No doubt I'm rooting for the Rays in the World Series for every obvious reason. They're not the Phillies. They've got Steve Henderson. They've got Cliff Floyd. They're the closest thing we'll ever see again to the '69 Mets. The '69 Mets are into them. They play up the road from Al Lang. I went to college in Tampa.

They're not the Phillies.

But a word on behalf of the Phillies. No, not these Phillies. Not the Phillies of ancient dubious history (Ben Chapman, et al), but of my flirtation with the Phillies for one season and my heartbreak in empathy for the Phillies on one October night, in Florida.

This was 1993, the year the Mets sucked as I had never seen them suck before and I adopted as my second team the first-place Phillies. Not against the Mets, mind you, but we were in seventh (the only year the National League East had a seventh) and they were roguishly charming. They had Lenny Dykstra and a bunch of fellows who seemed Dykstraish. We didn't play them 'til June that year and by then we were literally 20 games out. It didn't seem a conflict of interest to pull for the Phillies in a non-Mets vacuum. It didn't even seem bizarre to have bought at Shea, when you could buy this sort of thing there, a Phillies cap.

Sounds a lot worse now than it felt then (though it wasn't the worst cap I ever tried on for size). It made perfect sense to me in '93. I needed an outlet for my competitive rooting. The Mets I rooted on institutionally. The Phillies I hoped would go all the way. One night in August when the Mets were rained out, I tuned in the Phillies station and listened surprisingly intently. Man, I thought, if the Mets ever ceased to exist, is this what I'd be doing on summer nights?

I was excited when they held off a late charge by the Expos to win the East. I was thrilled when they upset the Braves in the NLCS (back when I also thought well of the Western Division Braves…how fucking bad was 1993 anyway?). I was psyched for them to take on the Blue Jays. They were down three games to two in a slam-bang Series when I found myself in Fort Lauderdale on business. An old friend from college was living in Miami, so I gave him a call after having fallen out of touch with him for a while. He was never much of a baseball fan but in the mid-'80s when we were close he was highly supportive of me and the Mets. It felt like kismet that the Phillies were in the World Series that week and I was in the area because he was originally from Philadelphia. When we goofed around playing Wiffle Ball back in the day, I wore my mesh Mets cap from Cap Night 1981 and he wore an old-school Phillies cap, the pre-Schmidt model on which the new retro Phillies caps were based. If he could get behind the Mets for my sake in '85 and '86, it was the right thing to do in '93 to return the favor.

We hooked up on the Saturday afternoon before Game Six was to be played at SkyDome. We went mini-golfing and to a batting cage like we used to in Tampa. After a nice meal at an Italian joint I knew from when my parents had a place in Hallandale, we headed back up to Lauderdale to my hotel to join the game in progress. We had trouble finding it on the radio because the station that had been airing the World Series bumped it in favor of the Miami-Syracuse football game (reminding me how glad I was to be living in New York where priorities weren't askew).

We turned on the TV in the seventh. Dykstra was up with the Jays leading by four. He was traded to the Phillies from the Mets the day after my buddy got married. I had flown down to Miami for the wedding on short notice to be the best man and got word when I arrived in New York that night: Dykstra and McDowell for Juan Samuel. (Samuel…he's pretty good, I instantly decided.) Four years later, two on, nobody out, Dave Stewart pitching. Lenny swings and makes it 5-4. It’s his fourth homer of the Series. By the end of the inning, Al Leiter is pitching for Toronto and gives up the sac fly to make it 6-5 Phillies. My friend and I are high-fiving and yelling and looking forward to a seventh game. I’ll be flying home in the morning, but this will be great. I’ll call him tomorrow night after the Phillies beat the Blue Jays, having been down three games to one. There's going to be a seventh game. Lenny and the Phillies still have a chance!

In the bottom of the ninth, Joe Carter goes Bill Mazeroski on Mitch Williams. Wild Thing, he made our hearts sink. My old friend and I sat on opposite sides of the bed, saying nothing for the longest time as the Blue Jays celebrated. He was from Philadelphia but not the biggest Phillies fan by any means. I was from New York and every other year of their existence except that one hated the Phillies. But for a few minutes in Florida we were both crushed by this turn of events.

The Phillies reverted to anathema to me the next spring. I eventually discarded their cap. I haven't heard from my friend since 1996. He lives in Tampa now. I wonder if he even knows who's in the World Series this year.

