There's a most pleasing sliver of my baseball season that recurs now and again, one I tend to forget about as soon as it's transpired, which is too bad. It's the great underreported gem of any year. I don't think I truly noticed it myself until yesterday.

Let's say it's a Sunday morning and I've made arrangements to meet somebody outside the ballpark — whichever ballpark it happens to be this year — kind of early, like an hour before gametime. Doesn't happen too often, and when it does, I'm a little cranky at first because it means sacrificing the few winks I generally get between Ed Randall and Ed Coleman; my sleeping patterns are perpetually askew, so I appreciate the extra hour here and there.

But if I'm going to push myself out the door for anything on a Sunday morning, it's going to be for a Mets game. Push, I did Sunday. Down to the LIRR station, up to the LIRR platform (where I run into my junior high English teacher and her husband; he's a Mets fan who has almost finished my book and tells me we had essentially the same mother — the things you never imagine learning while slogging through eighth grade), onto the 11:01 to Woodside. Except for presenting my ten-trip to the conductor once before Jamaica and once after, I'm cut off from the world by my iPod and several sections of the Times. Come the first sighting of the Interboro Jackie Robinson Parkway, I trade my reading glasses for my distance glasses, stuff all reading materials back into my 2004-model Sports Bag Day Catch The Energy sports bag and prepare to disembark. Moments later, it's Woodside, where the LIRR connection is too far off to stand around and wait for, so I invest two flights of stairs and one Metrocard swipe in the 7.

It's Sunday, so there's no express. Weeknights I won't take the local. Weeknights are too rushed for the local, even if I'm an hour early for the game as occasionally happens. Who want to make eight stops when you can make only two? On Sunday, there's no such decision to make. It's Sunday, so it's all local.

And it's all good. On Sunday morning, when it's not yet noon, the local can take its time. On Sunday morning, the first two cars are blissfully uncrowded. It's not a matter of getting a seat. It's a matter of which seat I'd like. Sometimes I want the window because I need WFAN reception, but I've sort of fallen out of that slice of the ritual. The iPod doesn't leave my ears for a long time. I've got a big chunk of bench to myself, I've got my music, I've got my reading glasses on and my papers out again.

It's a sweet ride. Well-paced. There's no onslaught of Manhattan passengers at 74th Street. It's too soon for that. There are just enough Mets fans so I don't feel like an oddball and just enough neighborhood folks — Jackson Heights, Corona, Flushing — to remind me there's a world outside the Gates where I'm headed. On weeknights I feel like something of an intruder among tired people returning home from work. Sunday morning is Sunday morning. Nobody's intruding on anyone. There's plenty of time, there's plenty of space.

I look up from my reading and try to gauge the Mets fans. Which ones are the habitual attendees, the ones whose grim devotion to the cause puts mine to shame? Which ones are the couples whose boyfriend half got the tickets in hope of impressing or indoctrinating the girlfriend half? Which ones are the citydwellers who haven't been to a game in years but somebody gave them tickets; who only go to a game once a year and treat it as an adventure; who like the Mets fine but could take or leave them? It's easy enough to make out the parents who are raising their kids right. I wonder how many innings the children on board will sit through, squirm through, nosh through, whine through, want stuff through and show just enough interest through so the dad is given heart to do this all again when they're just a little older.

I like the out-of-town visitors, especially when a team without a huge following is playing the Mets and that team isn't a current or ancient enemy. We've had our battles with Cincinnati, to be sure, but hostilities have been minimal in this century. There's always a trickle of Reds fans or their counterparts on these veritable special guest occasions. They're fine until further notice. I like the nonaligned riders, too, the stray American League fan on a ballpark sojourn. I don't mind taking out my earbuds to give directions, though “Mets-Willets Point” is pretty hard to miss.

