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Even by 2009 Mets standards, yesterday was a bizarre day, one marked by two doses of good news and one dose of distraction.

The distraction was SI's report that the Mets turned down a package of Fernando Martinez, Jon Niese, Bobby Parnell and Ruben Tejada for Roy Halladay. Why is that a distraction? Because I don't believe it's true — not for a New York minute. If it somehow is, and Omar Minaya really turned it down, he should be ridden out of town on a rail. (Well, he should be ridden out of town on a rail anyway. We'll get to that in a second.) A Triple-A starter with potential, a reliever who throws hard but gets knocked around, a prospect who can't stay on the field and a 17-year-old roll of the dice for a 32-year-old ace who's one of the best pitchers in the game? That's Johan II — a deal you say “yes” to so fast that you choke trying to talk and wind up text-messaging the word to J.P. Ricciardi and even then you're shaking so hard you wind up typing something like y yesss s.

Distractions aside, the first bit of good news is that we got to play the Nationals, who are useful at arresting headlong plunges such as ours but otherwise a disgrace, a shoddy trick played on good fans of a city left too long in the wilderness. Jeff Francoeur and Livan Hernandez had fine nights, which in a better world would lead to them immediately being traded for whatever they might yield in return. In this world, it leads to a garbage-time win. (If that’s short shrift for a rare Met victory, my apologies. I’m happy, but what does it really change?)

The second bit of good news was the report that Jeff Wilpon told Omar and Jerry Manuel that their jobs were safe. You might ask why that's good news, considering our front office…

• manages a major-league roster as if the roster limit were 22 guys
• either employs incompetent physicians or competent ones whose counsel goes unheeded
• makes trades that suggest statistical analysis is conducted with an abacus, a phrenology text and dog-eared issues of Sports Illustrated
• seemingly bids against itself to sign fat, old and bad players to guaranteed deals; and
• is otherwise dysfunctional in an endless parade of quietly depressing ways.

The answer for why it's good news is that it's the Mets, and these days when I hear news from the baseball-operations side of the Mets' house, I simply assume the opposite of what's being said is the truth.

• Player X did not suffer a setback in rehab = Player X suffered a setback in rehab
• Player Y is day-to-day = Player Y will be out for at least six weeks
• Omar and Jerry are safe = Omar and Jerry are in serious trouble

Actually, I'm not campaigning for Jerry's ouster — his strategic reliance on small ball and adulation of grit and other intangibles is irritatingly Neolithic, but I think the effect of such things is ultimately fairly small, and Jerry strikes me as a pretty good players' manager. But the front office is another story. It's a shame that the rash of injuries that doomed the season will probably keep Omar and his various feckless or reptilian lieutenants safe from a just reckoning for everything else they've screwed up.

Which is the increasingly inexplicable part.

We all know the Met brass are thin-skinned about bad PR — it's been a weird, vaguely sad obsession in Flushing for years now. But now the Mets repeatedly suffer self-inflicted, Seinfeldian disasters in their efforts to escape bad press. This would be hilarious if it were happening to the Pirates (come to think of it, it routinely does happen to the Pirates), but unfortunately we're talking about the team I love.

Beat reporters and bloggers from all ends of the spectrum reflexively doubt anything the baseball-operations people say. Stories about front-office dysfunction spread often and easily, with no one inclined to disbelieve them. The handling of injuries is so comically inept that players have reportedly complained to the Players Association. (Now there's a way to attract top-tier free agents!) Manuel's “surgery on Thursday” crack wasn't the smartest thing for an employee to say, but he was only saying what everybody who watches this team thinks all the time. Avoiding bad PR? The Mets have become a factory for it.

I've accepted that 2009 is a season from hell. I’m not happy about it, but I know some seasons come up snake eyes. What's harder to accept is that the front office has turned Citi Field into the Augean stables of baseball operations. Unless we get to play the last 72 against the Nationals, it’s time to clean house.

