Welcome to Rainout Recall, a precipitation-precipitated post from the past designed to help soak up the baseball void left behind by bad weather. Tonight we travel back in time to I'd Be A Real Mess If We Were 9-3, originally aired April 18, 2006, when the surging Mets were making us dizzy with success and, because we're Mets fans, uncertainty.

***

For about 30, 40, maybe 50 minutes after last night's game, I swear to you I was as baseball happy as I've been in 20 years. And baseball happy, given my short slate of priorities, pretty much means happy.

No kidding, though. When the enormity of our five-game lead over frigging Atlanta sunk in, I became almost overcome with joy. It was nothing like I remembered since 1986.

This isn't me falling into the hated trap known as the memory hole. I leave that to the know-nothing Kens and Barbies who deliver highlights on TV, blatherers who waste radio airspace and general assignment reporters who write those worthless metro section “baseball fever has gripped the city!” stories. We know different here. We're the institutional memory of this franchise. We know that the convenient storyline, “It's been a sad state of affairs for Mets fans since 1986,” is specious. We know there have been winning seasons and playoff seasons and even a pennant season, that there have been victories that have warmed the cockles and cockles that have warmed to victories.

We know that. You know that. I know that. But here's what else I know:

The last time I felt the way I did last night had to be 20 years ago. This takes into account the extended stretches of satisfaction, excitement and dreaminess that have made me the fan I am today, the ones from 1988 and 1990 and 1997 and 1999 and 2000 plus a few others from less successful campaigns. Those were good. A few were breathtaking. But they weren't this.

The way I felt last night in the wake of beating the Braves was something else altogether. This was first place as a matter of course. This was taking it to a team that had taken it to us. This was having a masterful power-hitting first baseman slugging a huge home run for us, not against us. This was a rightfielder acquired from some distant precinct flourishing, not shrinking. This was a catcher who runs the game and a middleman who stops the bleeding and a closer who ends opponents' evenings and 200-game-winner Pedro Martinez being 200-game-winner Pedro Martinez after all these years.

These are the Mets of 2006. They are ours. OURS! And first place is OURS! Theirs by achievement, but ours by rightful inheritance. We're the caretakers of the estate. We watched after it as the Howes and the Cedeños and the Wiggintons and the James Baldwins overran it and infested it with futility. We've watched the Braves ransack it so many times that we've lost count. Finally we have some real hard-ass types to scare them off with pitchforks.

We're ten and motherfucking two. We're five games ahead of the whole pack of National League Eastern Division jackals. We're No. 1! We're No. 1!

Just like the '51 Dodgers, the '64 Phillies, the '69 Cubs, the '78 Red Sox, the '95 Angels…you get my point. This is why the euphoria only lasted 30, 40, 50 minutes, because I have no concrete evidence that it will continue tonight or next week. Watching Floyd leave with a pulled rib cage muscle and seeing no sign of Beltran actually put me in mind of another great first-place team, the 1972 Mets. Remember them winning anything? They got off to a 25-7 start, had a six-game lead in May and then everybody got hurt. They finished 83-73 and way back in third place.

I don't want to be the 1972 Mets. I don't want to be the 1969 Cubs. The weird part is I don't want to be the 1999 Mets, and if you know me at all, you know that I consider the 1999 Mets representative of all that was worth living for. I was never so wrapped up in a baseball season as I was in 1999. I never cared so much about a Mets team as I did in 1999. No club — no thing — ever lifted me higher or threw me to the ground harder with impunity than the 1999 Mets. That was a year when fate itself hung on every single pitch.

I don't want that out of 2006. I'm too far gone after 10-2. To wind up in a dogfight with the Braves for the division or somebody else for the Wild Card would be to descend from the mountaintop. I like it too much up here to ever leave.

I fear I've been spoiled. 1999 was the best year of my baseball life and I now consider it beneath me, beneath us. It was fine for then, but I've tasted a record-setting five-game lead after 12 games and I don't want to go back. I want a six-game lead after tonight. I can't bring myself to throw out numbers beyond that, but I want great, big stuff out of this season. We can be scrappy as all get out in getting to it, but I want 1986-scrappy, not nearly blowing a playoff spot in the last two weeks of September-scrappy.

