The Mets are on a 2-1 tear. Cancel the deathwatch. Schedule the parade.

Well, maybe not yet on either count, though a win in Atlanta following a rain-shortened split in Philadelphia beats losing three of four to the Marlins and Nationals…and seven of ten overall…and being 9-12 when they went to Citizens Bank…and 16-22 from September 13 through April 29, even with a long winter's nap that you would have thought sufficient to refresh them included in that span.

It's hard to shake the sense that this giant has been sleeping for too long, or that the giant isn't all that imposing, that he may be, if not a pigmy, then just another bloke on the block, just another team that may or may not be good enough to win enough games to make its season a few weeks longer and make its acolytes a whole lot happier. So often I wish the Mets would wake the bleep up already.

Sometimes I take it upon myself to rouse them from their stupor as much as one can without actual access to their alarm clocks. That's what I tried to do in my way last week. The reaction interested me, to say the least.

If you've been reading here for a while, you know me as a reasonably articulate and thoughtful Mets blogger, Mets author and Mets fan. If you just discovered this space within the last five or so days, however, I'm the fellow who advocated trading the Mets' three best position players, which made me an “idiot” on “opium” who offered an idea “in poor taste” and a plan that “blows,” writing “one of the worst blog posts I've ever read,” thus turning this site into something out of “Mike Francesa,” riddling the atmosphere with “poison” and representing a plunge “into Metsblog idiocy” bereft of “logic and intelligence”.

Pleased to meet you, even if I'm not usually that guy.

At the risk of a meta-posting, I'd like to revisit the piece I wrote last Thursday, Remaking the Mets Right Now, because it elicited what I would say was the single most aberrant set of reactions we've received in now five seasons of blogging. And that's OK, because it may have been the most aberrant piece I've ever written here. Not that I was really going for blog history.

One question came up time and again both in the comments section here and on one blog in particular that linked to it and discussed it a bit, (a blog I happen to enjoy on the days it doesn't assert I've “jumped the shark“): Was this for real? Was somebody really suggesting the Mets trade their best position players — their core, to use the fashionable word — for reasons having almost solely to do with stated reasons of “heart,” “guts,” and other non-statistical intangibles?

I'll get to my answer eventually, but I'd like to spend a few bytes on how I got to Thursday April 30, by retracing my steps all the way back to Wednesday April 29. That was the crappy game straight out of the early and late 2008 playbook, one the Mets led on strong pitching by their strongest pitcher only to let it get away on a little shoddy relief and absolutely no clutch hitting. The 4/29/09 game was a whole lot like a game on 5/15/08, a one-run loss that wasted fabulous pitching and was illustrative of what had been a seasonlong post-collapse malaise. History, I felt last Wednesday, was repeating itself again and again and again. I wasn't the only one who felt that way, judging by the reader comments to the April 29 post. This one in particular pulled at my Metstrings:

This is a heartless, gutless and ultimately a spineless team. They've changed managers; still they play listless baseball. They've changed closers; still they play lethargic, apathetic baseball. What is it going to take for these guys to win? What is it going to take for them to start playing like they actually want to win? How many times must we fans be subjected to the same embarrassing and futile effort? I don't want to hate my Mets. I really don't.

Yes, I thought, I'm feeling you. We're all feeling each other. We were like this last year. We were like this the year before. We were like this a week earlier during and after the St. Louis series. On such occasions, given the practice I've had at it, I'm usually good for what Jason elegantly refers to as a cri de coeur, a cry from the heart. I've written several, always sincerely, always passionately, always to generally wide approval. It's part of my gift, apparently, for saying what Mets Fans Who Like to Think are thinking.

I could've done that last week. Like our commenter above, I saw a team playing listless baseball; lethargic, apathetic baseball. I found myself not wanting to hate my Mets — I really didn't. Yet at this admittedly tender stage of 2009, I felt I was going down that road of reluctance again. I had to fight the impulse to hate my Mets for two, three months of 2008. I had to remind myself I love the Mets on the final weekend of 2008. That in itself felt like a replay of the stretch dive of 2007. I love the Mets because I love the Mets, but here I was, 21 games into a new season, and I was at that unfortunate crossroads where I was loving the Mets even though there was almost nothing about them that I could stand.

I couldn't stand saying that again. I couldn't stand running into roadblocks as I tried to work my way out of that maze. I couldn't stand that every time I allowed myself to wonder how we might take this team that came up not just short in 2007 and 2008 but historically and embarrassingly short — a team shortening its chances in 2009 as well — I couldn't conjure an obvious fix. I couldn't stand that as I went through the possibilities, I always came up against the same dead ends.

Look, you're not going to trade Wright, nor should you. Look what he's accomplished in 4½ seasons. Best player the Mets ever developed. And you're not going to trade Reyes, nor should you. Nobody can change a game with his feet the way he can. When he's on, he's unstoppable. And Beltran? Not only can't you trade him because of his contract, but why would you? Guy's so talented, so capable and so professional — and he's produced plenty.

Wow, I thought, we must be pretty great, because we have three absolute untouchables in the lineup every day. And that made me feel good…until the team would start playing the way it would play and I'd come back around to trying to figure out what to do. How, I asked myself, can you fix a team that seems so able and accomplished yet keeps presenting itself, on the field, as unfixable?

It finally dawned on me that there was a possibility I hadn't explored.

The longtime reader knows I carry an inextinguishable torch for the New York Baseball Giants. I can only imagine what it must have been like to have been a loyal Giants rooter in 1948 when our worst enemy, Leo Durocher, was hired away from Brooklyn and became our manager. I can only guess how long in those days of relative constancy it would have taken me to accept the enemy as my own, particularly as a Giants fan. The Giants were tradition. The Giants were practically family. John McGraw took over as manager in 1902. He was succeeded by Bill Terry in 1932. Terry gave way to Mel Ott in 1942. Three managers headed the family across 46 seasons: one was practically the inventor of 20th century baseball and two were Hall of Fame players.