I'm off to San Diego Comic-Con and Maine (because that's a logical itinerary). I fully expect Greg will have this season pointed the right direction by the time I return. Right partner?

It's all Fear right now, but sometimes you gotta have a little Faith. Get your copy of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

Forty years ago today, Neil Armstrong — a 38-year-old former naval aviator and test pilot from Wapakoneta, Ohio — stepped off a ladder and into the charcoal-colored powder of the Sea of Tranquility. Watching on a little TV in an airport lounge in Montreal were the 1969 New York Mets — a band of professional ballplayers aged 22 through 36.

The Mets had split a four-game series with the Expos, with some heroics (a convincing win for Jerry Koosman, Ron Swoboda dashing home from second on a Bobby Pfeil bunt that the Expos let roll all the way to an intersection with the third-base bag) and some worries (24-year-old ace Tom Seaver getting knocked out in the third inning and complaining of a sore shoulder, Tommie Agee smashing into an outfield wall and lying stunned on the warning track for a good 10 minutes). The second game of their doubleheader was the final one before the All-Star Game; the Mets entered the break with a 53-39 record, five games behind the Cubs.

How did the Mets react to the little image of Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin at work 240,000 miles from home? Depends on whom you ask and when you asked them. In a New York Times interactive about reactions to Apollo 11, Seaver recalls that the Mets had gone through customs and stopped to watch the landing at a bar. He notes that even no-nonsense Gil Hodges stopped to see history made, that Tug McGraw became very emotional, insisting that “if we can get a man on the moon, we can win the World Series,” and says that the team took inspiration from the viewing.

But one suspects the mystic chords of memory are at work there, smoothing away dissonance in unconscious pursuit of a better narrative. “Joy in Mudville,” George Vecsey's wonderful 1970 quickie book on the Miracle Mets, tells it another way. The Mets had waited around in a deserted terminal for their chartered 727 back to New York, only to learn the plane had an oil problem and another one would have to be sent from Detroit. So they trudged a quarter-mile with their gear back to a lounge for a hastily arranged dinner. It would take five hours before the 90-minute flight could begin; in the meantime the players stared dully at the moon landing. Swoboda groused that NASA could send a rocket to the moon but Montreal couldn't get a plane off the ground. And Jerry Grote was stewing about a comment Newsday's Joe Gergen had made to a Chicago paper. Gergen had said that “the Mets have about as much chance of winning the pennant as man has of landing on the moon” — which of course was a warning to Cubs fans to take the Mets seriously, what with Apollo 11 ready for launch and all. But somehow Grote was certain the reporter had ripped him and his teammates.

Either way, it was the summer of the moon landing and the summer of the Miracle Mets, and in our minds the two will be forever linked. Or at least they will be in mine. I was nine weeks old when men landed on the moon and five months old when the Mets landed in the promised land, and I spent a good chunk of my childhood reading about both with equal parts happiness that both things had happened after I was (just barely) born and frustration that they would always be secondhand experiences.

And secondhand experiences at an unavoidable distance. I was born in 1969, but my earliest reliable memories are from around 1976. That was the year I started watching the Mets and dreaming that one day I'd see them win the World Series, and reading about the planets and imagining that one day we would go there. And why not? When I was a baby, the Mets had struck down the terrifying Baltimore Orioles and astronauts had taken that first small step/giant leap towards the planets.

But hard on the heels of such hopes came a vague unease. Yes, the Mets had won it all in 1969 — they'd even returned to the World Series in 1973 for an oddly chaotic and ultimately unsuccessful encore, with a strange undercurrent of 1970s-style tension and danger. And yes, men had gone to the moon after Armstrong and Aldrin, zooming around on NASA dune buggies and hitting golf balls. But by 1976 a good chunk of the Miracle Mets had been traded or retired or didn't seem so miraculous anymore — they seemed forever destined to finish third. And no one had walked on the moon for four years. In elementary school my teachers talked about Skylab, but Skylab was boring. Much like the Mets of the mid-Seventies, it didn't go anywhere.

