Call it what you will, the facility in which the Florida Marlins play home games maintains one undeniable Yogiesque tradition.

Nobody goes there — it's not crowded.

The fun of a Marlins home game is guessing the attendance, which one could probably do with aid of an abacus. The figure in the boxscore says Thursday's was 12,423. The AP account says fewer than 5,000 showed. Wayne Hagin said it was really about 1,500. When he presented the Defensive Play of the Game in the postgame show, I could make out the scattered applause of about three people. And the play was made by a Marlin.

We will have Land Shark Stadium in all its guises to kick around only through 2011 as that sign on its outfield wall indicates. The Marlins finally got somebody to ante up and build a new ballpark for them: somewhere that isn't in the middle of nowhere, something with the retractable roof that's going to make midweek afternoons in August less unbearable, pending the combatants. The clinically dead 2009 Mets versus the modestly plausible 2009 Marlins might not draw a minyan to an air conditioned Taj Mahal. But let's not blame our potentially forever doomed Mets for the attendance shortfall off the Florida Turnpike's beautiful Exit 2X. We always seem to turn out a fistful of dislocated New Yorkers to pump up the Marlins' numbers. Indeed, cries of “Let's Go Mets!” filled pockets of oppressive air hanging over what used to be known — no kidding — as Joe Robbie Stadium, Pro Player Park, Pro Player Stadium, Dolphins Stadium and Dolphin Stadium. If it weren't for Mets fans in South Florida, it regularly appears there'd be no fans in South Florida.

Nobody going to Marlins games is a cherished local custom. Once a year this time of year, you can look forward to the annual picture of Whatever It's Called with nobody inside except for way down there on the field. A Major League Baseball game is in progress despite attracting the most minimal interest possible short of none. It's treated as news when clearly it's business as usual.

Tim Redding, supported lavishly by some suddenly hot and humid lumber, didn't mind the loneliness. He understood there were going to be more people on his club's Disabled List than there'd be in their opponent's grandstand. “This stadium has been empty for years,” he said after defeating the Fish. “It's just sad. But it's 90 to 100 degrees here every day from the middle of May to the beginning of October. I wouldn't want to be out there sitting in the stands roasting, either.”

That is what is known in other endeavors as running down the product. “Hey kids! Don't come out and see me or my friends next time we're in town!” But can you blame Tim for being honest? Fran Healy wouldn't be able to hype a 90-degree August afternoon affair between two nowheresville teams at something whose very name begs you to disregard it. Fran used to promise that Shea would be rocking. What would he blather if hired by the Marlins — that Land Shark will be sweating?

There's no telling if South Florida can ultimately support a baseball club when it has a more readily accessible, retractable-roofed park to call its own. I used to think so. I also used to care. I'd like to see the National Pastime succeed wherever it goes. Plus my parents long ago had a condo not all that far away from the eventual site of Joe Robbie And Such, so while I never developed any real attachment let alone affection for Miami-Fort Lauderdale, I did sort of know the area and thus felt the most microscopic fleck of proprietary interest in it having baseball.

But recently I rewatched the final game ever played at Shea Stadium, which you probably recall was a Marlin victory over the Mets at literally the worst possible time. It was the Marlins' job to play hard and try to win, just as it was a year earlier when they did the same thing. That's fine in and of itself. But the excitement they showed in having done nothing more than eliminating somebody else from postseason contention? Since I was at that game and my mind was in a dozen different places at once, I didn't quite focus on their uproarious celebration. Except for not donning NATIONAL LEAGUE SPOILER t-shirts and not dousing each other with non-alcoholic beer, you wouldn't have known the Marlins weren't going any deeper into autumn than the Mets were. As our friend and blolleague Dana Brand puts it in his splendid new book, I hope they “languish unloved and unnoticed for a very long time to come”.

Let indifference be the eternal mark of the Florida Marlins. Let their infrequent paying customer come to be known as someone “disguised as a non-empty seat”. Let the ghosts of the Montreal Expos — who Jeffrey Loria raped and pillaged en route to Miami — haunt the roof of the new ballpark so it leaks and creaks and remains wide open for every 6 o'clock thundershower. Let them find a more embarrassing corporate name than Land Shark Stadium. And let their whole outfit be devoured by real sharks.

