“Josh. What are you doing?”

“I don't know. What are you doing?”

“Protecting oil companies from litigation. They're our client. They don't lose legal protection because they make a lot of money.”

“I can't believe no one ever wrote a folk song about that.”

—Sam and Josh, “In the Shadow of Two Gunmen,” The West Wing

When my mother wanted to hurl an insult my way, she'd call me an idealist. It came out when I expressed an opinion or conducted an action that didn't fit with her world view. By definition, an idealist isn't practical. The nerve of me, in my late teens and early twenties, for not having it all figured out according to somebody else's standards.

I've never considered myself all that idealistic. In theory maybe. Otherwise, I've just thought what I've thought and done what I've done. Sometimes it appears idealistic. Perhaps from being browbeaten for alleged idealism, I more often instinctively followed the pragmatic road to realism. I'm generally more realistic than idealistic. I try to see the big picture and operate within that framework. I'm not a dreamer. A close friend, concerned by my lack of concrete goals, once fretted that my problem was I didn't have any dreams. The “idealist” charge, wielded as epithet, probably tempered the dreamer in me.

The realist-idealist dynamic came to mind with the ongoing flap over the name of the Mets' new ballpark. Two years ago, when it was announced we would be watching our team play in a structure called Citi Field, I balanced my reflex antipathy toward the sale of such corporate naming rights with my awareness that almost no stadium's identity is not put up for highest bidder. My conclusion was Citi Field was all right:

Listen, I advocated going for top dollar and avoiding utter embarrassment if possible. The Mets seem to have achieved the first part, and while the second part is a matter of taste, Citi Field — albeit a little generic to the point of fictional and rather resonant of a minor league facility in Islip — isn't a total disaster. As Mets fans, we've conditioned ourselves to treat noncalamities as moral victories. Score one for us.

Quite the rallying cry, eh?

Citi Field is already a part of our Met lexicon even though the Home Opener in its corporate confines is a little less than nineteen weeks from now. Even as we've intermittently debated the merits and potentials of our unborn ballpark, we have thrown the Citi name around as a matter of course, just as those who signed on the dotted line had hoped. For two years, it's been “Citi Field this” and “Citi Field that,” whatever the context. The branding was in full swing and, until last month, it probably represented invaluable word-of-mouth advertising. Now…not so much.

When the Mets partnered with Citi in November 2006, it sure looked all good on paper. The Mets were going to get their not inconsiderable sum of $400 million over 20 years while Citi was going to receive whatever benefit companies believe is en route when their names are plastered all over sports facilities. Despite having lived through the mishegas of Enron and other magically disappearing stadia signage, you couldn't ask for a more solid bet than Citigroup in terms of continuity (been around in some form since 1812); locality (two Citi towers in two boroughs in plain sight along the 7 line); fluidity (despite some “rhymes with…” issues, it beat Jason's predicted Federated First Union Bankshares Field, to say nothing of Petco Park); liquidity (big, big company) and image. I don't know that Citi had the best or highest profile, but they didn't have, to the best of my knowledge, an evident Enron problem lurking.

Not a pitch has been thrown at Citi Field, yet hoo-boy, have things changed. The long-term prospects for Citigroup and the Citi name are no better than that of any three Met relievers. Whatever regional cred they had has likely dissolved into the morass of however many of the 52,000 jobs being lost come from the New York area (52,000 — why, that's more people than you could fit inside Citi Field). And as far as image, it's going to take a lot more than $20 billion in cash and $306 billion in assumed assets to bail out Citi's PR.

This is reality. And it's not ideal. Not by a long shot. Not ideal seems to be the going rate for much of reality these days. I am not equipped to explain it or analyze it. Hide under the bed from it is the best I can come up with.

The baseball end of things, admittedly not a patch on the Francesalike fanny of the economic crisis, should be examined within the parameters of its own foul lines, and there it is tempting to see the ideal coming into view if you squint hard enough: Having been visited by the Ghost of Naming Rights Yet to Come, one Wilpon or another snaps awake, realizes what a folly Citi Field is and pastes over those wretched salute-to-Domino's logos with the finest four-letter word this side of Mets…

Shea.

Fat chance, we were told Tuesday, but it's nice to dream, says the man who doesn't much bother with such frivolities.