But disappointment was what the 1970s were for. As I got older, I got better at separating the joy of my birthright from the disenchantment of my childhood. I knew the Mets of the late 1970s and early 1980s weren't going anywhere near the World Series, but it was impossible to say they couldn't win one. I knew the astronauts of the late 1970s and early 1980s weren't bound for the moon or Mars, but you had to be awfully cynical to say they wouldn't get there at some point.

It's July 20, 2009. Neil Armstrong is 78. Tom Seaver is 64. The Mets have about as much chance of winning the pennant in 2009 as man has of returning to the moon this year — and if Brian Schneider interprets that as a blogger ripping him and his teammates, he'll be correct. But now there are qualifiers — “in 2009” and “this year.” Beyond that, I have hope. And why wouldn't I? For practically all my life, I've known that amazing things are possible. You could look it up.

The first of three AMAZIN' TUESDAYS is coming to Two Boots Tavern July 21. It will be a Mets night devoted to reading, rooting and Roy Lee Jackson. Get all the details here. And get your copy of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

Thanks to the Cubs' vigilance on our incidental behalf since the All-Star break, the Mets have picked up ground on the Nationals, so we go to Washington holding a 17-game lead in the only race in which we are likely to participate for some time to come. I'd say we have a real chance to lock down fourth place with a good trip.

And that's all I've got anymore. I won't technically give up while the Mets are single-digits from first (9 games) or the Wild Card (7 games). Should they gather steam and enter August within five or so games of a playoff spot, their chances must be taken seriously.

Also, if my cat Avery grows wings, I'd urge you to consider him a bird.

But Avery's not going to grow wings. And the Mets aren't going to stop barrelling in the wrong direction. The only — only — thing we have going for us on the four of five days through the rotation that aren't spoken for by Mr. Santana is if we have to leap out of a burning National League East pennant race, the Nats will provide the mattress to break our fall.

Or as an erstwhile co-worker from Alabama liked to say, “Thank the Lord for Mississippi.”

Fernando Nieve, who would have had a tough time getting the ball ahead of Roger Craig, Jay Hook and Al Jackson when this franchise first drew breath, was the latest victim of the occupational hazard of being a Met Sunday night. He had been doing his job more effectively than most of his teammates for quite a spell. Fernando Nieve, international man of mystery when we grabbed him off waivers in March, was our No. 2 starter based on both merit and process of elimination. Now he's been eliminated by tough luck. He ran hard to beat out a high chopper in the top of the second and there he went, strained right quad and all. Nieve will go to New York for an MRI, which is the Met equivalent of that farm upstate where you tell your kid dear ol' Rover went. Vaya con Dios, Fernando. And while the Mets misdiagnose his condition, keep in mind that by changing one letter, Nieve can become Niese pretty quickly.

Natch, an injury where a guy has to be carted off the field doesn't mean he'll really be placed on the DL, not here. We're already carrying thirteen pitchers, if you want to count Tim Redding under that heading, and we've seen the Mets don't like to make moves that clear the roster of the lame and the halting in order to make room for the conceivably healthy. I'm guessing it's because they know once they say adios to a hurt player they will never, ever see him again. Apparently, the Mets organization — despite its implied and now stated distaste for celebrating its own history (part and parcel of its top executives' transparent disdain for their brand and their customers) — can be sentimental in weird ways.

The upside of the innovative four-man bench Omar Minaya has put at Jerry Manuel's disposal is it allows the manager uncommon latitude in terms of emergency fill-ins when starting pitchers pull quads. We lead the league in emergency fill-ins. Hell, we lead the league in emergencies. Enter Tim Redding, the most unlikely Mets pitcher extant considering the word is out that he's gone in all but body. One of the truly great headlines of the season appeared on page A75 of the Nassau Edition of Sunday's Newsday:

Redding is pariah in clubhouse

It's not because Redding expressed a thought that could be construed as hate speech or because he had a Ponzi scheme cooking that was just busted up by the Feds…and it's not because each Met has suddenly developed shame from being associated with other spectacularly subpar baseball players. It's simply become common knowledge that eight men out in the bullpen means somebody's about to take the proverbial pipe. On other, shall we say…professional teams, a fellow who has proven dreadful as a starter and useless as a reliever might have already been issued his golden ticket out of town and would, by now, be blaming his stratospheric earned run average on inconsistent use (you know Redding's going to do that, and at this point, who has the energy to argue the salmonella-infected chicken/rotten egg point?).

