Baseball is full of hoary cliches that have become overused because they contain a fair bit of wisdom. Among them is the caution that no team is actually as bad as it looks when it's on the skids or as good as it looks when it's on a winning streak.

It will come as a shocking surprise, tomorrow or the day after or later this week or sometime fairly soon, to watch the New York Mets lose a game. They will pitch badly or make errors or fail to show patience at the plate or pop the ball up or just get beat, and we will fret and grumble and moan and they will lose some more games and we will view them with suspicion or derision or despair. In other words, we'll take a series of baseball games and contort them as required until we've fulfilled the basic human need to impose a storyline on potentially unrelated events.

It's utterly irrational, and you know what? That's fine. Shrugging away the season's ebb and flow as statistical noise is undoubtedly a more accurate way of viewing the world, but it sure makes things dull in the telling. It's important to be able to remind yourself that no, David Wright will not strike out every time from now until the sun goes dark, just as Carlos Beltran will not finish the season at .374 and play with a blank back to his jersey for the rest of his Met career because we'll retire his number posthaste. But once you do that, let go again — whether it's to exult or suffer.

Right now would be to exult. Right now it rains overnight and just enough so you don't have to water after work, the cops are handing out warnings instead of tickets, the bank errors are in our favor, the chef sends out an amuse-bouche with each course, and the toast always lands butter side up. It won't be like this often, so soak it up.

Certainly the Mets can do no wrong — being down 2-0 with Livan Hernandez missing his spots and Ian Snell crackling fastballs and arcing sliders to all sides of the plate felt like a momentary inconvenience, and indeed it proved so. Livan found himself, Snell lost himself, Livan and Jose and David played sparkling defense and the hapless Pirates played their trademark lousy kind. (I cannot figure out why Brian Bixler is on a major-league roster.) Reyes and Luis Castillo pulled off a double steal, Daniel Murphy caught everything hit his way even when it looked like Jerry Manuel had waited too long to bring in Jeremy Reed, and Castillo even hit his 20th career sacrifice fly.

It was all kinds of wonderful, and we got to see it firsthand — as you know from Greg's kind birthday wishes, I turned 40 on Friday, which went into the mix with Emily enjoying her seventh Mother's Day and Joshua enjoying just being a kid at a ballgame on a spring day. Emily decided a while back that going all out at our new ballpark was just the thing for these intersecting celebrations, so we went to Citi Field in grandly over-our-heads style: brunch at the heretofore-unglimpsed Acela Club and seats in the Excelsior deck, behind home plate and a couple of rows below the SNY booth. (My goodness do I love my wife — while thanking God every day that she has such pitifully bad taste in men.) In case you're wondering, the Acela Club's food is very good — Emily had crab cakes and gave them high marks — though given Citi Field's other food options I think brunch makes more sense than dinner. Oh, and be aware that those window views you see on TV come with a surcharge, the exact amount of which we didn't quite nail down in friendly discussions with Mets folks. I think the extra would be worth it to eat good brunch and watch BP, but your mileage may vary.

Our seats were reached from the Caesar's Club, which is a comfortable, elegant space full of cushy chairs and generous couches and big windows that actually give the vista a bit of grandeur that makes you do a double-take when you remember you're looking at Flushing. To that, I must add that the Caesar's Club feels like it has nothing to do with the baseball game taking place not so far away. It would be heaven during a long rain delay or as a retreat for someone who doesn't care about baseball, but happily neither of those conditions applied today, so regarding things that were Caesar's we had rendered unto us nothing except a couple of bathroom trips and a glass of wine.

Emily and Joshua got to go on the field for the National Anthem, courtesy of Joshua being a member of the Kids' Club and Emily being a member of the Moms' Club. (I could pick them out with perfect ease from 500 feet away — like most fathers and husbands, by now I'm very familiar with the posture of my son when he's not really trying and failing to hold still and listen and that of my wife when she's offering well-deserved remonstrances. They arrived just in time for first pitch thanks to some speedy navigation of Citi Field's concrete bowels and still vaguely mysterious elevators, and we were off.

