Liván Hernandez is gone from our midst, but the Elton John song they played for him at Citi Field when he did something well resonates slightly this Sunday, specifically the part, “when the New York Times said God is dead…”

I wouldn’t want to get that deep, but what does it say about the state of the modern newspaper when the New York freaking Times doesn’t send a reporter to Queens to cover the only home team playing baseball in its city on this particular weekend?

I know what it says about the Mets. That the Mets aren’t contending and therefore aren’t going to be considered a vital topic. But the Mets have not contended in Septembers before, yet their home games were always covered by the Times. Always, at least as far as I can recall from my many years of dedicated reading.

Whenever I’m reminded of the plight of the newspaper business, of course I get sad. Sports sections have been my Greek chorus for forty years, offering vital commentary and filling in the details of the narrative that has been every Mets season I’ve lived through. There was a time up until a couple of years ago when I didn’t make a move without reading at least three daily papers. Sure I saw the game. Sure I knew the score. But the stories and the quotes and the columns, let alone the standings and the stats and the transactions…that was baseball. I loved that there used to be a newsstand on the 7 extension. I loved that somebody used to sell the Night Owl edition of the next day’s Daily News outside Shea after night games. I loved when Channel 9 used to show newspaper vendors strolling the concourses of Three Rivers Stadium and Jack Murphy Stadium because it underlined my sense that the local paper was the tenth man of every game.

Notice the use of the phrase “used to” pervading my relationship with the daily paper. I all but gave up on newspapers in 2007. I still help myself to much of their work, but I stopped paying for it six days a week. I felt too guilty to let go for the longest time; being a writer and all, I felt I should support the craft even once I had a high-speed Internet connection to give me all the information I used to have to make a trip into the outside world to get. The breaking point wasn’t convenience or thriftiness. I got sick of supporting the local media’s love affair with the New York team that wasn’t mine, reasoning that the space they were giving the Yankees came at the expense of ink to the Mets. Screw that, I finally decided.

And screw it I did. I went from a seven-day-a-week newspaper consumer to one. I stuck with Sunday. There’s way too much tradition to give that up, way too much custom and habit. There’s too tactile a feel to the papers on Sunday, dating back to when I was a kid familiarizing myself with the printed word, for me to just read it on my Mac.

It wasn’t just the reading, though. It was the act as it unfolded for me for as long as I could remember. It was my father bringing them home, sometimes on Saturday night, which seemed almost mystical. It was schlepping from candy store to luncheonette to wherever papers were sold because sometimes we/I wouldn’t get out early enough or they didn’t deliver enough to our area. It was that Sunday morning in college when my Tampa Tribune was delivered to my dorm room without the sports and I called to complain and they sent somebody right over — a guy just off the line…literally an ink-stained wretch. He had this big smile when he handed the rest of my Trib to me, happy that some college kid cared enough about the newspaper to want every bit of it. And I had this big smile when I accepted and realized how much a part of the paper he felt even though he didn’t write or edit it.

For as long as I’ve known the Mets, I’ve known Sunday papers, and I’ve built my Sundays around that one particular section called Sports before reading any of the rest. Sometimes I’d slurp it all down. Sometimes I’d sip a story here or a column there, leaving myself some sports to savor later in the day. I used to have nightmares about looking for the Sunday papers and not finding them, or finding the wrong edition or an issue from a week earlier. That’s how ingrained into my life they are.

It’s a hokey cliché but Sunday wouldn’t be Sunday without the Sunday News (nauseating Jeter soul-kissing and all), Sunday Newsday (Wally Matthews’ continued employment and all) and the Sunday Times. Of course the Sunday Times. Local news notwithstanding, I could live without Sunday Newsday. I lived without the Sunday News when it was struck in 1978 and again in 1990-91, and though I still hold great sentiment for it, I resent its Yankee ragness no end. But the Sunday Times is the Sunday Times. Its price goes up, it gets a little thinner, but it’s still the Sunday Times. The New York Times and I live together in the greater New York area. I would be abandoning my responsibility as a New Yorker if I ever stopped reading it.

Yet the New York Times is abandoning its responsibility. On a Sunday. To the Mets. And to me.

Today’s paper had one story about the Mets-Cubs game from Saturday. That’s OK. I understand the Mets aren’t a big deal at this stage of their lost season. With the tennis and the college football and other teams in pennant races, I understand if their game rates just one story.

