Ya gotta love ballplayers. They put the brutal loss behind them, they say. They show up at the park, to a man they insist they don't mention among themselves the devastating events of the night before, they drown out their bad memories by turning up the clubhouse music and they go get 'em.

Congratulations, Mets. You forgot you lost on Friday, or so you claim, and you won Saturday with no sense of drama other than that provided by the backdrop of having lost horribly Friday. We got a start that would have delighted us had it come from John Maine; because it came from heretofore unknown quantity Fernando Nieve, we can be ecstatic from it. Given the tenor of what enshrouded the Mets from Friday, I think we can catalogue Nieve's 6-2/3 innings as the best, most crucial start we've seen since Johan in Game 161 last September. It was definitely an effort that won't keep us all awake and drinking later tonight.

Yet, at the risk of labeling them liars, I don't believe the Mets had total amnesia about Friday. Nor should they have. They should carry the way that game ended with them into Sunday's game, into Tuesday's game and for the rest of the season. The way they played Saturday indicates to me Friday weighed on them, which is good news. Something can weigh on you without necessarily crushing you.

Take our entrenched second baseman Luis Castillo, who apparently will be a Met clear to the final weekend of 2011 no matter what he does in the field or when he does it. His recent glovework is the most noteworthy aspect of his recent repertoire, but I'm thinking of Luis at the bat for the moment, specifically what he does once he puts the ball in play. I don't think Luis dogs it as a rule. I don't think any of the Mets dogs it as a rule. But every time Castillo hit something Saturday, he consistently busted it out of the box in a way I hadn't seen all year. It paid off in terms of a second base hit late in the game when Robinson Cano took his time on Luis's grounder and Castillo beat the throw to the bag by a half-step.

Was that single manufactured because Luis Castillo woke up Saturday with total amnesia about Friday or because he thought about the previous game a lot and wanted to atone?

The entire team's approach to baseball from first pitch to last seemed much improved, as if the Mets were the kid who was scolded by a parent for naughty behavior and then threatened with TV or computer time being taken away. “No, no, I'll be good! I'll hustle!” And off they went, darting from home to first and appearing interested for nine full innings. Still saw a little too much one-handed magic with the gloves, but Rome wasn't rebuilt in a day.

You wouldn't want your team standing and staring into space thinking “I can't believe he didn't catch it…” while their next game is in progress. You do appreciate that they might know more about the mindset it takes to play professional baseball than you do, including the importance they attach to having a short memory. But I don't want them forgetting Friday, and I don't think they did Saturday. My concern is they don't develop a brand new case of amnesia for Sunday, one in which they collectively decide everything is fine, nothing was ever wrong, let's settle in to our usual relaxed pace.

Remember Friday. Remember Castillo. We the fans will. You the players should, too. Short memories are fine, but selective amnesia can be dangerous.

We the fans will always have long memories, of course. That's our blessing and our curse — mostly our blessing. If we didn't care, we wouldn't care, y'know? Unless you were just introduced to baseball Friday night in the bottom of the ninth inning, there'd be no frame of reference to explain the immense, intense shock that set in when Luis Castillo didn't do what second basemen have been doing since Bid McPhee came up to the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1882. If you hadn't been a Mets fan long enough to understand what it means to lose to the Yankees anytime but particularly with a one-run lead and 26 outs penciled into the books, you could dismiss Friday night as a novelty and flip over to Bill Maher on HBO.

That's not why we're fans, I don't think. Some who follow baseball seem to pride themselves more on adherence to isolated ideals or leading-indicator statistics than raw emotion and blunt passion. Most of us live somewhere in the middle, but some nights cry mostly for emotion, passion and a long memory. As long as you don't make good on your threats of violence to yourself or Luis Castillo, those are perfectly valid landing spots on those kinds of nights. Some moments are absolutely more immense and intense than can be plotted on a graph. Sometimes you gotta ask not “who's going to play second base let alone replace his on-base percentage if he's released?” but declare, “fuck it, get him out of here, fix this goddamn team.”

There's always the next day to recalibrate. There's always the next day for the Mets fan who's cheered every second baseman since Charlie Neal to wander back into his allegiance after swearing to swear it off. There's always the next day to not completely rue every single Luis Castillo sighting you're going to experience for the next 2½ years but to take a deep breath and say, all right Luis, get on and maybe Cora can move you over.

It may not satisfy a dark night's bloodlust, but next days are relentless, so you've to be prepared for every contingency, including that the Mets won't release the guy you don't really want to look at anymore for what should be considered the worst sin of them all: not not using two hands; not not throwing to the right base; but not beating the Yankees.

We don't root for the Mets to go 6-156, but if the Mets could only win six games out of 162, which six would you choose? Accomplished college football coaches have been shown the university door because they lose the rivalry game once too often. Auburn boosters, for example, have been known to communicate their priorities as such: we don't care what else you do, but beat Alabama. SEC, Big Ten, Pac-10…baseball ain't college football, but boy wouldn't it feel good to see a blue and orange penalty flag thrown for allowing the Yankees to encroach on our sure thing of a win?

However high they fly or low they skulk in the American League standings, the Yankees will always be the Yankees to us in terms of the one team to whom we do not want to lose, ever. We just watched three searing battles with our divisional archrivals and, from a comparative fan standpoint, it was a tea party. I've already forgotten how much I hate the fucking Phillies. They're a warmup act in that respect. We could play the '69 Cubs, the '85 Cardinals, the '99 Braves and the last three years worth of Philadelphians as prelude to a Subway Series and I'd forget everybody from Leo Durocher to Shane Victorino. It may not be the formula for securing a pennant, but for six games per season, who gives a fuck? Beat the Yankees…especially when up by a run with two outs and a pop fly is wafting softly into a mitt.

