Happy 64th to the greatest vintner in Mets history. He's not shy about his ranking.

One day late, but Happy 44th to our former chief surgeon.

Mid-November is a very good week for pitchers, too, no?

Mounting a furious late-innings rally to finish the book (writing one, not reading one), so please forgive if I can offer you only bullets for a bit.

• Want to hear someone ramble on about Doug Flynn and related topics for twenty or so minutes? Please visit Mike Silva's NY Baseball Digest and start listening just past the 62:00 mark.

• Want to hate the Phillies (the only serious Met archrival, it occurs to me, to ever beat us out of a playoff spot and then win the World Series; I'm not counting the '97 Marlins, though I will always count '97) a little less? Probably not, but you might after reading Doug Glanville's piece on the Phillie Phamily in the Times.

• Nothing to do with baseball per se in this Op-Ed piece, but you'll love Matt Mendolsohn's line about radio if you've ever gathered around one with strangers to catch a pitch or more from Murph or Gary or Howie.

• Speaking of one of those fellas, the Gary, Keith and Ron cabal is in a good mood these days and is offering a nice discount if you'd like to purchase some of their excellent items and contribute to the community-minded works supported by their Pitch In For a Good Cause Foundation. Use the coupon code BLOGGER by November 28 and receive 10% off your next order.

• MiarcleMets.net is dead, long live BlueandOrange.net, Chris Wilcox's always thought-provoking blog. It's got a new name but remains the same good read it's always been. Check out his piece on best offensive seasons by Mets catchers for one example of why he's terrific under any name.

• Thanks to Metstradamus for Scribbling us up. We'll pass the love along shortly.

• Belated Happy Fiftieth to my main man Mike Steffanos, who shares a birth date with Keith Hernandez and Mickey Mantle and, to my way of thinking, belongs in exactly that kind of company.

• Finally, in the cheapest anniversary gesture I could come up with, Happy No. 17 to my darling wife, who married me on this date in 1991 and still hasn't figured out that the joke is on her. (Don't tell her, OK?)

You don't know the half of it, partner.

Italy is a lovely place, full of more or less kind people who are willing to forgive monolingual Americans their spastic attempts at communicating through six or seven Italian words, idiotic smiles and kabuki-sized arm gestures of questionable meaning. But all this kindness can't make up for an irreducible lack in Europe: There is no baseball.

I know, there's no baseball back home right now either. But it's different. It started with the absence of baseball fields below the airplane flying from Amsterdam to Milan -- I suppose the rectangles of soccer fields evoke some poetry in the hearts of European travelers, but I'm not one of them. What I wouldn't do to glimpse, through ragged clouds, the rounded wedge of a baseball field with a diamond at its heart.

Still, there is baseball here, in a way. Channel-surfing late-night Italian TV is a blur of homegrown Italian slapstick, oddly dubbed American movies and shows (watching "Lassie" in Italian is the equivalent of several blows to the head), softcore personals featuring vaguely scuzzy naked girls and, every once in a while, a Wii ad featuring an Italian family battling at computer baseball. (By the way, using baseball to entice Italians to buy a Wii seems like the equivalent of luring Americans with computer petanque, but then what do I know?) Then there was last night, when a colleague and I walked up Milan's most-famous shopping street, the Via Montenapoleone, and one of the chicer-than-chic display windows had a pyramid of softballs in it. I stared at those red stitches on white like I was gazing at the Holy Grail, which in a way I was.

Oh, and far too many Italians wear Yankees gear.

Entering my third week in Europe, I can say with renewed venom that the ubiquity of the Yankees makes it all the more clear what a fucking scourge they truly are. I swear, I could visit a band of headhunters south of Java and at least two of them would be wearing blingy hats with the goddamn Vertical Swastika on it. This morning I was walking back to the office with my however-many-millilitres of Coca-Cola and a kid in full Yankee regalia flagged me down to ask for directions. He's probably wondering why the weird American's Mi dispiace, non capisco Italiano sounded gleeful rather than apologetic. I mean, I get that the Yankees are an American symbol -- it's just that they're the wrong American symbol, the sports equivalent of an supersized carbon footprint. I miss the hell out of baseball, but God forbid I should ever miss it enough to find comfort in the sight of a Yankee hat.

To be sure, I have access to the Internet, and I've faithfully made the rounds of Metsblog and the newspaper sites and ESPN. We're hell-bent on trading Aaron Heilman, want to employ Derek Lowe, are playing footsie with Orlando Hudson and like Brian Fuentes better than K-Rod, or at least we're saying so for agents' consumption. I get all that. But even though it's the same cyberspace reached from my desk back in Brooklyn, it's different. The World Series expired quietly in the pouring rain in the middle of the Amsterdam night, leaving me to awaken in a world without baseball. (And taking the $20 I'd bet on the Rays back in January at 175-to-1 with it, more's the pity) And now there's nothing at all.

That's not nothing as in "no baseball," though that's bad enough. It's the Big Nothing, marked by knowing that no other soul within 100 miles is trying to figure out how to get rid of fucking Luis Castillo, or waiting to give Johan Santana a standing O, or wondering with equal parts anxiety and excitement about that first walk into Citi Field. I'm homesick for my wife and my son and my friends and my familiar streets, but it would also make me borderline giddy to see an NY in orange and blue, or a back emblazoned with WRIGHT 5.

When that finally happens it'll still be November, baseball-free as always, but man oh man will it be a happier November.

It's been almost six weeks since the Mets played a game. I went through my usual five stages of grief, all of which were anger. But now I'm ready. I've been ready since yesterday when I wandered into a 7-Eleven I frequent during the season and sometimes pick up a beverage and a sandwich to bring to Shea. I hadn't been there since the season ended. I made a beeline to the cooler door and realized I didn't need a beverage. I wasn't going to a game. I couldn't even remember why I came in there.

As I've let on from time to time, I'm quite the political junkie. These past few months when I haven't been skipping from Mets site to Mets site, I've been on political sites. Couldn't get enough of 'em. Then we had the election. It worked out well from my perspective, but y'know what? I can't look at another political blog. Six weeks from now, I will not be waiting for Senators & Congressmen to report (although, come to think of it, that would seem to be the idea behind electing them).

This afternoon, under a bleak November sky, I don't want Pitchers & Catchers. I want a game, a game that counts. I'm not a baseball junkie. Baseball isn't junk. There's a difference between what you shoot up your veins and what is embedded in your soul.

Seriously, though. I want a game. Tonight. Let's go!

Tell the contractors we'll need another shelf in the Citi Field trophy case, with Carlos Beltran and David Wright bringing to the new joint a couple of familiar trophies. Each defender won another Gold Glove Wednesday, third straight for Carlos, second in a row for David (this one, I believe, way more deserved than the last one). Johan Santana, A.L. winner in '07, will have to wait 'til this time next year for his first National League mitt o' glitter as the voters are still in the habit of reflexively handing the pitchers' award to Greg Maddux. The great Maddux, who earned my appreciation for passing Roger Clemens on the all-time wins list in 2008, is leaning toward quietly hangin' 'em up, which also tops everything Clemens the drama queen ever did regarding retirement.

Technically, the Gold Gloves go home with the players, but maybe there'll be something in the Citi Field trophy case signifying the accomplishments of Beltran and Wright. Maybe there'll be a Citi Field trophy case even.

Many of us snorted derisively when Jimmy Rollins took time from the Philadelphia Phillies' World Series celebration to take a shot at the New York Mets. It wasn't much of a shot — we heartily agree, Jimmy, that Johan Santana is a great pitcher — but the shortstop's sidebar struck a dissonant note. You won and you're worried about the team you beat three steps ago on your road to glory?

That, to use a clearly lower-case pejorative, was bush. Why would the Phillies or their fans to whom Rollins was pandering be obsessed with the Mets? our side asked. In turn, why were Mets fans obsessed with the Phillies being obsessed with the Mets? It was a silly loop of an argument, the kind of unanswerable goose chase that clogs blogs and bores boards.

But that's OK. It's partisanship. As sports fans, we may strive now and then for sportsmanship, but that's not why we root. We root for our guys to win and, by necessity or sometimes out of spite, their guys to lose. When confronted by the occasional uncomfortable reality that what we craved didn't occur, we bring ourselves to acknowledge unpleasant news as best we can and get back to being pro-us and anti-them. It's what we do.

It's been 22 going on 23 years since my side won the last baseball game played in a given year. At that moment, I was elated to be a Mets fan. I wasn't interested in sticking it to those we vanquished along the way, though I will confess to dropping by the Carvel where a Mets-hating Yankees fan friend of mine worked and talking a minute of trash before he grudgingly spit out his congratulations. I sought to abuse him as a stand-in for every jerk I put up with in junior high and high school, but on the night of October 28, 1986, fresh from a trip to the Canyon of Heroes, it felt superfluous.

Sports at the upper levels are simple: a championship is won, a parade is held, t-shirts are sold and the story is essentially over. However gratified or wounded we feel by the result, it — our wonderful collective mania notwithstanding — was just a game. We take our games very seriously and we absorb their outcomes with emotional intensity, but their implications lean to the personal rather than the universal. The Phillies won the World Series? It bums us out. The Giants won the Super Bowl? It gave many of us a rush. Outside of their immediate spheres of influence, however, there's not much at large a championship can impact.

The outcomes of other high-profile competitions that aren't sports yet tend to be treated as such are another matter. As in sports, sometimes your side wins, sometimes your side loses. Though the stakes dwarf those yielded by the final score of a ballgame — even a really big ballgame — there usually exists the impulse to cheer or boo, to raise a banner for your side and maybe stick a tongue out when the other guy's motorcade rolls by. You know: pro-us, anti-them.

Then there are those rare moments whose parameters would seem to encourage that familiar form of partisanship, but you don't feel partisan at all. Maybe you've won and you're filled with good cheer and satisfaction for the triumph of the side you consider your team, but you have no desire whatsoever to stick it to the side you've never cared for. You are not interested in dropping by the Carvel and pointing out to your friend/foe how Darryl Strawberry's combination of power and speed trumps whatever Don Mattingly brings to the table. You may have been waiting for this moment for years — say eight years, as in the time elapsed between the Yankees' last world championship in 1978 and the Mets taking it all in 1986 — but when it gets here, it's not where your head is. Your head realizes that the World Series and the Super Bowl and such can grip your imagination, but there's a difference between what you imagine and what you're living through.

And when you attempt to comprehend what you're living through, you decide that sometimes partisanship is a dissonant impulse and that what you really want is for everybody in the game to be on the winning side.