Past Junction Boulevard. Past 103rd Street. Past 111th Street. Into the station of choice. The papers are back in the bag again and the distance glasses are on again. Our car empties. Every car empties. More Mets fans than I realized on the rest of the train even if it's still before noon. So many different variations on Metswear. Plenty of homages to WRIGHT, of course. BELTRAN and REYES are active. SANTANA pitches every day if you are to believe the backs of the jerseys and t-shirts. Somebody's still clinging to PIAZZA. There's always a SEAVER just as there's always someone who won't waste a perfectly good ALOMAR even if Alomar was a perfect waste. PULSIPHER and PAYTON sneak through the turnstiles from another era. Somebody handed down a CARTER to the next generation. And somebody else goes to a lot of trouble and secures something otherworldly like a Chiba Lotte Marines top with VALENTINE 2 on the back (when such exotica is spotted, one must stop observing, step up and salute with a “hey, nice jersey!”)

Early on a Sunday, there won't be much in the way of chanting. If it's the Reds or some other cameo-appearer, there won't be smack talk. The drinking teens are taking a later train, so it's not particularly loud. Some 40,000 may find their way into our ultimate destination in the next hour or so, but it's not a stampede from the 7, through the station, down the staircase. It's steady. Steady and reassuring. I've been doing this forever. Shea Stadium becomes Citi Field and I'm still doing it. Gate E is now the Left Field Gate, but the principle remains the same. Sometimes, if tickets were distributed in advance, we meet inside. Sometimes, if someone's grilling, we meet at somebody's van. Sometimes texts and cell calls fly. Sometimes it's as simple as the solitude of the stairs, the plaza, a side trip to my brick and the appointed spot at the appointed moment, a little after noon. The earbuds stay in until the person of the hour emerges as promised.

The initial recognition, the warm greeting, the cheery interaction between friends is the payoff on the ride. You were looking forward to this and this, it turns out, was worth looking forward to. A dozen sidebars will reveal themselves, other swell Mets fans will join in, but eventually, because there is a main event involved, the substance of the game supercedes all. You enjoyed the ride, you enjoy your friends, you embrace your surroundings, but the fortunes of the afternoon are at last in the hands of the Mets. This particular Sunday, they hit plenty, they pitch just enough and they win their second in a row, a streak that will stay current for several days running thanks to the vagaries of the July schedule. The Mets are on a roll. Life, therefore, rocks.

The ride home will be better because of what just happened. The ride in, however, was guaranteed to be good no matter what was going to occur. It was something comfortingly familiar yet it was loaded with anticipation for the unknown. I've done it so many times and I always want to do it again. Especially on a sleepy Sunday morning.

• Baseball takes an All-Star Break but Faith and Fear in Flushing plays through. Look for our annual series of midsummer essays to carry you through to 7:00 Thursday night.

• You might want to christen the return to real baseball July 16 with a trip to Foley's NY on W. 33rd St. between Fifth and Sixth, across from the Empire State Building. As the Mets take on Ryan Church and the Braves in Atlanta at 7:00 PM, Foley's will feature the stylings of Frank Messina, the Mets Poet. We saw Frank at Varsity Letters in April, and he (and his book) are worth your attention.

• As long as you're making plans to take in a road game at a public venue, we suggest you mark your calendars for 7:00 PM, July 21, the first of Three AMAZIN' TUESDAYS at Two Boots Tavern on the Lower East Side. I'll be hosting along with Jon Springer of Mets By The Numbers, and our special guests will include Paul Lukas of ESPN Uni Watch and Matt Silverman, co-author (with Keith Hernandez) of Shea Goodbye. All the salient details are here. We'd love to see you for an immensely Mets evening of reading, rooting and Rey Ordoñez.

• Read the book my junior high English teacher's husband is enjoying: Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available at local bookstore and online from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Join the discussion on Facebook.

Jeff Francoeur is the best thing to happen to this ballclub of ours since the butcher and the baker and the people down the street gathered to make an appointment to get acquainted with the Mets of New York town.

Jeff Francoeur is the rising tide that lifts all boats: Johan Santana threw his best game in ages; Omir Santos rediscovered his magic; Angel Pagan stayed healthy; and Bachman-Turner Overdrive blared.

Jeff Francoeur is the blanket that covers right field, the bolt that solidifies the lineup, the spark 24 otherwise flickering personalities required in order to light up Citi Field.