So now I've set myself up for disappointment. Anything less than first place will be crushing. Anything that isn't built to an impenetrable lead and soon will have me on more pins and needles than I need. Anything that follows the path of the recent St. Louis Cardinals — stupendous regular season, postseason failure — makes the whole thing an awful, unfair tease. And if we do scale the highest of heights and plant a few flags? If we do win everything there is to win in 2006 and are celebrated justly for it? Then I just know something will go wrong in 2007 and it will be 1987 all over again and I'll be sad.

OK, this is sick, as is this: guilt. Guilt?! Guilt from what? I'm watching last night as Pedro is wriggling out of jams and Andruw Jones just misses with one into the wind and there's no Chipper in sight and somehow I'm thinking, “Well, the Braves didn't get the breaks. The Braves are undermanned. This isn't a true test of the Braves.”

Just lock me up now before I do harm to someone with that kind of thinking. The Braves are at a disadvantage? The Braves have injuries? Like we weren't physically to say nothing of mentally challenged when playing them series after series, year after year? They came out on the short end of a bad bounce or two? All balls have done in a thousand Mets-Braves games is bounce their way. I hate the Braves, so I know I can't possibly feel sorry for the second-least sympathetic organization in baseball.

What is it then? Is it that the Mets don't deserve happiness? That some other baseball team deserves it more? The Red Sox got theirs. The White Sox got theirs. You don't have to wait 80-90 years to get yours. Cripes, it's been 20 years! Isn't that enough?

As I'm peeling back the layers on this onion, I'm finding my problem is a mash-up of expectation, perception and defensiveness. Though I came of age when the Mets were good, I never expect something like a 10-2, 5 GA start out of them at any time since. But I have always perceived them to be capable, and I'm extremely defensive when somebody — friend or foe — tries to paint us as some kind of perpetual, congenital loser. When I hear other Mets fans say things like, “Whaddaya expect? We're the Mets,” I bristle hard. I expect better than that. I perceive us as not long-suffering (even though I have, in fact, suffered for long periods of time because of the Mets). I guess I consider the Devil Rays the exemplar of übercrappiness and we generally haven't been them. It's almost as if it's been good enough for me not to be Tampa Bay.

But the rest of the world doesn't see it that way and, as much as I hate to admit it, I do care what the rest of the world thinks. When we finish with records like last year's 83-79, I want to sprint into the streets and do a jig that screams, “We had a winning record!” But nobody cares. Nobody cared when we finished 88-74 in 1997. It set my soul on fire, but by 1998, the memory hole beckoned. “Mike Piazza turned the Mets into winners.” The dickens he did! (Sorry, Mike; we loved having you, but we didn't all-out suck when you got here.) I could have lived with improving incrementally, auditioning Aaron Heilman as closer, enduring the fits and starts of Mike Jacobs at first, but then they go and drop Billy Wagner and Carlos Delgado into our laps and I'm ebullient…until I wonder if that's somehow unfair because we spent money that a team like the Devil Rays doesn't have.

And my head goes round and round like this.

I worry that we won't win the next game. I worry that we'll win too many games. I worry that we won't win enough World Series. I worry that we've done something wrong to be doing everything so right. I worry about displaying an uncharacteristic sense of entitlement and then I worry that I don't think I deserve better and worry that that reveals something as self-destructive as excessive haughtiness would. I worry that my worrying will screw up a 10-2 start with 150 games to go.

Then I get down to worrying about the normal things a normal fan worries about, like injuries and age on the pitching staff and a thin bench and bullpen depth and whether hot starts by Lo Duca and Nady and Sanchez are going to last because if everything doesn't continue to be the festival of Our Lady of Perpetual Victory that it's been for all of two weeks, I just don't know what I'm going to do with myself.

Which is why I'm better off confining my thoughts to those 30, 40, 50 minutes after a big win when everything is perfect.

***

Mets Walkoffs picks up what has become a long-running cause (too long), lobbying for the Mets Hall of Fame to reopen its rusty figurative gates and make them literal.