Rare is the candidate who makes good on the vast majority of his promises, but when you find one who does, you owe him your vote. Thus, this Election Day, it's a landslide.

Johan Santana is Faith and Fear in Flushing's Most Valuable Met for 2008.

As we continue to pick the debris from the wreckage of the second consecutive massively disappointing finish out of our hair and our souls, we are left comforted by the image of Johan Santana living up to every shred of hype and hope invested in him by the citizens of Metsopotamia, no more so than when they needed him most.

I'll confess I was a bit of a cynic from time to time, wondering what the big deal about this big-ticket item of ours was. He was great to have around, but would he be worth when it all really mattered?

He was worth everything. Everything.

Although Scott Boras did an exquisite job of it, you couldn't put a dollar value on Johan Santana if you were a Mets fan breathing in precarious sync with your club down the stretch in 2008. When everything was crumbling before him, around him and after him, Johan Santana was the rock that stood strong and stayed steady. Once every five — or four — days in September, Johan Santana transformed what it meant to root for his team. He was the sure and decidedly not shaky thing.

The memory the final Sunday of 2008 still clings uneasily to the Met psyche, but I'm willing to place the final Saturday a fraction of a scintilla above it on the vine of critical perception. We know what was lost on Sunday. But think about what was won on Saturday. In witnessing, perhaps, the most spellbinding clutch pitching performance of the Met age, we were reassured not just for 24 hours, but for next year and for the five years of his contract beyond that (to the extent that anybody can be sure about anything beyond the moment in which we live). Our team went out and paid a Manny's ransom for one pitcher and that pitcher pitched like a bargain. By September 27, demanding the ball on short rest and then knowing exactly what to do with it and then doing it...it was as if he were pitching for free. It didn't feel like he was merely doing his job. It felt like missionary work.

We dream of Mets coming through in our name. So few do in circumstances like those hovering over the final Saturday. Even fewer do it as a matter of course. Johan Santana did it. Johan Santana did it every which way in September. And August. And most every time he started in 2008. The Mets were 22-12 in his starts, and that's taking into account outings that gave way to appearances by the vaunted Mets bullpen (whose participation in games he learned to turn superfluous as the season wound down). Johan Santana's Mets were a joy and a delight. Everybody else's Mets were a crapshoot. Every five — or four — days we really needed a sure thing. With Johan, we got it.

Among position players, FAFIF MVM honorable mention is due Carlos Delgado, touted here for National League Most Valuable Player honors when Met things were looking their best. The first half of his season swirled in repercussions and recriminations but his second half lifted our second half in a way I've rarely seen any individual Met position player's performance lift a season. One candidate for the presidency in 2008 said that a previous White House occupant "changed the trajectory of America" and "put us on a fundamentally different path". That is how Carlos Delgado's turnaround impacted this team from late June well into September. If Delgado's first half was midnight with a bad moon rising, his second truly felt like morning in the middle of the Met batting order.

You can rightly pick apart how Carlos Delgado began 2008. I will always remember how he completed it.

FAITH AND FEAR'S MOST VALUABLE METS
2005
Pitcher: Pedro Martinez
Position Player: Cliff Floyd

2006
Position Player: Carlos Beltran
Pitcher: T#m Gl@v!ne

2007
Position Player: David Wright
Pitcher: John Maine

2008
Pitcher: Johan Santana
Position Player: Carlos Delgado

Still to come: The Nikon Camera Player of the Year for 2008.

I've been waiting to announce this because like every no-hitter in Mets history, I won't quite believe it until I see it in front of me, but it's listed on Amazon, so...well, there it is.

I think this is where I say pre-order yours today.

More details as they become available.

For Halloween this year, I'm dressing up as a Yankee Stadium sentimentalist.

Eeeeeek!!!

Relax. It's just a mask.

Many thanks to Alex Belth of Bronx Banter (newly moved to the SNY family of blogs and richly deserving of whatever additional attention results) for the invitation to take part in the seriously wonderful series of Lasting Yankee Stadium Memories and recall a trip or two to the other local venue that will be haunting the gruesome graveyard of ballparks soon enough.

More ghoulishness here.

For the ones who aren't jerks; for the ones who didn't just find out about baseball; for the ones who honestly understand what a gift this is; for the ones like the men in their fifties I ran into outside of Shea after the last Sunday game between us in September 2007 who were too beset with anxieties over potentially blowing the Wild Card to even suggest they had a shot at winning the East despite having just swept the team in first place; for the real fans who have earned it over 28 years by being true and without being jerks...to them I say congratulations.

For the rest of us, there's A. Bartlett Giamatti in cardboard concerto.

For the rest of us, there's farewell to the old and welcome to the new...designed to be the greatest ever built for baseball.

For the rest of us, there's the lingering hypothetical we can always imagine went our way.

For the rest of us, it's Let's Go Next Year. It can't get here fast enough.

As we wait for the World Series to continue or conclude or do something other than start late and generate low ratings, consider that if it were the Mets representing the National League under similar circumstances, last night would have been the final game in the history of Shea Stadium (and remember it was Billy Wagner not holding an eighth-inning All-Star lead that facilitated the middle three games being played in the N.L. park). Seeing as how Philly's weather edged our way not long after the tarp covered the Citizens Bank Park infield, can you imagine the final game ever at Shea Stadium being suspended? Can you imagine Shea being given a little extra life by sixth-inning tie, ungodly precipitation and/or commissioner's fiat?

Can you imagine Wright driving the ball with Murphy on third and nobody out?

So much for that flight of fancy.

How evenly matched are the Rays and Phils? Let's take a closer Faith and Fear in Flushing look.

Ray Daviault
1) Made Met and major league debut April 13, 1962 at the Polo Grounds, first home game in the history of the franchise. Gave up a walk, a wild pitch, a fielder's choice and another wild pitch to allow the Pirates a tack-on run. Mets lost 4-3.
2) Said Casey Stengel afterward, according to Jerry Mitchell's The Amazing Mets, "Maybe he should be a starter instead of a reliever, although he is 29 years old an' has been a reliever an' it is hard to change a man's life for him." Ray would make three starts in 1962. An' he was 27 on the occasion of the Home Opener. You could look it up.
3) First Canadian-born Met, beating Ken MacKenzie to the punch by two days.
4) Entire big league career took place as a 1962 Met: 36 appearances, 5 losses, 1 win. Gave up go-ahead homer to Curt Flood in the top of the ninth in the opener of the July 7 twinbill vs. St. Louis. Struck out Julian Javier, Bobby Gene Smith and Ken Boyer. In the bottom of the inning, Joe Christopher reached safely and Marv Throneberry hit a come-from-behind walkoff homer to make the Montreal native a winner for the first and last time.
5) Select Ultimate Mets Database Memories:
• "His nickname was Frenchy."
• "I was very lucky to be coached by Ray Daviault in a Junior league in Montreal. I never had a coach like him. He taught me all as I know now in baseball. His brother Dave played in the Pittsburgh farm system. I know them very well and they are two very nice gentlemen."
• "Other than Tim Harkness, the only Met from Quebec."

Phil Linz
1) Made Met debut July 13, 1967 as a defensive replacement for Buddy Harrelson in the second game of a doubleheader at Cincinnati's Crosley Field. Struck out by Ted Abernathy in his first Met at-bat as Mets lost nightcap 6-3 and split twinighter.
2) Played 24 games as utilityman in '67 and 78 games in '68, mostly as a second baseman. Batted .209 in Met career under four managers: Wes Westrum, Salty Parker, Gil Hodges and Rube Walker, who ran the club in Hodges' absence after Gil suffered a heart attack last week of the season. Linz' last Met game was his last game as a big leaguer.
3) Best known as the Yankee backup infielder who raised skipper Yogi Berra's hackles by blowing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" into a harmonica on the team bus after a tough loss in 1964. Goaded by Mickey Mantle to "play it louder" (Linz didn't hear Yog' order him to knock it off and asked Mantle what Berra said), Phil incited his manager to knock the instrument from his hands. The confrontation is cited as both what sparked the Yankees to their epic dynasty's final pennant and the episode that demonstrated to ownership that Berra had lost control of the team. After Berra was fired, the Mets brought him on board and he stayed at Shea for more than a decade.
4) One of several Mets/Yanks the Village Voice surveyed for memories of Shea and Yankee Stadium in September. Of the ballpark in the Bronx, Linz described the walk from the tunnel to the field as "the gates of heaven opened up to me." Asked if there was anything he liked better about Shea, Phil laughed and said, "No."
5) Select Ultimate Mets Database Memories:
• "I worked with Phil in the mid-'90's. He's a great guy. He had something nice to say about everyone in baseball. He liked everyone. He told me Jerry Koosman was a particularly good guy."
• "My son broke his collarbone in 2001 when he was 12. He was diving for a ground ball at Firemen's Field in Valley Stream on the first day of summer vacation, and was completely unable to do anything until September. One of the parents of a kid on the team knew Phil Linz and asked if a call from former Met and Yankee Phil Linz would cheer my son up. I knew who Linz was, my son didn't, but he was a major leaguer, so I said sure. Well, Linz called my house, spent 20 minutes on the phone with my son, telling him stories about his playing days."
• "Wasn't Mr. Laffs (Linz' bar) a big money-maker in the Upper East Side heyday of the late '60s early '70s?"

Ray Sadecki
1) Made Met debut April 10, 1970, relieving Jim McAndrew in the midst of a third-inning beatdown. Allowed two inherited runners and two of his own to score as Cardinals defeat Mets 7-3 at Busch Stadium.
2) Best record as a Met was 1970, despite that inauspicious debut. As a long reliever and spot starter, Ray went 8-4. His won-lost ratio combined with his cool name made him an instant favorite of at least one seven-year-old fan who was experiencing his first full season of rooting.
3) Won 20 games for the 1964 World Champion Cardinals, which came as a shock to at least one seven-year-old fan when he found out that some Mets used to be other things, especially 20-game winners. Despite surrendering a leadoff double to Phil Linz in Game Four of the '64 World Series and being knocked out in the first inning, St. Louis came back to defeat the Yankees 4-3 as Roger Craig and Ron Taylor held the American League champs scoreless after Sadecki left. That's three Met pitchers in the World Series in 1964, albeit none of them as Mets at that moment.
4) Threw the last World Series pitch at Shea Stadium for thirteen years, retiring Bert Campaneris to close out Game Five of the '73 Classic. When he did, the Shea scoreboard promised Miracle No. 2 awaited 3,000 miles away. Just under one year later, Sadecki and Tommy Joe Moore was traded back to St. Louis for Joe Torre. He returned to the Mets for the first month of 1977, released four weeks before Torre became player-manager.
5) Select Ultimate Mets Database Memories:
• "Yogi Berra called Sadecki a staff saver."
• "He was kinda the 'whatever you need, Skip' type of player. Think about any present-day player having that type of attitude. That is a reason sports have gone down. The world needs more Ray Sadeckis!"
• "I feel that the trade the Mets made to get Ray Sadecki never gets the recognition it deserves as one of the team's best. I mean all they gave up off a world championship team to get him was Bob Heise and Jim Gosger. They also received Dave Marshall. What Sadecki did for the Mets from 1970 to 1974, is not even done by today's modern day pitchers."