An encouraging development, at least as gleaned via television, is the Yankee Stadium aura & mystique bit may officially deader than Brian Bruney's sense of discretion. Remember how every time the Mets would go to Yankee Stadium II (1976-2008) and whichever of our players was new would be asked about what a thrill it must be to play on the (approximate) site where so many greats and so much history, blah, blah, blah? And our guys always went along with the script of what a privilege this was. I always thought that put us two runs in the hole before a pitch was fired in anger. But YS II is vacant and YS III is just another retro park that can't sell its best seats.

Yesterday I heard Mike Pelfrey interviewed about how great and exciting it must be to come to Yankee Stadium.

Oh yeah, he said, the clubhouse is really nice.

BAM!

And Nieve, answering questions about how well his mystery date went, was queried as to whether he was even more nervous considering it was the Yankees he'd be facing.

No, he said.

Just no.

DOUBLE BAM!

Pelf, like my wife, is from Wichita, and she suggested Mike was “just being a Kansan” about it (when asked how she liked Star Wars, Stephanie's grandmother responded, “It sure was loud”). But Fernando the Third — good for you. Don't let the media revive the dying “we're in such awe” narrative. You can use “it's important we beat the Yankees because we're the Mets” or just keep that in mind as you head to the mound. But no visits to monuments, nothing about ghosts, ixnay on all that tired “they're just such a great team” logorrhea.

And, it can't be stressed enough no matter what happened in the most recent game played, always use two hands.

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Of course I thought of Buckner. As I watched slow-motion replay after slow-motion replay, I thought of Bob Costas' line that the Bill Buckner play, October 25, 1986, is the Zapruder film of American sports. The Luis Castillo dropped pop fly was now the ball through Bill Buckner's legs for the 21st century.

I thought of the Billy Wagner game from three years ago, May 20, 2006, how helpless that felt, how commanding Pedro Martinez was for seven innings — and Duaner Sanchez for an inning beyond that — and how all Wagner had to do was come in and not give up four runs to the Yankees. He gave up four runs. We lost after he left, in eleven.

I thought of Armando Benitez. I could have thought of a dozen Armando Benitez games, but I thought of one of his last appearances in a Mets uniform, a Subway Series Sunday night, walk after walk, destroying a Mets lead and creating the platform for an extra-inning Mets loss at which point everybody in the house had heartburn. Armando saved a lot of wins for the Mets but blew a lot of saves, too. Each blown save felt bigger than any ten he didn't blow. On that occasion, June 22, 2003, Stephanie, sitting up and battling fierce indigestion that got her out of bed, asked, “if he keeps doing this, why do they keep him?”

I thought of Looper, Pittsburgh, July 8, 2005. It wasn't the Yankees. It didn't have to be.

I thought of and sputtered on as part of my post-Castillo pillow-throwing rant (hey, they're throw pillows) to Stephanie about the Jets. The Jets? Why on earth the Jets? Because this was pretty Jetslike. This was January 3, 1987, the Jets with a ten-point lead on the Browns, some four minutes from going to the AFC championship. Then Gastineau roughs Kosar and Cleveland has new life and two overtimes later, it's the Browns who will move on to face the Broncos and it is the Jets who I will never, ever again trust with a lead until 0:00 is on the clock.

They're not the only ones.

I thought of earlier in the evening, being out at a local Italian restaurant for my brother-in-law's birthday, a man thoughtful enough to have reserved me the seat that faced the TV. I watched the Mets take a 6-3 lead on Sheffield's fifth-inning blast and celebrated for about a minute and then turned dark. “Y'know what the problem with my mind here is?” I said to my baseball-oblivious sister. “I can't enjoy the Mets having a lead because now all I can do is worry that the Yankees will come back and before I know it, we'll be losing 7-6.” Which we were shortly after we got home and Jon Switzer became a Met.

And I thought of Francisco Rodriguez who, it was being noted by Gary Cohen as the Yankees celebrated their improbable…no, impossible comeback, had technically blown his first save as a Met. At that instant I didn't ache for myself as a Mets fan and I didn't ache for the Mets. I ached for K-Rod. This CANNOT be a blown save for Francisco Rodriguez! I squealed. How? How? I'm used to saves being blown by Mets closers who were congenitally incapable of closing consistently — Wagner, Benitez, Looper, the grand old man Franco — but that wasn't this. Frankie Rodriguez did his job. If Omar Minaya has done anything exquisitely in his almost five years as general manager of the New York Mets, it was sign this man, this closer, this bastion of perfection who has flourished in a pool of incompetence all season long.

A BS for K-Rod? BS, indeed.

I thought about Luis Castillo, but not out of empathy. I was empathetic toward Luis Castillo in 2008, even as I wished to see him remain sidelined for his and our own good. Luis Castillo was a one-man Mets bullpen last September. You did not want to them in a game and you did not want to see him in a game. That's why we got Damion Easley until he could no longer trudge out to second. That's why we got Argenis Reyes and Ramon Martinez even though one was woefully undercooked and the other was practically done. If Omar Minaya has done anything abominably in his almost five years as general manager of the New York Mets, it was to sign this man. In 2007, Luis Castillo was ineffectual. In 2008, Luis Castillo was a sad sack. In 2009, as he soared to bare adequacy, I could have sworn Luis Castillo was a Comeback Player of the Year candidate.