When it comes to opening wax packs, Bluenatic is suddenly having a great summer of 1988.

And check out the all-around good work being done at Remembering Shea.

Those Staten Islanders sure are a cocky bunch.

Actually, that would be a gross generalization and probably inaccurate. I knew one guy from Staten Island in college and he seemed nice enough. I know one guy from Staten Island now — big Dave Kingman fan — and he's never struck me as over the top (except maybe in his fondness for Dave Kingman). And the patron saint of Staten Island sports figures, Bobby Thomson, is perhaps the most humble hero baseball has ever produced. In fact, he'd no doubt recoil at being called a hero.

But I encountered this one guy from Richmond County a few weeks ago, and he was raving about the season Jason Marquis, also of Richmond County, was having. As if his numbers couldn't speak for themselves, this Staten Islander had to burnish Marquis's credentials as such:

He's gonna beat the Mets when the Rockies come to New York.

That unnecessary boast has been on my mind ever since I heard it. I wasn't frothing for the Mets to take on a freshly minted National League All-Star, but something about the man's guarantee struck me as the wrong thing to say. It was hubris in a game where humility is far more helpful to your cause. It reminded me of the last Bar Mitzvah I attended, some cousin of mine from Massapequa in 1991. He taunted some Northern California relatives in his challah-slicing poem (don't ask*) that he'd be going to San Francisco in a few weeks to see “my” Mets sweep their Giants.

Their Giants swept his Mets. And our Mets went on to wander in the desert for the next six seasons.

My cousin from Massapequa. The guy from Staten Island. Will baseball fans ever learn it doesn't pay to imitate Joe Namath? That there are no sure things? That you don't write checks your ass has no way of knowing in advance whether it can cash?

Jason Marquis didn't pitch terribly Tuesday night, but his Staten Island lansman put the nahora on him. I don't know if that fellow (like my cousin and, come to think of it, Jason Marquis) is Jewish, but he should have said, “You'll see Jason Marquis and maybe he'll do all right, kinahora,” which is what we say in Yiddish or at Citi Field to ward off evil spirits. It certainly worked for me, sitting and rooting humbly in the Left Field Landing Tuesday night.

Beat an All-Star pitcher with a lineup wherein that All-Star pitcher could easily bat sixth? Why wouldn't we be humble?

Sorry Marquis, you were doomed by the hubris of one of your friendly neighborhood boosters. And the Mets…the new, improved and humble Mets…they won their fourth in a row after no one in his or her right mind was boasting about their chances.

How do we proceed from here in the Wild Card race where the odds against us are as long as the Verrazano and our prospects still distressingly narrow? Stay humble, keep a low profile and hope for the best. Kinahora.

*It occurs to me it was the candle-lighting that brought out the poetry, not the challah-slicing. If it was the bread that had to wait for 64 couplets on the Bar Mitzvah experience, it would have gone stale.

More baseball advice you might find as not so awful: Get 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.

First of all, let's make something clear: Greg and I have never lobbied Omar Minaya, Jeff Wilpon or anybody else in the Mets organization for the job of bringing Mettle the Mule back to life as a clever, two-person costume. For Omar to insinuate otherwise in a press conference is despicable, and we're not sure how we'll be able to blog about the Mets given what's happened. Also, the new GM should listen to the doctors and figure out how to manage a roster. Thank you.

The annual summer trip to my folks' hilltop cottage in Maine is always a place to take stock of a couple of things: the march of technology and the state of the New York Mets.

Technologically, we've from dial-up Internet to cellphones that don't particularly work very well, from snowy rabbit-ears reception to post-digital-transition converter boxes. The rule for years has been that WFAN doesn't come in until after dark, so games get joined around the sixth inning. This isn't to mock the summer house for being backwards — rather, it's to note that here, technology assumes a back seat for a few days to reading books, picking blueberries and just sitting. Which, at least for a while each summer, is how it should be.

As for the Mets, well … Maine has rarely been kind to them. There have been dismemberments by unlikely Pittsburgh Pirates and other disasters I can't summon up for linkage because I'm on dial-up, but remember as a vague ache and bedrock sense of wariness.