Our vantage point was perfect for continuing Joshua's baseball education, whether it was Ryan Church pantomiming making a catch of Ramon Vazquez's single with Robinzon Diaz on first or the Pirates playing in against Reyes and then retreating to halfway with two strikes. We also inadvertently furthered his education in other ways.

It was fun being 20 feet from Ron Darling and Gary Cohen, and I was inordinately proud of myself for (barely) managing not to loudly profess my admiration of them. To their left and directly behind us was Omar Minaya's suite, where our GM was entertaining folks with the windows open. (I also managed not to yell a grateful “Wilbur Huckle!” at Keith Olbermann.) As I noted to Emily, Omar's proximity led to the amusing spectacle of heads in our section swiveling to give Omar a direct dose of the gimlet eye whenever one of his acquisitions did something questionable.

This became relevant during Sean Green's rather unsuccessful working out of various kinks. Emily was tired and impatient by then, and our son was immensely more so on both counts, plus full of a dangerous amount of sugar. Anyway, Emily started barking at Green, which sent Joshua off, screeching (with a scary amount of both volume and venom) at our distant, hapless reliever that the idea was that he pitch well, not badly, and so stop annoying six-year-old Mets fans and their mothers.

This was amusing, except right about then Nate McLouth (why do the Pirates employ 75% of blond, mulleted ballplayers, anyway?) hammered a ball into the seats and one of us made the mistake of noting that Omar the GM of the Mets, who'd acquired Sean Green, was nearby. If you ever idly noted at a fraternity party that, hey, cups full of beer can be thrown as well as drunk, it was pretty much like that. Joshua yelled something out at the field at “Omir” and we, focusing on accuracy of charges rather than advisability of behavior, compounded the error by noting that Omir was blameless and Omar was behind us.

So up goes Joshua on his seat, turning around to stare like a gunfighter into the GM's suite and loudly give Omar advice about bad middle relievers and what ought to be done with them while everyone around us laughed and we tried to hide. If any of you attend tomorrow night's game and find that the cordon in front of the SNY booth has suddenly quadrupled in size, you'll know whom to blame.

Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets will further your baseball education without the whole yelling at the GM problem. Check it out at Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

Straight from the 5/7/09 edition of Manhattan Neighborhood Network's On the Sportslines, I join Debi Gallo for a three-minute discussion of Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets. It aired Thursday evening on Time Warner Cable and RCN Cable, and now it airs on YouTube here at approximately the 12:05 mark.

For Mets fans who love to read as much as they like to watch, two Q&A's to share: NY Writing Careers Examiner here and MetsBlog here. Enjoy these links and, if you don't mind, pass them along to friends who may not know the book exists. Word of mouth and word of Web is how something like this gets known…and it's not much of a book unless it gets read. Tell 'em, too, por favor, they can find it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and at most NYC-area bookstores. Ongoing Facebook discussion continues here.

Thank you for all your help and kind words in the two months since FAFIF: AIPHOTNYM came out. As with a certain team's winning streak and stay in first place, I hope it keeps rolling as the season goes on.

I should be a Mets fan. I identify with their culture. I appreciate how deep into the Bachman-Turner Overdrive canon the Shea Stadium deejay can dig. I have bitten my palm, Squiggy-style, over the throngs of big-haired women who have the Mets logo airbrushed on their nails.
—Joel Stein, Time, 2000

There were good reasons Sebastian Bach of Skid Row performed before Saturday’s game against the Pirates. There were good reasons Gary Dell’Abate, a.k.a. Boy Gary/Bababooey from the Howard Stern show, threw out the first ball. Very good reasons, actually, having to do with the Mets holding Autism Awareness Day. Bach and Dell’Abate (the latter a huge Mets fan) are supporters of a great cause, and it is to their credit that they would use their celebrity to raise awareness, just as the Mets are doing a fine thing publicizing such a fight.