But I don’t understand how they rate one wire story.

Nevertheless, that’s all the Mets’ activities Saturday got in the sports section of Sunday’s Times. (There was a cheeky column comparing the woes of the Mets and Knicks, but it was from reporting Friday and had very little to do with informing you about anything you don’t know about your ballclub.) Mind you, the Mets played a home game Saturday. They played a day game. I get that papers sometimes save money by not sending reporters on the road in hopeless Septembers. And I get deadlines from night games not always meshing with the paper I see. And I’ll even throw in the realization that the “New York” in New York Times is a bit more of a brand name than a hometown, that this newspaper has a mission that extends way beyond the five boroughs and environs.

But come on. This is a disgrace. Saturday’s game was in Queens, right next door to the Times-staffed U.S. Open. It sold upwards of 38,000 tickets. Even with the Mets down and out in the National League (and the Cubs about the same), it is a subject of continued interest to who knows how many hundreds of thousands of regular Times readers. It is a staple we look forward to regardless of wins and losses. There is still a little part of me that doesn’t think a Mets game has taken place until I see what is written about it in the papers I buy.

Ben Shpigel is a terrific reporter and writer. I love to read his work in the Times. If he was granted a few well-earned days off, I’d be content to read what his substitute is writing for a weekend. I’d be interested in reading what a new voice has to say. I’d at least skim a lousy story by some hack. The point is I buy a paper that is the New York whatever it is and I expect my New York team, playing at home the previous afternoon, to be covered by somebody on that New York paper. And it was not. It was not in the print edition and it wasn’t online. There was just an AP story. AP stories are fine if you’re out of town.

I’m right here and so are the Mets. Where’s the story?

I was out at Citi Field today, Sunday. The Mets played a marvelous ballgame, at least a scaled down version of one given the expectations we now have for them. Mike Pelfrey found redemption. Daniel Murphy found his power stroke. Frankie Rodriguez found the ability to not disappoint a crowd of nearly 40,000, many of whom came expressly to take home his bobblehead. Whatever special insight is to be gained from their successes and our presence does not look like it will appear in Monday’s Times. There is an AP story on its Web site right now, more than four hours since the Mets won, and nothing else.

As happens regularly, I was reading one of those sad plight of the newspaper industry stories the other day. This one concerned the Times and its sports section. John Koblin reported in the New York Observer on the near demise of its general column Sports of the Times, long a centerpiece of the sports section. The overriding reason for its fade from view, according to the article, was the business has changed. That’s usually the reason newspapers don’t do what they used to do. One of the ways the Times would make up for the loss of that column, according to NYT sports editor Tom Jolly, would be by asking its beat writers to write more opinion pieces.

Whether that’s a great idea or not can only be divined from the pieces that are written and what it correspondingly does to the regular game coverage that has always been those reporters’ first order of business (former Timesman Murray Chass isn’t for it). But how will the Times offer any kind of perspective on the Mets — first-person, third-person, objective, subjective — if they can’t be bothered to send a reporter to Citi Field for two consecutive days?

As a writer, I want newspapers to succeed and endure. As a reader, I want newspapers to succeed and endure. As somebody who counts some good friends as members of that industry, I want newspapers to succeed and endure. But as a Mets fan who has always relied on the Times to tell me about the Mets, if they’re not going to tell me a blessed thing, why should I give a damn what happens to them?

UPDATE: Times posted Shpigel’s story on Sunday’s game on its site later Sunday evening.

Covering the Mets across four decades, Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

Our two-game winning streak didn't become three, but we can take solace in the message inscribed on a sign I saw held aloft beneath the Pepsi Porch Friday night:

AT LEAST WE STILL DON'T HAVE HEILMAN

That's Aaron Heilman, the Mets starter turned reliever whose very sight at Shea Stadium, rightly or wrongly, was an automatic Maalox Moment. That's Aaron Heilman from when the Mets' bullpen was Agita Central. That's Aaron Heilman from…you know, Aaron Heilman.

In the seventh Saturday, with Chicago up 4-2, Aaron entered the game and gave up a single to Fernando Tatis, a wild pitch and a single to Angel Pagan before striking out Luis Castillo and surrendering a sac fly to David Wright to make it 4-3. Then he was removed in favor of John Grabow.