This year, it seemed, things would be different. There's now a big AT&T cell tower on a neighboring hilltop (invisible, happily), so my cellphone reception is an order of magnitude better than it is in, say, Brooklyn. And with MLB At Bat, the sundown rule was repealed: WFAN was just one of 30 radio feeds I could listen to if I so desired, day or night. And the Mets? They'd acquitted themselves admirably down in Houston.

But something about the piney woods just spells embarrassment for my team, it seems.

I followed Tony Bernazard's long-awaited comeuppance via Twitter, with fellow faithful giving me the news 140 characters at a time. (This is me, by the way.) Press conference at 3:30 pm. Something big. Ah, Tony B. was out. Good. Now he'd have to abuse people who weren't college-aged prospects or below him in the office hierarchy — people who could fight back, and hopefully would. I hope Willie Randolph danced in a hallway and then tore his shirt off in celebration.

I tweeted that being a Mets fan had just become slightly less embarrassing, and headed out to do errands with my dad. On the way back, I pulled out my phone and punched up Twitter. What the hell? There was Steve, suggesting I reconsider the lack of embarrassment. There were Zoe and Caryn and Will and Vaccaro and Heyman and lots of other Mets- and sports-related folks. The iPhone was practically red-hot processing it all.

I pieced it together one bite-sized chunk of disbelief at a time. Yes, Bernazard was out. Omar had offered some nonsensical blather about the Mets' HR folks looking into the situation even before Adam Rubin's scathing stories in the Daily News; seeing how that was coming from the Mets' front office, I dismissed it as nonsense. But there was more. Much more. Omar had called out Rubin in the press conference, all but accusing him of having it in for Tony and lobbying the Mets for a job. Rubin, rightly indignant at being bullied from the pulpit, had sent both barrels back Omar's way. “Despicable,” he called the GM's behavior, and properly so.

My mouth was hanging open. Omar Minaya, who could at least be relied upon to shield his many failings with a veneer of plastic professionalism, had apparently lost his mind. The Mets had fired someone who richly deserved it, and even that had become an utter fucking farce. The Twitterers' heads were spinning. Over at Metsblog, you could tell Matt Cerrone was pinching himself between increasingly unlikely updates.

For a split-second I ached to be in New York, monitoring all this firsthand.

The last couple of seasons have shown us — in excruciating detail — that nothing said by any member of the Mets' baseball operations should be taken at face value. The team that takes the field each night is too often a shambles, with players who should be on the DL active but unavailable and the bench and/or pen painfully short. Obvious roster moves aren't made, aren't made in a responsibly timely fashion, or are leaked to the papers and then not made anyway. (Spare a moment of pity for poor Tim Redding.) Injuries are habitually misrepresented, leaving you to wonder if the team employs incompetent doctors or ignores the advice of competent ones. And, as we now know, the VP of player development bullied prospects, campaigned for the ouster of one manager while fraternizing with another, abused clubhouse guys doing their jobs, screamed obscenities at deputies in public and nearly came to blows with players on buses.

And an organization with this shoddy, sorry track record attacks Adam Rubin? It wasn't exactly hard picking whom to believe, and whom to side with. It is indeed despicable to attack someone for doing their job when the real issue is you not doing yours, and classless to try and use the trappings of your office to intensify the attack. I've never had reason to doubt Rubin's reporting; on the other hand, I've had reason to doubt Omar Minaya's competence — and now his truthfulness — night after night after night.

I've written before that the barrage of injuries to high-profile Mets would probably save Omar's job when he deserved firing for a lot of other sins. But yesterday changed that. If he lost his cool up there, that's a straw that ought to break the camel's back and result in his own firing in short order. If, on the other hand, he trained his guns on the Daily News on the orders of ownership, he ought to quit posthaste for the sake of his own honor. (Jeff Wilpon's presence as Omar kinda sorta apologized — and promptly got undermined by his boss — makes me as suspicious as it does Greg.) If that's what happened — and I really hope it isn't — the Wilpons need to think very seriously about what measure of blame they deserve for the dysfunctional disaster their team has become. Whatever the case, the very culture of this organization is fundamentally broken, and everybody that's part of it needs desperately to look in the mirror and ask hard questions about why and what needs to be done about it.