Jeff Francoeur is the reason the Mets are banishing Gold's from their hot dogs and topping all Franc-furters with Frenchy's mustard.

Jeff Francoeur is wearing No. 12 because he was thought to be no more than half the player Willie Mays was — but now that's he's proven that estimate was off by 100%, he'll be suiting up in No. 24 tomorrow.

Jeff Francoeur is on the Mets and the Mets are 1-0 with him and for one game, we the hypercritical Mets fans have no complaints…none at all.

Jeff Francoeur joined the struggling Mets and the Mets stopped struggling. Tell the boys from 1969 there's a new miracle worker in town.

Join us July 21 for the first of Three AMAZIN' TUESDAYS at Two Boots Tavern, a Mets night devoted to reading, rooting and, of course, Jeff Francoeur. Get all the details here. And if you can take a moment's breather from rightfully praising Jeff Francoeur, 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.

What's the big deal about Jonathan Sanchez? We have no hitters in our lineup all the time.

On the Friday night the Mets traded Church, their offense may as well have stayed in temple. Then again, every night is the Sabbath for these bats. A day of rest…a week of rest…a month of rest…there's a reason Bob's Discount Furniture, purveyor of sleeper sofas, sponsors the Mets.

Meet the Slumber Company. And it's not like the rightfielder we just traded for is Dave Parker.

Then again, why get out of bed when you're facing Bronson Arroyo, the second-greatest pitcher in the history of baseball (bowing only to Joel Piñeiro)? Arroyo toys with the Mets over and over. I can only assume he's won three or four Cy Youngs.

Arroyo (21 runs surrendered in his three previous starts against non-Mets) is clearly unbeatable. The guy from the other night on the Dodgers is unbeatable. So is the Phillies starter last Sunday. They're so awesome I couldn't remember their names without looking. No offense (as if we have any to give) to Clayton Kershaw and Joe Blanton. It's just that it's getting hard to keep track of who shuts us out. The Mets have been shut out three times in five games by three different teams. They've absorbed a shutout in five of their past six full series. Since scoring nine inexplicable runs against Pittsburgh on July 2, they've scored 10 runs in seven games. The last Met to homer was Fernando Tatis, more than a week ago. The last Met to steal a base was Frank Taveras, around 1980.

The Reds launched two balls that somehow cleared the unclearable fences of Yosem-iti Field (last Mets home homer was by Gary Sheffield seven home games ago). Can't do anything about those once they're gone. It was the run Cincinnati scored in between the Joey Votto and Lance Nix blasts that illustrated why this team has exhausted its slack quota vis-à-vis its lack of Reyes, Beltran, Delgado, whoever. Brandon Phillips is on third. Jerry Hairston misses a squeeze bunt. Phillips is as dead as the Mets lineup. Brian Schneider, who somehow survives while all associated with him are whisked away, fires to David Wright. All Phillips can do is create a basepath of distraction inside the third base line and hope the Mets botch an easy out. And it works. Wright throws a little high to Schneider and Schneider is completely flummoxed. It flicks off his glove and Phillips steps on the plate.

I cursed out David Wright's off-target throw for a minute or two, which made me feel guilty since David must be crying himself to sleep most nights. Switching over to MLB Network during the next commercial break made me feel better. The throw, according to Dave Valle and repeated slo-mo replay, wasn't off-target. Schneider, the big-deal defensive catcher, presented Wright with a terrible target, too high and too far to the right of the plate. It wasn't the fault of DW after all.

It was all BS.

Wright and Schneider aren't Buffalo herdsmen. They're not playing because somebody in front of them isn't. They're the starters. They're the veterans. And they can't execute a play in which a baserunner is dying to be executed. It's just one play, but it's been a season of so many plays like that. Amid nonexistent hitting and barely adequate starting pitching, the Mets can't throw from home to third to home without giving up a run.

No wonder we're caught in a most un-Wise big city crunch.

Into the teeth of 2009 steps Jeff Francoeur, so I'm feeling better. They built largely unnecessary Citi Field primarily to take our money, but also allegedly from some vague desire to promote outfield adventures. Jeff's our man, I guess. He's got that cannon of an arm. So did Ellis Valentine. Come to think of it, so did Ryan Church.