Yeah, we suck this year and we may suck a while more. Or we may not. Nothing looks good when you're unexpectedly calculating a tragic number in late August (20 for the division, 21 for the Wild Card). Our ownership was fleeced, our GM's apparently overmatched, our erstwhile stalwarts disappear into infirmaries never to return, their replacements might not push the Atlantic Theater Company if they entered the Broadway Softball League and the next 34 games loom as the baseball equivalent of Mao's Long March…except it'll probably be less fun and more treacherous. The Mets are 30-49 since June 1, which was when Beltran first started to ache in earnest. That's nearly half a season of getting our brains beat in and having nothing to shield our noggins except ever thicker copies of the DL. We're playing at 1979/1993 levels. Of course it appears all is lost and all is doomed forever.

But today we stuck it to the Marlins in front of essentially everybody who cares about them. So for one night in 2009, I feel good to be a Mets fan.

If you somehow missed AMAZIN' TUESDAY, the report from the press pool is here, with another perspective here. If you haven't secured your copy of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, you may do so here or here, after which we invite you to discuss it and keep up to date on future events here.

(For posterity: Mike Pelfrey was bad. Cory Sullivan was briefly good. Mets lost in Florida. None of this matters.)

The Mets, I fear, are about to tumble into an abyss. I fear they are nearing a horrifying period, duration unknowable but probably not brief, that will damage the franchise and fray its ties with its fanbase. I'm not talking about 2009, that plague year of injuries that keep mounting when you don't they can any more. I'm not talking about Citi Field, a nice place to see a ballpark whose flaws are fixable and, indeed, gradually being fixed. I'm talking about things that are harder to fix, and will take longer to recover from.

Yesterday afternoon, amid news of MRIs and trades and press conferences and conference calls, I felt a twinge of unease that had nothing to with Johan Santana's elbow and what value the Mets would get back for Billy Wagner. I couldn't quite figure out what it was until later — and when I did figure it out, I wondered if I'd known what it was all along, and just hadn't want to admit it.

Simply put, I didn't believe a single thing anyone connected with the New York Mets said on Tuesday afternoon.

Actually, that isn't true. I do, for instance, believe that Omar Minaya was telling the truth when he appeared foggy on the details of the condition of Santana's elbow back in spring training. “Spring training was such a long time ago,” he said. And I believe him when he said that he couldn't remember what an evaluation of Santana's elbow at the All-Star break had shown. (See Joel Sherman, if you dare.)

Which makes it unbelievable that the Wilpons could even think of letting Omar keep his job.

Let's review. This is not an ingrown hair Pat Misch might have complained about to a trainer. This is Johan Santana's elbow. And Johan Santana's elbow is the hinge around which much of this team's fortunes turn, and in which the Wilpons have invested more than $100 million. How is it that Omar Minaya is not intimately familiar with every medical report concerning that elbow, with every pang reported or suspected, with every nuance of its care and protection? Spring training is not such a long time ago where Johan Santana's elbow is concerned — it was the starting point of 166.2 innings of wear and tear, every 0.1 of which needed to be justified when talking about that amount of money. And Omar's own words make it glaringly obvious that when it came to the Wilpons' prize investment, he's been asleep at the switch.

“Paperwork, that's false hustle.” Uh-huh. More and more, that foolish quote given to Sports Illustrated in better times looks like it should be Minaya's professional epitaph. Because it seems like every time he addresses the media, he reveals that he hasn't done his homework.

As for Johan's own conference call, in which he said he was fine with how things had been handled? I don't believe him either. I believe he's a good employee who wouldn't hang his bosses out to dry for a bunch of reporters, and I believe he'd pitch until that arm was ready to fall off rather than give in to pain or defeat. But the former has little bearing on the truth of what happened, and the latter is just another indication that the Mets' baseball people have been cavalier at best and negligent at worst.

Next came the trade of Billy Wagner to the Red Sox for two prospects (Chris Carter and someone yet unleaked) we've been telegraphed not to expect too much from. Here the Mets said the right things — Billy's a good soldier who deserves a postseason shot, we got prospects back, etc. — but I didn't believe any of that either. The Mets dumped Wagner's salary, plain and simple. They could have held on to him, offered him arbitration and taken a shot at high draft picks, but they didn't do that. What does it say about the state of the Mets that they felt they needed to recoup the relatively paltry (by baseball standards) sum of $3.5 million?

