As late afternoon became early evening Sunday, I was bucking myself up for the challenge ahead, both the Mets' and mine. Theirs is the one that matters, winning enough games without losing so that they return to the playoffs and try to win a world championship. Mine is simply to show up and try not to be an impediment to their success.

Wow was it familiar. It's just about what I was doing at this time a year ago. A year ago there was some slight relief (pun not intended, though it should have been) with the Mets winning three straight in Miami. It didn't fool many of us who were fast gaining our degrees in collapsology. Trouble was surely lurking and it hopped right out from behind the bushes the second the Mets' charter landed at LaGuardia for their final seven games. Me, I rendezvoused with the team for the final five, four of which were abysmal and we know how that ended.

So here I am and here we are and, a few key differentiating details aside, it's basically the same thing all over again. Sunday was fifty-one weeks since the worst day in the history of Shea Stadium settled in our hair and rushed up our nostrils. We went through all of that anguish and all of that angst and all of our recovery efforts and all the rationalization we could muster just so we could get right back where we started from: trying to make the playoffs, trying to not miss the playoffs, trying our darndest to be there as much and as best we can.

What's that saying about doing the same thing, expecting different results and the definition of insanity? Never mind that now. It's too late. It's been too late as long as I can remember. If I could just slip the bonds of fanhood without a second thought, don't you think I would have long ago? No, this is the life I, like you, have chosen. I have chosen a life that inflicted upon me insane amounts of unhappiness fifty-one weeks ago and I've gone through every motion possible just to arrive back at potentially the exact same precipice.

Except this time I'm determined to go the final seven games of the year, not just five (having already been to the previous eight which, virally speaking, literally sickened me). And if things go as wrong as they possibly can, it will turn a sweet-sorrow parting into the most bitter ballpark funeral I can imagine.

Hence, I'd appreciate it from my friends in Mets uniforms if they could build leads and hold them this week, if they could find a way to win far more than they lose and for their counterparts in management to not make me sorry I've been looking so forward for so long to so much.

Is it really so much to ask for?

As for the ancillary issues connected to the final seven regular-season lines of The Log:

1 win in the next 4 games clinches a winning record against the Cubs. (Current: 10-7)

2 wins in the final 3 games clinch a winning record against the Marlins. (Current: 16-16)

3 wins over the Marlins would make them the second-most oft-beaten opponent in Log history. (Braves: 20)

2 losses to the Marlins (shudder) would mean a losing record against every current divisional opponent. (Braves: 20-23; Phillies: 18-21; Nationals: 6-8)

4 wins are needed for the most in one season. (2001: 23)

6 wins in the final 7 games would put the final Log record at 40 above .500. (Currently: +35; Highest previously: +38 on 6/21/02 and 7/26/02)

2 Santana starts and 1 Pelfrey start would put 10 in The Log for 2008 for each of them, tying for the most by any one starter in any one year. (Leiter in 2001)

2 more games attended will bring the 2008 total to an all-time high of 39. (2001: 38)

4 more games attended will mean I've attended a majority of the home schedule in 2008.

5 more games attended will bring The Log's regular season total to 400 lifetime.

4 games attended against the Cubs will signify the only complete four-game series ever attended.

2 wins will clinch a .500 season. The Mets need more than that for their own survival, but if I were to finish 22-22, it would be quite familiar. My record was .500 in '83, '84, '86, '91, '92, '94, '95, '96, '03 and '04.

A win Friday would snap a Friday losing streak of five consecutive games dating back to 9/14/07, the first night of The Collapse. Friday is the only day of the week without a win recorded in The Log in 2008.

If I don't focus on the minutiae, the big picture might strangle me alive.

It occurs to me that with the last two losses in Atlanta, our record fell to 86-69, which was either intentional so as to inspire great championship luck or a subliminal way to sell remaining $869 seat inventory.

It's that time of year when baseball moves to the head of the line, shoving aside personal commitments and anything job-related that isn't truly extraordinary. (I've got one of those next week, which is hard to do when you don't actually have a job.) Eight games to go, every one of them freighted with potentially enormous significance. Are we in first place? Second? Is the margin small enough that the one could become the other again tonight? Did Coolstandings just add or subtract 30-odd percent to or from our postseason chances? What did the Brewers do? Are the Marlins close enough to worry about yet? What's our magic number, anyway? What's our other magic number? OK, what's their magic number?