Now he is no longer barely adequate.

I imagine Luis Castillo comes to work Saturday and greets Ryan Church and Daniel Murphy, among others. I imagine their conversation will be self-satisfying to all involved.

“Guys, you think I'm in trouble?”

“Gee, Luis, I missed third base to cost us a game, but nothing bad happened to me. I got to keep playing.”

“Yeah, Luis, I dropped several fly balls, but nothing bad happened to me. I got to keep playing.”

“That's good, fellas. Because I just committed as egregious sin on the baseball diamond as could be imagined, but I guess I'll get to keep playing, too.”

“Of course you will, Luis. This is the Mets. There are no consequences for failure to execute the easiest and most vital steps that are part and parcel of winning baseball games. Maybe on other teams those miscues are frowned upon, but here only the fans get worked up about them. Our supervisors look the other way.”

“Yes, Luis, it's true. They are either very forgiving or have exceedingly low expectations where results are concerned. In fact I'm assuming that like almost every day here, we won't have to take infield or do anything other than go through the motions for a few hours before we can shower and leave.”

“We still get paid, right? I'm due $15.5 million over the next 2½ years and I have all kinds of uses for my absurdly high salary.”

“Luis, I'm surprised you'd ask these questions. You were of virtually no help to the team last year — most would say you were a detriment — and I'm guessing you didn't miss a single paycheck.”

“That's true, Ryan. I was compensated in a timely and lucrative manner.”

“Then relax. We're very good at that here.”

“I know. But what I did last night — drop a most simple popup that our closer worked so hard to generate for what was supposed to be the last out…and against the one rival who our fans so hate for us to lose to — I thought there might be a penalty.”

“Despite my near-rookie status, I don't think that's a problem, Luis. Maybe you get moved to a new position…”

“No Daniel, unlike you, I don't have even perceived versatility working for me.”

“Then I think you just get paid and everybody acts like nothing ever happened.”

“Cool!”

“Isn't it, though?”

Not cool. Not cool the way most of the Mets play. Not cool that Castillo was fooled by a most guileless ball. Not cool that once he got his footing and was under it, he used exactly one hand — half of his quota — to secure it. Not cool that he did not secure it. Not cool that instead of grabbing the ball and firing it home, he tossed it mindlessly to second base where there was no play. Not cool that as a Mets fan I thought the trail runner on the play would only be at third base. As a Mets fan, after all, I know very well that a player who is on first base when a ball is popped to shallow right/deep second with two outs isn't going to run very hard.

I forgot it was a Yankee running all the way from first base. Of course Mark Teixeira scored. The Yankees do that. The one thing I'll never take away from the Yankees is that somebody somewhere instilled that ethic into them. You run, you run, you run. Teixeira ran on an impossible play and thus scored because somebody teaches him and his teammates that nothing's impossible in baseball.

Not when you're playing the Mets.

The dismalness of this experience was a thousand percent enhanced by the fact that it was the Subway Series, that we wound up losing a game we were about to win to the Yankees, but the Castillo dropped pop fly transcends even the opponent. We've grown up since the early days of Interleague play when making a stand in the face of the pinstriped propaganda apparatus seemed paramount. This wasn't that Friday night, not in 2009. We're supposed to be a big-time contender as a matter of course, whatever city we're playing our road games in on a given weekend. This wasn't about attaining braggin' rights or a Mayor's Trophy. This was about winning a baseball game, something the Mets did not do. You can't win 'em all, you've heard, and that is true. But you can operate in a manner in which attempting to win every single game you play in is your most obvious priority.

The Mets aren't in that business, which is a bad fit considering they're a baseball team.

What business are the Mets in exactly? I ask that quite seriously. If the Mets are in the business of winning baseball games rather than putting on airs to project an impression that they are interested in winning baseball games, then Omar Minaya releases Luis Castillo before today's first pitch. Then, when that is done, Fred Wilpon releases Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel. And if a commission could be convened to find the Mets a new owner, that wouldn't be the worst idea in the world either.

Break up the Mets. For their own good, break up the Mets. Break off a piece of the Mets at any rate. Dismiss the most blatant offender. Dismiss Luis Castillo. Tell some lucky Buffalo Bison or Savannah Sand Gant he is now the second baseman in Flushing. Tell Luis Castillo, however, that he no longer plays for the New York Mets. Tell him and his erstwhile teammates that there have to be some minimal standards for maintaining membership on this team and that not catching a catchable pop fly for the final out is that standard — a standard that could be overlooked this one time if he had made good on his Pee Wee League error and thrown home. But he didn't do that either.

What does it take to not be a Met? Is this enough? Is not making that play enough? He doesn't make that play in the second inning against the Padres, or even the Yankees, we say, well, OK, these things happen. But c'mon, this is crunch time. You don't have to be Wise, the Official Potato Chip of the New York Mets, to understand the concept of crunch time. You, Mr. Veteran Second Baseman with three Gold Gloves gathering dust on your mantel, are paid to catch that ball.

