“If he’s so dumb, how come he’s president?”
—Gerald Ford’s campaign slogan, as reported by Chevy Chase on Weekend Update, 1975

Those who cut the Mets miles and miles of slack for sucking as badly as they do point to the injuries. How could have we expected them to contend without their key players? I’ll buy that. I’ll buy that substituting for All-Stars and even regulars wasn’t going to be easy. I’ll buy that if you told me ahead of time that we’d endure most of 2009 missing mass quantities of Reyes, Delgado, Beltran, Maine, Perez and Putz (plus assorted other dollops of the disabled) I’d have no right nor reason to expect this team to be in the middle of a pennant race in mid-September.

But I’d also have no right nor reason to expect what we’ve gotten. We’ve gotten dumbass baseball from the moment the season started right down to its final weeks. We’ve gotten amateur baseball from professionals. We’ve gotten neophyte mistakes from those who have been playing the game continually since childhood.

It’s not that we don’t have good players. We don’t, for the most part, but it’s not that. It’s that we’re getting bad baseball. Dumbass baseball.

We’ve seen it emanate from just about every source imaginable since April, but from no one as repeatedly or as regularly as from Daniel Murphy. Since it’s a teamwide epidemic, I’m assuming we’ve seen more bad baseball out of Murphy in ’09 because he’s had the dratted luck to remain healthy this entire season. He’s played in ten more games than David Wright, twelve more than Luis Castillo. It only figures that by exposing himself more, he would be more exposed than any Met.

All Mets play bad baseball. Daniel Murphy plays it the most.

Murphy, to the best of my knowledge, was not granted a contract by the New York Mets because he clipped and sent in coupons from empty cartons of Dairylea for the honor. I assume he plays because he succeeded at it in school well enough to be drafted and played it well enough in the minors to be promoted. That’s where I came in to the Daniel Murphy story. I saw him, same as just about everybody else, for the first time last summer. For the better part of two months, he impressed with the bat. He held his own, albeit sometimes shakily, with the glove. He was handed left field for this year.

Then he charged out to left and proved he couldn’t play it. There is a tendency to offer the kid his own yard of slack for his glovework to date. Daniel Murphy had never been an outfielder before 2008. He was an infielder — a third baseman. Third base was taken. He had played some second base, we were told, and tried it again in the mythical Arizona Fall League (where we assume everybody’s shortcomings can be curtailed), but it didn’t work there and besides, we were blessed with a terminal case of Castillo. Carlos Delgado’s hip, Fernando Tatis’s limited utility and Jeremy Reed’s frightful experience gunning a ball to the backstop in L.A. made Daniel — who remained healthy and willing — the de facto everyday first baseman.

It wasn’t a disaster. Sometimes Daniel Murphy at first base was downright competent. Once in a while, as on a freak play against the Dodgers in July, he appeared brilliant. That’s both encouraging and a little misleading. I remember watching Dave Kingman play first base after he wore out his welcome in the outfield, and he managed to periodically appear brilliant if only by comparison to his defense elsewhere. Even Mike Piazza was once witnessed diving for a ball there. Anybody, with the exception of luckless Jeremy Reed (who, incidentally, has played the fourth-most games of any Met in 2009…who’da guessed?), can get by for a spell at first.

But Daniel Murphy is never going to be Keith Hernandez defensively. He is never going to be John Olerud or David Segui either. If we’re lucky, he’ll be Dave Magadan, no great shakes in the field, but no great shame — and a heckuva stick usually minus the power. Mostly, he’s Daniel Murphy. He’s likable, he works hard, he gave us that most appetizing glimpse in ’08…we want him to succeed.

To this point in his young career, he is not succeeding. He is not close to doing so. And if he didn’t give us two nice months and didn’t have a name that a lot of fans seem to enjoy slapping on their backs with his number, I can’t imagine a lot of us would particularly care whether he was here next year or not.

If it were just about last night and three dreadful moments in a brutal ninth inning when sensible people were sleeping — failure to corral (or go after) a fair ball down the line that didn’t have to be a double; failure to cleanly pick up a grounder; and compounded failure to grasp that same ball as it practically bounced into his glove — the impulse would be to say, as Murph himself did, that it was just a “pretty awful day” at the office. We’ve all had those, particularly at the age of 24. But Murphy has actually had a pretty awful year by every measure except health and attitude.

While not proceeding gracefully afield in 2009, he has also shown he’s not yet a big league caliber hitter. Murphy didn’t hit Wednesday night. Not hitting is typical behavior for the Mets, who strangely lead the N.L. in batting average yet don’t seem to drive runners home. It’s not to his credit that Murphy went 0-for-4, but that’s just an ohfer. His .258 average is about as high as he’s batted since May. He’s on base barely more than 30 percent of the time; he slugs at a .403 clip — and those are after compiling his best stretch of OBP and SLG of the season. These are not the numbers you’d expect out of a cleanup hitter, which is what he’s been on paper for much of the year, but we know that’s a technicality, and we understand it. But they’re not numbers you’d readily accept anywhere in the lineup, save for the pitcher’s spot.