Our former reluctant setup man didn't blow the Cubs' lead and we didn't win the game, but nevertheless, I agree with the sign. At least we still don't have Heilman.

I'm sitting with the Chapmans of recent Bar Mitzvah fame in the very first row of the Big Apple section in center field. It's a few minutes to first pitch. The Mets have taken the field and are tossing balls around to prepare them for the game. They do this all the time but when you're not sitting on top of the outfield as I was with Sharon, Kevin and Ross you don't really notice this ritual. We're not particularly close to Angel Pagan at that moment, but we're closer than we're ever going to be. So Kevin does the logical thing. He stands up, he waves his gloved hand and shouts something to the effect of, “HEY ANGEL! HOW ABOUT A BALL? RIGHT HERE!”

In the time it takes me to think “that's cute, but Angel Pagan is never going to thr…” Angel Pagan throws Kevin a ball. I mean a strike. That's a major league arm, no matter the throws he sometimes balloons into the infield. When Angel Pagan wants to let one loose, I can attest now that he can.

I can also add that Kevin Chapman has soft hands because he caught a major league throw without flinching.

The best part — as if a Met throwing a Mets fan a ball upon request is not a very good part — is upon inspection, it was revealed the ball was a Shea Stadium commemorative ball, one emblazoned with that precious 1964-2008 logo you saw everywhere last year. I guess they have a few gross somewhere in the back and they come in handy for loosening arms and sating fans.

After that, the game started, and Parnell pitched quite well, but the Mets didn't hit enough, and Pagan didn't catch as well as he threw, but then Tatis outhit the mistakes of his team's defense, and the Mets helped nail the Cubbie coffin closed for another year even if we had to do it from inside our own crypt.

Yet that's just the game. The action before the game…Angel firing a ball to Kevin just because Kevin asked — and the ball being from Shea…I know it won't show up in the boxscore.

But it really should.

Mets Weekly begins a three-part countdown of the Top 10 individual statistical seasons in teams history in the episode that debuts today at 10:30 AM on SNY and will be repeated at odd intervals. Look for me affirming the greatness of the players and seasons involved.

They wear uniform tops with NEW YORK on the front and their unfamiliar last names on the back. They dress in a major league clubhouse. They test their skills against professionals. They generally don't look like they belong on the same field as the pros, yet there they are throwing and catching and running and hitting as if they do. Their families sometimes tag along and cheer relentlessly for them from mostly empty stands. And when their moment in the sun has passed, at least a couple will tell you they had the time of their lives.

It's all part of the fun now that the Mets are holding Fantasy Camp in September.

MISCH 48, VALDEZ 4, THOLE 30…you might not mistake them for actual players, but honestly, if you squinted a little, they didn't look so bad out there Thursday afternoon.

MISCH 48 took time out from what one assumes is his “real life” job to try his stuff as a starting pitcher. He impressed the coaches not only with his stamina but the way he supported his teammates by not going back into the clubhouse when he was done throwing to live batters.

VALDEZ 4, who came to one of these camps earlier in the year, is really getting the hang of baseball. Bunted his way on, scored a run, and didja see that throw he made to the plate the night before?

And THOLE 30 — great hustle, great attitude, great big smile. Two hits, including a long double! Nobody would have known who he was without the uni, but why should he be any different from his teammates?

Some woman who they said was the mother of THOLE 30 screamed her head off in support of her son. MISCH 48 posed for pictures afterwards. VALDEZ 4 and SULLIVAN 19 and HERNANDEZ 11 and even that guy who didn't get to put on a regulation batting helmet until late in camp all appeared thrilled beyond belief. For one stray afternoon in September, I'm sure they were.

The reality of being a Mets fan toes the rubber in Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

Oh, I remember games like these, Septembers like these.

The team has a playoff spot in its sights — and a pack of rivals that want the same prize. Your young hurler takes the hill; you know he’s good and can’t wait for the rest of the world to find that out. Your opponent is already beaten on paper, a collection of raw kids and vets playing out the string, with a journeyman on the mound.

The kid falters a little bit early on, and you worry about some awful blowout, some awful evidence that he isn’t ready. But he settles in and puts your worries to rest. Unfortunately, the journeyman isn’t pitching like one — and so on and on you go. It’s tied and it stays tied and you’re fretting, wondering why these palookas can’t just go down to defeat and not wanting to assume they will, because the baseball gods notice hubris like that and punish it. And as it stays tied the fear creeps in — maybe you’re not that good. Maybe that recent losing streak isn’t just a bump in the road, an enhancement of the ultimately joyous drama, or a test of character. Maybe it’s a true measure of what you are.