What did Church do so badly that he needed to be traded? Nothing from what I saw, but the same could be said of what he did particularly well to merit staying on, at least since the several times the Mets played bocce with his noggin. Ryan, his propensity for misfortune and his recurring bewildered expression would have fit in well on the Wes Westrum Mets, which is pretty much what the Jerry Manuel Mets have become, save for the insertion of inappropriate managerial cackling where “ohmigod, wasn't that awful?” used to go.

Wanna keep Ryan Church? Would have been fine with me. Wanna trade Ryan Church? Fine with me, too. His place in Mets history was secured when he took the last swing ever taken at Shea Stadium. It was for an out, which is what Ryan Church is now. Given the pair of mishandled concussions to his coconut, I wouldn't wish the door hit him on the way out, but I do wonder whether he remembered to touch third.

Jeff Francoeur? I tend to be automatically impressed when we get a guy I've heard of for doing something other than sucking out loud his entire career, provided he's measurably younger than Moises Alou. My first-blush image of Francoeur is frozen from 2005, the last of the Brave division winners. Francoeur came bursting off the assembly line with Brian McCann and seemingly a dozen homegrown Atlantans, making our lives miserable for the first and presumably not final time. I'm still surprised Ryan Langerhans and Pete Orr aren't superstars.

I needed to be reminded that in the pantheon of Braves rightfielders Jeff Francoeur wasn't the second coming of Henry Aaron, that he hasn't been burning it up these past couple of seasons, that he was briefly demoted to the minors in 2008, that he had been playing his way out of his hometown for a while — and even I was cognizant that he will swing at anything.

That said, what the hell? This team was spiraling downward with Ryan Church, so it can attempt to alter its trajectory with Jeff Francoeur. He's here because the Mets didn't want their guy and the Braves didn't want theirs; because Jeff's only 25; and because he doesn't carry an onerous price tag (the Braves threw in a few bucks to make the contracts even…when was the last time a team had to send the Mets money?). Once Francoeur is offed, which seems inevitable given the Mets' perpetually revolving right field door, one suspects he won't be missed. I've watched Victor Diaz come and Lastings Milledge go amid the heightened hopes that enshrouded them both. I've heard Omar Minaya hail the potential longevity of Xavier Nady and the upside of Ryan Church. Who can take this position or, for that matter, this general manager seriously anymore?

This is Kevin Bass in 1992, Richard Hidalgo in 2004. This is a Mets team with limited to diminishing upside taking a flyer on a guy who's fallen from favor elsewhere. This is what it's come to. In the context of where 2009 now sits — a 12-24 record since June 1 — acquiring Jeff Francoeur, also known as “doing something, anything,” is as encouraging a development as anything else the Mets have produced lately.

Which in itself is pretty discouraging.

Trade sitting home on July 21 for joining us on July 21 for the first of Three AMAZIN' TUESDAYS at Two Boots Tavern, a Mets night devoted to reading, rooting and Roy McMillan. 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.

You read it here first on February 24: Ryan Church would not last the season as the Mets' primary starting rightfielder because nobody lasts the season as the Mets' primary starting rightfielder two seasons running. Well, maybe Jeff Francoeur will. The ex-Brave with the great arm arrives in exchange for Ryan, who hopefully leaves with his head intact. Francoeur, unlike Church, has a track record of playing practically every day. I wonder how long it will take for him to contract a rare tropical disease or crash into Angel Pagan.

Now Rivera brings the hands together…

Runners take a lead at all three bases.

One-two to Franco…

LINE DRIVE base hit into right field!

Henderson scores!

Here comes Alfonzo…

Here comes O'Neill's throw to the plate…

Alfonzo slides…

He's safe, the Mets win it!

THE METS WIN IT!

MATT FRANCO WITH A LINE DRIVE SINGLE TO RIGHT AND HE'S BEING MOBBED BY HIS TEAMMATES!

Matt Franco, a two-run single off Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the ninth inning, and the Mets win it, nine to eight!

