Perhaps you remember Carlos Beltran's introductory press conference in which he declared that the heretofore bedraggled, woebegone organization he'd signed with was no more, that these fellows with whom he'd thrown in his lot for lots of money were instead the New Mets.

That was January 11, 2005. On May 30, 2009, Beltran didn't make any big public statements, but by his exit from Saturday's game, he could have been saying we were looking at the even Newer Mets.

Once Beltran left the game with a stomach virus as the top of the sixth commenced Saturday, there wasn't a single Met on the field who was a member of the 2005 renaissance men or the 2006 National League East champs. In fact, with 2007 acquisition Luis Castillo having pinch-hit in the fifth only to sit down thereafter, there would be, for the remainder of the day, no player in a Mets uniform on the field who had been a Met before 2008. Brian Schneider, technically the most recently activated Met on the roster, was the most heavily tenured Met of anyone who played from the sixth through ninth innings.

C Brian Schneider: March 31, 2008

CF Angel Pagan: March 31, 2008

3B Fernando Tatis: May 13, 2008

1B Daniel Murphy: August 2, 2008

P Brian Stokes: August 9, 2008

2B Ramon Martinez: September 7, 2008

LF Jeremy Reed: April 6, 2009

PH Omir Santos: April 21, 2009

P Ken Takahashi: May 2, 2009

RF Fernando Martinez: May 26, 2009

SS Wilson Valdez: May 27, 2009

Wow, that was quick.

Extenuating circumstances, of course, explain how our good old Mets became Club Nouveau. Beltran was feeling icky. Jose Reyes and Carlos Delgado are on the DL. Oliver Perez is experiencing yet another setback. Slumping David Wright was judged to require a rare blow (though he did make it as far as the on-deck circle in the ninth). There was no pressing lefty-lefty matchup with which to bother Pedro Feliciano. Mike Pelfrey pitched Friday. John Maine pitches Sunday. Ramon Castro catches for the Chicago White Sox.

I haven't checked with Elias or anybody like that, but there's no way we've had a lineup so lacking in core Mets of the recent past for even a fraction of a game since before the Age of David kicked in. There's always a Wright or a Beltran listed on the manager's card and, before this last road trip, there was usually a Reyes. Each of them plus Delgado played in no fewer than 159 games last year. (Reyes, Wright and Beltran all sat to start this memorable affair from May 17, 2007, but Delgado was in the whole way.) But just like that, for four not so solid innings, the team fielded eleven players who are, relatively speaking, Metsies come lately.

Not that there's anything wrong with that if they win. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that even if they lose, which is what they did behind starter and loser Tim Redding, an active Met for not quite two weeks. There is no magic inherent in having been a longtime Met per se. But it was strange to notice this kind of September lineup in late May, and by September, I mean the kind of Septembers the Mets endured before Carlos Beltran blessed us with his talent and signature in January '05.

For part of a day, life went on without all the Mets we've automatically identified as Mets for years. It just didn't go on very well.

Familiar names and faces dot 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. Read all about why you'll want to read FAFIF: AIPHOTNYM at Transplanted Mets Fan and join Jason and me on The Happy Recap radio show tonight around 6:10.

Omir Santos drove home Gary Sheffield Friday night while driving away Ramon Castro. He may be our most versatile catcher ever.

As we click our heels over Santos, we are destined to remember Castro fleetingly…which is just about the only fleetness to be associated with Ramon. Yet in the annals of Mets backup backstops, he was actually quite the latter-day stalwart. By starting Wednesday when oh me/oh my/Omir was sidelined by a bruise to the shin, Ramon nosed ahead of Vance Wilson for ninth on the all-time Mets games caught chart, 256 to 255. I know — just what every kid receiver aspires to, but that left him behind only Ron Hodges, Duffy Dyer and (by five) Mackey Sasser among those who were never designated full-time starters behind the plate. Castro caught more Mets games than Wilson, than Chris Cannizzaro, than Paul Lo Duca, than Todd Pratt, than the legendary Choo Choo Coleman even. Ramon Castro was his name and he was here for quite a while, bub.

I'm guessing we all have versions of three impressions of Ramon, in no particular order:

• He was injured a lot.

• He was the clubhouse cutup.

• He hit a big home run against the Phillies ages ago.

The injuries were unfortunate. Without them, he would have passed Mackey Sasser with ease, maybe even Duffy Dyer (who I could have sworn caught 500 games a year every year when I was a kid but was never actually behind the plate for more than 91 in any given season). The cutup stuff, which seemed to involve gaseous outbursts according to various reports, lost its charm when he'd do unfunny things like miss his wakeup call in San Diego and show up late to the park. But that home run he hit on August 30, 2005 — and the one that followed the next night as the Mets briefly closed in on serious Wild Card contention — helped establish Castro a going cause for those in search of forehead-slapping answers to the Mets' recurring hitting and catching woes over the next few years. Why doesn't Ramon play more? came up time and again these past five seasons. It wasn't a bad question, but he never came as close to catching as many games as the 99 he got in in '05, the year Mike Piazza was being eased out, the year Ramon Castro was the Omir Santos of Shea Stadium.

