According to the gentleman sitting behind me way up high in Section 3 of the Upper Deck Saturday night…

• The Mets were headed to “Comeback City”.

• There was still “plenty of time left”.

• Every ball should have been thrown “to second!” even if the play was at another base.

• CLAP!

This dude — nowhere near qualifying for the League of Extraordinary Morons, mind you — did like his clapping. The Mets left little to applaud, but he urged them on without pause.

Beat booing.

When John Maine gathered two strikes: CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!

When John Maine gathered two balls: CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!

When John Maine gave up two more runs: not so much CLAP! but lots of exhortation delivered Bill Swerski's Super Fans style (a Chicago accent in Queens is very jarring; I fully expected a call for Manuel to be fired in favor of Ditka).

The Clapper did say please and thank you a lot — as in please get a hit and thank you for retiring an Astro — but he mostly clapped. As the game wore on, he grew rhythmic. It seemed to have no connection to the action, all of which was dismal. By the eighth, I caught his pattern.

HIS HANDS: CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!

MY MIND: one…two..three…go

HIS HANDS: CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!

MY MIND: one…two..three…go

HIS HANDS: CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!

MY MIND: going…going…gone

HIS HANDS: CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!

If I hadn't been nursing a stye above my left eye, I might not have minded The Clapper's booming palms in my left ear. And if the Mets really were headed for Comeback City instead of missing the exit ramp from Futility Freeway, he would have seemed more colorful and less cumbersome.

This was the first game I'd been to in a while where a lousy Mets performance could be sloughed off as just one of those things. Usually a resoundingly noncompetitive loss in which Brandon Backe outdoes Roy Oswalt while David Newhan makes like Lance Berkman would have me ghosting suicide notes for the entire Sterling Equities organization. But I've seen the evil and the good — doctor, my stye! — enough to give the Mets the benefit of one stinker's doubt. We never did approach Comeback City, and there really wasn't plenty of time left when were down 8-1, but it was a decent night in Dairlylea Coupon Country nonetheless. It was an evening to enjoy free sportsbags, complimentary bagpipes (to honor the Irish, the Mets wore the uniforms of the O'Hfers for four innings) and the company of my dear friend Matt from Sunnyside.

That's a name accurate in terms both geographic and disposition. Earlier this season, as I was penning concession speeches, Matt insisted Pelfrey and Delgado and everybody else would come around. The Mets played lame but Matt held firm to his optimism. Poor deluded soul, I thought then. Soon the Mets were winning, Matt's faith was validated and I was recalibrating my fearful estimations for the remainder of 2008. Who, besides The Clapper, seems clueless now?

Other than achy John Maine, I mean.

The following message was transmitted electronically to supporters of Jerry Manuel overnight:

Friend —

I have some important news I want to make official.

I've chosen Scott Schoeneweis, Aaron Heilman, Pedro Feliciano, Brian Stokes and Luis Ayala to be my closer.

The bullpen and I will appear as running mates this evening in Flushing, New York — the same place this campaign began more than four months ago.

I'm excited about hitting the ninth-inning trail with the bullpen, but the six of us can't do this alone. We need our entire rotation's and offense's help to keep building this movement for first place.

Please let the five relievers who have recorded saves in Billy Wagner's absence know you're glad they're part of our team. Share your personal welcome note and we'll make sure they get it.

Thanks for your support,

Jerry

P.S. — Make sure to turn on your TV at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time to join us or watch in person at Shea Stadium.

On Thursday night Tom Seaver paid one of his periodic visits to the broadcasting booth, an occasion that should be a happy one for Met fans but somehow never quite is. Why not? Because whenever Seaver visits, you get the definite impression that he treats such drop-ins as if he's Zeus come down to blister a mortal or two with his radiance. When Keith Hernandez — not even a Hall of Famer! — had the temerity to ask Seaver how he lost all those games, the laughter was loud and long, and Seaver was smiling. But there was a slight hinge of hysteria to the guffaws — Keith had danced gleefully onto a third rail, and Gary and Ron didn't seem entirely sure that he'd get off it alive.