Light production isn’t necessarily the most vexing problem with Daniel Murphy in the wake of his first full season (though it sure doesn’t help his cause). It’s not even that he made two to three lousy plays in the ninth to cost the Mets a ballgame they should have won. It’s that this is how too many Mets play, Daniel Murphy more frequently than any of them in 2009. If Murphy dove for Garret Anderson’s double instead of thinking, in essence, “um, it’s not foul?” Anderson might have been caught at first. He certainly would have been held there. As for the double-muff that ended this sodden affair from Atlanta, of course he should have come up with Ryan Church’s grounder. It was an in-between hop, but it didn’t appear (on television) all that tricky. But Murph literally took his eye off the ball and — where have you seen this before? — didn’t use both hands available to him. When the ball somehow caromed right back in his midst, he simply missed it. A lot going on there, much as there was when Reed melted down at Dodger Stadium (which happened to be the same game wherein Church skipped by third base; oh the irony).

Is all that bad luck? Inexperience? Unrefined instincts? Or dumbass baseball? After a full year spent in the company of Daniel Murphy, I’m veering to that last choice. We saw it in the outfield until it could be seen no longer. We saw it on the basepaths in Philadelphia Sunday night when he took off for third despite having no chance — none — of being safe on a ball that trickled a few feet from Carlos Ruiz. We’ve seen poor slides. We’ve seen tepid production that hasn’t been close to the taste we received last year, before the league got a look at him.

It’s just bad, dumbass baseball out of Daniel Murphy, just as it’s been from most of the Mets for inconceivable spans of 2009. Usually, however, there’s some redeeming feature justifying the presence of certain of his teammates in this expectation-lowered annum. For example, I wanted Castillo released the night of The Popup, but (despite laughing my fool head off at sympathetic rhetorical questions like, “Where would the Mets be without Luis Castillo?”) he has hit to the best of his Luis Castillo abilities. Jeff Francoeur is a half-assed defender and has no sense of the strike zone, but he hits a ball out of a park now and then, throws like Roy Hobbs and — cliché alert! — plays hard, even when hurt. Angel Pagan has revealed his dumbass tendencies in spades, but we’ve also seen his speed, his power and how they manifest themselves into triples, which is no small consideration at Citi Field.

What the hell do we have in Daniel Murphy? A power-free first baseman who doesn’t hit for average, doesn’t get on all that much and has no expertise at or feel for his position. But he did have a nice August in 2008 and people do enjoy wearing shirts that say MURPHY 28.

I don’t particularly want Carlos Delgado to return, not even for incentives — though I wonder what ever happened to, “You’ll be compensated at no less than $400,000 to play baseball with meal money kicked in, there’s your incentive.” He’ll be close to 38 on Opening Day 2010; he’ll be, save for a minor miracle, inactive since May 10, 2009; and, if memory serves, he’ll still have the kind of seniority and sway that is alleged to have held David Wright back from assuming his presumably predestined informal team captaincy (not that that sort of thing isn’t vastly overrated, but all reports indicate Delgado has never exerted the “positive influence in the clubhouse” that was supposed to be his value added). Delgado’s not a long-term answer and I kind of doubt he’s a short-term answer.

But what evidence is there that Murphy is suitable where Delgado isn’t? His youth and fading good first impression notwithstanding, I wouldn’t hesitate to shop him if anybody else sees something in him. After a year like this, there aren’t many Mets of whom I wouldn’t let it be known around baseball that we’ll listen to any reasonable offer. The only major leaguer this organization has developed in the past five seasons with an MLB tenure longer than Murphy’s is Mike Pelfrey. Pelfrey has been, save for his own two good months in 2008, a vast disappointment, to put it mildly. Somebody wants to talk to somebody about trading for Mike Pelfrey, I wouldn’t hang up the phone either. But at least Pelfrey has shown recurring flashes of what he is thought to be. He’s not a “No. 2” starter right now. He’s barely a No. 5, to use that sickening term. He’s backpedaled behind Nelson Figueroa, for cryin’ out loud. But there’s something there with Pelfrey. It would take a lot to make me consider letting him go with his 26th birthday yet to come.

I don’t see anything there with Murphy. He has none of the so-called five tools in abundance and that sixth tool that one would think comes free with every player — baseball sense — is completely lacking. Whoever develops Mets prospects, whoever coaches them, whoever manages them once they reach the majors and whoever oversees the entire baseball operation share some fault for Daniel Murphy coming here ill-equipped for the long season’s haul, but how do we not hold Daniel Murphy accountable for forever playing dumbass baseball?

Is there really a good player underneath all this bad play? Will he, as Ron Swoboda once did, persevere past his youthful indiscretions and reward us with some great and memorable moment in a better year than this, thus practically erasing public recollection that his early career was marked by chronic boneheadedness that overwhelmed his good first impression? Is replacing Daniel Murphy with an actual player whose craft is first base going to be prohibitive because we’re always going to run up against the Madoff factor?

And if the Mets are so dumb, how come I’m still watching them?

(FYI: Philly’s win over the Nats cut our 4th place magic number to 5, but after this latest Turner Field debacle, who can enjoy even that much out of life?)

The New York Mets whittled their magic number to clinch 4th place in the National League East to 6 when the Philadelphia Phillies defeated the Washington Nationals 5-0. The Mets, however, continued to imbue the Battle for the Upper Basement with tension, strategically configuring a shutout loss of their own at the hands of the Atlanta Braves, 6-0. The Mets' four hits can be taken as a sign that their eyes are focused squarely on the 4th place prize.