That said…the lead singer from Skid Row…Howard Stern’s punching bag of a producer…the Mets. The spirit of Shea Stadium lives. I mean, really, Sebastian Bach, with the hair and the metal and I assume a reality show to plug. And Gary from Uniondale. There is nothing majestic about having these as your celebrities on a Saturday afternoon. There is nothing sacred. There is nothing prim or proper. There is something very much Mets about it.

To which, I say hot damn, bring on the Sebastian Bachs and the Gary Dell’Abates (hell, their stand-ins are usually riding my train anyway) and let’s be Mets about this. Let’s be Shea about this. Let’s bite our palms as Squiggy would at this six-game winning streak and these new places of ours: Citi Field and first, respectively.

Citi Field? Needs work, still. Never mind the blind spots (none of which bothered me from Mezzanine 1…I mean Promenade 414) and the lack of Mookieabilia. It needs to be louder or somehow dirtier without becoming filthy. It needs some Shea to it. In the top of the second, my friend Jeff, he of [friggin’] fantasy camp correspondent fame, read my mind and asked, “Is it quiet here?” We indeed could have been studying for our PSATs when it was a mere 1-0. As it grew into 5-0 and all the other delightful scores until it was finally 10-1, it got louder and maybe a little Sheaish. Needs work in that respect, but on the occasion of my seventh game, I came away with no other complaints, not from the game, not from the park, not even from the overpriced cheeseburger stand beyond center that I finally bore down and tried (good, not great; get a Steak ‘N’ Shake up in here and we’ll talk).

First-place Mets? I want to exult and luxuriate, but I seem to recall being in first place in some other recent seasons and…well, you know. Nevertheless, there are five places available in your National League East, and the one we occupy as a result of our win and the Phillies’ loss is the best to have, so let’s have it. Let’s keep it, too. Let’s not let up. But it’s May 9 and 29 games in. To paraphrase the great philosopher Howie Rose, the last 133 are the toughest. But this is a better look to the Mets than what constant viewers saw a little more than a week ago. And the sound of “first-place Mets” is, with all due respect to Mr. Bach’s charitable impulses, better than “18 and Life” at its loudest and clearest.

Unless 18 refers to Jeremy Reed, who could have pitched for all it mattered by the ninth. Which would have been pretty awesome.

Fuckin’ A it woulda been.

Two inquiring minds wanted to know more about Faith and Fear: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, thus we have two Q&A interviews it is our pleasure to share, this one with Tad Richards of the NY Writing Careers Examiner and this one with Regis Courtemanche of MetsBlog. My thanks to both for their interest and inquiry. The book they ask about is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

OK, the Mets didn't play a particularly crisp game — it was cringeworthy when Carlos Beltran and Ryan Church both wound up south of Nate McLouth's eastbound fly ball, agonizing to watch any ball get near Daniel Murphy (unblemished though his record was) and disturbing to see the offense lapse into torpor against Jeff Karstens, whom I don't think it's too uncharitable to call a short-arming junkballer.

But my birthday game was a reminder that there's a big difference between a good team playing slightly flabby baseball and a truly bad one. And the Pirates are truly bad, in a lot of ways. (I know by saying that I've ensured they'll summon up the ghosts of Tike Redman and Humberto Cota and put two shivs between our ribs, but even if that happens other teams will prove me largely correct.)

A lot of their players are simultaneously bad and too old to have much hope of getting better. Brian Bixler has a .261 career OBP, showed no ability to play shortstop, and is 26. I know the Red Sox didn't want to give up Brandon Moss, but after looking at his stats and watching him play tonight I'm not sure why — he looks like the kind of sluggish player Boston is smart enough to now employ in a limited role, if at all. Freddy Sanchez's defensive strategy seems to be to fall in the general direction of balls, which does make him a perfect keystone partner for Bixler. Nyjer Morgan played a superb left field, and I never would have guessed he's a veteran of junior hockey in western Canada, but he still became 28 while doing all that, which is a little too late to get excited about.