And this is where it starts to get really troubling: I don't believe the Mets are going to put that $3.5 million towards making the baseball team better.

I've read analyses of the Wagner deal arguing that two middling prospects are a better bet than two draft picks when you take into account the uncertainty of signing and developing draft picks, and maybe that's true. But I also read a lot of approving reactions to the Wagner trade based on the assumption that prospects are better because the Mets draft incompetently and/or won't sign their draft picks anyway. And even if nothing else I imagine to be true is true, that's incontrovertible evidence of a serious fan-relations problem.

But let's talk about draft picks. As noted in the New York Times, the Mets signed only seven of their picks from the draft's first 10 rounds and spent $1.86 million on those signings. That's less than the Tampa Bay Rays spent. Less than the Florida Marlins spent. Less than the Oakland A's spent. Less than the Kansas City Royals spent. Less than the Pittsburgh Pirates spent. In fact, it's less than every other team in baseball spent. Asked about this by the Times, the Mets' director of amateur scouting pointed out that the Mets went nearly $400,000 over slot to sign top pick Steven Matz, as if we should be proud of them for ignoring toothless bullshit decrees from Bud Selig they never should have paid attention to in the first place.

And going back to Omar, you probably remember reports doubting that he'll be fired — not so much because he doesn't deserve it, but because he'd pocket $2 million and the new guy would want his own staff, leading to more payouts to freshly terminated employees. Again, the kind of money that would instantly bankrupt me or Greg and most of you, but not a huge amount of money for a giant-market club with a new, high-priced stadium.

And all of this seems to point to what we'd prefer not to discuss.

The Mets have been tight-lipped about exactly how much money Bernie Madoff stole form the Wilpons — I've seen estimates ranging from $700 million to less than you'd think. Whatever the figure is, I sympathize immensely with the Wilpons. To be robbed by someone you trusted must be beyond awful, and to have the extent of your violation be the subject of endless questioning and voyeuristic interest must be infuriating. The Wilpons should have been able to enjoy the first year in the new ballpark they built to evoke things they hold dear, and they've had little chance to do that. None of what they've gone through should be anybody's business.

Except, unfortunately, it is. What the Wilpons can and will pay, and what that will mean for the team that takes the field in 2010 and subsequent years, affects everything. It affects free agents big and small, not just in who gets offers in the first place, but in how agents assess the overall competitiveness of the team and the likelihood that team will add pieces to try and get their clients a ring. It affects sponsors wondering if their companies will be showcased with a winner or a laughingstock. It affects draft picks, scouting and minor-league operations. And, of course, it affects fans wondering if it's worth it to shell out for season tickets or partial plans.

If the Wilpons have absorbed horrific losses that are indeed affecting the team, sooner or later that will be impossible to hide. If they haven't, their silence and their team's recent actions have created the perception that they have. Either way, the team we love is mired in a toxic situation. Loyal, rational fans openly scoff at what the Mets say about injuries, personnel moves or draft picks. They don't believe the GM has a plan, and they're starting to believe the owners won't spend money to put things right.

I desperately hope I'm wrong about this. I hope the Wilpons are OK financially, for their own sakes and not just for how it might affect my evening plans. I hope that their team is really unaffected by their losses. I hope that they are looking hard at what is wrong with their considerable investment. And I hope next year all this looks like paranoia and distraction bred by a year of buzzard's luck, and we spend a summer to remember in Citi Field, enjoying the terrors and joys of watching a healthy team chasing a division title.

But I fear the goblins are all too real. I know the Mets are badly run, I fear they're financially damaged, and I worry that the latter will make it impossible to fix the former. And if that's true, 2009 is just a preview of what awaits us, for who knows how many years to come.

Ollie Perez is out for the season in deference to right knee surgery. One would like to believe it was patellar tendinosis that caused Ollie to be so godawful almost every start this year, and that when they address his tendon issues, he'll be on the road to reverting to the Ollie who was unhittable often in 2007 and occasionally in 2008. They may want to install a strike zone detector somewhere deep within his being while they're poking around.

