That doctor from SNY's constantly airing New York State Smokers Quitline commercial — the one who comes into the examining room and tells that poor, haunted guy all the diseases he risks contracting from indulging his filthy habit (kind of like a one-man death panel) — might make a good medical liaison for the Mets. Imagine him opening the door, making his diagnosis and then reappearing to make another and another and another…

“You have tears in your left medial collateral ligament and flexor pronator.”

“You have a torn right upper hamstring tendon.”

Of course that's not one guy he's scaring spitless. Those are the injuries that sent ten men, all of them Mets, to occupy what is presumably baseball's busiest Disabled List. If there's a busier DL, I doubt it's on a ballclub. It's probably in a war zone.

While the Mets' DL has meant a break (figuratively speaking) for the likes of Cory Sullivan, who wouldn't otherwise be a Met right now and wouldn't have tripled twice in Phoenix Wednesday afternoon to key a rare Met victory, it has, of course, crippled the Mets' chances of contending in 2009 and strained their ability to compete — that and their composite lack of professionalism and unfamiliarity with the fundamentals of baseball. But the injuries have been the most glaring problem and will likely be both the legitimate excuse and sorry alibi the Mets lean on when this abortion of a debacle of a disaster of a season is over.

As fans, we ache for our players' pains. If one is sustained on the field, like if he falls and he can't get up, we hold our breath until the guy's on his feet or a cart and then we rise and applaud. We collectively wish him well (we may have even admired that he was playing with pain up until the moment he could play no more) and then get on with the business of rooting for his generally lesser replacement. As the 15-day mark approaches, we begin to ask when our guy will be coming back because we could really use him.

And that's when the trouble seems to start. Almost nobody is placed on the 60-day DL at first. It's almost always 15 days, just a couple of weeks. We are conditioned to believe that number. Then we are conditioned to believe the most hopeful number we hear when 15 days come and go. He was supposed to be out six to eight weeks, but if all goes well could resume baseball activities as soon as three weeks? And then he could go to extended spring training? And play a rehab game? Great!

Our expectations rise. Somebody reports something about somebody picking up a ball, swinging a bat, running a lap, hitting the stationary bike. Boy, if he's doing as well as they say, he could be back sooner than expected. Throw him into the mix and we improve a lot. Yeah, I'm sure glad he's coming back. It doesn't seem to help anybody's cause to tamp down our expectations. The Mets, like just about all commercial enterprises, are in the optimism business. Sure, he'll be back! He's bending without discomfort! He's tying his shoes again! He's eating solid food! St. Lucie beckons! Can Citi Field be far behind?

Then? Then nothing. Because the optimism is rarely founded in anything but wishful thinking. What good does it do the Mets to announce this player or that pitcher is indeed going to St. Lucie — “but don't get your hopes up”? Doesn't do the player/pitcher any good. He has to believe he's getting closer, too. I don't know how many tickets are sold on the basis of any individual player's active status, but who wants to discourage the fans by telling them, Whoa, slow down there, he's healing but he's not a walking miracle? The media need something new to report and hype up and hype whatever they've got. Someone continuing his stay on the Disabled List is not news. Someone making his way off it is.

I'm not a doctor, I don't play one on TV and I haven't watched a medical drama since Marcus Welby, but I'm pretty sure the human body is a tricky contraption, especially those human bodies that engage in unusual, maybe unnatural activities for a living. So when we hear that a person in one of those bodies is working toward recovery but encounters an obstacle…oh, we don't like that. It must be somebody's fault. Some doctor, some trainer, maybe the player himself. Somebody's too stupid or too lazy or too “soft” to get it together. The same guy we stood and clapped on weeks, maybe months ago is not someone we're happy with now.

When the hell is he coming back?

Billy Wagner may be coming back Sunday. Or he may not. I'll put this in the seen-when-believed file, but OK, he's been out for a year and nobody necessarily expected him to return at all after Tommy John surgery. That's one for some combination of science and hard work.

Anybody else?

This is where we get into trouble because how the hell would I know? How the hell would you know? How the hell would Omar Minaya or Ray Ramirez or Dr. David Altchek know? It sounds good to say “we expect them to start coming back by the All-Star Break” or “we should begin to see a couple of them around August 1,” but what does it mean? Nothing, apparently. It's the old “nobody knows anything” catch-all, except it's true — at least until someone does know something. Wednesday there was a palpable knowing sigh emanating through Metsopotamia when word went forth that Carlos Delgado, in the midst of rehabbing his hip, strained an oblique. Oh not again!