In Newsday, David Lennon somehow made me feel sorry for Tim Redding and his immensely undeserved salary. “Half the guys won't even talk to me,” the outcast pitcher said. (I wonder if the incommunicativeness includes his catchers refusing to put down one finger for a fastball, et al, or if Schneider and Santos simply avert their eyes from the mound.) Of course he's a pariah. We've known baseball works this way since we read Ball Four and Jim Bouton described what it's like to be sent down: “[A]s I started throwing stuff into my bag I could feel a wall, invisible but real, forming around me. I was suddenly an outsider, a different person, someone to be shunned, a leper.” It is tradition to avoid acknowledging the guy who almost any one of them in that clubhouse can be at any moment. There but for the bizarre machinations of the godawful front office go close to two-dozen men who have no business suiting up for a big league team — even this one.

But Tim Redding's still here. And because Fernando Nieve took an unfortunate tumble, Tim Redding was called upon to enter a scoreless game in the bottom of the second. He commenced to make it scorey. I thought for a fleeting moment that the pariah might rise up, save his season, save our season or at least give us something to savor between Johan starts. But no, not this year, not this bunch, not this pitcher. Three innings, four hits, three walks, five runs, two earned — though as Bobby Ojeda (who is the most scathing home-team analyst you've ever heard dissect a home-team loss) said afterward on SNY, “errors, schmerrors,” or words to that effect. Redding and his 7.16 ERA — still lower than Ollie's! — can go back to sitting on the bubble now, thankful that internal Met ineptitude has kept it from bursting altogether.

The Mets faced adversity and Atlanta Sunday and each creamed them decisively. Who says doubleheaders are dead?

But believe it or not, we still love our Mets. Thus, the first of three AMAZIN' TUESDAYS is coming to Two Boots Tavern July 21. It will be a Mets night devoted to reading, rooting and Roy Lee Jackson. Get all the details here. And get your copy of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

It's fairly standard procedure for Jerry Manuel to go through as many as a half-dozen pitchers to cover one regulation game. It's a union rule, I think. Thus, I suppose it doesn't necessarily matter if he wants to spread members of his eight-man bullpen out per usual, like with a starter pushing himself overboard by the fifth, à la Big Goofy Pelf Friday night, or have them pop out of the Volkswagen Beetle Bozo-style one after another as he did in the eighth Saturday.

Actually, it works better when the starter provides seven innings of stellar work in the fashion of a Johan Santana. It likely means things are looking good for the Mets or, considering it's the Mets we're talking about, not so bad. It was indeed not so bad going to the eighth after Johan continued his Santanalicious pitching of recent outings. The Braves didn't appear any stronger offensively than we did the night before (when we were yet again two-hit, though for what it was worth, we could have been no-hit — honestly, would have you noticed a difference?). Problem was the Mets of Saturday hit like the Mets of Friday who have been hitting without connecting in any particularly meaningful manner for the past 38 games.

Just get Johan a couple of runs, we've been pleading approximately every fifth day since March 31, 2008. This time the Mets took us literally. They got him a couple of runs in the sixth via five baserunners, two basehits and one baseball that reached the outfield. We don't ask the runs be scored in a forceful nature. We just want the numbers. And we — Johan — got 'em.