But hey, it was definitely funny. Less funny was Seaver narrating footage of himself talking pitching with a gaggle of Met hurlers, including Joe Smith and Mike Pelfrey. Seaver made no bones about being unimpressed with Pelfrey (whose name he apparently didn't know), relating bemusedly that he'd been discussing the pressure point of a change-up grip and the kid hadn't known what he was talking about, making Seaver realize he had to go a lot more slowly. Not exactly a comfortable moment in the booth — thanks for the vote of confidence, Tom!

Seaver gets a pass for these things for two reasons. The first reason is because he is the closest thing to God among those who have worn the blue and orange — the only guy who wears our cap in Cooperstown, as any of us could tell you. But the second reason is because he is one of the most cerebral students of one of the world's most difficult crafts — the ability to throw a baseball over and over again to certain points with certain velocity and spin, an act which is the culmination of a demanding choreography between body parts, some of are making unnatural motions and will require being packed in ice to avoid permanent harm, and all of which aforementioned stuff would be hard enough without another preternaturally gifted athlete standing a bit over 60 feet away waiting for the smallest mistake that will allow him to slam that ball back at you harder than you threw it. Tom Seaver was a superb physical specimen, yes. But he every bit as much of a Hall of Famer from the neck up, studying pitching with a lab scientist's pitiless scrutiny and an engineer's fever to tinker.

And psychologically he was a monster, waiting to devour any hitter who betrayed a weakness. One of my favorite stories is about Seaver pitching against the Pirates in the rain, and waiting to throw the ball until a droplet of water had grown heavy enough so that it would wiggle off the bill of Manny Sanguillen's helmet and into his face while Seaver's pitch was traveling. Few other pitchers would have thought of that, but Seaver regarded such things as a crucial part of his arsenal, and he never had much use for those who didn't devote the same care to that mental side of pitching. Seaver knew his profession was thick with throwers and chuckers, guys with million-dollar arms and heads worth a lot less than that, and always seemed faintly affronted that they had the same job description he did. Pitching, he said last night, “is using what you have to work with on any particular day and it changes within the context of the day. It's the definition of pitching, it's not the definition of throwing.”

Seaver said that in discussing Pedro Martinez (tip of the quoting hat to Mark Herrmann), but it would have applied even more so to Johan Santana tonight. Santana, frankly, didn't look terrific — his location was off and his pitchers seemed to lack the zip and bite they've had recently. Roy Oswalt, his counterpart on the mound, looked better, but wound up with that left-handed compliment for pitchers, the eight-inning complete game.

How? Well, luck certainly had something to do with it. Santana rode the edge of disaster a couple of times (particularly when he batted down Lance Berkman's centerbound scorcher with two on and two out in fifth) and got some help from poor baserunning by Hunter Pence. Oswalt, on the other hand, was nicked for a run on one of the least-wild wild pitches in baseball history and a bloop single, made one bad pitch the rest of the night, and lost.

But it wasn't just luck — far from it. When your fastball's electric and you can throw the ball to a dime-sized target, you can do pretty much whatever you want on the mound. It wasn't exactly that kind of night for Santana. But because of that, I bet Seaver would say it was a victory to savor even more. Johan turned so-so stuff into seven shutout innings, using what he had to great effect. He won from the neck up — which was enough to make even Tom Terrific proud.

Why must my beloved Shea Stadium be strategically infested with morons? And can they remain inside the building once the demolition commences?

My morons from Thursday night stay in the game the way morons do: by drinking and cursing and not shutting nor toning down their yaps for a solitary second. There is nothing wrong per se with drinking or cursing or saying things. But it’s just a bad combination when it’s all stirred together for nine innings when I’m trying to enjoy the Mets beating the Braves.

Excessive drinking never helps matters. One beer, two beers…go ahead. The beverage industry appreciates your patronage and it’s legal. Taken in moderation, alcohol beverage intake has been shown to have beneficial health effects. Maybe you’ve heard of the French Paradox. It suggests drinking red wine can be a heart smart activity. But what of the Shea Paradox, the one in which the more the morons behind me drink, the less I enjoy being at my favorite place in the world?

Go figure.