But not what again? That a man trying to fix one part of himself hurt another? That's frustrating from a fan standpoint, but I'll bet it's way more frustrating for Carlos Delgado. It can't make anybody in the organization for whom he works happy either, whatever their role in his recovery or prognosis, however supportive they are or however cynical they've become.

Somewhere along the way, Delgado was pegged as coming back by now. So was Reyes. So were Beltran and Maine and Putz. I could swear I heard or read about the encouraging progress each was making at some point or another. Guys who went down in May and June, you could say they would return in July or August and who was going to argue? It sounded good and not unreasonable. The Mets were however many games out that they were. Add Delgado and Reyes and Beltran and Maine and Putz to the equation, and that's not such a bad team. You wouldn't have to slash ticket prices to sell seats to see that team.

Like I said, this is frustrating. There is a tendency to remember the outsized examples and blame somebody for not living up to, or for perhaps for living down to precedent. How about the way Johan pitched even though he needed knee surgery? Remember the way they screwed with Reyes' running style? How many times did they say Pedro was ready before he suffered a 'setback'? Didn't they have to fire their hospital a few years ago? There is also a tendency to cringe when we hear of the most benign “ouch,” because we recall how benignly various hips, hamstrings and hamates might have been framed before the players attached to them disappeared into the Disabled mist.

It's just possible that the Mets stretch all wrong, or that their pitchers don't warm up properly. It's just possible that they hired a battalion of incompetent doctors, or that some conniving segment of the medical-industrial complex knows that lingering Met injuries represent a cash cow. It's just possible that every Met who's gotten hurt has a mental block about recovering, or the ones with long-term contracts don't see the benefit of rushing back to a team buried in fourth place.

It's also possible that there is some sort of shortfall in the Mets' training methods; that there are doctors who shouldn't have been so certain about certain prognoses; that each player is an individual; that their aggregation of injuries has been rather freakish; that management lacked foresight in terms of roster alternatives; and that the team's communications apparatus is as fractured as any given pinkie when you consider the gap that exists between promised return dates and the reality in which those dates go by without any evidence of tangible progress.

The above is my pet theory, but when it comes to Met injuries, nobody knows anything really, and that includes me.

If you think the overpopulation of the Mets' DL is part of some great, big plot, then the book for you is The 30 Greatest Sports Conspiracy Theories of All-Time, whose new improved edition has been co-authored by Mark Weinstein, blogger of Bluenatic and editor of another fine sports book of recent vintage. Conspire to get your copy today.

And if you think 2009 should go out on the happiest, healthiest note possible, you should attend the second annual Gary, Keith and Ron end-of-season bash in the Big Apple section at Citi Field, Saturday, October 3. This is your chance to make like Cory Sullivan and stand on the warning track of a big league ballpark. Details here — and here's an added bonus because you have the good taste to read Faith and Fear in Flushing: Through this Saturday, August 15, use the coupon code Blogger and get 15% off tickets and all GKR merchandise, courtesy of Lynn Cohen.

The Mets are now 1-5 on a West Coast trip against crappy teams. Tonight they got beat by Max Scherzer, he of the David Bowie eyes, and Trent Oeltjen, a young Aussie who really ought to retire the moment the Mets leave town. (Trust me, Trent — baseball isn't this easy.) They got beat because they sent out a lineup composed of guys who couldn't make the Junior Varsity, because they were unlucky, and because at various points they played flat, indifferent and frankly lazy baseball for the second night in a row.

One more final game in the desert and it's back home for 11 against the Giants, Braves and Phillies, all considerably tougher competition than the Padres and Diamondbacks. Barring a jaw-droppingly unlikely series of events, that homestand will be the final Waterloo, the stretch after which even the true believers will have given up.

The hope here is that it doesn't mark the season going from unfortunate to ugly. Because it's looking like it sure could.

