MIRACLE ON THE HUDSON is a headline I would have hoped to have seen describe some incredible play some incredible second baseman made on our behalf (a second baseman who's still sitting out there on the open market, FYI). But this other thing will do, too.

Having grudgingly rewatched Game Seven of the 2006 NLCS on MLBN the other night, I could have told you that you can never trust birds.

And this Sully guy? Can't say I've seen a better save — or does Capt. Sullenberger get the hold and the ferry crews the save? As a Mets fan who survived the icy plunge of late innings last August and September, I'd forgotten what a save looked like.

The 2:35 mark here confirms we know a little something about miracles. US Airways Flight 1549…about as close to 1969 as you can get in real life. Nice work.

Very nice.

Crass promotional announcement latched onto the tail end of true heroism: Flashback Friday returns to this space in one week.

Rickey Henderson is going to Cooperstown. Pedro Martinez might be going to Miami. Derek Lowe might be coming here — if he's not going to Atlanta. Oliver Perez? Nobody has ever been able to state with particular confidence where anything propelled by Oliver might be going. Billy Wagner might be coming to Citi Field in August.

And you know what? None of it particularly matters. This is the night of Tim Redding, starter 5a to Jon Niese's 5b, who passed his physical (throwing arm still attached, no signs of blindness or missing legs/feet, check) and is now officially a Met in Waiting.

I say this not to bury Rickey or Pedro or dismiss Billy or diminish Derek or Oliver. I say this because it's the offseason, and as I grow older offseason hypotheticals increasingly strike me as useless teases.

Rickey Henderson is going to Cooperstown, with Jim Rice joining him now that sentiment has battered down the sensibly constructed barriers of statistical comparisons in his case. (Which is not a particularly venal sin: The Hall of Fame is a museum, not a lifeboat, and there are about 14,000 vaguely talented old New York Giants clotting up the ranks thanks to buddies on the Veterans Committee.) My reaction — and maybe it was the jetlag and the winter — was underwhelming. Yes, Rickey Henderson lit up Queens briefly in 1999, stealing 37 bases at age 40 and momentarily turning Roger Cedeno into a competent baseball player. But his Met career took a hideous turn in Game 4 of the NLDS against Arizona: Bobby Valentine pulled him for defense (with Melvin Mora throwing out a runner at home about a nanosecond later, instantly and thoroughly proving Bobby had been right), and after that Rickey Henderson went instantly and irredeemably from Colorfully Wise Old Rogue to Gigantic Pain in the Ass. He whined about being lifted, played cards with Bobby Bonilla as a Cinderella season turned to rags, whined in spring training, then jogged to first on a non-home-run and got released. (For which various sins I consigned him to a lower rung of Met Hell.) Unless we hear Rickey will go into the Hall of Fame wearing a Mercury Mets cap and bearing a third eye, his ascension is at best a momentary diversion from snow and ice. It's Rickey's day, and that's well and good, but it's no longer Rickey's time.

Pedro might be a Marlin, we're told — except for the fact that everybody immediately started denying that Pedro would be anything of the sort. I felt a brief bit of wistfulness at the soon-to-be-debunked news, thinking of what a great teacher Pedro is, about his steely glare on the mound and how much fun it can be to think along with him as he concocts improv baseball jazz from his brain and the situation on the field and whatever he sees in the batter's eyes and whatever pitches he has in his arm that day. Remember that first afternoon as a Met regular, with him walking slowly and boldly past the Reds dugout, like an alley cat just out of reach atop a junkyard dog's fence? So do I. (I also remember fucking Looper blowing the fucking save.) But it was a long time ago: We have seen, in excruciating detail, that Pedro's battered body will no longer do what his crafty brain asks of it. There are no miracles left to invoke — only a slow decline into sepia and a last couple of lines in the record books that we'll tell our kids not to dwell on. Pedro's time, sad to say, has passed.

