… is Joshua, after having two Dashes wrecked by rain and one hijacked by ESPN, finally got to run the bases. Emily and I walked around the warning track with him, marveling at how big Shea is from a player's-eye view. Joshua chugged around the bases (My! Kid! Is! Running! The! Bases! At! Shea!) and low-fived Mr. Met at second base. It would have been pretty amazing if I hadn't been suicidal.

Which brings us to the bad news, which includes everything else. Luis Ayala coming up empty, which you knew had to be coming after a good streak, so we'll let him pass. Pedro Feliciano being allowed near a pitcher's mound when he's demonstrated repeatedly that there should be a restraining order against such behavior. The sublime uselessness of Luis Castillo. The baffling absence of Damion Easley in a do-or-die situation where someone able to hit the ball more than 100 feet was required. Learning that Easley was missing because he heard a pop in his quad yesterday and went for an MRI. The Phillies catching up to the Brewers and then passing them. Whatever the Phillies will do tonight. The whole heavy-bellied, head-dragging horror of the slow-motion disaster.

We're playing baseball tomorrow night. Hooray.

Good things about Shea Stadium when you’re absolutely sick of it from having been there all week (and you’re sick while you’re there):

• Jon Niese, who, if he were sold at the concessions, would be the freshest thing in the house.

• Section 36, Row F of Upper Deck which gives you — and this is a compliment — a real Shea view of things. You can’t see the left field corner but you’re right on a line with the boardwalk to the LIRR. You really know where you are when you’re in Section 36. I was able to watch Port Washington trains pull in and out, which I never did before. I never will again. (Thanks to Mike and Lisa of the Mike’s Mets‘ Mike and Lisa for the throwback locale…and for indulging my bronchial escapades.)

• An old-fashioned, you don’t have to leave between games doubleheader, allowing one who has a cold or virus or infection or perhaps just pennant fever to pick and choose one’s entrance time safe in the knowledge there’ll be baseball whenever you show up (top of the fifth, first game) and you’ll have seen plenty when your insides have had enough (end of six, second game). The Log is contented.

• Unscheduled second games. There was a well-done fireworks gala far beyond Citi Field, slated for a Saturday evening when nobody would be at Shea. But there we were, with our own Grucciesque action to distract us between pitches. We wouldn’t have seen Shea’s last fireworks night if we hadn’t been rescheduled. We wouldn’t have been sneaking one in on the sly, seeing a game we weren’t supposed to see (except this was a makeup of Friday night’s rainout and I was supposed to see that). Ever come across an episode of all-but-cancelled syndicated talk show on Channel 11 at three in the morning? One of those episodes they’re airing ’cause they’ve got to burn them off? That’s what a second game of a doubleheader on a Saturday night feels like. I didn’t know Vicki Lawrence still had a talk show!

• Did I mention Niese? Damn he was fine, especially that curve ball, coming around the bend like the 9:36 to Penn Station.

Bad things about Shea Stadium when you can’t get enough of it even though you’ve been there all week (and you’re sick while you’re there):

• The Mets’ refusal to score in the bottom of the sixth in the first game despite loading the bases with no one out.

• The decision to stick with Santana into the eighth. I thought Jerry gave him just a little too much rope. Then again, these were the BrAAAves he was facing and he is Johan Santana. He should have been given more runs with which to work, but that’s an oldie if baddie.

• The strikeout board wasn’t working. Did Azek not pay its bill?

• Luis Castillo.

• Last 29,000 in the ballpark are rotten eggs! I didn’t really want the olive drab Military Appreciation cap they were handing out to the first 25,000 fans, even if I do appreciate the military. And I knew that by being the 2008 version of Petticoat Junction‘s Uncle Joe — movin’ kinda slow at the junction — from whatever ails me, I wouldn’t sniff a cap. But what a cheap-bastard policy to which the Mets hew.

