Saturday: a solid Mets win featuring a shutout from starting pitcher R.A. Dickey, a home run from David Wright and slick infield work from the unlikely double play tandem of Omar Quintanilla and Daniel Murphy.

Friday: History.

I’m guessing you’ll indulge me if I’m not quite ready to move on to extended consideration of Saturday’s solid Mets win.

We have not yet arrived at the blasé juncture where R.A. and his endlessly fascinating persona making it to 8-1 — with the Mets nearing a third of the season seven games over .500 and in possession of a National League Wild Card spot — is to be shunted into the Diamond Dust paragraph of your team coverage. But unless Dickey, who allowed the Cardinals five fewer walks than the five they scraped together the night before, was also going to give up seven fewer hits than he actually did to embellish his effort, then there was little chance I’d be shaken from my Friday night afterglow by 4:10 the next afternoon.

It was just as well that after not sleeping much in the hours that followed history, I nodded off for a couple of innings Saturday. I wasn’t giving R.A.’s gem the attention it deserved, which I felt a little bad about, but in all the scenarios I ever dreamed up for the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History, it never occurred to me to include a day after.

Nearly a decade ago, I made a list of what I referred to as my One Hundred Greatest Baseball Experiences. Ninety-nine of them — pennant races, playoff games, distant ballpark journeys, brushes with the utterly unexpected — had, in fact, occurred. I could pin those down, when, where and how they happened. The hundredth, however, was an amorphous amalgamation of all the near-misses that had failed to result in the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History. I listed the date as To Be Determined.

Which is why I’m in no particular hurry to heed Howie Rose’s advice and put June 1, 2012, in the history books. It is history, obviously. It is delightful history, the most anticipated if hardest-to-project historical event in the 51 years in which the New York Mets have played baseball. We didn’t know when cycles or three-homer nights were coming either, I suppose, to say nothing of balls finding holes between first basemen’s legs or catchers tackling third basemen as they attempted to touch second after thinking they’d slammed grand, but those things transpired in the course of Metropolitan events. The stuff that was swell but kind of standard simply happened. The stuff that was extraordinary we couldn’t have imagined anyway.

The no-hitter each of us imagined. Each of us dreamed of the day. I literally dreamed of the day. In 2003, I dreamed the Mets’ first no-hitter would be a joint affair: Al Leiter and John Franco, which seemed odd to me while I was dreaming it since Franco was no longer the closer by then. (I’m sure they’ll confirm whether or not it was really just a dream at his Hall of Fame induction tonight.) Those no-hitters that seemed so real in real life for five or six or seven innings but were destined to wind up one- or two- or eight-hitters lingered in the first layer of our Mets consciousness — unlike the relatively pedestrian seven-hit, no-walk shutouts like Dickey’s from Saturday — because they offered us a glimpse into what he hadn’t had and had decided on some level we couldn’t have.

I first took a pew in the Church of Baseball in the weeks following the night Jimmy Qualls became Jimmy Qualls, so my Metsian catechism always included a line about how we’d never had a no-hitter. Some years it was a fact that you accepted, like the sky being blue. Some years you wondered why the sky wasn’t green. Other years it positively pissed you off you couldn’t have a green sky.

The Joe Wallis-type episodes aside, I don’t think the no-hitter deprivation really started getting to me until the mid-1990s, when we began reaching a point of saturation in terms of seemingly everybody receiving one but us. The Marlins had two before they turned five. Hideo Nomo rustled one up for the Dodgers at Coors Field, where nobody ever got anybody out. The Cardinals got a pair out of Jose Jimenez and Bud Smith, each of whom was, respectively, Jose Jimenez and Bud Smith. The Twins had to play a game at like eleven in the morning to accommodate college football at the Metrodome, so Eric Milton woke up early and no-hit the Angels. Nomo got a second no-hitter, this time for the Red Sox. Derek Lowe, who had been a closer the year before, also got one for the Red Sox.

And of course every year that the Yankees were winning a World Series, they garnished it with a no-hitter. And also of course, none of these could be simple propositions. They couldn’t pull any old former Cy Young winner battling substance abuse problems off the scrap heap in 1996. It had to be Doc Gooden, ex-Met hero, with his ailing father being prepped for surgery while he was striking out Mariners to make it that much more compelling. Self-anointed character David Wells couldn’t merely no-hit Minnesota. He had to perfect-game them. David Cone — a former teammate of Gooden’s, you might recall — had to do Wells, who went to the same high school as Don Larsen, one better: Cone pitched his perfect game against the Expos (the Expos?) in front of Don Larsen on the day grudge-dropping Yogi Berra returned to the Yankee fold, because Berra caught Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series and here it was, 43 years later, on the same sacred patch of sod in the Bronx, blah, blah, blah.