Now Omir Santos is the Omir Santos of Citi Field and Brian Schneider can go warm up Sean Green for all I care. But these things have a way of turning. BriSchnei, who just sucks the life force out of me by his very presence (a lower-key version of the sensation Jason experiences when he thinks of or looks at Bobby Jones, Jose Vizcaino, Steve Trachsel, Gerald Williams, Luis Castillo and Ramon Martinez; we all create and maintain our Met crosses to bear), had one of the biggest hits of 2008 in Philadelphia when he grew a beard and touched off a ten-game winning streak. If we're going to make first place our summer — and autumn — home, we're going to need all hands on deck, yada yada, so welcome back and go get 'em Mr. Momentarily Irrelevant.

Omir's latest big night coincided with my latest big night at the new ballpark where, for all my wariness of its charms, I've reeled off six straight Log II wins, as good a streak as I ever constructed in the old Log via the old ballpark. Consecutive Victory VI was witnessed from an unexpected perch in the Ebbets Club, an invitation that excited me more than it should have. It wasn't the prospect of clubbiness that revved me up or even the temptation provided by a seat closer to the action than I've had to date in the current crib. It's that I really wanted to see the Ebbets Club because it's been a bane of my Citi Field co-existence ever since I walked by it in early April.

Why, I asked myself over and over, is there something named for Ebbets Field at the Mets ballpark, particularly when there is nothing on the public premises designed to specifically evoke Shea Stadium or the Polo Grounds, which were the actual homes of the Mets before 2009? I sort of get why they felt compelled to clone Ebbets' exterior, spooky as it is to find miles from McKeever Place. I respect if not exactly embrace the Rotunda homage to Jackie Robinson (whether or not I'm “an intelligent, liberal New Yorker,” it does feel like social studies homework). Yet the Ebbets Club, every time I pass its guarded entrance, has irked the spit out of me. For a ballpark that opened for real not two months ago, Citi Field is already legendary for its unbearable lightness of Mets being. Thus I had to see for myself what else they were doing for the Dodgers — and conversely not the Mets — behind closed club doors. When I was offered an in, I was perversely psyched to go. Yes! I will be even more offended!

But y'know what? The Ebbets Club isn't even a good Brooklyn Dodgers tribute. I was actually a little disappointed that I wasn't Pee Wee'd, Oisked and Skoonjed to death in there. A little of it was having my high dudgeon deflated, but more of it coalesced into a new question: why have an Ebbets Club and not have it be an outstanding tribute to the ballpark and team that inspired it? Go all in or don't bother. There were like two pictures of the Ebbets exterior and nothing else of a Bummy nature that I recall. There were a few abstract pieces of Mets art, but nothing as simple as, say, a framed publicity shot of Ed Lynch. For a facility that's koo-koo for clubs, the three I've seen at Citi Field — Caesars, Promenade and Ebbets — could be injected into any golf course, any airport, anywhere in the United States that isn't interested in the New York Mets. (And the food was surprisingly institutional in quality; Aramark lives.)

But the Ebbets Club seating outside, the actual place where you watch the Mets game — very nice. Very, very nice. A Citi analogue to Shea's rear Field Level section between home and first, except comfier, cushier and spatially more exclusive. It doesn't rate the posted price tag ($160 on this Bronze evening), but I wasn't paying for it and neither was my incredibly gracious host. Not that I was in a hurry to leave such lovely baseball surroundings or turn away from Santos' baseball heroics, but I was particularly impressed by how close the EC is to the JRR which, in turn, is steps from the MTA and its Super 7 Express bullet train. The game ended near 10:30 and I had no problem making the 10:54 at Woodside. I always thought Shea had good subway access. Not compared to Citi Field it didn't.

The funny thing about an ideal seating section like Ebbets Club is it reveals almost nobody who goes to a Mets game is ever satisfied with his assigned spot. Everybody there had good seats, yet people — not just the young kind — were always angling for something more. If you were in Row 7, you had to be in Row 5. If you were in Section 115, you had to drift to Section 116. And if the usher made it clear you weren't supposed to stand in the area reserved for the differently abled (even if there were no patrons in wheelchairs), you just had to stand in that area until ordered to move. I suppose if you told one of these ticketholders he was going to play second base, he'd sneak over to first when Jerry Manuel wasn't looking.

While the victory that counted wasn't secured until the eleventh, a clear win was notched in the Mets fan's ledger in the eighth when the sing-a-long was trumpeted and Neil Diamond went the way of Ramon Castro. “Sweet Caroline” was traded not for Lance Broadway but for “Meet The Mets”. Not just “Meet The Mets,” but two verses of “Meet The Mets,” one more than we got when it was a third-inning staple at Shea after “Our Team Our Time” imploded. Perhaps it was the novelty of “MTM” or the liberation from the Red Sox' anthem, but wow was it awesome to hear the Mets' song at the Mets' park during the Mets' game. Our little contingent of Mets writers not only sang along, but we clapped along during its playing and stood and applauded its reintroduction when it was over. It was like that Silly String commercial where the dreadfully dullest gathering imaginable heats up because somebody thinks to bring something incredibly fun to the party.

Besides Omir Santos, I mean.

Special guest book plug not just because he was generous with his access to the Ebbets Club but because he's always worth reading: check out Matt Silverman's work on Shea Good-Bye: The Untold Inside Story of the Historic 2008 Season, written with Keith Hernandez and everything else in the prolific Met Silverman portfolio.