But in came Durocher, and Durocher was not going to be bound by tradition or familial surroundings. “Back up a truck,” Leo told owner Horace Stoneham. The manager wasn't impressed by the slugging reputations of Stoneham's “Window Breakers” as they were known. They hit 221 home runs in 1947, most ever launched by one team in a 154-game season. Yet they finished a distant fourth in an eight-team league. When Durocher came on for Ott in '48, they were en route to leading the N.L. in homers once more but were absent from the race. As Noel Hynd recounts in The Giants of the Polo Grounds, Stoneham asked Leo, wasn't that kind of power — Johnny Mize, Sid Gordon, Willard Marshall in particular — worth something? No, he said, it wasn't.

“You need a whole new team, Horace.”

It would take serious recrafting and rebuilding, but Leo Durocher got his kind of team, one that was scrappy, feisty and terribly unGiantlike, at least since John McGraw departed the scene. Shortstop Alvin Dark and second baseman Eddie Stanky, in particular, came to embody the spirit of the new Giants. “We had two guys who could do things with the bat, could run the bases and who came to kill you,” is how Durocher would later put it. The team Leo remade, with not inconsiderable help from a kid outfielder named Willie Mays, would grow into a bona fide contender in 1950, a legendary pennant winner in 1951 and World Champion in 1954.

Granted we're talking sixty years ago and a ton of mythology. But there are examples throughout baseball history of teams that had good players, popular players, who were capable of putting on a pretty good show but proved incapable of executing a grand finale. The Red Sox trading Nomar Garciaparra in a four-way deal that netted them merely Doug Mientkiewicz and Orlando Cabrera in 2004 is a more recent example that is often cited of letting go of established talent for guys who fill niches on your club more effectively. Trading a signature player is no guarantee of ultimate victory, of course, but deciding something isn't working can sometimes be the first step in making it far more functional.

That's what I decided last Thursday. I decided the Mets as we know them aren't working. I decided instead of continually running into those roadblocks — Wright, Reyes, Beltran, the trio too good to trade — that I would simply remove the roadblocks. I would trade them.

How many times have you said to yourself as the Mets left a dozen or more runners on base or didn't hit a slew of cutoff men, “Trade 'em all!” It's certainly crossed my mind. Except I decided to get specific. I decided to trade roughly a third of 'em.

I can't do that for real, by the way. I don't work for the New York Mets in any capacity, let alone as general manager. And as far as being a latter-day Dick Young chasing Tom Seaver out of town, no, I don't have that kind of juice either. At most, the voice of this blog might have gotten us better pretzels than we used to have, but I'm guessing we probably would have gotten those anyway.

But I can imagine, just like any fan can. I can imagine my team might be different and better from what I've experienced. I can imagine not having to fight the impulse to hate my team. I can imagine that instead of beseeching the baseball gods to impart intangibles onto the players we have, that they could instead install new players who already come equipped with those intangibles. I can imagine that the paperwork wouldn't be overly cumbersome and that the balance between the metrics you can measure and the qualities you can sense would all just kind of come out in the wash. I can imagine that swapping out a few points of OPS here and a year or two of potential there would be worth it if it got me a team I wouldn't dream of hating…if it got me a team I could love day in and day out.

I can imagine. And when I imagine, I blog. And when I blog, as one of my fellow bloggers recently noted, I sometimes resort to “unusual techniques and genres to present the experience of the Mets: lists, dialogues, fantasies, glossaries, etc.” Add one more to the etc. files: uncommon directness, allowing desire to be expressed without the exasperating filter of “yeah but” rationalizations.

Yeah but you couldn't do that. Yeah but you couldn't trade your best players. Yeah but you couldn't give up that much talent at once to a division rival. Yeah but Beltran has a no-trade clause. Yeah but Wright and Reyes are only 26. Yeah but Wright and Beltran are good for more than a hundred RBI every year. Yeah but Wright is the face of the franchise. Yeah but the problem isn't Wright or Reyes or Beltran. Yeah but you wouldn't be getting fair value. Yeah but…

Screw “yeah but,” I thought. Or didn't think. I didn't want to think last Thursday. Or I didn't want to think about why I couldn't have a Mets team that did all the things the current Mets team doesn't do for me. I did think how it would be theoretically possible to have a different team, that scrappy, feisty team Durocher wanted, that the Red Sox got. I wanted to figure out how to construct that team on the fly without worrying over all the “yeah buts” one would run into if one were actually charged with doing this.

So I did it. And I presented it in fairly stark terms, as if that's the sort of thing I do every day, as if it wasn't an unusual technique or genre to which I was resorting. I decided to let my inner fan run rampant on our blog. It wasn't the start of a full-throated campaign to rid Metsdom of its core players. It wasn't a permanent format switch from the Blog for Mets Fans Who Like to Read to Let's Spit Out the First Thing that Occurs to Us. It was a way to go beyond a simple cri de coeur and to explore a “what if?” without a “yeah but”.

Thus, to answer the question from a while back, was I serious? No, I wasn't. And yes, I was. No, I wasn't serious in that I had zero expectation that anybody is going to make those trades. No, I wasn't serious in that I hadn't done more than the most cursory research into whether those trades would have more than a fleeting or surface impact. No, I wasn't serious in that I would want to see most of the players I mentioned just go away. (I own four different t-shirts with REYES 7 on the back — think I wanna deplete my wardrobe that drastically?)

But yes, I was serious in that if I could snap my fingers and do anything then maybe — maybe — I would trade a bunch of guys who, as a unit, seem incapable of playing hard, fighting to the last out and winning the games that absolutely need to be won. It was the would-be GM equivalent of drunk dialing. It may have been the 2009 one-man answer to the alleged 1950 trade agreed to between Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey and Yankees co-owner Dan Topping: Ted Williams for Joe DiMaggio. It was a done deal, until they sobered up the next morning.