You are paid to not allow a blown save onto Francisco Rodriguez's ledger if Francisco Rodriguez did not blow the save. Frankie will blow a save eventually. He will blow several over the course of his contract, and we will deal with that reality when it occurs. But you, Luis Castillo, committed not just an error, but a sin. You did not support your teammate. I don't mean you didn't issue some worthless stream of quotes after the game. You didn't back him up with your glove. Not in the second inning, but in the ninth inning. We have Frankie Rodriguez so we don't have those Wagner, Benitez, Looper moments. The frustration of watching a solid to spectacular start swirl down the drain is immeasurable. It was unspeakably deflating when Pedro would be no-decisioned because of Looper or Wagner, or Johan came away empty-handed because of Billy the Kid…and never mind their W-L. The team W-L took a hit. Frankie's the barrier to that happening more than rarely between now and 2012.

Yet you, Luis, you conked Frankie over the head with that barrier. He did his job. One out, a single to Jeter, another out, Jeter steals second, 3-1 to Teixeira, an intentional ball four, then Alex Rodriguez, Mr. Clutch. K-Rod popped up A-Rod. That's doin' the job. That's exactly why K-Rod was such an acquisition. Wagner and Looper and Benitez and sleepless nights extending back to John Franco…it was no sleep 'til K-Rod. But he did exactly what he had to do.

You didn't. You did the opposite.

The other night Carlos Beltran misplayed a ball in center field that led to some Phillie runs. It did not occur to me that Carlos Beltran should be released. You don't weigh one misplay against a portfolio bulging with sensational catches and bountiful hitting. Luis Castillo is not Carlos Beltran. Luis Castillo is usually adequate. Once in a while he is adequate-plus. Thursday night he collected three hits and scored three runs and flashed a bit of leather. That was very nice, but it's not enough to counterbalance Friday night. Friday night was Monster Chiller Horror Theatre and our second baseman was Count Luis, sucking the blood from victory. His act must be cancelled.

This is not a call for Jihad against Luis Castillo per se. I've got nothing against him personally. I felt bad he was such a target for boos in 2008 partly out of sympathy and partly out of utility. I don't think booing a Met will help a Met and we tend to need all the help we can get. But it doesn't help the Mets, plural, to continue to foster a roster of zombie players who make some of the most embarrassing, unprofessional and deleterious mistakes a baseball player can make. Everybody who makes them — like Church, like Murphy, like Fernando Martinez — is essentially patted on the back and/or the head and is told that's all right, you get to keep playing for us.

Is that the plan for Luis Castillo? Is he, like everyone else on this team, given a pass for what has bulleted to the top of the Worst Play Ever charts? Are the New York Mets in the business of winning baseball games? Or are they just putting on airs?

While I was thinking about Buckner and Wagner and the Jets blowing it in Cleveland, I watched the postgame show on SNY. Bobby Ojeda, Darryl Strawberry and Chris Carlin at once closed ranks and praised Luis Castillo to the hilt for standing at his locker and speaking to reporters. I feel bad, Castillo said. I thought I had it, Castillo said. I have to catch that ball, Castillo said.

He looked very sad. He's a human being and you can't help but wish a human being who is not in the opposition's uniform not look that sad. But honestly, I don't care that he stood at his locker and admitted culpability. Geez, are our standards for performance that low that blowing it and then saying “I blew it” earns you credit?

Not here it doesn't. Make a vital mistake in building a car so the car breaks down, you shouldn't be on the line any longer. Make a vital mistake with a prescription or a ligament, then mister, you shouldn't be a doctor. Be the Met who can't catch the game-ending popup against the Yankees, you can't be a Met in the next game. You just can't. I'm trying to be reasonable and not hair trigger in recommending this course of action, but sometimes it's reasonable to do what appears drastic.

Next week, when Luis Castillo shouldn't still be a Met but probably will be, the Tampa Bay Rays will come to Citi Field. Every beat guy will write a Scott Kazmir story, even if Scott Kazmir is on the DL. You'll recall the trade of Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano raised a firestorm of dismay and disgust among Mets watchers in 2004. It was nothing but bad in most eyes (not mine; I reflexively concluded Kazmir was an overblown Mets pitching prospect in the tradition of every Mets pitching prospect for a decade) but later its narrative got a fresh coat of rationalization. Yeah, Scott Kazmir was a bad trade, but it moved the Mets to act positively. It brought in Minaya who brought in Martinez and Beltran and we all began to live happily ever after.

Could a dropped pop fly, a mindless toss to second and two hustling Yankee baserunners have the same effect in 2009 that Jim Duquette's front office bobble in 2004 had in terms of righting the ship? Could this be, to cross over to football again, the baseball equivalent of the most infamous moment in Giants history, the one from November 19, 1978 when Joe Pisarcik muffed an unnecessary handoff to Larry Csonka? Remember or at least read about that one?

The Giants were about to put away the Eagles. All they had to do was take a knee; fall on the ball. Inexplicably, the order was sent down from the press box not to do what every team did with the clock running down — hand it to Csonka, that's the ticket. Pisarcik handed the ball to Csonka's hip instead. The ball fell to the Meadowlands turf, Herman Edwards picked it up for Philadelphia and romped into the end zone. The score went from 17-12 Giants to 19-17 Eagles in an eyeblink. The subsequent scream, when prorated to 2009 Mets levels, may have been the harshest I let out until 8-7 Mets became 9-8 Yankees on June 12, 2009.

The Giants, who hadn't made the playoffs since 1963, were on the fringe of the NFC Wild Card race until that football slipped free. When what happened happened, their competitive aspirations died yet again. What followed was a firestorm that made the Kazmir controversy look like Cap Day. Bob Gibson, the Giants offensive coordinator who was pressured to call the handoff from director of football operations Andy Robustelli, was let go the next day. Fans — which is to say people who had been with the team for generations — burned their season tickets in the Giants Stadium parking lot. Most memorably, a plane was hired to carry a banner: 15 YEARS OF LOUSY FOOTBALL — WE'VE HAD ENOUGH.