Alright, I’m lost, Jim said aloud although a bit begrudgingly
Like things might change in light of this confession
He was both amazed and sour that at this late date and hour
He might find himself in this situation
—The Rainmakers, “A Million Miles Away”

You may have noticed that as many as three games of the World Series will be taking place in the National League East ballpark closest to Shea Stadium that isn’t Shea Stadium — and we’re not talking Citi Field, wise guy. So relatively close yet really, so far.

The Mets finished three games behind the eventual National League champion Phillies in 2008. Were there really only three games separating the two teams? One of the outs I gave the Mets in case they didn’t win their division throughout the season was I never honestly thought they were as good as the Phillies, a team that seemed far more loaded in just about every department. Conversely, if the Phillies were that good, I wondered why they didn’t have at least a seven-game lead most of the season. You’d like to think if your team can get close to winning something — lest I remind you the Mets led the Phillies by as many as 3½ in the second week of September — they can pull it off.

Having had more time than I wished to observe the Phillies this month, I revert to my default stance that the team that should have won did win (even if one bleeping fly ball could have changed the course of the final week, but never mind that Wright now). However little you think of their followers and however much Ray blue you bleed starting Wednesday, the 2008 Phillies are very good, they deserved to win the East, they are the best team in the N.L.

So how’d they do it?

In one of Omar Minaya’s traditional no-time-to-think explanations right after the Mets eliminated themselves from playoff contention — with so much experience in offering concession statements, you think he’d have this stuff down pat — I heard him say something curious. Paraphrasing here, he said the difference between the Mets and Phils was the Phillies’ core had a little more experience, specifically that they’d been contending longer.

“What a crock” was my first reaction. Where was this experience differential in 2006 when we were new to first place but had no problem holding it? The Mets had adequate enough service time then. If anything, two years should have made the Mets wise beyond their years and our dynasty should be in its heyday as we speak. Owing the Mets’ failure to the Phillies’ longevity seemed as strange as insisting the Mets who failed in historic fashion down the stretch in 2007, despite defending a division title, were done in by not having enough pennant race experience (which is what our general manager suggested in the aftermath of Collapse I).

But let’s look at the Phillie side of things, particularly how their roster’s been constructed. If we can’t stand the Phillies (and we can’t) I think it has something to do with their familiarity. They have put together a team over time that has grown together. Grown on our nerve endings, sure, but grown to win, too.

Every year since 2000, one of the key members of these Phillies has established himself as a Major Leaguer: Burrell in 2000, Rollins in ’01, Myers in ’02, Utley in ’03, Madson in ’04, Howard in ’05 and Hamels in ’06. Every one of them was drafted by the Phillies. Not all of them were immediate successes and most of them experienced setbacks along the way, but here they are, a unit, a core. It’s as if somebody somewhere had a plan. Baseball doesn’t work the way it did forty years ago, but these guys coming and staying together reminds me of “the boys from Syracuse,” the future Tigers who played together in the minors in the mid-’60s and coalesced into the world champions of 1968. There was no free agentry then and there was generally less inclination to trade young talent for quick fixes; there was no Wild Card to tempt a GM into quick fixes. It’s not the same in 2008, but it’s a close enough echo of what worked for a long time in this game.

Complementing the core are a slew of smart, inexpensive pickups. The dreaded Shane Victorino was a Rule 5 selection on whom the Dodgers gave up. The nearly as dreaded Greg Dobbs was plucked off waivers after Seattle let him go. Carlos Ruiz worked his way up the minors after signing out of Panama. Chris Coste is a legendary scrap heap reclamation success story. Jayson Werth was a bargain basement free agent. Brad Lidge came in an almost no-risk trade and brought along Eric Bruntlett. Jamie Moyer was a quiet deadline deal that keeps paying dividends. Pedro Feliz was an under-the-radar signing. Matt Stairs, the quintessential September pickup, proved his value with one swing in Game Four of the NLCS (and boy does he enjoy the company of his teammates). All their ancillary setup men seem to have come in on little cat’s feet but unlike our setup men, they don’t do unspeakable things in their litter box.