This was the period during which I came to resent our lack of no-hitters enough so that on my first trip to Cooperstown in twenty years, I ostentatiously refused to as much as peek at the no-hitter exhibit. Not until we’re represented there on the right side of history, I told Stephanie.

Now we will be. We got as shiny a no-hitter as we could have hoped for. The Jimenezes and Smiths demonstrate all it takes is nine innings of stuff and luck once in a lifetime, but a Johan Santana extracts all the flukiness from the equation. A Johan Santana indicates there’s no mistake about this being a no-hitter (no matter what an Adrian Johnson does or doesn’t observe with the naked eye). A Johan Santana wins you the front page of every tabloid and ensures you’re the talk of the town.

If fate had dealt the no-hit hand to Dickey, it would have been a fantastic story, because what about Dickey isn’t a fantastic story? If it had fallen to Jon Niese or Dillon Gee, their Q ratings would have shot up briefly in non-Mets households. Jeremy Hefner or whoever the next Jeremy Hefner is being the no-hit guy would have ultimately fallen somewhere on the same curiosity scale where Dick Rusteck (only Met rookie to debut with a shutout) and Dave Mlicki (conqueror of pinstripes in the first Subway Series encounter) sit; a Hefnerian pitcher wouldn’t be forgotten, but eventually he’d need to be explained. The one thing that seems safe to guess is that for each of these fellows, throwing a no-hitter would be the crowning achievement of his career.

Johan Santana’s career, on the other hand, has been predominantly crowning achievements. I’m still getting it through my head that this was as big a deal for him personally as it was for us collectively. Johan had never thrown a no-hitter before? That might be the best argument for no-hitters not being that big a deal. If Johan didn’t have one, how splendid could they be?

That, though, overlooks the forty miles of bad road Johan had to overcome to pitch at all in 2012, which is what informed the garment-rending Terry Collins did in determining whether an extra 19 pitches beyond a made-up, arbitrary pitch limit was going to do in Santana before Santana could destroy our 50-year gnawing void. It also pretends Johan isn’t human and wouldn’t want a no-hitter to tuck in among his Cy Youngs and other superlatives.

The bit about Johan “taking the decision out of Terry’s hands” by telling him, in so many words, yo, I got this after six innings Friday brought to mind a story I adore from Loose Balls, Terry Pluto’s kickass oral history of the ABA. Kevin Loughery was coaching the Nets and drawing up the final play of a tight game when Julius Erving laid one of his enormous hands on one of Loughery’s shoulders and assured him, “Kevin, I’ll take the last shot.”

Loughery was amenable to that strategy, but wanted to have a contingency plan in place. “OK, guys,” he told his players, “if Doc misses…”

“The hand came back on Kevin’s shoulder,” goes the anecdote, “and Julius said, ‘Kevin, I won’t miss.’”

That settled that. And Dr. J didn’t miss. And Johan wasn’t coming out of that game no matter the pitch count. And we weren’t going to be waiting any longer for that first no-hitter.

So now that we’ve got it, what’s next? I feel like I’m in the car with Holly Hunter and Nicolas Cage after Edwina and Hi kidnap Nathan, Jr., in Raising Arizona: “Everything’s changed!” In the case of the movie, Hunter’s Ed was trying to convince Cage’s Hi not to hold up convenience stores any longer. Our everything changing looms as more cheerful, but a marks a fundamental shift in our lives nonetheless.

When a Met pitcher has a Santana going in the sixth or seventh inning, what will that be like? We’ll want it, natch, but how badly? What will it be like rooting for the second no-hitter in New York Mets history? If it’s Niese or Gee or Harvey or Familia or whoever, will the impulse be more “I really hope he gets this” as opposed to the reflexive “I really want us to get this”?

And what’s left of a never-got-one nature to ache for anyway? Put aside a World Series championship even if you’ve never seen one before, because the Mets have two of those. They have cycles, triple plays, a 6-for-6 night, 10 consecutive strikeouts, a batting title and now a no-hitter. What is left hanging out there on the vine that can be attained on the field? An MVP has to be voted on, so that’s not it. A perfect game would be something, but that’s like waiting for the clouds to rain candy. Not everybody has one of those, so it’s not as if the Mets are being left out. Ditto for a four-homer performance. We’ll love if it happens, but it’s rare enough to advise against holding breath for.

