Emily and I knew our beach vacation would have to share mental space with the Mets, the Phillies and assorted opponents of the day. But yesterday I found myself pursuing another order of business — one I never thought would move me to action. I found myself on mets.com, ordering a pair of Shea Stadium seats.

If you're a veteran reader of this little blog, you probably know I'm not sentimental about Shea Stadium. I love the team that calls it home, of course, and any wedge of green grass and tan dirt used for the most beautiful game in the world will get a happy sigh from me. (Last fall, coming back from a long trip to Europe, the plane dipped down over Vermont, New Hampshire and upstate New York; looking down, I grinned broadly to once again see baseball diamonds — whether razor-edged and immaculate, vaguely diamond-shaped, or totally overgrown — dotting the landscape.) I have lots of wonderful memories of Shea, but they have to do with games and players and friends — to paraphrase Tom Seaver, the architecture's not part of them. Between its rusting beams, sticky floors, exploding bathrooms, sleeping vendors, bad food, and surly Aramark drones, Shea resembles a North Korean government building that happens to have a baseball game in the middle of it. I respect my friends who feel differently, but so long as the game is still played nearby, I won't exactly be sad to see the building go.

So given all that, what was I doing agreeing to shell out more than $900 for a pair of plastic seats from the old barn? Particularly when I'm in an, um, career transition? (Do you need a vocation to be on vacation?)

Practically speaking, I thought of our backyard deck and how it would be simple to take up a couple of boards of Trex, bolt down two seats and reassemble things. The seats would add a little character to the place, and we were always hauling plastic chairs back there for people to sit on anyway. People would get a kick out of the Shea seats, and run no risk of falling backwards into the vinca after a few too many, as has been known to happen with plastic chairs and the uncharted edge of the deck. As for Emily, she kind of shrugged at the idea — you might describe her as “accepting,” “acquiescent,” “indulgent” or even “resigned,” but she wasn't “opposed.”

But of course “practically speaking” never has much to do with the question of why one is buying expensive surplus baseball-park seats. So what was I doing?

I suppose it's this: While I'm happy about CitiField, I don't pretend that it won't mark a new era in the history of the baseball team I've followed my whole life. Parenthood has cut down on my Shea visits in recent years, and I know that'll be even more true at CitiField, at least until the novelty wears off for the city as a whole. I'm not particularly worried about being shut out: Rightly or wrongly, I figure I'll get by via StubHub and friends with plans and lagniappe, and soon enough I'll know the new place as well as I know Shea, from where the better food is to the quickest escape routes. (And where the Shake Shack outpost is — I'll have that one figured out after Visit No. 1.) But all this will take a while, and even then, with fewer seats, deciding to go to Citi will likely never be as simple as deciding to go to Shea. I'm pretty sure I'll be happy at CitiField, but that's not the same as knowing for sure.

The team that will play at CitiField will look more or less the same in terms of uniforms and fan-bestowed myths, and I hope the company will include many of the same people. But while the architecture won't be the focal point of those new memories any more than it is of Shea reminiscences, it will be different, and memories will inevitably be Shea memories and Citi memroies.

Which gets to the heart of the matter.

I saw my first games as a baseball-mad child at Shea, rooting for Mike Phillips and Joel Youngblood and Lee Mazzilli. Years later, having moved back to the area, I met my blog partner and good friend Greg Prince at Shea, no doubt outside Gate E, for Bill Pulsipher's major-league debut. Which kicked off a hell of a run in Queens: I saw Rey Ordonez introduce himself to New York with an unbelievable relay to home plate; John Franco get ejected for fighting and so not be available for a save opportunity on John Franco Day; Todd Hundley's 41st homer; Mike Piazza's first game; John Olerud erase weeks of frustration with a grand slam off Greg Maddux; Brad Clontz uncork a wild pitch that kept 1999 going; Pratt hit one over the fence; Robin Ventura's grand-slam single; the 10-run inning against the hated Braves; Benny Agbayani's extra-inning home run; Bobby Jones send Jeff Kent and the Giants home with a one-hitter; Timo Perez leap into the air to get us to the World Series even faster; and David Wright's major-league debut. (And I've left space for two more months of good things, should the baseball gods provide.)