I don’t watch the Phillies every day so I’m probably missing the slumps and the godawful outings. Because all I know about them is this year’s version made up 3½ games in a blink and last year’s version made up twice as much ground just as fast, it is my impression that they’ve been gellin’ like a felon when it’s counted. I see role players fulfilling their responsibilities, stars living up to their billing and strikes being thrown and outs being secured in late innings.

What I don’t see is a big-name free agent in the lot. What I don’t see is a humongous contract assumed and extended. What I don’t see is overpaying for underperformance. Geoff Jenkins didn’t seem to do much for them and So Taguchi was a bust (thank heaven for small favors), but it apparently didn’t drag them down. They’ve been right way more often than they’ve been wrong.

The Phillies were building in the early 2000s. They competed for Wild Cards from 2003 through 2006, never winning one. It took The Greatest Collapse In Baseball History™ to push them across the line in 2007 and two ill-timed, king-sized letdowns in Flushing and Milwaukee to ensure their good fortune in 2008. But they’ve won their division, our division, two years running. They got there with a clutch of extraordinarily talented players and a gaggle of mighty useful contributors. They may not have won then, but they do win now.

No need to compare all their moves to the Mets. We know who we’ve got, how we got them, what they’ve done for us lately. We know it hasn’t been quite enough these last two seasons. We sense that something has to change. I wonder if it’s this assumption, as expressed from Omar Minaya to Matt Cerrone in Metsblog’s recent Q&A with the GM:

“We are a market with a ‘win-now’ mentality.”

To be fair to Omar, he was responding to a question that used that phrase. But he agreed with Matt’s assessment, and it’s not exactly out-of-the-box thinking to identify New York as an impatient place. I think we can all agree we’d rather win now than not win now.

But we’re not winning now, not in the winning enough to keep playing in October sense. We’re not losing more than we win, which is an upgrade from where we were pre-Minaya — and at some level we’ll always be grateful for that — but where exactly has yielding to the pressure of “win now” gotten this franchise? Has anything been put in place to not just “win now” but to win later? To keep winning? To win against the Phillies who are not just an admirable case study in baseball management if you examine them in a vacuum but your most serious divisional rival?

The Phillies have that core as catalogued above. Rollins, Utley and Howard aren’t going anywhere. Hamels is entrenched. Victorino is clearly a virus that won’t be eradicated anytime soon. Guys will come and go from their roster like anybody’s, but will enough of them leave to make a difference for the Mets? Will they be replaced by ever more efficient cogs? How will the Mets make up a gap that reveals itself, the closer you look, as wider than three games? Minaya had some good luck with a few reclamation projects of his own in 2008 and we saw a couple of rookies make a promising mark along the way…will there be more of that? Or will “win now” automatically mean another flurry of commitments negotiated beyond anybody’s concept of the limits of practicality? Is another class of two-bit relievers and no-account infielders lining up to sign on the dotted line for three, four, who knows how many years? Is it perhaps possible that we’ll someday look back on 2007 and 2008 as the most stressful chapters of a building process whose ultimate outcome more than makes up for the body blows we’ve absorbed in these saddest of Septembers?

I have no idea. Does anybody?

If you’re not overly cheerful yet, check out Dan from Mets Refugees‘ expertly taken shots of the Shea scoreboard in ruins. It’s not like the Mets needed a scoreboard anyway the last time we looked anyway.

In the last couple of years, I’ve gotten a number of amusing reactions to our “Numbers” shirt. No, they’re not lottery numbers that came in for me (though that would be nice) and no, they don’t have anything to do with the plot of “Lost.” I’ve learned that the actual answer to the real question being asked will almost always disappoint the asker. “They’re the numbers retired by the New York Mets” means next to nothing to the vast majority of people, a small amount to a decided minority of people, and a great deal to a much smaller minority of that minority. Caring enough about those numbers to put them on a garment? You lost most folks a while ago.

Which is fine — what good’s a secret handshake if it’s obvious to every Tiger, Diamondback and Highlander you might meet? When Greg and I agreed to make up Numbers shirts (an idea actually borrowed from the very fine Padres blog Gaslamp Ball), my biggest hope was that people would think they were cool. I’d like to say I saw right off that they were a perfect fit for what we do on our blog. But I’m not that smart. I got lucky.