Any combination of Mets victories and Nationals setbacks totaling 6 will give the Mets their first 4th place crown since 2004.

Four things to think about as the quest for next-to-last continues:

1. The 2009 Mets, who abandoned their quest for a winning record Sunday night, have now ensured their 25th losing mark in 48 seasons of operation by making Tuesday's loss their 82nd of the year. The Mets' two other full-season 4th place finishes (1996 and 2004) yielded records of 71-91. To be as good as those Mets, these Mets must win eight of their final seventeen games. In 2007 and 2008, the Mets went 5-12 and 7-10, respectively, having entered the last two years with presumably impenetrable divisional leads of 7 games in '07 and 3½ games in '08.

2. The Mets record since peaking at 28-21 on May 31 is 35-62 for a winning percentage of .361 that translates, over 162 games, to a 58-104 record. After a five-game winning streak brought the Mets to 49-51 on July 30, they have gone 14-31, for a winning percentage of .311, a rate producing a 50-112 record across 162 games. It would thus seem delusional, even taking the team's myriad injuries into account, to assert some form of significant Met retooling isn't necessary. Are they a 58- or 50-win team in 2010 if those on whom they counted in 2009 are healthy and back? No. Are they, as Bart Hubbuch contended in the Post, “a potential 97-win team” just because they went 15-10 with Carlos Delgado, Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes and David Wright playing together? Even more no. Reyes 2010 is an unknown quantity. Delgado will be even less of a certainty, if he's invited back. And given the long recovery time from the bone bruise, there has to be at least some question mark attached to Beltran's long-term viability. We also haven't seen Wright hit with power outside Citizens Bank Park. Even if all four guys are here and healthy, how can a team piecing itself together after four horrible months, the last two of them particularly abysmal, not be considered ripe for retooling? Not necessarily blowing them up, as Hubbuch puts it, but seriously considering every possibility? The Mets at their worst have played like a 50-win team. At their best, they didn't look remotely like a 97-win team.

3. The 2010 Mets will open their season at home against Florida on April 5 and close it at home against Washington on October 3. It is unclear how those games and the 160 games in between will develop, but Matt Artus of Always Amazin' examines the phenomenon of dynamic pricing and surmises few of the 81 home dates will be bargains despite this year's questionable value: “You can bet that things won't get cheaper anytime soon. If you want to watch a winner, you'd better be prepared to pay.”

4. AMAZIN' TUESDAY was truly Amazin' and we thank everybody who spoke, everybody who attended, everybody who helped spread the word and everybody working at Two Boots Tavern for making it such a fantastic time. If I were to tell you several dozen Mets fans sat together in a room with the Mets game on and had loads of fun, you would never guess the event took place in the present. But it did. Our team may have expired, but Mets fandom dies hard, baby.

For those of you following the most underreported race in baseball, the New York Mets' magic number to clinch 4th place in the National League East is 7. Any combination of Met wins and Washington National losses totaling 7 will give the Mets their third full-season fourth-place finish ever and their first since 2004; they also finished fourth in the second half of the 1981 split season.

In recognition of the 2009 Mets' ultimate goal, 4 things to keep in mind today:

1. It's AMAZIN' TUESDAY! Tonight at 7 (when else?) at Two Boots Tavern on the Lower East Side, join your friends from Faith and Fear in Flushing and Mets By The Numbers for one more evening of reading, rooting and Rusty Tillman. Joining Jon Springer and me will be John Coppinger, a.k.a. Metstradamus, and Jeff Pearlman, a writer of many articles and books but, in our hearts, the author of the indispensable 1986 chronicle The Bad Guys Won. Bring a Mets baseball card, get a free beer. All the details you need are here.

2. Ex-Nat Anderson Hernandez had the honor of hitting the Mets' 6,000th home run ever, a fact dutifully recorded by Mark of Mets Walkoffs, where the countdown is on to determine the Sixty Most Metmorable Home Runs in Mets History. Nos. 60-51 are given the Delight-is-in-the-Details treatment here.

3. Wonder why the Mets are focused on 4th and not a higher position? Could it be because the Mets haven't developed themselves more than one starting pitcher on whom they can still depend this entire decade? I Hate the Mets, a blog written by JF — who relates to the Mets as only a true Mets fan can these days (judging by the site's title) — recently worked up a most revealing chart. It's not your imagination that the Mets never seem to bring up a solid starter who sticks around for very long. Maybe Mike Pelfrey, but solid is still debatable with him. Other than Pelfrey and Jae Seo, no Met-bred starter has contributed more than a season's worth of starts to the Mets in the 2000s…though a few have pitched pretty well for other teams. Examine the whole mess here.