The phrase “the end of history” was thrown around a bit as the Cold War faded, but history just kept on coming. We no longer have our one glaring quest to intermittently preoccupy us, but I’m sure a singular outcome we hadn’t anticipated anticipating will take the place of the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History. As biographer Richard Ben Cramer suggested Bob Dole’s governing priorities would have been had he been elected president, “something’ll come up.”

While we get used to having a no-hitter in our backstory, we’ll also be figuring out where Johan Santana’s gift to Mets fans will stand in our eternal esteem. Right now, it’s the greatest thing that ever happened, but a little of that is the euphoria talking. When it’s not yesterday’s headline but something that happened a while ago, where will the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History…I was going to say “rank,” but that cheapens the thought process. I’m not looking to say it’s better than this but not as good as that; I prefer to love every wonderful thing that happens to us without choosing among them.

I’m mostly curious if the no-hitter from 2012 will come through the years unblemished or if it will be battered by circumstances we can’t yet fathom. I’ve been witness to so many moments, games and seasons that while they were going on were universally embraced yet after a while were shunted into obscurity or, worse, came to be dismissed or derided because they weren’t enough.

Will Santana’s night of transcendence hold up as the singular episode we know it to be right now or will we decide (because we are the way we are) that there’s a “Johan’s Curse” attached to it because Mike Baxter got hurt preserving it and Ramon Ramirez got hurt celebrating it? If Terry’s fretful instinct proves right and Johan isn’t able to go five innings in his next three starts, do we view June 1 as the mountaintop or the beginning of the next tumble downward? If by August Dickey or Niese throws a perfect game, does Santana’s measly no-hitter seem merely adequate? How soon will it take for a fan at Citi Field to hold up the sign with the wrong letter when a party patrolman asks him to name the pitcher who threw the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History? (And how galling will it be that he’ll win the prize pack anyway?)

I’m resigned to accepting that not every Mets fan is destined to remember great Mets moments as they happened. I’ve been in too many conversations with too many people I like who were with me when such great Mets moments happened in which I’ve learned they not only didn’t retain the salient details but they forgot they were there altogether. So I don’t know in which direction the narratives of others will take the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History. It is my blessing and curse to have what I’ve been told is an unusually uncanny memory. Inside my head, it’s not a chorus of names and dates that take center stage, for anyone with Google can look those up. What makes my memory a pageant of pungent recall is my ability to recreate the feeling of — to paraphrase Walter Cronkite — the way it was. It’s knowing that something happened, that it unfolded as it did and that it carried a particular meaning in its day that needs to be understood later on if it is going to be appreciated in context.

Hence, years from now, if the first time a Mets starting pitcher went nine innings and gave up no hits to the opposing team is remembered as anything less than the essence of sublime, I’ll know it will be a disturbingly inaccurate portrayal of the way it was.

But I’ll also have to concede that when it comes to time, interpretation and retention, that’s the way it is.

Not incidentally, the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History has been great for business, as Faith and Fear’s WordPress-era viewing records have been shattered since Johan Santana changed history. Thanks for thinking enough of us to come here for what Jason and I were thinking in the wake of the night we were never sure we’d really see. And thanks just as much for sharing your own thoughts on this event like no other. The comments of the best blog audience in all of Metsdom have never been more of a pleasure to read.

Not that I wasn’t already succumbing to my more lachrymose tendencies, but what opened the floodgates good and wide up around my eyeballs where I couldn’t believe what I was seeing was the SNY camera shot of a mother holding a son of maybe five years old. They were smiling and they were cheering and I realized something about that kid:

If this happens, he won’t have to grow up with this.

To clarify the pronouns, the first “this” was the no-hitter Johan Alexander Santana was closing in on with two out in the ninth.

The second “this” I seriously doubt I have to specify.

Because it existed like hell for 50 years and two months and it has ceased to exist as of June 1, 2012, the night of the real and true First No-Hitter in New York Mets History.

Of course it’s an upper-case affair. It’s an up-in-lights affair. It’s an above-the-marquee event that will forever front this 51st season of New York Metropolitan baseball. Like Bill Haley & The Comets; like Bo Donaldson & The Heywoods; like Huey Lewis & The News.