I was completely serious and I was completely unserious. It was a thought that would never become reality and it was a reality that I thought might be nice. I have to confess that for a few hours last Thursday, I enjoyed breaking up the Mets. I enjoyed not having to make alibis for my Mets, that I no longer had to reason just you wait and this one will be ready to be the clubhouse leader and that one simply doesn't like to talk and the other one is maturing, you just don't realize it. I enjoyed having a different Mets team. Not that I've ever lusted after the players I proposed acquiring, but I imagined my hypothetical lineup and rotation and I was pretty excited. I didn't mind having Ryan Howard take aim at the Pepsi Porch 81 times a year. I liked Jimmy Rollins backing up his talk at short in a Mets uniform. As much as I detest Shane Victorino, I could like a guy who comes to kill somebody else. And Roy Halladay, the footnote to my blockbuster extravaganza…not a bad No. 2 guy.

I also kind of enjoyed not having David Wright, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran and the rest. I enjoyed the trial separation. I enjoyed that the guys who didn't win it in 2007 and 2008 wouldn't be around to remind me of their collective shortcomings in 2009. I enjoyed a team for which the general manager didn't feel compelled to offer up asinine assessments regarding edge. Of course, as the hours went by, I remembered they were also responsible for getting us close enough for heartbreak in '07 and '08, and that, yes, in typical ex-Met fashion, I'd be cringing at every revenge swing each of them took against us in Hypothetical Citi Field for years to come. Like Yawkey and Topping, I sobered up.

And yet…

You know those letterman-style jackets you often see at games in April and September, the ones with the 1969 and 1986 logos? I remember noticing them in 2006 and both admiring and dismissing them. Sharp jackets, to be sure, but just as sure to be out of date soon enough. Maybe I'd splurge on one when it had three championships marked on it, which was obviously going to happen in October 2006.

I see those jackets now and they sadden me. Not that they don't remain sharp, not that 1969 and 1986 aren't worth displaying and revering, but geez, I think, is that it? Is that all we're ever going to have to put on a Mets' world championships jacket? Are the Mets ever going to win another World Series in my lifetime? Perhaps that's the ultimate panic question, but I'm coming to have my doubts. It's been 23 years. Mets fans under the age of 30 have no first-hand experience with the phrase World Champion New York Mets. I've suddenly spent half my lifetime waiting for another. Every season, somebody else gets in on the act. We're not in Cubs, Indians or Giants territory, but once you're approaching a quarter-century, does it really matter whether it's 1908 or 1948 or 1954 or 1986?

Somebody commenting on last Thursday's post said he'd be happy to live a lifetime of reasonably competitive 89-73 seasons, particularly after bearing the scars of the years just before 2005. He said he had no memory of what we call the glory years, 1984-1990, which some argue was a period of disappointment as it encompassed only one championship.

I understand the instinct to just be thankful for what you got. These days have indeed been better than '02 to '04, just as they are better than '91-'96 and '77-'83. I can appreciate a winning record over a losing record having lived through all of the above and having forgotten, I assure you, none of the bleakness.

But, no, I don't want to make my ceiling 90 wins with an 80% chance of torpidity. I don't want to pretend this is a great club just biding its time for its spectacular breakout streak that's always a day away. I don't want to go on forever with a team that is incapable not from a lack of talent but from a paucity of desire to play like it cares whether it's going to be the team that breaks what is now a substantial World Series drought. It's twenty-three years since the Mets won it all. It's nine years since the Mets simply got there. It's been back-to-back years of excruciating near-misses, having missed in April and May and June and July and August as much as they have missed in September. It was April last week. We lost more than we won and looked damn inert in the process.

My dream team of last Thursday — would it win? Would Howard hit that dramatic dinger off Papelbon in October? Would Halladay shut down Jason Bay? Would Fernando Martinez in left and Daniel Murphy at third blossom under the tutelage of Rollins and Kevin Millar?

How the hell would I know? It was hypothetical. It doesn't have an answer. But I imagined it would because I imagine a world in which those beautiful blue letterman jackets have three logos. I imagine immediate dividends and a championship and a parade that would sate me for quite a long time. It's only recently that the enormity of having waited more than two decades has hit me. During Sunday's rainout, I practically waterboarded myself and watched MLB Network's airing of the 2000 World Series film. It was fun to be a part of the Fall Classic, I thought while it was it was going on. My 2000 self rued losing like crazy, but somehow it was cool that we were a finalist. Watching it in 2009 just angered and saddened me, less for what went wrong in 2000 (run!) and more for that it didn't end the dry spell at fourteen years.

Would my undoable trades bite us later even if they paid off now? Would we suffer at the hands of our traded Mets while our acquirees went downhill in 2010? Quite possibly. But I don't think I'd care all that much if I could have that trophy and that jacket and that parade. I've never been about the rings, baby, but I'm getting to a point where I'm dismayed at the realization that there's no particular reason to expect I'll ever see the Mets attain a third, that I'll be living off memories of 1969 and 1986 until I'm no longer available to root. That's horribly pessimistic and fatalistic, but where is anything resembling evidence that this might not be the case in the foreseeable future?

This is where I grow moody and I want to trade everybody. I wouldn't call it Faustian, but Victorinoesque is bad enough. Still, when I watch these Mets, these Mets who went down in Game Seven in '06 and haven't ever really recovered, I don't know what I'm watching. I could be watching a champion that's a move or two away. Or I could be watching a cruel tease that's going to disintegrate anyway, so why not beat it to the punch and pull it apart right now? I honestly don't know.

There's a lot I don't know, but there are a few things this episode has helped me learn.