Livan Hernandez, being a student of baseball history, was not going to let the 40th anniversary of Tom Seaver's fateful encounter with Jimmy Qualls go by unheralded. No, Livan Lacking offered Tom Terrific a ballfield tribute: To celebrate Seaver recording 25 outs before Qualls' clean single, Livan decided to pay homage to a Hall of Famer, recording no outs before allowing a Rafael Furcal ground-rule double, then a bunch more mess as the Mets staggered to an 11-2 loss.

This game, in addition to being dull and thoroughly depressing, lacked even the lowest-common-denominator pleasures of white balls arcing over green fields. It seemed to last about five weeks. After Ryan Church hit into a double play and Omir Santos popped one up, I dragged myself upright to turn off the TV, annoyed but mostly relieved that it was over. But no Dodgers shook hands.

Wha? Talk about hubris, you smug L.A. bast — oh, fuck me, that was only the 8th. NOOOO!!!!

I can't even tip my hat to the die-hards who stuck it out down nine runs on an unseasonably cool — heck, downright cold — July night that featured hit-allowing by both Livan Hernandez and Tim Redding. You all really had nothing better to do? If Moonlight Graham had been playing in this mess, he would have stepped over the foul line around the fifth inning so he could morph into an 80-year-old and shuffle the hell away from it.

When Gary Sheffield got ejected, I half-wished that Marty Foster would pop out of my TV and eject me. No more TV for you, Fry, and don't let me catch you sneaking a listen to the radio or I'll file a report with the league office. Oh, if only. The Livan Death March had miles left to go, before I could drop exhausted by the trail. Which, I suppose, makes it a microcosm of 2009.

Join us for the first of Three AMAZIN' TUESDAYS at Two Boots Tavern on July 21, a Mets night devoted to reading, rooting and Rusty Staub. 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.

The Mets have won their last four one-run games. In fact their last four wins have all been of the one-run variety. They beat the best team in baseball Wednesday night. They stayed close to each of their rivals in the N.L. East. Oliver Perez is 1-0 since early May.

See what happens when you read the eye chart with one eye covered? It may not improve your seeing, but what you see might look a whole lot better.

Beating the Dodgers provided an effective tonic for all the moping and griping we've been doing as Mets fans. Forget for a moment that the moping and griping is a completely legitimate response to the totality of the eye chart; that each of these last four squirmy, more lucky than good one-run wins, including the most recent, deserves to be lumped in among that third you're gonna win no matter what; that you have to stretch way back to June 25 to find four Met wins; that this fourth-place club is closer in form to Washington than they are to Philadelphia, Florida or Atlanta no matter the alignment of the standings; or that our returning savior Ollie walked seven in five innings.

He won. We won. Save your fresh mopes and/or gripes for another 24 hours.

Citi Field was a fun place to be Wednesday night. I tend to forget that while P1 fans like us immerse ourselves in the Zeitgeist of the moment (currently and deservedly doom and gloom), there are Mets fans who, while not immune to what's going around them, simply show up and shout at Mets games. It was true amid the nadir of Mets series versus the Braves ten years ago as Atlanta was ruining everything, it was true as we entered Game Six against St. Louis three years ago on the brink of the abyss and it was true again as the Los Angelinos seemed determined to make our lives more miserable.

Ha! Our lives in 2009 can't be any more miserable, though I think a little of the extra zip this crowd contained had something to do with the opponent and its leftfielder. We were supposed to sign Manny Ramirez at some point, weren't we? We didn't, which is too bad from a production standpoint, just fine from other perspectives. Manny missed 50 games, which would make him the perfect Met this year. He also seems to wander through a different baseball game than the other players on the field — again, a very Metlike thing to do, as the New York Nine rarely seems to gather on the same, successful page. But Manny tested positive, and not for baseball acumen, so obviously he's not our kind of guy. Thus, we booed him a lot, which was fine with me. Being on the other team is good enough reason, but if righteousness is your bag, Manny should be your target. A bulging MAMMARY RAMIREZ banner was posted all night in left field. Nice touch.