It hasn't been a banner couple of years in Flushing where roster management is concerned, but the Mets moved with rather un-Metsian determination and dispatch tonight, sending Ramon Castro to the Chicago White Sox for 25-year-old pitcher Lance Broadway even as Omir Santos was still raising his fists toward the klieg lights.

Of course, Santos helped make their decision more straightforward, lining a home run into the left-field stands at Citi Field for the Mets' first run and driving in their second and final run six innings later. (Would someone explain to me why the Marlins didn't walk Santos to load the bases and pitch to the immortal Wilson Valdez?) That was enough to support Mike Pelfrey and a parade of lights-out relievers, with Gary Sheffield serving as young Omir's supporting cast on the offensive side. Who knows how Sheffield will hold up in the summer heat, but right now you'd think it was 1999 — balls are leaving his bat blue-shifted, prompting third basemen to call their insurance companies. The mortar shot Sheffield bounced off the Acela Club set the crowd murmuring even if it was just a strike with 410 feet of asterisk attached to it; the single he whistled to start the 11th was a lesser liner but ultimately of greater import. (And meanwhile, David Wright continues to grind his bat to sawdust with games on the line. Nice to have that particular worry be the parenthetical, isn't it?)

Emily and I took it in from the Excelsior level, in a section that had apparently been reserved for feral children. But being in a “Lord of the Flies” outtake was the lone blemish on the evening: The ominous weather forecast had left us agreeing that this time we might actually see quite a bit of the Caesar's Club, instead of looking around it in brief bemusement on the way to and from the bathroom, but the skies yielded a couple of spritzes of subway-time rain and then remained peaceable for the balance of a very nice late-spring night. Meanwhile, down there on the field, the Mets did their part, surviving a pretty good-looking young lefty in Sean West and dodging Met killers Jorge Cantu, Cody Ross and Hanley Ramirez (in an unasked-for cameo).

On the 7 train back, your bloggers were exchanging rapidfire SMSes, celebrating all things Omir. A sampling:

GP: Santos has Godlike tendencies.

JF: He is an LES Artiste. (Hipster ref?)

GP: Brian Schneider to the white courtesy phone, your bus out of town is waiting.

JF: If only. He has many more Toyotas to sell, I fear.

GP: So did Bill Sudakis and we chased his sorry ass out of here. Santos 4-Ever!

(You see, we can be brief.)

What we didn't expect was that the other catcher would be the one to be paged in the clubhouse.

Ah, Ramon. The Round Mound of Pound arrived as a nice surprise, a Marlin castaway with surprising pop and a light touch in a clubhouse that could alternate between deadly serious and snoozingly vanilla. (What will Saturday matinees be without the bubble-stuck-to-the-hat trick?) But he was given several chances to claim the catcher's job for his own, and flubbed all of them because he could never manage to stay on the field long enough to put minds at ease. Granted, I also just described Schneider — but the demand for catchers who are lead-pipe cinches for repeated trips to the DL is rather limited, Schneider was due $4 million this year compared with Castro's $2.5 million, and that was more or less that.

Santos? Yeah, I know he's 28 and now has exactly 86 big-league at-bats on his resume. But he's got a short, sharp swing (that pinch-hitting farce was ridiculous, but Jerry was on to something), a pretty fair arm and calls a good game. And, of course, he has the flair for the dramatic that's made him a cult hero, from his first career homer to his undressing of Jonathan Papelbon to his lightning-quick second tag to tonight. You know what? Let's go for it and see if he can also move a Toyota or two.

Wanna be treated like an All-Star? Then 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.

“Well, fuck, we have to do this again.”

“Again? Really? Can't we just reflexively rule against the Mets like we used to? It was a lot easier then.”

“I know. It was a great umpiring tradition, one we were proud to uphold. Like wearing a chest protector.”

“Remember when Chris Woodward had a home run called a triple in Wrigley a few years ago? It didn't much matter in the outcome, but the point was the Mets got screwed by bad or lazy umpiring. That was great sport.”

“Those were the days. Me and Angel Hernandez laughed our asses off about it all over again during Spring Training. But now we have to actually be accountable for at least a few of our calls.”

“I dunno, fellas, it's kind of nice to take a breather in the middle of the sixth inning.”

“I know what you mean. Standing out there in the middle of a ballgame. Damn, it can get boring.”

“That's why I try not to watch too closely, especially those fly balls. We're like a thousand feet away. It's just a guess to begin with.”

“And it's not our fault they build ballparks where you can't tell right off.”

“I know! I mean did this used to happen so much?”

“Well, it's not like they just built Fenway yesterday.”

“Yeah, but who told them to suddenly stick seats on top of the fence?”

“Good point…hello, mission control? Yeah, we're ready, fire up the replays.”

“First look…shit, I can't tell. Can you tell?”

“No man, I can't tell.”

“Me neither.”

“Nope, me neither, too.”

“Hello, Manhattan? Give us another angle.”

“That one's worse than the one before. Why don't they use more cameras for this?”

“Boy, it's unclear.”

“I can't figure it out. The ball does a funny thing up there.”

“But that could be the wind.”

“The wind?”

“It does get windy here.”

“Oh come on. It's not the wind.”

“So you think it hit the sign?”

“I don't think anything. I'm just saying it gets windy here.”

“Yeah, what's up with that? It gets windier here than it got at Shea. Why didn't they cut down on the wind as long as they were going to the trouble of building a new ballpark?”

