A team that had Yadier Molina didn't need Joel Piñeiro. Molina did us in on one swing so infamous a book I know made it the photographic representation of Mets fans' sense of Fear. But it is Piñeiro who has been the most vile of St. Louis villains since then. (FYI, Albert Pujols isn't a villain; he's simply Albert Pujols). Piñeiro's role, like Molina's, was cemented on an autumn night at Shea Stadium, albeit out of the playoff glare and eleven or so months later. On September 27, 2007, collapse already in progress, the Mets had a makeup game against the Cardinals. We'd be throwing Pedro against Piñeiro. Pedro was pretty decent. Piñeiro was practically vintage Pedro. He entered the evening with an ERA of 4.72 and left it at 4.33.

I ask you: Who lowers his ERA by almost four-tenths of a run in the final week of a season?

Joel Piñeiro, that's who. Joel Piñeiro has worked his way into shorthand for oh no to Mets fans in this generation the way Chipper Jones, Pat Burrell and Preston Wilson did in the last generally good go-round, the way Dontrelle Willis did in the transition period between Met contenders, as Hanley Ramirez does regularly nowadays. Except Jones and Ramirez have had really good careers and Burrell, Wilson and Willis weren't at all bad when at their best. Joel Piñeiro, from what I understand, remains Joel Piñeiro except when he's sticking it to the Mets.

I wasn't surprised he'd toss a two-hitter at the Mets Tuesday night. I wasn't surprised the Mets would ground out weakly 22 times and leave Liván Hernandez and Elmer Dessens utterly unsupported. Yet I was kind of surprised Piñeiro has reached mythic status for people who aren't just me and my friend Gene. Two Septembers ago we sat in Loge and watched Piñeiro mow us and most of our playoff hopes down quickly, efficiently and horribly. That 3-0 blanking took 2:20 to play and us by surprise. Gene and I had only two words for each other that night:

Joel Piñeiro?

Last night, while Piñeiro was using all of 2:13 in non-rain time to dispose of us, SNY showed highlights from Joel's previous Metsterpiece. Out after out was being made at Shea Stadium: Reyes, Delgado, Beltran…it didn't matter that we had the “A” team available then. Piñeiro's legend was now a matter of public record. He toyed with us then. He toyed with us in April, come to think of it. He has now toyed with us yet again — collected as many hits as he allowed for evil measure.

Joel Piñeiro pitched. Yadier Molina caught. Don McLean, I assume, saw Satan laughing with delight.

***

Now about this new, improved outlook on life not having Carlos Beltran around is supposed to give us.

I am moved to remember something Debbie Reynolds said as the title character in Albert Brooks' characteristically brilliant Mother when Brooks worked up a theory that she hated him, her son, because he represented a part of her that never worked out. All right, Debbie Reynolds said reluctantly, if that's what you need.

So to my co-blogger who has found some kind of salvation in being without Beltran on top of being without Reyes, Delgado, Maine, Putz, Perez even…all right, if that's what you need. But with all the love and respect I can muster to you and others who have expressed similar sentiments, I think you're all — and I beg you to consider the source of this evaluation — a little nuts.

This Met underdog myth is dangerous to bandy about as a rationale for whatever ails us at any potentially dim moment. Yes, we were created in a fog of futility. Yes, by the time we played our first 9 games we were already 9½ games out of first place. Yes, we looked right past the 120 losses the first year and wrapped our arms tight around this franchise as no sane fan base ever would have. Yes, our first championship remains unmatched in the annals of human — not just sports — history as the shiningest example of spiritual uplift because it was conjured from so far below. Yes, last place on August 30, in the World Series on October 13. Yes, two down with two out and none on in the bottom of the tenth. I'll even throw in two games out of a playoff spot with three games left to play, barely removed from a death-soliciting seven-game losing streak, and emerging with three straight victories, then a fourth in a tie-breaker.

Yes, we are at our best when overlapping with our worst. It's what has made us who we are or at least who we like to believe we are. It has made us Mets fans clear down to our marrow. But you can't rig the system to feel it. And you can't want to be in the position to test it. As frustrating as so much has been since Molina swung for the fences and Beltran didn't swing at all, the answer isn't screw it, let's hope an expansion team-caliber lineup takes the field not in the name of rebuilding but so we can like them on the off chance they'll overachieve.

We don't have a choice at the moment. We wouldn't choose, given the option to use whoever we have under contract, to start the 2009 version of Fernando Tatis in left or at first or anywhere if we could help it…and I like Tatis. We wouldn't choose, if we had Carlos Delgado available, Daniel Murphy to start at first…and I like Murphy. We wouldn't choose to send Alex Cora to short if Jose Reyes had two perfectly fit legs…and I've come to like Cora, too. It's nothing against the guys who are attempting to fill the widening void to say I'd rather not have them out there every day where they will now become regulars. I don't want to see what Fernando Martinez can do in center because I don't want to be without Carlos Beltran for an extended period.

The Mets who made 2007 infamous and 2008 unfulfilling and 2009 something of a mess before the injuries redefined everything were not necessarily a bowl of cherries. They were playing for high stakes and coming up a buck short at the worst possible opportunities. I sometimes wished they — select individuals or the unit as a whole — would just go away. But I liked playing for high stakes as long as they were a realistically graspable prize.