But then it comes together late. Their bullpen comes apart. The aging bat you brought up for the stretch drive, the one you thought empty of further hits, rifles one up the middle, just over their shortstop’s leap, and you have a lead. Then you’re running wild — the catcher stole a base, wasn’t that wonderful! — and you head for the ninth with a three-run lead. Nothing is assured, but it is three runs, and you just dropped a dead team walking with a hard shot between the eyes. Sure enough, they go down quietly in the ninth and you’ve won, taking another September step toward October.

Yes, I remember games like these and Septembers like these. Unfortunately, that was written from the point of view of the Colorado Rockies. I’m a New York Mets fan. And this September, the New York Mets suck.

Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

Tell me if this sounds familiar: Runner on first, ball hit through the infield to center…runner out at second.

I'm sure it does. But just how familiar is it? We're so used to seeing the 2009 Mets pull boners out of their oversized hats and then learning that such missteps are either virtually unprecedented or thought extinct since the days of Chris Cannizzaro that it's surprising to find a Met doing something embarrassing that another Met did not that long ago.

When Angel Pagan cleverly ran from first to first by way of second on Luis Castillo's otherwise well-executed hit-and-run non-single Tuesday night, of course disbelief boiled over in the SNY booth, just as it did on my couch. Yet while Keith Hernandez muttered over and over (interrupting his steady stream of Laugh-In references) some variation of “I've never seen that before,” I sank back and shook my head.

I don't know about you, Keith, but I'd seen it before. I saw it so recently to have blogged about it when it happened.

We take you back not to some archived Philadelphia A's vs. St. Louis Browns tilt or even Casey Stengel's Amazin' uptown incubator. We take you back only as far as we need to go for a precursor to Angel's descent into hellish baserunning.

We go back a scant four years.

Yes, the Mets' style this September is clearly as retro as any episode of Mad Men, but that doesn't mean final Met months devoid of competitive aspirations and competent baseball went out with the Charleston let alone Art Howe. We had one of those months in September 2005 — at least for a few depressing weeks.

I'll always hold a special place in my heart for the 2005 season because it was Year One for Faith and Fear. With Willie Randolph in the saddle and Omar Minaya calling precious few press conferences, it felt like high summer from April through August, certainly when compared to its immediate predecessors. We would write, the Mets would improve, life was pretty good.

But then, the Mets ceased their improvement program and reverted to the form that had been their signature in the seasons immediately preceding '05. Just as they tumbled into August abysses and September swoons of 3-17 in 2002, 4-19 in 2003 and 2-19 in 2004, the Mets took a swan dive into the deep end of 2005. At their nadir, they posted a stretch of 15 losses in 18 games, knocking them from legitimate Wild Card contention into the lonesome basement chill of last place.

It was as if 2005 had all been one cruel tease, with all the talk about “The New Mets” turning hollow. We got Pedro Martinez. We got Carlos Beltran. We got progress-packed first full years from David Wright and Jose Reyes. We got, finally, a healthy Cliff Floyd and the results were enormous. We even got a mini-surge from Mike Piazza in advance of his exit from our midst. We got all that and we still got last place.

Life was unfair.

There was a showdown series at Shea with the Phillies in which the Phillies showed up far more emphatically than the Mets. There was a Saturday night in Miami during which Randolph decided Shingo Takatsu, just recalled from wherever Shingo Takatsu had been vacationing, should face as his first batter Miguel Cabrera. The Mets had been leading 4-2. One ringing double later, they were trailing 5-4. There was then the customary three-game sweep at Turner Field to seal the Mets' fate for 2005. That road trip ended in St. Louis with the first-place Cardinals pecking out whatever entrails the Mets' corpse still maintained.

We were dead, yet we weren't done dying — not until the Washington Nationals came to Shea Stadium, and the play that epitomized the decline and fall of the nascent Metropolitan empire transpired. Let's lean on the AP account of the action from September 13, 2005 for the details:

New York cost itself a chance to rally with some bad bunting and inexplicable baserunning in the seventh.

He was easily forced out at second by Wilson, and Carlos Beltran flied out to end the inning.