Those numbers — the orange 37 14 41 and the red 42 — can’t instantly be understood at a glance. Even when they were on the wall at Shea (they’re gone now, with so much else), they were somewhat mysterious. They didn’t come with names attached, nor should they have. (The Cardinals are doing it wrong.) They have meaning, that’s obvious — meaning that goes to the heart of the history of the New York Mets, and all the elation and disappointment that’s threaded through that history. They’re a mystery, one that’s unlocked by knowledge obtained through devotion.

But here’s the thing about that knowledge and that devotion: It can be passed on. It should be passed on. And that’s what we do and who we are. By which I mean not just me and Greg, but everybody who likes to come visit, whether it’s to comment or just to read and in doing so, reminisce about what’s been and hope (or worry) about what might be. That’s passing it on, too — the daily conversation that’s a part of the history of the franchise, right alongside the chronicle of games and seasons and players.

In my old career I sometimes got tapped to talk to business-side folks about various blog ideas, and the thriving community of Mets bloggers made for a good object lesson whenever I sensed someone had drunk a bit too much buzzword Kool-Aid. “What kind of blog are you talking about?” I’d ask, and if they looked puzzled, I’d take them on a quick tour around the Met blogosphere. Within a couple of minutes, they’d see blogs that are one-stop news sources and blogs that dig into cool new stats and blogs that await no-hitters and blogs that celebrate walk-offs and blogs that lend themselves to in-game chats and blogs that scout minor leaguers and blogs that break down upcoming enemy pitchers and blogs that are personal reminiscences. They’d see that even within a world bound by the narrow confines of Met fanaticism, there were a great many varieties of blog.

Including ours. What we do is watch and cheer and worry while enmeshed in history — our own and our ballclub’s, two chronicles that long ago became too intertwined to ever untangle. For us, no player, no game, no pennant race and no lost summer ever stands alone. Is Johan Santana’s valiant effort in Shea’s penultimate game its own animal, or an echo of John Maine the year before or Al Leiter in Cincinnati a while back or Jerry Koosman when we were kids? Is Daniel Murphy the next Edgardo Alfonzo, the next Mike Vail, or a player who will make such an impression that eventually someone will be the next Daniel Murphy? A catch valiantly pursued but not made (Ryan Church at the fence, perhaps) will bring back Shawn Green in October against the Cardinals, or Shawon Dunston at the end of September against the Braves. A lucky bounce and a play made will bring back Dave Augustine and Richie Zisk. Wackiness at the plate might summon memories of Paul Lo Duca and too many Dodgers, or Ramon Castro and too many Astros. Those folks streaming out of Fenway because the Sox were down 7-0? You don’t do that, even when you’re cold. Why not? Because we once trailed the Braves 8-1 going to the bottom of the eighth, and oh what a night that was.

It can seem intimidating, this rich history of games lost and sometimes even won, of players mundane and miraculous, celebrated and obscure. But baseball takes a while. It has spaces — between seasons, between games, between innings, between at-bats, between pitches as batters and hurlers prepare for renewed war. And those spaces are perfectly suited for remembering and teaching and connecting the dots. From fathers and mothers to sons and daughters, most definitely — in the last couple of years I’ve learned, with a happiness so piercing it borders on heartbreak, that that’s the sweetest way to do it. But it can also flow from friend to friend, from neighbor to neighbor, from reader to reader. Until another convert has joined the ranks of the blue and orange, with all that pain and suffering and hope and joy. Until it’s been passed on.

So what are those numbers? Glad you asked. Take a seat — it’s a heck of a story.

All praise to the Red Sox and all pity to the Rays. I recognized ourselves in both of them Thursday night.

The Red Sox were our better angels, the team we believe the Mets to be when circumstances demand they be it. The Red Sox were the best of '69, '73, '86 (ironically enough) and '99. They were every Amazin' comeback we've ever catalogued, every ten-run eighth, every five-run ninth, every unlikely grand slam that has ever tied or untied our fate in our favor. They were us as we see us.

The Rays were our worst instincts, the team we watched the Mets devolve into in October 2006 and September 2007 and over and over in 2008 until we devolved into nothingness. They were every uneasy pitch, every blown lead, every empty feeling that has enveloped us in failure. They, too, were us as we see us.

Dueling archetypes. One won. One lost. Typical Mets.