Ideally, Citigroup; a slew of other gigantic corporations; the regular folks who work for them and are impacted by the lot of them; and the whole darn country aren't in a mess of massive making, either, but let's stick to baseball. It would be ideal if William A. Shea would continue to be honored, seeing as how he is no less responsible for securing us our franchise now than he was in 1964. It really would be better. We wouldn't have to wait for the inevitable next knife to drop. We wouldn't be gritting our teeth and rolling our eyes in anticipation of Citi being called something else down the road. We wouldn't feel so used. We wouldn't be reminded countless times in 2009 not just that corporate naming rights never really feel right but that this corporation's name feels really misplaced in light of what it came to represent in the fall of 2008.

And yet I can't really commit to that seemingly ideal vision, as much as I'd kind of like to join the torch and pitchfork brigade. Perhaps it's because I'm in no mood to align myself with those who have demagogued the Citi-Mets issue. Politicians (surprise!) have done it. Hack columnists and worse have done it, using the bailout as an excuse to dump all sorts of unrelated nonsense on their favorite blue and orange targets. Even those media members for whom I have enormous respect have brushed up against the easy answer of assigning villainy and sticking out tongues. Vile corporate bastards! Venal baseball business! Vengeance be ours! And your bullpen sucks, too!

It's not that simple, it really isn't. It's also not fair to the principals, as unsympathetic as they come off at every turn. Whatever role Citigroup played its own near-demise, the matter of $20 million a year to name the Mets' ballpark for 20 years isn't at the crux of its ills. A $20 million commitment for, say, 2017, has very little (or less) to do with hundreds of billions gone awry. Marketing expenses, whatever you think of the efficacy of ballpark-naming as a business-building exercise, are legitimate expenses. You and I, at our federal government's behest, are literally supporting Citigroup with the idea that they will stay on their feet so as to prevent widespread fiscal calamity. Marketing's a part of that, a part of what every company does. I don't know how you quantify the impact of this kind of sports facility marketing, but there must be a little something to it since so many companies have invested in it and so many franchises continue to jump on board.

I'd redirect the $20 million due the Mets for 2009 to save 52,000 jobs if it worked that way. I don't get the sense that it does. Among other moves, Citigroup is selling its German unit and is cutting back on investment banking (another big surprise). “Don't sponsor the ballpark” is not going to reverse those kinds of presumably necessary strategic decisions or bring those particular jobs back. Citigroup's annual operating costs are supposed to be reduced — reduced — to $50 billion after all its cuts. If we were to have them not pay the Mets for Citi Field next year, then it would be $49.980 billion. A couple of business writers have used the rather cavalier term “a drop in the bucket” to describe the company's baseball obligation. Easy to drop that in a bucket if you've got it, which I'm guessing nobody reading this does on his or her person. But $20 million is 0.0004% 0.004% of $50 billion. A drop in the bucket?

Yeah, basically.

Twenty million dollars in the eyes of the Mets, on the other hand, is not a drop in the bucket. That's a Cy Young winner on the mound, or at least the money freed up to pay one because the debt service on the ballpark has a going source of cash. The Mets are counting on that $20 million. The Mets and Citigroup have a deal.

Is it ironclad? I haven't seen the contract and I'm not a lawyer, so how the hell should I know? But why the hell would the Mets not want to get paid? They've set up their whole business model in order to get paid. Sometimes the intersection of the Mets and money is plainly obnoxious, and as fans we feel it directly (which will feel like a discretionary drop in the bucket once all these bailouts come due), but can you blame the Mets for not wanting to rip up the Citi Field contract? If somebody said I'd be getting an enormous sum of money in return for promotional considerations, I'd want the money. We all would.

This is not the moment in time when you want to be promoting a ballpark named Citi Field, that's for sure. The Mets will have to decide (if market forces don't do it for them) whether it will always be the wrong moment for promoting a ballpark with that name. The First National City Bank of New York, Citigroup's progenitor, dates to 1812. They weren't supposed to be Enron or any of the other now-ya-see-'em/now-ya-don't propositions that got into stadia and arenas. They were supposed to be solid. Nearly two centuries of brand equity and marketplace goodwill was supposed to have legs.