Catcher Robinzon Diaz (perhaps the “z” is for “ZOMG do we suck!”) looked impressive and Nate McLouth is genuinely good, but there's just not enough there for anyone to think the Pirates will win 75 games any time soon — and if you're thinking about farm-system reinforcements, this spring the Pirates' minor-leaguers got beaten by Manatee Community College. It's like surrounding Ty Wigginton and Jason Phillips with lots and lots of Jorge Velandias, only it never ends. Joshua asked about the Pirates and seemed genuinely surprised when I told him that they were an original National League franchise and told him tales of Willie Stargell and Dave Parker and the Killer Bs. This is a proud old franchise that deserves better than the hideous run of pain and futility that's been inflicted on a generation of fans.

But the general hopelessness about the present and future (Yates and Burnett and Veal, oh my!) wasn't the worst thing about watching the Pirates. Rather, it's that they have the worst body language of any baseball team I've seen in a long time. Every time I looked at them it seemed like someone was staring at his shoes, or gaping at an equally confounded teammate, or trudging in a grim little circle while the brain trust glowered out at the field. I remember this brand of corrosively bad baseball (oh Howe do I remember it), and I feel for those compelled to spend 162 valuable afternoons and evenings watching it.

But all that said, the Pirates are in our way, and empathy shouldn't be allowed a place in the equation. And the Carloses showed a welcome lack of human feeling, with Beltran banking a petite yet perfect double off the tarp for the lead and Delgado supplying the exclamation point off Sean Burnett, a sad-eyed LOOGY whose delivery seemed to begin about five feet behind Delgado's head. Given that, I didn't rate Delgado's chances of hitting the ball 42 feet as particularly high, which once again shows what I know: Burnett threw a breaking pitch that flattened out enough for a good look and Delgado hit it about 420 feet. And we were safe in port, Pirate-infested waters and all.

Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History, whose pages include a more local history of class warfare, is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

A few truths we can declare to be self-evident from the course of baseball events Thursday night:

1) Seven innings of starting pitching, even if not originated from the United Colonies…United States of Santana are a darn effective commodity. Mike Pelfrey, this win's for you. But you knew that when you earned it.

2) The shoulder bone's connected to the arm bone…and the arm bone's connected to the save bone…and the save bone's connected to the win bone…and as long as none of Frankie Rodriguez's bones fall off or out, we'll be all right. Oh hear the word of the Lord!

3) Whoopsie! One just got away from the next Mets pitcher who faces Forearm Freddie, a.k.a. Shane Victorino. Whoopsie! Another one just got away and hit the Human Hemorrhoid where he sits. No, really, ump, it was an accident, like the infertility drug for ladies that somehow got mixed up in Manny Ramirez's babushka. If somebody gets ejected or suspended for taking down Victorino and his obstructionist tactics, that's a message worth sending.

4) A message isn't necessarily sent because of two wins in May or three out of four in a given archrivalry (or four consecutive victories overall), but it beats the fudge out of not winning the three we've taken from Philly in the last week. The Mets still don't feel as if they are a first pitch to last pitch never let down proposition, but — surprise! — neither is anyone else in this division of the dismaying. Thus, after being rather limp and disinterested in the sport until fairly recently, the Mets are almost a first-place club at 14-13. Should we move into the top floor of this particular not-so-high-rise, I'll contain my enthusiasm until it's permanent. I've been excited to have rooted for a first-place club these past two seasons, not so excited when those occupations revealed themselves as short-term sublets. That disclaimer stated, onward and upward.

5) The triple is no longer the most exciting play in baseball, not when it's a daily feature of competition. Although Funhouse Field had made three-baggers the new double (thus unleashing the awesome research fury of Mets Walkoffs toward a whole new destination), we have finally been reminded that nothing beats the Mets hitting home runs at home. Remember home runs at home? Beltran, Wright and Reyes did in the first couple of innings Thursday night, and hey, as John Denver once warbled, it's good to be back home again on one swing of the bat. Maybe Citi Field doesn't carry a three-base limit after all.