Enough was enough. Robustelli, a great old Giant from their last glory epoch, was fired. Head coach John McVay was fired. NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle stepped in and facilitated the hiring of GM George Young. Young hired head coach Ray Perkins. They drafted Phil Simms (who replaced Pisarcik early in the 1979 season). Perkins' defensive coordinator was Bill Parcells. I realize this is a digression about football from thirty years ago, and more Mets fans are Jets fans than Giants fans, but I'm guessing you can see the point: from utter disaster came deliverance. Parcells would succeed Perkins. Young would steer the organization to a series of successful drafts, including that of Lawrence Taylor. There would be growing pains, but there was a powerhouse rising in the swamp. Eight years after Pisarcik couldn't hand the ball to Csonka, Simms brought a Super Bowl trophy home to East Rutherford.

The Giants were far more of a mess in 1978 than the Mets are presently, but the Mets do not appear to be heading in a super direction for the long term. The Minaya era has peaked. Jerry Manuel has peaked. Luis Castillo has peaked. In the time it took Alex Rodriguez's pop fly to peak, descend and bounce away — 15 seconds of lousy baseball at most — it became crystal clear to me that this is a Pisarcik moment.

This is a team that needs to start being saved from itself at once. This is an organization that needs a modern-day Gil Hodges to march out to second base and tell Luis Castillo that his leg isn't quite right, you're leaving the game. Except Luis needs to leave the clubhouse and keep walking. Don't cry for him, Lou Castillo — he'll still get paid his $15.5 million whether he's here drifting uncomfortably under pop flies until he's not catching them with two hands or not. We're getting Sheffield for almost free, so look at eating Castillo's contract as good financial karma.

In late April, I pondered the future of this team and wondered if it was being well-served by its core. I now realize my concerns were misplaced. The Mets' core is not Beltran, Wright and Reyes. The Mets' core is complacency, ineptitude and unaccountability. That trio is locked in here unless something is done to remove them. If Wellington and Tim Mara could be made to understand they weren't doing themselves any favors by keeping those who had failed them around, Fred and Jeff Wilpon can, too.

Omar Minaya can no longer be graded for what he did between December 2004 and January 2006 when his deals yielded Pedro, the Carloses, Wagner, Lo Duca, Sanchez, Nady and Maine. It is 2009. He brought in Frankie Rodriguez. That's one big check mark in his favor. He also constructed a roster and a depth chart behind it that was ill-equipped to handle adversity and injury. That's a huge minus. He has run an organization where slothfulness is nurtured and tolerated. That's an outsized minus. He has created a team of four or five stars and as many as seventeen or eighteen journeymen. Mark that a minus, too. Omar Minaya isn't helping the Mets win baseball games.

Jerry Manuel? Isn't Jerry Manuel responsible for the way his team plays? For not touching third and not catching flies and not running to first and not sliding home and not knowing enough to use two hands or to throw to the right base? Why don't they take infield every day? Why don't they make it around the bases when they're on the bases? What was Jon Switzer doing in there against Hideki Matsui besides a Mel Rojas impersonation? Jerry Manuel isn't helping the Mets win baseball games.

Luis Castillo? Until Friday night, not the Mets' biggest problem. But he's bearing the brunt now. Luis Castillo did not help the Mets win a very big ballgame. In fact, he lost it for them not because he isn't good enough but because he didn't play well enough. There's a difference.

If you're not helping us win baseball games, you're hurting us. If you're hurting us, you shouldn't be here. I don't know why anyone would run a baseball team any other way.

METSTOCK: 3 Hours of Pizza and Baseball is coming to Manhattan on Thursday, June 18, 7:00 PM. Meet the authors of A Magic Summer, Mets By The Numbers and Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, talk baseball with us, watch the Mets beat the Orioles just as they did in '69 with us and have a generally great time. Details here.

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.

Something looked wrong with that play from the first tentative step Luis Castillo took back and to his left. Something was awry with his footwork, with the way he was staring into the night sky, with the set of his shoulders … I don't know, but something looked wrong from the start.

Granted, a properly paranoid fan (which is to say every fan) always holds his or her breath on a game-ending pop-up that stays up there long enough for horrible thoughts to creep into the brain. But 999 out of 1,000 times, those horrible thoughts evaporate when the ball is squeezed, the held breath is released and the game is safe. But … I don't know. Something told me this might just be that 1,000th time, and it was.

Did Castillo lose it in the lights? Did he hear Ryan Church's footsteps? Did he … oh, whatever. It hit him right in the pocket of the fucking glove, the one his other hand was nowhere near. That's whatever.

The rest of a messy but fairly entertaining game now goes right down the memory hole, alas. The Mets were patient (and corporeal) when Joba Chamberlain and his annoying straight-billed hat kept throwing pitches around the plate and into Met bodies. Gary Sheffield blasted a from-the-heels home run that was decidedly satisfying; David Wright came back from what looked like a fishing expedition of a failed at-bat against Mariano Rivera to rifle a ball up the gap and score Carlos Beltran. Shawn Green and Pedro Feliciano offered bullpen hope, even if newcomer Jon Switzer made an instantly persuasive case that he is not the answer to the search for that other lefty in the pen. Livan Hernandez pitched ably enough on a night when you knew the two teams involved were going to trade broadsides for the duration and lost leads were the stuff of concern, not disaster.