Though it's tough to tell sometimes from what goes on between the white lines, the Mets have been legitimate strivers since 2005. It beats the snot out of the alternative. Remember the alternative? Remember the Mets taking a pass on competing? On not bothering to attempt to contend on an annual basis? Remember our recurring episodes of hopelessness? Not hopelessness as in “we're going to blow it at the end” but hopeless as in there's no chance there will be anything to blow?

In a couple of interviews I've given to promote my book, it's been assumed by some pretty savvy questioners that because I wrote with a kind of fondness for being a Mets fan through bad Mets years that I was really fond of those bad Mets teams. I was too polite to respond “the hell I was,” but the hell I was. I rooted for them because they were the Mets. That's what I do. I'm a Mets fan. But I wasn't fond of their intermittent, sometimes entrenched lousiness. I kept rooting because I knew that the day my team stopped being bad and started being good would forever stand among the best days of my life.

It did and it does. It's a sensation that may have been helped along by admirable loyalty or worrisome habit, but the bottom line was always about the payoff: I will root for my team forever in the hope that some day they will reward me; it will mean something because I was always there. That's why I want to live to see a third Mets world championship.

I talked a while ago about those Mets varsity jackets you see, the ones with the 1969 and 1986 World Series logos on the back, how I believed somebody would be sanctioned to market new ones following 2006, how seeing the unrevised editions of those jackets bums me out now because I keep looking for the third logo that still isn't there. If I just wanted a garment with a championship patch, mlb.com would have sold me one from the Cardinals, Red Sox or Phillies shops in the falls of 2006, 2007 or 2008, no questions asked. I want one that says Mets. I love the Mets because I love the Mets, I like to say, but because I love the Mets, I burn for that logo signifying that next thus far unattainable championship.

That's how it has been since the beginning, no matter the underdog myth. I just completed reading what may be the best book ever written about our franchise, Once Upon the Polo Grounds by Leonard Shecter. Sadly, it is out of print but it is amazingly not even close to out of date. Shecter — a longtime Post sportswriter and Jim Bouton's collaborator on Ball Four — covered the Mets in their infancy and was moved to look back on them in the wake of 1969's unforeseen maturing. He tells story after story that will make you simultaneously laugh and cringe regarding the 1962 and 1963 Mets. Of course he talks about the Mets fans, one of whom summed our breed perfectly, I thought.

It was a cold and miserable day at the Polo Grounds and the Mets were down 15-5 with two out in the ninth. A fan stood in the aisle in right field, his shoulders hunched against the cold, his hands deep in his coat pockets. He jiggled up and down for warmth and all the time he was rooting. “C'mon,” he said, almost to himself. “C'mon, one more run, just one more run.”

“Why one more run?” he was asked.

“That would make it six,” he said. “Then you could say if they got any pitching they woulda won.”

The fan turned back toward Don Zimmer, who was at the plate. “C'mon,” he said. “Just one more.”

Zimmer popped up to the catcher.

The fan shrugged his shoulders. “Ah well,” he said. “I'll be back tomorrow. No use giving up now.”

No, no use giving up now. No use giving up when it's seven ham 'n' eggers and David Wright. No use giving up when it's Hernandez, Redding and Nieve behind Johan Santana. No use giving up when it's Dessens and Misch to the rescue. No use giving up mostly because it's 2½ back and June 24. We never give up as long as the math holds. But we don't never give up out of some vague desire to like lesser players than those more accomplished regulars who sometimes rub us the wrong way. We don't never give up because expectations are getting to us. We should want expectations. We should invite expectations. Jason said we can't deal with hegemony. I'd say we haven't had much practice, but I'd sure like to give it another try (and then, to Jason's other point, leave the Yankees to the craven and the tourists). Just because 2007 and 2008 left me with what one insightful analyst deems Post-Traumatic Mets Disorder doesn't mean I wasn't willing to suspend disbelief that 2009 would somehow meet this era's enhanced, perhaps overblown expectations.

I want the “B” team to come through. I was never happier this season than the night Omir Santos snuck one over the Green Monster and Ramon Martinez guarded the Fenway infield the way M. Donald Grant once guarded against progress. I don't have to have fancy name players but I do have to have hope, and hope is a kissing cousin of expectations. Where there's no hope there's no fun. Don't kid yourself, Leonard Shecter would have told you. Mets fans may have manufactured themselves some good times at the Polo Grounds while the Mets were going through their first of many bad stretches, but they had an eye on better times the whole time:

While Met fans loved the Mets when they lost, it was a love like that a mother bestows on a son has just missed a scholarship. Better things had been expected.

The fans cheered the Mets on to win, not lose.

I know nobody here is rooting for the Mets to lose, but it strikes me as too cute to think there is something Metly to be gained by going without better players, that we perceive our juices won't be properly stimulated unless stirred by latter-day Hot Rod Kanehls as opposed to the guys who, for all their imperfections and occasional attitudinal dropoffs, burdened us with expectations, hope and for a brief, tantalizing instant, the specter of hegemony (since faded). I liked expecting. I liked hoping. I'd be thrilled to get some hegemony up in here. Those seasons I fondly or otherwise absorbed between 1977 and 1983 forever tempered my notions about deriving romance from undermanned rosters. When good things happen unexpectedly, of course they're fantastic. They're also highly unlikely. That's why we don't expect them.