Last night was the final regular-season Saturday-night game to come at the same time as our regular Saturday-night babysitter, so Emily and I didn't even discuss what the plan was — we didn't need to. We decided to walk over the bridge and go to Mark Joseph Steakhouse, where back in July we'd found good eats, bar seats right by the TV and a companionable bartender whose public loyalties were whatever his customers espoused (only sensible) but whose semi-private loyalties were orange and blue. Second verse, same as the first — we even got our same seats, and Jared remembered us and tended to our food-and-drink needs and our worries over Pedro, the bullpen and the lineup with equal aplomb.

The only problem? Well, as with last time, it was that pesky score. 3-0 when we arrived a bit late, prompting a round of Pedro-related angst. Greg's covered the gist of that, and at Mark Joseph we traced much the same trajectory, from melancholy declarations that it's Jon Niese's turn (and discussions of whether Brandon Knight would be a better choice) to stubborn urging to slow hope to jubilation over Pedro's Mister Koo-like double to grumbling over the blown call at second. The saving grace was that it was largely a private war — a White Sox fan would stop by for updates on his own postseason quest, but other than that the bar was Mets country. The ultimate proof of that? In the middle innings the inevitable Yankee fan made an unasked-for appearance, woofing his support for the Braves. That ruffled not a feather on any of the rest of us — if anything, it brought mild, amused disbelief. You're a Yankee fan rooting against the Mets in enemy-of-my-enemy fashion? Has your season really dwindled to notions of such little consequence? Oh, that's right — it has. The unwelcome noise went quiet and then went away entirely, as the Yankees themselves soon will.

The Mets are trying to avoid the same fate, and so what they did against the Braves mattered quite a bit, and ended poorly, with Nick Evans striking out as we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. Before that, seeing our bartender friend and the dour score, Emily joked that we'd been a bit worried about coming, given what happened last time. Which prompted Jared to smile but also to raise an eyebrow — perhaps thinking that his record is pretty damn good, except when these two idiots from Brooklyn plop down at his bar.

“You should come when Santana's pitching,” he said.

Addendum: A friend of Faith and Fear is looking to sell tickets for Tuesday's and Thursday's games. Two for each game, field boxes (117F), $59 each. Can be fetched in Brooklyn or Times Square. If you're interested, drop us a line and we'll broker a meeting. First come first served and all that.

The occasional Quadruple-A desperation callup notwithstanding, no Met starter is more difficult to watch than Pedro Martinez. That's less a reflection of his mediocre output in 2008 than it is how much emotion he elicits from me every time I see him.

His first innings have been killers. If Pelfrey or Ollie were having them, you'd figure it was just one of those nights and the guy would have to work out of it. If it were Johan, you'd adjust your set because not since the weirdo Seattle game with the Felix Hernandez grand slam has he had any significant early problems of which to speak. If it were Maine, you'd be thrilled he was back. But it's been Pedro stepping on the mound and stepping into trouble as almost a matter of course this season. And it breaks my heart every time out.

It breaks my heart because it no longer surprises me that Pedro's in deep almost immediately, if not sooner. Saturday night's three-run first in Atlanta was numbingly normal for he who was an ace among aces for most of his career, some of it here. Other pitchers have bad first innings and I worry about the game. Pedro has a bad first inning and I worry about the game, the rotation, the season, his career and the common mortality we are all leasing on this planet.

What makes his lousy first innings (21 runs in 19 starts with a .361 batting average against) and his generally dissatisfactory outings particularly painful is that I can see him knowing what's not working. He's too smart for his own good. All pitchers, I suppose, are more clued in than we would guess. They all have an idea of what they want to do but they just can't do it sometimes. Pedro can outthink any batter. He just can't outpitch that many anymore. It's tough to absorb. It doesn't necessarily all go to hell on him at once either. He struggles and he struggles and there's always one too many batters in an inning. By the time he solves in practice what he's figured out in theory, it's 3-0 in the first.

Then, sometimes, somehow he turns it on. Not vintage Pedro, but close enough for 2008. Pedro can keep you in the game. Not as a rule, but he did Saturday. When Jerry sent him up to bat for himself in the fifth, I was a little surprised and moderately annoyed. First and second, two out, no offensive prospects otherwise, and we're not taking our best shot? Then again, one more inning of a settled-in Pedro versus the mysteries of the Met bullpen after a roll of the dice on Marlon Anderson? Either way, I wasn't thrilled. Then Pedro swings and belts a double that scores two runs — even Schneider from first.