Did Shea have a lot to do with these memories? Not really, though I did enjoy (with a touch of anxiety) watching the stands flex under 50,000 ecstatic die-hards. But it would be small-minded and mean-spirited to ignore the fact that these things happened at Shea. Those two green seats (because that's where I usually sat) will be an homage to all those times — and, OK, an acknowledgment that I'm a little more sentimental than I thought.

It was a much bigger night for Carlos Delgado and Mike Pelfrey than it was for yours truly, but I'm going to grab third star from Monday's contest for myself.

Delgado: Two homers, six RBI, beautiful first base defense, a drama-free curtain call.

Pelfrey: A second consecutive complete game masterpiece.

Me: My 400th game that counted* at Shea Stadium.

I have to share this bronze with my friend Ben (you know him, perhaps, as Student of the Game) who provided my passage to another Log milestone in 2008. Ben has committed to memory every high and low of the past three seasons, all the way back to Opening Day 2006, so he can appreciate a numerical obsession.

Did I know, Ben asked, that the Mets have started 12 different leftfielders this season? I did not. Could I name them now that I knew there were an even dozen? Alas, I could come up with only 11/12ths of them**.

But I can count to 400.

• No. 100 was May 24, 1996. It was a loss to the Padres. Fernando Valenzuela cruised for San Diego 15 years and a couple of weeks after I saw him cruise for the Dodgers. Fernando cruised Shea a lot in his day.

• No. 200 was October 1, 2000. It was a win over the Expos, the last day of the season. We required 13 innings and three Geoff Blum errors, including a bad throw to score Benny Agbayani to end it. I'd be back six days later for another cup of Benny Bean heroics.

• No. 300 was July 24, 2005, a win over the Dodgers and the first-ever game for young Alex Wolf. I suspect Alex, whom I failed to convert to the church of baseball, is stuck on 1, but I haven't checked lately.

• No. 400 was August 25, 2008. We handily beat the Astros, the same franchise that beat us on July 11, 1973, the Wednesday afternoon I sputtered to an 0-1 start, never daring to dream I could someday grow up to be 221-179 (211-176 regular-season, 10-3 postseason), never imagining anything beyond the hope that someday I'd get to Shea a second time and maybe see my first win.

You'll notice, if I haven't put you to sleep with my salute to numerology, that the time between milestones keeps shortening. I've been to 110 games at Shea since the dawn of Faith and Fear. I was actually fading a bit as a Sheagoer during the Art Howe era, but this blog revived me. The team got better, sure, and the urgency kicked up a notch once Shea had an expiration date affixed to its left field wall, but having somewhere to write about going to Shea, besides a ledger, proved the all-time spur for my personal attendance. And starting in 2005, I really stumbled into a pot of gold in terms of meeting Mets fans, a second wave akin to my early online days when Jason, then Laurie, then other wonderful folks proved themselves friends I hadn't yet met. Since '05, there've been people like Ben; people whose names could fill a few paragraphs right here and now; people who didn't exist for me before this blog took flight. They've become a big part of my baseball life and they're people I'm privileged to know, at Mets games and elsewhere. The pleasure is always mine.

Lots of pleasure for everybody Monday night, for No. 400. How could anyone with a home team-rooting interest not find pleasure in Pelfrey's lightning-quick transition from question mark to exclamation point?! From Delgado shedding his albatross status and picking up the mantle of team MVP? Who couldn't laugh a little, given the nine-run lead, that the primary culprit who kept this from being a complete game shutout was (Christ Almighty) David Newhan? Who would deny after where the Mets were in April and May and June that this has been a helluva summer to spend at Shea, that this has been — as a wonderful book about 1969 was called — a magic summer?

I'm a happy Mets fan these days. The happiness is tempered by who's on the DL (if not by who's finally off it). The happiness could be tapered by Wednesday night should the next August trip to Philadelphia take the course the last August trip to Philadelphia did. It's a tough row to hoe at the Cit and the Dolph and the Mill and I have no idea whether a Maineless rotation and a Castillo-laden infield will maintain the magic this summer has conjured at Shea. I'm far from saying “I don't care,” but…no, I do care. We've gotten too close to September not to. But this Mets club, this Redeem Team II if you will, has given us more than we could have expected amid the swirl of swill we were hopelessly stuck in back in late Randolph. They've given me a helluva ride going back to June 29, the final game of the final Subway Series at Shea Stadium. The Mets are 20-7 at Shea since then, with me on hand for 10-4 of that.