6) Every season requires a new soundtrack, filled with songs sensical and otherwise. Last night, as Beltran spoiled Moyer's early bird special, our new home run theme came to me in a rush as I blurted, for no reason I could identify, “Beltran goes 'Wig-Wam Bam'!” For those of you who have somehow lived your lives not under the influence of the Sweet, this is “Wig-Wam Bam,” a track whose magnificent dopiness had eluded me until this past winter. Since May 7, 2009, I blast it every time a Met rounds the bases unaccosted. I wasn't through with the first playing when Wright required it get a second go-round. It sounded even better when Reyes necessitated an unprecedented third playing; fortunately, it is scientifically impossible to grow sick of the Sweet. (Too bad Castro could only go “Wig-Wam”.) The Mets are 1-0 since “Wig-Wam Bam” was adopted for these special circumstances. I look forward to testing its durability with many more home park home runs between now and Wednesday. CitiVision operators take note.

If you throw one copy at Shane Victorino, you're still going to need another to read, so consider buying two copies of 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.

Which do you like better? Johan Santana Field? Johan Santana Stadium? Johan Park at Santana Yards? The Joho Grounds? He can name it whatever he likes. He owns it.

Let's not wait. Let's not leave it to Mets ownership to properly honor Johan Santana. He is more than National League Pitcher of the Month. He is more than National League Pitcher of the Eon. He is more than The Franchise. At this moment, he is the entire Industry and several subsidiary interests. He is Johan Santana. When you've said Johan you've said it all. His is the one arm to have even if technically you need more than one.

Do you trust the Mets to remember that? It's bad enough trusting his teammates to score for him. That's why we mustn't wait for him to play out however many contracts he'd like to sign, however many Cy Johans he'd like for his mantel, however long he'll continue to toy with the abilities of mere mortals — even those who, by their gaudy sleeve patches, refer to themselves as world champions. If Johan Santana walks this earth, how is it possible for anyone else to presume to be championing it?

Tommie Agee was the last Met inducted into the team Hall of Fame seven long years ago. At this rate, the organization will still be dithering over Darryl, Doc, Keith and, for that matter, Ron Hunt by the time Johan is inducted by acclimation into Santanatown (an upstate hamlet closely associated with James Fenimore Santana, writer of great American pitching lines). We know they'll be giving the 2020s' version of Mister Koo No. 57 the second it's no longer actively graced by the Met body of all Met bodies, so let's stop them before they forget who brought them their greatest glory from 2008 on. Let's put 57 on the wall of Sanway Park immediately and have the Son of Jor-El simply rub his cape against it before each start. And yes, of course, rename Citi Field at once. What are they/we paying the Mets for naming rights? $20 mil per annum? Oh, Johan Santana is far more valuable than that.

Johan Santana completely stifled the Phillies Wednesday night, much as he completely stifles everybody. Somehow, almost accidentally, Fernando Tatis, Carlos Delgado and Jayson Werth combined to score an entire run for him, which is all a superman with an ERA of 0.91 requires for victory. Pedro Feliciano and Frankie Rodriguez dared not untidy his work from there. And that was it. Santana wins, Mets win. It was a team effort. On those glitchy occasions when there is a Met loss and Santana pitches, I cannot fathom that he is part of that team. If Alex Rodriguez signified 24 + 1, Johan Santana is 1 who happens to be kind enough to not disavow his ties to 24. Johan has started six games thus far in 2009. The Mets have won four of them. The other two shouldn't count. A team playing behind Johan Santana can't possibly lose, therefore those two games simply must not have occurred.

Chan Ho Park picked the wrong night to stop being Chan Ho Park, for Johan Santana is always Johan Santana. Just by showing up, he has home field advantage. This is, after all, his world.

You don't have to spend the next 15 days on the Disabled List like Oliver Perez to enjoy Faith and Fear in Flushing, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

Drive in two, give up one. Statistically, Carlos Delgado was a verifiable asset. He was Delgado +1. That's not a wedding invitation; that's a hockey notation. He comes up in the ninth, the Mets needing an assist, and he puts a big hit on Mike Gonzalez; at least it looks big in the boxscore. More well placed than line drive, but the score goes from a stubborn 2-1 to an almost comfortable 4-1. With the Mets' goal in sight, the rest of the game looks like one big empty net.