“The wind fucking distracts me. Blows in that barbecue smell during the game. You try the ribs yet?”

“Damn, those are good ribs.”

“I haven't had the ribs yet. They're really that good?”

“You're kidding. You haven't had the ribs?”

“Hey, is that the same as the pulled pork place?”

“Same one. You gotta try the ribs.”

“Can you guys keep it the fuck down? I'm trying to get HQ on the phone…yeah, we're still here. We need another angle.”

“OK, there's the ball, there's Dunn…I can't tell.”

“I can't tell either. But why are they advertising Subway in this ballpark?”

“I know! They've got all that great food in the outfield, who the fuck wants to go to Subway?”

“Is that Subway Subway, like the sandwich shop, or is that like the New York City subway?”

“What are you, retarded?”

“I'm just asking. You don't have to be such a dick about it.”

“C'mon fellas. Focus. It's Subway Subway like they've got everywhere else. And just because they have a sign for it doesn't mean they have a Subway in the ballpark. You think they buy and sell gold coins in the ballpark just because they have a sign for that, too?”

“I think they do.”

“They buy and sell gold coins at Citi Field?”

“No, I mean the sandwiches.”

“Is that like the tackiest scoreboard ad you've ever seen?”

“For Subway?”

“No, moron. The coins.”

“It is, but I mean Subway. I think they sell Subway sandwiches here.”

“They do? Really? What the fuck for?”

“Subway's pretty good. I like the BMT.”

“Yeah, but here? With that rib place and all? That's pretty lame that someone would go to Subway when you can get ribs that smell that good when the wind is blowing in.”

“What's lame is hanging a yellow sign over the field and asking us to track a white ball against it…hi, Manhattan, we need another angle.”

“Can't tell. Can not fucking tell.”

“Me neither. It really is easier watching from home.”

“I agree. Last year I had a layover in the Kansas City airport on a Sunday night. I ran into Angel Hernandez, so we went to the bar and watched that Mets-Yankees game where Carlos Delgado got screwed. That was classic.”

“I'll bet Angel loved that.”

“He did. One of his favorites.”

“Do any of you guys know what the deal is with those stands jutting out into right? Shouldn't that have been a simple fly ball?”

“It's supposed to be like Tiger Stadium was. The owner's son was taken there by his grandparents when he was a kid and it impressed him so much he wanted to build something just like it here.”

“Really? That's so gay!”

“I know. What if they took him to a whorehouse instead? Imagine what would be out in right field.”

“Fucking owners. Ruining baseball.”

“Just like the fucking players.”

“You said it. Thank god for us upholding the integrity of the game…hi, me again. Can you give us another angle?”

“Hey, did you see that? Definitive proof!”

“Where?”

“On the left. The ball just came straight down and…oh wait, that was just some jerkoff dropping his drink.”

“Or throwing it. I can't tell that either.”

“Fans are fucking ruining this game, too.”

“Thank god for us.”

“Thank god.”

“Who tells them to put their shit on the ledge? There's a baseball game going on!”

“And what about the fucktards who catch a home run ball and throw it back?”

“Yeah, I don't get that. They fight over foul balls but when they get a fair one, they think they're being big heroes throwing it back because somebody on the other team hit it. I wanna say, 'Hey, fucktards, we don't take the run off the board just 'cause you throw it back!'”

“Oh, you should say that! I mean you should actually say that!”

“Fuck, I'd say it except I'd get fucking fined. First that stupid QuesTec, now this shit with the replays. I'm not taking any chances.”

“Remember when umpiring was a sacred profession and you could screw the Mets with total impunity? God, as recently as last year Carlos Beltran hit a ball out of Dolphin Stadium that was ruled a double. Nobody changed that. They showed that on MLB Network over the winter. Angel Hernandez and I shared a good laugh when it ran. He texted me: 'LOL Mets!'”

“Angel's a sweetheart.”

“He really is.”

“Listen, fellas, I'm enjoying this break as much as the rest of youse, but I can't tell shit from these replays and HQ doesn't have any more angles. So what do we do?”

“I'm stumped.”

“Me too.”

“Me three.”

“Our default directive is to rule against the Mets in these situations. We've been doing that going back to at least 1988 when Tim Teufel had a clear home run taken away at the Astrodome.”

“Does it go back that far? I thought it started with that time in '95 when Chris Jones hit a fair ball that was called foul. That's another of Angel's favorites. He has a whole reel of them he shows at parties.”

“Regardless, guys, that's an out-of-date directive. We can still use it for bullshit interference calls and the like, and we're still allowed to unconscionably squeeze Johan Santana…”

“Six walks? How ya think superstar likes them apples?”

“…but we're supposed to get these right.”

“We are, aren't we? What did we call on the field again? It's been so long I forget.”

“Um, shit, what was it?”

“We said it was a double. Murphy wound up on third, Sheffield was out at the plate.”

“How could he not be out? He thought it was a homer.”

“Mets baserunners are always doing that, aren't they?”

“Yeah, they suck that way.”

“True. But the Nationals really suck.”

“They do. They really do.”

“So, whaddaya think?”

“Well, the Mets are going to blow things eventually. I mean, c'mon, that's their whole thing.”

“Was last year. Was the year before.”

“Yeah, but the Nationals? Are we really going to waste a favorable call on the Nationals?”

“You're right. What if they win tonight? They'll only be a hundred games out.”

