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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This year's 150th game, a loss to the Nationals in Washington, is last year's 150th game, a loss to the Nationals in Washington.

This year's team meeting before the 150th game is last year's team meeting before the 150th game.

Odalis Perez is Chris Nabholz.

Willie Harris is Willie Harris is Willie Harris.

Fernando Tatis is Damion Easley.

The Phillies relentlessly edging in front are the '99 Braves.

The Brewers suddenly on our radar are the '99 Reds.

Ramon Martinez pinch-running is Jay Payton.

Brandon Knight spot-starting best not be Brian Lawrence.

One day lately is just like the other.

Never fear, the crumple is coming to an end. Because I, Jason Fry, bearer of Faith and banisher of Fear, am on my way to Washington, D.C., to give the blue and orange troops the support and tough love they obviously need, lest the hordes of Cheesesteak City blight another October. With yours truly poised like a rock of Gibraltar in the stands, victory is assured. Relievers will not give up infuriating tack-on runs. Young All-Stars will not snuff delicate rallies by hitting into double plays. First basemen will not field like tipped-over refrigerators. Pudgy second basemen with ludicrous contracts will not jump like their bodies have the density of neutron stars. Sanity will be restored. All will be well.

Ah, who am I kidding? Look tonight and tomorrow and maybe you'll catch sight of me bawling and banging my head against the seats in abject panic while my companions pretend they don't know me.

The Mets aren't collapsing. They are deflating. There's a difference. Time remains to pump them back up. But if they don't get the air back into the balloon, there's no shame attached. I did not dream amid the mess of April, May and June that the Mets would be clinging to the remnants of a division lead in mid-September. For the better part of July and August, even, I kind of waited for the inevitable sag. Maybe this isn't it. Maybe it is.

I'll accept the raised if potentially false hopes of summer as fleeting if indeed they do not translate further. And I'll take an explicable September crumple — no fifth starter per se, a fourth starter in name only, the wrong second baseman unavailable, temp closers nursing their groins — and not look upon it an overly harsh manner.

We know what last September was. This, however it turns out, isn't that. This barely had a chance of being where it is. This was wing and a prayer territory and look how far both got us. It got us a half-game ahead of (and fuck you Mike Schmidt, I'm not talkin' to you) a deeper, more talented and healthier rival. The Phillies ain't perfect but they do have Brad Lidge and they do have Brett Myers and they do have Ryan Howard and all of them are on fire. True, we have Johan Santana and we have three stellar hitters with a hundred RBI apiece and we've got heart, but we've also got deficiencies and then we've got nights where we forget to pack the bats for the road trip.

I could be wrong. I could be very wrong. I could be thrillingly wrong. I can't wait to be wrong. But I swear when I saw Elijah Dukes' home run flying toward the left field stands at Nationals Park, I decided we aren't winning this thing. Sanchez delivered. Dukes swung. And there I was…wavin' Two Thousand Eight goodbye. You can only write off an unreliable pen for so long before you have to put it in the books as possibly not meant to be.

We are, on the other hand, still in first. We do, on the other hand, still have 13 games to go. The Phillies, Lidge and Myers and Howard notwithstanding, ain't Superman and they ain't God. And no matter how you phrase it, this ain't an encore of you know what. That's not the way this one goes down.

I shall not permit it.

Over the summer, I contributed a bit of research to a very exciting project regarding the history of Shea Stadium. I pass along from the people with whom I worked an announcement that might be of some interest to you.

Maritime and Spitfire Pictures, producers of LAST PLAY AT SHEA, a documentary feature based on Billy Joel’s historic final concerts at Shea Stadium, are inviting fans to share their most beloved Shea memories from 1964 to 2008.

Whether your memory is of the Mets, Jets, a concert, special event or anything else that underscores Shea’s special place in your heart, we want to hear from you.

Select fans may be chosen for interviews for possible inclusion in the documentary.

Please submit your “Shea Memories” to Glen Zipper at Spitfire pictures (glenzipper@spitfirepix.com). Please be sure to include your full name, age and best contact phone number. Those selected for interviews should be prepared to make themselves available the week of September 22.