Derek Lowe? Oliver Perez? We know the situation by now — these are the Siamese Twins of the Scott Boras Traveling Circus, unhappily linked until some surgically minded GM comes up with $40 million to separate them. It's been fairly compelling free-agent kabuki, I'll admit, and so far well-played by both Boras and Omar Minaya, who still has all the reason in the world to be patient. This will work itself out whether or not I tie myself into a knot thinking about it in January. Someone's time will come, but it's not here yet.

Billy Wagner? A successful return in August would be a wonderful epilogue to a compelling story, but I've heard these kind of stories too many times before. Everyone is ahead of schedule in January, just as everyone reports to camp in the best shape of his life in February and everyone displays new reserves of grit and determination in March. (You just watch Luis Castillo follow this arc, showing up in St. Lucie slightly less pudding-bellied and coated with Dorito dust, saying all the right things and then collecting two extra-base hits through Memorial Day.) In August Billy Wagner will be 38 — finding that there are pitches left to coax out of that arm would be miracle enough, so let's not even daydream about his finding smoking fastballs and sly sliders in time for late-season games that matter. Billy's time is quite possibly over, and at best it's farther off than we should allow ourselves to believe.

Which brings us to Tim Redding, a 31-year-old journeyman with a 4.92 ERA and two seasons in which he's won 10 games. Which description isn't meant to discount him or predict, with that irritating certainty of the offseason, that he has nothing to offer the 2009 Mets. Rather, it's to be realistic about what news we actually have and what it actually may mean. There's some decent competition for the fifth starter's slot, no more and no less. Miracle returns? They're nice to imagine, as are big, game-changing checks written by other people. And yes, it's nice to remember past glories — so long as we repress less-glorious days. But when thinking of the 2009 Mets and their certainties, none of that will do us much good this night. For better, for worse or for unsurprising portions of both, it's the time of Tim.

The immediate impulse upon hearing the Mets are signing Tim Redding is to express eye-rolling dismay, replete with a sigh and a smart remark like, “What's the matter, Jose Lima wasn't available?”

Having poisoned the thought process with that impulse already, I'll throw out a couple of happier possibilities: 1) Sometimes guys you write off as journeymen surprise you; 2) Redding may not be altogether awful.

I saw Tim Redding pitch in Washington in April. He wasn't too bad for five innings. Or maybe the Mets weren't that good until they woke up in the sixth. It was Redding vs. Santana, and even in the what's wrong now? world of Willie Randolph's 2008 Mets, that matchup was eventually going to favor Johan. Still, the home pitcher seemed sharp enough, and he seemed even sharper a few weeks later at Shea when he defeated Claudio Vargas, one of the many Tim Reddings the Mets trotted out last year. We kicked his ass pretty good in September, though as Mike Steffanos points out at Mike's Mets, injuries may have had something to with his putrid second half. Not that Tim Redding was ever going to be the most distinguished alumnus of the 1999 Michigan Battle Cats pitching staff, but he's probably worth a long look as a fifth starter for 2009.

Long look as a fifth starter…see, that's the reason I impulsively scoff at this acquisition. You sign a guy to be your fifth starter, or if you don't have much pitching to begin with, your fourth starter. Sometimes those journeymen do surprise you in ways large and small: Rick Reed, Brian Bohanon and Glendon Rusch leap to mind from the relatively distant past as no-names who became good pitchers as Mets for anywhere from a little while to several years. You usually don't get that lucky. You usually get Jose Lima or Scott Erickson or the late Geremi Gonzalez in this decade or the late Dave Roberts (with whom I spent one interesting evening) going back almost thirty years now. You kind of get what you pay for when you scrounge around for fifth starters. The bolt from the Reed blue excepted, you get fifth starters.