Like the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History & The Rest of 2012.

Whatever comes along, the Mets have a pass. 29-133? Oh, that’s not gonna happen, but you know what I mean. Every season in which the playoffs don’t seem particularly possible, I make a little bargain with Whoever might be in a position to do something about it: Give me a no-hitter and I’ll accept anything else that befalls the Mets.

As if I had a choice. As if, for 8,019 games — the vast majority of which I have witnessed in one form or another — I had something to say about this most holiest of grails eluding our grasp. As if I could have revoked all those miserable clean singles. As if I could have turned Tarzan Joe Wallis around at the players entrance of Wrigley Field. As if I could have told Leron Lee to take off the Fourth of July forty years ago and have himself a leisurely Independence Day. As if I could have convinced Mr. and Mrs. Qualls to do no more than hold hands.

You’re a Mets fan. You don’t really need me to be specific about who and what I’m talking about here, either. Those names — Wallis from 1975, Lee from 1972, Qualls from 1969 — used to mean something to us. Paul Hoover, Kit Pellow, Cole Hamels, Ernie Banks, Wade Boggs, Keith Moreland, Chris Burke…the whole miserable club.

Those names mean nothing now.

The only name that matters now is Johan Santana.

Tom Seaver, who didn’t retire Jimmy Qualls or Leron Lee or Joe Wallis, matters, too, if only because a little before I saw that kid on TV, I made eye contact with Tom on the box his bobblehead came in a few weeks ago. “Tom,” I thought. “We just might finish this one tonight.”

“Might” was the operative phrase, because we’ve been living with “might” since at least July 9, 1969. How would we know if it was going to work?

I guess we know now.

Oh, the trail to getting there, though. We’ll skip over the first 8,019 games and all the first innings Pete Rose ruined and those three times a ninth inning went by the wayside. We’ll just worry about tonight, which I was so unworried about that…oh god…I declined a late invitation to attend Friday night’s game.

Kevin From Flushing texted me around 5:30 about an extra ticket. “Not able to make it tonite,” I claimed, which now that I think back to that decision, I wonder what the hell I was thinking. But y’know what? I don’t care that I wasn’t there to see it happen. I’m just glad it happened.

Usually I have a deck of Why This Could Be The Night factors shuffling around in my head once we get through maybe the second inning. And I very well could have started collecting them early as I watched on TV instead of from Promenade:

• Beltran was back (btw, my hunches suck);

• Wainwright of Game Seven infamy was throwing to Molina of even more Game Seven infamy;

• It was the world champs in the other dugout;

• The wind was kicking up in weird ways;

• Thole had just returned from his concussion in a mask he’d never worn before;

• I was in the same room as Santana two days ago for a press conference I arrived late for and found I wasn’t credentialed for but was waved in anyway — in person, Johan looks like an enormous Johan Santana mannequin, not quite lifelike because how could you possibly be standing in the same room as Johan Santana?;

• Wainwright was matching Johan with no hits for a while and the first hit he gave up could have been scored an error;

• I could have very easily been there had I had my act together at 5:30 when Kevin texted.

Normally all of the above, from pregame to like the fourth inning, would have congealed into a big blob of superstitious conditional thinking. But despite listing those above stray thoughts, it didn’t. I refused to let it. Johan’s pitch count was stacking up and haven’t we all heard enough about pitch counts to make us wish we’d never sat through arithmetic in the first grade?

The Mets took a 2-0 lead somewhere in there. It got windier, it began to rain, no hits continued to be generated and I was in the kitchen stirring sliced strawberries and bananas into some non-fat, plain Greek yogurt as the sixth was beginning when I overheard two things from the living room:

1) “One swing could win it for New York!” which I took to mean they were showing Carlos Beltran’s greatest hit, the home run that beat St. Louis in that magical summer of 2006.

2) Some low-level commotion, which I was afraid to check in on.

I did a little rewinding of the DVR. Sure enough, there was vintage Beltran helping the Mets crush the Cardinals. And then there was contemporary Beltran hitting one just foul. Except in real time on the broadcast, the Freeze Cams and such were revealing third base ump Adrian Johnson — and isn’t it interesting how we never bother to learn the umpires’ names unless they become Angel Hernandez? — absolutely, positively blew the call.

Well, I thought, them’s the breaks, Redbirds.