“Ha! That's funny! Boy do they suck.”

“They do. What's the point of giving them a break?”

“Besides, you want these New York assholes giving us shit about it?”

“They are assholes. Do you see how they're always doing the wave here? Even in tight games?”

“I don't want them throwing their shit at me. I'm on vacation next week.”

“Already? It's only May!”

“Screw you. I'm upholding the integrity of the game here.”

“Fellas, focus! Home run?”

“Well, it's not conclusive, but shit yeah, anything to get us out of here alive.”

“Besides, it's kind of cool when we come out and twirl the finger and people cheer us.”

“Isn't it? That was way cool the other night. And you know we'll be on SportsCenter over and over. My kids love that.”

“OK, agreed. Home run. Let's go be heroes.”

“Think the rib place stays open after the game?”

Make the right call 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. Some mostly nice words here from Mostly Mets.

It was one of my wife's more modest goals, but also apparently one of the harder-to-reach ones: See Johan Santana pitch.

Emily and her dad have had a seven- or 15-game plan for a couple of years, and their run of starting-pitcher luck has been spotty to say the least: Last year they got a surfeit of Mike Pelfrey (not so bad in the final reckoning, but not the kind of thing that makes you circle dates on calendars), and so far this year they'd seen a whole lot of Livan Hernandez. So I cringed when I heard how excited she was that Johan was in line for tonight's start. First of all, the weather forecast was iffy with a chance of sucky. Second, I was beginning the day in Denver, with my flight scheduled to arrive at 4:38 pm. At JFK.

Put the two together and you had the makings of a mess, but happily everything turned OK — Emily got there in the top of the first, in cool but clear conditions, and there was Johan on the mound as promised.

But instead of JOHAN — the burn-you-to-cinders-with-his-radiance version we've become blessedly used to — my wife got johan, who surrendered a home run to Adam Dunn that might have caused NORAD to scramble F-16s and walked four guys in one inning. I'll amplify the point for future links and 2012's archive wanderings: Johan Santana walked four in one inning, not one month. And the four guys were Washington Nationals. Startling, I know, but every maestro has his off-night — like Mozart didn't have a few nights in which he futzed around on the clavier, hit a couple of bum notes, said to hell with it and shuffled off to booze it and play cards. The joke is that Johan got a win — ironic payback for all those nights in which he was brilliant and his supporting cast spent the night kicking balls around and striking out.

Of course it helps when you're playing the Nationals. It is not news that the Nationals play horrible baseball (OK, maybe it's news in the Sandwich Islands or something), but what doesn't seem to get discussed enough is that the Nationals play stupid baseball. They don't cover bunts, they can't direct traffic on infield pop-ups, they … let's just be kind and say they have a long way to go. I've seen whole seasons of hapless, agonizingly stupid baseball, so I'm sympathetic — but what I don't understand is how the Cult of Manny Acta remains open for business amid all this mess. The Nats' ownership should be scalded for running the team like they're still the vagabond Expos, and the GM's tenure was an actual, honest-to-goodness scandal, but the field management and coaching look slipshod too. It's hard to win when you've got a roster of guys who are too young paired with guys who are too old (and when your roster is seemingly about one-third first basemen and designated hitters), but it's a hell of a lot harder when you're giving away one or two runs a night on mental errors. The Nationals play like they've either tuned out their manager, aren't receiving sufficient adult supervision, or both, and yet I haven't heard a word of criticism aimed at Acta.

(Speaking of adult supervision, I'm wagering Fernando Martinez will feel the sting of those boos for a long time. That was one time in which the boos from a Met home crowd were completely justified — and I say that in part because I'm sure F-Mart's first safety will be rapturously cheered. All as it should be.)

Anyway, a scuffling Johan, David Wright cooling the ballpark with swings of the bat, and understudies playing the roles of Reyes, Beltran and Delgado. (If anybody has “see umpires review a home run on video” on their bucket list, just head to Citi Field most any night.) Hard to say that was the game Emily wanted, but she did get an entertaining, goofy and just plain weird affair, one that ended with the Mets victorious, and back in first place. Which is pretty much all any Met fan needs.

***

Addendum: While in Denver I got to check out Coors Field, and it was like an alternate-reality Citi Field, with lots of brick and green seats and a glassed-in corner restaurant (in right, not left). The prices were a bit different, though: I paid $40 or so for a legitimate ticket from the Rockies, and wound up 11 rows behind home plate. (A good chunk of the topmost level was not just empty but actually chained off.)

Everything was perfectly nice, but if you think Citi Field is generic, go see Coors Field. The Rockies feel more celebrated on Blake Street than they do inside the park, and aside from center field's Rockpile and the line of purple seats at the mile-high elevation, there's very little that sticks in the memory. (The food was generic, too.) The Coors Field attraction I most wanted to see was that Bambi fantasia of pines and rocks and waterfalls beyond the center-field fence. It's every bit as ridiculous (in a kind of endearing way) live as it is on TV, but what I hadn't expected is that it's an extension of the visitor's bullpen. Shouldn't the right to commune with some simulacrum of nature before toeing the rubber belong to the home team?