Phil Hennigan
1) Made Met debut April 11, 1973, rescuing Tug McGraw in the bottom of the ninth with two out and two out, inducing a flyout from Bernie Carbo to earn a save at St. Louis as the Mets beat the Cardinals 5-4. He saved a win for Tom Seaver the next day with one-and-a-third shutout innings.
2) Phil's Met career slid rapidly downhill from there. The Mets lost 25 of his remaining 28 appears in 1973, leading to his release in early July. His final Met numbers were 0-4, 50 hits in 43.1 innings, a 6.23 ERA.
3) A friend tells me his father always responded to Phil Hennigan entering a game by noting (I'm paraphrasing) that both the bases and he would be loaded in no time at all.
4) Perhaps it's just a coincidence, but the Scotch Kramer favored on Seinfeld was called Hennigans: "Say you got a big job interview, and you're a little nervous. Well throw back a couple shots of Hennigans and you'll be as loose as a goose and ready to roll in no time. And because it's odorless, why, it will be our little secret." That made it, according to Jerry's nosy neighbor, the "no smell, no tell brand Scotch".
5) Select Ultimate Mets Database Memories:
• "When I was a kid I cut Tom Seaver's head off of his baseball card and taped it onto Phil Hennigan's body. Dumb move but I still have the card."
• "I still remember Bob Murphy calling him 'frisky Phil Hennigan' each time he was brought in."
• "I knew Phil when he played for the Indians. His wife Carolyn and their sons were wonderful people. When the Mets got Phil, my sister and I decided to go to Shea Stadium when we visited New York. Phil left tickets for us every time we visited. He was one of the wonderful former Indians who we got to know in the 1970s. As a player, he certainly tried hard, but the years on the Indians' roster were rough and it seems it didn't get any better in New York."

Ray Burris
1) Made Met debut August 24, 1979, throwing seven two-hit innings but left the game at 0-0. Neil Allen gave up a run-scoring double to Davey Concepcion in the eighth and the Mets lost 1-0.
2) His second start for the Mets was the first game I ever attended with my oldest Met friend in the world Joel Lugo. Burris took the 5-4 loss in that quintessential 1979 affair.
3) Burris' most famous appearance on the Shea mound was as the Cub starter on July 13, 1977, throwing to Lenny Randle as the great blackout of '77 struck. Ray won a complete game victory, even though the last 3-2/3 innings of were picked up and played September 16, 1977.
4) The Mets lost Ray's eight starts in 1980, Ray taking the L in six of those games, though his ERA rose only a half-run during that stretch. After finishing 7-13, Burris left as a free agent and signed with Montreal, starting the final postseason game in Expo history. His eight five-hit innings at Olympic Stadium went for naught as Fernando Valenzuela matched him and Steve Rogers, normally a starter, surrendered a two-out ninth-inning homer to Rick Monday on what came to be known in Quebec as Blue Monday. It was Burris' last postseason appearance despite pitching until 1987.
5) Select Ultimate Mets Database Memories:
• "Only Murph could get away with saying 'Oh how that man perspires!'"
• "I live in Texas and he is one of my coaches and has helped me become a better player and pitcher. He has a big heart and I owe him a lot."
• "I had the opportunity to catch for Ray in American Legion Baseball during the late '60s. I was not his regular catcher...what I remember most about Ray was the fact that I was the worst catcher he ever had and not once did he blame anything on me although I was the goat."

Phil Mankowski
1) Made Met debut April 11, 1980 as a pinch-hitter, working a walk off of Bill Caudill. He didn't score and the Mets lost to the Cubs 7-5 at Shea in front of 4,460.
2) In his first start at third four days later, he made two first-inning errors against the Expos, leading to five Montreal runs and a 7-3 loss before a Shea crowd of 3,207. In his only other start, at the Astrodome on April 25, 1980, Mankowski made another error, but it didn't lead to a run in that Mets loss. His fielding percentage during his brief third base tenure in 1980 was .571. Phil played third like I played third in Pee Wee League, except I didn't get a second start.
3) Nevertheless, Phil Mankowski was a Halloween treat when he was traded to the Mets from the Tigers on October 31, 1979. Going to Detroit in exchange for him and Jerry Morales was all-time bane Richie Hebner. Leaving a flaming bag of Richie Hebner at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull was a serious treat.
4) Disappeared to Tidewater for the balance of 1980 and all of 1981, before he was recalled for a few weeks in 1982. Was riding a four-game hitting streak when the Mets dropped him. Seems to me the Mets could have used all the four-game hitting streaks they could get in 1982.
5) Select Ultimate Mets Database Memories:
• "I just remember Phil's picture in the back of the old Wometco Home Theater (WHT) program guide (they had about five Mets/Yanks games a month fed from SportsChannel)."
• "Phil Mankowski was on third base when Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) hit the game-winning home run in the movie, The Natural."
• "Just saw Phil the other day, and sure enough he is now in the foodservice industry in the Western New York region. Still doing very well and still in pretty good shape."

Ray Searage
1) Made Met and major league debut June 11, 1981 with two scoreless innings behind Pat Zachry. Threw the final Met pitch before the players' strike...to Tom Seaver, who went back out for the bottom of the ninth and retired Rusty Staub, Mike Cubbage and Alex Treviño to defeat the Mets at Shea 5-2.
2) His next appearance would come just under two months later, the very next game the Mets played — after the strike. Ray allowed a single to Leon Durham in the midst of a three-run Cub rally at Wrigley, one that tied the game at four in the eleventh thanks to Bobby Bonds' two-run double; in the top half of the inning, Dave Kingman had put the Mets out in front 4-1 on a three-run homer off Rawly Eastwick. The game was in extras because Bill Buckner homered off Mike Scott to knot the game at one. The Mets and Cubs would each score in the twelfth before the Mets put two on the board in the thirteenth and Greg Harris saved it for Dyar Miller. It was the very first game anybody played after the 50-day strike, thus the Mets, in the split-season format instituted for the remainder of 1981, were the best team in baseball at 1-0. (Given that it was Reopening Day, this game is quite possibly the greatest Memory Hole Special in Mets history. Will ya look at those names? And that action?)
3) Ray's next appearance the next day included his first win and first hit (off future Met Dick Tidrow). He'd never have another of either as a Met.
4) He's from Freeport, Long Island, a Dave Kingman blast from where I sit.
5) Select Ultimate Mets Database Memories:
• "Man, this guy had a 1.000 winning percentage as a pitcher and a 1.000 BA. Why did we let him go?"
• "If I recall, the 1980 yearbook says that the Mets acquired Ray Searage from the Cubs in a minor league deal for catcher Jody Davis. Here's a trade I wish the Mets had never made. On the other hand, had they kept Jody Davis, we in all likelihood would have never enjoyed having Gary Carter on our team."
• "The poor guy pitched for the Mets when they stank, so he was shipped to the Cleveland Indians, when they stank — in Municipal Stadium. Naturally we called him 'Raw Sewage,' and so did the Cleveland fans — I mean fan (at the time)."

Phil Lombardi
1) Made Met debut June 27, 1989, inserted at first base as part of a double-switch by Davey Johnson in the twelfth inning of a fourteen-inning loss to the Expos at the Big O. Went 0-for-1.
2) On that very same night, I was at Comiskey Park watching Bobby Valentine's Texas Rangers defeat Jeff Torborg's Chicago White Sox.
3) I was home in time the next night to see Lombardi hit his only Met homer as starting catcher. He went 3-for-4 but the Mets lost again.
4) The key player in the trade that made Lombardi a Met on December 11, 1987 was Rafael Santana, sent packing to create a spot for Kevin Elster. It was a very big deal that the Mets and Yankees made a trade involving a major league player. An illustration of Rafael with his bindle flung over his shoulder and preparing to cross the Triborough appeared on the back page of the Daily News. Lombardi and Linz made it two Phils to have played for the Mets and Yankees; Burris is the only Ray to have been both Good and Evil.
5) Select Ultimate Mets Database Memories:
• "Met him the summer of '89 at Bill Robinson baseball camp in Staten Island. Nice guy."
• "I knew Lombardi in 1985 when he was the number one catcher for the Albany-Colonie Yankees in the Eastern League. Phil was a very friendly guy who showed flashes of major league potential."
• "Absolutely, positively could not throw. Not even back to the mound. I remember a game at Shea where Bobby Ojeda was visibly upset at having to jump and bend for each throw back from Lombardi. It was painful to watch."

Ray Knight
1) Ray Knight's made his Met debut August 29, 1984, starting at third and going 1-for-3 in a 3-2 win over the Dodgers at Shea. Ray was either obtained for the stretch run in '84 or to play third long enough to showcase Hubie Brooks at short and facilitate the eventual trade for Gary Carter. Ray didn't contribute a whole helluva lot otherwise as the Cubs pulled away. For that matter, Keith Moreland's infield hit to third which Knight couldn't quite handle on September 7, 1984 should have been ruled an error and Doc Gooden should have rolled from there to the first no-hitter in Mets history.
2) The last Met I booed as a matter of course was Ray Knight in 1985 for batting .218 and being generally lousy. Ray was Comeback Player of the Year in 1986 and World Series MVP, too. Perhaps I need to get on these guys more.
3) Ray Knight was the last Mets World Series Most Valuable Player. Mike Hampton was the last Mets National League Most Valuable Player. Neither was invited back to the Mets the following season, seasons in which the Mets themselves were not invited back to those respective postseason rounds. You know, there might be a connection.
4) After midnight on October 26, 1986, in a game that began on October 25, Ray Knight scored the winning run of a World Series game. You might remember it. Exactly 22 years later, in another World Series game that began on a Saturday night and technically ended on a Sunday morning, Eric Bruntlett scored the winning run. It was a pretty exciting ending, I suppose, but I don't think it will be remembered nearly as well as Knight's winning run in 2030. Just a guess.
5) Select Ultimate Mets Database Memories:
• "I remember going to a game at Shea in '86. Mets vs. Dodgers. George Foster hit a grand slam against Tom Neidenfuer. He also took about five minutes to circle to bases. Neidenfuer was fuming. Ray Knight was the next batter, and the first pitch was right at his head. The funny thing about it was seeing Knight go straight down to avoid the pitch. He hit the dirt, then about 1/100th of a second later shot straight up and charged the mound. It was hysterical seeing it. That team sure had attitude!!!"
• "His homer off Calvin Schiraldi in Game Seven gave the Mets the lead they never relinquished. I met him when he worked for ESPN, a truly gracious and nice person."
• "This is an odd memory but every time I hear 'Blister in the Sun' by the Violent Femmes I think of Ray. I was in college and a bunch of us had gotten a beach house over the summer and were partying pretty hard. That song came on just as Eric Davis slid into third (the TV sound was down) and Ray Ray decked him. It seemed to have been choreographed perfectly. I was toasted and the whole thing seemed so cool. I don't remember a hell of a lot from that night but the fight stands out."