Delgado, Reyes, Perez, sometimes Maine, on infrequent occasion Beltran and more recently Putz have all driven me crazy since 2007 crumbled. But their bunch — aided greatly by Wright, Santana and this year Rodriguez — has never completely extracted hope from our equation. They were never the marquee flops of 2002 or 1992, to name two. God knows they weren't the wretched refuse of 1977. The Mets, whatever their respective Q ratings and salaries, have played some stupid, slipshod, stultifying baseball in 2009 for which I'm certain we'll pay in the end, but they've kept us in this thing. I hate to think where we'll be without the guys we are now without, yet I'll believe in the guys who are elevated in their stead, because they are Mets and I am a Mets fan. I'm not, however, going to pretend this arrangement looms as better or purer than the one we were planning to have.

Part and parcel of the underdog ethos is we, Mets fans, suffer. I don't like the phrase “long-suffering Mets fan,” because that has never sounded accurate to my ear or my four decades of experience. I don't suffer as a Mets fan. I endure. I think we all do. We endure whatever gets in our way until we can, at last, rejoice without qualification, without having to recall a season that was great except for the disappointment inherent in not winning it all. That's what I did in the seasons after '69 and before '86. That's what I've been doing ever since. The goal of rejoicing isn't always top of mind; I don't wake up every day thinking “when's that jacket with the three logos coming out?” Yet somewhere, maybe deep down, maybe near the surface, that desire is there. If that's not part of the Mets fan myth, it's because it's the day-in, day-out reality of being a fan — Mets fan or any fan. Rationalizing that something besides an ingrained desire to see your team win drives you to the ballgame every night?

With all the love and respect I can muster, I can't possibly believe that that's what any of us needs.

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.

It's long been my contention (though not my co-blogger's) that Mets fans have never been comfortable with hegemony. Our history is one of miracles and belief; our flirtations with dynasty have generally ended with the amassed firepower aimed at our own feet. Even the '86 team needed a miracle a whole lot bigger than 1969's to become the bad guys who won. And this, I maintain (again, amid Greg's dissent) is why we don't entirely mind sharing our city with that baseball colossus up in the Bronx, the one that soaks up sportswriter attention and back pages and free-agent dollars and the loyalties of the soulless and the misguided. Compared with the Yankees, we look like what we truly were in the days of our founding myths and haven't been for some time: underdogs. St. Anthony's team. The little guys who'd win a World Series once men walked on the moon, whose names Frank Robinson couldn't bother to remember, who'd rise up from the cellar behind a goofy reliever and take a punch from Pete Rose and fight off final strike after final strike until finding salvation in a little roller … trickling …

Tonight franchise myth finally became rude reality. Carlos Beltran is off to the DL with a “bone bruise,” which my copy of Rosetta Stone for Met Front-Office Spin translates as “compound fracture with sepsis, possible gangrene.” He joins Jose Reyes (hamstring tendon), Carlos Delgado (hip surgery), J.J. Putz (bum elbow), John Maine (bad shoulder) and Oliver Perez (absence of cerebellum) on an awfully expensive shelf. Left behind are David Wright, who can look like Hank Aaron or Tommie Aaron depending what kind of streak he's on; Johan Santana, who only materializes in the world of mortals every fifth day; and Frankie Rodriguez, whose presence must be prefaced by having a lead in the ninth inning. Surrounding them are Cora's Irregulars — raw rookies and possibly overcooked veterans, fourth outfielders and apprentice first basemen, fifth starters and spaghetti-thrown-at-the-wall middle relievers. Underdogs, in other words. (And underdogs just 1.5 out of first place, thanks to our membership in the Axis of Feeble, a.k.a. the National League East.)

And that's just fine.

We've waited forever for the Mets to somehow recover from the hangover of Yadier Molina's blast off Aaron Heilman. Tonight it felt like they had, even if it was only by excising important player after important player from the active roster, with Beltran's removal somehow feeling like the death knell for our latest wanna-be dynasty. Not exactly the hangover cure any of would have chosen, but damn if tonight didn't feel free and easy and downright fun. What chance did we have against El Hombre and Tony La Russa's relentless button-pushing, after all? You really thought we could beat the Cardinals with Fernando Tatis as our cleanup hitter and Jeremy Reed in center and Tim Redding — he of the lumberjack beard and the zero wins — on the hill?

Well, who says we can't?

Sure, this one had the look of recent Met exercises in futility: surprisingly competent early pitching, a lead in the early innings, then the teeth-gnashing spectacle of the Mets getting sleepy as the other team crept back into it and waited to pounce. Except this time the Mets kept scoring, with Cora lashing line drives and corralling balls like a stuntman and Omir Santos continuing to spit in the eye of statistical expectations and Daniel Murphy looking relaxed at the plate and first base. When Brian Stokes leapt to snag Albert Pujols's bouncer up the middle and convert it into a double play, the Mets fairly streaked off the field with joy and relief. Whether we were out at Citi Field (merely misty for once) or snug on our couches, we all did the same.

I'm not saying losing Jose and the Carloses and our setup guy and the third and fourth starters is addition by subtraction or anything ridiculous like that — should the wounded troop back into the clubhouse tomorrow night magically cured and accompanied for lagniappe by a repaired Billy Wagner, I will whoop like a fool and high-five everyone in sight. But I am saying that ever since Carlos Beltran trudged away from home plate in disbelief, there's been something slightly sour about the Mets, a sense of curdled expectations that's frequently made contemplating them frustrating and rooting for them aggravating. And somehow it feels like that's lifted. Watching the Jon Switzers and Omir Santoses of the world out there for the foreseeable future means not rationally expecting anything at all. And maybe that will work where higher expectations have not.