That was a lot of rage to boil down to 140 characters. So I fired off this Twitter update: “Does any #Mets fan believe anything Omar Minaya says? Fire him too, right now. What an absolute f—— disgrace this team is.” I offered much the same on Facebook. And then, looking out at the Maine woods, I realized I didn't want to be in New York. In fact, I was thoroughly and heartily glad that I wasn't. The turkeys were crossing the meadow again, and I wanted to see if I could get a short video of them. Perhaps the fawn and his mother would emerge from the woods once more. A front had rolled through, promising a beautiful sunset. Maybe there would be fireflies.

Ah, but there was a game to be played. And Cora's Irregulars had shown some admirable fight these last two days. Mets back at home, against the wild-card-leading Rockies. And, more basically, a summer night with baseball to be played. Time to fire up the iPhone and get Howie and Wayne on the line.

The game started. The Mets fell behind. I was still fuming. And then, little by little, the anger seeped away.

We had dinner. Joshua was put in the bath and put to bed. We washed up. Did the usual things of a vacation night, as the sun went down (beautiful as hoped for) and the night came up, the wood thrushes' calls giving way to the tap-tap of insects against the porch screen. And all the while, the game was unfolding a pitch at a time, obeying the usual rhythms of baseball on the radio at night, heard through the doorway and amid the scuffling of chairs and the clink of gathered silverware. Called strike threes. Pitchers looking in for signs. Long drives, but playable.

Hey, I thought, they're only two runs down. Let's go, boys! And then a short sharp rally to even things at three, and then another one to threaten the Rockies' pen and bring up the prospect of K-Rod coming in for the save. In the Maine night, my thoughts had turned from the mess of the afternoon to the age-old conundrum of whether Daniel Murphy should bunt the runners over or swing away. He bunted and Jeff Francoeur was walked and Cory Sullivan gave way to Fernando Tatis, last year's inspiring story turned this year's tale of frustration. Tatis fell behind 0-and-2, and the mind turned to Omir Santos and whether he could shake a little more magic out of his bat. Except then Tatis was swinging from his heels and the ball was flying and it was GONE and Fernando was floating around the bases, fist in the air, and the roar of the crowd was a joyous crackle fighting its way out of the iPhone's pinprick speakers, and I wasn't thinking about Omar Minaya or Tony Bernazard or Jeff Wilpon even the littlest bit.

The intrinsic beauty and joy of the game of baseball is asked to redeem a lot about the sorry and ugly business of baseball. Sometimes the asking seems like too much. But incredibly and improbably, baseball often manages to pull it off. Nothing about the Mets' team coming back to beat the Rockies makes the Mets' organization less of a mess. But for three hours, somehow, the Mets made me forget about the Mets. And for that I'm grateful.

Someone grabbed the last copy of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets? Rip off your shirt and challenge him to a fight, right now. Alternately, it's available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

“You again?”

“C'mon, let me in.”

“You're not on the list.”

“I can't get on the list unless you let me in.”

“Then you're not getting in.”

“Check it again.”

“I've checked it every day for weeks. You're not on it.”

“Take a closer look…toward the bottom.”

“Sigh, all right…name again?”

“I told you: Mets. New York Mets.”

“Is that with an 'N' or an 'M'?”

“Last name Mets. M-E-…”

“No. Not here.”

“Look all the way down. I should be there. I really should.”

“Buddy, there are seven lines here on this page, your name isn't on any of them.”

“Is there a second page?”

“Why would we need a second page? This is a very exclusive establishment.”

“Could ya check? Would it really hurt to check?”

“There's never a second page.”

“Maybe there is now.”

“Sigh, will you go away and leave me alone if there isn't?”

“Yes, I swear.”

“All right, but it's useless, we never have…hey!”

“What?”

“I'll be damned. There is a second page. What's your name again?”

“I told you: Mets. New York Mets.”

“You're the New York Mets?”

“Yes! I've been trying to tell you I'm on there. I'm supposed to be inside.”