Alas, one item in my report doesn't favor the Mets, and it's a big one. I was there early, so I hiked up to some of the cheapest seats in left field, right field and the Rockpile. (Which left me gasping like a 70-year-old chain smoker — when I say Coors Field lacks atmosphere, I mean it literally.) The seats didn't feel like they were farther removed from the field than our own Promenade level, but the only view missing was a sliver of the left- or right-field corner. In Coors Field's cheap seats, the only way you could not see two outfielders at once would be if they snuck into foul territory to perform a normally private act. As SNY viewers found out tonight, in Citi Field, that view's missing from the broadcast booth.

I honestly love Citi Field, but the Mets' adventures in geometry continue to defy explanation.

The darkest corners of Mets fans' personal geometry (and some sunny ones) are explored in Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

First, you gotta start with how it ended, which was with Liván Hernandez, the human petrol pump, dispensing every last pitch the Mets' tank would require. How many? I heard 127. Did it matter? Not really. Honestly, what does Liván Hernandez have to do but pitch? Everybody else's arm is always being saved for a next start. Liván's not about conservation. Liván's about mileage. The sense at Citi Tuesday night was he would come out after seven; he shall be leavin' 'cause that's what Mets starters do after seven. But Liván was stayin'. When he batted for himself in the eighth, it was a surprise but it made perfect sense — and not just because he's got 11 points on Ramon Martinez in the batting average department (though Bring 'Em Home Ramon is suddenly up to four RBI). Hernandez's groundout was the most heartily greeted 6-3 at-bat Flushing has seen in ages.

Liván finished off the Nationals in the ninth. Granted, finishing off the Nationals is the baseball equivalent of a meal made solely of Totino's Pizza Rolls. It shouldn't take you long to clean your plate. But anybody remember all the way back to the first game of this series and how it took four relievers to negotiate nine outs via seventeen National batters? Our big three of Parnell, Putz and Rodriguez were all worse for the wear from Monday night. I was already girding myself for Sean Green Roulette 24 hours in advance when I remembered we'd be getting Liván and Liván gives us innings — lots and lots of juicy innings. You never expect nine, but when the pump is registering one “ding!” after another, you wonder why not.

Now the middle, as in the middle of the Mets order. It's all that separates us at the moment from morphing into Nats North. Our record is a dozen games better than Washington's at the moment, but how can you tell us apart? Not from the Pagans, Santoses, Tatises and Ramon Martinezes (even if they've all been admirable gamers of late), but because we have David Wright and Gary Sheffield and they don't. Wright comes up and it's man against lesser men. Sheffield comes up and that rarest of species, the Citi Field home team home run, soars as much any fly ball can in that canyon. Wright we knew from. Sheffield? Were you expecting this? Remotely? I was mildly enthused to pick him up because it had been rumored we'd be doing so for nearly twenty years. All right, I said, let's see what Gary Sheffield in a Mets uniform actually is. I never dreamed he would be lifesaving, cleanup guy.

Sheff may be the best take-a-flyer acquisition in team history since…Liván Hernandez. Throw in Luis Castillo's as nearly unlikely rebound season and the 1997 World Champion Marlins alumni society is making a case for Reunion of the Year honors.

Gary's at-bat music, however, lurks a bit on the blue side as it seems to involve a lyric about doing something unfortunate to a stepsister (and this from one of our elder statesmen). I will not repeat it in polite company, but it makes repeated commercials for Drag Me to Hell seem gosh darn appropriate for a baseball audience. Maybe my friend Sharon and I were just hearing the lyric incorrectly. The more a Met hits, the better his taste in music gets, you know.

Finally, the beginning…the beginning of Fernando Martinez's big league career. Like the presence of maybe half the roster, it's kind of surprising to find him here in May 2009, though if you're a student of Met phenomology, this is exactly when our outfield prospects seems to bubble up. The Mets have a knack for getting hurt and desperate in May. As previously reported…

• Darryl Strawberry debuted May 6, 1983.

• Preston Wilson debuted May 7, 1998.

• Alex Escobar debuted May 8, 2001.

• Lastings Milledge debuted May 30, 2006.

• Carlos Gomez debuted May 13, 2007.

And now, on May 26, 2009, it is Fernando Martinez's turn to try to spin his prospects into pure gold. Good luck with that. As we see from five of the most glittering examples the Mets' minor league system has had to offer in the past three decades, we don't really build outfielders to last. Straw was Straw, and that was great. The rest of them together were barely a stem in a Mets uniform. Wilson, 34, is one of Gary Carter's Long Island Ducks these days. Milledge was given the Oscar Madison treatment by the Nats earlier this year when he was asked to remove himself from his place of professional residence. Carlos Gomez isn't tearing it up in the Twin Cities at last check. And Alex Escobar…you get the point.

None of this augurs a damn thing for Fernando Martinez, given that he's his own self. Everybody says he's very talented. His birth certificate says Citi Field's vendors can't sell him a beer. In the first hour of the day Fernando Martinez was born, Orel Hershiser was inducing Kevin McReynolds to fly out to John Shelby to seal Game Four of the 1988 NLCS and, by the reckoning of some, the Mets' ill fate for the next decade. No Met has ever been born in 1988 before. Or 1987. Wow he's young.

Is he ready? He'll let us know. F'tinez looked willing and reasonably able from the other side of Promenade, if only somewhat ready. He did sting a grounder effectively enough to gain an RBI on a fielder's choice and he did run like the wind down to first, which is always a welcome sight. He also struck out twice, and a line drive to the gap in right kind of played him, but it wasn't a particularly catchable ball and Met corner outfielders not flashing leather is hardly a novelty this season. It's fun to try out phenoms even if it's no fun when desperation's the reason they're here. But let's see what the kid's got.