***

None of this will matter a century from now — but some things still will. Here's a Brooklyn tale that's taken 310 years to tell, and that includes everything from the American Revolution to Casey Stengel and the 78th Precinct Little League.

Don't wait a century to have Mets history beamed into your brain in its wired-up vat jar — it's much more comfortable to read 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.

Roster update, per Mr. Rubin of the News and the Mets' dumb luck:

• Lefty Pat Misch and righty Elmer Dessens are mounting their white steeds and heroically galloping to the rescue of an overworked bullpen. They could contribute most effectively by tying Bobby Parnell to his locker so he couldn't come when Jerry Manuel inevitably calls, but presumably they are being whisked to Citi Field to pitch.

• The not particularly belabored Ken Takahashi will refamiliarize himself with the charms of Buffalo Bisonhood.

• Wilson Valdez seeks a new assignment, having been designated for exactly that.

• Veteran Major League outfielder Fernando Martinez returns, four days older and wiser from when he was last a Met, his .194 batting average having almost nowhere to go but up.

• Carlos Beltran has been placed on the 15-day Disabled List with a bone bruise to the right knee that, unlike the Mets' day-to-day Active List, has grown noticeably deeper.

Actually, I guess that's a bigger deal than Pat Misch and Elmer Dessens combined, but I figured by saving the bad news for last you'd have a few extra seconds to enjoy thinking Carlos Beltran might be OK.

Hope you reveled in the respite.

I read something about a hopeful prognosis that Carlos might be out only a couple of weeks, but these are the Mets we're talking about. Their prognoses for injured players bring to mind Pat Morita in the World War II flashback scene of the Japanese restaurant episode of The Odd Couple: “They told me I'd be making love to Betty Grable on White House lawn by Christmas.”

From Pat Morita to Pat Misch: 0-7 over four seasons with the Giants. Gave up 11 home runs in 52.1 innings in 2008. But that's the old Pat Misch. Actually, I feel like the Mets have been giving us The Old Pat Misch (wink, wink) all season long. But let's remember not too many weeks ago we wondered who the hell Fernando Nieve was.

I saw Al Leiter outduel Elmer Dessens on a day so hot Dessens had to be taken to Mount Sinai for dehydration. But he was pitching well before that. This was nine years ago. Elmer Dessens, 48-62 lifetime, was 29 then. He's nine years older now.

Let's Go Mets…whoever you are.

A couple of weeks ago Prospect Park's ballfields were too soaked for Little League play, and so Joshua's game was relocated to Washington Park, a place Emily and I had never heard of. It turned out to be at Fourth Avenue and 3rd Street, a couple of blocks from the Gowanus Canal, and we arrived to find ourselves in a rather oddly configured space. There was a middle school at 5th Street and Fifth Avenue, separated from Washington Park by 4th Street, which dead-ended in a traffic circle after half a block instead of going all the way through to Fourth Avenue. Above 4th Street was a playground, separated from the spongy, nouveau artificial turf of the Little League field by an old, dignified-looking stone house with a red roof.

The field was full of Little Leaguers, attended to by parents and coaches and ice-cream hawkers and Sandy the Seagull, there to drum up awareness of the Cyclones' upcoming season. The next hour was amiable chaos, as separate Little League games spilled over into each other, kids were dissuaded from climbing chain-link fences, and parents cheered and carped at teenage umpires and remembered not to do that and cheered some more. Joshua and his Screaming Eagles teammates were annihilated (I'd put it more kindly, but it's true), but they had fun and we took our son to the bathroom in that stone building and then cut up to 3rd Street so we could hit Fourth Avenue and walk down to the subway and head home to Brooklyn Heights.

On the way, I saw a historical marker outside that old stone house; still wondering about this rather odd pocket of Brooklyn, I stopped to peek at a leaflet. A quick glance made me realize we were in no ordinary place; further study revealed we were somewhere extraordinary. Reviewing everything that's happened in the vicinity of the Old Stone House, you'll swear I'm making it up. But it's all true.

The Old Stone House was built by a Dutch settler named Claes Arentson Vechte in 1699 in what was then rich farmland below the hills of Park Slope, near the Gowanus Creek and its treasure trove of foot-long oysters. On August 27, 1776 the house stood at a crossroads through which units of the fledgling Continental Army needed to retreat to reach the fortifications at Brooklyn Heights on the western end of Long Island, across Gowanus Creek. Unfortunately, they were cut off: The Vechte house — then owned by Claes's grandson Nicholas — had been occupied by some 2,000 British troops and Hessian mercenaries, and used as an artillery position against the Americans. As their fellow soldiers fled towards the Heights, some 400 soldiers of the 1st Maryland Regiment attacked the Vechte house six times, wresting it from the British twice before breaking off the assault and fleeing for the Heights themselves. 256 Marylanders were killed, and buried by the British in a farm field — a mass grave now lost somewhere beneath the gritty businesses of Third Avenue. (A marker affixed to the American Legion Hall at Third Avenue and 9th Street remembers them.) Two days later, an unseasonable fog would help George Washington — who'd watched the battle at the Vechte house from Brooklyn Heights and admired the Marylanders' bravery while lamenting the loss of life — escape across the East River with his 9,000 remaining men. At the time, the Battle of Brooklyn was the largest in the history of North America.