It's been clear for some time that 2009 was going to be a harvest eaten by locusts, a famine year that reminds you baseball is fickle. Which is taxing to live through, but part of being a fan. But a sour spring has turned into a nauseating summer, with mutterings about subpar medical care and willful front-office blindness, the drip-drip of revelations about Tony Bernazard's reign of terror and Omar's self-immolation at the podium. That wasn't enough to necessarily turn the fans against a wounded team, but now the effort on the field has to be called into question, too. It was bad enough that Livan Hernandez showed up Alex Cora and Luis Castillo half-assed a throw to Daniel Murphy; it was worse that these misdeeds came a night after Jerry Manuel's made his displeasure with Angel Pagan, Fernando Tatis, Mike Pelfrey, Anderson Hernandez and Murphy evident.

Omar Minaya, for all his many faults, was probably going to get a pass for 2009 because his team got hit by lightning. Then he had to pick an embarrassingly public feud with a reporter, and now his future seems very much in doubt. Jerry Manuel, for all his many faults, was probably going to get a pass for 2009 because his team got hit by lightning. But now his charges are playing like a team that's stopped listening to its manager — and much more of that could put his future in doubt.

I've been more than clear that I think Omar should go, and I think as a strategist Jerry is a pretty good player's manager. So what's wrong with a purge of the ranks? Nothing in the long term, I suppose. But purges are generally the culmination of ugly, bloody times. Citi Field has flaws that good conscience demands the Mets address before 2010, but so far it's been a relatively bright spot in an otherwise horrible year. That can change quickly, however, and it will if the Mets come home and play the kind of indifferent garbage-time baseball they've shown us on this road trip. The Wilpons are already staring at the likelihood of inaugurating their new park with 90 losses, which is bad enough; having the Mets slump across the wire pelted by well-earned boos would be a whole lot worse.

Say “boo” and you're three-quarters of the way to saying “book.” Take your mind off the carnage with 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.

To start off on a rather obvious note, game recaps are supposed to say something about the game you just watched, or missed, or fell asleep during, or were going to watch and didn't and now feel guilty about it. Let's dispense with tonight's game in relatively brisk fashion, then:

1. Mike Pelfrey was bad. Again.

2. Daniel Murphy had a miserable night against a tough lefthander, then it got worse. He wasn't even in your picture when Anderson Hernandez confidently fired the ball to first base in an attempt to complete a double play. The play would have been funny if it had happened to the other guys.

3. The totality of the Met highlights was Fernando Tatis cracking a triple off the center-field fence.

4. The wreckage of the 2009 Mets are easy prey for even an average major-league baseball team on most nights.

Earlier today a friend of mine inquired — with polite hesitation — what I thought the Mets' offseason considerations should be. It's a subject I warmed to almost instantly, in this year that can't end soon enough.

Such questions generally come down to positions that need filling; in deference to the form, I'll try my answer that way, while warning up-front that in my view these questions are not the ones that should be uppermost in the minds of Mets executives when they gather in conference rooms overlooking an empty Citi Field.

Corner Outfielders: Jeff Francoeur is overrated and an adequate player at best, which makes him essentially the inverse of Ryan Church, for whom he was traded — Church was underrated, but also an adequate player at best. Either way, this leaves the Mets in much the same situation in 2010 as they were in 2009: expecting big things from a right fielder whom you doubt can deliver. And as with 2009, that puts more pressure on left field.

The Mets' response to this question last winter was to assume there was an answer from some combination of an old player coming off a very good year (Fernando Tatis), a young player out of position (Daniel Murphy) and an older player who'd become a DH (Gary Sheffield). Tatis has been merely OK, Murphy was a disaster, and Sheffield has been far better than expected (and a model teammate, contrary to the bleatings of Wally Matthews and others) but still fragile and defensively challenged.

So what happens in 2010? Presumably the Mets realize neither Tatis nor Sheffield is an answer — though that's a dangerous thing to say about a team that thought another round of Gerald Williams and a mummified Moises Alou was a good idea. An obvious answer is to chase Jason Bay or Jermaine Dye, but the Mets resisted obvious answers (Manny Ramirez, Adam Dunn) a year ago. Looking internally, it's hard to imagine Fernando Martinez being ready, or Angel Pagan's bat being sufficient. My question: How is this not the time to give Nick Evans an extended audition?

Daniel in the Lions' Den: As was just amply proven, Murphy has some lessons to learn at first base. But mental lapses aside, he's shown soft hands and confidence there — certainly he's looked far better than he did in left field. But even if Murphy evolves into a .290 hitter and a high OBA guy (by no means a sure thing), can he put up sufficient offense to play first? Second would make more sense based on his numbers, but that brings to mind horrible visions of Gregg Jefferies stumbling from position to position, trailed by errors and vindictive teammates. I like Murphy, but one gets the feeling he makes the most sense as a DH.