And let's not see Mets stay active when they are clearly suited for sedentary purposes only. It's fitting that the Mets would go west and assume the mantle of kings of wishful thinking when it came to roster management. Omar Minaya was playing deep in WTF? territory with his hesitancy to definitively disable Carlos Delgado, Jose Reyes and — oldie but goodie — Ryan Church when it became painfully apparent that none was healthy and none would contribute. Delgado was shown the DL door while the Mets were on the coast and now the other two aching athletes have joined him. Each man, too injured to participate, was apparently too valuable a spirit to put on the shelf for fifteen or more days. I'm not a doctor or a trainer or anything more than an observer from far away. But I figured out guys who are hurt can't help without first healing. Why couldn't Omar? You'd rather have Delgado and Reyes and Church than the raw rookies and cooked journeymen who dot the roster, but you can't always get what you want. For now, it's a crazy quilt of Mets and a lineup that is stitched too loosely to be accurately labeled patchwork.

Some nights, somehow, they're just what the doctor ordered.

***

Two quick Citi Field observations from Tuesday night:

1) I used to have to fight the Shea sausage guy (every Shea sausage guy) for onions without peppers. I'd even accept mostly onions, understanding these garnishes were hopelessly enmeshed on the grill. But time and again I was told the separation I craved could not be achieved let alone attempted. This time, on the occasion of my first Italian sausage in the new ballpark, I asked and not only got no argument, but received one onion after another painstakingly plucked from the mountain of peppers I so detest. I didn't get the man's name, but the fellow working the Premio stand on the first base side of Promenade around 7:00 couldn't have been more conscientious or customer-friendly.

2) As captured by Matt Cerrone, all seven of the Mets' postseason banners are now technically on display. Very technically. Why they've been posted on a wall in the Bullpen Gate area as opposed to within the field of play begs an entire course of analysis that might get at the heart of the Mets' shame spiral. This strikes me as a very passive-aggressive concession to team lore by an organization that can never shake its self-loathing. “You asked for them to be in the ballpark, so here they are — you happy?” Not with this placement I'm not, not really. While there are flags for '69, '73, '86 and '00 on the Pepsi Porch (where four poles have been eliminated), the '88, '99 and '06 banners are essentially hidden from the view of most of the fans. It's a ballpark, yet the Mets act as if their best baseball stuff belongs in some out-of-the-way basement rec room. “Don't bring that junk into my nice living room! You might leave marks where the people in the Caesars Club could see them!”

***

For a deeper look at what was going on while Fernando Martinez was on the brink of being born, 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.

First of all, I'm crazy about the President, Josh. I've been crazy about him for longer than you've known who he was. And I'll keep poking him with a stick. That's how I show my love.

—Amy Gardner on her gadfly tendencies, The West Wing

With no flourishes or ruffles, a personal milestone of sorts was established earlier this month, one that you might say was almost a dozen years in the making.

On the last weekend of August 1997, I attended back-to-back Mets-Orioles games at Camden Yards. Those were my third and fourth games at the Birds' nest, making Camden a solid second on my ballpark list in terms of most games seen (it had been tied with Yankee Stadium and Veterans Stadium with two apiece). Through 2008, I'd notched seven contests from OP@CY in the “Elsewhere” section of my Log, certifying Oriole Park at Camden Yards a solid if perpetually distant No. 2 behind Shea.

On May 10, Citi Field passed Camden Yards for second place when I made it to my eighth Mets game of 2009. Unless I move to Baltimore immediately and become a big-time Orioles fan — or go anywhere else and switch allegiances, I suppose — second place belongs to Citi Field probably forever.

The current standings (games that count only):

1) Shea Stadium — 415

2) Citi Field — 10

3) Oriole Park @ Camden Yards — 7

4) Yankee Stadium II* — 5

5) Wrigley Field — 4

*The “renovated” version that opened in 1976 and closed in 2008.

By week's end, Citi Field's total is slated to rise. It will, like the Mets' Mojo of a decade ago, keep on risin'. Citi Field is here to stay in my life. Yours too, of course, but you probably arrived at that conclusion sooner than I did

Citi Field's probation period is over. I've been to ten games, not counting an exhibition and various walk-throughs. My approach to it as a stranger in a strange land has been altered. It's still a little unfamiliar, I'm still not wholly used to it, I still have my issues with aspects of it and I'm still hyperconscious of my surroundings, but it's no longer some new ballpark whose mysteries consume me. It's where I go to ballgames. It's where I go to Mets games. I find it hard to spit out that it's my home park, seeing as how that phrase will always be reserved for what no longer stands next door to it, but in all practicality it is.

It's either Citi Field or nothing at this point. I'm not prepared to go to nothing.

Maybe it was reaching double-digits sooner than I ever expected. I'd had it as a long-term — like September — goal to beat Camden's total in 2009. I can't believe how quickly Oriole Park fell. Maybe it was the glance to the left where there had been a moderately comforting pile of rubble all season but where now there is just asphalt that is part of more asphalt. Deep down, as long as there was a little something left of Shea, I clung subconsciously to the notion that it was somehow not completely gone, even if a pile of rubble was nothing more than a pile of rubble. But there is, at last, nothing left of Shea and it is completely gone. Its commemorative base markers are down and the rubble's been cleared. There is, at long last, no physical evidence that until very recently there used to be a ballpark right there. There's only the ballpark that is there now, and that's the one I went to for the tenth time Monday night.