No, disaster is hit about 200 feet in the air and a lousy 140 feet from home plate.

Well, I do at least have my hatred back. This week I learned a valuable lesson: Don't confess to anything less than a desire to see every Phillie and every Phillies fan left destitute and living in a refrigerator box on an active railway. The line to batter your correspondent was long: Faith and Fear readers, other blogs' readers, my wife, my co-blogger. Duly noted. Settling in for tonight's game, I knew there would be no such issue. Just the sight of Derek Jeter sticking his hand out behind him at the plate was enough to make me grit my teeth. Ditto for the first glimpse of A-Rod's oversized Mickey Mouse batting gloves, Joe Girardi and his annoying, presumptuous uniform number, and the sound of those awful post-Yankee-homer bells. It wasn't until the seventh inning when my jaw unclenched. (A temporary condition. Thanks, Luis.) Sometimes people who don't know me very well try to plumb the depths of my hatred for the Yankees, and I explain that seeing that the Yankees have won a spring-training game pisses me off, at least for a moment. When we're in a zero-sum affair, every pitch to a Yankee that's a ball is a bruise, every Yankee hit is a wound, every Yankee run is a near-death experience.

And every Yankee victory that comes with two outs in the ninth on a dropped pop-up by a fat, overpaid second baseman you've spent the year trying reluctantly to accept? I'm kind of amazed I can type. Shock is a powerful thing, I suppose.

I haven't seen enough of the new Yankee Stadium to form an impression of it, but it's definitely true — as Gary, Keith and Ron noted — that the place was oddly quiet. The score can't be an explanation, so what gives? In April Citi Field seemed oddly quiet itself, but it hasn't felt that way in a while, now that the weather has warmed and people have stopped touring the ballpark. Curious. I have no idea about the interior because I was too annoyed at Kevin Burkhardt being gosh-and-golly about the Museum of Pinstriped Fascism. (Memo to Kevin: This is a bad place for bad people. You should be a somber, reluctant guide, like you're showing us around an exhibit of war crimes.) Beyond that, the right-field stands gobbled their share of Yankee baseballs, but only Jeter's wouldn't have been out last year.

Just heard Howie Rose's call of the fatal play. Excuse me while I projectile-vomit.

Where do we go from here? I don't know, man. Ruinous loss against the Phillies. Another ruinous loss against the Phillies. A jaw-dropper of a disaster against the Legions of the Vertical Swastika.

Baseball, man. It'll fucking kill you sometimes. And now I'm off to stare at the ceiling and replay that one in my head. I'll do that with this play several thousand times in my lifetime. May as well get started.

METSTOCK: 3 Hours of Pizza and Baseball is coming to Manhattan on Thursday, June 18, 7:00 PM. Meet the authors of A Magic Summer, Mets By The Numbers and Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, talk baseball with us, watch the Mets beat the Orioles just as they did in '69 with us and not discuss FUCKING LUIS CASTILLO AND HIS FUCKING APPARENT LACK OF A FUCKING OPPOSABLE THUMB. Details here.

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. NOTE: FACEBOOK IS EASIER TO USE IF YOU HAVE A FUCKING OPPOSABLE THUMB, APPARENTLY UNLIKE LUIS FUCKING CASTILLO.

That's all.

The country thunder of Raul Ibañez didn't seem all that admirable, did it?

Fucking Raul Ibañez (all fucking Phillies will be, until further notice, referred to in this manner — and none of that cutesy-poo “phucking” spelling either) completely unplugged what had been an electric series Thursday night, one a Mets fan could imagine relocating to October and throwing off sparks under the NLCS banner until a most worthy league champion is crowned.

We Mets fans have great imaginations, don't we?

For 29+ innings dating back to Tuesday, it was real enough. This was 51 hours of outstanding baseball and gripping theater. Then came Ken Takahashi and fucking Ibañez and his fucking laser beam of a home run that bolted right through the Flushing fog causing the curtain to fall and the show to close. Exit the Citi Field crowd, stage left.

Yeah, fucking Ibañez was quite the buzzkill, though to be fair this game didn't seem to crackle like the two before. But so what? We were winning 3-1 for a while. Tim Redding was touchable but not overly penetrable. With his seven innings of walkless, gut-check ball, Redding became the latest “who he?” Met starter to move up the ladder. He would have anyway because of John Maine going on the DL (oh, by the way, John Maine is going on the DL), but he earned the promotion from “disturbing uncertainty” to “one thing we don't have to worry about as much as other things,” not unlike Liván Hernandez's 2009 trajectory.

The Mets' strong points include Liván Hernandez and Tim Redding. What a season.

Redding gave the Mets a real chance to win. He outpitched fucking Jamie Moyer, whose only saving grace is that he was born 43 days before I was, thus making him the only obstacle between me and my mortality. As long as there's a baseball player older than you, you still have a chance to grow up to become a baseball player. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. That said, fucking Jamie Moyer was quite touchable and seemed plenty penetrable, but I looked up from my Cascarino's chicken roll and my Nathan's fries — the food remains awfully good at Citi Field — and noticed penetration wasn't much achieved all night.

Fucking Moyer. And their fucking bullpen. Save for a stray open barn door single to Omir Santos to start the superfluous bottom of the tenth, fucking Clay Condrey, fucking Chad Durbin, fucking Scott Eyre and fucking Ryan Madson gave up not a darn thing to the Mets after fucking Moyer departed. The Mets (rather Luis Castillo by way of Carlos Beltran) did all their scoring by the fifth. Then it was time to tuck the bats in for the evening. Sleep tight, Sluggers!