Phil Humber
1) Phil Humber made his Met and major league debut September 24, 2006, mopping up the ninth inning of a 5-1 loss to the Nationals at Shea during the indifferent stretch that followed the clinching of the Eastern Division.
2) The Mets lost all five games in which Humber appeared, but the only one that will perpetually haunt us is Phil's first and (to date) only big league start, September 26, 2007 against Washington at Shea Stadium. He was staked to a 5-0 lead entering the fourth when it, like the 2007 Mets, all came apart. The Mets went on to lose the game, the division and whatever halo they'd held onto from 2006. It's not back yet.
3) Phil's baseball coach at Rice University was Wayne Graham, a Met in 1964 and one of five Waynes in Met history, joined by Wayne Garrett, Wayne Twitchell, Wayne Housie and Wayne Kirby.
4) Phil Humber was packaged with three other prospects and shipped to Minnesota on February 2, 2008 for Johan Santana. There is only one Johan.
5) Select Ultimate Mets Database Memories (each posted on UMDB late in the 2006 season):
• "Looked good coming out of the pen last night. Hope he has overcome his injury and has a long and healthy career with the Mets (successful too!)."
• "I was at Shea when he made his ML debut against the Nationals. I was shocked he pitched considering it had been almost a month since he was in a game and the arm problem."
• "After he went down with arm problems, I never expected to hear from him again. He had a really good year in the minors and two nice innings at Shea. Maybe he'll be a future starter after all, or a chip in a deal for someone else."

Rays vs. Phils Conclusions
1) Knight gives a big edge to the Rays, though in the long run perhaps nobody in this particular competition will have inscribed a bigger contribution in Met lore than Humber. Sure felt that way the final Saturday of September 2008.
2) Honestly, I'd have to take at least four of the Rays before I'd consider a single Phil. Maybe Lombardi over Daviault, but Searage and his 1-0/1.000 over Lombardi.
3) Rey Ordoñez was not eligible to participate.
4) Nor were Mike, Tony, Jason and Andy Phillips.
5) The three most essential Web sites for anybody doing what we do here (not counting this one) are, year after year, Baseball-Reference, Retrosheet and, especially for us, Ultimate Mets Database, with a special nod toward those fans who leave their incomparable memories of all Mets great and fleeting on UMDB. We depend on the lot of these sites almost every time we blog and they deserve more shoutouts than we remember to give them. Visit them, support them, spread the word about them. They make baseball a better place.

Early this morning, in a month when baseball is still being played fairly close to this latitude, there was frost that required scraping from my windshield. That's the first sign that winter's creepin' in and I'm tired of this town again.

I'm already tired of winter and it's October.

It was enough to make me calculate, for the fourth consecutive offseason, the coming of the Baseball Equinox, that precise moment when we are as close to the last pitch of the last season as we are to the first pitch of the next season. Everything from that point forward means there is hope for us yet, that next year is almost here, that you can make out, ever so fuzzily, baseball over the horizon. That's when you can start counting down in earnest to pitchers and catchers. You can start doing it now if you must, but my ballological clock is still set to 2008 time. I remain stuck on how we sprung back to second and I'm not nearly ready to consider how we might fall ahead to first.

Anyway, on to the big number...

The 2008 season ended for Met intents and purposes on September 28 at 5:05 PM. The 2009 season will begin at approximately 2:15 PM on April 6. That places our Baseball Equinox at 3:40 AM, January 2. That's a Friday, if you're scoring at home (or even if you're by yourself).

Stay warm. Keep the faith. Go Rays.

No doubt I'm rooting for the Rays in the World Series for every obvious reason. They're not the Phillies. They've got Steve Henderson. They've got Cliff Floyd. They're the closest thing we'll ever see again to the '69 Mets. The '69 Mets are into them. They play up the road from Al Lang. I went to college in Tampa.

They're not the Phillies.

But a word on behalf of the Phillies. No, not these Phillies. Not the Phillies of ancient dubious history (Ben Chapman, et al), but of my flirtation with the Phillies for one season and my heartbreak in empathy for the Phillies on one October night, in Florida.

This was 1993, the year the Mets sucked as I had never seen them suck before and I adopted as my second team the first-place Phillies. Not against the Mets, mind you, but we were in seventh (the only year the National League East had a seventh) and they were roguishly charming. They had Lenny Dykstra and a bunch of fellows who seemed Dykstraish. We didn't play them 'til June that year and by then we were literally 20 games out. It didn't seem a conflict of interest to pull for the Phillies in a non-Mets vacuum. It didn't even seem bizarre to have bought at Shea, when you could buy this sort of thing there, a Phillies cap.

Sounds a lot worse now than it felt then (though it wasn't the worst cap I ever tried on for size). It made perfect sense to me in '93. I needed an outlet for my competitive rooting. The Mets I rooted on institutionally. The Phillies I hoped would go all the way. One night in August when the Mets were rained out, I tuned in the Phillies station and listened surprisingly intently. Man, I thought, if the Mets ever ceased to exist, is this what I'd be doing on summer nights?

I was excited when they held off a late charge by the Expos to win the East. I was thrilled when they upset the Braves in the NLCS (back when I also thought well of the Western Division Braves...how fucking bad was 1993 anyway?). I was psyched for them to take on the Blue Jays. They were down three games to two in a slam-bang Series when I found myself in Fort Lauderdale on business. An old friend from college was living in Miami, so I gave him a call after having fallen out of touch with him for a while. He was never much of a baseball fan but in the mid-'80s when we were close he was highly supportive of me and the Mets. It felt like kismet that the Phillies were in the World Series that week and I was in the area because he was originally from Philadelphia. When we goofed around playing Wiffle Ball back in the day, I wore my mesh Mets cap from Cap Night 1981 and he wore an old-school Phillies cap, the pre-Schmidt model on which the new retro Phillies caps were based. If he could get behind the Mets for my sake in '85 and '86, it was the right thing to do in '93 to return the favor.

We hooked up on the Saturday afternoon before Game Six was to be played at SkyDome. We went mini-golfing and to a batting cage like we used to in Tampa. After a nice meal at an Italian joint I knew from when my parents had a place in Hallandale, we headed back up to Lauderdale to my hotel to join the game in progress. We had trouble finding it on the radio because the station that had been airing the World Series bumped it in favor of the Miami-Syracuse football game (reminding me how glad I was to be living in New York where priorities weren't askew).

We turned on the TV in the seventh. Dykstra was up with the Jays leading by four. He was traded to the Phillies from the Mets the day after my buddy got married. I had flown down to Miami for the wedding on short notice to be the best man and got word when I arrived in New York that night: Dykstra and McDowell for Juan Samuel. (Samuel...he's pretty good, I instantly decided.) Four years later, two on, nobody out, Dave Stewart pitching. Lenny swings and makes it 5-4. It’s his fourth homer of the Series. By the end of the inning, Al Leiter is pitching for Toronto and gives up the sac fly to make it 6-5 Phillies. My friend and I are high-fiving and yelling and looking forward to a seventh game. I’ll be flying home in the morning, but this will be great. I’ll call him tomorrow night after the Phillies beat the Blue Jays, having been down three games to one. There's going to be a seventh game. Lenny and the Phillies still have a chance!

In the bottom of the ninth, Joe Carter goes Bill Mazeroski on Mitch Williams. Wild Thing, he made our hearts sink. My old friend and I sat on opposite sides of the bed, saying nothing for the longest time as the Blue Jays celebrated. He was from Philadelphia but not the biggest Phillies fan by any means. I was from New York and every other year of their existence except that one hated the Phillies. But for a few minutes in Florida we were both crushed by this turn of events.

The Phillies reverted to anathema to me the next spring. I eventually discarded their cap. I haven't heard from my friend since 1996. He lives in Tampa now. I wonder if he even knows who's in the World Series this year.

Alright, I'm lost, Jim said aloud although a bit begrudgingly
Like things might change in light of this confession
He was both amazed and sour that at this late date and hour
He might find himself in this situation
—The Rainmakers, "A Million Miles Away"

You may have noticed that as many as three games of the World Series will be taking place in the National League East ballpark closest to Shea Stadium that isn't Shea Stadium — and we're not talking Citi Field, wise guy. So relatively close yet really, so far.

The Mets finished three games behind the eventual National League champion Phillies in 2008. Were there really only three games separating the two teams? One of the outs I gave the Mets in case they didn't win their division throughout the season was I never honestly thought they were as good as the Phillies, a team that seemed far more loaded in just about every department. Conversely, if the Phillies were that good, I wondered why they didn't have at least a seven-game lead most of the season. You'd like to think if your team can get close to winning something — lest I remind you the Mets led the Phillies by as many as 3½ in the second week of September — they can pull it off.

Having had more time than I wished to observe the Phillies this month, I revert to my default stance that the team that should have won did win (even if one bleeping fly ball could have changed the course of the final week, but never mind that Wright now). However little you think of their followers and however much Ray blue you bleed starting Wednesday, the 2008 Phillies are very good, they deserved to win the East, they are the best team in the N.L.

So how'd they do it?

In one of Omar Minaya's traditional no-time-to-think explanations right after the Mets eliminated themselves from playoff contention — with so much experience in offering concession statements, you think he'd have this stuff down pat — I heard him say something curious. Paraphrasing here, he said the difference between the Mets and Phils was the Phillies' core had a little more experience, specifically that they'd been contending longer.