Pedro's two-bagger was one of those moments, albeit writ small, along the lines of the Endy catch when you can't believe the Mets won't somehow grab the unlikely momentum onto which they've latched and turn it into something great. Pedro goes out and fuels your hope even more by snagging an Omar Infante liner and turning it into a DP. Damn the Mets for continuing to not touch Campillo. Damn Bill Hohn for a horrible, lazy, out-of-position blown call on what should have been a caught stealing on Brandon Jones in the bottom of the sixth, thereby setting up a Brave insurance run. (Granted, Gary Darling helped the Mets earlier with an out at first they didn't quite deserve, but C.B. Bucknor called out a clearly safe Jorge Cantu in Miami at home; when did Major League umpires turn into the kind of useless bystanders who populate the Shea Stadium Ushers Union?)

There were collateral benefits to Pedro's losing start. By going six after that typically dismal first, he didn't tax the bullpen, admirably effective in its two innings of fort-holding. By throwing 116 pitches, he reminds you that he is, unlike too many on this club, healthy. By not crumbling after Josh Anderson's RBI single made it 4-2 and retiring the dangerous Martin Prado, he left on a modest high note. And by answering everybody thoughtfully and honestly afterwards, he was a professional. Use me any way you want, he said: I'll pitch middle relief, I just want to help this team win. Pedro clearly wasn't kidding himself, so he didn't try to kid anybody else that everything's fine.

It's not. But it's not all for naught, I don't think. Watching the first, on the heels of his last start in Washington and the one before that against Philly, I was bouncing him from Thursday's turn. It's not my decision to make, but now I'd put him out there again. The entire season could be on the line. Unless you've got the Pedro Martinez of nine or six or three years ago warming up under the stands, I don't see any better options.

You know when I had an inkling the Mets might be all right? When I saw a matter-of-fact reference in a wire-service story somewhere the other day to the “fading” New York Mets. It brought me back to the third week of the 1986 season when I saw the exact same descriptor used for a team that had started 2-3 and wasn't yet on a tear.

Fading? The Mets at their lowest point lately had lost three in a row, four out of five. They had sunk a half-game out of first place, plummeting all the way into the Wild Card lead. It wasn't a positive trend, but it didn't remove them from the picture.

All of us together panicking about precedent and doom? That's fine. We're fans. Objective accounts adjusting the exposure on the Mets' image so we can't see they were still perfectly viable with a dozen games remaining? That was the overreaction.

It's three full days later and the Mets are in first place again. The unbeatable Phillies did lose a game. The Mets have won three in a row. Milwaukee…they've got problems. Florida…they've got clock issues (though that shouldn't stop them from enjoying a big ol' last hurrah today and tomorrow before checking out next weekend). Most importantly, the Mets are clutching their fate in their own two hands, steadyish or not. It wasn't the prettiest of wins in Atlanta Friday night, but all we need to know is it was a win, nobody got hurt as far as we could tell, the bullpen was more help than hindrance and Daniel Murphy is alive, well and hitting.

Lots more baseball to go. A fade is just an out-of-date hairstyle.

These days, it counts as a minor miracle when our bullpen only allows five baserunners in two innings, as happened tonight with Joe Smith, Scott Schoeneweis and Pedro Feliciano backing up Johan Santana, who maintained his dignity even when Kevin Burkhardt asked if he could watch once he came out of the game. (I would have forked over a fair amount of money to hear him say something like “Well Kevin, I'll tell you what I'm going to do — I'm going to stand next to the relievers' lockers with a pair of hedge clippers, a lighter and a gas can, and if they blow this one, we'll see how they like flying to Atlanta with nothing to wear but still-smoking rags.”) No closer? That's the least of our problems — plenty of nights we don't have a reliever who can reliably get anybody out at all.

On Wednesday night at Nats Park my friend Cooper was agitating to get going when Aaron Heilman entered a 9-5 game. He considered that safe; I stared at him in dismay. “This,” I told him, “is the equivalent of the point in the slasher movie where the co-ed realizes they forgot the puppy AND GOES BACK IN THE HOUSE.” Sure enough, Heilman promptly gave up a ringing double and a sharp single, leaving me to bay at our distant, dismal reliever in drunken fury while Cooper stared at me in disbelief. Was I a prophet? Nope, just a Met fan.