• I learned that the subject of team-altering trades is forever touchy. I should have known that. When I was 13, in the summer of '76, the Post suggested trading Tom Seaver, since the Mets were going nowhere with him. I nearly fainted. Blasphemy! Within a year, it was a done deal. In the offseason following 2003, the Daily News made a pitch to dump Mike Piazza. They offered all kinds of sound reasons to do it. I nodded and I cringed. The Mets without Mike Piazza? NEVER! Never came eventually. Most of the comments didn't really hew to the sentimental, but still, the core is the core for a reason. As long as your core isn't Ty Wigginton and Tony Tarasco, it's hard to imagine being who you are without who you are. You don't want the Post telling you your franchise player should go. You don't want the News telling you your franchise player should go. And, I guess, you don't want some blogger telling you, even in a fit of frustration-driven dark fantasy, that maybe, just maybe, the problem isn't what's surrounding our core — that maybe the problem is our core.

• I learned one of my foundation statements from my book is eternal: Mets fans do take everything personally. Usually this blog doesn't receive as many as 50 comments for any single post unless a manager has been fired, playoff games have been played/choked away or Keith Hernandez opts to wear red. But when you tell Mets fans that, oh, by the way, I'd like to trade most of our regulars, a couple of pitchers and some prospects, they do take it personally. Except for those who automatically use name-calling as a substitute for discussion, I was mighty impressed with the depth of the responses to my piece, even though almost all of them disagreed with the proposal. You are people who care deeply about what this team does. You transcend fandom without venturing into a state of danger to society. Some of you had solutions. Some of you had optimism. All of you had concern (in a few cases for my mental well-being). The passion of this fan base is no trifling dot on a graph. Those who take it lightly do so at their own peril. Except for those of you who register just to tell us you plan not to read here anymore, I'm glad to be among you.

• I learned that civility sometimes takes a holiday just because someone presents a view that doesn't mesh with yours. I learned that across 2008 as I consumed political blogs, but that's politics, which shouldn't be confused with baseball. This is the Mets. We're all Mets fans. It's downright sad, no matter how insane you might find an idea of mine or anybody's, that you are compelled to respond to it in an insulting manner. You don't like it, explain why without hurling epithets. Or just roll your eyes and move on to some place you like better. That goes for any forum you find yourself in, not just Faith and Fear, not just blogs, not just online. You're not doing yourself any favors, not as Mets fans or human beings, by thinking a basic civilized demeanor is optional. You can be packing the tightest, most statistically verifiable arguments and few are going to want to listen to you if you can't present them with a modicum of politeness.

• I learned that I'm responsible for every word I write, nuance or no nuance, shades of gray or black and white. Sometimes a long track record of blogging about everything Mets-related except hypothetical trades doesn't count when you decide one time to do hypothetical trades. Then you're suddenly the idiot who did an outlandish hypothetical trade post. You write your words, you take your chances. (And better, I suppose, to be derided now and then than be totally ignored.)

• I learned that it's unclear how one can best go about placing a value on an individual ballplayer's skills. I've read Moneyball. I read Tim Marchman. I get the whole bit about how “heart” and “guts” and “grit” can be overblown in the wrong hands and next thing you know, you've got a team of good faces that can't take a pitch to save their lives. I also see where season after season of pleasant statistics don't necessarily add up to a rewarding bottom line. I wouldn't dismiss the stats but neither would I write off those silly qualities that make up a “winning ballplayer”. I'm a fan. All I have to do is have opinions. My best wishes are extended to those responsible for making the actual decisions that create a ballclub and hopefully that elusive characteristic some call chemistry. I don't think it's nearly as easy to craft as some of us would like to believe.

• I learned I'm not as attached to my favorite Mets as I would have thought. Though I love, all things being equal, the idea of great Mets remaining Mets and nothing but Mets, this little exercise may have helped prepare me for the day down the road when somebody considered an inextricable part of the core is wrenched away. I had a tough bastard professor of microeconomics in college who told us the first day of class, “Look to your left and look to your right — one of you isn't going to be here by the end of the term.” Sooner or later, as unlikely as it seems now, David Wright or Jose Reyes or both might very well be ex-Mets. When that day comes, you can count on me to write a paean to their Mets greatness, how this is wrong, how the integrity of everything we stand for has been slapped in the face…and I will mean every word of it. At the same time, I will look at who's replacing them and, if they are a better alternative, I'll welcome them with at least one arm open. I've learned I'm more of a Mets fan than a fan of any individual Met these days.

• I learned once more the validity of something Jason said many years ago upon realizing his prediction of Met doom was wildly inaccurate: in baseball, you can be wrong and happy. The Mets, the team I love and the team I can't stand, are playing .667 ball since Thursday. Small sample size or not, two out of three is two reasons to feel good about feeling a little stupid. Should the opportunity come along some crisp autumn afternoon for me to be standing on Lower Broadway, I'll be the one holding up the sign that reads “I WAS WRONG ON APRIL 30, 2009 AND I'M ELATED!” or words to that effect. Stop by and say hello. I'll be the idiot with the biggest smile in New York.

Seriously.

Only slightly longer than the above post but definitely more fun: 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 check out Jason's and my quite civil half-hour with the Seven Train to Shea.

I'm heading for New Orleans for three days tomorrow (it will be an interesting trip, as explained in navel-gazing fashion here), so I was eager to get an evening of uninterrupted Mets before I departed.

“Uninterrupted” is an approximation for parents, though — the early innings, with John Maine looking like he was falling apart, unfolded as Joshua and I ate pizza, after which there was bath and reading and the requisite coaxing, cajoling and bald-faced threatening required to get a six-year-old into bed at a speed greater than that of continental drift. I trudged back to the couch and things hadn't improved: It was still Braves 3, Mets 0, with the proceedings enlivened by shots of Oliver Perez wandering around the bullpen looking slightly more confused than usual. I settled in to watch more out of loyalty than joy, with a somewhat sour expression on my face …

… and then I fell asleep.

ZZZZ … huh? Wha?

Gary Cohen was very excited about something. A ball was headed over a fence. Carlos Beltran was involved. I blinked and stared and saw, to my sleepy astonishment, that it was now Mets 6, Braves 3. (And then stayed awake for the rest, rewarded by nothing except for a Chipper Jones blast. Well, OK, and a victory.)