Might all the brand equity and all the goodwill have gone the way of those 52,000 jobs? Could be. Could very well be. At this moment in time, it ain't there. But is that the forever answer? Forever is a long time. Is this a passing public relations storm or a low-hanging, unpuffy, uncumulus cloud that will never lift?

I don't know. No one does. Apparently the Mets don't think so, or don't want to think so. If it were a one-year deal, I imagine some smart lawyer would have undone this pact. It's for 20 years with a 200-year-old enterprise. The principals, particularly the Mets — the principal with everything to lose in flying the Citi banner — are banking (if you will) on the long term being more forgiving that it would appear presently. Should Citi become less a sponsor than a stain on the Mets brand, one imagines a squadron of skilled attorneys will be dispatched to deCitify every sign in sight.

Given that we have sadly passed the age when we name no more than a showy rotunda for a great human being, an extrication from Citigroup would merely open the gates to another alliance with another corporation. The most relevant commentary I've read regarding the Mets' position comes from Darren Rovell of CNBC, who wrote, in the wake of the bailout, “No other company, in this environment, would give them $20 million a year. I don't even think they could get $12 million at this point, to be frank.” Twelve-mil is better than no-mil from a financial (if not spiritual) standpoint, but it's not in the same ballpark as twenty-mil. The contract calls for twenty-mil. If the Mets are willing to withstand the current undeniably lousy publicity, then they stand to collect.

It's a screwed-up triangle among the Mets, Citi and the taxpayers, to be certain; not a few teams find themselves under the TARP of this kind of awkward three-way arrangement. Taxpayers are bailing out to one extent or another the rights holders of Chase Field, PNC Park and Comerica Park. Not a lot of hands are clean, not even at pristinely dubbed Yankee Stadium (major corporate partner on deck: TARPed up Bank of America). Leave it to the Mets to become the quick and convenient symbol for all that's wrong in this realm.

(Of course it might be helpful to their cause if ownership would refrain from offering baffling soundbites like, “It's not really Citi's fault they're in this problem,” when it's clear 52,000 jobs didn't mysteriously eliminate themselves by some random act of mondo attrition.)

Maybe this is the weapons of mass distraction shooting irrelevancies at their deadliest, but if the money's flying around in unconscionable sums and it's going to land at the turnstiles of privately held baseball clubs, well, damn it, let my baseball club get the share it signed for, and let them remain competitive. Playing in a park named for a bank, as has been amply demonstrated at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, is no foolproof recipe for on-field success. But that's Pittsburgh. This is New York. These are the Mets. We've seen them fall achingly short with a big payroll. We've seen them come not remotely close with a lesser one. There won't be enough seats and the prices will be too high for those there are in that vanity plate of a venue rising in what used to be the parking lot, but from wherever I follow them as long as Citi Field stands, I'm going to want its team-in-residence to play well and contend. Taxpayers were stuck with the bill for the previous stadium as a matter of course. We get stuck again for some unforeseen aspect of the coming attraction?

So what else is new?

They held another media tour of Citi Field Tuesday, the first since the grass was planted. It's shaping up as a very pretty park from the pictures I've seen. Staring at them and reading all about it whets my appetite for baseball and certainly stokes my curiosity. I'm convinced it will be fresher than its predecessor; it can't help but run smoother. I'm not convinced that will make it extraordinary, which is what I want it to be versus what else has been built, but that's something that cannot be judged without some innings shared between me and it. Right now, frankly, the photographs sadden me more than they excite me. It looks like some place from somewhere else. It doesn't look like where the Mets play, at least not as I've always understood it. Perhaps the Mets need to actually play there to rectify that particular perceived liability.

It would be ideal if Citi Field lives up to its overwrought World-Class billing and feels like home immediately. But like I said, I don't get too terribly hung up on what's ideal versus what's really going on.

ADDENDUM

Good and comprehensive article (minus the demagoguery) on Mets-Citi by Richard Sandomir in Thursday's Times here.

Since arriving in the middle of October, my authentic Shea Stadium outfield wall brick and I have had a running dialogue. Not necessarily the most scintillating of conversations. It can be like talking to a fraction of a brick wall.