"What a crock" was my first reaction. Where was this experience differential in 2006 when we were new to first place but had no problem holding it? The Mets had adequate enough service time then. If anything, two years should have made the Mets wise beyond their years and our dynasty should be in its heyday as we speak. Owing the Mets' failure to the Phillies' longevity seemed as strange as insisting the Mets who failed in historic fashion down the stretch in 2007, despite defending a division title, were done in by not having enough pennant race experience (which is what our general manager suggested in the aftermath of Collapse I).

But let's look at the Phillie side of things, particularly how their roster's been constructed. If we can't stand the Phillies (and we can't) I think it has something to do with their familiarity. They have put together a team over time that has grown together. Grown on our nerve endings, sure, but grown to win, too.

Every year since 2000, one of the key members of these Phillies has established himself as a Major Leaguer: Burrell in 2000, Rollins in '01, Myers in '02, Utley in '03, Madson in '04, Howard in '05 and Hamels in '06. Every one of them was drafted by the Phillies. Not all of them was an immediate success and most of them experienced setbacks along the way, but here they are, a unit, a core. It's as if somebody somewhere had a plan. Baseball doesn't work the way it did forty years ago, but these guys coming and staying together reminds me of "the boys from Syracuse," the future Tigers who played together in the minors in the mid-'60s and coalesced into the world champions of 1968. There was no free agentry then and there was generally less inclination to trade young talent for quick fixes; there was no Wild Card to tempt a GM into quick fixes. It's not the same in 2008, but it's a close enough echo of what worked for a long time in this game.

Complementing the core are a slew of smart, inexpensive pickups. The dreaded Shane Victorino was a Rule 5 selection on whom the Dodgers gave up. The nearly as dreaded Greg Dobbs was plucked off waivers after Seattle let him go. Carlos Ruiz worked his way up the minors after signing out of Panama. Chris Coste is a legendary scrap heap reclamation success story. Jayson Werth was a bargain basement free agent. Brad Lidge came in an almost no-risk trade and brought along Eric Bruntlett. Jamie Moyer was a quiet deadline deal that keeps paying dividends. Pedro Feliz was an under-the-radar signing. Matt Stairs, the quintessential September pickup, proved his value with one swing in Game Four of the NLCS (and boy does he enjoy the company of his teammates). All their ancillary setup men seem to have come in on little cat's feet but unlike our setup men, they don't do unspeakable things in their litter box.

I don't watch the Phillies every day so I'm probably missing the slumps and the godawful outings. Because all I know about them is this year's version made up 3½ games in a blink and last year's version made up twice as much ground just as fast, it is my impression that they've been gellin' like a felon when it's counted. I see role players fulfilling their responsibilities, stars living up to their billing and strikes being thrown and outs being secured in late innings.

What I don't see is a big-name free agent in the lot. What I don't see is a humongous contract assumed and extended. What I don't see is overpaying for underperformance. Geoff Jenkins didn't seem to do much for them and So Taguchi was a bust (thank heaven for small favors), but it apparently didn't drag them down. They've been right way more often than they've been wrong.

The Phillies were building in the early 2000s. They competed for Wild Cards from 2003 through 2006, never winning one. It took The Greatest Collapse In Baseball History™ to push them across the line in 2007 and two ill-timed, king-sized letdowns in Flushing and Milwaukee to ensure their good fortune in 2008. But they've won their division, our division, two years running. They got there with a clutch of extraordinarily talented players and a gaggle of mighty useful contributors. They may not have won then, but they do win now.

No need to compare all their moves to the Mets. We know who we've got, how we got them, what they've done for us lately. We know it hasn't been quite enough these last two seasons. We sense that something has to change. I wonder if it's this assumption, as expressed from Omar Minaya to Matt Cerrone in Metsblog's recent Q&A with the GM:

"We are a market with a 'win-now' mentality."

To be fair to Omar, he was responding to a question that used that phrase. But he agreed with Matt's assessment, and it's not exactly out-of-the-box thinking to identify New York as an impatient place. I think we can all agree we'd rather win now than not win now.

But we're not winning now, not in the winning enough to keep playing in October sense. We're not losing more than we win, which is an upgrade from where we were pre-Minaya — and at some level we'll always be grateful for that — but where exactly has yielding to the pressure of "win now" gotten this franchise? Has anything been put in place to not just "win now" but to win later? To keep winning? To win against the Phillies who are not just an admirable case study in baseball management if you examine them in a vacuum but your most serious divisional rival?

The Phillies have that core as catalogued above. Rollins, Utley and Howard aren't going anywhere. Hamels is entrenched. Victorino is clearly a virus that won't be eradicated anytime soon. Guys will come and go from their roster like anybody's, but will enough of them leave to make a difference for the Mets? Will they be replaced by ever more efficient cogs? How will the Mets make up a gap that reveals itself, the closer you look, as wider than three games? Minaya had some good luck with a few reclamation projects of his own in 2008 and we saw a couple of rookies make a promising mark along the way...will there be more of that? Or will "win now" automatically mean another flurry of commitments negotiated beyond anybody's concept of the limits of practicality? Is another class of two-bit relievers and no-account infielders lining up to sign on the dotted line for three, four, who knows how many years? Is it perhaps possible that we'll someday look back on 2007 and 2008 as the most stressful chapters of a building process whose ultimate outcome more than makes up for the body blows we've absorbed in these saddest of Septembers?

I have no idea. Does anybody?

If you're not overly cheerful yet, check out Dan from Mets Refugees' expertly taken shots of the Shea scoreboard in ruins. It's not like the Mets needed a scoreboard anyway the last time we looked anyway.

In the last couple of years, I've gotten a number of amusing reactions to our "Numbers" shirt. No, they're not lottery numbers that came in for me (though that would be nice) and no, they don't have anything to do with the plot of "Lost." I've learned that the actual answer to the real question being asked will almost always disappoint the asker. "They're the numbers retired by the New York Mets" means next to nothing to the vast majority of people, a small amount to a decided minority of people, and a great deal to a much smaller minority of that minority. Caring enough about those numbers to put them on a garment? You lost most folks a while ago.

Which is fine -- what good's a secret handshake if it's obvious to every Tiger, Diamondback and Highlander you might meet? When Greg and I agreed to make up Numbers shirts (an idea actually borrowed from the very fine Padres blog Gaslamp Ball), my biggest hope was that people would think they were cool. I'd like to say I saw right off that they were a perfect fit for what we do on our blog. But I'm not that smart. I got lucky.

Those numbers -- the orange 37 14 41 and the red 42 -- can't instantly be understood at a glance. Even when they were on the wall at Shea (they're gone now, with so much else), they were somewhat mysterious. They didn't come with names attached, nor should they have. (The Cardinals are doing it wrong.) They have meaning, that's obvious -- meaning that goes to the heart of the history of the New York Mets, and all the elation and disappointment that's threaded through that history. They're a mystery, one that's unlocked by knowledge obtained through devotion.

But here's the thing about that knowledge and that devotion: It can be passed on. It should be passed on. And that's what we do and who we are. By which I mean not just me and Greg, but everybody who likes to come visit, whether it's to comment or just to read and in doing so, reminisce about what's been and hope (or worry) about what might be. That's passing it on, too -- the daily conversation that's a part of the history of the franchise, right alongside the chronicle of games and seasons and players.

In my old career I sometimes got tapped to talk to business-side folks about various blog ideas, and the thriving community of Mets bloggers made for a good object lesson whenever I sensed someone had drunk a bit too much buzzword Kool-Aid. "What kind of blog are you talking about?" I'd ask, and if they looked puzzled, I'd take them on a quick tour around the Met blogosphere. Within a couple of minutes, they'd see blogs that are one-stop news sources and blogs that dig into cool new stats and blogs that await no-hitters and blogs that celebrate walk-offs and blogs that lend themselves to in-game chats and blogs that scout minor leaguers and blogs that break down upcoming enemy pitchers and blogs that are personal reminiscences. They'd see that even within a world bound by the narrow confines of Met fanaticism, there were a great many varieties of blog.

Including ours. What we do is watch and cheer and worry while enmeshed in history -- our own and our ballclub's, two chronicles that long ago became too intertwined to ever untangle. For us, no player, no game, no pennant race and no lost summer ever stands alone. Is Johan Santana's valiant effort in Shea's penultimate game its own animal, or an echo of John Maine the year before or Al Leiter in Cincinnati a while back or Jerry Koosman when we were kids? Is Daniel Murphy the next Edgardo Alfonzo, the next Mike Vail, or a player who will make such an impression that eventually someone will be the next Daniel Murphy? A catch valiantly pursued but not made (Ryan Church at the fence, perhaps) will bring back Shawn Green in October against the Cardinals, or Shawon Dunston at the end of September against the Braves. A lucky bounce and a play made will bring back Dave Augustine and Richie Zisk. Wackiness at the plate might summon memories of Paul Lo Duca and too many Dodgers, or Ramon Castro and too many Astros. Those folks streaming out of Fenway because the Sox were down 7-0? You don't do that, even when you're cold. Why not? Because we once trailed the Braves 8-1 going to the bottom of the eighth, and oh what a night that was.

It can seem intimidating, this rich history of games lost and sometimes even won, of players mundane and miraculous, celebrated and obscure. But baseball takes a while. It has spaces -- between seasons, between games, between innings, between at-bats, between pitches as batters and hurlers prepare for renewed war. And those spaces are perfectly suited for remembering and teaching and connecting the dots. From fathers and mothers to sons and daughters, most definitely -- in the last couple of years I've learned, with a happiness so piercing it borders on heartbreak, that that's the sweetest way to do it. But it can also flow from friend to friend, from neighbor to neighbor, from reader to reader. Until another convert has joined the ranks of the blue and orange, with all that pain and suffering and hope and joy. Until it's been passed on.

So what are those numbers? Glad you asked. Take a seat -- it's a heck of a story.

All praise to the Red Sox and all pity to the Rays. I recognized ourselves in both of them Thursday night.

The Red Sox were our better angels, the team we believe the Mets to be when circumstances demand they be it. The Red Sox were the best of '69, '73, '86 (ironically enough) and '99. They were every Amazin' comeback we've ever catalogued, every ten-run eighth, every five-run ninth, every unlikely grand slam that has ever tied or untied our fate in our favor. They were us as we see us.

The Rays were our worst instincts, the team we watched the Mets devolve into in October 2006 and September 2007 and over and over in 2008 until we devolved into nothingness. They were every uneasy pitch, every blown lead, every empty feeling that has enveloped us in failure. They, too, were us as we see us.

Dueling archetypes. One won. One lost. Typical Mets.