The Mets' next five starts are scheduled to be taken by Kevin Kobel, Ray Burris, Juan Berenguer, Dock Ellis and Tom Hausman…sorry, those are the five pitchers who started five consecutive games for the Mets in September 1979, and to be fair, there was a doubleheader mixed in there. Otherwise we might have seen Craig Swan or Pete Falcone.

Either of whom would be at least a No. 2 in the current rotation.

The Mets' next five starts in real life are scheduled to be taken by Mike Pelfrey, Tim Redding, Pat Misch, Bobby Parnell and Nelson Figueroa, though Jerry Manuel told Joe Benigno and Evan Roberts that if he has to use Misch in relief to win a game tonight or tomorrow (because using Pat Misch is such an ironclad guarantee of success), he'll go with Lance Broadway on Friday.

Stephanie asked me if Lance Broadway was actually somebody's porn name.

“He could have fun in a stalled elevator.”
—Bob Murphy, on Tug McGraw

Inside the attic of Two Boots Tavern, I’m convinced there is a painting of the National League standings that grows grayer by the month. There’s probably also an X-ray of Dorian Gray’s right elbow up there, and every time I walk in the restaurant to read aloud, its ulnar collateral ligament tears a little more.

Gotta be, right? I can track the progress of this blighted Mets season by the prevailing background vibe at each of our generally genial Two Boots events.

• In June, for METSTOCK, we looked up at the Mets game frequently and enthusiastically, convinced the Mets we’d known since 2006 or thereabouts were going to put away those not particularly pesky Baltimore Orioles, because that’s what the Mets are supposed to do. Alas, Frankie Rodriguez legitimately blows a save for the first time and our team falls three behind the Phillies. Not good, not good at all, but not cause for giving up.

• In July, on the first AMAZIN’ TUESDAY, as new rightfielder Jeff Francoeur ducks a ball he couldn’t make out in the Washington lights, the Mets prove unquestionably down in the dumps, frustrating the hell out of everybody who takes intermittent peeks at the Two Boots TVs. We lose 4-0 to the lowly Nationals and fall an improbable — but not impossible — seven out of the N.L. Wild Card lead. Still, we care that we lost because there’s still something to care about up on those screens.

• It’s August now, and we just had our second AMAZIN’ TUESDAY, an extraordinarily enjoyable evening among friends and extended Summer Family. The game was on per usual, and glances were taken, but this time the Mets didn’t devastate us in the ninth or disappoint us much before then. They barely distracted us. That’s what happens when yet another wave of your personnel has been disabled, shut down, traded or whatever. The biggest cheer (and, really, it was more of a non-groan) erupted when it was noticed Francoeur was playing through thumb pain. The biggest buzz, such as it was, came not from Nelson Figueroa’s reasonably robust emergency start (every Mets start is essentially an emergency start) but from the sight of Gary Sheffield leaving with whatever was ailing him…though I’d have to say the most excitement emanated after the game, when we learned J.J. Putz was announced as out for the season.

Somebody must have had Putz in an injury pool.

The Mets lost to the Marlins, dropping their record to a season-worst twelve games under .500 and pushing them more games back of whatever it is we’re no longer contending for than I care to check. Everybody in our reading room was a Mets fan, but nobody seemed hot or bothered over the defeat. That’s what happens when losses accumulate swiftly and numbingly.

Yet our band of brothers and sisters, united for this evening entirely by our Mets fandom, enjoyed a pretty Amazin’ Tuesday, what with the beer and the pizza and the in-depth Mets discussion. The way we Mets fans can have fun in this stalled elevator of a season indicates we may very well be as hopeless as our team.

But in a good way.

Thanks to all who came out for our second AMAZIN’ TUESDAY, along with the sensational staff at Two Boots Tavern. If the Mets continue to exist in some discernible physical form, we’re going to do it one more time, on September 15. We’ll be announcing another great lineup of readers and talkers shortly.

Just to catch you up on New York Mets pitcher depletion matters:

• Johan Santana, out for the season as you might have suspected once he was scratched from tonight's start. He's going in for “minor” arthroscopic elbow surgery to remove bone chips. I know…shudder, but they fixed his knee OK, proving perhaps that every Met who goes out with an injury maybe someday comes back. Nick Evans takes his place on the roster, thereby quelling all those urgent “Where's Nick Evans?” inquiries that show just how far we have fallen as a people.