My brick calls me Mack, as in “Hey Mack…” He hasn't bothered to learn my name but he reminds me at every turn that he's a union brick, Brick Local 1. Brags that Donn Clendenon once tattooed him with a double that was smacked off a Milt Pappas pitch, “and I didn't flinch, Mack. Never missed a game.” Still wears a dab of mortar from when he was original laid — which he says with a straight face, what with his being a brick and all. Asks if the shelf where he sits is in fair territory, that he used to be in fair territory before they changed the dimensions of Shea on him. I have to explain that there's no fair or foul territory in my living room, that he's not in a ballpark anymore.

This gets my brick riled up because as he never tires of pointing out, “I ain't a ballpark brick, Mack. I'm a stadium brick. I built Shea Stadium. We're a multipurpose stadium, ya got that?” Then he asks when the hell football season starts and is that expletive Richard Todd gonna be benched or what?

He's a brick that's been sitting behind a reconfigured outfield fence since around 1980. He's missed a few memos. He's missing more than that lately.

“Listen, Mack,” he said the other day. “It's all well 'n' good that my shop steward got me transferred me up here to the whaddaya call Diamond Chew Suites.”

“Diamond View,” I corrected him, gently.

“Yeah, whatever. Thing is, it's cushy as hell, but I'm bored with it. It's a no-show job and I'm a friggin' stadium brick. Now ya wanna get me back on the wall where I belong? Kickoff's gotta be comin' soon.”

I had to break it to him that there's no more football at Shea Stadium.

“Then battin' practice, Mack. Battin' practice. Ya wanna see where Henry Aaron himself got me in BP one night?”

There's not going to be any batting practice anymore. There's no more baseball at Shea Stadium.

“Mack, you gone soft in the head? No baseball at Shea Stadium? We can't host Jehovah's Witnesses and Jethro Tull every night. Listen, Mack, the Jets were just a few Sundays every fall — to tell ya the truth, I thought they were playin' awfully quiet lately. But the Mets? Where the hell are the Mets? They didn't move to California or nothin', did they?”

No, I told the brick. The Mets are still in New York. They're almost right where they've been since 1964. It's just that you're not.

“Mack, you ain't talkin' sense. I'm a stadium brick, a Shea Stadium brick. They could move back the fence, they could cover me up, they could make a horrible racket with that “clap your hands” bit every two minutes, but they can't have a stadium without us bricks. Say, come to think of it, where are all the other bricks?”

I was dreading this, but the brick deserved to know the truth about what happened to Shea Stadium. So I told him. I told him about Citi Field.

“Citi what?”

Citi Field, I said. The new World Class Home of the New York Mets.

“Never heard of it, Mack. Never heard of it.”

You didn't notice the construction behind you these last couple of years?

“I just thought it was more of that DiamondPigeon crap they're always blastin'. I never listen to any of that. How does anybody think straight anymore?”

DiamondVision, I said. It was called DiamondVision. And I don't know how anybody thought straight, but it wasn't that. It was a new ballpark.

“What do we need that for? We got a stadium. We got Shea Stadium.”

Not anymore, we don't, I said.

My brick wasn't having it. “Look, Mack, you're a nice guy and all, but you don't know the way things work around here. I'm gonna talk to my shop steward.”

You don't have a shop steward anymore, I told him.

“Well, I'm gonna get in touch with somebody at the home office.”

What home office? I asked

“Listen, Mack, I got friends. I ain't just some dumb brick. Thomas Crimmins put me on this job.”

The construction company that built Shea?

“You got it, Mack. Crimmins. And Carlin.”

P.J. Carlin, the other company that was involved in the building?

“Yeah, and not only that, Mack, I got a cousin who's got an in with Praeger-Kavanaugh-Waterbury.”

The architects who designed Shea?

“You bet your ass, Mack. My cousin's a brick at their headquarters. I know people.”

I had to tell my brick that I wasn't sure if any of those companies was still in business.

“Lemme tell ya somethin', Mack. I got seniority. I been on the job since '63. I got layed before Christmas. If necessary, I'll take this to Mr. Shea.”

You're not going to find Mr. Shea, I told my brick.

“Mack, what are you talkin' about? Mr. Shea is a big man around here. This is Shea Stadium we're talkin' about.”

I wasn't getting through to the brick by dancing around the issue, so I had to explain the whole thing, not just what Citi Field was but that there wasn't a Shea Stadium anymore.

“Mack, yer talkin' crazy. Shea Stadium is…it's Shea Stadium! It's huge! It's multipurpose! It's exactly what ya need in this day and age.”

