WW *

Eventually it happens — the tumblers align all wrong, and one Faith and Fear blogger has Saturday night commitments, and so does the other Faith and Fear blogger. So you know more about tonight’s game than does your chronicler, and if you want to stop right there, understood.

I always feel guilty when I’m not at my station, for a couple of reasons. First of all, the Mets are my team and I ought to be at least contributing good psychic vibes, even though rationally we all know they’re worth absolutely nothing. The second reason, believe it or not, is crazier. Living in New York City, you’re never all that far from someone in a car listening to WFAN, or a bar with the game on, or people in their apartments watching SNY, or someone walking down the street with MLB At Bat cranked up. There’s a low-level Mets buzz all around you, and it seems like on some level I should be aware of it and intuit something from it — some collective negative mutter, or high-spiritedness in the air. Livestock and pets freak out before earthquakes, so why am I not subliminally aware that Jayson Werth has done something I won’t like?

I know this is insane. But it still bugs me that I obviously lack such a Spidey sense.

Anyway, we got out of Harry Potter (better than the last one because SOMETHING FUCKING HAPPENS, but so desaturated that I left the theater desperate to see a full color wheel) and it was 3-0 Nats in the seventh. I checked in on the Mets periodically until the top of the ninth, when I laid the iPhone down between me and Emily on the (TV-less) restaurant counter, and we watched the balls and strikes advance. We saw the Mets load the bases and, well, anything seemed possible. I thought about switching to Gameday, but decided there was luck in the bare-bones narrative we had. There wasn’t: The count on Willie Harris went to an impossible 1-3, and that was that.

It wasn’t until later that I filled in the details: that Werth had hit a knuckleless knuckler, that Jason Marquis hadn’t even shown up except to pack for Arizona, that the Mets had been throttled by the thoroughly unassuming Yunesky Maya, that Harris had been Wainwrighted by a perfect slider at the knees. And so our streak is over, and we’re back to an ominous 7 1/2 back of Atlanta. When I miss games and we win, I lovingly watch the replays and then the condensed game and generally luxuriate in guaranteed good news. When I miss them and we lose, it’s on to the next one, and led us never speak of this one again.

Besides, I know I didn’t miss much of anything a Mets fan would ever want to see again. My Spidey senses may suck, but they told me that much.

* Noted for the younger set, or those with a better Yankees information blackout than mine: “WW” was Phil Rizzuto’s scorecard notation for “wasn’t watching,” which he did more often than was charming, no matter what Bronx Bombers fans tell you.