Thanks Luis, But…: Luis Castillo has had a much better year than I'd expected, and shown admirable toughness after the wreck of 2008 and again after his dropped pop-up became the lowlight of the season (so far) and a dreadful memory that will be seared into our memories forever. Hats off to him. That said, he's still essentially useless in the modern game, with no power, poor range and a dreadful contract. His value will never be higher, which is to say he might fetch a AA prospect turned suspect if the Mets paid a good chunk of his salary. Do it. The idea of watching Luis trying to hit a sac fly in September 2011 makes me want to break stuff.

Soft in the Middle: Even assuming John Maine returns from injuries to be effective again, the middle of the Mets' rotation is suspect at best. Barring a startling reversal (and, perhaps, a brain transplant), Oliver Perez will be front and center in discussions of bad free-agent signings for years to come. And Mike Pelfrey has been simply terrible: 2009 has been the season we expected him to have in 2008. Given that the season is what it is, losing the chance to get a good long look at Jonathan Niese is another misfortune in a season that hasn't lacked for them. Here's hoping nothing jaw-droppingly awful happens to Bobby Parnell. At least then we might learn something, and have some hope besides a season in which Johan Santana is repeatedly followed by four rainouts.

So that's the positional questions as I see them. But as I said above, I hope the Mets turn to those after asking some more fundamental questions this winter. (Which is to say, starting right now.)

Evaluate the Architects: The Mets' freakish run of injuries had given Omar Minaya a pass until he lost his mind and decided to attack Adam Rubin for revealing that Tony Bernazard was basically a psychopath. The Mets should take a hard look at their GM and ask if he truly deserves a pass. The front office can't manage a roster, is rumored not to listen to team doctors, has a fetish for hobbled, faded veterans peddling the suspect tonic of “leadership,” and can't even handle a simple, richly deserved firing. I don't know if the problem is Omar himself, his lieutenants, interference by ownership or something else, but it's something to be tackled head-on.

Doctor's Orders: You could fold this one into the question above, but let's go over it anyway. The Mets either have incompetent doctors or competent doctors whose recommendations are ignored by incompetent baseball executives. It's one or the other, and neither answer is acceptable. The question isn't why there have been so many injuries, but why so many injuries seem to have been misdiagnosed and/or mishandled, leaving guys sliding with excruciating slowness from Day-to-Day to We Don't Know to Being Re-evaluated to Finally on the DL to Still on the DL to Out for the Year. The Mets have consistently taken the field with 22 or 23 guys available, which is a dereliction of someone's duty. Fix. This. Now.

The Curse of Next Year: Let's assume Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes and John Maine all return healthy next spring. Those guys plus David Wright, Johan Santana and Frankie Rodriguez are a formidable core, no doubt. But is that team really one free agent or trade away from beating the Phillies and holding off the resurgent Marlins and Braves? I'm not so sure. If the Mets aren't sure either, stop trying to plug holes with pieces made of sawdust. Think about 2011, and figure out how 2010 positions us best for that year.

New York baseball fans have a reputation for treating such advice like it's cowardice, but that's talk-radio yip-yap. I'd like some confidence that there's a plan beyond hoping players are magically healed, veterans slurp from the Fountain of Youth and Prozac can be slipped into all the reporters' coffee. Give me that, and I will be patient. No, constructing a realistic blueprint and trying to make it work isn't shameful. What we've put up with for the last four months, on the other hand, fits the definition perfectly.

A key part of 2010: Enjoying 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.

When it's a particularly positive development that the Mets have beaten the Padres, it can mean one of two things:

• The Padres are very good.

• The Mets are pretty bad.

The Padres haven't been very good all that often in their forty big league seasons. They've notched as many as 90 wins only three times. When they're not reaching for glory, they're usually wallowing well south of the National League West border. Beating the Padres when they're very good is a fine thing, but it hasn't been a possibility since 1998.

It was a particularly positive development for the Mets to beat the Padres Sunday because the Mets have been pretty bad, particularly in San Diego. When Daniel Murphy ranged far into foul territory to catch the final out, Wayne Hagin treated the feat the way those of us who have watched the Mets for more than two seasons reflexively greet a series win at Turner Field. Wayne said the Mets can finally enjoy the wonders of San Diego, having broken their streak of eight straight losses at Pitco. True, they'd be on their way to the airport 45 minutes hence, but it's Wayne Hagin, so you have to grade perspective on a curve.