• Speaking of policy, there was a ten-minute window between games that had me ready to take the axe to Beloved Shea. Every Upper Deck concession had a prohibitive line, which I found curious since half the 54,000 had bailed. But I guess there was nothing else to do but queue up. OK, I’ll go down to Mezzanine…but same deal. Long lines for every worthless item. It occurred to me how I generally refuse to stand in any line more than three people long at Shea and how there’s usually something that isn’t a wait. But it just wasn’t happening between games. Hell with it, I’ll ride the escalator upstairs, find something if I can and get back to my seat either way. The right field escalator, however, was blocked off by the orangeshirts. It was running, it was running upward, it was running upward ’cause there was another game, yet I was told I couldn’t take it. This wasn’t postgame when they want to indemnify themselves against lawsuits when drunken morons kill themselves screwing around. This was keeping people from using the escalators for the function for which they were designed. “Can I take the escalator up?” I asked. No, I was told; take those ramps over there. This infuriated me to the point I needed to turn around and walk away (and back toward one of the many escalators that wasn’t obstructed by an idiot in an orange shirt). Yeah, I know where the ramp is. I’m Shea Stadium’s de facto last season ticket holder. I’m here as much as you are. I really came close to snapping until I decided I’m not communing with Shea all September to get into bureaucratic hassles.

• Part II within the ten-minute window was when I wound up at a no-frills stand, right near Section 36, with loads of pretzels on display. There were only two parties in front of me. 1) Two girls buying two hot dogs and one souvenir soda, and I exaggerate not one iota when I say their transaction took five minutes. 2) Two guys buying two beers until the second guy ordered separately a third beer, causing the vendor to demand to know why he didn’t order it before when the ID’s were out (I was on the side of neither of these dolts in this debate). Finally, my turn.

“One pretzel please.”

“The pretzels aren’t ready.”

I stared at him for a beat and walked away, even angrier than I was about the escalators — not because my pretzelhole was going unfilled but because WHAT THE FUCK? YOU’VE BEEN HERE SIX HOURS FOR WHAT? TO NOT HAVE THE FUCKING PRETZELS READY WHEN PEOPLE WANT TO BUY THEM?

Jon Niese calmed me down pretty soon, what with his eight shutout innings and seven Azek-free strikeouts, but I’m still beyond comprehending how Shea Stadium managed to operate for 45 seasons. I’d like to see more of Niese this year and next. I want to see nobody who currently works in a non-baseball capacity at World Class Citi Field next year. Seriously, fire everybody and start anew. The food is not worth standing in line for, as we all know. It’s amazing what we’ve put up with for decades. Food’s not the main attraction, but if you’re going to keep customers on the premises for two games, it’s customer-unfriendly to sell horrible product at an exorbitant price, and do it in a perfunctory manner at best. It’s that manner that bugs me more than the lousy, expensive food.

That’s why when they make the pregame Fan Magic presentations once a month to honor their top employees (I go to enough games to know about stuff like that), I boo as if Pat Burrell, Yadier Molina and Idi Amin are due up in the top of the first. Fire everybody who works at Shea. I know there are some decent people putting themselves through school and such. I know there are men who have been showing fans to their seats since the ’60s. I don’t care. Everybody must go. Clean out the culture. The Daily News can run sob stories next April about the poor usher who had only his job at Shea to live for and now he’s been replaced by World Class Citi Field’s secret team of customer service specialists who were Disney-trained at a secret underground facility outside of Binghamton in the summer of 2008. I will stand and cheer and I won’t feel the slightest twinge of empathy despite being an otherwise empathetic soul.

The Mets’ ballpark isn’t for them. It’s for me. It’s for us. Yet it’s been run like a fucking gulag as long as I can remember. And we accept it because it’s a part of us, because we don’t know any better, because we’re junkies aching for the fix. We are told we can’t walk there, we can’t buy this, the pretzels aren’t ready and when they are they’ll be absurdly marked up. And it all comes with a straight face.

Cut ’em all. Cut the vendors, cut the guards, cut the ushers, cut all the worthless supervisors who have been giving out these rancid marching orders. If it all stems from the top, then the city should massively fine somebody who’s been making them run a ballpark this way. It should be the best place on Earth. Most times it is if you know what to avoid. Yet it occurs to me late in Shea’s life that you shouldn’t be in an atmosphere where you’re cognizant of avoiding things. You should be embracing things at a ballpark. You should love all of it.

Shea was wonderful. Shea I related to. But never once in 36 seasons did I have a notably positive encounter with anybody who worked there. At best, it was adequate. Let’s aim higher in the new joint.

In April or May, rainouts are shrug-your-shoulders stuff, down payments on an unexpected doubleheader or on-again off-day at a point so much later in the season that the date seems like science fiction. We're gonna play Pittsburgh in … August? Wow, August. Yawn … wonder how we'll be doing then?