“Inside? You?”

“That's right. Why do you sound so surprised?”

“No offense, pal, but you?”

“What do you mean 'you?' Are you this rude to all your clientele?”

“Well excuse me, but it's hard to think of you as someone who belongs in this club. I mean look at ya. You've obviously been through hell.”

“You're pretty judgmental for a bouncer.”

“You bounced yourself. Your second baseman dropped that pop fly, didn't he?”

“Old news. He's batting over .300 and on base almost .400.”

“That rightfielder of yours loses balls in the lights.”

“He's also got 14 RBI in 12 games for us.”

“Your first baseman's got zero power and he's batting cleanup.”

“And with him there we're talking 9 runs a game.”

“Two games!”

“Our last two games!”

“And that starting pitcher you used yesterday. He can barely get out of the first inning.”

“But he does. And then he keeps going.”

“You ain't much to look at, chief.”

“Says you.”

“Says me? Says the standings! It took me to the second page to find your name on here, and I'm not even sure why it's on here.”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“C'mon. I know you're trying to impress somebody, but 7½ back?”

“With 66 to play…”

“You're not that close.”

“I've been farther back. I could tell you some tales that would make your hair stand up.”

“I've heard it all before.”

“Mine are doozies. I was way back a couple of times and you wouldn't believe what I did.”

“I don't need to hear your whole life story. All I know is you got a whole page of Wild Card contenders in front of you.”

“Lemme see that page!”

“Hey! Mitts off the clipboard! Only I can touch the clipboard!”

“Well, you touch your clipboard and go back to that first page and tell me who's better? I mean really better?”

“They're all better than you. That's what the standings are for: to tell everybody who's better than everybody else. And I got a sheet of paper that says seven teams are ahead of you — substantially.”

“They're not so great. Not one of 'em's a worldbeater. Not one of 'em I can't take if I put my mind to it.”

“But seven of 'em?”

“That's today. What about next week?”

“What about it?”

“I got time. I'm just getting my act together. I'm gonna be big soon. You'll be sorry if you don't let me in. I've got people in there.”

“People? What people?”

“Top line on your first page. The Colorado Rockies.”

“What about 'em?”

“I've got an appointment to see 'em.”

“You? What business do you have with the Wild Card-leading Colorado Rockies?”

“Me and them, we're playing four games, starting tonight.”

“So?”

“So I put it in a good showing, I ain't 7½ back no more. I'm closer.”

“Not that much closer.”

“How do you know?”

“If you were gonna get that close, wouldn't you already be closer?”

“I got time.”

“Not that much.”

“I'm tellin' ya, I do. This one time, I was 10 back, and it was even later than it is now. Nobody thought I had a chance. And this other time, they had me buried. You gotta believe me.”

“And ya came back…”

“Damn straight I came back! Over five teams! If there'd been more in my way, I'da come back over them, too!”

“Uh-huh.”

“It's true. I did it before. I can do it again.”

“There's nothing about you these days except for two good games to tell me that's true.”

“Ah ha! You admit it!”

“Admit what?”

“That I just played two good games. I played a good one Saturday and another one Sunday.”

“It's only two good games.”

“Yeah, but it means I'm hot. I'm hot at just the right time. And I'm hot just when the guy I gotta take down is here. I can take him down.”

“Listen to you. You're pathetic. You think you're gonna take down the Rockies just 'cause you beat the Astros twice? You're still not ahead of the Astros. You're not gonna be ahead of the Rockies no matter what ya do these next four.”

“I'll be closer. That's the important thing. I just gotta get a chance in there.”

“Somebody else'll be ahead of you. Somebody else'll always be ahead of you.”

“Now, maybe, but not next week. Or the week after. I gotta start somewhere.”

“You shoulda started earlier.”

“I know. I know I made some mistakes.”

“You made some whoppers. You had plenty of chances.”

“That was before. This is now. I'm hot, I'm tellin' ya. I'm ready. I got people in there. I got the Rockies. I can take 'em, but ya got let me in.”