4. One of my favorite lines from The West Wing was uttered when Leo (John Spencer) came to work early and found Sam (Rob Lowe) had slept on his office couch. Go home and get some rest, Leo told Sam. No, it will be all right, Sam countered, I'm just going to change my shirt. Leo: “I think you're putting too much faith in the magical powers of a new shirt.” I thought of that yesterday when I put on a new shirt of my own, one that says I'M CALLING IT SHEA. I had seen these around Citi Field and was impressed by the loyalty so many Mets fans were showing to the dear, departed homestead, yet had resisted buying one for myself. I love Shea Stadium and I still mostly meh Citi Field, but except out of habit (such as when an LIRR conductor stares at my Penn Station ticket, my wardrobe, my ticket again and asks me where I'm going), I don't call Citi Shea. Shea was Shea and Citi is Citi. If the naming rights to Shea had been sold while Shea still stood, that would be another matter. But Citi is a place all its own and, though it would have been appropriate to christen it something like Shea Field, its corporate name is its birth name — and pretty accurate considering the vibe it emits. Nevertheless, a thoughtful person sent me an I'M CALLING IT SHEA shirt and I have to say I felt a surge of empowerment just holding it in my hands. They can pave over my stadium, they can hide our past, they can make it so we mindlessly utter the identity of a financial institution when all we want to do is talk baseball, but here, in glorious blue and orange (not Citi Field's official colors of forest green and Phillie crimson), was somehow a magical statement. I may not call it Shea, but I'm proud to wear it. If you think you might want to try one on, just click here.

I want a world without gravity

I'd watch the earth recede

— Jim Carroll (R.I.P.)

This may come as shocking news, so please sit down.

The 2009 New York Mets are not going to the playoffs.

The inevitable became the actual with tonight's 1-0 loss to the soon-to-be-N.L.-East-champion Phillies. And of course, in this season of pain and regret, the choice of executioner was ironic. Wielding the ax was none other than Pedro Martinez.

He was marvelous, he really was. He looked like the Pedro we always thought we were getting, the one we saw all too rarely. His fastball hit 91, his change-up was deadly and he showed the curve just enough to make the other two pitches evil incarnate. And his location — his undoing in too many injury-plagued starts the last two years — was pinpoint. Watching him I thought of his breathtaking duel against Roger Clemens on 2000's Memorial Day. Then, trying for a better ending, I thought of June 3, 1997. He was an Expo then, at the height of his powers, yet found himself hooked up with Bobby Jones as a surprisingly tough opponent. With the score 0-0 in the eighth, the Expos nicked Jones for a run on a Rondell White double. Matt Franco led off the bottom of the eighth, pinch-hitting for an apparently luckless Jones, and rifled a ball over the right-field fence to tie the score. Pedro stayed in, long enough to witness Carlos Baerga double in Edgardo Alfonzo. John Franco got the save (he did sometimes, you could look it up) and after the game the cameras caught Pedro sitting alone in the dugout in despair. He was still there when the lights literally went out.

It wasn't personal, it really wasn't. I was pleased to see the old master out there summoning some more magic from that arm. I wish him well, and bear neither him nor the fickle baseball gods ill will for the fact that he's finally pitching the way he kept claiming he could if given yet another chance. What happened? You got me. Maybe his body just needed time to heal. Maybe he learned something during his convalescence that let him take the final steps in his transformation. Maybe he's just riding a statistical streak. Maybe our karma's just that crummy. Whatever the case, I'm happy for him, and I don't blame the Mets for refusing to roll the dice yet again.

I wish Pedro well, but my team's my team, and he was wearing the wrong uniform. Sure, it was stirring to see him campaigning for close pitches before a packed house trying to carry him across the finish line with cheers and applause. Yes, it was disconcerting to be repeatedly reminded that he was doing it for them, for Rollins & Co. and their hideous fans. Absolutely, it was great drama anyway. (A silver lining: Charlie Manuel's insane decision to put 130 pitches on that fragile arm wasn't my problem.)

But I was more interested in marveling at how well the generally scorned Tim Redding pitched, and pinching myself to verify that Sean Green had somehow not melted down, and applauding Pedro Feliciano for his final defusing of the Philadelphia lineup. And hoping that someone might channel Franco and Baerga, and turn out the lights at Citizens Bank Park.

It wasn't to be: Daniel Murphy made a dumb decision with Pedro running on what had to be vapors of vapors, getting thrown out at third and ensuring Pedro wouldn't have to throw a 1-1 pitch to Jeremy Reed for his 131st pitch. Ryan Madson looked shaky as usual in the ninth, but Jeff Francoeur turned in an amazingly terrible at-bat and Angel Pagan (who also made the final out of the matinee) rocketed a low liner right into Pedro Feliz's glove.

And with that, the 2009 season was mathematically over.

I wanna drift above the borders against my will

It's like they're pressed against a mirrored glass

We're dead, but the pennant races of better years still live in the pages of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets . Get it from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or pick it up at a fine area bookstore. The discussion continues on Facebook.

Come on down to Two Boots Tavern on the Lower East Side for our final AMAZIN' TUESDAY of the season — September 15 at 7:00 PM. Greg (and hopefully I) will be joined by his co-host Jon Springer of Mets By The Numbers as we welcome special guests The Bad Guys Won author Jeff Pearlman and Metstradamus mastermind John Coppinger. And if THAT'S not enough, there will be great pizza, cold beer (the first of which is free if you bring Two Boots owner Phil Hartman a Mets baseball card) and more Met bonhomie than you thought could possibly be scraped together at the end of a year like this. The Mets-Braves game will be on, too, even though it doesn't matter. Seriously, we've had three of these events and every one of them has been a blast, so come on down and have a great Mets time with us.