The history of the Old Stone House doesn't end there, however — and there's a reason you're reading about it on this blog. By the late 1800s it was part of a park that was lower than the urban landscape now surrounding it. The park was used for skating in the winter, though it had hosted baseball exhibitions as far back as the 1850s, including games between the legendary Brooklyn amateur club known as the Excelsiors and their opponents. In 1883, the Washington Base Ball Park rose around the Old Stone House, which would be used as a “ladies' house” and for storage at the ballpark. Washington Park was bound by Third and Fourth Avenues and 3rd and 5th Streets — the exact parcel of land that now includes the playground, Little League fields, the stub of 4th Street and the middle school.

The new park's tenant was Charles Byrne's Brooklyn Base Ball Club, of the Inter-State League. Their first game at Washington Park came on May 12, 1883, with Brooklyn beating Trenton, 13-6. Byrne's team would jump to the American Association in 1884 and take on a variety of nicknames, including the Atlantics and the Bridegrooms. For the 1888 season, they fielded a team strengthened by their acquisition of another American Association team — the Metropolitan Club, generally referred to as the New York Metropolitans, or sometimes as the New York Mets. Founded in 1880, the Mets had shared the Polo Grounds in northern Manhattan with the National League's New York Gothams, later to be known as the Giants. But their owner had miscalculated after the 1885 season, leaving the Polo Grounds for a cricket ground in Staten Island, very near the stadium where the Staten Island Yankees play today. Buying the attendance-starved Mets let Brooklyn protect its fan base. It also gave Brooklyn a ready-made star in Mets slugger Dave Orr, whose Washington Park fans would chant for him to knock it into the Gowanus.

In May 1889 Washington Park burned down, though the Bridegrooms' uniforms and gear were safe, as they'd been stored in the Old Stone House. Reconstructed under the watchful eye of the club's secretary, Charles Ebbets, it reopened less than two weeks later. Brooklyn won the American Association pennant in 1889, and opened the 1890 season as a new member of the National League. Brooklyn moved to Eastern Park (in what's now East New York) for the 1891 season; Washington Park would soon be torn down and the Old Stone House buried as part of an effort to raise the park's elevation to match that of its neighbors. (The house would be dug up and reconstructed in the 1930s with stones from the original house, becoming part of J.J. Byrne Park — the name by which many Brooklynites still refer to the site.)

In 1898 Charles Byrne died and Charles Ebbets took over the Brooklyn club, by then often known as the Superbas or the Dodgers. One of his first orders of business was to leave Eastern Park and return to the Gowanus area. Brooklyn's new home for the 1898 season was a second Washington Park, built catty-corner from the first one across Fourth Avenue. Brooklyn would call this new park home through 1912, the last campaign a 58-95 disaster whose final days were witnessed by a 21-year-old outfielder named Charles Dillon Stengel. Casey, by the way, hit .316 in 17 games.

In 1913, Stengel and his Brooklyn teammates moved to their new home, a state-of-the-art park known as Ebbets Field. But Washington Park would have an odd and short-lived encore — it was completely rebuilt in 1914 as the home of the Federal League's Brooklyn Tip-Tops, and at the time looked very much like Chicago's Weeghman Park, today known as Wrigley Field. The Federal League shut down after 1915 and the third incarnation of Washington Park was torn down in 1926, though the left-field wall can still be seen on Third Avenue, between 1st and 3rd Streets. (It's part of a Con Ed facility.)

With the Tip-Tops extinct and Brooklyn's National League team off first to Flatbush and then to California, professional baseball was gone from a site that had been hallowed by a critical early battle of the American Revolution and then steeped in the freewheeling excitement of the sport's formative years. But baseball isn't gone: Stop by the Old Stone House on a Saturday and you might well see kids in uniform trying to launch a coach's pitch on the same arc followed by long-ago drives struck by the Mets' Dave Orr while Charles Ebbets watched. Retrace one of Orr's blasts and add a couple of bounces and rolls and you'll be in territory that Casey Stengel once patrolled, beneath a second ballpark's outfield walls. One of those walls remains; spend an hour in Washington Park and you'll learn how much else does, too.

Stay historically minded with Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

It's getting so bad that I'm beginning to think Brian Schneider deserves to be traded to a contender.

Strangely enough, our lone power bat of the weekend actually is on a contender, through no fault of his teammates. Your depleted, disabled, demoralized, depressing New York Mets have lost 12 of 18, yet sit no more than 2 games from first place in their division. Will wonders and helpful American East League combatants ever cease?

Can't speak for the former and we know we have the latter working on our behalf for only another week. Bon Rayage to our friends from Tampa Bay as they set sail for three dates at home versus their October 2008 nemeses the Phils. If the Rays, who zapped us Sunday, can do what the Orioles did — sweep Philadelphia — all will be forgiven from this soggy weekend. Then it's the Blue Jays' turn to reinforce the lessons of 1993. After a fashion, however, we'll probably have to stop relying on others to get our job of staying close to top of our division done.