Beltran didn’t argue, but ex-Met Jose Oquendo went ballistic. Mike Matheny flirted with nuclear. Adrian Johnson appeared a little embarrassed. But guess what — no replay on dubious foul calls, just as there was no way of fixing Jim Joyce’s egregious safe call on another Venezuelan pitcher, Armando Galarraga, who had another no-hitter…a perfect game, at that…going two years ago tomorrow night.

Then Beltran grounded to Wright and the first serious bullet had been dodged. Two batters later, there was a disturbing popup Ike grabbed with one hand. I’d wished he used two, but consider that one ghost of many slain.

Nine outs remained. The elephant was in the living room with me and my quickly inhaled yogurt. There was no denying what was going on. But it wasn’t worth congealing the ball vis-à-vis all the reasons This Could Be The Night. It was too late to war game this in my head. Either it was going to happen or it wasn’t.

It became a 5-0 lead in the bottom of the sixth after Lucas Duda’s three-run homer, a crucial blow in terms of taking the pressure off our pitcher (Seaver’s 8⅔ innings of no-hitter ruined by Wallis was in a zero-zero battle), but probably the easiest-to-forget turning-point three-run homer in a shutout victory we’re going to have for a while.

The game passed from baseball into opera in the seventh as the winds swirled, the mists blew and none other than Yadier F. Molina prepared to ruin everything with a deep drive to the left field wall with one out. Of course Yadier F. Molina. Of course. Yadier F. Molina isn’t booed nearly enough by the crowds who are too busy doing waves and texting wrong answers to inane quizzes to know when the devil is in their midst. And the devil was doing it.

But then he wasn’t doing it, because a Mets fan came running across Northern Boulevard to remove the blotch from Endy Chavez’s night of a lifetime.

Who else but Mike Baxter would preserve the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History? Who else but Mike from Whitestone? “Hello, Steve? First time, long time. I want to talk about how I’m going to grow up and be a crucial part of my favorite team’s history.”

Welcome aboard, Mike from Whitestone. Welcome aboard to your shoulder crashing into that W.B. Mason sign with the strength to be there. Welcome aboard to holding on to that ball, baby. Welcome…and thank you, young man.

That was two ridiculous breaks working in our favor, the lousy call on Beltran and the sublime catch against Molina. By now, it was 6⅔ innings of no-hit ball in suspended animation while Ray Ramirez tended to Baxter…and Johan stood on the mound hopefully not stiffening up…and what was his pitch count again…and Torres is coming in and moving Nieuwenhuis to left…and Torres misplayed a ball terribly two nights ago…and didn’t Kirk drop a ball against the Giants in April…and who’s Matt Adams and what are the odds it’s this guy I never heard of until tonight who ends the dream?

Except he didn’t. He grounded to Ike to end the St. Louis seventh.

Opera, I tell you.

Johan was due up in the bottom of the inning. Any idea that Terry Collins wouldn’t let him hit would have caused a riot in that I was planning to storm my television and choke him into another dimension if he didn’t. But Johan stayed in to bunt. He received, as Gary Cohen noticed, a “smattering of applause” for his pitching to that point, though to be fair, it seemed his mere showing up in the on-deck circle elicited a strong ovation. Maybe somebody put down their mobile devices for a while after all.

The Mets added three runs in the seventh. We are taught to like that sort of thing. I forced myself to like it Friday night. Being against tack-on runs is dangerous karmic behavior. But c’mon already and get Johan back on the mound before somebody does something stupid like demonstrate concern for his ongoing recovery from shoulder surgery and take him out for his own good to our everlasting sorrow.

The second batter in the top of the eighth was Shane Robinson. He was the first guy I announced out loud as the guy who was going to end the bid. I mean, Shane Robinson?

But he didn’t. Nor did the walking Rafael Furcal. And nor did Carlos Beltran, whoever he used to be.

“EIGHT INNINGS!” I shouted in case anyone didn’t know. “EIGHT INNINGS!” I slapped a wall, hyperventilated, paced around and scared the hell out of the one cat who dared to hang in there with me until now.

“You’re scaring Avery,” Stephanie said, though she knew that was going to be the collateral damage. She did her part by continuing to futz around with her Nook. She’s walked in on too many no-hit bids not to be considered culpable in the total reaching 8,019. (Then again, hadn’t we all?)

Johan came up again in the ninth. Did his mannequin impression. Struck out not just looking but standing perfectly still. Best at-bat of his career since that 12-pitch home run against the Reds.