Free and clear of pennant race stress, join us at Two Boots Tavern on the Lower East Side for the final AMAZIN' TUESDAY of the season, September 15 at 7:00 PM. If the Mets had been as good as this reading and discussion series, we'd be looking at playoffs right now.

The final installment will be plenty fun, with Jon Springer of Mets By The Numbers and your friends from Faith and Fear in Flushing welcoming Jeff Pearlman, the author of The Bad Guys Won (and other fine work) and John Coppinger, creator of the endlessly delightful Metstradamus blog. All this plus great pizza, cold beer and the company of your fellow Mets fans — each and every one of them a champ for hanging in there against the backdrop of 2009. Two Boots' TVs will be, as always, tuned to the Mets game…and what the hell, maybe they'll win one. But you'll be a winner either way if you come on down.

Bring a Mets baseball card, get a free beer. Where else you gonna get a deal like that?

Two Boots Tavern is at 384 Grand St., between Norfolk and Suffolk. You can take the F to Delancey; the J, M or Z to Essex; or the B or D to Grand. Phone: 212/228-8685.

The never-say-die Mets didn't say die until the ninth in the afternoon portion of Sunday's quasi-doubleheader. But their offense failed to come to life in any tangible way until the eighth, so the late-inning heroics effect that proved so popular the day before was kind of dimmed and doomed ahead of time.

It really pays to score four in the first and take your chances from there.

Gosh, Saturday's game was so much fun, making it that much more of a shame that we had to trudge back to our usual humdrum lives so soon again. What, Angel Pagan couldn't have kept the ninth-inning rally going for the power-hitting Anderson Hernandez, he who has the distinction of bopping the Mets' 6,000th home run? (That's 6,000 in franchise history, not in one game — that, as they used to say on Sportscenter, would be a record.) If Hernandez had continued it, how about an encore for David Wright? And what about that bit wherein if a frog had wings he wouldn't bump his ass when he hops?

Yeah, just getting carried away with the ifs here. I tell ya, though, it's been a while since I indulged ifs of the hypothetically hopeful variety. The most ifs I've allowed myself lately have been in the service of ruefully wondering, “If they'd just let the Mets play last 20 games as 180 consecutive innings, could we be done with this season any sooner?” Before Saturday, my patience for Team Unwatchable had completely run out. I watched the unwatchable Mets, but not all that closely. This was no longer the baseball 1962 Mets hitting coach Rogers Hornsby and I stared out the window all winter and waited for. This was just cruel.

M-E-T-S…Must End This Season.

Then came Saturday and all its candy-coated treats. Not just the win in comeback fashion over the Hated Rivals, but the way it was done: David Wright matching his career high in RBI; Fernando Tatis racking up four hits for the first time in ten years; Carlos Beltran resuming his All-Star ways (tell me again how injured players should just pack it in); the chronically ordinary Santos and Murphy contributing to a crucial pre-ninth run that will get lost in the retelling…

Oh, there will be retelling. There will have to be, by our little band of griots. Few will remember this game down the road. You and I, we'll remember it, but that's because we are all sick in the head Metswise. We watch the unwatchable until our patience is stretched as thin as Wilson Valdez. But mass attention was long ago diverted from this Mets team, and not without good reason. Still, you get some fine moments from not so fine Mets teams at junctures like these.

Some get remembered more than others. Perhaps because it slipped into the larger narrative of spoiling the Cubs' Wild Card aspirations, relatively many in our tribe seem to remember the Victor Diaz/Craig Brazell Game from September 25, 2004 (which I find amusing since I couldn't find anybody to take an extra ticket from me that sunny Saturday afternoon). There seems to be general if ever more vague recollection of the Carl Everett Game from September 13, 1997, a much better year but one almost worn down to its nub by the time its most miraculous episode unspooled. Those were games, tied on dramatic two-out ninth-inning homers and won in extras on emphatic long balls — not Lenny Dykstra- or Todd Pratt-caliber situations, but transcendently awesome enough to merit second-tier recall among Metsopotamians of good standing.

But does anybody besides me and my friend Joe, maybe because we were there, remember the Esix Snead Game of September 21, 2002? Does anybody besides me and me alone remember the dizzying spectacle of the Mets beating the Giants 11-9 in San Francisco across twelve stunning innings on August 21, 2004? Or (if I may go way the hell back) the way Joel Youngblood channeled Steve Henderson for a tenth-inning 5-4 win over the Pirates on September 29, 1980?

These were great, great, great games that got no, no, no attention in the pre-blog era. They came when almost nobody was looking, when the Mets were deemed unworthy of coverage or anybody's time. All of 1,787 paid their way into Shea to watch Youngblood swat a two-run homer off Grant Jackson in the bottom of the tenth to rescue Jeff Reardon who had given up the go-ahead run in the top of the tenth. I listened on WMCA, after school, as my mother insisted on my standing still so she could hem some new pair of pants she bought me. I didn't care about pants. I cared about Mets. I may have been one of only 1,787 listening at that point, but I heard every bit of it and I did not stand still.