The Mets came home. After San Francisco, after Los Angeles, after Boston, the Mets came home. Citi Field was not a strange land Monday night. Citi Field was where they needed to be and, by association, where I needed to be. I needed to see the Mets in home uniforms, even if they wore what appeared to be Nationals caps (it took me about four innings to get straight that I didn't necessarily want the guys in the red hats striking out). I needed them to come off the road, away from the traps and the turmoil that came close to swallowing their season alive but didn't. The Mets needed home cooking. The hot plate's plugged in a little to the east of where it used to be, but that's just a matter of wiring. The Mets came home. It was good to have them back where they belong.

Where I belong, too, I guess.

The tenth game of the rest of my life yielded a positive result through torpid means. When the Foxwoods Resort or whoever sponsors it now turning point of the game requires an off-camera conference of six or more minutes, you know you're getting a later train than you'd like. But if you're going home with three Gary Sheffield RBI and a win in your pocket, you don't mind. You'll wait six minutes for the umpire's finger to twirl definitively in your direction.

I waited in style and comfort befitting a traveler whose flight to Charlotte had been delayed due to mechanical trouble. Monday night was my second trip to the Logezzanine, what the Mets refer to as the Excelsior level. Because I came home in late April half-raving about and half-cursing at the existence of this hidden in plain sight Loge-Mezzanine hybrid — raving because it was nicer than where I'd sat previously, cursing because except for a few Value dates it was prohibitively expensive — Stephanie requested a looksee when the prices would be relatively accommodating. Monday night with the Nationals equaled just such a paradigm, so I grabbed a couple of “reasonable” $45 tickets and gained us admission to the rarefied air of Not Promenade.

It's still nice. It's still not worth putting on a pedestal beyond what good ol' Mezz used to be. It still includes access to that airport lounge they call Caesars Club. I'd happily wait for my flight to be called there. I happily waited for the flight of Gary Sheffield's game-changing home run to be called correctly there. I felt kind of silly, otherwise, munching away in a room at a ballpark while a ballgame was going on out of view. So did Stephanie, though she revealed she's never much cared for eating at her seat (the activities one takes for granted when one grows up partaking in them) which is how we wound up in there for the bottom of the sixth. Citi Field doesn't need a lounge filled with high-def screens showing nothing but an in-progress Mets game. Everywhere else in the world needs that lounge. Imagine how much you'd enjoy everywhere else in the world if that service were in fact available.

Our right field, last row Logezzanine experience, pretentiously isolated from the heart of Citi civilization as we were, put us in mind of the Third Ring of the New York City Ballet…except maybe for the way the ushers at Lincoln Center don't pace behind you cursing out misstepping dancers the way our green-jacketed guy dismissed Parnell and Putz every time they threw ball one. When I find myself enthusiastically spending a stray Sunday at the ballet, do you know what I wish for? A Caesars Club-type refuge: dozens of TVs beaming the Mets game, and maybe a few snacks. There is not a setting in the Western world that wouldn't benefit from the addition of a vaguely Mets-oriented faux sports bar…except for a ballpark where you've got the ballgame itself to entertain you.

Otherwise, the “club” feels like a high school cafeteria that nobody who really knows the school spends their lunch period in, not with everything else that's available on or near campus. I don't really get the exclusivity angle that permits only people who have tickets on that level to come in and pony up for a roast beef sandwich — they didn't restrict access to the TGI Friday's when I went to what was then called Bank One Ballpark, and this isn't even as special as what they had at the BOB. In Phoenix you could see the field from your table; from Caesars you can see the William A. Shea memorial parking lot.

Logezzanine would be an unqualifiedly fine place to watch a ballgame, but the Mets took what should be a simple, swell middle tier of seating, cloaked it in “amenities” and priced it out of reasonable most nights. I assume they have a business model that works for them, but if they lowered the tag on Excelsior seats a bit and opened up the club to anybody and everybody who wandered by and was willing to indulge their curiosity, the environment would probably feel less balletic on that level — and they'd make more money overall moving roast beef sandwiches on novelty alone. Get people walking through there, they'll find something to spend on. It's a sensation endemic to Citi Field.

I grant you this is not a real problem, just a ballpark problem, and not as pressing a matter as the slices of outfield you can't see or the evidence of Mets history that remains camouflaged. I'd like everything to work better, though, not because I don't like Citi Field, but because I do. I'm rooting for Citi Field to work as well as it possibly can. It is my home park, which means I feel a vested interest in its potential, my tone and tendency to list grievances notwithstanding. If it's going to be my home park, I want it to be the best home park it can be. As much as I adored Shea Stadium, I never stopped detecting its drawbacks or informally advising its keepers on how they might improve it. Their ultimate answer was tear it down and replace it. I don't think that's an option with Citi Field for a few decades, so ideally its paying customers and those who operate it should join forces toward an ever brighter tomorrow. As one of our esteemed blolleagues recently reminded me, we're supposed to have a voice in this. It's our place. I just want as much of it as possible to feel that way, and not merely by default because it's Citi Field or nothing.

Looking for something to do while umpires confer on whether a fly ball has cleared the fence or not? Try 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.