One of the selfish little truths about being a baseball fan is it's not much fun if you don't get to watch. Obviously I'm glad we won, and that Beltran is still playing on another plane of existence, and that David Wright seems to be awakening, and that John Maine toughed it out, and that the Mets showed heretofore woefully lacking a) spunk b) grit c) fight d) [insert name of unquantifiable essence here]. But from my perspective it was Braves 4, Mets 0, and I left wondering why everybody else had such a good time.

While-you-were-sleeping wins always remind me of an amusing conversation with Greg: Years ago, for no particular reason, I asked him if he'd want the Mets to win the World Series if he couldn't watch any of the season or postseason. All I was going for was some minor point about a team's season being inextricably linked with the fans' enjoyment of the ride, but Greg immediately began poking at the idea like a demolitions expert confronted with a suitcase trailing red wires. Could he record the games and watch them later? Buy the DVD? Wait around to see them on some version of Mets Classic? “No,” I said to all three of those and most everything else he came up with. My co-blogger always gives me far too much credit for having coherent rules and belief systems, when most everything I do is half-assed improv. He's still baffled — and a bit offended — that Tommy Moore's 1990 Senior League card doesn't count for The Holy Books.

(By the way, if you think this is too far-fetched, consider what happened to this poor guy.)

Still, even if I missed the good part, it was a win. If only I didn't have the uneasy feeling those may prove scarce this year. There are storm clouds everywhere around this team, from its not-so-automatic bullpen to its lousy starting pitching to injuries and late-inning struggles. (And I know, back from three runs down, but until we get a few more of those the exception still proves the rule.)

And the gap between Met pronouncements and Met reality makes me more frightened.

Take Oliver Perez's Mysterious Knee Injury. This began as an amusing bit of farce, from Oliver's colloquy in the training room with noted medical professional Jay Horwitz to Oliver seeming to not quite remember which knee hurt. (In the New York Times, Ben Shpigel's arch account was only missing a sprinkling of those eye-rolling animated emoticons.)

But the more you think about it, the less amusing it gets.

Oliver Perez has an ERA of nearly 10, which might be a stretch even for coaches throwing BP. He belongs in Triple-A, where the likes of Bobby Jones and Steve Trachsel regained what passed for their mojo.

I think the Mets know that. And I know Ollie can refuse the assignment. (Can't you just imagine Omar Minaya trying to send Oliver down only to receive a sat-phone call from the undersea hideaway of Scott Boras, who sinisterly stroked the Persian cat on his lap throughout their conversation?) But in searching for an answer, the Mets seem determined to continue their aggravating recent tradition of thoroughly mismanaging a big-league roster. The knee injury, if it was indeed fake, was a lame but acceptable cover story in an era of huge salaries and fragile athlete egos — but the Mets could barely stick to that story for a single news cycle. Instead of being in Buffalo or on the DL Oliver is in the bullpen, where it's frankly incredible to think he'll be able to solve whatever's wrong with him. And poor Ken Takahashi is suddenly a starter. (His diary entries about how American baseball teams conduct their business must be quite something.) A not-so-fearless prediction, about which I'd be thrilled to be wrong: None of this will work, and the Mets will finagle a flare-up of the phantom knee injury that sends Oliver to Buffalo or St. Lucie a couple of weeks after he should have departed. In the meantime, only the Mets could start with “Oliver Perez Has Developed a Case of the Sucks” as Point A and somehow decide “Let's Screw Up Two Roster Spots” makes sense as Point B.

Given all this, Carlos Delgado's all-too-real hip injury becomes terrifying. Not only because it sounds uncomfortably close to what made him play so poorly that he nearly got released, but because it makes me wonder what gap there might be between these Met pronouncements and whatever's really happening. Given the Perez saga, I wouldn't be stunned to find out that Delgado actually has gangrene and needs his leg sawn off. After which he'll spend 13 days on the bench, come in for an inning of hopping gamely but futilely after balls in a blowout, and then go on the DL.

Wait a minute, we scored runs after the first?

Wait a minute, J-Rolls and the Flyin' Hawaiian and Utley and Howard were batting in the ninth (do they ever not?) and there was a two-out walk and the inning didn't end with a Met closer whirling around in horror to stare at a point somewhere above the outfield fence?

Wait a minute, Greg Dobbs got a big single as a pinch-hitter to launch a Phillie uprising — and then screwed up on the basepaths to derail his team's comeback?

Wait a minute, there was no rain to quash Met comeback hopes or umpire transforming a fielder's choice into a game-ending double play or death march through extra innings or Aaron Heilman looking like he just found a cigarette butt in his Coke?

This was Phillies/Mets, right?

It's not that bad, of course — but it was bad enough. The Mets, you may have noticed, have been playing flat, bad baseball, with a disconcerting habit of showing the enemy their soft, blue and orange underbelly in the late innings. The Phillies, you may have noticed, have been playing … well, Phillie baseball, which may not statistically look a whole lot different than ours but sure feels different, and last year ended with a trophy instead of recurring trauma. And so with that buildup we were going to Citizens Bank? Without Delgado and with David Wright all but barfing at the plate while squeezing his bat into a little anthill of sawdust? My midafternoon Twitter update was this:

Already mad at the Mets for losing. Figure it will lessen the blow of the actual event.

And no, I was not trying to hoodwink the baseball gods.

