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.

If the Mets have led you to claw fingernail marks in your own palms this year — stigmata I think we all bear — then this was baseball as sweetest absolution. Stagnation, frustration, expectation, exultation and exhalation were the night's procession, as some bullpen tightrope-walking was followed by a barn-burner of an 8th inning and then a relatively sweat-free 9th. This is the way —

Hey, have you been to my Web site lately?

Wait a minute, I think the shortstop of a third-place team wants to sell us an SUV! What was that, Mr. Jeter? No, I haven't taken your Ford challenge, whatever that is. Look, I don't mean to be rude, but you're interrupting. Could you come back at the end?

The day didn't begin auspiciously, not with the news that Billy Wagner has increased swelling in his pitching elbow, leaving our closing arguments to the tender mercies of Heilman Sanchez Feliciano Smith Schoeneweis Stokes and Ayala LLP, a bunch of Lionel Hutzes of late when it comes to laying down bullpen law. Nor did things look good when the Mets grabbed a 2-0 lead only to do their usual hare-and-the-tortoise imitation, falling into a doze against Jo-Jo Reyes and allowing Chipper and this year's squad of Bravos Anonymous to perform recon and ambush Oliver Perez. (Ollie was due for a tepid performance, so gets only a mild scolding — but it was scary to rediscover how naturally eye-rolling, muttering and hair-pulling accompany a Perez start.)

But things started to turn with Ayala's Shea debut. The newest Met was handed a tough —

Have you been to my Web site lately?

For Pete's sake! Yes, I've heard of the Ford Edge. I'm aware that you have one, Derek, or at least that your TV pitchman self does. We're discussing a pennant race here, so do me a favor and get back in your vehicle. Now look at your side mirror. Does it say BLUE JAYS IN MIRROR MAY BE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR? It does? Then why don't you worry about that challenge and leave us in peace?

Ayala was handed a tough assignment: first and third and one out with the Braves up 3-2. It was reassuring to see Dan Warthen out at the mound after he retired Omar Infante, I assume to tell Ayala not to be macho for his new teammates and to pitch around Brian McCann in favor of Jeff Francoeur if he'd rather. That was good — but it was better to see Ayala coolly erase McCann and the threat. As for Heilman, he's probably always going to look like a kicked hound out there on the mound, and we're just going to have to get as used to it as we can. But just when it looked like the roof was going to cave in, he got Gregor Blanco to foul out to Wright and give us a chance at a second inning against Jeff Bennett and the Costco-sized bag of sunflower seeds he carries in his cheek.

As for Nick Evans, he probably isn't ready….

Have you been to my —

I know, I know, you've definitely got an edge. Everybody says so — taxi drivers, sassy meter maids, construction workers, vague baseball types wearing blank hats. And yes, I get that you've got an Edge, not an edge, and I can get one too. Sometime between the first viewing and the millionth, that little narrative twist lost its effectiveness. Enough!

Nick Evans needs more seasoning, but it's impressive how well he works counts — even when the home-plate ump is calling the black and then some, as Charlie Reliford was in the 8th. Evans walked, Wright walked as Bennett buried slider after slider in the dirt, Beltran dribbled a little excuse-me single up the line and it was Carlos Delgado up with the bases loaded and one out. Bases loaded, as we all know, has not been kind to us this summer. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but I believe the Mets were 3 for 43,412 in that situation, and 1 for their last 37,297. Not good odds —

Have you been —

All right, now I'm getting pissed. Look, Jetes. No one thinks you have any relevance to Met baseball except hacky columnists and ad-sales drones. So why don't you just take it somewhere else?

Not good odds, but there you had it: Carlos Delgado against Will Ohman, one pretty important late-summer game in the balance, the victorious Phillies no doubt gathered in their clubhouse to watch. Delgado got decent wood on a foul down the left-field line, which of course means absolutely nothing, and here came the second pitch from Ohman and OH MAN! OFF THE WALL! EAT IT, BOBBY COX! CHANGE THE CHANNEL, PAT THE BAT! WOOO!

Actually I was terrified. The ball took a crazy, Augustinian bounce right off the pad to Blanco, who came flying out of nowhere to snare it with his bare hand and fire home, assailing me with visions of Endy Chavez becoming Richie Zisk. All would come to nothing, and this awful game would rise to the surface of Gary Cohen's play-by-play and this blog's postgame lamentations on many dark days in the future, leaving us to brood over the play that had short-circuited a pennant drive.