As for Matt Kemp, he's a bum. I don't mean as in member of a club that used to play in Brooklyn (insert your own appropriate if predictable “Fred Wilpon finally has his favorite team playing at Citi Field” observation here). Guy in the row in front of me and my host Matt Silverman (co-author with Keith Hernandez of Shea Good-Bye and guest scholar at the upcoming AMAZIN' TUESDAY extravaganza) high in Section 508 was adamant on the point:

“KEMP! YOU'RE A BUM! KEMP! YOU'RE A BUM!”

The Kemp You're A Bum Guy gets a pass for his volume and repetition because he was sitting next to a man in a RAMIREZ 99 jersey, an older gentleman who should have known better than to jump on such a skeevy, frontrunning bandwagon. As for our solo Greek chorus, his cries of Kemp's bumminess blew up when Ryan Church turned Matt's single into a triple. You never heard a blowhard turn sheepish so fast. It was almost worth the eventual run Kemp scored to hear a half-dozen wise guys turn on the mock ire:

“CHURCH! YOU'RE A BUM!”

That's stuff's way funnier when your team wins. Visiting fans like the one we nicknamed Dodger Girl are more tolerable, too, when they leave after seven innings because their team is losing (of course a Dodger fan would leave after seven). I have to give Dodger Girl credit for assuming the mantle of obnoxiousness you might have thought would go wanting with neither the Phillies nor Yankees on the premises. But she kept bringing it, even if “it” was kind of incoherent. Lots of bluster about “POSTSEASON! WE'RE THE ONES GOING TO POSTSEASON!” which I found both presumptuous (I'd like to introduce you to a Mr. Branca for a seminar on chickens that go unhatched) and misplaced. We don't have much to hold over the heads of other teams' fans lately, but the last time the Dodgers passed through these parts in October, I'm pretty sure I saw two of them tagged out on the same play at home plate. You can remind me of that aspect of Dodger POSTSEASON! all you like.

It occurs to me that with all the games I've been to at Citi Field, I haven't come home with too many of these types of anecdotes which were a staple of my Shea Stadium reportage between 2005 and 2008. I think Wednesday night was, in its way, the first time I've gone to a Mets game in the new place and it felt like a Mets game in the old place. Even the good results I've encountered this season (I'm 14-5 now; go figure) never quite added up in the stands. There was a cohesion of experience present against the Dodgers that had gone missing over the first half as Citi and I warily went about our tenuous courtship. The last Subway Series game was the pits in that regard. Citi Field was not home of the Mets that Sunday night. It was just some place where two teams showed up to play baseball.

Not this time. This time it was alive the way Mets games are supposed to be. I imagine it could have died at any moment — without Oliver weaving fifteen outs among his seven walks; without the runs eked out in the third while Matt and I were dining adjacent to Mama's of Corona of the Promenade and comparing woe-is-us notes with two good guys we ran into, Louie from Centerfield Maz and Darren from WFUV; without Daniel Murphy's WTF? 3-1 handling of Mark Loretta's carom off the first base bag (I thought Loretta was safe, but I had three young chippies on their way back to the beer line in my line of sight); or without Frankie Rodriguez having the good sense to give up a home run before a walk and a single in the ninth. Yes, any number of things could have killed the fun. But as was the case in the previous three one-run wins, nothing did.

It's one win. It doesn't defuse the doom or unglue the gloom. But we're as entitled as anybody to the third of the games we're not supposed to lose.

Join us for the first of Three AMAZIN' TUESDAYS at Two Boots Tavern on July 21, a Mets night devoted to reading, rooting and Rusty Staub. 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.

Reality can be a plunge into a cold bath, or it can just be reality. Tonight I watched the Mets lose by a pair of grand slams to the Dodgers and didn't even flinch.

What good would flinching have done? I figured the Mets would lose, and just hoped it would be dull and pitiable instead of excruciating and infuriating. They were slow on a couple of ground balls, two different pitchers walked in runs and the offense couldn't muster an extra-base hit. By the ever-sinking standards of the summer of 2009, that's not that bad.