When a starting pitcher comes to the plate, we suggest he “help his own cause.” Johan must always help his own cause, no matter where he stands on the diamond, because nobody else is going to do it for him. When it came to the bottom of the seventh, that immense 2-0 lead in his pocket, the only man who could help the cause of Johan Santana was Johan Santana. His cause was getting out of a bases-loaded, one-out jam. That it was Johan's own jam didn't matter. The key was leaving it to The Man, not to the pen. Jerry Manuel's smartest move in ages (smarter than his deciding to skip those manager-optional media-interaction training sessions) was letting Santana find his own way out. And he did. Struck out McLouth, got Prado to ground weakly to Wright at third. Wright picked it up and stepped on the bag, which was fine. I would have preferred Johan had done it as I'd prefer Johan do everything on this team, but even The Man can only do so much.

One-hundred fifteen pitches in the books — 75 of them strikes — meant Johan couldn't help anybody's cause going to the bottom of the eighth. I'm not certain why not, considering he was going on six days' rest and Tony La Russa didn't make him do anything more strenuous in St. Louis than tip his cap, but in the 21st century, you don't ask an ace of a floundering team to go more than 115 pitches unless the season is on the line (which is where this season dangles every single game until it inevitably plops to the ground). Alas, it was July 18 now, not September 27 then; therefore, Santana's done and it's up to the bullpen to accumulate three little Brave outs in the eighth. Just get those three outs without surrendering two runs. Just get it to Frankie Rodriguez.

Easy to say. Less so to do.

• Feliciano comes in and Chipper homers as Chipper will. The margin of error has been reduced to one run.

• Feliciano stays in and gives up a single to McCann.

• Green comes in and Santos throws out the pinch-runner for McCann at second in what all — even those unlistenable, irrepressible, weather-vane schmucks Thom Brennaman and Eric Karros Fox hires to ruin its Game of the Week telecasts — agree was the result of a missed sign. One out.

• Green walks Escobar.

• Green, still in, gets Diaz for the second out.

• Misch comes in and, after the schmucks make much of Misch not allowing any of his first batters to reach since joining the Mets, allows his first batter, Kotchman, to reach via single.

• Misch stays in and walks good ol' Ryan Church on four pitches.

The runners are three. The outs are two. The lead is one.

Stokes comes in. Fourth pitcher of the inning. It's taken three pitchers to collect two outs, a twist on the defunct NBA “three to make two” free throw rule. It's both amazing and completely predictable it would come to a fourth pitcher after two-thirds of an inning. Of course the shutting out that Johan did is fading fast. Of course the bases are loaded and it's so close to a tie or probably a deficit that we can taste it. We can taste a tie or a loss. It tastes like lima beans.

Oh, look, it's Greg Norton coming in. My spine has been replaced by a shiver.

Greg Norton hit perhaps the most instantly obscure death blow home run in Mets history last September. In its time, approximately 4:00 PM last September 14, Norton's ninth-inning, pinch-hit, three-run blast off rent-a-closer Luis Ayala blared the trumpet that for a second consecutive denouement, The collapse is coming! The collapse is coming! The Mets entered that Sunday afternoon in first place, two games ahead of the Phillies. Ayala had been getting the job done…as had Stokes. So much would transpire between September 14 and September 28, with so many Met relievers blowing up innings left and right, it's easy to forget the Norton bomb helped detonate 2008 every bit as much as the Pendletons and Scioscias of yore did damage to their seasons. Plot points can be similar, but narratives tend to vary.

We don't have Luis Ayala anymore. But we do have Brian Stokes. And September's crush has clearly come early this year. Our viability has vanished and our plausibility is mostly pretend. But if Brian Stokes lets Norton address the ball as he did at Shea ten months earlier…after Johan has bequeathed the bullpen a shutout…after the two-hitter the night before…after every hollow bat and fallen star and thundering blunder in 2009…well, if Stokes can't get Norton out, the season is truly and completely over save for 72 games' worth of dog days.

A ball.

A foul.

A ball.

Another ball.