Whoever, whatever, the Mets won where they hadn't been winning and they won behind Johan Santana, who earned it on both sides of the ball. A starter's W-L is an often misleading thus fairly useless barometer but even with Santana's ups and downs, he was gypped out of a win his last time around, the game K-Rod put in a Goodwill bag and Sean Green kicked to the curb. The Cardinal loss was his eighth of the year, more than he had in 2008, the year he was ND'd within an inch of his sanity. This year's Santana isn't being haunted by no-decisions. It's inconsistency hobbling his stats. Johan's a 13-8 pitcher by the numbers, but that doesn't seem right. So often, as on Sunday, he performs up to his 18-1 ace standards. When he's not on top of his game, he feels like some 9-14 non-entity of the latter-day Jeff D'Amico variety.

He's Johan. We expect him to be Johan all the time. We have so little left to expect besides the worst. Thanks to him for coming through. Frankie, too, who didn't have a save opportunity but made the most of a chance to make up for his recent shakiness. Third star, one supposes, goes to the Padres for not coming off like the divisional dynasty Braves and sweeping us despite Pitco mysteriously behaving as Turner West.

It's a fact: The Mets and Padres aren't good simultaneously all that often. We and they had winning records together in '84 and '85; '88 and '89; '98; and '05 to '07. It took them ten seasons to achieve a .500+ year. Their first pennant, 1984, felt like a fluke — a welcome fluke considering how much we hated the Cubs heading into that October, but a fluke whose luck ran out against the big-time Tigers. They were a juggernaut in '98, but you wouldn't have picked them over the Randy Johnson-enhanced Astros in the NLDS or 106-win Atlanta in the next round. But they beat both and their reward was a sweep at the hands of the Yankees. Since then, the Pads have been primarily an undercover operation. Their making the playoffs in '05 and '06 was big news in Mission Valley, likely nowhere else. They choked a Wild Card away in late 2007 and almost no one took note that they committed maybe the second greatest collapse in baseball history. Then they went back to their customary wallow.

With a profile that low, it's no wonder the Padres wear camouflage.

This little detour into Friar inertia was taken to demonstrate what a downer they almost always are, making it extra frustrating to watch them exert themselves only mildly en route to three consecutive victories over the Mets. We don't have many franchises to look down on, traditionally speaking. We can't look down on the Phillies anymore. No matter how embarrassing the latest name of El Sacko del Soilmaster and no matter how empty it is 78 dates in any given year, any team that was racking up two world championships while we were racking up none — and ending our last two seasons to boot — has something over us, so there go the Marlins. The Pirates, whose last winning season was clinched when Barack Obama was 31, have blocked too many chip shots for us to get all high and mighty on them. Whatever's wrong with the Nationals, it hasn't stopped them from nipping at our anatomy at all the wrong times the past couple of Septembers.

The Padres? Now there's a Padres curse? We're supposed to be relieved that we finally won a game in San Diego? Like that's a monkey off our back? You have to respect all your opponents and take 'em one game at a time and all that, but somewhere in this league, can't we have a gimme? I know we had a good run in Arizona for a while, but pending this week's set, that's currently inactive. We've won a lot of games at home against Colorado, but they were in the World Series when they weren't supposed to be two years ago while we weren't when we were due in Detroit three years ago.

We seem to have not lost a season series against the Reds since 2001. And they have no great recent success against anybody else. Plus we beat them when it really counted in 1973 and 1999. But we gave them Tom Seaver and they stuck us with George Foster, so it's kind of a wash. Hard to think of the Reds as our patsy. Not that I really thought of the Padres as our patsy, but if we were going to have one, you'd kind of think a franchise with less overall success than us; with no head-to-head body blow against us; with no playoff spot picked from our pocket; with not even a no-hitter on their ledger could be a little more cooperative and lose to us a little more. We beat the Padres eleven out of twelve in '69 and ten of twelve in '86. When we beat up on San Diego, it usually means we're very good.

We're not now and haven't been lately. They swept a cringeworthy four-game series at Pitco last June. They opened Citi Field by taking two of three. Then the first three of this series. Finally we beat them. It shouldn't feel like an accomplishment. It should feel like business as usual. But it's the Mets who have been in the patsy business in 2009.