I found it revealing that my morons (a quartet of them, two laddies, two lassies) told each other stories of how “I was so fucking drunk” over and over and over. Truly every third story for about six innings involved unseemly displays of drunkenness. It seemed to get them thrown out of every venue they’d been permitted in, including — shocker — Shea Stadium. No, not last night, darn it all to heck, but in the past. The most demonstrative of the morons did confess that this one fucking time when these fucking people were fucking mad at him for fucking standing and fucking cheering and they fucking called over a fucking usher who fucking threw him out…well he might have fucking deserved it because he’s pretty fucking sure he fucking wore his fucking Yankee jersey that night and had had like seven fucking beers in the first three fucking innings and he was (his words) pretty fucking obnoxious.

Credit must be given for that much self-awareness, I suppose.

Such behavior is to be expected by kids getting their first taste of hops, barley and freedom, except these were no kids. One of them complained (or fucking complained) that LeBron James is eight years younger than he is. LeBron James is 23, which would make this young man 31. At 31, you shouldn’t be fucking getting thrown out of places with such frequency. Nor should your baseball repartee be limited to, when Nick Evans is at bat, calling out “N-i-i-i-i-ck!” in a “funny” voice six or seven times and laughing hysterically every time.

When I attended Mets-Braves games in the past, I considered the Braves the greatest obstacle to my happiness. After the Mets completed their sweep of Atlanta, I had to rework my rankings regarding nemeses in such a scenario:

1) The morons behind me

2) The Braves, even in their present state

3) The fellow to my left who invaded my foot space with about a thousand peanut shells but was otherwise stone quiet until the score was 5-4

When Delgado drove in Wright (who walks a guy in a slump to get to a guy with four hits, open base or not?), I didn’t much care about the gentlemen and ladies behind me in what was technically Row D but was spiritually Row F. I was too excited by the events of the previous minutes: the Phillie loss going up on the big board; the Met win unfolding before my eyes; the knowledge that there would be no extra innings and that my shotgun acquaintance with the fab four would be ending as soon as I exited, stage left (they were relieved too, ’cause it meant their ringleader could go “fucking smoke”; doing so at Shea earlier this season got him fucking thrown out, you know). I picked up my bag — its strap soaked by those fucking guys’ fucking spilled beer — and put immediate distance between me and them.

After I interrupted our post-win revelry with a rant on what jerks we were stuck sitting in front of, my friend Mike, as civil and cerebral a sort as you’ll enjoy a game with, confessed he hadn’t really heard a whole lot of what they were carrying on about because he is adversely affected by aural nerve damage.

Out of respect for Mike and the gift of hearing in general, I won’t say some guys have all the luck.

Another story on how Chipper Jones loves Shea in today’s News. I’d squeal with delight if I ever heard a Met talk like this.

It's a shame that, provided both are behaving more or less decently, players and fans don't interact more. Baseball's fun to play and fun to watch. (Of course, on a mind-bogglingly gorgeous night like tonight, sitting outside a bus station would be pretty much A-OK. But still.)

Take the bottom of the seventh. Carlos Delgado had just driven in Nick Evans to tie a loopily entertaining Mets-Braves tilt at 4-all. (As you might expect, more on that in a moment.) Now, Julian Tavarez was in and Fernando Tatis was up. He crushed a 1-0 pitch to left, where it zipped into the glove of Omar Infante a couple of steps from the fence. A young guy in the bleacher area's slot in the outfield wall had apparently been yelling something at Infante, grinning to take away whatever edge his words might have carried. Infante let his momentum carry him nearly all the way to the guy's face, brandishing the ball he'd caught. He was grinning too. It was the kind of moment you don't see enough, and it was pretty cool.

But Dame Fortune didn't agree. She began to weave her web.

We have six more to play against the Braves, so your chronicler will recite no eulogies for them, for fear of getting a little spittle in the aforementioned Mistress of Baseball's eye. Nor will you hear any triumphant braying about the prospects of the orange and blue — besides the fact that that shit's for Yankee fans, last September will keep me woof-free until CitiField's days are numbered. But it's simple truth to observe that the Mets just played one of those charmed-life series against their old foes, one in which we got every big hit, every steely-eyed at-bat and every lucky bounce while they got absolutely nothing. We're not this good and they're not this bad, but sometimes baseball rules that you are and they are — and while that's decree is in delirious effect, you enjoy every single marvelous moment.