Faith and Fear readers sharing their Shea memories for posterity? It's a natural. Get in touch with Glen if you'd like to find out more.

So for the reasonable price of $10,000, I joined the Shea Stadium Premiere Club. Didn't think I could afford it, but it turns out if you go to a game without buying a pretzel or a soda, your savings mount up rather quickly. Thus, with the extra 10 G's I saved Sunday by buying nothing, I became a Platinum member and got first crack at the historic artifacts that will be saved from Shea before it is dismantled to make way for Citi Field.

This is not a fee, by the way, but a non-refundable deposit toward my intended purchases. Like I said, incredibly reasonable. MeiGray, the company that's handling the memorabilia sales, heard about my decision to attend every remaining home game and figured I must be their target demographic. They took my money right away and gave me the very first exclusive tour Sunday evening.

They took me through their entire inventory of what they're offering up front. Those gigantic banners of the great players and moments in Mets history are $2,000. The door from the Bob Murphy radio booth is $4,000. A letter from the main SHEA STADIUM sign goes for $5,000. The column that says Gate E is $10,000. David Wright's locker is $15,000. A foul pole is 25 large. The '69 and '86 world championship flags are 50 grand a pop.

For a big spender like me, they said, they could wrap up whatever I wanted so I could take it home on the LIRR right away.

Very nice, I said, but I wanted to see the good stuff, the exclusive stuff, the stuff nobody else knows about.

Well, they said, that would cost me an extra $10,000. If I gave them that, then they could upgrade me to Double Platinum Chrome membership in the Shea Stadium Premiere Club. It wouldn't be a fee, but a non-refundable deposit toward my intended purchases.

Since the pretzels weren't ready Saturday night, I had an extra $10,000 just taking up space in my wallet, so I said of course and gave it to them.

They pocketed my $20K and told me to follow them.

We went deep into the most feral catacombs of Shea Stadium. Very deep. You entered through Gate F, but that's all I know. This was where no one goes. In fact, they had to blindfold me so I couldn't tell anybody the way. (The blindfold was an extra $5,000 — not a fee, but a non-refundable deposit toward my intended purchases — but it was spare change to me, having brought my own beverages Sunday.) I did hear a lot of myowling.

They removed my blindfold and gave me the Double Platinum Chrome tour.

I was stunned.

“I've never seen any of this before,” I said.

“No one has,” my guide told me.

First there were the banners:

1987 National League East Champions

1998 National League Wild Card Winner

2007 World Champions

“But the Mets didn't make the playoffs those years,” I said.

“Keep looking,” said the guide.

Beyond the flags that didn't fly were other, even rarer items:

• A broken heart from the 1988 playoffs…

• A tortured soul from the 2000 Subway Series…

• A mind bent permanently out of shape, signed by Armando Benitez, John Franco and Brian Jordan…

• The swings never taken in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded on October 19, 2006…

• The Mets' intestinal fortitude from last September 30 (mint condition, not game-used).

“Whoa,” I said. “How much we talking?”

“Let's not talk price just yet,” the guide said. “There's more to see.”

A fog rolled in to the depths of Shea Stadium. Everything grew hazier and hazier until I was taken to what was called the piece d'resistance: a ghostly image — a hologram, actually.

It was Greg Norton launching a three-run bomb off Luis Ayala in the ninth inning on September 14, 2008.

“Whoa!” I said again. “This is already here? This is here with everything else that has destroyed our spirits and represents all that has gone wrong at Shea Stadium over the past twenty-plus years? You're already listing this in your catalogue of horrors?”

“If you hand us an extra $100,000,” my guide said, “we will let you know in two weeks.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Really. See, it's not a fee, but a non-refundable deposit toward your intended purchase.”

“Well, I was thinking about an Italian sausage for the last homestand, but that does sound like quite a deal…”

I'll let you know what to make of that image when I know. They promised me I'd be the first to find out.

Membership, you see, has its privileges.

… 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.