But a funny thing happens when you plunge yourself into baseball despair: actual baseball, which will always have the capacity to surprise you. Carlos Beltran continued his sublime hitting, and even rediscovered the ancient strategy known as sliding. Wright wasn't Right, not just yet (Keith did an excellent job breaking down how out of whack he is at the plate), but he did go 2 for 4, and I couldn't help feeling that he was helped by having Beltran being frisky on the basepaths while he was at the plate. David has thought himself into this hole, and protecting a runner in motion can pare your job as a hitter down to the elemental. On the mound, Mike Pelfrey was … OK. He pitched in some bad luck in that three-run third, between Raul Ibanez's broken-bat parachute and Pedro Feliz slapping one through the hole Alex Cora had vacated to cover second. But he also made 17 pitches on 2-0 or 2-1 counts, including every batter in the top of the first, and somehow came out with a W. I wouldn't recommend that as sound strategy.

And then there was that sublime bit of ridiculousness in the sixth, with Jose Reyes surrounding a hot shot from Rollins. Jose has no play! No, he's going to third! And he overthrows Wright! And Coste is heading home! No, he's not! He's going back to third! Only now Dobbs is going to third! And now Dobbs is going back to second! And Santos tries to throw the ball into center field! But Cora leaps up and grabs it! And now Coste is going home! And the throw to Santos … and HE'S OUT!

Not exactly how you'd diagram anything likely to happen on a baseball diamond — it reminded me of my parents approaching various ailing cats armed with medicine, a towel and anticipatory Band-Aids — but somehow it worked out. And we'll take it.

Two of your favorite baseball authors (although only one is winsome enough to get away with heretical trade proposals) will be featured on SNY's Mets Weekly Saturday May 2 at noon. Alyssa Milano will be talking about her Touch clothing line and I will surely touch on the book and blog known as Faith and Fear in Flushing, the latter of which you're reading right here and the former of which you can purchase via a fine bookstore near you or from just about any reputable online bookseller, including Amazon and Barnes & Noble. And just as Ms. Milano has written about her love of baseball, we, too, offer some pretty stylish shirts. (I heard a young girl shrieking excitedly in Alyssa's direction when she appeared at Citi Field two weeks ago, while I've been blessed to read many high-pitched responses to my own work recently.)

This same episode is scheduled to air again Sunday 5/3 @ 4:30 PM; Monday 5/4 @ 1:30 PM; and Thursday 5/7 at 1 PM.

Back up a truck.

—Giants manager Leo Durocher's player personnel report to owner Horace Stoneham, 1948

The Mets need a heart transplant, a new set of guts and a severe makeover. There are two trades that will never happen, probably couldn't happen, maybe shouldn't happen, but let's say they did.

1) The Mets send David Wright, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, Tim Redding and Ramon Castro to Philadelphia for Jimmy Rollins, Shane Victorino and Ryan Howard.

2) The Mets send Carlos Delgado, Brian Schneider, John Maine, Brad Holt and Ike Davis to Toronto for Roy Halladay, Rod Barajas and Kevin Millar.

In concomitant moves, the Mets shift Daniel Murphy to third base, call up Fernando Martinez and have Oliver Perez and Bobby Parnell switch roles.

Our new starting lineup:

Rollins SS

Victorino CF

Sheffield/Martinez LF

Howard 1B

Millar/Church RF

Tatis/Murphy 3B

Barajas C

Castillo 2B

The bench would include Jeremy Reed, Omir Santos, Alex Cora and the platoon third baseman, leftfielder and rightfielder who aren't starting on a given day.

Rotation: Johan Santana, Roy Halladay, Mike Pelfrey, Bobby Parnell and Livan Hernandez (until Jon Niese merits replacing him)

Bullpen: Frankie Rodriguez, J.J. Putz, Oliver Perez, Sean Green, Brian Stokes and Pedro Feliciano (with Nelson Figueroa on speed dial should another arm be deemed necessary)

Why would the Phillies go for it? Castro gives them some catching depth, with Ruiz recently injured. Redding, once he heals, is another arm for a club that desperately needs arms. Those guys are deadwood on this team. Obviously it's the three bigger names that will make this happen, three players with a world of talent and a pretty impressive track record, all of whom have produced at Citizens Bank Park. Reyes is younger than Rollins. Beltran is a bigger power threat than Victorino. Wright sends Feliz to first to platoon with Dobbs, potentially making up for Howard. They still have a batting order with four legitimate all-stars, including Chase Utley. Wright and Reyes are still relatively inexpensive for a while. That franchise has already won a World Series. The can think long-term.

Why would the Blue Jays go for it? They're not going to stay in first place. They're probably not going to compete for the playoffs. Halladay's a free agent after 2010. It's unlikely they'll hold onto him. Carlos Delgado is going for 500 home runs. He was a big deal in Toronto and his milestone march where he established himself would create great goodwill. That's for the short term. Maine and the two prospects are for the longer term, understanding you have to give up a lot to obtain a Roy Halladay.

Why would the Mets go for it?

Why not?

All right, seriously, why not? Where are we going with the core we have? The core four, we can all agree, includes three of the most talented players in the National League plus an all-time power hitter with some legitimate pop left in his bat. But the Mets, it should be painfully apparent by now, aren't going anywhere as presently constituted. So why pretend anymore?

Rollins and Victorino are exactly the kind of players we're always crying out for, guys who talk the talk and walk the walk. Rollins isn't as fast or as dynamic as Reyes but he brings us similar dimensions, plus more power and maturity. Victorino is close enough defensively to Beltran and surely knows enough to slide. Wright, the face of this franchise, is becoming, no kidding, a frowny face. As productive as he's been, he may have peaked in New York. He's no longer draped in Teflon. Howard strikes out more than Wright (though not much more) yet he may possess the one power stroke in baseball that could thrive at Citi Field. We've already seen anybody can triple here, but he may be the only guy who can consistently homer here. We'll be down a little in overall power, but have you seen how this place plays?

Halladay is in Santana's class. The two of them, with a few runs behind them, give you a leg up in every series in which they pitch. You have Johan under contract, you get Roy under contract. Barajas for Schneider, I confess, is dog and cat. Millar, however, comes for much the same reason Victorino and Rollins do: fire, dirt, the whole bit we're always despairing we're missing. These are guys who play to win, not to simply get one more game crossed off the schedule. At this stage of Millar's career, that's almost his sole equity. It's a valuable one to have on this club.