Mets Walkoffs (naturally) found some historical statistical doppelgängers for Tim Redding where wins and losses and percentages of each are concerned. In his career, Redding has won 34 and lost 51 for a winning percentage of .400. Mark at MW acknowledges that pitchers' wins can be misleading, but stresses that among the 948 pitchers who have at least 80 decisions in the post-World War II era, Redding's winning percentage is the 36th worst, or “among the bottom 4 percent of pitchers in that time”.

Mark mentions Redding trudges off the mound in the company of Met hurlers like Pete Smith, Jay Hook and Rusch when it comes to lousy records. I'll dispensate Glendon immediately for his übersolid 2000 (to say nothing of the venal identity theft to which he was briefly subject that very same year). Hook was an Original Met. You can't hold any Original Met's record against him. But Pete Smith…

Man, Pete Smith. I remember when we acquired Pete Smith in the offseason preceding 1994. It was the most memorable aspect of Pete Smith's Met tenure, and then only because of the remark Joe McIlvaine made upon trading Dave Gallagher for him. Our GM said he was confident Pete could be a “serviceable” pitcher. Next thing I know I get a phone call from Chuck, up in arms over our newest arm. Why, he asked, are the Mets getting a guy whose ceiling Joe Mac is placing at winning no more often than he'll be losing — and why is he issuing quotes indicating that such output would be considered satisfactory?

Pete Smith's single season as a Met yielded a won-lost record of 4-10. Lest that seem misleading, his ERA was 5.55 and his WHIP was…oh, like it mattered.

The subject of journeymen who rise above their perceived stations always brings me back to Reeder. Laurie and I used to laugh at the way Bobby Jones and then Al Leiter were designated the “ace” during stretches when Rick was clearly outpitching them. It was less about Reed than the concept of the ace. The ace, we agreed, is whoever's pitching that day. I grant you the ace concept carries a little more weight when Johan Santana graces your payroll, but on any given day, you need to throw somebody who you can count on to play a large role in winning you a baseball game. That's more or less the job description of an ace. It's also the job description of a starting pitcher. Every starter, even your “fifth starter,” is your first starter when he gets the ball.

So my question, even in the context of budget constraints, is why doesn't this team make every conceivable effort to secure the services of nothing but top-flight starters? Why are we dabbling in Tim Redding after years of endless dabbling in Jorge Sosa and Brian Lawrence and Chan Ho Park and so forth? Yes, I know Derek Lowe and the mysteriously untouched Oliver Perez are still out there, and the Mets are angling to get one of them, but why not just go for it and get both, especially as winter wears on and prices drop? Maybe Sabathia's tag was prohibitive, but what about Burnett? Why weren't the Mets players for more pitching? I don't know who Omar's called to talk trade, but is pitching at the center of his swap talk?

When we do all-time teams, we generally have Piazza as starting catcher and Carter as his backup; Mex at first, Olerud behind him. Our idea is the best and the next best. That's fine for paper, but that wouldn't work in real life. Starting position players need to start. It takes a certain mindset and acceptance of skill level to play in reserve. You wouldn't keep a 100-RBI bat on the bench to back up a 110-RBI bat. It just doesn't work that way. But pitching? Tom Seaver didn't start more than once every five days. Neither did Jerry Koosman. Or Jon Matlack.

I'm a little in pipe dream territory now (not that that's unusual). I don't think teams set out to have five starting pitchers who perform in descending level of ability, but when you go out and say, in so many words, we're gonna sign Tim Redding and his lifetime 4.92 ERA and he'll be in the back of our rotation…why on earth do you think you have a “back” to your rotation? Your rotation needs, to every extent it can, to have nothing but a front. Tim Redding coming on board because Derek Lowe hasn't bitten and Jon Niese may not be ready doesn't really appear to be a giant step forward in constructing the kind of rotation that won't have us rotating on our own axis — or getting our axis kicked — come those myriad days when Santana isn't batting ninth.

And speaking of back ends…

This Inaugural Season patch the Mets will be wearing on their right sleeves this season to “honor” their first year inside the facility bearing the name of the company that needed a massive taxpayer-funded injection to stay afloat…Holy Pete Smith, does that thing look unserviceable.