The cumulative effect of the way the past three seasons have ended has drained me of passion for October baseball as practiced by others. I don't know that I've watched a single LDS, LCS or World Series game from beginning to end since October 19, 2006. Game Five between the Rays and the Sox I caught only in snatches. I saw the Rays take a large lead, I saw them extend it, I noticed young Scott Kazmir rolling along and I heard it mentioned that Red Sox fans were beginning to file out of Fenway in the seventh down 7-0.

It was license enough for me to keep flipping and commence napping but not before I wondered what I'd do in that position, at a playoff game, my team all but dead, my season all but the same. Of course I said I'd stay, and I would. But I remembered how I weaseled out of Shea the night the Braves were about to clinch against us/eliminate us from divisional contention in 2000. I also found myself surprisingly cognizant of train schedules a year later when the Pirates were a half-inning from knocking us out. But those weren't playoff games. And Lord knows I've made up for those indiscretions on recent final Sundays.

The Red Sox, in the obit I was ad libbing in my head, had been proud champions. My, how they had changed their script since 2003 and my, how they had zero of which to be ashamed. Jason Bay — Scott Kazmir to us before Scott Kazmir came to mean something more — had been a great replacement for Manny. The Red Sox seemed to make lots of smart pickups like that as a matter of course. I noticed Mark Kotsay playing first. I'd forgotten about him. He didn't have the impact of Jason Bay, but that's a player I've always considered a little underrated. J.D. Drew's contract was written off as a boondoggle, but he's a piece of the puzzle up there. And Papelbon, out on the mound soaking up the seventh to give them a shot. Yes, the Red Sox had been good for the sport, I decided. It was nothing personal against them that I was thrilled for the Rays.

The Rays were still a bit of a mystery guest to me, a little shy of familiar this deep into the postseason. But I was getting to know them when I was bothering to pay attention. Was Upton really hitting that many homers? Was Longoria that good? Carl Crawford...didn't he say something about being better than Jose Reyes a couple of years ago or generating as much buzz as Jose if he played in New York? Maybe somebody said that about him. In any case, I was looking forward to pulling for the Rays in the World Series, Senior Circuit loyalties be damned. What has the National League done for me lately other than gang up on and crush my dreams?

Baseball certainly changes your priorities in a Fenway minute, doesn't it? As I grew drowsy, it was 7-4. When I was a pliant eyelid from dozing, it was 7-6. When I next looked at the television, it was 7-7, two out, bottom of the ninth, Youkilis up with nobody on. Slow grounder to Longoria...he makes a nice Wrightlike play...he'll get it to first and they can go to the tenth tied...

Not so much.

It was hope against hope, to the extent I was hoping all that hard, that the Red Sox wouldn't end it in the ninth. Bay was walked and Drew did what Drew did against the Angels, what I vaguely recall him doing against the Tribe last October. What had been 7-0 for the scrappy underdogs was now an 8-7 final for the scrappier champions.

And people left?

Sorting out whether this is another 2004/2007 in the making for the Red Sox or a blip for the Rays along the lines of the Astros having to endure Pujols' bomb off Lidge in the fifth game of the NLCS in '05 before returning to Minute Maid old Busch (its last game ever) to finish off the Cardinals is best left to fate. Though the Rays didn't exist when I was an undergrad in Tampa, my heart will be with them Saturday night. I liked the idea of them clinching their way into the World Series on October 16, the 39th anniversary of their most obvious inspirations winning it all the first time. But I like even better that my Bulls are home Saturday afternoon and the possibility exists for an area doubleheader sweep of sorts, even if I'll be the first to admit USF vs. Syracuse doesn't hold a candle to a potential pennant party. It's just a possibility, however, no matter what the Bulls do. As we learned a lot in 2008, and as the Rays have been cruelly reminded, good relief help is hard to find.

Sympathy for the former Devil team notwithstanding, I also like the idea of what I saw after the Red Sox came all the way back in Game Five. I love that those who did stay when it was 7-0 stayed long after it was 8-7. I loved watching the Red Sox fans eventually stream giddily out of Fenway, maybe not forming "the largest conga line ever" as in Fever Pitch (hey, that was beating the Yankees when that seemed like fiction), but a marvelous street scene in its own right. The warmth of it all reminded me of Roger Angell throwing Bostonians a bone in 1986, extracting "spirit and pleasure" from the Red Sox' Game Five victory in what was about to become our World Series: "This was the last home game of the year for the Red Sox, and when it was over, the fans stayed in the stands for a time..." I liked Thursday night's TBS shot of the grounds crewman hosing down the pitcher's mound, too, for it signaled Fenway wasn't necessarily closed for the winter.

Then again, I thought, the Shea grounds crew dutifully manicured the mound and the batter's box in the wake of the loss of September 30, 2007. Maybe it's just what grounds crews do. Or in Shea's case, did.

I keep peeking at pictures and video of Shea being hollowed out. I shouldn't, but I do. I was going to say I'm doing it 'cause it's a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon, but so is a fatal disease. I guess it's part curiosity and part weird gratification that somebody is bothering to record the deconstruction process. It's a little like when I was in high school and the Mets sucked yet I was grateful when they were mentioned at all, even for sucking. Shea is still a topic of conversation this October, albeit for the most dismal of reasons.

The Red Sox fans who stayed to the end and then after, they were lucky. I'd love to not leave a ballpark right about now.

It would have been terrible had Hiroki Kuroda hit Shane Victorino in the head and caused him injury. But since he didn't, I must confess that watching a baseball whiz by the helmet of Shane Victorino Sunday night has been the highlight of this postseason for me, a most bitter, resentful Mets fan.

I've got no real horse in this October derby. I'm rooting against the Phillies but can't say I'm pro-Dodgers. Every time I try to be, Rafael Furcal shows his face or Hong-Chih Kuo warms up. Hell, I'd forgotten Chan Ho Park was still pitching for them. Blake DeWitt is a natural born Met-killer and Jeff Kent is all-century unsupportable across two millennia. And who's that suave character in their dugout pushing all the buttons when he's not driving around in those State Farm commercials? Still, they can't match the Phillies for sheer firepower of nightmarishness: Victorino, Myers, Dobbs, Burrell, Werth, Taguchi, Moyer...and that's before getting into their actual stars. Phillies versus Dodgers is chronic warts versus a recurring rash.

Thus when Kuroda's pitch sailed over Victorino's head in Game Three and Victorino responded (to use South Park language from which I usually refrain but seems far too appropriate to pass up) like the little bitch he is, it was 2008 postseason baseball at its finest. The Dodgers can't throw up and in at Shane Victorino enough.

As long as no one gets hurt.

The anger is still palpable here. It's not anger at the Phillies for having the nerve to do their job and win their division. It's anger at the Mets. The Mets haunt this October if you let them (it's the only way they get close to October). I watched the Phillies open the NLCS at Citizens Bank Park and realized that coulda if not shoulda been Shea, and Shea would still be alive (which it is not at the present time). I watched the lineups introduced at the start of the ALCS and when the Tampa Bay fans responded with a sustained chant of LET'S GO RAYS! I found myself wistfully mouthing along with them, except for the Rays! part. Two Octobers ago, even two weeks ago, that was us chanting, and it wasn't wistful at all. As reasonably happy as I was to see a walkoff win for those Rays Saturday night, I stewed that it was the 22nd anniversary of Lenny Dykstra's bottom-of-the-ninth game-winning home run against Houston and it should be the Mets, not some Tampa-come-lately, congregating joyously around home plate.

One of my all-time favorite movies, That Thing You Do!, came on late Friday. There's a lyric in one of the songs I really like from the soundtrack that struck me anew: "Tell everyone in Philadelph'ya/there's a party goin' on!" Boy, I thought, wouldn't have that been a great theme for the night we clinched the East this year? I got retroactively mad at the Mets for short-circuiting that after-the-fact idea.

I was mad at the Mets when I woke up Sunday and saw how beautiful it was outside and realized there would be no game on Channel 11 at 1:10. I got mad at the nice weather. Where was this two weeks ago?

I got mad at the Jets for winning in New York Titans garb because that's what they wore on September 28, which I first learned from the idiot sitting behind me on The Final Day because he kept repeating it between anti-Met outbursts ("Hey, the Jets are winning — they're wearing the Titan uniforms...BULLPEN SUCKS! BULLPEN SUCKS! Hey, the Jets are winning...they're wearing the Titan uniforms...").

The Mets are ruining movies. They're ruining meteorology. They're ruining other sports now. Everything they accidentally touch turns to Met.

Somebody throw at Victorino again.

Better yet, visit Forgotten NY's thoughtful and comprehensive tribute to a New York landmark that will never be forgotten.

Welcome to the final edition of Flashback Friday: Tales From The Log, a final-season tribute to Shea Stadium as viewed primarily through the prism of what I saw there for myself, namely 402 regular-season and 13 postseason games in total. The Log recorded the numbers. The Tales tell the stories.

10/3/04 Su Montreal 13-12 Gl@v!ne 4 157-125 W 8-1
You don't know who or what you're never going to see after the last day of a baseball season. You hear things, you know certain people aren't long for your uniform, but there can be as much uncertainty as finality.

Take Officer Jimmy, for example. Officer Jimmy was a New York City cop who worked the subway entrance outside Shea. He was the only NYPD officer I ever knew, even remotely. He was a family friend of Laurie's. She'd stop and schmooze him for a bit after games in the late '90s and early '00s. I'm sure it was sincere, but it was also a way to get Jimmy's attention long enough so he'd open up the gate and let us through, thus saving us a Metrocard swipe apiece. When the Mets lost Game Three of the 2000 NLCS, I didn't go home unhappy. I'd just saved a buck-fifty.

On the last day I saw Officer Jimmy, it was initially inside, not outside Shea. It was the final day of the 2004 season. Don't know why he was walking a beat on the Field Level, but he was and he waved. I got a kick out of the fact that I'd been at Shea enough to be recognized by somebody, anybody who worked there. We greeted each other warmly, if without substance, but that's all right. He said something to me nobody had ever said at a ballpark before:

"Have a good winter."

In a way, those should have been fighting words. It was Game 162, why are you using the w-word? Let me enjoy my game 'til there are no more games to enjoy. But I liked that I was somehow in, in the fraternity of baseball people just a tiny little bit. People who worked in ballparks, people who made their living in the summer game, this must be the way they say goodbye to each other at the end of a baseball season: Have a good winter.

It was only October 3. The temperature was at least 70. But yeah, winter. It was going to be here. And things would change once it was over. It was inevitable.