This is why seasons that fall well short of desired outcome must not, despite my recurring 2009 dismay, end any sooner than they have to. Sometimes amid the muck and mire of Met dregs you get an Esix Snead Game — an Andres Galarraga error brings the tying run home in the ninth, Snead blasts a two-out, three-run walkoff homer in the eleventh — or an afternoon like the one in Phone Company Park five years ago that I still so adore. August 21, 2004 should be a cult classic:

• Bonds on six times without benefit of an intentional walk;

• Wright 4-for-6, three runs scored;

• Floyd drives a homer into the Cove;

• Looper throws three gut-covered innings;

• Zeile skies one into a blinding sun that Dustan Mohr can't handle for the eventual winning runs;

• Jeff Keppinger reaches base for the first time, Wilson Delgado collects three hits and Bartolome Fortunato earns the only save of his big league career.

It was one of those games after which I e-mailed everybody I knew to discover almost none of them had bothered to watch. Pity. The Mets do some of their best work under cover of futility.

That's what they did Saturday when they blew a 4-0 lead and stormed back from an 8-4 deficit to win 10-9 while the “big stories” in sports unfolded on diamonds, gridirons and tennis courts elsewhere. It's not what happened Sunday when they fell down 4-0 and lost 5-4. Nevertheless, John Maine pitched three more innings than we thought we'd see out of him in 2009. Hernandez launched that shocking shot to center (shocking for Citizens Bank even). Josh Thole recorded four hits and Jeff Francoeur strung together three more. Others might take those as signs of encouragement for 2010 (except for Francoeur, whose continued playing and producing in spite of a bad thumb is easily dismissed because he doesn't walk much, so stop enjoying watching him hustle and smile, you unsophisticated ninny). Honestly, I've watched too many Septembers to take anything from them as evidence of what to expect in the years that follow. I'm not all that keen on expectations anymore on the whole. Go find me the season preview that predicted how injured and inept the Mets would become and then I'll put credence in long-term projections.

But at least until Sunday night writes a new storyline, I will appreciate Sunday afternoon's handful of highlights for what they are: a few guys on my baseball team doing well and making me happy for instances all too fleeting as my baseball team's presence on our communal stage dwindles daily. That's about the most I can ask out of September when I absolutely can't ask any more.

Come to Two Boots Tavern on the Lower East Side when we convene our final AMAZIN' TUESDAY of the season — September 15 at 7:00 PM. Jon Springer of Mets By The Numbers and I welcome special guests The Bad Guys Won author Jeff Pearlman and Metstradamus mastermind John Coppinger. There will be great pizza, cold beer (the first of which is free if you bring Two Boots owner Phil Hartman a Mets baseball card) and more Met bonhomie than you thought could possibly be scraped together at the end of a year like this.

In Mets-Phillies lore, you win the Damn Thing when you go to Philadelphia, you build a huge lead, you hold on for dear life and you come away thanking your lucky 10-9 stars that you didn’t blow the Damn Thing. It was the formula for broacast immortality on July 25, 1990 and it echoed clear through to July 7, 2008.

Mets 10
Phillies 9

It remains the official score of sweet relief, no matter what route the Mets take to arrive there.

This Saturday afternoon in South Philly, it wasn’t Mets 10 Phillies 3 as it was nineteen years ago when Bob Murphy and Mario Diaz teamed to hold off unfathomable disaster. And it wasn’t Mets 10 Phillies 1 as it was last year when Pedro Martinez, Tony Armas and Aaron Heilman couldn’t stand prosperity and Billy Wagner could barely handle it. Those were 10-9 wins whose last chapters were written by Terry McMillan, when we found ourselves crossing our fingers, clutching our totems, beseeching our deities and waiting to exhale.

This Saturday afternoon in South Philly was different…but similar enough.

We needed to win 10-9 in 1990 to move within a half-game of first-place Pittsburgh. We needed to win 10-9 in 2008 to pull within 2½ of the Phillies. We also needed to not lose those games, too, because to surrender leads of six and eight runs, respectively, is to tell the baseball gods, “No, no thanks. We’re not interested in succeeding this or any other season.” You lead 10-3 or you lead 10-1, you have one job: you win. You win because you lead by a lot and you win because you rarely lead by that much. It’s one of those “in the course of a season, there’s a third you win” games — you don’t toss those back lightly.

Nor, come to think of it, do you charge out of the gate with five hits, four runs and stick the whole package in a Hefty Bag as precursor to kicking it to the curb. That, however, is what the Mets did today. They disrespected elderly Jamie Moyer by slapping the cane from his left hand and making off with his Social Security check. Young whippersnappers nearly got away with it, too, but don’t mess with the Gray Panther because he carries mace to the mound and, before we knew it, he had subdued those smart-alecky Mets with fifteen consecutive outs.

Well, that’ll happen. The Mets blitzed Jim Rooker with six consecutive hits to score four runs in the first at Shea in 1979 and then stopped scoring altogether. That was all right, because Pete Falcone subdued the Pirates that night and we won 4-0.

I never thought I’d say this in an unflattering context, but Mike Pelfrey is no Pete Falcone.