So yeah, when this happened on September 1, 2009…

Angel Pagan, who led off with a single, was running on the pitch and didn't see Castillo's one-hopper to [Carlos] Gonzalez. He mistakenly thought Gonzalez caught the ball on the fly, and started sprinting back to first.

Gonzalez threw him out, which denied Castillo a single and rendered the play a fielder's choice.

…I knew I had seen it before, in the nightmare death spiral of September 2005.

One of the comments that trickled in here four Septembers ago was this from a reader who noted, “I've been scoring games for Stats, Inc. for a while now, and that was my first ever 8-4 ground ball forceout. We've all seen the 8-4 force on the shallow pop, but never on a solid grounder.” Indeed, it was unusual then. It feels common now that “never” has become twice.

Dig these two lines from the play-by-play data ESPN posts with its game recaps.

9/13/05 K Matsui grounded into fielder's choice to center, J Offerman out at second.

9/1/09 L Castillo grounded into fielder's choice to center, A Pagan out at second.

I mean, geez. An 8-4 ground ball forceout twice in the span of four years. By the same team. In the same month.

I mean, geez.

Listen, we like Angel Pagan a lot. He's no Jose Offerman, a surly baseball zombie collecting checks here for no discernible reason in 2005 en route to achieving his ultimate infamy in the independent leagues two years hence when, as a Long Island Duck, he attacked the opposing pitcher and catcher with his bat. Strangely, his alibi then — “I lost it for about 10 seconds” — blamed his loss of mind on the vagaries of time, same as he did when misreading Matsui's shoulda-been single to center. “You've got a second to think about it. You don't have all day.”

If he had, would have he brained Majewski, too?

Jerry Manuel didn't excuse as much as explain Pagan's Rocky Mountain blunder, and even then he could only expound on what we all saw:

“He lost sight of the ball, didn't pick up the coaches and I guess his brain locked up on him. We've done that a number of times this season, kind of shoot ourselves in the foot on the bases to some degree.”

Yes, we have, haven't we?

David Wright at least brought Castillo home with a most welcome double and Angel later tripled Cory Sullivan home with a run that didn't matter much in the wake of Mike Pelfrey's own myriad problems. All wasn't lost because Pagan didn't know where he was going between first and second — it was going to be lost anyway.

On that night of shame four years ago, a lot seemed lost. The season had already swirled drainward, but now we were certifiably inept. With ineptitude came mass apathy. I went to Shea the next night and there was practically nobody there. I don't mean they announced 52,000 but it was more like 35,000. I mean they announced 24,000 and it probably wasn't 12,000. The Mets had revived their post-2000 malaise persona. I thought it was behind us. I thought we were The New Mets with our established stars and our emerging talent. Instead we were the same old Mets, the kind of team that can run into an out without really trying. The kind of team that relies on Jose Offerman.

The Mets lost the second game of that dismal National series. Then they lost the third game on a humid afternoon with even fewer people at the park to witness it. It was an outstanding Metaphor for what 2005 had been: We fell behind early, rallied ahead (on a Floyd grand slam), gave back the lead in the ninth as errors by Gerald Williams and Kaz Matsui undermined Braden Looper before Willie Randolph inexplicably let Roberto Hernandez pitch to Vinny Castilla with a runner on third and two out in the tenth, perhaps unaware that .000-hitting Keith Osik was due up next and Frank Robinson had no better option on his bench. The Mets lost 6-5. The Mets had lost 15 of 18. The Mets had sunk four games below .500 after rising eight games above it in August.

I didn't know it, but the 2005 Mets reached bottom that afternoon. They wouldn't get any worse — a lively 12-4 spurt lifted them from the basement and to their first winning record since 2001 — and Shea Stadium was never again the ghost town it so regularly morphed into during those dreadful Septembers of this decade's first half. It was the one time I can recall when they turned themselves around in some meaningful fashion toward a season's end and maybe generated some momentum for better times to come. The Mets raced out to a 10-2 start by mid-April 2006, and looked back neither at the rest of their division nor where they had wallowed in mid-September 2005. The old Mets were dead. The New Mets were en route to becoming champion Mets. The Shea of '06, '07 and '08, no matter the indelible heartbreak it held in store, never again featured anything quite like Jose Offerman running from first to first by way of second, certainly not in the same kind of dreary atmosphere that was pervading the ballpark and the ballclub during that one final bow to utter Met hopelessness.