The cumulative effect of the way the past three seasons have ended has drained me of passion for October baseball as practiced by others. I don't know that I've watched a single LDS, LCS or World Series game from beginning to end since October 19, 2006. Game Five between the Rays and the Sox I caught only in snatches. I saw the Rays take a large lead, I saw them extend it, I noticed young Scott Kazmir rolling along and I heard it mentioned that Red Sox fans were beginning to file out of Fenway in the seventh down 7-0.

It was license enough for me to keep flipping and commence napping but not before I wondered what I'd do in that position, at a playoff game, my team all but dead, my season all but the same. Of course I said I'd stay, and I would. But I remembered how I weaseled out of Shea the night the Braves were about to clinch against us/eliminate us from divisional contention in 2000. I also found myself surprisingly cognizant of train schedules a year later when the Pirates were a half-inning from knocking us out. But those weren't playoff games. And Lord knows I've made up for those indiscretions on recent final Sundays.

The Red Sox, in the obit I was ad libbing in my head, had been proud champions. My, how they had changed their script since 2003 and my, how they had zero of which to be ashamed. Jason Bay — Scott Kazmir to us before Scott Kazmir came to mean something more — had been a great replacement for Manny. The Red Sox seemed to make lots of smart pickups like that as a matter of course. I noticed Mark Kotsay playing first. I'd forgotten about him. He didn't have the impact of Jason Bay, but that's a player I've always considered a little underrated. J.D. Drew's contract was written off as a boondoggle, but he's a piece of the puzzle up there. And Papelbon, out on the mound soaking up the seventh to give them a shot. Yes, the Red Sox had been good for the sport, I decided. It was nothing personal against them that I was thrilled for the Rays.

The Rays were still a bit of a mystery guest to me, a little shy of familiar this deep into the postseason. But I was getting to know them when I was bothering to pay attention. Was Upton really hitting that many homers? Was Longoria that good? Carl Crawford…didn't he say something about being better than Jose Reyes a couple of years ago or generating as much buzz as Jose if he played in New York? Maybe somebody said that about him. In any case, I was looking forward to pulling for the Rays in the World Series, Senior Circuit loyalties be damned. What has the National League done for me lately other than gang up on and crush my dreams?

Baseball certainly changes your priorities in a Fenway minute, doesn't it? As I grew drowsy, it was 7-4. When I was a pliant eyelid from dozing, it was 7-6. When I next looked at the television, it was 7-7, two out, bottom of the ninth, Youkilis up with nobody on. Slow grounder to Longoria…he makes a nice Wrightlike play…he'll get it to first and they can go to the tenth tied…

Not so much.

It was hope against hope, to the extent I was hoping all that hard, that the Red Sox wouldn't end it in the ninth. Bay was walked and Drew did what Drew did against the Angels, what I vaguely recall him doing against the Tribe last October. What had been 7-0 for the scrappy underdogs was now an 8-7 final for the scrappier champions.

And people left?

Sorting out whether this is another 2004/2007 in the making for the Red Sox or a blip for the Rays along the lines of the Astros having to endure Pujols' bomb off Lidge in the fifth game of the NLCS in '05 before returning to Minute Maid old Busch (its last game ever) to finish off the Cardinals is best left to fate. Though the Rays didn't exist when I was an undergrad in Tampa, my heart will be with them Saturday night. I liked the idea of them clinching their way into the World Series on October 16, the 39th anniversary of their most obvious inspirations winning it all the first time. But I like even better that my Bulls are home Saturday afternoon and the possibility exists for an area doubleheader sweep of sorts, even if I'll be the first to admit USF vs. Syracuse doesn't hold a candle to a potential pennant party. It's just a possibility, however, no matter what the Bulls do. As we learned a lot in 2008, and as the Rays have been cruelly reminded, good relief help is hard to find.

Sympathy for the former Devil team notwithstanding, I also like the idea of what I saw after the Red Sox came all the way back in Game Five. I love that those who did stay when it was 7-0 stayed long after it was 8-7. I loved watching the Red Sox fans eventually stream giddily out of Fenway, maybe not forming “the largest conga line ever” as in Fever Pitch (hey, that was beating the Yankees when that seemed like fiction), but a marvelous street scene in its own right. The warmth of it all reminded me of Roger Angell throwing Bostonians a bone in 1986, extracting “spirit and pleasure” from the Red Sox' Game Five victory in what was about to become our World Series: “This was the last home game of the year for the Red Sox, and when it was over, the fans stayed in the stands for a time…” I liked Thursday night's TBS shot of the grounds crewman hosing down the pitcher's mound, too, for it signaled Fenway wasn't necessarily closed for the winter.