• Billy Wagner, traded to Boston for two demi-prospects to be named. He waived his right to refuse shipment, saving the Mets some money in the short term and perhaps helping the Red Sox in the fight for the Greater Good this fall. Mostly Billy Wagner will help Billy Wagner look for another contract/closer role next year. I tend to agree with a friend who calls Wagner “Armando Benitez with more self-esteem,” but good luck to him anyway given his hard work getting back to the majors and 101 saves in a Mets uniform (fourth-most behind Franco, Benitez and Orosco). The occasional self-serving outbursts and ninth-inning blowups don't completely negate the stability he gave the post-Looper bullpen — and he's the reason there's even one Metallica song on my iPod. In any event, this grants the previously demoted Pat Misch a return trip from Buffalo. Other than Angel Pagan's two varieties of homer, Pat Misch's four scoreless innings were the best thing about Sunday's überdebacle. That also shows just how far we have fallen as a people.

• J.J. Putz, not pitching for the Cyclones tonight as scheduled, his return to the Mets pushed back just a little further. Somehow I doubt the Putzheads in Brooklyn were really expecting (or lining up) to see him. On the positive side, Cyclones Poker Chips Night is still on for Saturday, September 5. Better poker chips than elbow chips.

(Oh, and Ollie's knee is going to be examined. Wish they'd look at Omar's head while they're at it.)

UPDATE: THIRD AMAZIN' TUESDAY IS SEPTEMBER 15, 7:00 PM, WITH GREG PRINCE, JON SPRINGER, JEFF PEARLMAN AND JOHN COPPINGER, TWO BOOTS TAVERN. CURRENT INFO HERE.

Just a reminder that your friends from Faith and Fear are co-hosting AMAZIN' TUESDAY tonight at 7:00 at Two Boots Tavern on the Lower East Side, 384 Grand St., between Norfolk and Suffolk, accessible via the F to Delancey and other popular subway lines. If you haven't been to one of our nights of reading, rooting and Randy Milligan, an impartial observer filed reviews from Metstock in June and the first AMAZIN' TUESDAY in July. When you see what you missed, surely you'll want a piece of the action this time around.

Our guests are two of the most insightful observers of the Metsopotamian condition we know. Dana Brand, author of 2007's wonderful Mets Fan, will be sharing with us The Last Days of Shea, so brand spanking new the ink is still wet. Dana also blogs regularly, thoughtfully and passionately here, and you are urged to read him regularly. Caryn Rose, known in these parts as Metsgrrl, is one of the go-to sources for life at Citi Field and its psychic environs. We're so happy to have them both.

Phil Hartman, the most Met-minded restaurateur New York has seen since Rusty Staub called it a day, will be serving up The Stork, a pizza made with Creole chicken, wild mushrooms, cheddar and mozzarella in honor of George Theodore and the (Tim) Teufel Shuffle martini, which, naturally, is shuffled not stirred. Phil's AMAZIN' TUESDAY offer of a free beer in exchange for a Met baseball card still stands. It's a great way to rid your collection of those unwanted Ollie Perezes.

Speaking of baseball cards, you're in for a treat when Jason gives you a look inside his glorious obsession that is The Holy Books. You haven't lived until you've heard what it's like to live without Al Schmelz.

As for living without Johan Santana, we'll be doing that, too, for it is what we do when such a burden is thrust upon us. The Mets-Marlins game will be on and you're welcome to look up at a TV while we talk, read and kibitz, but feel free to look at us, your pizza or your drink instead as the action at Soilmaster Stadium dictates.

We're not judgmental. We're Mets fans.

To reach Two Boots Tavern, you can take the F to Delancey and walk two short blocks south and two blocks east to Grand between Norfolk and Suffolk. There is also the J, M or Z to Essex or the B or D to Grand. Phone: 212/228-8685.

The Mets lost again, which of course you probably expected.

Jeff Francoeur hurt his thumb making that great catch Sunday, which can't possibly surprise you.

And now Johan Santana will miss his Tuesday start with elbow discomfort. Johan Santana's elbow was about the only thing that wasn't giving us discomfort in 2009.

Scratch that small favor.