They look like numbers to you. They represent experiences to me. The numbers are etched into The Log for all time, no matter that the binding cracks and the pages start to yellow. The experiences loom as my Tennessee sippin' whiskey. Tonight I caught a buzz because we won 9-1. Someday I'll pour myself a taste of these 400 nights and days and every drop, I'm betting, will go down pretty damn smooth.

Ben and I talked about a lot of Mets matters Monday night, but the one note I think I hit as squarely as Delgado hammered Wesley Wright came after Reyes tripled and Pelfrey scampered home to make it 9-0 and all who remained stood and cheered. This place, I said, is so much better when everyone is happy.

Happy Shea Stadium.

Happy first place.

Happy summer.

Happy 400th.

*There were two exhibitions and one intrasquad affair way back when, but if they're not written down, they didn't “officially” happen.

**I came up with Pagan, Clark, Chavez, Alou, Anderson, Evans, Tatis, Easley, Nixon, Aguila, Murphy; the one I didn't get was one-game starter Andy Phillips. But hey, even Mike Pelfrey can't throw a shutout every turn.

We certainly had righteous fun tearing apart the 75 Greatest Moments at Shea ballot, but now that fan voting has trimmed the selections to the Top Ten, it's time to get even more serious. You have until September 1 to vote for any one of the following, with the Mets revealing the big winner during the last week of the season.

FYI, these weren't necessarily the Top Ten I voted for, but I can't say any of them are bad choices. Then again, there are no Ice Capades here.

In chronological order:

• August 15, 1965: Beatles' First Concert at Shea

–Well, they did have more hits than the Mets in 1965.

• July 9, 1969: Tom Seaver's Imperfect Game

–I get the feeling the first Mets' no-hitter wouldn't be as good as this.

• October 16, 1969: Mets Win the World Series

–There are no words.

• October 25, 1986: Mets win Game Six of the World Series

–There is, in fact, one word, and it's a proper noun.

• October 27, 1986: Mets are World Champions Again

–Until further notice, that's the last time it happened.

• October 9, 1999: Todd Pratt's homer clinches the NLDS

–Of course Pratt was playing — it was a day game after a night game.

• October 17, 1999: Robin Ventura's Grand Slam Single

–“Siphon votes from me, will ya?” Tank screamed at Robin as he tackled him short of second.

• June 30, 2000: Mike Piazza Caps Ten-Run Inning Against Braves

–It was Fireworks Night; the Grucci Brothers apologized for it being anticlimactic.

• September 21, 2001: Mike Piazza Returns Baseball to New York City

–The only night Chipper Jones wasn't booed at Shea Stadium

• October 19, 2006: Endy Chavez's Catch

–Doubling Jim Edmonds at first should probably be listed as an additional moment.

So…what're you gonna vote for? Remember, you have until Monday, September 1 to make your voice heard.

I've never completely understood the adage about not letting the other team's best guy beat you. He's their best guy. He's supposed to be the one who beats you if you are, in fact, supposed to get beaten. When Albert Pujols homered off Aaron Heilman in the fourteenth inning a few weeks ago, it wasn't fun, but it was Albert Pujols. It beat Yadier Molina beating us.

Likewise, I can accept Miguel Tejada or Lance Berkman pulling the trigger a lot less begrudgingly than I can the Astros' support crew doing us in. Brad Ausmus? Before today, he was a Killer B only by first initial. Darin Erstad? Power wasn't his game…before today. Good Major Leaguers continuing long careers, but not the guys who you picture crucifying your chances in the late innings.

But David Newhan? Christ Almighty, as David Newhan himself might think with total sincerity in the matter.

I was familiar with only two elements of David Newhan's biography when he signed with the Mets to become the new and hopefully improved Chris Woodward last year: 1) His father is a sportswriter of great renown; 2) he, like Shawn Green and Scott Schoeneweis, was represented by a card in my Jewish Major Leaguers set that these fine folks put out. As one who writes about sports and has been Bar Mitzvahed, I filed both facts under “couldn't hurt” and waited for David Newhan to perform utilityman miracles.

And I waited.