Where to start? Well, the Braves' defense was appalling all series: Kelly Johnson looked like his glove had been replaced with a cheese grater, while Chipper had one go simply straight through his glove to extend a Damion Easley at-bat. (I swear I remember the same thing happening to us against them — perhaps with Eddie Perez hitting? And no, I haven't forgotten Mr. Infante.) But first base was the real nexus of horrors for Atlanta. Mark Teixeira is gone and Casey Kotchman, his smooth-fielding replacement, missed the final two games to be with his ailing mom (whom we of course hope is OK), leaving Greg Norton and Martin Prado to do their meager best. Prado actually made a nice play on Delgado in the seventh, only to find Will Ohman had been gazing at the proceedings in fascination from the mound and wasn't where he should be, resulting in the ball sailing wide right and the Mets tying the game. In the top of the ninth, with Prado on second, Gregor Blanco grounded to deep second, where Easley made a nifty snag — and a throw so bad it was good. Delgado had to lunge toward the coach's box to corral it, neatly blocking the view of Greg Gibson, who called Blanco out. I presume Blanco didn't argue because he was dazed from pancaking into Delgado's broad back, but what about the famously argumentative Bobby Cox? Maybe it was because he saw Prado had rounded third with an urgency generally reserved for continental drift. Bobby's been around the game long enough to know a lot of things, including the immortal truth that when you're going horseshit they fuck you.

Blanco's erasure paved the way for the ninth, and the feeling that somehow, someway, the Mets would prevail. First, at 10:03 by my clock, Poland the Nats had actually managed a win against Germany the Phillies. David Wright was on second, having turned an 0-2 count into a 3-2 double up the gap. (I love David Wright.) The Inescapable Delgado was at the plate against Vladimir Nunez, and at 10:07, on a 1-1 count, he hit a shoulder-high liner at Infante. Dame Fortune (remember her) ooched that ball into the lights and it glanced off Infante's glove. He fell down. At that same moment, Wright had gone too far towards third and tried to reverse course. He nearly fell down, leaving the two critical players in this little drama on the ground or close to it with the game in the balance.

It was a shorter distance for Wright: He found his feet and dashed his way to a dusty belly-flop home, while Infante contemplated how the distance from left field to the Atlanta dugout had somehow morphed from 300 feet to 300 miles. If that guy from the seventh inning was still at his station, you know he gave poor Infante an earful. And I hope he did — not so much because Infante deserved it but because charmed baseball typically lasts about as long as late August imitates late May. You better enjoy both.

If you want to feel welcome at Shea Stadium (or its successor facility), here's a piece of advice. Don't be the man on the mound when the Mets clinch the pennant there. All will never be right for you in Flushing again.

Our sample size is two pitchers, so the rule is open to interpretation. But the precedent isn't pretty.

Case 1

Nolan Ryan enters Game Three of the 1969 NLCS in the third inning and pitches seven innings to close out the Braves, undoubtedly the most phenomenal long-relief performance in Mets history. Thirty-nine years later, he is invited back to participate in final weekend ceremonies at Shea Stadium and the New York Post reports he politely declines.

The better news is that the Mets, according to the Post, have invited “hundreds” of former players for the occasion (I didn't know that many ex-Mets sell Lincolns and Mercurys). If management has been saving all of them up for one big Sheagasm, well, great. I dream of a final Sunday like the one that closed Baltimore's Memorial Stadium in 1991 (from Peter Richmond's marvelous Ballpark: Camden Yards and the Building of an American Dream):

[T]hen Brooks Robinson steps onto the top step of the home dugout, pauses for a moment, hefts himself to the field, and jogs to third base.

And for that single moment, there isn't anyone in Memorial Stadium who wasn't finally grateful for the ballpark's youth; because of it, the men who played in it — almost all of them — could return to bid it good-bye, all of them alive. Other parks speak of their ghosts. Memorial needed none. It had never happened before that a stadium could be visited by virtually all of its former players.