Never mind never thinking there’d be a no-hitter. I never thought I’d see anything like Johan Santana shutting down the Marlins when everything was on the line, when he couldn’t, just couldn’t, leave the mound — if Johan Santana handed a slender lead to the 2008 Mets bullpen, it would evaporate, so Johan obliterated his pitch count and pitched the game of a lifetime that September Saturday when Shea was about to die.

Now the stakes weren’t nearly as intense…but, no, that’s a lie. They were every bit as intense. Johan hung in and beat the Marlins, and Jason and I embraced manfully and the Brewers lost to the Cubs and the Mets stayed alive for one more day until they and Shea came tumbling down. And if they’d ultimately succeeded? I would have witnessed the third world championship in New York Mets history, which would have been every bit as marvelous as that sounds, based on having witnessed the other two.

But I hadn’t yet seen the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History. Nobody had. Nobody ever would, went a strain of our cultural thinking. We talked about it at the Hofstra 50th anniversary conference. Phil Humber — traded with three other fellows for Johan Santana, it occurs to me — had just pitched his perfect game. Tom Seaver pitched his no-hitter with the Reds. Al Leiter, Hideo Nomo, Nolan Ryan, Dwight Gooden…everybody had pitched a no-hitter before or after their Mets tenure. But everybody missed the mark. Nobody did it where we would have loved and adored them for doing it.

One of the favorite parlor games in which we Mets fans indulged for our eternity was “who could do it?” or “who would we want to do it?” I haven’t had a definitive guess since I insisted it would be Bill Pulsipher, so what did I know, but I always rejected the notion that it couldn’t or shouldn’t be “some journeyman”. Some journeyman? If his journey took him to the Shea Stadium or Citi Field mound and he pitched a no-hitter in a New York Mets uniform, I think we’d immortalize him without hesitation.

Even if it had been T#m Gl@v!ne, for whom I rooted with most of my heart and soul on May 23, 2004, which was a story I was telling the other night at the game where Jeremy Hefner homered (which takes a back seat as novel episodes go this week). I heard Gl@v!ne going for it as Stephanie and I entered a theater to see a show. I manipulated the radio in my ear as long as I could, until the orchestra was playing the overture to Bombay Dreams, until Kit Pellow stopped the bid.

We all have those types of stories, but this one comes back to me suddenly, not just ’cause it came up the other night but because without Gl@v!ne’s signature implosion on the worst day in Shea Stadium history (in my view), the Mets don’t make every effort to trade for the best available pitcher on the market in the offseason that followed. They don’t wait out the Yankees and the Red Sox and they don’t pony up Phil Humber, Kevin Mulvey, Carlos Gomez and Deolis Guerra to the Twins and arrange all kinds of zeroes to lure Johan Santana to the their ranks in time for 2008.

Santana was a reasonable facsimile of the American League version his first year, until the last few starts, when he was all that and an oversized bag of chips. He was sort of that on and off in 2009 and 2010 except he was aching and we weren’t very good for very long and before we knew it, he was out for a year and his contract was a Beltranesque albatross and maybe we can trade him, huh?

Maybe not! Maybe Johan works his broad shoulders off as well as the rest of his anatomy and he’s starting on Opening Day as Gary Carter is remembered and he’s succeeding without actually winning for several starts thereafter and he’s shutting down the Padres so effectively last weekend that if he hadn’t given up a few hits, you could have sworn he had no-hit stuff.

And then eight innings of no-hit baseball are in the books for a Mets starter for the first time since that September afternoon in 1975 when I listened to Bob Murphy describe Tom Seaver trying to keep hope alive in 0-0 combat. It wouldn’t really be a no-hitter if he got Wallis, Murph explained, but it would be nine no-hit innings, and when I was twelve years old, that would be plenty.

But Wallis singled and the Mets lost in extras and I continued to grow up with this.

I will not, however, grow old with it.

Because Torres caught a blooping liner from Matt Holliday. And because Nieuwenhuis handled a fly from Allen Craig. And David Freese — the guy who cost the Texas Rangers their first world championship — struck out.

Johan Santana pitched the First No-Hitter in New York Mets History.

It happened. It really and truly happened. I shouted and I cried and I hugged my wife and we drank champagne from the same Mets mugs with which we toasted the 2006 N.L. East championship, none of which will show up in the box score, but I always wondered what I would do if it happened, and now I know.

We can all go count something else now.

Never thought it would happen.

But it did.