Takahashi? Maybe he had some awesome stranglehold on lefty hitters, lefty pitcher that he is. That was my guess to my friend David who invited me to share in his interesting left field Promenade Box seats (interesting is code for neat perspective if you don't worry too much about tracking every little fly ball to left or center). I recalled Takahashi made his debut against the fucking Phillies in early May after Oliver Perez — name ring a bell? — was knocked out. Ken acquitted himself decently then, so maybe removing Bobby Parnell before fucking Chase Utley could spank our young man again wasn't a bad move.

I didn't know lefties were actually batting about two-thousand off Takahashi. I was out in left field. What was Jerry Manuel's excuse?

Well, there ya go. The Mets had a chance to sweep the fucking Phillies and instead lose the last two in a row. The fucking Phillies lead the Mets by four games. They're without fucking Brett Myers and fucking Brad Lidge but they just stormed through a gauntlet of a road trip. Maybe the injuries will catch up to them in the same way the Mets' mind-blowing lack of depth began to hit them after they acquitted themselves so wonderfully in San Francisco and Boston (when not sucking the chrome off the proverbial trailer hitch in L.A.).

The fucking Phillies aren't admirable. They're just good. If we start admiring good, then let's drop the artifice and become Dodgers (or Lakers) fans at once. It is the depleted Mets who are admirable for keeping up to this point. Even allowing for the performance du jour of a Sheffield, a Santos, a Castillo — and the heady leadership of Alex Cora — this lineup is Beltran and Wright and hide your eyes from the fright. The whole product is being held aloft by two All-Star hitters, one stellar closer and, at the moment, four generally sound to spectacular starting pitchers. The fifth, Maine, is off to the land of Perez and Putz, Delgado and Reyes and whoever else we've disabled (check closer, and I'll bet you find Pedro Astacio rattling around on the 15-day). Johnny got lit up by the notoriously inept Washington Nationals last Saturday which should have been the tipoff right there that something was very, very wrong. Get well, John. And let us know if you run into Ollie.

Saturday's starter in Maine's place will be…determined at a later date. I listened on the LIRR home as Steve Somers guessed Nelson Figueroa, which directed me to root around my schlep bag in search of expired medications that could dull the pain. Before I could swallow any out-of-code Ibuprofen, Ed Coleman came on to speculate it will probably be Jon Niese (a Saturday morning in 2011: “You know, Richard, Jon Niese never really recovered from being called up to make that start in place of Maine in the Subway Series before he was really ready a couple of years ago. It's a real shame what happened to the kid.”) or maybe Fernando Nieve, a starter only masquerading as a reliever…which would describe Ken Takahashi as well. I don't know who will start for us between Liván and Johan. I do know the Mets should don Red Sox uniforms for the next three days because they seem to work wonders against the Yankees…though it probably helps to fill them with Red Sox.

Lest this resemble the Thursday night fog in its gloom and doom, it wasn't a bad night at Red Brick, not with David one seat over for the first time since we swept the Rockies last July; not with visiting New York expatriate Andee dropping by from Portland, Oregon for the denouement; not with the aforementioned chicken roll; not even with the unwanted conclusion of the all-time Either Log record winning streak of seven games (which was mostly a mélange of triumphs at the hands of the Bucs, Nats and Fish, but ya play who ya play). The Citi Field novelty has, unlike that dense fog, officially burned off for me, and that's fine. I don't want it to be novel. I want it to be where I go to see Mets games (Mets wins ideally). Perhaps it's because I was showing David around on his maiden voyage that I no longer felt remotely like an alien in my ostensible home park (not when there are others who by dint of their personal schedules still do). Listen, there remain things I don't like about this ballpark, things I don't love about this ballpark, things I would change about this ballpark, but 36 seasons at Shea went by and those types of things existed there, too.

Congratulations, Citi Field. In your way, you're becoming Shea Stadium to me.

Three things have helped me permanently accept this ballpark besides the reality that it's not a weekend carnival that will fold up its tents Sunday and realight in Woodhaven next weekend:

1) Familiarity, familiarity, familiarity. It's not the back of my hand, but after fourteen games, it's creeping down my arm.

2) It's where they keep the Mets, and as down on them as I tend to plummet, I still like to join them as often as possible.

3) My coming and going rituals.

My coming ritual is simply stopping by my brick, no matter which way I'm headed. I can go Left Field, Right Field or Rotunda, but I gotta at the every least nod to my brick, maybe tap it with a toe. Last loss before last night? The last time I didn't acknowledge my brick.

My going ritual is exiting through the Rotunda. I don't particularly care if I come in that way, but I just about have to go out that way. Early in the season, I was scuttling out any ol' rathole. I didn't like it, particularly in tandem with trudging down those awful schoolhouse staircases. It was like ending a day at the ballpark with a tedious fire drill. Though they're slower than what I was used to at Shea — nice technological breakthrough 45 years later — I've come to enjoy the stroll down the left field ramps. In the right light, I feel enveloped by those enormous banners of great Mets moments, the ones that face out so people who are not at the Mets game can enjoy scenes of Mets history while people at the Mets games don't have to be bothered by any of that silly team-intensive imagery. While everybody else is spilling right toward the William A. Shea Memorial Parking Lot when we approach the final ramp sequence, I veer left and walk through Field Level, which isn't all that crowded by the time I'm downstairs. That allows me to exit grandly down one of the winding Rotunda staircases. Whatever time I'm taking by not hustling down those soulless back stairs is more than made up for by landing steps from the subway entrance. I find I leave in a much better mood, win or lose, than I did when I was first getting the hang of this place. Heading out the front door assures me I just spent a few hours belonging in that place. It makes me want to come back to see how it's doing, like I have a proprietary interest in its well-being, even as there are things there I don't like, don't love and would change.