David Newhan's 2007 was one of the least inspiring of all Met 2007s. To put it kindly, he never quite got untracked. Hit a momentarily big homer against Milwaukee in a game that was ten minutes from devolving into a Brewer blowout. Contributed days later to the unlikeliest of ninth-inning rallies against the Cubs. And if he did anything else after May 17, I must have missed it. Willie Randolph kept sending David Newhan up to bat and, like Ricky Ledee (1 HR, 6 RBI, .222 BA), David Newhan (1 HR, 6 RBI, .203 BA) kept turning right around to reclaim his a seat on the bench. His unremarkable production as a bit Met was not unique. Utilitymen — whoever their father, whatever their lineage — are benchbound precisely because they are generally incapable of cracking a good lineup. It happened to Woodward. It happened to Joe McEwing before him. It happens to almost all of them. They also tend to wander through the desert seeking a 25th-man role on foreign rosters. Thus, David Newhan — erstwhile member of the organizations of the Athletics, the Padres, the Phillies, the Dodgers, the Rockies, the Rangers, the Orioles and the Mets — journeyed on after 2007, candles unlit in the Shea Stadium window regarding his return.

He came back this weekend anyway, not as a Newhan but as a new man — a man apparently bent on inflicting regret on those for whom he did next to nothing. Saturday night? A no-doubt home run off John Maine, his first of the year. Perhaps David, starting at second base, used his '07 pine time to really study Maine's arm angle in anticipation of someday swinging against him. Or maybe he succeeded as he did because Johnny's arm is perilously close to falling off.

Sunday? Sunday David Newhan stepped up as a pinch-hitter for the Astros. In 2007, as a Met, David Newhan batted .171 in pinch-hitting situations. In 2008, he'd tumbled far from that lofty perch. He was 1-for-21 (.048) as a pinch-hitter before facing Aaron Heilman in the seventh. Call it the rise of the new man; call it David Newhan's revenge; call it anybody could have whacked Aaron Heilman today. But David Newhan singled sharply to drive in the tying run for Houston (and might have eventually scored an insurance run had Astro third base coach Ed Romero not waved home dead duck Humberto Quintero).

Two days, two ringing hits, two darts fired at the Mets' slimming first-place lead. The Mets have seemed like a much better or at least much spunkier unit than their 2007 predecessors all summer long, not necessarily because David Newhan isn't a Met anymore but his absence, though largely overlooked, didn't hurt. His presence this weekend, however, sure has.

When I received my 2008 Jewish Major Leaguers update set, I was delighted to find portrayals of Scott Schoeneweis and Shawn Green in blue and orange that was authentic and not Photoshopped. But there was no David Newhan. I asked JML why Newhan as a Met was not included (if for nothing more than completion's sake) and was told that in light of David's chosen spiritual path — he considers himself a Messianic Jew, or what is referred to sometimes as a Jew for Jesus — “Newhan is considered 'out' in terms of current Jewishness.”

Funny, I thought. He was considered “out” by most pitchers every time they faced him last year.

Well, kind of.

Long Beach Island is so far from New York City in terms of feel that it's always a mild surprise to remember that it's not far at all in terms of distance: They get WFAN down here and SNY is on basic cable. Which makes it not unlike keeping track of the Mets at home, except here the game competes with the sound of the ocean instead of whatever the heck it is one's neighbors are doing.

I hope Emily and I can be forgiven for not following last night's game with razor-sharp intensity: We had to get a comically tired child fed, pajama'ed and into bed, unpack all our stuff and figure out what needed doing this morning so we can get down to the serious business of not doing much at all. (I was proud of myself that within half an hour on LBI I was oozing up Long Beach Boulevard at about 30 MPH, in no particular hurry to get anywhere. It used to take me a couple of days to force the West Side HIghway out of driver's muscle memory.)

Oh, and the fact that it was quickly 5-0 Astros took the edge off a bit, too.

And yet how far we've come: We kept watching, which was partially because that's what we do but also because these days you never think this team is done for until the 'F' appears. And indeed, with nobody out in the eighth it was 8-3, and then there stood Carlos Delgado with two on and two out, one good swing away from making it an honest-to-goodness ballgame again. (And if Duaner Sanchez hadn't been singularly unimpressive in attempting to clean up after John Maine, Carlos would have been the tying run.)

OK, so Carlos didn't get that one good swing — he was just off a hittable fastball from Tim Byrdak and then grounded out, and an inning later we'd lost. But man, what a difference a couple of months makes. Back then, if the Mets were up 8-3 I'd have been trying to figure out how they'd blow it. Now, they were down 8-3 and I thought, What the hey, we have a chance. I was wrong, but if you're measuring how far we've come, it really is the thought that counts.

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.