With that kind of crowd of former Mets, big and small, would anyone in particular be missed if he didn't show? Probably, because we all have favorites and favorites are capable of letting us down, but it should be enough. It should be enough that the Mets asked, for Nolan Ryan — who as a Major League club president should know better — to appear on the last scheduled day of Shea. Ryan's never been particularly sentimental about his time in New York, and one doesn't doubt some bitterness will always reside in the soul of a player given up on young and succeeding for a generation thereafter.

But c'mon, Nolie. Come back.

Nolan's never resurfaced for a Shea Old Timers Day (when we used to have them), not even when the '69ers gathered. Seaver skipped the skippable 25th anniversary wake in 1994, but he eventually returned. Yogi didn't believe anybody made his presence necessary in '94 either, but Yogi's dropped by now and again since (Piazza's catcher home run record celebration, Ralph Kiner Night). Nolan Ryan, the only other Hall of Famer associated with the 1969 World Champion Mets, hasn't been to Shea, to the best of my recollection, since he stopped pitching for the Astros twenty years ago. Other than for being an Astro at Shea at an inopportune juncture in October 1986, I don't remember Mets fans holding Ryan's post-Mets blossoming against him. It won't ruin the final weekend not to have Nolan Ryan around, but it would be that much sweeter if he remembered what he did on the Shea mound on an autumn afternoon when he was young.

Case 2

Mike Hampton pitches a masterful three-hit shutout against the Cardinals in Game Five of the 2000 NLCS. Combined with his previous outing in St. Louis, it earns him the MVP award of the series. He is hoisted triumphantly by his teammates for capturing them the flag.

Then we grabbed him and threw him under the bus, where he has resided ever since.

Mike Hampton returns to Shea tonight. It is not to commemorate the final season of Shea. It is, if he hasn't hurt himself since this morning, to try and stop the 2008 Mets Express from rolling all over his current team, the Braves. Remember when we worried Mike Hampton would sign with the Braves? Remember when we would have liked him to have resigned with us? Remember Mike Hampton throwing that shutout in Game Five? Or the seven scoreless innings in Game One? Or the 15 wins in the regular season?

Or do you just remember he took a lot of money from the Rockies and said something inane about the area's schools?

I've seen Hampton pitch at Shea twice since he left, in 2001 and 2002. Both times he was booed to with an inch of his Fu Manchu. Both times mocking him was great fun. Both times the Mets defeated him. Both times were good times.

Both times, however, I applauded him very softly when he was announced. He won us the fricking pennant, I thought, where's the appreciation?

From here, Mike Hampton never looked comfortable in New York. He was a salary dump by the Astros and a hired gun for the Mets. He was the ace we desperately needed who took a little time to live up to his previous notices (sound familiar?) but when we required a step up in class, he generally gave it to us. He did it in the heart of the regular season, he didn't do it against the Giants or Yankees in the postseason, but he sure as hell did it against the Cardinals. You could argue Alfonzo or Perez or Zeile could have been NLCS MVP, but you couldn't argue with Hampton.

Then he left as a free agent, signed an enormous contract somewhere else and insulted our intelligence some by implying he wasn't lured to Denver by $121 million over eight seasons, the eighth of them playing out as we speak. I recall the Mets making him an extravagant offer that was blown out of the water by Colorado's. I forget the exact numbers, but I don't think we were going beyond six years or much above $100 million.

Real bang for the buck that would have been.

Mike Hampton was never a terribly sympathetic figure in a Mets uniform. For some reason it irked me that one time he sat on the bench in a Cleveland Browns helmet, as if he wished he were in another place, in another sport. The football mentality, if he had one, should have been shown in some other way, like retaliating for Piazza and the bat shard in Game Two of the World Series. But that was all background noise to his Mets legacy in my mind. The main attraction was that NLCS performance, that clinching game, that pennant, still the last one earned by a Mets team at Shea Stadium. That alone should get you a hall pass to say all kinds of silly things about all kinds of silly schools.

If he's remembered by the Shea crowd tonight, eight years later, it won't be with fondness. But listen closely after he's introduced. You'll hear one fleeting round of very soft applause before he is treated like any other Brave.