I had to elaborate that in this day and age, it's been judged that you don't need something huge, that you don't need something multipurpose, that you don't need Shea Stadium.

“Seriously, Mack. Get Mr. Shea on the phone. I don't have time for this pussyfootin' around. I got BP. I gotta brace for Dave Kingman. He's a mope, but he can hit, boy.”

So, once again, I took it very slowly. I went through the list of ballparks…stadiums that had been knocked down in the last twenty years, how this was what they call a trend in the industry, how the Mets decided they wanted to be a part of this trend, how they spent many years and lots of money putting together a deal that would build a new ballpark in the parking lot…at which point my brick started laughing.

“The parkin' lot? That's a hot one, Mack! Where's everybody gonna park their cars?”

I kind of skirted that issue and explained that it was very important to the Mets ownership to have a new ballpark since almost everybody else in baseball had one and that they didn't want Shea Stadium anymore.

“Listen, Mack, you got a future on Johnny Carson maybe, but seriously, I gotta get back to work. There's a game tonight.”

There's no game tonight.

“There's always a game tonight. Get me back to the wall. You want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.”

There's no wall.

“So where the hell am I?”

You're in my living room, I said. When they started taking Shea apart, I made a point of asking for a brick from the outfield wall. I gave the Mets some money and they sent me you.

“This guy,” he said as if to somebody else. “What a card. Ya wanted a brick? Ya buildin' yer own 'ballpark'?”

No, I said. I just wanted something from Shea Stadium.

“Hey Mack, why don't ya just do like everybody else and go to the game and buy a scorecard? Gotta be cheaper than sendin' away for a brick.”

I went to the game, I said. I went to lots of games. There aren't any more games to go to at Shea Stadium.

“Oh, right. They're buildin'…what's it called?”

Citi Field.

“Well, why don't ya be a pal an' go get me Mr. Citi on the blower, an' I'll ask if I can be in your and his imaginary ballpark.”

There's no Mr. Citi, I said.

“There ain't?”

No, I said, there isn't.

“Well, I know there's a Mr. Shea. Mr. Shea saw to it that New York got the Mets. Mr. Shea saw to it that there'd be Shea Stadium. If there ain't no Mr. Citi, who's namin' a 'ballpark' after him?”

They don't name ballparks for people anymore, I said. They name them for companies.

“Is it a baseball company?”

No, Citi is not a baseball company. It's a bank.

“I see. A bank. Gotta be a pretty big bank that it's got a stadium inside it.”

It doesn't work quite that way, I said, but yes, Citi is a pretty big bank. More or less.

“Whaddaya mean, 'more or less,' Mack? Speak English.”

I tried to explain as best as I understood it the whole Citigroup situation, how they agreed to pay $400 million over twenty years to call the ballpark Citi Field. Then, after my brick stopped laughing hysterically, I went into their various woes, how they had to eliminate personnel, how the government is bailing them out with $20 billion in cash and by assuming more than $300 billion in toxic assets, though I have to confess I barely understood what I was talking about.

“Mack, that's a lotta samolians. Too much for me to wrap my brick brain around.”

Me too, I said. Me too.

“And when you say 'the government,' that means taxpayers, I'll bet.”

Yeah, I said.

“Whoa, Mack! That's gotta make this Citi a pretty unpopular character right now.”

Probably, I said.

“So if I'm hearin' you right, this Citi's got a lotta problems.”

Yeah, I said. I guess they do.

“Then how is it they still got a 'ballpark' in the parkin' lot like you say?”

Well, I told my brick, it's complicated.

“Accordin' to you, Mack, I got nowhere to go. Gimme the skinny.”

The complicated part, I said, is that the Mets and Citi signed this deal for the ballpark name on the assumption that Citi will be around a long time…

“And they're gonna put a bank on the field?”

Not exactly, I said. It's more of a marketing thing. Companies like their names on ballparks and arenas.

“Don't they have 'em on banks no more?”

The idea, I said, is people who come to the ballparks will be more aware of the banks because they'll go to the ballpark or watch the games and hear the name.

“Ain't that what they got names on banks for?”

It's complicated, I said.

“Sounds like a company that ain't got its books in order ain't gonna be able to pay no $400 million for no 'ballpark'.”