Pelf couldn’t gift-wrap runs to the Phillies fast enough. Citizens Bank Park, as we know, was built on an abandoned air hockey table, so balls do tend to fly out of there. But did Mike really need to act as air traffic controller and guide them to their destination? Feliz, you’re clear for takeoff…Utley, use the right-center runaway…Ibañez, there are some clouds with your name on them…

Moyer settling down, Pelfrey coughing it up. That would seem to be a 2009-style script, wouldn’t it? The Phillies turned that 4-0 deficit into an 6-4 lead by the time Moyer got around to permitting another baserunner. It was 8-4 not long after that.

Yup, this was Pelfrey. These were the Mets. This is 2009. Sigh… Not the exhaling we’d want to do. So what if Beltran homered earlier? So what if Wright had driven in two right before that? So what if Wilson Valdez managed to get Daniel Murphy in on a fielder’s choice in the seventh? It was 8-5. Big whoop. And here comes Ken Takahashi to whoop it up even more, allowing a double to Utley and an RBI single to Ibañez to make it 9-5 in the bottom of the seventh. Takahashi exits, Sean Green, master of the Citizens Bank bases-loaded walk, enters. What’s going to go wrong now?

Surprisingly, nothing, at least not for us. Jamie Moyer, realizing it was now or never for the early bird special, exited and gave way to that paragon of humanity Brett Myers. On Fox, Tim McCarver and Howie Rose (how strange to type that combo) were framing Myers as some sort of secret weapon for Charlie Manuel heading to the postseason given the Phillies’ continued case of bullpen hiccups. Oh, he was a secret weapon for Manuel all right, except for the other Manuel in the other dugout. A double to Tatis, a homer to Wright — Phillies 9 Mets 7 — a single to Beltran, and off Myers goes, presumably to counseling.

In comes Chan Ho Park, who still owes the Mets the money he stole from them on April 30, 2007. Park wants to settle out of court. We’ll take restitution in a pair of two-out base hits, one from Santos, another from Murphy to make it Phillies 9 Mets 8.

Hey, is this really happening? Are we really within a run after not answering eight consecutive scores by the Hated Rivals? Pelfrey’s gone (6 IP 10 H 8 ER — he’s way gone), Moyer’s gone, Takahashi’s gone even. Everything that wasn’t working for us is no longer a factor. This is the definition of a Whole New Ballgame.

Except that Sean Green is still pitching in Philadelphia, which can’t possibly be good. True, he gets two quick outs in the eighth, but two is not all Green needs. Green needs a third. That doesn’t seem to be his thing. Sure enough, a walk to Rollins. Then a wild pitch. Then a walk to Victorino. Christ, it’s Sean Green vs. the Phillies. It’s the Mets’ bullpen vs. the Phillies. It’s Mets karma vs. the Phillies. It’s that fucking game from two years ago (I’m thinking of the 11-10 debacle, but I could be referring to any of about fifty). It’s that fucking game with the triple play from last month. It’s not going to be good, is it?

Oh wait, we have one bullet in our chamber. We have Pedro Feliciano, whose entire purpose is to retire Phillie lefties. Chase Utley is one of those, so Jerry Manuel replaces Green with Pedro and…oh, great. He walked Utley. Well, coulda been worse. He could have not walked Utley and all that implies. So it’s bases loaded, and it’s two out and it’s one of the most dangerous hitters in the world, Ryan Howard, coming to bat.

Which is fine, because Pedro Feliciano lives to strike out Ryan Howard. Which he does.

Now it gets a little hazy because I’m out running errands. I left the house after Cory Sullivan didn’t tie the game in the top of the eighth, partly because errands needed running, mostly out of conviction that if I sat here and depended upon a miracle, I’d be left staring at no such thing. If I go out and don’t watch and don’t listen, I reasoned, maybe I’ll miss something worth missing.

Nice to know at the tail-end of a miserable season I’m still capable of instinctively thinking in those terms.

Thus, I followed the Green-Feliciano untangling on my squinty Palm Centro while standing in line at Pathmark. I picked up the play-by-play in the car with two out and none on in the top of the ninth. It’s all up to Tatis, Wayne Hagin said. Tatis seems to have done something well, lashing a single to right, but even that is fairly unsatisfactory, according to Hagin, because Fernando should really be on second. All the bounces, he notes, are going the Phillies’ way.

But Fernando Tatis is on first. There are two outs. David Wright is coming up. And I’m parked in front of the house with bundles to remove from the trunk. If I sit here and listen, David will probably…

I turn off the radio, get out of the car, gather up my bundles, fumble with various doors, get in and out of the elevator, work my keys, enter the living room and see the game is on. Beltran is batting. The baserunner diagram is empty. Damn, I think, Wright didn’t get on.

Then I rewind my thought process.

Hold on…if Beltran is up and there’s nobody on base…it says there are two out…and Beltran is definitely batting after Wright…it says 10-9…wait, the 10 is on top of the 9 and the Mets are the visiting team, which means…

“HEY! DAVID MUST HAVE HIT A TWO-RUN HOMER!”

Yes, I figured it out. Somewhere between getting out of the car and coming into the house, David Wright blasted a two-run home run off Ryan Madson and now we were winning in the ninth. In a matter of minutes, Frankie Rodriguez, albeit with less relish than his bobblegänger would indicate, retires the Phillies 1-2-3 to end it most happily.