And if he's languishing again on the DL come September 28, he's welcome back on my watch for the final weekend. He can take Ryan's place.

I have been reminded that the late Tug McGraw closed out an NLCS for the Mets at Shea in 1973. He remained pretty popular in Queens for the rest of his life, though like Jesse Orosco, who finished off the Astros in Houston in 1986, he was traded away one season later.

Not so long ago, Mike Pelfrey making it through the fifth inning would have been worthy of somewhat grudging attaboys. The Kansas righty had size, stuff, a first-round pedigree and the most-famous visible tongue this side of Gene Simmons, but he rarely had results. It felt like you could diagram most Pelfrey starts: He'd show flashes, particularly with that evil sinking fastball of his, but quickly have trouble hitting his spots with his change and curveball, leading him to sideline the secondary pitches and try to get by with just the fastball, which would lead to an eruption of walks and hits and an early exit. And looming over all that was that prospect pedigree, which has been more blessing than curse for some time around here — recall, if you dare, the dull semi-parade that's featured the likes of Dave Mlicki, Jay Payton, Grant Roberts, Terrence Long, Pat Strange and Victor Diaz, to name just a few who arrived much celebrated and departed barely noticed. Sure, you have David Wright and Jose Reyes (and thank goodness), but given our underwhelming farm production of the last decade or so, a Met fan can be forgiven for wondering not what went wrong with the other guys, but what possibly could have gone right with those two.

But to the very short list of prospect success stories, perhaps we can now add Mike Pelfrey.

What happened? Maybe it's that Dan Warthen believes a curveball complements a fastball in a way that's nothing like ketchup and ice cream. Certainly you don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that Big Pelf seems a lot more comfortable under the Manuel/Warthen regime than he did during the Peterson/Randolph reign. When Willie came back to his California hotel room to find Omar waiting, Pelfrey had just beaten the Angels in singularly unimpressive fashion, allowing six earned runs over six innings to improve to 3-6 with a 4.62 ERA. Since then, he's 9-2 with an ERA of 3.12.

But I'm a little suspicious of that, perhaps just because as studious fans we eat these stories up — the “A-ha!” moment from the new coach is the baseball equivalent of the heroic prosecutor extracting a witness-stand confession from the bad guy in a courtroom drama. It might just be that Pelfrey came to the big leagues at 22, with very little in the way of minor-league experience, and had to absorb a fair number of the knockings-around that are a pitcher's life lessons. (Whether absorbing those beatings in brutally public fashion was good for him or not is another question.)

Whatever the case, tonight was one to celebrate. The Mets staked Pelfrey to a 5-0 lead courtesy of the wonderful Daniel Murphy and the horrible Atlanta Braves infield (though thankfully, fill-in first baseman Greg Norton was OK on a play that looked uncomfortably like Todd Hundley bearing down on Cliff Floyd's exposed forearm), then did their usual Metsian offensive snooze, letting the Braves creep back into view. In the sixth, up 6-1, Pelfrey gave up a bunt single to Gregor Blanco, then walked Yunel Escobar and Chipper to bring up Brian McCann with the bases loaded and none out. Three months ago, we all would have waited for Pelfrey to crumble; tonight, you felt like he'd find his way out of it — and one nifty double play from a cool-headed Argenis Reyes, he more or less had. That led him to the ninth and a 3-0 count on Larry Wayne, our old enemy now reduced to a figurehead. Again, one might have expected to peek ahead in the script and find a Chipper double or home run and Pelf trudging off the mound to be replaced by one arsonist or another. But no: Three pitches later, it was Chipper trudging away.

The worries about Pelfrey in September will likely concern his passage into uncharted territory innings-wise. That's not to be laughed off, not if these Mets wind up with October dates on their calendar after all. But look how far Mike Pelfrey's come. Too many innings? He and we should have such problems.

We're nuts, we Mets fans. Honest to god we are. There was so much doubt permeating Shea Stadium last night, right up to the moment Delgado doubled in the eighth, that you would have thought we were the fourth-place team a dozen games out and that the Braves were the division leaders.