In case you're wondering, even though we've been playing dead, we're not dead yet. Not just the Phillies are in range, but so is the National League Wild Card; it's never too early to not sneeze at any possible ticket into the postseason. Sadly, it's not as close as it was recently. We are 2½ out of the Consolation Prize, but we're fifth in that particular derby, trailing…oh, it doesn't really matter at the moment 'cause we're talking a pretty fluid situation. Other than Washington and probably Arizona and San Diego (and Pittsburgh, since Carlos Beltran noted how they couldn't shine the Mets' shoes after they took three straight from us), everybody in the N.L. is not just alive for a playoff spot. Everybody is conceivably viable.

Well, sure. It's June 22. There are 95 Mets games left and a similar amount for everybody else. It would be folly to count us out no matter how many Mets pitchers couldn't make their sinkers sink, their fastballs move, their strikes not turn into runs — and no matter how hard Jerry Manuel tugs on his relievers' arms in an effort to make them fall off. We're not healthy at the moment — Jose Reyes, in particular, is not close to returning, which I should have known after Omar Minaya hinted he might be — but someday we might be healthier. John Maine and Oliver Perez are set to go the Amy Winehouse route and, if all goes to plan…who am I kidding? There is no plan. There can't be a plan where the Mets and their nicks, cuts, scrapes and dire bodily circumstances are concerned. I will believe none of these rehab reports or derive any satisfaction from the alleged progress they yield until somebody's actually back on the team and back on the field. That goes for Reyes, for Maine, for Perez, for Delgado…you know, I'd all but forgotten Angel Pagan was on the DL, too. You know when I'll count on Angel Pagan? When he's playing left or right or, MRI forbid, center for the big league club and presumably getting hurt again.

We're two out of first and only 2½ from the Wild Card with a long way to go. Keep telling yourself that. It's the only thing I've got these days.

Hope you've got 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.

We were supposed to go to the game.

That was the plan: meet up with a gang of Met-minded folks for our inaugural viewing of the Mets from the Pepsi Porch. And it seemed like a sound enough one: Joshua's Little League team started the morning and ended their season with a win in Prospect Park, beating both their opponents and the rain and sending us back to Brooklyn Heights to rest, take care of weekend duties and hope the weather permitted the Mets and the Rays to inflame their rivalry to pilot-light level. Even if there wasn't built-in intensity, there would be Johan Santana and beer and tacos and the Pepsi Porch and fellow fans and baseball right there in front of you. What's not to like?

But come 3 p.m. the radar map was covered with the grassy bruises of storm systems arrowing for New York City. The question wasn't if there'd be a stoppage, but when that stoppage would come and if it would ever be followed by a startage. We hemmed. We hawed. The kid expressed a love of the Mets, but a reluctance to sit around for an hour or more under some form of Soft Drink Overhang while the tarp was on the field. That seemed eminently sensible. And so we bailed.

It's odd watching a game from which you've excused youself. You feel happy because the weather's crappy and you're not in it, of course. (Because if you didn't go and the weather isn't crappy, what's your excuse?) But mostly you feel guilty — you want Johan Santana to throw the first Met no-hitter and Danny Meyer to give whomever's in your seats free Shake Shack for life so you're punished, to the extent that watching good things happen to the Mets can ever be punishment.

And hey, Johan gave it a run, retiring 13 Rays before the first hit and offering reassuring evidence that whatever happened at Leni Riefenstahl Stadium was some kind of horrid workplace flub, like the time you dropped the water barrel while it was descending to mate with the cooler or accidentally printed three copies of a 680-page PDF just before heading for lunch. Johan gave it a run, but was on the short end when the rain finally asserted itself and gone when it lifted.

Rain delays are their own psychological experiment, particularly when the hope is that you'll get another crack at erasing a small deficit. For some reason they seem to inspire hope. The starting pitcher who's held you down will not be able to return. This will lift the morale of the forces of good, who have undoubtedly spent the rain delay engaged in soulful team-building exercises. By the time word arrived that the tarp was off the field, I had the game all but won. Joshua felt differently, and the bottom of the ninth was an uncharacteristic scene in our house: The six-year-old grousing like a bitter railbird while his cynical father remained blithely confident.

Alex Cora was a smart, smart hitter who might not be the most talented guy in the lineup, but could always be relied on to do whatever he could to make the right outcome as likely as possible. And, indeed, Cora maneuvered his way into a 2-1 count against J.P. Howell. He grounded out, but he did what he could. Joshua flung himself onto the couch and bemoaned that this was the worst game ever. (He was asleep when Luis Castillo dropped the fucking ball.)

No, no, I said, there was just one out. Things were still possible. Fernando Tatis then tried to prove me right, drawing three straight balls and then trying to squeeze one more ball out of Howell, which he couldn't do. He flied out to right. Joshua returned to lamentations.

Kid, relax. There's a baseball expression called “a bloop and a blast.” A little dunker from Carlos Beltran and a dinger from David Wright and we would play on through the rain. And Carlos Beltran drew a 2-0 count before singling solidly off Howell, prompting Joshua to briefly perk up.

And then, well, you saw it. David Wright arrived saucer-eyed and overanxious and left after a near-vertical hack at Howell's final pitch. And there was nothing whatsoever I could do to sugarcoat that, because it had been pathetic and now we were done. Except that as Wright trudged off the field and the rain came down, we were not in the Pepsi Porch and awaiting the joys of the 7 train alongside legions of other tired, wet, exasperated Mets fans.