It's a useful comparison, though — if you want to properly prepare yourself for the late innings of a 2008 Met game, cue up some wretched early-1980s slasher movies, the ones starring nubile co-eds in their underwear at night and the dullard cops sent to rescue them, with the whole crew picked off one by one by a masked killer with something extremely sharp in one gloved hand. The rhythms and themes are pretty much the same: That first hitter to reach against that first bad Met reliever is the rustle of leaves somewhere in the woods behind the laughing girl drinking beer at the campfire, a sound barely noticed and quickly dismissed by everybody except the agitated audience. And so it goes until REEEEEE!!!!! REEEEEE!!!!!! REEEEEEE!!!!! THE TYING RUN IS ON THIRD AND IT'S A 2-0 COUNT!!!! AND THE BLOODY KNIFE IS FILLING THE SCREEN!!!!!! AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Will at least one co-ed stagger off to safety? Or is this one of those nihilistic movies where the killer winds up triumphant? Let's meet our cast:

Carlos Muniz — Didn't really have any lines, killed off before anybody was on their guard. When the credits roll, sole identification will be under the group heading OTHER SORORITY SISTERS. (See also: Jorge Sosa, Matt Wise, Tony Armas Jr.)

Eddie Kunz — Hot pledge with just a couple of scenes, struck down in some particularly cruel, messily ironic way that's played for laughs. And we thought that one had potential.

Bobby Parnell — Has somehow made it to the final reel despite having had only one line and never being identified by name. If you've seen any of the other movies in this series, you already know this won't end well.

Duaner Sanchez — Ever notice how slasher movies are motivated by a pitiless medieval morality? How the girls who do drugs, get drunk, or have sex are fated to vanish in a river of blood, with the virtuous wallflower the only one who'll limp her way to the sequel? Well, Duaner's the slutty blonde who was mean to the girls who were scared to smoke pot, and then wobbled off early for a shower. OH GOD, A MACHETE!!! I totally saw that one coming, you guys.

Scott Schoeneweis — Has some brains, gives you hope by knowing enough not to get stoned in the woods or to sneak off and make out with the hot counselor from the camp across the lake. But inevitably slips in the wet grass and then scrabbles helplessly in a vain effort to get up as the escaped lunatic fires up the chainsaw. Oogh. That was gross.

Al Reyes — Cut from the movie. I hear the ironic death scene will be on the DVD.

Ricardo Rincon — Not a co-ed (would you want to see a co-ed who looked like Rincon?), but the veteran cop who appears to have restored order. (Often played by Joe Don Baker or one of those nameless, ubiquitous character actors.) Currently walking confidently over to open the closet doors to show the terrified girls that everything is fine now. But the old guy is never the male lead, so — OH MY GOD! DID YOU SEE THAT? THE CHAINSAW CAME RIGHT THROUGH THE LOUVERS!!!!

Aaron Heilman — Will this particularly hapless co-ed be decapitated by a windowpane? Hanged from a showerhead? Run into the clothesline and wind up in pieces in the old well? Judging from the way it's been going, it could be all three.

Pedro Feliciano — Wow, with a pitchfork? Ehhh. That one was too klutzy to put much faith in anyway.

Billy Wagner — The chaperone whose unexpected ambush made you think that jeez, maybe none of these girls will get out of the house alive.

Joe Smith — Such courage! Such spunk! Such basic decency! OH NO! THE MENTALLY DISTURBED LITTLE BROTHER IS LEFT-HANDED!!!!!

Brian Stokes — The handsome young police officer who took that staticky yell for help seriously, drove out to the lake, coolly fired a slug from his .38 right through the hockey mask and then even found a blanket to wrap around the shivering survivor. And now he's comforting her — everything is going to be fine! BUT WAIT! SOMETHING IS MOVING BEHIND HIM! AND HE DOESN'T KNOW!! OFFICER STOKES!!!! TURN AROUND!!!! NOOOOOO!!!!

Luis Ayala — Escaped the ax by leaping through the upstairs window. Now hopping on one good leg down the driveway. But wait! There's the killer, shambling slowly but relentlessly in pursuit! HE'S STILL ALIVE! AND HE'S GAINING!!!

Oh my God you guys, I'm so freaked out. I can't look anymore, not even through my fingers. Somebody tell me how it ends.

To address my lingering virus that developed in the wake of the day-night doubleheader against Philly, I was prescribed some cough syrup Wednesday. Some very good cough syrup. It's got some very good stuff in it. It makes you quite drowsy which is the way to watch the Mets these nights.