I rather enjoyed the temporary ritual in between the coming and going, the one I established in May watching the Mets reel off seven consecutive wins. Perhaps that will be revived in the near future.

Until then, fuck the fucking Phillies. Imaginary NLCS previews are on hold. What we have to do right now is go beat the Yankees. I'd say “fucking Yankees,” but that seems redundant.

METSTOCK: 3 Hours of Pizza and Baseball is coming to Manhattan on Thursday, June 18, 7:00 PM. Meet the authors of A Magic Summer, Mets By The Numbers and Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, talk baseball with us, watch the Mets beat the Orioles just as they did in '69 with us and have a generally great time. Details here.

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.

You know, I've tried to hate the Phillies. I really have. But I can't quite manage it.

There's the country thunder of Ryan Howard, the guts and intensity of Chase Utley, and Jimmy Rollins' habit of backing up his big talk. Can't hate any of them. There's the goofy surfer charm of Jayson Werth and Cole Hamels, and the strange sight of Raul Ibanez, who somehow has 20 home runs despite looking like he's about 60 years old and hunched over in constant pain. None of them get black marks in my book. There's the stranger-than-fiction story of Chris Coste and the apparently never-ending tale of Jamie Moyer. Great stuff. There are guys who annoy the crap out of you but you know you'd adore if they wore your uniform — a category that includes the likes of Shane Victorino and J.C. Romero. Not so long ago, the Phillies were known as a soft clubhouse full of guys who spent the spring hiding from Larry Bowa and could be counted on to quit in the summer. Now, the Phillies play like the fate of the world's at stake every night, and the clubhouse accused of being soft is our own.

I'm not saying some of the Phillies don't get me worked up — Brett Myers needs no explanation and Greg Dobbs strikes me as a Cody Ross-level douchebag. (Rollins' takeout slide on Alex Cora was clean; Dobbs's tonight was decidedly not.) And I like that the Phillies rub the Mets the wrong way — I wish more opponents made the Mets a bit testy. But watching the Phillies — even getting beaten by the Phillies — just doesn't make me seethe like seeing triumphant Yankees or Braves does.

Maybe it helps that tonight's game was another classic — just one that turned out wrong for us. There was more bad feeling on display, another three-run lead surrendered, chance after Met chance wasted, tit-for-tat highlight plays and finally too much Werth and Utley to withstand. And there was plenty to ponder along the way.

For openers, it's increasingly apparent that Mike Pelfrey is somewhere between eccentric and batshit insane. During the broadcast it came to light that Johan Santana had taken Pelfrey aside and told him to stop fidgeting and taking off his cap and being generally Pelfreyesque on the mound. Gary, Keith and Ron used that to salute Santana's leadership, but it struck me as evidence of just how weird Big Pelf has become: He falls off the mound, mutters the pitch he's going to throw so the hitter can hear, picks fights with enemy batters and at least once per start has to be tended to by the catcher and the infield like he's a spooked horse. It's not that there's anything wrong with this — rather, it's that pitchers are expected to start off flighty and jumpy and then calm down, or at least channel their competitiveness as they mature. But Pelfrey seems to be going in the opposite direction: The better he gets, the weirder he gets.

Speaking of weird, is it possible baseball's umpires have taken up pre-game crack? Dan Iassogna blew two calls at first (Castillo was out, Beltran was safe) and Fernando Tatis all but draped himself over Carlos Ruiz on a remarkably incompetent bunt without drawing an interference call from Randy Marsh. What gives? And while I'm feeling cranky, whatever happened to the home-plate umpire removing the bat when a runner was inbound?

When Bobby Parnell came into the game, I glanced at his stats and did a double-take: Were opponents really hitting .300 against him, with lefties up in Ted Williams territory? Yes, they were — and the Phillies immediately proved it, with Utley lacing his fatal home run into the right-field seats and Ryan Howard driving Jeremy Reed to the left-field wall and a good distance up it. Lighting up three digits on the radar gun is nice and all, but that BAA is more than a little terrifying for an eighth-inning guy.

And finally, what can you say about Werth's catch? Werth himself admitted he didn't expect to catch it, which I'm sure offers David Wright no comfort. A couple of inches in any direction, and our lasting image of tonight's game is Werth rolling over disconsolately in the grass as SNY's cameras track the ball to a final resting spot somewhere on the warning track and Wright gets dogpiled at first. Then Emily goes to Citi Field Thursday night with her husband having bought her a mini-broom and insisted she chant “SWEEP!” all night while he glues himself to the couch and tries not to think too hard about a share of first place.

Instead, we're left with this: He sure as hell looked like Ron Swoboda out there, didn't he?

***

METSTOCK: 3 Hours of Pizza and Baseball is coming to Manhattan on Thursday, June 18, 7:00 PM. Meet the authors of A Magic Summer, Mets By The Numbers and Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, talk baseball with them, watch the Mets beat the Orioles just as they did in '69 with us and have a generally great time. Details here.

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.