You'd think not, I said, but it's complicated.

“Mack, I'm a brick, and I get that you can't be buyin' no fancy brickyard when ya got Uncle Sam to be yer business partner.”

Well, I continued, they're a big company, and it's a long-term deal, and marketing expenses are different from the various financial obligations that have entangled Citi. But my brick wasn't having any of it.

“Mack, lemme ask you a question. Why would the Mets want this name in the parkin' lot or on the stadium or whatever you say it's gonna be if they're a buncha moochers with everybody else's money?”

Again mentioning the complication factor, I said Citi has been around a long time and the idea is it will still be around a long time, that this current problem, as deep and serious as it is, isn't necessarily fatal to their brand or their business.

“Mack, I lost track of all the billions you say they're in the hole for, but I'd think — and mind you, I'm just a stupid brick from a stadium that you tell me ain't open for BP tonight — that's not the best sign.”

You could be right, I told my brick. But the Mets have a contract…

“A contract? Is it a union contract?”

No, I said. Not a union contract.

“Well,” my brick said. “I'm a union brick, Brick Local 1, and I know ya don't mess with the union. But otherwise, I'd think yer muckety-mucks have ways of gettin' outta contracts. The Mets trade players under contract all the time, don't they?”

Yes, I said. They do. But this may be more complicated.

“Mack, yer talkin' gibberish. Ya keep sayin' it's complicated, but I keep hearin' Citi's got no scratch, needed a big-time handout and now they want their name plastered all over this thing that between you 'n' me I still say yer pullin' my leg over. If I say that yer tellin' me the truth, that there is a new stadium or 'ballpark' or whatever, you gotta be tellin' me that it's not gonna be called Citi Field if Citi is the kinda operation you been describin'.”

It's complicated, I reiterated.

“Yeah, complicated. Very complicated. Ya know what wasn't complicated, Mack? It wasn't complicated that Mr. Shea got us a ballclub and got us this stadium and Hizzoner Mayor Wagner said we gotta do somethin' for this great man who made sure we'd have National League baseball. So they named the stadium for him. They named it Shea Stadium. That's what ya do, see? Ya build a stadium, ya name the stadium for somebody who deserves it and ya play in the stadium. That's what I say. But I'm just a dumb brick.”

No, I said. You're a very smart brick.

“Yeah, smart brick. If I'm so smart, where's my wall? Where's my outfield? Is this fair territory? When's BP? If I'm supposed to believe you, I'm out of a job and there's gonna be a Citi Field in the parkin' lot.”

Well, the name could change because Citi's name could change. It's been known to happen.

“But you said it's a big company. Why would a big company change its name?”

Sometimes these things happen. Some other company might take over Citi. And if they change the name, then the name on the ballpark would change. It happens a lot, actually.

“Somebody's gonna want a piece of this outfit that can't keep its books straight, that's got Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer on the hook for 300 very, very large, and that company's gonna get to have its name on the new stadium?”

It's complicated, but yeah, something like that.

“This guy…” my brick said of me. “Yer a scream, Mack. Ya almost had me goin' there. The Mets are gonna play in another place, in the parkin' lot, named for a company that can't pay its bills or keep its workers employed, because the company's gonna pay them for the honor even though it's essentially on the dole. But then the company might not exist — which is what you say Shea Stadium does not anymore, even though I know for a fact they played a whole schedule there every year for a very long time and it was perfectly all right, or at least perfectly all right enough so somebody didn't have to slip somebody 300 billion big ones for some new joint.”

Uh-huh.

“Ya keep tellin' me these stories, Mack, and I might stick around. Hey, I ever tell ya about the time Clendenon clanked a double off me?”

In the platinum cheap seats, the mood was indeed one of good-natured dislike rather than holy war hatred; bonus points to the Mets fan who intermittently waved a sign referring to their Mr. Damon as JOHNNYCAKES.

—”The Cool of the Evening,” May 22, 2006

One of the things my friend Charlie Hangley says he'll remember about Shea is the way I would walk toward his perch in the Upper Deck on Saturdays and give him “the Sopranos greeting: 'Ho! Dere he is!'” before launching into my tirade of the week. I remember it fondly, too, even if I'm fairly certain I never, ever used that exact phrase. But because I like Charlie's version better than whatever it was I actually might have said (I used to think the ideal fantasy camp would be held not in St. Lucie but at Satriale's, and all the campers would spend a week immersed in This Thing Of Ours), I feel compelled to pass the following along.