It's three-and-one on Greg Norton. The run that's scored was off Feliciano. The man on third was put there by Green. First and second are filled by way of Misch. Now Stokes will make it a true team effort by walking in the tying run. Or, probably, worse. The camera picks up Buffalo Bison oughta-be Bobby Parnell preparing to mop up this mess in the pen. Jerry Manuel is about to call on his fifth reliever of the eighth inning, none of whom can be legitimately considered his eighth-inning man, none of whom is his closer. Frankie, apparently, must not be unwrapped until Christmas.

But Norton, hitting a cool .116 despite whatever residual haunting he has going for him, swings through strike two. Then he does the same through strike three.

Inning over. The Braves don't tie the score.

Holy smokes! Something went not wrong!

Then the Mets go out and mysteriously add three runs to their side of the ledger. It's accomplished so oddly — it involves both a successful suicide squeeze and Alex Cora not making an automatic out — that maybe it should be included in the next book of sports conspiracy theories. Nothing theoretical about these additional tallies, however: they're real and they're spectacular, or at least as spectacular as 2009 is capable of getting. The Mets have tacked on enough runs to make this, irony of irony, a non-save ninth. Frankie does us the courtesy of pitching it anyway, and the Mets win 5-1. Rain in South Florida ensures we'll end the night having picked up a whole half-game on Philadelphia. We're eight out of first, six from the Wild Card. We still have virtually no chance at either, mind you, but it doesn't cost anything but a few shreds of sanity to keep track.

Last year it was a bumbling bullpen (plus Daniel Murphy left standing at third with nobody out in the bottom of the ninth of a tie game in the unlikely event you've let it go) that essentially ended everything. This year the bullpen's easy to overlook as a root cause of systemic failure because it hasn't been the prime culprit too terribly often. But geez, Feliciano to Green to Misch to Stokes to almost Parnell just to escape one inning with a one-run lead…as the Beatle not headlining Flushing these days put it so succinctly, it don't come easy.

And — as somebody else kind of big might have added — that's the way it is.

The first of three AMAZIN' TUESDAYS is coming to Two Boots Tavern July 21. It will be a Mets night devoted to reading, rooting and Randy Tate. Get all the details here. And get your copy of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

Dozing in front of a game is generally an excellent way to lose track of what's happening. But sometimes one sense is sufficient.

For example, with Brian McCann at the plate I had my eyes shut and was lying in bed, drifting somewhere between a coma and mere snoozing. The second McCann's bat connected with Mike Pelfrey's latest sinker that wasn't inclined to sink, I muttered “Fuck” and burrowed back into the pillow, eyes still shut, seeking a more comfortable position.

And I think I've found it — it's away from what remains of this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad game. Somebody wake me in 2010, OK?

The first of three AMAZIN' TUESDAYS is coming to Two Boots Tavern July 21. It will be a Mets night devoted to reading, rooting and Roger Cedeño. Get all the details here. And get your copy of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

I think I started getting excited around 3 p.m. — the Mets are playing tonight! Weirdly, it was almost like Opening Day II — no, I didn't have particularly high hopes, not after the torrent of injuries and bad luck and craptacular baseball that was the first half of 2009, and not after Omar Minaya brought that first half to a thudding halt by making a jaw-droppingly stupid trade. (Yes, I advocating trading Ryan Church. I don't remember advocating trading him for a player who is quantifiably worse in every measurable capacity except birthdate, though.) But still, this is baseball — take it away for 72 hours and I was a wreck no matter what the standings say. They're the Mets, and if I can watch them play baseball I will, even if I suspect that baseball will wind up being painful to watch.

So I was happy at 3 p.m. Heck, by 5 p.m. I was thinking that they do have a pretty soft schedule, and by 6 p.m. I was thinking good thoughts about Angels Pagan and Berroa, and by 7 p.m. we practically had the division won. Six-and-a-half out, so what? That's nothing that can't be cured by a 12-game winning streak, or by Jeff Francoeur suddenly becoming a convert to the Church of OBP (crap, I said “Church”), or by Jose and the Carloses being rebuilt in a secret operating room by government agents. (STRONGER! FASTER!) Bring on the Braves!