I took it a little before Capital One Pregame Live. As a result, I wasn't as in-game lively as I might have been otherwise. I didn't really have the wherewithal to cheer the two first-inning homers. In fact, I nodded off at Mets 2 Nats 0 and woke up from the longest 15-minute nap of my life with it Mets 7 Nats 1. My alertness waxed and waned until I began to have these visions of relief pitcher after relief pitcher marching in from the bullpen while Gary, Keith and Ron grew grimmer and grimmer. Next thing I knew, Jerry Manuel was cracking wise about the crowd not wanting to see him blazing a path from the dugout to the mound and Johan Santana having to throw a complete game Thursday, even if it takes 170 pitches. I guess he was being funny. It was hard to tell, legally medicated as I was.

It took seven relievers gritting their teeth across four innings to quell the Washington Nationals, but the Mets held on 9-7. I didn't feel a thing.

OK, so that didn't work. Never has a 1-0 game seemed so unclose. Never has a supposedly close game's ending with the wrong result felt so unsurprising. Nationals Park was, by my thoroughly unscientific estimate, about 30% to 35% Met fans. But we were a numb, hushed bunch from pillar to post, with only a few half-hearted Let's Go Mets chants to betray our presence. The sight of all those backs adorned with CARTER and DYKSTRA and STRAWBERRY and ALFONZO (invoking the angels of the past, or betraying discontent with the present?) would have been comforting, if the shoulders hadn't been slumped forward around misery. (There were sights of REYES and WRIGHT and SANTANA too, but the body language was about the same.)

The company, at least, was pennant-winning: I went with my old friend Megan, who very kindly put me up and even lent me this laptop, and we were joined by Liz (another old friend and longtime Met fan) and her friend Rob. In the middle innings I headed off to commiserate with Jeff, who'd been Greg's host here back in April. Whether I was in short left or the right-field corner, there was puzzlement and muted despair over the utter lack of offense on the field and the sickening see-saw between PHI/ATL. (And then MIL/CHI, which I belatedly realized was becoming very important.) When David Wright tipped a ball foul with two strikes in the ninth, my chin dropped to my chest before I realized he wasn't out. No matter; he was a minute later. Carlos Beltran rifled a liner to center that Lastings Milledge was playing deep enough to corral without incident. And then with two strikes, Carlos Delgado swung and missed at a ball that eluded Wil Nieves. I watched the ball spinning in the dirt and thought dully that we hadn't lost yet. But I knew and Nieves knew and Delgado knew and everybody else knew that was a formality, and I was already getting to my feet by the time ball was retrieved and quietly applied to slugger. Ugh. Waiting for the Metro, I grumbled to Megan that it was rarely a good sign to be able to recite your team's hits immediately from memory. Double ugh.

If you haven't been to Nationals Park, Greg's impressions from late April should be your first stop. I was too angst-ridden to take in much more than the slow throttling happening down on the field, so I'll limit myself to a couple of updates/first takes: The big, beautiful HD scoreboard now dispenses relevant info, as well as a-bit-too-excited exhortations to the crowd. (Strike two isn't consistently important enough to get agitated about, fellas.) Vendors and greeters and other folks were consistently friendly and more or less on the ball — as a Shea denizen, I stared in bemused disbelief when I was handed a Coke with the soda cap still attached.

As for Nationals fans, they're still a vaguely defined, placeholder kind of rooter — there are stalwarts (the guy in front of me in a VIDRO uniform shirt was raucous and worked up, as he should be), but most of them seem like they're still learning the ropes: They take way too many cues from whatever the scoreboard's suggesting they do, and embarrassingly few of them have figured out that the secret of not mistaking a pop to left-center for a home run is to look at the fielders, not the ball. Oh, and the Nats really need to find place for the outs on their otherwise-excellent out-of-town scoreboard.

Several folks have offered variants on Greg's observation that Nats Park feels like an overgrown minor-league park, with none of them meaning anything snide by that. I had the same impression, and I think maybe it's the breaks in the levels. If you were a young baseball fan between the late 1960s and the end of the 1980s, your first experiences of a baseball stadium almost certainly involved an all-purpose donut, with an unbroken ring of seats arcing from at least foul pole to foul pole. Things like that get into your head as a sort of Platonic reality (“ideal” seems too strong), and become the standard against which everything else is judged, whether you're conscious of it or not. Broken concourses seem off to us and unfinished, while younger fans may well praise them as allowing more of a connection between a stadium and the city surrounding it.

At least that's my half-assed theory. Regardless, Nationals Park is clean, bright and new. Great place to see a game. Even better place to see the Mets win a game, if that's possible right now. We'll try again tonight.