Which is to say that while I still felt guilty, I wished I'd had reason to feel a hell of a lot guiltier.

It's Father's Day! “Father” starts with “f,” which means you should buy a book with lots of words that start with “f” and is about manly things. You've just described 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.

You know how Frankie Rodriguez gets a save and then points skyward? I used to think he was giving thanks to the Heavens for instilling in him the talent and fortitude to close out baseball games for the New York Mets. I now realize he was just saying “hi” to the folks in Row 17 of Promenade.

“Hi” back, Frankie. Thanks for the save.

And thanks to a nice man and great Mets fan named Michael Garry who showed me how the upper half lives Friday night, for I got an unexpected and by no means unfulfilling taste of the last row of Citi Field for the first time. The last shall be first, or something like that, which is fine when the Mets win. When the Mets win, every seat in the house is one of those unfillable Field Level niches — Metropolitan Box! Field Box! Baseline Box! Let's Name More Overpriced Boxes We Can't Sell At Full Price! — for which I'm continually receiving mets.com e-mail come-ons. From high atop Citi Field, way back in Section 537, you can see a lot of empty green way the hell down in the territory you'd infer would be the first to fill in. But that's not how it works in 2009. People don't particularly care that a visit by the A.L. champion Rays has been deemed Gold by the Mets marketing department. They care that they have enough silver in their pockets to get home after a night at Citi Field.

When the invitation from Michael was extended my way via his co-worker and my blood brother Jim Haines to tag along on their office outing, I assumed we'd be seated more or less where we were. When your ballpark suddenly accommodates 41,800 instead of 55,300, group sales isn't quite the Mezzanine field trip it used to be. The intimacy the Mets hail in hyping Citi Field takes on a whole new perspective when it sends you to the last row in left field. For example, you get an intimate view of the out-of-town scoreboard. Not the scores, just the board, because we're staring at its back. Fortunately its back is dotted with hi-def monitors, so you're not exactly at a loss trying to follow a Mets win. Michael wasn't far off when he joked this was a different kind of suite level. Except for the fact that nobody in a maroon jacket was going to stop you from gaining access to Row 17, it did feel oddly exclusive up there.

I won't pretend the sky and a majority of the outfield weren't welcome sights when we moved down a whole bunch of rows for the bottom of the eighth, but this season at Citi Field is about getting to know the place, and getting to know Row 17, spiritual descendant of Shea's Row V, had its small, unanticipated rewards. For example, I found my attention occasionally drifting to the Willie Mays Bridge, of which we had an uncommonly great view. Jim and I marveled at how there was a steady stream of pedestrian traffic each way throughout the game. Where were all these people coming from and going to exactly? One of the innovations I heartily approved when this place opened was the potential for walking around. I partook a couple of times until I realized I was missing the game. I like access to snacks and the opportunity to stretch my legs as necessary, but mostly I like to watch the Mets when I go to a Mets game.

The Mets were going somewhere at least. We got a great view of the monorail route Brian Schneider's homer took to shockingly deep right-center. By dialing up his first dinger, BriSchnei killed my private statistical notation in which every individual Met's home run total could be expressed as Schneider Plus, as in, “That was Gary Sheffield's eighth home run of the year, or Schneider Plus Eight.” Oh well, I imagine I'll find something else to carp about with him. Nothing but hearts and flowers, however, for Fernando Nieve, who has never done anything wrong in a Mets uniform. We had hopes as high as Row 17 for Eric Hillman and Alay Soler and a lot of two-start wonders over the years, but let's ride the Nieve wave as long as we can. If he can generate six splendid innings every time out, I'll hike up to top of the park every time he starts and call that slightly claustrophobic corner of Citi Field Fernando's Hideaway. And we'll point right back at Frankie for a job well done, even if he can't possibly see us behind that scoreboard.

What you won't find in any boxscore or seating chart is the revelation that the longstanding dark night of Jim, me and Mets games has reached an end. Ten consecutive night games we'd attended dating back to 2005 dealt us ten consecutive losses, darkening our mutual mood to a stark jet black. A sample of what it was like for us leaving Shea Stadium on those occasions:

September 22, 2006: “I find myself growing snippy and impatient after schlepping to Shea for another subpar game.”

May 15, 2007: “It was more annoying than entertaining.”

September 28, 2007: “Jim and I were owed at least one beer for our trouble, so we stopped in a watering hole he knew not far from where he grew up. And after letting loose an ear-steaming monologue probably far more entertaining than anything I am capable of piecing together at the moment, I noticed I had become another cliché: my head was literally on the bar and I was figuratively crying in my beer.”

May 30, 2008: “I know they kind of suck and am learning to accept it. Jim knows they kind of suck yet it still bothers him. It leaves him questioning why he likes baseball, why he watches baseball, why he allows the Mets to disturb his biorhythms, why do they HAVE TO SUCK SO MUCH?”

June 27, 2008: “[S]omehow it came to pass that on the very day our beloved New York Mets crushed the despised New York Yankees in Yankee Stadium and swept, in however delayed a fashion, their entire season's slate of games in The House That Uncouth Built, I concluded the night more anguished than ebullient. Timing is everything.”

September 26, 2008: “Not so deep down, though, I kind of wish the Mets and all their nonsense would just go away.”