As for the internal moves, if Fernando Martinez is going to be the future of this club (along with Ryan Howard), let's get him out there and see what he can do. You've got Sheffield for a year, so it's not all on the kid. Murphy needs to forget about left field. Eventually he becomes the everyday man at third. Until then, let him be spelled by Tatis, who deserves more at-bats and, more to the point, helps the club by playing, not sitting. Millar might not have much left, but let's maximize him and Church. Jeremy Reed should get some starts somewhere along the way as well. He and Tatis can add outfield depth should Martinez falter and need a brush-up in Buffalo or Sheffield go kaput (though his bat speed and eye still seem fine).

Santana and Halladay explain themselves. Pelfrey's too promising to trade, thus he stays over Maine if the Blue Jays want a pitcher. Parnell's too promising to waste in the bullpen; he was a starter his whole career 'til the end of last year. Perez is too risky in the rotation. He could be an incredible set-up man to Rodriguez in short spurts (Putz is only signed through this year and I can't believe he'll want to stay in an eighth-inning role). Like Castillo in the offseason, you simply can't move him, so you have to hope he finds himself and you have to help him find his way. With as much upside as this new rotation should have, let's carry one fewer pitcher in the pen and see what happens.

There. Done. New team. Grittier team. Less talented lineup but still capable (particularly in Citi Field) and probably way heartier — to say nothing of being able to throw two absolute aces every five days. You'd miss the guys you've grown to love, but there was a time you didn't love them. There was a time you'd never heard of them. You'd love a different brand of baseball, a winning brand of baseball, if it introduced itself to you, whoever was making the introductions. There was a time a couple of these new guys weren't your enemy. If they do for you what they've done to you, you'd grow to like them plenty.

These two trades are never going to happen. But let's say something like these trades were to happen. Seriously. How about it?

Don't wait on Omar to make this acquisition: 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.

Citi Field is beginning to grow on me. The Mets are beginning to feel like fungus.

Spent a lovely afternoon in Section 509, my favorite section to date. First spot I've sat where at least 95% of the field was available to me. Crisp but not uncomfortable weather for Weather Education Day. My buddy Rich made his CF debut, his first retro park appearance of any kind. Yes, we agreed, afterwards: this was definitely a Retropolitan type of outing. The Mets have been playing like this more often than not since 1962.

What can you do with a game in which Santana is plenty good (if not otherworldly), we get twice our daily allotment of triples, a disputed home run call goes our way and we are presented with a surprise (shocking, really) appearance by the backup catcher at the very last minute? You can win, but the Mets refuse to not lose. Intimidating AC/DC fanfare notwithstanding, J.J. Putz failed to leave the Marlins thunderstruck. His post-Johan performance was disappointing and ultimately fatal, but he merely picked up the smoking gun. The culprits who killed today's chances all carried bats, particularly when there were runners on base.

And hoo boy, were there runners on base.

The chicken nachos, the gentle sunshine and the company, planned and otherwise (I've been fortunate to run into some very nice FAFIF readers every game I've gone this homestand), made it too nice a day to complain virulently or send up distress signals. Indeed, Rich thinks it's too early to push the panic button. Me, I think Citi Field should stock the cupholders with emergency flares, but maybe he's right. The Mets had an afternoon game like this last May: midweek, hopeful and eventually futile. We lost it by one run. We missed the playoffs by one game. But it wasn't the end of 2008, just as this, despite our ugly 9-12 mark, wasn't the end of 2009.

Merely a discouraging continuation of everything we've seen.

If you're not going to push the panic button, at least click on 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.

Meanwhile, a Mariners fan says Mets fans will love the book…even if Mariners fans will only like it.

On a lot of nights, the New York Mets are a pretty unstoppable baseball team from about 7:20 until about 7:45.

Unfortunately, the nights drag on, and so do the Mets. The orange-and-blue hare begins to coast. To hop only now and again. Then it goes to sleep somewhere, and you feel yourself go rigid at home on the couch or out in Flushing in your new properly angled green seat. You can feel it coming. Then you watch it happening.

Tack-on runs not scoring. C'mon, Mets.

David Wright striking out AGAIN and looking perplexed. Get UP, Mets.

Starters not going deep enough. The game's not over!

A little insurrection put down and now the lead is less comfortable. METS!

Some reliever comes in and is fine. More runs, please, fellas! Please?

Another reliever comes in and is not so fine. AUUUGGHHH!!!!

Fizzled rallies and strikeouts and it's over, the tortoise has won, and you are so not surprised. You realize you felt this marching towards you since about the third inning or so, and it arrived sure as the thunder and lightning followed the racing clouds and the treetops bending and pitching. Only the Mets are the ones out there soaking wet, looking perplexed.

I really don't know what it is with this team. They look poorly constructed and rickety and mismatched, and logy and lead-assed and dull. I'll just go for the lethal comparison: They look like the plodders who bumbled along under Willie Randolph's sour glower for half of one season and then half of the next. I thought Jerry Manuel had at least exorcised that evil spirit, but here it is again spitting bile and showing off its alarmingly flexible vertebrae. I'd call it the Ghost of Shitty Baseball Past, but a 9-11 record and a run differential of zero isn't exactly past. This phantom is all too Present, and the Future scares me.

Speaking of the past, HEY, HAVE YOU BEEN TO MY WEB SITE LATELY? As if things weren't irritating enough.

* * *

A more interesting note: Over at Keith Olbermann's blog, he's discovered another Almost Met — a guy with the Only In Baseball name of Wilbur Huckle, who suited up for the Mets in September 1963 but never got into a game. Huckle becomes the ninth Almost Met — the others are Jim Bibby, Randy Bobb, Billy Cotton, Jerry Moses, Terrell Hansen, Mac Suzuki, Justin Speier and Anderson Garcia. But Huckle joins Cotton and Hansen in having tales that are not just odd but tragic, from a baseball point of view: The other six Almost Mets played at least one major-league game in another uniform, and so became Real Something Elses, but not those three. They never crossed the white lines to find a home in the eternity of the Baseball Encyclopedia. (Olbermann calls the sad ranks of such players the Bill Sharman Society, after a Brooklyn Dodger phenom who suffered the same fate. Elias, less poetically and more cruelly, calls them zombies.)