Tuesday night Stephanie and I went to do our weekly grocery shopping at our nearby King Kullen. I stopped in the recycling area to crush my soda bottles and receive a voucher for my deposits when I noticed a guy who looked a great deal like Vito from The Sopranos out in front smoking a cigarette. This being Long Island, we have our share of men who look a great deal like Vito from The Sopranos, so I didn't think much of it.

Until we were inside the store and I saw that it was, in fact, the guy who played Vito from The Sopranos. He was peddling his pasta sauce — though I've been led to believe the proper term is gravy — and Bada Bing bric-a-brac to not exactly a turnaway crowd in the appetizing/produce section. He was at a table underneath a sign urging one and all to meet Vito from The Sopranos. One customer was schmoozing him as we shopped in the general vicinity.

You can't think you saw the guy who played Vito from The Sopranos and not acknowledge him when he turns out to be who you thought you saw, especially when the one customer schmoozing him has left and the guy who played Vito from The Sopranos is up and restless, examining the cheese & cracker platters and other appetizing delicacies. Hence, before we took off for detergents, air fresheners and the other wonders of Aisle 2, I made my move.

“Hi,” I said. “I just wanted to say we really enjoy your work.”

“Thank you, brother,” the guy who played Vito from The Sopranos said, shaking my hand well but not so hard as to strangle it. “I really appreciate it.”

After the slightest of pauses, he continued.

“Would you be interested in some sauce?”

I really wasn't. I tried to pass the buck to Stephanie, as in, “Are we interested in some sauce?” but that wasn't going to work. Stephanie's too nice to play bad cop.

“It comes with an autographed picture,” the guy who played Vito from The Sopranos added.

I didn't really want an autographed picture either. I wasn't averse to having one, but it wasn't on our shopping list. Even still, I realized right away that you really can't engage the guy who played Vito from The Sopranos and leave him hanging. So Stephanie pointed to one of the jars of sauce, the Sunday Sauce as opposed to the Roasted Garlic & Eggplant (which would likely not agree with me), and the guy who played Vito from The Sopranos handed it to her. He was careful to note he was a chef before he was an actor, so we could be confident that this wasn't just a case of some TV schlub making a few bucks off his fairly famous face.

With the jar handed over, the guy who played Vito from The Sopranos peeled a picture — one of Vito, Tony and Christopher — off a stack and prepared to make good on the rest of the bargain. I asked the inscription be made out to both of us, and if we ever open a diner, you know what we'll be hanging behind the cash register.

The guy who played Vito from The Sopranos seemed grateful for the sale (at $6.99 per 32-ounce jar, so would I). He shook hands with Stephanie, then me again, and we wished Mr. Joe Gannascoli a very happy Thanksgiving.

Not incidentally, the same to all of you.

Speaking of great television drama, look to SNY for a marathon of most gripping Subway Series action Thursday afternoon: Dave Mlicki at 1:00, Matt Franco at 4:00, Dae-Sung Koo at 7:00. Don't know about the guy who played him, but Vito probably didn't enjoy any of those if you recall the episode in which he offered Finn something more than a jar of sauce.

Mounting a furious late-innings rally to finish the book (writing one, not reading one), so please forgive if I can offer you only bullets for a bit.

• Want to hear someone ramble on about Doug Flynn and related topics for twenty or so minutes? Please visit Mike Silva's NY Baseball Digest and start listening just past the 62:00 mark.

• Want to hate the Phillies (the only serious Met archrival, it occurs to me, to ever beat us out of a playoff spot and then win the World Series; I'm not counting the '97 Marlins, though I will always count '97) a little less? Probably not, but you might after reading Doug Glanville's piece on the Phillie Phamily in the Times.

• Nothing to do with baseball per se in this Op-Ed piece, but you'll love Matt Mendolsohn's line about radio if you've ever gathered around one with strangers to catch a pitch or more from Murph or Gary or Howie.

• Speaking of one of those fellas, the Gary, Keith and Ron cabal is in a good mood these days and is offering a nice discount if you'd like to purchase some of their excellent items and contribute to the community-minded works supported by their Pitch In For a Good Cause Foundation. Use the coupon code BLOGGER by November 28 and receive 10% off your next order.