You come back from winter and they who were there won't necessarily be. Officer Jimmy wasn't the next spring. Laurie got word that he'd retired from the force. Laurie knew Officer Dave and he'd occasionally give us the favor of the open gate in the next few seasons, but it wasn't the same. Officer Dave never recognized me without Laurie the way Jimmy did. Eventually Dave moved on. Then they changed the subway setup and there were no more free rides.

The last day of 2004 brimmed with lasts, and you didn't need to know a cop to get the skinny. It was all around us: me, Laurie, Jason and Jim — I had gotten hold of the corporate seats of a company I was on good terms with and I invited my three go-to friends. I got my hands on some Mets tickets — want to go with me? On the last day of the 2004 season, they all did.

We saw a lot of coming and going. Mostly going, a little coming. There was, too, some stuff over the horizon we couldn't make out just yet.

Winter would wait on us that Sunday. History wouldn't. History said goodbye to quite a bit of Metsdom that day.

• Goodbye to Todd Zeile. Zeile had played with more than a third of the teams in baseball, yet it was up to us to adopt him as our own. Zeile was ending a long and reasonably distinguished career in 2004. The Mark of Zeile, as the scoreboard put it, was emblazoned on our fortunes in 2000 when he took over first base (unsatisfyingly) for John Olerud and played a role (significant) in getting us to a World Series. We were fed up with him by '01 but, down as we were a couple of years later, we were willing to welcome him back as a symbol of past glory in '04. He didn't just receive bouquets and bon voyages before the game — they let him receive during the game. He hadn't been a regular catcher since 1990, his first full season. He was going to catch T#m Gl@v!ne today.

• Goodbye to John Franco. Franco was a Met approximately as long as Zeile was a big leaguer. But they weren't going to let Franco close for old times' sake. The Mets didn't officially acknowledge he was leaving because it was kind of murky. His contract was up, a new GM, Omar Minaya, was coming in...and we knew Franco wasn't coming back. No mini-farewell tour for Johnny though. Just a decade-and-a-half of saves punctuated with disappointment. Or perhaps fifteen years of disgust whose saving graces were indelible moments like the strikeout of Barry Bonds that preserved the Mets' chances in the NLDS of 2000. The organization always seemed to love John Franco more than the fans. John hadn't been used since September 4. We couldn't love him any less than the organization at this point.

• Goodbye to Art Howe. One was tempted to say good riddance except in the couple of weeks since it became clear Art wouldn't be invited back — he had been fired without actually being dismissed (oh the operational acumen of those early '00s Mets) — he had become a sympathetic figure. Nobody wished ill on Art Howe by the final day of his managerial tenure. Nobody wished he'd hang around either.

• Goodbye to the Montreal Expos. Closing Day 2004 was a chance to say goodbye, au revoir, if not a bientôt — I will see you soon — to the Montreal Expos. After years of teasing them with fatality, Major League Baseball finally certified the Expos a dead deal. They'd tried to contract them, they'd practically liquidated them and now, after as much negligence as the law would allow, they were moving them to Washington. Montreal had seen the last of the Expos a few nights earlier. We would see the last of them altogether. By now it was universally remembered the Expos played their first game ever at Shea Stadium on April 8, 1969. Now they were playing their last game ever here. Then they won 11-10 but the season turned out Amazin' for the Mets. At the end of 2004, literally beating them to death was all we had to look forward to.

A lot going on for the formality of Closing Day, a.k.a. Opening Day's evil twin. Actually, I take that back, sort of. Opening Day at Shea, as welcome a sight as it was after the good winter was over, had its pains and poseurs, the “ya gotta be there” crowd who got in your way, drank too much and (blessedly) never showed their faces again. No cachet to a mundane Closing Day among the hoi polloi. Unless there's a pennant or something like it on the line — in 2004 there most decidedly was not — only the hardcore want to go on Closing Day. Nobody aims to be seen on the last day of the season, especially when the combatants are the fourth-place Mets and the fifth-place Expos.

Don't know why not. It's kind of perfect. Closing Day seals the deal. Every statistic we will see for the rest of our lives — the win-loss records, the batting averages, the totals — becomes complete on Closing Day. Half-games and magic numbers and all loose ends are generally taken care of. It provides the necessary sealant before we put a year away, before we put it in the books. We’ll take it down from the shelf, peruse it, smile, sneer, remember that year. It is what it is, but it’s not all that until it’s over, which it is on Closing Day.

On the other hand, it is the end of days, the end of days with baseball in them. If that's not nefarious, I don't know what is.

Since the tickets came to me late, I had to meet everybody with whom I was going outside Gate E. Laurie found me first. As we rambled on in conversation, we were interrupted briefly by a family with a video camera. Their son Sammy, we were told, was going to be Bar Mitzvahed soon and they were making this little film and would we mind pretending that he's a big baseball star and could we make a fuss over him? One more layer of intrigue...sure, why not? Laurie treated Sammy as if he were Greg Maddux: "Yeah! You're the best! You're awesome!" They got their footage and we went back to rambling.

I noticed a steady drizzle of Expos fans wandering by as we awaited Jason and Jim. I had noticed them Saturday night when I was here, too. You could tell them by their Expos caps, of course, but also by their cigarettes. Expos fans like(d) to smoke. If their team didn’t move, their base may very well have died off prematurely.

Our third and fourth showed up simultaneously and we were soon enough inside. Once the Mets got done telling us that Todd Zeile was the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being we'd ever known in our lives, it was time for the national anthems. Plural. As had been the case for all 25 Mets-Expos games I’d attended at Shea dating back to 1980, we’d start with “O Canada.” Oh my. It occurred to me that this would be the last time I’d hear “O Canada” under these circumstances. The Blue Jays might fly in for Interleague again, but it wouldn’t be the same.

I ostentatiously put on my throwback red, white and blue Expos cap — I'd empathetically bought one the year before when it was apparent they would join the ranks of the New York Giants and the Seattle Pilots — just so I could take it off for the Canadian anthem.

Not being a Canadian, you wouldn’t think any of this would matter to me, but it did, a little. In 1992, the New Jersey Devils had a great Soviet hockey player, last name Fetisov. The USSR had just broken up. A reporter asked him about how wonderful that must feel. No, Fetisov said. I’ll never hear my beautiful national anthem again. I kind of understood what he meant as I clutched my Expos cap to my heart and stood on guard for thee. “O Canada” got a pretty decent singalong and a nice round of applause. It seemed only fair to get revved up for the “Star Spangled Banner,” which I have to say pales as a song vis-à-vis its northern neighbor. But I’d miss it, too, when nobody was asking me to rise for it.

After ball one to Brad Wilkerson, I put away the Expos cap. They were the enemy now and to the end. The Mets cap went on.

Some 33,500 would be announced as on hand and for once it looked like it. The exiting Expos angle certainly didn’t hurt. Closing Day attracted scads if not oodles of Quebecois plus some local rubberneckers. For once I didn't mind the non-Metsian among us. Their team wasn't going to exist in a few hours. They were going from The Big O to The Big No. Good on them for showing up. I hoped their team would lose, but good on them anyway.

There are games without pennant race implications, perhaps, but there is no such thing as a meaningless game. One thing I noticed is for all the practiced cynicism, sardonicism and Met-related derision from our little group, we all wanted a win. No Mets fan wants to spend a day, even a last day, at Shea and leave emptyhanded. We root and we scoreboard-watch. The Mets had already clinched fourth, if you can clinch fourth, and there was barely a game with significance for the playoff picture — positioning between Minnesota and Anaheim was all that was still up for grabs — but we all craned our necks several times per half inning toward the big board in right center. It’s habit. You watch the scoreboard even if there’s nothing worth watching.

Couldn’t help but notice that the last score in the National League column involved GB and NYG. That was the Packers and the Giants of the NFL. It was Sunday and it was fall. Football. Damn football. Whistle it for encroachment on Closing Day and penalize it one month. Come back in November when you can provide me some sporting succor. Until then you're obtrusive, sweaty and unwanted.

Gl@v!ne gave up a run in the top of the first. The Mets got it back in the bottom of the first: Reyes singled and stole second; Matsui moved him to third; Wright hit a sac fly. That was poetry. That’s what we’re looking for in 2005, what we got hardly at all in 2004. That was the future, certainly Reyes and Wright, ostensibly Matsui but only because he’s signed for two more years.

David Wright put down a marker with a homer, two hits and three RBI. David Wright hit .293 in two-plus months of everyday duty at third. David Wright blasted 14 home runs since his promotion on July 21. David Wright was on the cover of the program in that hideous orange batting practice jersey of yore. I believed then and there that David Wright was our future; teach him well and let him lead the way. He was everybody’s favorite right off the hot bat.

As the season drew toward its close, Jose Reyes and Kaz Matsui had switched positions to where they should have been in the first place. Kaz came to America with hair as orange as that BP jersey and an a reputation for defensive shortstop brilliance that was just as unfathomable. Jose Reyes was asked to move to second to make room for him, sort of like assigning da Vinci to picket fence duty because some dude from somewhere else is allegedly handy with a brush. Then they both got hurt. Now they were well. Reyes was a shortstop again, thank goodness. Kaz didn’t look bad at second base. At least not on Closing Day.

Wright’s hitting and Jose’s running had the Mets up 4-1 by the end of the fifth. The Expos’ emotions, like their frequent-flyer mileage, had probably run out. This looked like our day. Sure, we told each other in kind of a mini-Red Sox rant, we could still blow it. But nah, we weren’t gonna do that. We were gonna win. Then we were gonna do something even better.

We were gonna get what we came for.

Todd Zeile had been slobbered over all day. He seemed to own DiamondVision. We clapped for him today as much as we shunned him in 2001. Eric Valent and Victor Diaz started the home sixth with consecutive singles. Zeile came up and walloped a long drive over the left field wall. In this very exclusive, very ad hoc fraternity of fans who had focused on Todd Zeile’s happy ending, this was it. Todd Zeile’s last at-bat in the big leagues was a home run. We all went silly for him. He acknowledged us. It was Ted Williams writ small, but with a dollop of courtesy. Toddy Ballgame? Toddy’s ballgame, anyway.

It got better, in its way, in the visitors’ eighth when with two out, Art Howe sent in John Franco to pitch. This was another goodbye, more tentative, more deserving. Franco had his fifteen years at Shea, was from Brooklyn, grew up in these stands. We’d had our differences, he and us, but we were waiting for him to get into the game. It was a sign of the times that Howe would have to plug him in ahead of the ninth with a six-run lead. John Franco hadn’t been a closer since 1999, hadn’t been much of anything since the Subway Series in early July when he froze Jorge Posada on a called strike three. Unlike Zeile, Franco hadn’t announced his retirement and the Mets hadn’t thrown him a to-do. They did make him a video valentine, but he might have preferred a contract offer for 2005.