But that feeling faded fast. Oliver Perez got through the first with unaccustomed rapidity as Joshua and I watched. The kid was pleased, but I shook my head, muttering that two of those outs had gone awfully far. Being proved right within three pitches by Yunel Escobar and Garret Anderson might have given my son newfound respect for me, but I would have been happier if he'd gone to sleep thinking his dad was sure a pessimistic bringdown.

Oliver pitched tolerably; these days that's grounds for optimism. It was somewhat cruelly ironic for him to start the second half against Derek Lowe, who's morphed from The Pitcher Who We Sensibly Didn't Want to Pay $15 Million When He's 40 to The One That Got Away and Left Us Watching Fuckin' Oliver Perez. Honesty and the fact that you can check compel me to admit that I thought paying Lowe that much for that long would have been nuts and bringing back Oliver was an acceptable gamble, so I can't do more than mutter on that score. And I already bitched about Church-for-Francoeur, so let's just move on.

By the way, this blog post went through rehearsal with a lot of bitching about Brian Schneider and his apparent inability to block the plate. But then Schneider made that insane, backhanded spear of an Ollieball that was headed for the backstop. I don't know how he did it; Keith was so discombobulated he said “Jesus” on the air, and so Schneider not quite doing two things at once was forgiven. Though I'm still not buying a Toyota from him or harboring any desire to see him in 2010.

Anyway, after a brief Met uprising matched by the Braves, it was down to the middle relievers, as approximately 68 trillion baseball games have been before. Whose reliever will be unlucky and/or bad first? It was ours, of course — Pedro Feliciano committing the oft-punished sin of walking the leadoff hitter, which led to Bobby Parnell against Chipper Jones and me sitting glumly in bed knowing how that would end. I've long maintained Chipper will get a standing ovation at Citi Field when he arrives for his apparent last at-bat, heralded for being a worthy enemy all these long years. Yes, but we'll also be cheering the fact that he soon will no longer be able to bedevil us. How many generations of young Met hurlers has Larry Wayne sent trudging off how many mounds?

As a final note, this game did have a vivid demonstration of how fundamentally unfair baseball can be. Pat Misch — whom I only recently stopped confusing with Jon Switzer — is pitching in the eighth. Anderson slaps a ball into the hole that Alex Cora knocks down, but it squirts away just long enough for Anderson to be safe at first. Casey Kotchman sneaks one between short and third. Greg Norton — precursor to the most depressing Mets Dash in history, now hitting under .100 — hits a well-placed changeup one-handed for a little parachute and the insurance run. Nate McLouth then hits a tracer — easily the hardest-hit ball of the inning. So of course that's the one that winds up in the second baseman's glove. Baseball, man.

Ah well. 7 1/2 back, cavalry not detectably closer, front office should be kept away from telephones and email to fend off further absurd moves. And somehow, despite all this, I wish it were tomorrow, with Mike Pelfrey and Jair Jurrjens warming up and the evening cooling down and the game just a few minutes away. Baseball, man.

The first of three AMAZIN' TUESDAYS is coming to Two Boots Tavern July 21. It will be a Mets night devoted to reading, rooting and Roger Cedeño. Get all the details here. And get your copy of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

Once a year I forget how much I hate every player on 15 rival rosters and root for the National League All-Stars. But every year, given the shark-infested waters under the various bridges we've burned ('06 NLCS, '07/'08 collapses), it gets harder to muster that ol' team spirit.

It got more difficult between innings at Sunday's Mets game when the CitiVision operators offered a “salute” to the 2009 Senior Circuit standard-bearers.

They commenced by showing us first baseman Albert Pujols. I don't think anybody in the stands was really paying attention at that point. No reaction whatsoever for someone who usually generates jeers and bad 33-month old memories. I applauded so softly that it was imperceptible even to myself. But I did applaud. At this point Albert Pujols is the George Washington of the National League. He's at the head of the list and you can't dispute his ranking.