For one day, the 2009 Mets got their heads out of their collective morass. For one day, the 2009 Mets reversed their Pelf-inflicted wounds and self-inflicted embarrassment. For one day, the 2009 Mets rose up and punched that arrogant foreman at the plant square on his fat nose, kicking him square in the nuts on the way up. For one day, the 2009 Mets didn’t lose.

The Mets won the Damn Thing 10-9. They didn’t take the classic route to arrive at that most sacred score, but the relief feels as sweet as ever.

Help us keep this damn winning feeling alive at Two Boots Tavern on the Lower East Side when we convene our final AMAZIN’ TUESDAY of the season — September 15 at 7:00 PM. Jon Springer of Mets By The Numbers and I welcome special guests The Bad Guys Won author Jeff Pearlman and Metstradamus mastermind John Coppinger. There will be great pizza, cold beer (the first of which is free if you bring Two Boots owner Phil Hartman a Mets baseball card) and more Met bonhomie than you thought could possibly be scraped together at the end of a year like this. It’s sort of like beating the Phillies in the ninth, except with words.

It's a measure of how far we've fallen (with farther to go) that I switched off the TV feeling that the Mets had eked out something akin to a moral victory by only allowing the Phillies to beat them by two runs. Nelson Figueroa bit and scratched and came out of things only vaguely mussed, Ken Takahashi conducted himself well and our Triple-A lineup was gallant in tilting at a few windmills before its predictable unhorsing.

Now that it's over, though, it's just another loss on the march to 90 and beyond. And I find myself shaking my head over the season as a whole yet again. This time it's not the injuries, or the incompetence, or the off-field embarrassments, though there have been plenty of all three. Rather, it's that the Mets will go into the offseason having learned almost nothing about key players for 2010, and burdened with worries about players they thought they didn't need to worry about.

A baseball plague year generally at least teaches you things, but the Mets haven't even gotten that. Fernando Nieve looked briefly intriguing and then was lost for the year. Fernando Martinez looked overmatched, but a season-ending injury left us unable to find out more about him. Jon Niese arrived for a dozen-start audition and promptly departed for the 60-day DL. The only player left who might be profitably scrutinized for 2010 is Nick Evans, but he isn't playing for some reason Jerry Manuel hasn't seen fit to share with the world. (Are there really still things to learn about Fernando Tatis?)

Daniel Murphy has shown conclusively that he can't field well enough to play left. One cringes at imagining him playing second, for fear of conjuring the petulant, stone-gloved specter of Gregg Jefferies. He looks adequate at first, but there are serious questions about whether he can hit enough to play there. If the Mets acquire a bona fide slugger to play left, they could conceivably survive with Murphy's bat at first. (Or, better yet, platoon Murphy and Evans.) But will they do that?

Angel Pagan has shown he can hit, but too many of his starts leave you wondering if he can think. Here, the dilemma is the inverse of Murphy's — the Mets might be OK with Pagan in left if they get a big bopper to play first, but will they do that?

Jeff Francoeur can get on base by swinging a bat at a baseball, and if you could bottle his attitude you'd gladly dispense it to your entire team. But he seems congenitally incapable of understanding the importance of getting on base in other ways, and his defensive reputation seems mostly based on a howitzer arm. The '09 Mets have a lot of players like Francoeur — gritty, likeable guys whom you suspect will never play baseball well enough to be effective everyday players.

Meanwhile, every single guy the Mets had stopped worrying about has given them reason to worry again.

David Wright's power has vanished, his defense has eroded, his strikeouts have soared, and he routinely turns in terrible at-bats. Is he concealing a nagging injury, or has his career taken an ominous downturn?

Fairly or not, Jose Reyes will play 2010 nagged by questions about his durability and his mental toughness.

Carlos Beltran will play with all eyes on the condition of his knee — and on whether the Mets doctors can be trusted to take care of that knee.

John Maine will enter 2010 having seen two consecutive seasons derailed by shoulder woes.

Mike Pelfrey may not be having nearly as bad a year as we all think (I found this Howard Megdal analysis fascinating), but he seems to think he's had a pretty awful one. And who says he'll have a good defense behind him next year?

For Oliver Perez to return to being a giant, expensive question mark would be miraculous progress.

And while we all want to bask in the radiance of JHN every fifth day, he did just have elbow surgery.

Where we had certainty, we now have uncertainty. Where we had uncertainty, we now have more uncertainty. Turning the calendar to 2010 will erase the Mets' immediate, day-to-day problems. But the larger problem? It's not going away any time soon.

Here's something certain: Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets is a fine and loyal baseball companion. Find out from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or pick it up at a fine area bookstore. The discussion continues on Facebook.

Come on down to Two Boots Tavern on the Lower East Side for our final AMAZIN' TUESDAY of the season — September 15 at 7:00 PM. Greg will be joined by co-host Jon Springer of Mets By The Numbers as we welcome special guests The Bad Guys Won author Jeff Pearlman and Metstradamus mastermind John Coppinger. And if THAT'S not enough, there will be great pizza, cold beer (the first of which is free if you bring Two Boots owner Phil Hartman a Mets baseball card) and more Met bonhomie than you thought could possibly be scraped together at the end of a year like this. The Mets-Braves game will be on, too, but don't let that detract from the experience. Seriously, we've had three of these events and every one of them has been a blast, so come on down and have a great Mets time with us.