John Franco came in with one on and gave up a single to Terrmel Sledge. Typical Franco, it was reflexively groaned. He wouldn’t…? Nah, he wouldn’t. He got the next guy, Ryan Church, to pop up to the catcher. Zeile. More euphoria from the manipulated masses. Franco’s last out was secured by Zeile. Ain’t that perfect?

But wait! As if he hadn’t been showered with enough adoration, Todd Zeile strode to the batter’s box to lead off the bottom of the eighth. Howe, not being totally clueless, called him back. One more round of applause by an incredibly generous crowd. As Zeile turned toward the dugout, he shook the hand of Angel Hernandez, the home plate umpire. They say that no matter how much baseball you watch, you’ll always see something you haven’t seen before. I’d never seen that, shaking the ump’s hand. Only in baseball kids, only in baseball.

We’d wallowed in the distant past. We peeked at the promising future. But even on Closing Day, it’s always about the fleeting present. The Mets had used 51 different players through 161 games and eight innings. Sic transit gloria. Very few of them were as recognizable as Franco or Zeile. We had seen in 2004, among others, Karim Garcia and Danny Garcia. Sic transit Garcia? ¡Muchas Garcias! Now we were about to top out at 52, a full deck of Mets. Move over Moonlight Graham. Here comes Joe Hietpas.

Joe Whotpas?

No, Joe Hietpas. Pronounced only marginally like it’s spelled. The “t” is silent and to this point, so was he. There was a buzz in our box over whether we’d see the Double-A catcher who was brought up in mid-September when Mike Piazza was down and Vance Wilson was out. Zeile got more catching time than Hietpas. In fact, Joe Hietpas managed, as an emergency backup backstop, to pull a muscle of some sort (maybe he overjumped for joy when he saw his big league meal money). Now it was the ninth inning of the last game of the season and the Mets led the Expos 8-1. As if to affirm that in the future, everyone will be Hietpas for fifteen minutes, Art put Joe in. We greeted him with Zeileousness.

With a seven-run margin of victory looking pretty safe in the reasonably capable hands of Bartolome Fortunato, I was gracious beyond my previous capabilities. We were now seeing the final half-inning ever in the history of the Montreal Expos. A petite but determined “LET’S GO EX-POS!” chant arose from behind the third base dugout. It wasn’t booed back by those of us in right. I joined in for a pitch or two then stopped. The preternaturally pesky Expos, who Laurie long ago convinced me were themselves "evil," could still do a lot of damage.

No, they couldn’t. Even after an error and a walk (what kind of game was Hietpas calling?), Fortunato straightened up and got three outs. The last was made by Endy Chavez, a pest I considered my own private Vladimir for the way he tortured Met pitching.

The relevant final totals:

• The final score on the big scoreboard was MON 1 NYM 8, Gl@v!ne going to 11-14, 20–28 as a Met and 262 wins lifetime, nowhere near the 300th he deluded himself into believing he’d earn here when he accepted a heap of Wilpon wampum (the dope). In CHI, old Greg Maddux won his 305th, of interest only to Laurie who idolized him even more than she lusted for young David Wright. ANA nabbed the AL’s third seed over MIN, who would have to play NYY, who also won, damn it. In the alien corner of the board, NYG apparently beat GB. By the ninth, its slot was replaced by NYJ at MIA.

• Mets finished the season 71-91. For the first time in five years, they won more games than the year before. The record didn’t reflect that they almost touched first place twice in July. And if you delete the blockheaded 16 losses in 17 games that flushed late August and early September, 2004 ran along the lines of Linus’ view of the centerpiece of A Charlie Brown Christmas: It wasn't a bad little tree — all it needed was a little love. It helped to look at the Mets more like Linus and less like Lucy.

• The all-time series between the Mets and the Expos was settled with this finale. It all came down to the last game of the season, of ever. Mets 299 Expos 298. We win! That was with us spotting the Expos that first one in '69.

• My all-time mark versus the Expos at Shea (me watching, not playing) rose to 13-12, another winning record under the wire for posterity. Whenever the Washingtons would come to town for my first look at them, they’d start out 0-0.

• For good measure, I got to go home with a .500 mark for the season. This was my 14th appearance of the year, my fewest since 1996. I didn’t make it to my first game until June 4, the day after we closed on our co-op. I was 6-7 coming in, 7-7 going out. No complaints.

• Todd Zeile finished his career in 2004 with 2,004 hits.

• Joe Hietpas, who Jace told me was nothing close to a prospect, may have made his first and last appearance, but it was enough to inscribe him on the wall as the 747th player in Mets history. That meant Jace would have to acquire his presumably minor league card because Jace’s goal was to have a card of some type for all 747 Mets (seven guys, he lamented, never had one). I looked up Joe Hietpas later and discovered he was born on May 1, 1979. That very night, a Tuesday in 10th grade, I tagged along with the juniors and seniors as the eighth ticket on High School Newspaper night from The Tide. The Mets lost to Gaylord Perry — his 270th win — and the Padres 10-5. Frank Taveras struck out five times. Bob Murphy gave us a brief keynote address on the press level beforehand.

On the other big board today, they replayed the tribute to Murph from August after which PA man Roger Luce read a thank you note from Joye Murphy for all the kind thoughts of Mets fans on his passing. Zeile had gotten a video. Franco had gotten a video. The Expos even got a classy DiamondVision sendoff. Every time they showed us a video, we clapped — we might not sign Carl Pavano, but we had our Ivan Pavlov down pat.

No star turn for Art Howe. Not even a Polaroid picture to shake. There wasn’t a single sanctioned mention that this was his last game as Met manager, and nobody was urged to applaud the man who presided over two dreadful finishes. Ultimately, Closing Day can only make so many amends.

On September 15, Art Howe was asked to remove himself from his place of residence, the home manager’s office. That request came from Fred Wilpon. But the owner allowed him a couple of weeks to hang around and pack up; Howe said it was all about honoring his commitment to the team, but I’m fairly certain he wanted the free flight home to Pittsburgh that next weekend’s road trip ensured. Nobody seemed to mind Art Howe was managing his last game. He was not popular, but he was not unpopular anymore. Few wasted breath on booing him. He was a tool of ownership, a screwdriver, maybe, where a wrench was called for. A good craftsman doesn’t blame his tools.

Art, substitute teacher to the end, swore the day was grand. His quotes included “that’s the stuff you read about in fairy tales” and “today was about as good as it gets.” Art Howe must read a lot of Brothers Grimm. Was he referring to the fractured 71-91 season as the fairy tale or the fact that he could immediately look forward to two years of cashing Sterling Equities checks for doing absolutely nothing — not a whole lot different from his abbreviated tenure as skipper — as the peak of existence?

Howe got to go out a winner and that was as swell as anything else swirling around us. Closing Day is a chance to forgive tomfoolery, chicanery, Wilponery and bad impressionistic Art. Dotting i’s, crossing t’s, crossing off Z’s and spelling Hietpas. I wouldn’t get to do all that again for quite a while. Six whole months Like an amputee feels a phantom limb, I knew the drill. The playoffs would get underway, and it would seem like baseball season, but it wouldn’t be. Whatever the postseason held in store, the Mets wouldn’t be part of it. Once November hit, especially after the election, baseball would be completely gone and its absence would be omnipresent. So this one would have to last, really last, from October 4 to April 4, 2005.

Jason and Jim and Laurie and I left together through the right field food court and out Gate E. Officer Jimmy, back on duty, obliged each of us at the subway and saved us eight bucks total. Once on board, it was six short stops to 74th Street where Jim and Laurie transferred to Queens buses and two more to Woodside, where I shook hands with Jason and detrained. I’d be e-mailing all of them in short order but our facetime would likely wait until spring ’05.

Some years I would go home from Closing Day at Shea Stadium brimming with wist. One year I was so wistful that I engaged in a crying jag the entire ride to East Rockaway. I walked from the station to our apartment, collected myself, opened the front door, entered the living room and I started bawling all over again.

No such display of emotion evinced itself from the 2004 closer. It was over. It was good. It was winter.

Next time it wasn't winter, my world was changed. At least my Met world was. October 3, 2004 is remembered here for many details that showed up in the boxscore, but I recall it, too, for one reason beyond all that is spelled out above.

It was the last Mets game I experienced as a non-blogger. Jason and I would found Faith and Fear in Flushing the following February and everything about being a Mets fan would change for me. It would have changed anyway — Willie Randolph, Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran would see to that — but doing what I do for FAFIF...the recaps, the ruminations, the Flashbacks, everything...has filled me, per the first "Treehouse of Horror" episode, with emotions a hundred times greater than what you call love and a thousand times greater than what you call fun. Thus, that Closing Day wasn't just the end for Zeile, for Franco, for Howe, for the Expos and for a season. It was the prelude to the beginning of a wonderful new era for me.

For me, trying to think about the Mets without Faith and Fear in the equation is like trying to think about television without The Simpsons. And that's unpossible.

It's also difficult to remember what the Mets were like before this particular era in their history kicked in. It's been rough the way 2008 and 2007 (and 2006 and, I suppose, 2005) ended, but have you seen a 71-91 around here lately? The bar has been raised and the Mets have failed to clear it of late, but it's way better to dismember in September than it is to die in July, it really is. Personally I wouldn't have rushed to extend Omar Minaya's contract, but compared to the reign of Jim Duquette, it's been nothing but sunshine and warmth since 2004 ended.

I knew I'd see my friends at Shea again after that Closing Day. We all reconvened the following April for the Nationals' first visit. Symmetry! As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, the names Laurie, Jim and Jason (obviously) come up lots in the present tense. It was only a little bit of coincidence that they were my respective guests for the final Thursday, Friday and Saturday games ever at Shea Stadium.

I saw Zeile and Franco the final Sunday, taking part in the closing ceremony. May have caught a glimpse of Art Howe during the rain delay in June when Texas came in and their game was postponed. Howe coached for them in 2008. I wasn't really looking for him.

Endy Chavez and Ryan Church are Expos I've seen plenty since the end of 2004, in a more welcome capacity. Joe Hietpas I haven't seen since that October 3 except during Spring Training telecasts. Last I heard he was trying to make it back to the majors as a pitcher. Would be something if he did. It's already something how he made it ever so slightly as a catcher.

But this, though, this you're gonna love. I was in the Diamond Club store before a game in July. As mentioned in my recounting of that night, somebody came up to me, youngish guy, and told me he recognized me as part of Faith and Fear. Told me