I've been obsessed with the Almost Mets for some time, and the line I always use — because I haven't been able to improve on it — is that Terrell Hansen would give his eyeteeth to be Moonlight Graham. Think about that some night when 3 a.m.'s sitting on your chest and you know it's going to be a while.

Anyway, Ken Takahashi — if you're warming up for your debut and feel a little tight, maybe you should just go on out there anyway. Trust me on this one.

You know what looks good next to the Baseball Encyclopedia? 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.

Remember, at midnight you can turn to WOR 710 AM, when Greg joins Joey Reynolds to talk Faith and Fear and whatever else comes up. Besides, like you want anything to do with the FAN after this debacle.

We were not shown the time machine that would make it possible for us to adjust our career choices in order to earn what it will take to afford a seat at the Excelsior Club conference table.

—The author, after visiting the Citi Field Preview Center, September 27, 2007

First class is what's wrong, honey. It used to be a better meal. Now it's a better life.

—Dorothy Boyd to son Ray, Jerry Maguire, 1996

Omir Santos is no mere Santos. And a seat on the Excelsior Level isn't your typical perch at Citi Field, at least not as I've experienced it in its young life.

It was on something of a lark that for the first post-Shea Mets home game I ever bought tickets to I went for something identified as Caesars Club seats. Back in March, I had no idea what that was, but I figured the proverbial Monday night in April against the Marlins — a Value Date during which the true value was delivered by our new starting catcher and a return to form by an old starting pitcher — would lack the demand later, sexier appointments might inspire, thus giving me a semi-affordable shot at how the other half would be living. Nothing against Porches, Promenades and the other proletariat positionings placed up and away from the action, mind you. Just wanted a feel for what I'd be railing against.

I can see why I will resent this level. Because I want in. “I want to go to there,” as 30 Rock's Liz Lemon would put it. I want very much to be in da club. I won't be, not at those well above 50 cent prices most non-Value Date nights carry. Yet now I understand what they were trying to tell us at the Citi Field Preview Center nineteen months ago when I had a hunch that I should've gotten rich or died trying in anticipation of the day when the pretty nice seats for Mets games would grow out of my general reach.

This is the World Class part of Citi Field. Or at least it's the phenomenal upgrade that we were promised as we lined up for propaganda and flowers at that Preview Center. Taste of the City might be the home of the tangy tacos, but Excelsior is where they keep the good china.

If you've ever squeezed a packet of Dijonnaise, you can relate to understanding Excelsior as the Logezzanine. That's all it is, really. If they took Mezzanine, scaled it down and lowered it a little to more or less where Loge was, you'd have Excelsior. You'd be covered, you'd have some sightlines (not all of them — still couldn't see a portion of the outfield, right this time) and you'd feel if not that ballyhooed intimacy, then at least familiarity with your 2009 New York Mets. That's all any Sheafolk could want, structurally: not an improved-in-spots Upper Deck, but an objectively better Mezzanine.

I'd strongly suggest taking a stroll through Excelsior, getting a sense of the amenable ballpark view, maybe sampling some of the fare at the Caesars Club if the Mets are up by five or six runs and you're comfortable following the action on a few dozen HD screens for a couple of innings…but you won't be doing that because this is the part of the park where they turn you away if you flash the wrong ticket. The right ticket can be yours for the correct combination of presidential flashcards — that's baseball in 2009 — but you're on your own there. I'm on my own after this fluky Value Date purchase. Each of my tickets Monday night was $45, about the upper limit of what I can/will ante for a single game of a nonhistoric nature. Hence, next homestand, when the Bronze Buccaneers sail in from Pittsburgh, the same very nice if not particularly spectacular right field seat in Section 308 would cost me $60. A glimpse at the Silver-tinged World Champion Phillies from that very same longitude and latitude would set me back $75. A fan-friendly quote no doubt exists to remind me there are affordable seats up in Promenade, that for $15 Bronze and $19 Silver, I can sit in something that isn't as high as the Upper Deck at Shea. And indeed, I've sat there four times already, in the company of good and gracious friends with whom I could gather anywhere and feel enriched.

But y'know what? These seats are better. Not the best, but better. Better and essentially unaffordable to me and, I'm guessing, most people I know. Maybe that's my fault for having waited 'til I'm deep in middle age to achieve a scintilla of accomplishment and a nugget of recognition in my chosen field — or for going into writing instead of hedge fund management when that kind of thing was clubworthy. Maybe it's my fault that I cheered as Beltran was signed and Delgado and Santana were acquired, forgetting not just that you get what you pay for but you pay for what you get. Maybe I shouldn't have put such an emphasis all winter on shelter and groceries. Or perhaps I've been so brainwashed by sports that it is I, the forty-year loyal fan, who feels I've failed myself and my team by not being able to sit in pretty nice seats for its games whenever I wish. I'm not asking for Sterlings, Deltas and Ebbetses. I'm asking for an occasional evening in the Logezzanine with a price tag that doesn't make me wince hard. I don't remember Loge or Mezzanine being almost uniformly and almost unfathomably prohibitive. Excelsior, with its Caesars Club entrée, kind of is. I expect to see Omir Santos hit another grand slam before I can see paying more than I did for a single evening in Section 308.

Not that Santos doing what he did wouldn't look good from any sightline.

Read it on the level of your choice: 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.

Stay up after tonight's Value Date to listen, come midnight, to WOR 710 AM when I join Joey Reynolds to talk Faith and Fear and whatever else comes up.