A September rainout, though, is a very different beast. Will the offday wreck our momentum? Doesn't this let the other guy line up his pitching rotation better? When on earth are we going to play? How many doubleheaders can we possibly have? And who the heck's gonna start? Will the lost game get played at the end of the season if needed? Will that “if needed” hurt us for the playoffs? Are we even gonna make the playoffs after all this? And so on — you know you're coming down the pennant-race stretch when not watching baseball is every bit as nerve-wracking as watching it.

And that's not even mentioning that Emily and I are going to a wedding scheduled to begin around the fith inning of today's Game 1 and go into the night. So I'll be That Guy, the one with the radio who keeps darting outside to huddle with the smokers for a listen, a listen that becomes extended because it's a really pivotal inning or just because his nerves are shot and he's convinced the team will lose if he abandons his post. (The bride is both salt of the earth and a longtime Met fan, so I'm crossing my fingers that she'll be forgiving.)

If you've also got nervous time on your hands (WE HAVEN'T PLAYED SINCE 11 PM WEDNESDAY — WHY DO WE HAVE TO BE THE 4 O'CLOCK GAME???!!!), why not check us out on Facebook? We've recently set up a page for Faith and Fear, and we'd be honored if you'd visit and maybe even become a fan. Or come drop by my personal page, or Greg's.

To tell the truth, we're not 100% sure where we're going with our Facebook presence, but we're trying it out, just as we always look for new ways to get Faith and Fear on aggregators, RSS services, and anything else that might reach people who love the Mets and like to read. If you've got any ideas about how we ought to do that, leave us a comment or drop us a line. And thanks as always for reading — we can't know if September will be glorious or gory, but either way we're looking forward to chronicling it not just as writers but as part of a larger community with all of you.

“May I help you?”

“Is this where I can buy Mets tickets?”

“Yes it is.”

“Great. I'd like two for Friday night, September 12 against the Braves.”

“We have those.”

“Say, if it rains, can I come anyway?”

“Absolutely.”

“And can I sit and wait for a couple of hours?”

“We encourage it.”

“If there's no realistic chance the game will be played, can I wait around for a good long time anyhow?”

“We're set up to accommodate that.”

“And can you make me think there's the slightest chance they'll play — like, can you make an announcement once or twice to that effect?”

“We'll do it in such a way that you'll think we're looking at a radar of Tahiti as opposed to Flushing.”

“Oh, and after you show an old highlight film or two, can you just slap some corporate logo up on DiamondVision so there's nothing to watch amid the tedium?”

“That's standard operating procedure.”

“And you're sure I can just sit as if a game is going to start soon even though the tarp is on the field and the rain is coming down and I have a lousy cold and I should be in bed?”

“Sir, the New York Mets assure you they'll almost never not do that in bad weather.”

“Great, I'll take two.”

“Here you go. Enjoy your long pointless evening at Shea Stadium.”

Field Level was always aspirational. It was the part of Shea you saw on TV, the part of Shea closest to the Mets, the part of Shea that was listed first when you thought about buying tickets. Beginning in the middle of 1980, it was flaming orange, which gave it cachet (or ca-Shea) to burn.

That said, Field Level was not necessarily the best seat in the house. It could be in a given location, but when it wasn't, and you found your neck in a constant state of crane, it was no more outstanding than the right Loge, Mezzanine or perfectly positioned Upper Deck slot. What Field Level always had going for it was it was the only one of the four primary levels of Shea Stadium where they made a point of keeping you out.

Field Level was the most exclusive normal part of Shea. Forget the Diamond View Suites and the Picnic Area. We know those were designed to be off limits. But Field Level was just seats for a Mets game. There were days when for a reasonable incremental investment, I could purchase them out at the ticket window. What if I didn't? What if they weren't available? What if I just wanted to come down to say hello to somebody? Or what if I wanted to buy something to eat or to wear that was sold only there?

Oh, I was so not getting in.

Wednesday night, I sat in Field Level for the final final time. Twice this season I assumed my orange ass-quaintanceship was over, that every time I had gotten in was a fluke. But one friend, with his mitts intermittently on the third base box of a company whose sole business as far as I can tell is to maintain four seats it never uses, kept making encores happen for me. He invited me to join him five separate times in 2008 and arranged for me to forge an unforgettable reunion a sixth time. I am extraordinarily grateful to this gentleman and urge you to consider buying every one of his Mets books if you haven't already (not because they're swell seats, but because they're good books). Anyway, Matt Silverman brought me into the orange circle for a last look around last night and it didn't disappoint.