Yet there is no wasted motion on a baseball field just as there were no wasted numbers Tuesday night in Atlanta. Nothing that happened didn't come bundled with some sort of consequence, potential or otherwise. Luis Castillo, in on three double plays — including one he started by nabbing a Chipper Jones bases-loaded liner in the third — made what would appear to be an inconsequential muff in the eighth. He stayed back on a one-out Jones grounder and the ball charged right by him. But when J.J. Putz didn't allow anybody else to reach base, no harm done, right?

Right?

David Wright wasted no motion driving in Carlos Beltran from second in the top of the third, one of two runs Liván Hernandez, Bobby Parnell and Putz would make stand tall for a very long time. Thanks to Jeff Francoeur's most intimidating limb, he did not deliver Beltran from third in the ninth (Carlos B. seems to live on base these days), but since Carlos D. got the hit a moment earlier, no harm done, right?

Right?

Ultimately, no harm to the Mets, but of course harm lurks hard when you don't do something beneficial on a ballfield. By Castillo extending the eighth and by Wright not bringing home at least one Carlos in the ninth, it gave the Braves two bonus threads of hope, no matter how slender each appeared:

1) They would need three runs to tie, not more; three runs is a considerable hill to climb against Francisco Rodriguez, but it's less considerable than four.

2) Having received that one gift baserunner in the eighth, the Braves were one batter closer to bringing Chipper Jones back to the plate in the ninth, almost invariably an atrocity waiting to happen (no kidding, check what Mets Walkoffs uncovered on the subject). True, he would be the seventh batter in the inning, but for the Mets, any chance Chipper comes up is a chance best not taken.

You know what happened next. Two Braves batters come up, two Braves batters go down, meaning it would take a calamity to put this game in doubt. Then again, we're playing in the Calamitorium, so an innocent single by Kelly Johnson looms suspiciously. A walk to Clint Sammons and his lifetime .177 average creates a sudden need to clear the throat. We've been winning all night. Liván was a veritable spa treatment: a soothing balm in a world filled with troubling Ollies and the like. Heartthrob Ramon Castro made us forget how much we used to love and depend upon on Omir Santos. Ken Kawakami was the pitching equivalent of patio furniture in fall, staying outside far too long and losing its luster in the process. If this game were a boxing match, we'd have been way ahead on points. But this baseball game was a baseball game and it was one swing from being tied.

Omar Infante had a puncher's chance with two on and two out, but K-Rod took care of that. A simple pop-up to first and…

DOWN GOES CARLOS!

DOWN GOES CARLOS!

Well, Carlos stayed on his feet, but the ball stayed in play when Delgado didn't so much drop it as fail to complete catching it. That silly Kelly Johnson kept running and scored. Sammons went to second. Then he followed Johnson home when Yunel Escobar singled, chasing Infante to third.

Frankie Rodriguez would now be facing his seventh batter of the inning:

Chipper Jones…

in Turner Field…

with the tying run ninety feet away…

and the winning run on first.

This wouldn't be happening if Wright had driven Francoeur a little deeper to right in the top of the ninth. Or if Castillo had picked Jones' ball cleanly in the bottom of the eighth. Or if a dozen Mets hadn't remained on base as if infected by an allergy to home plate. This wouldn't be a one-run game had the Mets not wasted so much motion.

Then again, they did start the inning with a three-run lead, thanks to a surplus of efficient motion. The surplus was shrinking, but that's what surpluses are for: to keep you in the black, if just barely.

So? So Jones hits a deep fly to right, Ryan Church catches it, the game is over, the Mets win. In the end, it's Mets +1.

Exactly the edge they required.

You'll come out ahead when you 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.

And thanks to Neil Best for showing a former Newsday carrier a little love…and to Metphistopheles for finding that nice needle in a horse barn haystack.