And haven't they taken care of business efficiently?

When the Diamondbacks close the roof, you can open the pages of 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.

The bad news was as plain as the grin on Mat Latos' face after he laid down a successful sac bunt. Why shouldn't Mat with the missing 't' be grinning? He was beating the New York Mets. That and $2.25 qualifies him for a Metrocard if the fare hasn't gone up by the next time the Padres come to New York, so yeah, it was bad news per usual Saturday night in San Diego. But because we've drowned in bad news lately, let's divine a few happier tidbits.

Bobby Parnell was good news. Not his line, not even his pitching, but the mere fact he started was good. Why dredge up the modern-day equivalents of Jose Lima or Brian Lawrence? Why not take the kid who was a starter who became a reliever but who may really be a starter and give him a shot? He needs that secondary pitch, something that he might have perfected with a summer in Buffalo, but he's got plenty of minor league games ahead of him from now to the end of the season — and with major league meal money!

Nelson Figueroa and Tim Redding were good news. Figueroa walked in one of Parnell's runs but was sound otherwise. Redding has adopted to his non-role with aplomb. I never wanted to see either one of them in a Mets uniform after tasting a small sample of their fifth-starter work, but they're here, they're getting paid and they're earning it.

Mike Pelfrey will be good news. He had to miss his turn in the rotation to be on hand for the birth of his son. The good news is the son was born and he named him Chase, because Mike Pelfrey plans to go to Chase Field Monday night and own the Diamondbacks. Gotta love the confidence given it was the future dad who was slapped on the bottom the last time the Mets got to Phoenix. Chipper didn't name his progeny Shea until he had actually done something there.

Alex Cora was good news. Good to see the old pro break an ancient homerless streak. He was one of the four guys with the longest stretch of at-bats without a home run in baseball. Natch, Luis Castillo was one of the other four. He's still got his .500 beard, he's still out there making most of the plays (his Rey Ordoñez one-knee-down impression didn't work so well), he's still in there more than he ever should have been. Cora's dinger landed somewhere in Julio Franco territory, but if that's the way they wanted to build Pitco (I'm officially renaming it), let them suffer the consequences when old infielders remember old tricks.

Jeff Francouer was good news. He shaved his .500 beard (killjoy realist) but he walked unintentionally and tried to throw Latos out at first in the second — and despite Murphy being flummoxed by the trickish play, the ball didn't go into the dugout, or into the stands, or onto the beach. It was a good idea and it's a reminder of what fun it is to have a rightfielder capable, theoretically, of executing a 9-2 putout.

Luis Castillo was good news. He walked to the plate and didn't fall down. He struck out as a pinch-hitter and didn't fall down. He returned to his seat in the dugout without incident.

Cory Sullivan was good news. Made a great sliding catch in left that nabbed the ball and avoided the wall. Not only didn't he get hurt making that play, but neither did Luis Castillo.

Brian Schneider was good news. True, he drives I-97 to the plate now, but he got himself a call, no matter how mistaken it was. Chalk it up mostly to another blunder in blue by a crew that includes Angel Hernandez (who has somehow found colleagues who belong at his level), but Schneider knew enough to tag Everth Cabrera after Cabrera touched home with his hand. Lance Barksdale didn't think Cabrera swiped the plate, which replays proved was a ludicrous conclusion, but Schneider didn't give Lance a chance for a second glance.

Dick Williams was good news. Williams was inducted into the Padres' Hall of Fame Saturday night — for you Mets fans out there, a team hall of fame is what a team maintains and embellishes when it's run anything like a proper enterprise, not a total sham steered into the ground by clueless clowns who only care about taking your money and crushing your spirit — and was interviewed by Kevin Burkhardt. Williams owed his A's success in the 1973 World Series primarily to Yogi Berra's (and Bob Scheffing's) decision to pitch Tom Seaver and Jon Matlack on short rest in Games Six and Seven. He could have said, “We were a dynasty, of course we'd win,” but it was comforting to know the way we lost those final two games wasn't just our fevered imagination. Even the opposing manager knows George Stone should have started Game Six.

None of the above would pass for good news in better years. But late on a Saturday night from San Diego in a year you wouldn't describe as “better” than anything, you take what you can get.

The right call to make is picking up a copy of 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.