• MiarcleMets.net is dead, long live BlueandOrange.net, Chris Wilcox's always thought-provoking blog. It's got a new name but remains the same good read it's always been. Check out his piece on best offensive seasons by Mets catchers for one example of why he's terrific under any name.

• Thanks to Metstradamus for Scribbling us up. We'll pass the love along shortly.

• Belated Happy Fiftieth to my main man Mike Steffanos, who shares a birth date with Keith Hernandez and Mickey Mantle and, to my way of thinking, belongs in exactly that kind of company.

• Finally, in the cheapest anniversary gesture I could come up with, Happy No. 17 to my darling wife, who married me on this date in 1991 and still hasn't figured out that the joke is on her. (Don't tell her, OK?)

You don't know the half of it, partner.

Italy is a lovely place, full of more or less kind people who are willing to forgive monolingual Americans their spastic attempts at communicating through six or seven Italian words, idiotic smiles and kabuki-sized arm gestures of questionable meaning. But all this kindness can't make up for an irreducible lack in Europe: There is no baseball.

I know, there's no baseball back home right now either. But it's different. It started with the absence of baseball fields below the airplane flying from Amsterdam to Milan — I suppose the rectangles of soccer fields evoke some poetry in the hearts of European travelers, but I'm not one of them. What I wouldn't do to glimpse, through ragged clouds, the rounded wedge of a baseball field with a diamond at its heart.

Still, there is baseball here, in a way. Channel-surfing late-night Italian TV is a blur of homegrown Italian slapstick, oddly dubbed American movies and shows (watching “Lassie” in Italian is the equivalent of several blows to the head), softcore personals featuring vaguely scuzzy naked girls and, every once in a while, a Wii ad featuring an Italian family battling at computer baseball. (By the way, using baseball to entice Italians to buy a Wii seems like the equivalent of luring Americans with computer petanque, but then what do I know?) Then there was last night, when a colleague and I walked up Milan's most-famous shopping street, the Via Montenapoleone, and one of the chicer-than-chic display windows had a pyramid of softballs in it. I stared at those red stitches on white like I was gazing at the Holy Grail, which in a way I was.

Oh, and far too many Italians wear Yankees gear.

Entering my third week in Europe, I can say with renewed venom that the ubiquity of the Yankees makes it all the more clear what a fucking scourge they truly are. I swear, I could visit a band of headhunters south of Java and at least two of them would be wearing blingy hats with the goddamn Vertical Swastika on it. This morning I was walking back to the office with my however-many-millilitres of Coca-Cola and a kid in full Yankee regalia flagged me down to ask for directions. He's probably wondering why the weird American's Mi dispiace, non capisco Italiano sounded gleeful rather than apologetic. I mean, I get that the Yankees are an American symbol — it's just that they're the wrong American symbol, the sports equivalent of an supersized carbon footprint. I miss the hell out of baseball, but God forbid I should ever miss it enough to find comfort in the sight of a Yankee hat.

To be sure, I have access to the Internet, and I've faithfully made the rounds of Metsblog and the newspaper sites and ESPN. We're hell-bent on trading Aaron Heilman, want to employ Derek Lowe, are playing footsie with Orlando Hudson and like Brian Fuentes better than K-Rod, or at least we're saying so for agents' consumption. I get all that. But even though it's the same cyberspace reached from my desk back in Brooklyn, it's different. The World Series expired quietly in the pouring rain in the middle of the Amsterdam night, leaving me to awaken in a world without baseball. (And taking the $20 I'd bet on the Rays back in January at 175-to-1 with it, more's the pity) And now there's nothing at all.

That's not nothing as in “no baseball,” though that's bad enough. It's the Big Nothing, marked by knowing that no other soul within 100 miles is trying to figure out how to get rid of fucking Luis Castillo, or waiting to give Johan Santana a standing O, or wondering with equal parts anxiety and excitement about that first walk into Citi Field. I'm homesick for my wife and my son and my friends and my familiar streets, but it would also make me borderline giddy to see an NY in orange and blue, or a back emblazoned with WRIGHT 5.

When that finally happens it'll still be November, baseball-free as always, but man oh man will it be a happier November.