Shea would fill up and stay filled in its final years. The Mets would move up and stay close to the top if not always at it during those three high-stakes seasons. What we experienced directly beforehand was a dark interlude just ahead of the bright sunburst that we convinced ourselves was going to become an epoch of brilliant success. We fell a little short there somewhere between the dust of 2005 and the dank of 2009, but we did rise there for a while, too. We really did.

Now, however, we endure Offerman moments so often that they have become our literal running gags. We fall down in left, we don't touch third, we line into three outs to end games and, once again, we can't make it from first to second on singles to center.

I've seen it before. Lord, how I don't care to see it again.

Derive the beauty, pain and joy that is our favorite team by reading Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

We drove down to Long Beach Island on Saturday, with the Mets/Cubs game getting lost between happy escaped-to-vacation road-trip music and offloading a rented SUV’s worth of stuff into the beach apartment. The first eight innings of Sunday’s game were spent on the beach; digital enthusiast that I am, I forgot to bring an old-fashioned analog radio only to realize too late that I didn’t want the iPhone exposed to sand and sun and salt. Monday? Monday was an off-day.

By this morning I was fidgety; and I knew what was wrong. I missed my Mets.

As it turned out — as it has so often turned out in 2009 — watching my Mets play a couple of innings of baseball was an instant cure for having missed them.

Mike Pelfrey was awful, as he has been for large stretches of 2009. It’s seductive to assume that 2010 will be entirely different, that 2009 used up a decade’s worth of buzzard’s luck when it comes to the Mets and injuries. Seductive and far too easy: Before you start daydreaming about 2010, remember that Mike Pelfrey is your presumptive No. 2 starter. Mike Pelfrey, whose career now looks like a logical progression from 2006 through 2009, with the second half of 2008 a statistical outlier that should be discarded.

Yes, Pelfrey was awful and Sean Green was awful too — as noted on SNY, the Mets have somehow managed to allow 19 runs scored on walks or hit batsmen, which is simply unfathomable even in this simply unfathomable season.

But no matter — a lot of other Mets were pretty bad too. The moment that got me hollering was the play in the second: Anderson Hernandez fell down in vague proximity to Todd Helton’s grounder up the middle, Angel Pagan (whose baserunning had turned a successful hit-and-run into a fielder’s choice in the top of the first) threw a one-hopper over David Wright’s glove at third, Pelfrey wasn’t backing up the play, and the ball went in the dugout.

Emily, sensibly enough, wanted to know why, after a ruined season, this was the play that had me hurling obscenities into the Jersey night. I muttered something vague, but I know what it was. It was that once again I was witnessing the kind of ass-headed baseball that you shouldn't expect to see when you sit down to watch major-league baseball — no matter if you’re watching a first-year expansion team or a wrecked team fielding Plan C guys at too many positions. It’s the kind of baseball the Mets have played all year long, and injuries are no alibi for it.

Beyond that? I was happy to see David Wright back, even looking like a Little Leaguer underneath his Great Gazoo helmet. (That thing is not going to be widely adopted. It’s simply ridiculous looking.) I was happy to get a glimpse of Nick Evans, of whom I hope to see a lot more in September. Lance Broadway looked serviceable. Josh Thole looked awfully young, out there in the Rockies’ surreal Bambi outtake of a bullpen, but any Mets prospect looks good right now compared to the broken-down mess we’ve become all too used to.

I was happy to get to watch baseball, until the baseball became unwatchable. And until I was left with this thought: In the home stretch of better years, you care intensely about the outcome of your own team’s games and about the outcome of games involving the team or teams you’re trying to catch. And you wind up playing amateur scout about those teams’ opponents: Which out-of-it squad will nonetheless fight like rabid badgers, giving your opponent fits? And which out-of-it squad will roll over and expose a soft white underbelly by about the third inning, offering your cause no support whatsoever?

The Mets are the latter — they don’t back up plays, they can’t run the bases, they walk in runs about as often as they're given opportunities to do so. Fans of the San Francisco Giants, looking at the scoreboard during their own tilt with the Phillies, saw the Rockies were playing the Mets and thought, Oh shit, the Mets. We’ll get no help there. And they were absolutely right. In this spoiled season, even playing spoiler looks beyond our capabilities.

Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.