Then second baseman Chase Utley. This unleashed the furies. BOOO!!! Chase Utley? Signature player of our current archrivals? The only batter in the history of civilization whose home run stroke has been shown to have benefited from Citi Field's contorted dimensions? I know we're all in this together come Tuesday night, but nobody here wants to look at Chase Utley unless it's video of him falling into a pit on top of…

Shortstop Hanley Ramirez? YEECH! And BOOOOOO!!!!!! Hanley Ramirez is a one-man teal wrecking crew. He plays on while Reyes gingerly jogs. His team is ahead of ours in the standings, which isn't nearly the Marlins' biggest crime based on their accumulated record of late September misconduct in these parts.

Third baseman David Wright. Supportive applause, warm cheers. Our guy. The Mets brass sometimes likes to promote its own. Sometimes.

Outfield starters next. They begin with Carlos Beltran. Good choice. He won't play in St. Louis. I don't know if he'll even show up (probably not). But nice to remember he was having a good season before going down. Another positive reception.

Outfielder Ryan Braun. A pin could drop.

Outfielder Raul Ibañez. That's not Ra-uuuul we're responding, but it's his uniform absorbing the abuuuuse more than the man. He hasn't been around here enough to meaningfully stoke our collective ire (though he's sure making strides).

I'm thinking we're moving onto the pitchers, but I've conveniently forgotten the other position whose starter is voted on by the fans. And the Mets being the Mets, it is his face now featured on our screen.

Catcher Yadier Molina.

AAAAAUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

AAAAAUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

Part of me respects the Mets' attempt to accurately complete the lineup. I don't like when history is revised to make people comfortable (our 2006 highlights DVD implies Game Seven ended with Endy's catch). But the Mets can sure be weirdly selective in what they choose to emphasize. The key, I suppose, is making certain Mets fans feel at least a little belittled by their own organization. Two weeks ago, during the Subway Series finale (the score of which was 3-2 at the time), they skipped the Eighth Inning Singalong altogether. The Eighth Inning Singalong is a dopey conceit, but this was when “Meet The Mets” had trumped “Sweet Caroline” as the song of record. To the extent the Singalong is liked or even anticipated, “Meet The Mets” is the reason why. “Meet The Mets” is our song.

But gee, you could hear somebody in charge thinking, if we play “Meet The Mets,” a good portion of this crowd at this particular game might mock it. And since we can't count on our Citi Field patrons showing any more life than our baseball team, let's just skip the whole thing.

The organist did play “Sweet Caroline” during the pregame that Sunday night, incidentally. They really can't help themselves, can they? (It was booed at 7:20 prior to an 8:05 start.)

As usual, I digress. The Mets plastered, without a satiric caption, the face of Yadier Molina, the single worst villain from a practical standpoint in Mets history. Quick — name someone else who hit a home run that almost literally ended a Mets postseason. Do the Yankees blow kisses to Bill Mazeroski or Luis Gonzalez? Falling down the Chase-Hanley hole isn't good enough for Yadier. Get those Arpielle mini-excavators to race over his supine body, and that we can applaud. Better yet, announce Yadier Molina's All-Star image and post “NO PICTURE AVAILABLE”. You don't need to be John McEnroe to declare YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS about expecting a respectful round of applause from a building filled with Mets fans when you're beaming Yadier Molina in oversized living (unfortunately) color.

Catcher Yadier Molina.

AAAAAUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

AAAAAUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

It crossed my mind that maybe somebody in the control booth was having diabolically ironic fun with us. But I don't think the fourth-grade interns they hire for stuff like this go that deep.

They finished up by showing Johan and Frankie, and they were clapped upon, but geez. After the Mets sent their best to Chase Utley, Hanley Ramirez and Yadier Molina, it's no wonder the apple was too embarrassed to show its face more than once.