“I don't know…”

“C'mon pal, one more shot. One more chance. That's all I ask. Let me in there. Let me in and I get on that first page on your clipboard. I can make my move. I can feel it.”

“I could get in trouble…”

“No trouble. Nothin' wrong here. I'm supposed to be in there, I swear it. C'mon buddy, give a guy a break. Just unhook that velvet rope for me. Lemme get in there so I can play the Rockies like it matters. Lemme in and there and maybe I can make it matter. I'm not ready to turn around and call it a year. I'm just not.”

“Sigh. All right, pal, I'll let ya in. I like your persistence, and that stuff about being buried before and coming back.”

“Thanks pal! Thanks!”

“But this is your last chance, you got me? You and the Rockies, for four. But I'm warning you, you better not blow these the way you blew whatever chance you had before.”

“I won't! I won't! You won't be sorry you let me in.”

“No, I'm almost positive I will. But I'm a sucker for a happy ending.”

Endings, happy and otherwise, fill 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 Mets having their top farm club where they do now puts me in mind of a very old joke that makes me laugh every time I think of it (no offense to any readers with roots or relatives there).

“I come from Buffalo.”

“Oh yeah? I come from normal parents.”

Saturday night Keith Hernandez mentioned his parents were married in Houston, at home plate of old Buff Stadium, home of the Houston Buffs, or Buffaloes. Keith's dad, the one we always heard was adjusting his swing for him as a Met by watching how much of his “17” he could see via satellite, was a Texas Leaguer in the 1940s.

Keith just throws stuff like that out there the way you or I might say, “You know, I stopped to tie my shoes today. And then I tied them so I wouldn't have to tie them again.” Keith's dad came up a topic of conversation in the days when Keith was becoming a legend in New York. He used to play ball, it was said; he had contacts in the game who told him not to leave the Mets after 1983, that they were loaded on the farm. But when Keith springs the details on you, it seems so mind-blowing, probably because nothing about Keith seems like a big deal to Keith.

So you might say Keith Hernandez comes from Buffalo — as have far too many 2009 Mets. But while Mex was revealing himself a little bit Tex, the latest Bison to stampede onto our team and into our hearts was creating his own legend…in Houston, no less.

Jonathon Niese is too young to have sepia-toned stories. He's 22, born, as Gary Cohen reminded us, on October 27, 1986 (as if we could forget the significance). His name comes up now and again as the prospect the Mets will need to trade to acquire whoever's hot and likely unattainable. You wouldn't hesitate to trade Jonathon Niese for Roy Halladay if the offer was actually made, but a Saturday night romp like that we just experienced you wouldn't be so quick to trade for anything.

When Met victories have become Honus Wagner T-206 rare, you sort of don't want to let them go for anything.

Niese the erstwhile Bison emerged a fully-grown Met and pitched seven brilliant innings. Murphy the accidental cleanup hitter (I assumed it was a typographical error) doubled twice — not just in the same week, but in the same game. The only ball Jeff Francoeur lost was one thrown by an Astro pitcher, not hit by an opposing batter. Omir Santos pushed his home run total (6) near his uniform number (9), which gave David Wright the impetus to become the first Met to actually outhomer the number on his shirt in 2009. It took 96 games, but No. 5 has 6 homers.

Even if he had to tie Omir Santos on July 25 to do it.

The Mets have been sad more often than silly this season. They continued to show their farcical ways by waiting until practically the last minute to clear room for Niese by disabling Gary Sheffield despite a) insisting all that ailed Sheff was a cramp from eight days prior and b) indicating Gary was on his way back to the lineup any minute now. Sheffield wasn't immediately happy with the decision. Who would be? But when you win 10-3, all the funhouse nonsense dissipates into joyful background noise.

Niese was a winner in the majors for the first time since Shea Stadium's pretzels were deemed precious cargo. Our hitters took advantage of the only outfield walls more inane than Citi Field's. And Keith Hernandez told a story about his dad who did what he had to do to be a Buff.

Well, yeah. He's Keith Hernandez.

Because you can never get enough Keith, get more Keith, in the form of Shea Good-Bye: The Untold Inside Story of the Historic 2008 Season, written with Matt Silverman, here.