The things you notice when you sit about a dozen rows from the field in a seat whose number is even and a little under 100:

• Balls down the line, their fairness and their foulness.

• The Pepsi Party Patrol girls smiling like they mean it when they dance on the visitors dugout. (I've been at Shea so much lately that I've come to know their names from their nightly DiamondVision turn…and have come to believe Crystal has an Aunt Sarah in Alaska.)

• Third base coaches are not hired for their athletic body types.

• How much camaraderie there is between opposing players before first pitch (except, apparently, between Elijah Dukes and human beings).

• The desperation on outfielders' faces when a dying quail approaches.

• How determined David Wright is to catch everything.

• How safe Jose Reyes is when he sets a record.

• Your leaning forward is bad news for the patron to your left.

• One person stands, everybody is screwed.

• Less maneuvering room than that which exists in Row Q of the Upper Deck. If the most petite of Olympic gymnasts would be physically challenged by the logistics of pulling a bag out from under an orange Shea seat, what hope have I?

• Cupholders!

• Too many people tap away on PDAs during ballgames for which their tickets were too expensive to somebody.

• There is little awareness by people who get up to get something or come back with that same something during critical pitches in crucial at-bats (though that, like the Palms and the BlackBerrys, is true in Mezzanine and everywhere else in the industrialized world).

• Field Level wasn't designed for waiter or waitress service. It's barely designed for vendors.

• An oversampling, by Shea standards, of older fans; those who can't as easily make the trip upstairs; probably prosperous fans who are the ones who can (or could) afford season tickets; loyal fans whose nameplates have been in place since way before any of the current nameplates over the clubhouse lockers were applied.

• Teens who are given somebody's unwanted tickets for a night don't really get how lucky they are.

• Kids who probably think this is where you always get to sit.

• At least one men's room is pimped out with space age urinals — like something out of a MolliCoolz brochure — and features both hand driers and towel dispensers (packing towels no less!).

• You're still not getting a ball. Not a pop fly, not a pity toss. It's never going to happen.

• There is an inevitable foot traffic bottleneck right behind home plate in the concourse just as there is in the Upper Deck. In this sense, Shea Stadium inconveniences everybody equally.

Now and then in my Field Level seatings I have to confess I've looked up at a relatively full stadium and thought how odd it is that people are sitting elsewhere. Don't they know this is the place to be? To be fair and unelitist, I've flipped the equation. Upper Deck is God's Country! Those swells don't know what they're missing! But the Field Level seats, in theory anyway, are different from yours and mine. Like I said, not always better, occasionally around the corners worse, but definitely different.

I laughed to myself when on the final concession stroll of my Field Level career I landed in right, at the “food court” outpost that sells brisket (it was my 34th game of the year — I'm running out of things I haven't tried). I laughed because I knew that I would have to show my ticket to get back to the concourse. It was the sixth inning, the Heilman frame as they call it in bowling. I'd be carrying a sandwich. Where the hell else would I be headed but to my seat? But I would have to prove it in a way I wouldn't have to in Loge or Mezzanine or Upper Deck. With not a dozen regular-season games remaining, the reins remain tight on Field Level. A guard is stationed to keep you out in 2008 as a guard presumably was in 1964, as a guard has always been to my recollection.

I indeed had to show my ticket. I laughed again.

It's nice down there, y'know? It's nice because you don't get down there much and it's nice because there's a game going on nearby. But it's not that nice that it needed to be informed by the aura of a restricted country club. If I look forward to one thing about World Class Citi Field it's that the Mets have declared you can get up and walk where you want like an adult and not be eyeballed, frisked and inspected for proper credentials. They told us this at the World Class Citi Field Preview Center last September. They volunteered it, as if they understood how inane their standing policy had been for 44 seasons. But here in the 45th season, they keep it up to Shea's dying day. As fan/guest/customer relations told me ages ago when I protested, “It's policy.”

Barring a postseason miracle (hey — I see one victory balloon before this thing is called and…yeah, you better run), I'll take in the rest of my Shea viewing from other vantage points. I won't be able to flash that golden ticket. I won't be one of the chosen thousands allowed to ante up for sushi on a whim. I will have to argue with somebody in an orange golf shirt or blue windbreaker if I want to partake of one more California roll for the road. I almost absolutely surely said sayonara to my beloved Daruma last night. It was tougher, I swear, than watching Pelfrey and the pen surrender ten runs to the freaking Nationals.

Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. All I ever craved was unfettered access to the only sushi stand at Shea Stadium.

And to think it seemed mildly insane to have an off-day after a two-game series. After whatever the hell just happened for the last two nights, we could all use a week listening quietly to whale songs in a warm bath in a dim, candlelit room.

Worry of the moment: What if we make it to October and everybody's arms are on E? In this current turn through the rotation, Pedro has looked ordinary and both Ollie and Pelf have been awful. You'll find Aaron Heilman under that heading as well, as per usual, but tonight he was joined by the normally stalwart Brian Stokes, who couldn't locate anything but his fastball and found that wasn't enough. Joe Smith was impeccable (with a lot of help from David Wright), as was Luis Ayala, but when it was 7-1 Mets the devout hope was that tonight's blog entry would be a meditation on the long-delayed debut of Bobby Parnell, instead of more hosannas for guys who could have used a breather. As if. It makes sense that Parnell's baptism has been kept on hold pending a blowout, but there's no such thing as a blowout when the Mets are involved these days.

But still. Let's hope we wind up having October to worry about. If Wright hits the way he did tonight, that would be a big help getting us there — and would further build his legend. By now it's a famous story that David accelerated his rise to the big leagues by working less hard, learning not to exhaust himself in St. Lucie pregame. So it was a bit scary to see him out there yesterday afternoon in the batting cage, taking extra hacks with both Howard Johnson and Jerry Manuel offering counsel. But Wright seems to thrive on not doing things the easy way — he's like John Henry with a bat, convinced that even more hard work is the best way to break down whatever barrier's come between him and what he can do. Yet he's often right — when talk radio begins to buzz about how tired he looks, you know a big game is coming. So of course extra BP, instead of tying his mind into even more of a knot, was a preview of a 4-for-4 night and a home run on a nice, line-drive swing that gave us enough insurance to downgrade tonight's game from nightmarish to merely scary. And while it would take a truly magnanimous Met fan to say Wright deserved a Gold Glove last year, this year it would take a truly mean-spirited one to say he doesn't. In the late innings tonight Wright's glove — and sometimes just his bare hand — seemed to be all that separated us from disaster.

If the Mets are showing the kind of pluck and patience they sorely lacked a September ago, the Nats seem like a rowdy study hall that's stopped respecting Mr. Acta's authority. The talent is there — Ryan Zimmerman, Lastings Milledge and the somehow-resurrected Cristian Guzman have obvious firepower, and Elijah Dukes is nothing less than a force of nature, primal rage constantly boiling out of a vessel too flawed to contain it. But the Nats lost in no small part because they kept aiming the gun at their own feet. Exactly how many lineouts to center does Milledge have to convert into hits before he plays at normal depth? (Cracked Keith: “He looks like he's out there to pull the number off the wall.”) What lesson is learned when Dukes takes several hours to leave the field after a groundout, delaying his exit further to incite an already-hostile crowd? What makes Anderson Hernandez think he can automatically get time with Ayala nearly in his windup after the Nats took forever to get him up to the plate with an out to go? Then there was the surreal sight of no less than seven men converging on first base at high speed after Damion Easley popped up and left Fernando Tatis scrambling on the wrong side of second in the fifth. Who would get there first? Tatis? Easley? Kory Casto? Emilio Bonifacio? Garrett Mock? Wil Nieves? The first-base ump? Somehow none of them collided, and somehow Tatis managed to find first before anyone in the gray and navy scrum could. Nieves' amazed disgust at the blown play at his feet told you everything you need to know about the Nats' 2008 — yes, they're young and it's been a long slog, but the lack of discipline on the field was startling.

Greg was in the park tonight; so were Emily and her dad. (As the Nats stumbled around in the seventh, I text-messaged NO DAIRY QUEEN FOR ANY OF YOU!!! to her, a household joke borrowed and transformed from a wistful quote about a long-ago playoff game.) For attending they got 23 runs' worth of offense, a pretty nice night with a hint of autumn (which of course hints at autumn baseball), and generous portions of joy and terror. But they missed a great show by Gary, Ron and Keith. There was Keith's crack about Milledge, Darling's dry assessment of Pelfrey making Dukes fish after Elijah's mini-eruption (“fastball in, slider away — it's worked for a hundred years”), and Gary's observation in the bottom of the eighth that 11-10 would be a fitting final score for the Nats' last appearance at Shea Stadium, since the Montreal Expos began their existence with an 11-10 win there on Opening Day in 1969. As a collective those three — and Howie Rose on the radio side — are not only great play-by-play guys and top-notch analysts, but also Met historians of the highest rank. We should all of us spend a few weeks listening to lesser announcers chronicle our team, just to remind us how lucky we are. (Hmm. How about October?)