Jesus, either we or the Mets are incredibly depressing. I don't know how our mutual and preternaturally optimistic friend Matt from Sunnyside puts up with us.

But our relentless Met fatalism was not a problem last night, not from the back of the house, not on the leisurely amble down the left field ramps, not as Jim as I merrily strolled the path to the Row 17 of parking lots, a.k.a. the Queens Museum (at $18 less than the $18 it costs to park adjacent to the facility so aptly named for a bank, it's totally worth the extra strides). The walk to Jim's car — swell guy to give me a lift, by the way — was an angst-addled march into the dimly lit recesses of the Mets fan's soul on those defeat-tainted occasions of the past few years. One time we walked past the well-lit and surprisingly active USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center and the idea that anybody was enjoying anything athletic sickened me. How dare tennis balls be struck with glee when baseball is making us so goddamn miserable? Last night, it was game, set and match Mets. I was so happy, I could have hopped over the nearest net.

It marked an encouraging change from all those nights when I could have been carried away in one.

***

Our heartiest congratulations to Friend of FAFIF Roger Kowalski — Kowalski to you — for winning the Mo Maniacs contest and the sweet season tickets it brings. He and Sal the Sign Man (whom I don't know but see on my train sometimes) were chosen as the Mets fans best suited to hyping up the crowd down in the Mo's Zone. Veterans of Sundays in the left field Mezzanine know Kowalski is totally the man for the job. Matt Artus of Always Amazin' shares the details here.

If you missed METSTOCK: 3 Hours of Pizza and Baseball Thursday, an enterprising blogger covered it like it was the newsworthy event it was. Go to Section Five Twenty-Eight and enjoy the observations of Paul V. And if you're wondering what all the fuss is about, 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. Makes a great last-minute Father's Day or Graduation Day present, I hear. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

It's been a while since we treated Brian Schneider like an All-Star. But can you blame us?

Schneider arrived from Washington as either the first or second incredulous “Who?” we offered after hearing the Mets had exiled Lastings Milledge (along with his mouth, rap career and casual schedule) to the Nats for the former Expo and Ryan Church, then chiefly known for his misadventures in religious studies. Installed as the Mets catcher by default, Schneider immediately began bumping his helmet into metaphorical boom mikes: He allowed an alarming number of passed balls and runners scoring in his vicinity and was hurt sufficiently often that we got to shiver in the wan light of the Robinson Cancel-Raul Casanova-Gustavo Molina era. Schneider's final line for 2008 — .257 AVG, 9 HR 38 RBI in 110 games played — all but stands up in its seat and yells “average catcher.” The only thing he does that's demonstrably better than average is throw out runners, and even there a historical-minded fan is mostly left wondering why today's catchers nab so few. When Schneider got hurt again this year, none of us seemed particularly interested in giving him another take. For fans who aren't particularly stat-minded, the anger that greeted Ramon Castro's departure had less to do with whether or not Omir Santos is incredibly lucky — rather, it was that Castro was going instead of Schneider.

Nothing that happened tonight really changes that — Brian Schneider is still a thoroughly average catcher with a doofy Toyota ad that's been shown enough to burn out untold ganglia in what passes for my brain. But he hit a baseball exceptionally hard at exactly the right time, driving a 2-1 Andy Sonnanstine fastball 415 feet or so into right-center. That was the key blow for a Met win over the Tampa Bay Rays, about whom I care about even less than I do the Baltimore Orioles. If not for a cameo by former Met nemesis Pat Burrell, whose new uniform and facial hair make him seem vaguely like Tom Hanks in the latter stages of “Castaway,” who could work up much antipathy about this one? I suppose you could yell at Dan Wheeler for not being useful as a Met five years ago, or hiss at the Rays for foiling Rick Reed's attempt at closing the Clubhouse of Curses in a previous millennium when they were the Devil Rays. I'm not exactly feeling the hate either way.

(Actually, I have reason to be irked at the Rays: Last January in Vegas, I put $20 on the Rays — then a 150-to-1 shot — to win the 2008 World Series. Fucking Phillies.)

No, most of tonight's displeasure seemed to be directed at the very real possibility that another Met lead (built on the thoroughly unlikely one-two punch of Schneider's power and Fernando Nieve's pitching) would unravel: Since being handed J.J. Putz's old gig, Bobby Parnell has spit the bit rather determinedly; Sean Green looked emphatic (in his IT-guy-who-just-pwned-somebody-in-Halo-way) in getting himself out of trouble, but then the trouble was of his own making; Pedro Feliciano needed to make an acrobatic play to retire Carl Crawford; and Frankie Rodriguez didn't look quite right just yet, greeted in the ninth with a long flyout from Dioner Navarro.

But we won, as we somehow have more often than not in this thoroughly weird season. Reyes and Delgado and Maine and Perez and Putz are hurt, the bullpen is iffy, the defense is suspect, and the Mets regularly do something so dunderheaded that you're left staring at the TV or the field with your mouth hanging open. And yet somehow we stay above water and the Phillies continue to stagger, and though our internal standings show us about 12 back and sinking fast, the real-world standings insist that we're just two games out. It doesn't seem possible, and probably it isn't over the long-term. But you never know. Maybe we're living through the best lousy year ever.

Our thanks to everybody who came out to Two Boots for Metstock. For the uninitiated, 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.