Then again, I thought, the Shea grounds crew dutifully manicured the mound and the batter's box in the wake of the loss of September 30, 2007. Maybe it's just what grounds crews do. Or in Shea's case, did.

I keep peeking at pictures and video of Shea being hollowed out. I shouldn't, but I do. I was going to say I'm doing it 'cause it's a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon, but so is a fatal disease. I guess it's part curiosity and part weird gratification that somebody is bothering to record the deconstruction process. It's a little like when I was in high school and the Mets sucked yet I was grateful when they were mentioned at all, even for sucking. Shea is still a topic of conversation this October, albeit for the most dismal of reasons.

The Red Sox fans who stayed to the end and then after, they were lucky. I'd love to not leave a ballpark right about now.

It would have been terrible had Hiroki Kuroda hit Shane Victorino in the head and caused him injury. But since he didn't, I must confess that watching a baseball whiz by the helmet of Shane Victorino Sunday night has been the highlight of this postseason for me, a most bitter, resentful Mets fan.

I've got no real horse in this October derby. I'm rooting against the Phillies but can't say I'm pro-Dodgers. Every time I try to be, Rafael Furcal shows his face or Hong-Chih Kuo warms up. Hell, I'd forgotten Chan Ho Park was still pitching for them. Blake DeWitt is a natural born Met-killer and Jeff Kent is all-century unsupportable across two millennia. And who's that suave character in their dugout pushing all the buttons when he's not driving around in those State Farm commercials? Still, they can't match the Phillies for sheer firepower of nightmarishness: Victorino, Myers, Dobbs, Burrell, Werth, Taguchi, Moyer…and that's before getting into their actual stars. Phillies versus Dodgers is chronic warts versus a recurring rash.

Thus when Kuroda's pitch sailed over Victorino's head in Game Three and Victorino responded (to use South Park language from which I usually refrain but seems far too appropriate to pass up) like the little bitch he is, it was 2008 postseason baseball at its finest. The Dodgers can't throw up and in at Shane Victorino enough.

As long as no one gets hurt.

The anger is still palpable here. It's not anger at the Phillies for having the nerve to do their job and win their division. It's anger at the Mets. The Mets haunt this October if you let them (it's the only way they get close to October). I watched the Phillies open the NLCS at Citizens Bank Park and realized that coulda if not shoulda been Shea, and Shea would still be alive (which it is not at the present time). I watched the lineups introduced at the start of the ALCS and when the Tampa Bay fans responded with a sustained chant of LET'S GO RAYS! I found myself wistfully mouthing along with them, except for the Rays! part. Two Octobers ago, even two weeks ago, that was us chanting, and it wasn't wistful at all. As reasonably happy as I was to see a walkoff win for those Rays Saturday night, I stewed that it was the 22nd anniversary of Lenny Dykstra's bottom-of-the-ninth game-winning home run against Houston and it should be the Mets, not some Tampa-come-lately, congregating joyously around home plate.

One of my all-time favorite movies, That Thing You Do!, came on late Friday. There's a lyric in one of the songs I really like from the soundtrack that struck me anew: “Tell everyone in Philadelph'ya/there's a party goin' on!” Boy, I thought, wouldn't have that been a great theme for the night we clinched the East this year? I got retroactively mad at the Mets for short-circuiting that after-the-fact idea.

I was mad at the Mets when I woke up Sunday and saw how beautiful it was outside and realized there would be no game on Channel 11 at 1:10. I got mad at the nice weather. Where was this two weeks ago?

I got mad at the Jets for winning in New York Titans garb because that's what they wore on September 28, which I first learned from the idiot sitting behind me on The Final Day because he kept repeating it between anti-Met outbursts (“Hey, the Jets are winning — they're wearing the Titan uniforms…BULLPEN SUCKS! BULLPEN SUCKS! Hey, the Jets are winning…they're wearing the Titan uniforms…”).

The Mets are ruining movies. They're ruining meteorology. They're ruining other sports now. Everything they accidentally touch turns to Met.

Somebody throw at Victorino again.

Better yet, visit Forgotten NY's thoughtful and comprehensive tribute to a New York landmark that will never be forgotten.