Granted, none of us much minded that Wright's home run made it 13-10 and so spoiled Gary's symmetry. Just as we may find a strange comfort in the fact that the Mets again have 17 to play but find themselves 3.5 games ahead, not seven.

We have half the lead we had last year. Fine. We also have twice the team.

Maybe you've heard: We supposedly have an easy schedule the rest of the way. Four with the Cubs, yeah, but they could well have wrapped things up by then, and the rest is all the dregs of the National League East.

Well, beyond the elementary fact that we're Met fans and so never assume anything is gift-wrapped for us, we know better. There can be no tougher opponent than a team that's out of it and is sending out young players trying to earn their spurs for next year — pitchers you've never seen and a lineup of guys handed the added incentive of a chance to derail someone else's postseason aspirations. The Nationals and Marlins played a key role in sending us to our doom in 2007, and the Braves may have been eliminated tonight but they still have Bobby Cox and Chipper Jones, which is nightmare fuel enough. Whatever the standings say, it gives me no pleasure whatsoever to see all those WSHs and ATLs and FLAs awaiting us. (Same warning applies for the Phils, about whom more in a moment — they've got essentially the same schedule, except their four-spot comes against the Brewers.)

For three and a half innings tonight, it was like a bad dream of September 2007. There was David Wright battling himself, Oliver Perez pitching like a spooked horse, and the Nationals rising up in indignation in the top of the fourth after the Mets took a 5-2 lead. Walk, strikeout, single, single, single, single, single, single, walk and finally a merciful but awfully late GIDP. While first Oliver and then Nelson Figueroa ducked and covered, there was Anderson Hernandez trying to prove to us that he could too hit, and Lastings Milledge looking for vengeance, and Ryan Zimmerman back from the dead and looking far too alive for my tastes, and the horrid Aaron Boone and various Anonynats and I swear they were hitting for about two days. 5-2 Mets turned into 7-5 Nats, and only the absence of Willie Randolph standing at the dugout railing like Captain Ahab assured me that it wasn't, in fact, 2007.

But you know what else was different?

Brian Schneider led off the bottom of the fourth with a single.

Seems like a little thing, but it mattered: Rather than looking unmanned and undone, the Mets came right back, putting together a rally on two singles and a groundout to tie the game. Yes, Fernando Tatis popped up with two outs and the bases loaded, but the counterpunch was enough to send the demons away.

OK, so in the top of the fifth the Nats retook the lead against an ineffective Brandon Knight. Guess what? Damion Easley led off the bottom of the fifth by drawing a walk. That didn't lead to a run, but, again, it was enough to serve as an exorcism. The Mets weren't panicking, but working good counts and turning in good at-bats. And eventually, one of Manny Acta's moves backfired under that pressure: He brought in Charlie Manning to turn around Carlos Beltran and neutralize Carlos Delgado, and the first Carlos slammed a two-run homer for the lead and the second Carlos sent a mortar off the K board above the relievers' heads. 10-8 Mets, and between peerless relief and nice defense from Damion Easley and Wright (whose offensive struggles have been invisible in the field), we got it to Luis Ayala, who went 1-2-3 against the team that cast him aside as a failed mop-up guy.

Do we lose this game in 2007? Of course we do — we lost this game twice against the Nats a year ago, along with three others that were thoroughly nauseating in other ways. (Don't click those links if you've got a bad heart, a weak stomach, or both.) But that was last year: 10-8 isn't normally a thing of beauty, but it was beautiful tonight.

And maybe there's magic in that untidy score: For a few minutes later and 100-odd miles south, Matt Lindstrom got Pat Burrell to whack a 2-0 pitch to center for the final out of a 10-8 Marlins win.

None of this ensures anything — I don't need to be reminded that those 2007 Mets started September 8-1. But it ensured tonight, and that's more than enough until the next tonight.