Force of habit, maybe, but misplaced anxiety for this particular era. But at Shea, where the beers are $8.50, anxiety comes with the territory.

We trailed 3-2 from the third until the eighth. That's five innings. You would have thought it was five years — like 1977 through 1981. And, based on the chatter in my particular box, you could have easily mistaken Carlos Delgado for Mike Jorgensen, save for the splendid defense and epic grand slam against the Dodgers many moons ago. Jorgy was clutch! Delgado?

Delgado had been slumping. In July he had been surging. But that was July. That was history. The Mets' six straight wins from August 12 to August 17 were history. Dusty, musty history ever since the morbid afternoon of August 18 (Mets fan math: 1 loss > 6 wins). What had Delgado done for us lately? Strikeout and two grounders to second across the first seven innings of August 19. It was the eighth now. The bases were loaded. Carlos Delgado, 26 homers, 79 RBI coming into the evening, at bat. Carlos Delgado, borderline Hall of Fame slugger, up with three ducks on the pond. Carlos Delgado, whose revival made accurate the phrase first-place Mets, staring at a large chance to change the game.

Boy are we in trouble.

I was sucked into this vortex of doom pretty easily. Yes, I said, Delgado…oh dear. Delgado will fail and all the goodwill from July will evaporate altogether. This is his last chance to hear cheers at Shea Stadium, because once he grounds into a 4-6-3 double play, Carlos Delgado will not be welcome here any longer, not this year, not next. What a downer that Delgado will go back to being booed and inevitably doling out snippy half-quotes in the clubhouse; the Phillies are beating the Nationals, so the lead will be a half-game before it completely vanishes; it was fun while it lasted; cripes, does Luis Castillo really have to come off the DL before the rosters expand?

Then Delgado doubled to the base of the left field wall off Will Ohman* and two runs scored and the third base side of Field Level, on my encore final stay in the lower stands, got up and boogied. The joint was literally jumping. The joints that hold the joint together were probably rupturing. Same thing happened on the first base side last month when Billy Joel did “We Didn't Start The Fire” (such enthusiasm for children of Thalidomide). I'd lived through joyful jumpiness in the playoffs way the hell upstairs, but Billy's show was my first exposure to it down below. Delgado's double was the second. It wasn't the last play at Shea. It wasn't even the last play of the eighth. But we're nuts, we Mets fans. Honest to god we are. We assume the worst and when what's delivered winds up 180 degrees opposite of what we expect, we exult to extents that make two-run doubles vibrate like twelve-run homers.

Tavarez came in to pitch. Easley singled in two more to make it 6-3. The jumping recommenced. Castro then doubled in another. More amateur gravity-testers, more ups and downs. The third base side in a rally, I must report, doesn't feel as secure as the first base side during a concert. Your mother would nag you to cut that out! if it were your bed you were doing this to. Most children's beds, however, are probably sturdier at this point than the third base Field Level at Shea Stadium. Had Yunel Escobar not robbed Argenis Reyes, I'm pretty sure we would have seen the seats roll off their tracks (bad news for Mets fans, but an opportunity for the Jets to come home, I suppose).

Four-run leads with no particular arm to close don't feel any more secure than Field Level during an improv bunny hop. During one of the many festive Atlanta pitching changes in the eighth, somebody in A/V got the bright idea to play one of those line-dancing numbers that instruct everybody to jump two steps to the left and so forth. People were actually doing it. Swell, more pressure on the infrastructure. A few more runs and there'd be plenty of final season souvenirs strewn about for the taking, including my spine.

I exaggerate slightly, just as we did when glooming so determinedly at the sight of only a four-run lead entering the ninth. Scott Schoeneweis, as good or bad a choice as any Met reliever at that moment, came in and gave up some hard-hit balls. None of them mattered. The Mets were golden by then. The lead held. The seats held. The Mets, they had their own edge. Even some scattered mock tomahawk chops — remember those? — couldn't piss off the deities who normally frown on that sort of behavior. The Braves had just surrendered a five-spot and, one of us noted, Brian Jordan loomed nowhere inside their dugout.

The Mets won. We went nuts. Not necessarily in that order.

*Will Ohman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. Or maybe I'm thinking of somebody else.