I'm in San Diego for Comic-Con — so of course the very first thing I did was go to a Padres/Marlins game.

Petco Park is a little different than your basic HOK/Populous design. Yes, it's got the basic hallmarks of today's retro/modern parks: circulating behind the seating areas, quirky outfield walls, private levels, split upper decks. But the first thing that jumps out at you is the white and buff palette. It fits with the clean, desert feel of being at the very bottom of California, making the park feel lighter and somehow smaller. Behind the scenes there are odd, vaguely South American touches: plantings that spill out over bridges and niches and sloping walls that wouldn't feel out of place in a ziggurat. It's subtle, and invisible from the field, but kind of cool — it feels like someone had fun designing it. I like Citi Field, but it feels more self-conscious: The only place where there's a spirit of play is the center-field bridge.

Petco is also in the middle of downtown, so its quirks feel more natural, whereas Citi Field will always feel like an urban ballpark that fell out of the sky and landed in a suburban sea of cars. The Metal Supply Warehouse facade is part of the park, but not a very big one — it's a lot smaller than I'd registered it as being on TV, basically tucked into one corner. It's actually one part of Petco that feels self-consciously retro — you look at it and your first thought is “Why did they keep that?” (Followed by, “I guess it's cool.”) It also creates a section of left-field seats with obstructed views, from which you can't see the left fielder or the center fielder. But — Mets please take note — Padres fans say you're warned about the obstructed views when you buy tickets. And the rest of the park has a perfectly good view of all outfielders without feeling far away — another rebuttal to Dave Howard's fantasy that geometries are an unfortunate law of physics in ballpark design.

The warehouse contains suites and a high-end bar with a balcony from which you can watch the game. There's usually a long line to spend a couple of innings on the balcony, but Wednesday's game had been moved from night to 12:35 p.m., so the park was basically deserted. The warehouse also contains — sit down and stop operating heavy machinery — the Padres Hall of Fame. It's not much — a section of mock lockers that don't contain much of anything real players would have in their lockers — and it's partially blocked by a beer sign, but it's there, so I paid homage to Tony Gwynn (who can no longer beat us with singles between the shortstop and third baseman, heavens be praised) before continuing my rounds.

Another nice touch in Petco is the grassy hill behind the park. There's lots of stuff to eat out here, a kids' field and room to circulate — it's the equivalent of the Shake Shack area out in left field — and you can see most of the game from the hill. There's also an interesting bleacher area right in front of it with grass in the aisles and a big sand pit where kids play that's right up against the chain link of the outfield fence. (Meaning that yes, an incoming home run could skull little Johnny. It's odd what makes Californians uptight and what they're relaxed about.) The Padres open the hill and the bleacher area and show away games on a big screen back there, and you can buy a reduced-price ticket that limits you to this part of the park. It's a cool idea, though it wouldn't work at Citi Field.

San Diego is a military town, and that's constantly evident, though in small ways — the ball-under-the-hat game takes place on the deck of an aircraft carrier, there's a huge aircraft-carrier model to gawk at, and a display proudly declares that the Pads are the team of the military. (If so, I think they're losing the arms race.) Nothing wrong with that, just a bit odd for a New Yorker used to his town's brassy celebration of itself as the pinnacle of all human institutions.

California being California, everybody was insanely friendly — I freely wandered into places I wasn't supposed to be with my blithe explanation that I've “never been here and just exploring around” proving a perfectly valid passport. Padres fans were happy to chat about their park, their team and my team. I was wearing the Numbers shirt — derived from the one sold by the fine Padres blog Gaslamp Ball — and my Mets cap, which meant I was That Guy wearing his gear when his team wasn't involved in the proceedings. One seemingly knowledgable Padres fan thought Willie Randolph was still running things, though — perhaps as they're West Kamchatka to us (“What uniform are they wearing this year? Is Brian Giles still around?”), we're East Silesia to them.

As for the baseball, well, the Padres struck out and made errors and looked half-awake and lost to the Marlins, 5-0. That felt all too familiar.

You can see photos from my field trip on Facebook. (While you're at it, let's be friends!)

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