Before the game Omar Minaya came down to talk injuries, and somehow managed to finish his rundown by game time. Carlos Delgado is hitting off a tee, but probably five weeks away. (And that's five weeks away from standing in a batter's box and having the stats count, not five weeks away from somehow being the Carlos Delgado of the second half of 2008.) Carlos Beltran is on the bike and in the pool, which means don't hold your breath. (OK, hold it in the pool. We've got enough problems around here.) Jose Reyes tried to run and needed a cortisone shot, which means you can't even discuss a timetable. John Maine is throwing off flat ground, which in the language of injured pitchers is a tiny step above “arm still attached to body.” J.J. Putz was seen sitting in the dugout. Billy Wagner is pitching to batters in Florida, but that's a giant crapshoot and unfortunately, Billy Wagner is not a cleanup hitter. Oliver Perez starts tomorrow, which … oh wait, it's Oliver Perez.

In other words, everybody important who's hurt or Oliver Perez is still hurt or Oliver Perez. The cavalry, if it comes at all, will trickle in a horse at a time to find the ranch burnt and the settlers dead. And there isn't enough bullion in the bank to hire enough new cavalrymen. I've seen too many disappointing Met prospects over the years to object to the idea of mortgaging the supposed future, but you could spot us the farm systems of the Rangers and Rays and probably still not be able to swing deals to fill all the Mets' holes. Nope, as Westerns go this is the end of “Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid,” and we are not walking away. It's over.

Look, the front office deserves to get excoriated for bad contracts and idolizing crappy veterans and poor roster management and entrusting the health of the players to a staff of Dr. Nick Rivieras, but in the end no single one of those things nor even the combination were what sunk the 2009 Mets. It was a barrage of injuries even a better-constructed plan wouldn't have survived. It may be unjust that that perfect storm will obscure the other mistakes, but the world is rarely just. Let's just move on.

Let the season go, make a PLAYERS FOR SALE sign and start building for 2010 right now. This needn't be a teardown project, or anything that will make the Citi Field bean-counters blanch under their green eyeshades. The Mets should open 2010 with a roster built around David Wright, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, Johan Santana and Frankie Rodriguez, and there's no reason to think that core can't contend with the right complementary pieces and bit players added to it. So start figuring out how to assemble them in July instead of November.

What can we swap? Well, by any modern reckoning, Luis Castillo is a terrible baseball player. But this year he worked hard to turn himself back to what he was in late 2007: merely terrible instead of terrible, fat and hurt. Fortunately, Major League Baseball is full of stupid GMs made greedy by the thought of playoff games. Point out that Luis Castillo never strikes out, is faster than average, has Gold Gloves on his mantle and is (dramatic pause) a veteran. That, plus paying off an admittedly cringeworthy portion of his horrible contract, might be enough to fob him off on someone else and let Orlando Hudson know to expect a call in November.

Ryan Church shows signs of being able to hit and is a superb defensive outfielder. I bet someone would rent him for the rest of '09. Brian Schneider's no great shakes, but crappy catchers automatically get a reputation for being Pitcher Whisperers. Put him on the curb with a FOR SALE CHEAP sign and see if someone bites. Shop around Alex Cora, cruelly exposed in an everyday role but a smart, tough bench player who deserves to be some contender's Lee Mazzilli.

Or do something else. The next crop of Milledges and Humbers for Adam Dunn? I'd make that trade. Or go fleece the Pirates for their prospects — the Pirates are like the slow kid down the block who can be conned into giving up grimy quarters for mirror-bright nickels. (If you don't take advantage of him, the less-scrupulous kid who lives next door will.)

Be brave, Omar. I know bad PR terrifies your bosses, but they have less to worry about than they think. Don't be afraid that the seats will empty and the press will be brutal. The press is already brutal and trust me, we're not showing up at Citi Field because we think Carlos Delgado might show up five weeks early. Yes, New Yorkers are impatient — but we're also realistic. We know this isn't our year, and we're ready to deal with it. The best thing you can do is stop pretending. Show us you're trying to make next year our year.

Remember: July 21 is the first of three AMAZIN' TUESDAYS. And that Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.