Paul Lukas of Uni Watch takes the Mets to task as they should be taken. One of the many unpleasant phrases Mike Francesa and Chris Russo used to throw around on their pleasingly defunct unpleasant radio show was that “[somebody's] not a patch on [somebody else's] fanny”. I thought of that vaguely revolting verbiage upon learning this long-rumored blight would really be sewn on to Mets uniforms in 2009, because it shouldn't be on a Major League sleeve. It should be a patch on somebody's fanny — that way, you wouldn't see it.

The kicker, as Lukas revealed, is the Mets have a much better design in their arsenal, one that plays up the most outstanding and obvious feature of Citi Field, the Jackie Robinson Rotunda. They've had created on their behalf a logo that celebrates it…here. It's very attractive. It would be even more attractive without the Citi mark, which is actually a helpful coincidence since MLB wouldn't allow a corporate name (other than that of a licensed apparel maker) to be flashed on garments worn on the field of play. So the Mets could just do what Lukas did and crop out “Citi Field,” and they'd have this. Or they could do what one enterprising poster at Baseball-Fever did and stitch “Mets” in place of “Citi Field”.

But no. The Mets don't do that, even if, as Lukas explains, a lot of teams have done something like it and made their commemorative patches look real nice. The Mets have to take that abominable pizza logo they've made their stadium shield and play off of that because…why, I don't know. It's the sort of patch you slap on the sleeves of an entire rotation of fifth starters if projecting such an image is indeed your goal.

Given organizational finances and the existing marketplace inventory, bringing in a couple of stud starters to go with Santana, Pelfrey and Maine may be out of reach for 2009. But, honestly, you have to advertise your aesthetic shortcomings right there on your right sleeve? I'm fond of saying there are no style points in baseball. The Mets' wretchedly designed Inaugural Season patch is certainly in no danger of scoring any.

An overdue finger is pointing you atta way to Metphistopheles, where Ray takes us through his 101 indelible Shea memories and such. It's the such that makes it a treasure.

Tonight at 8:00, the surprisingly watchable MLB Network threatens to become completely intolerable when it presents the most endlessly dwelled upon loss in FAFIF history. Viewing advice: find something else to do after the top of the sixth.

So, who should throw out the ceremonial first pitch at the new ballpark? Candidates who come to mind…

Ralph Kiner? Original Met and beloved icon.

Tom Seaver? Last pitch at Shea, first pitch at its successor. Also, you might have heard, The Franchise.

Roger Craig and Al Jackson together? Craig won the first game the Mets ever won in the Polo Grounds; Jackson did the same at Shea.

Dwight Gooden? Twenty-fifth anniversary of his electrifying rookie season and the next step in bringing the Doctor back into the fold.

One or more Bill Shea descendant? That and continuing the presentation of the floral horseshoe would be a nice reminder of why there's a National League franchise in New York.

Fred Wilpon? It's his dream, give him his moment.

Don Newcombe? I might save him for the second game, which will be Jackie Robinson Day, but maybe they really want to hit us over the head with the Dodger thing out of the gate.

Michael Bloomberg? Probably not, but he is the mayor who saw that this thing got done.

David Paterson? An actual Mets fan and the governor.

Barack Obama? Nothing at all to do with the Mets, but inaugurating a new ballpark with the new president…ah, let him concentrate on his job.

Some Citi executive? I'm sure that person would be heartily received.

Random fan? Maybe somebody who attended the first home game in '62 and the first home game in '64. Gotta be somebody who paid his way into both.

Hobie Landrith? First player Mets picked in the '61 expansion draft. If you don't have a catcher throw out the first pitch, you're gonna have a lot of passed balls.

Any other ideas?

And while you ponder that, can you help a sister — one of our own — out with some votes so she can be kicking Suzy Kolber and some other stiff competition? Let's keep these things in the Mets family.