But no — Blanco had done everything he could, but he was a long way from home and Endy was starting from third, not first. He was safe, David Wright had come home right behind him, and Delgado was standing on second at the center of the happy Shea Stadium roars. And then the worm finally turned for Damion Easley and it was 6-3, and then the Round Mound of Pound smacked one down the left-field line and it was 7-3, and not even a superhuman play by Yunel Escobar could undo this one.

Have you —

SHUT UP! I DON'T CARE! JUST GO THE FUCK AWAY!

I don't know who the hell's going to close. I don't know if our assemblage of random corner outfielders can keep doing it with mirrors. I don't know if we can hold off the Phillies. But games like this make you believe that maybe, just maybe, things might turn out all right. That maybe, just maybe, this team has come through doubt and dismay with both renewed confidence and a certain killer instinct. Or, if you prefer, that they've now definitely got an edge. Baby.

Turns out somebody who'll be working at Shea tonight has a healthy respect for the place. Too bad it's Chipper Jones.

Ray Glier has a terrific article in the Times this morning catching up with our old pal Larry Wayne. As you know, Mr. Jones and we have an enduring and somewhat sordid history together. Chipper sheds some light on the root cause of an unfriendliness that transcends boxscores.

You might remember the tipping point for why Larry became the most public of Shea enemies. It was at the end of a searing series between us and the Braves, a bitter eleven-inning loss that appeared to have knocked us out of the playoff picture for 1999. At the finale's conclusion, legend has it, Jones was being harassed by a field box fan that come World Series time, New York's other team was going to do in Atlanta and how. Chipper's infamous response was, “Now all the Mets can go home and put their Yankees stuff on.”

The nerve! We already didn't like him for his Braveness and his success. But that tore it. John Rocker would be a passing fancy. Hating Chipper Jones would be forever.

But The Chip adds a wrinkle I either missed or he's making up. I can't quite believe I would have missed it because I was pretty well on top of that 1999 limp to glory, but maybe I did. Or maybe Chipper's burnishing the legend to make himself a little less loathsome in a deathbed bid to get Shea on his side before there's no more Shea to take sides. Jones tells Glier that the field box fan who heckled him was wearing “a split jersey, half Yankees, half Mets, and a split hat, half Yankees, half Mets”.

He was? There are such garments? In New York? People wear them? And they are allowed into Shea Stadium?

That in itself is more detestable than anything Chipper has said or done at Shea, and he's committed plenty of war crimes against Met pitching since 1995. One cringes to imagine that such a prime spectating spot would be taken up by a human being dismal enough to sport a New York-New York jersey divided against itself.

Even still.

Let's assume Chipper's baseball hermaphrodite existed. Let's assume this Big Foot of the box seats really roamed the orange aisles of Shea and there truly was such a creature who uttered those ugly sentiments of surrender to Mr. Jones while we were only two out of the Wild Card with three to play. Even with the heat of battle still rising from his neck, what the fudge was Chipper thinking to lump all New Yorkers together like that? He'd been around long enough to know Mets fans were Mets fans and the other thing was the other thing. He'd been in a World Series over there and had just played for his life over here. Come on!

Today's Larry Jones is contrite, almost, sort of, just a little. “I was like, ‘Come on bro, pick a side,'” he explains to Glier in 2008. “I was a punk kid, I didn’t know better. That’s when I said it.”

Well sir, we are a sensitive people and we took it to heart. In 1999, it was no simple task to be a Mets fan in New York. Thus, if you wanted to fire up the base, you did it. We didn't like lots of Braves then or in the years that followed, but we really hated you. You killed us with your bat, but it was your mouth that made you transcendent. Why do you think nobody ever got worked up when Brian Jordan showed his face — and that guy destroyed our postseason dreams in September 2001.

But y'know what? There's something about Larry. Maybe it's just his longevity; or it's the sentimentality whirling in the air with only 22 home games left; or it's that Chipper Jones really does seem to have a thing for the ballpark for which his son is named beyond his lifetime .310 batting average there. Jones, now able to tell New Yorkers apart (at least by cap design), swears he received good wishes during the All-Star Break from all stripe of Gothamite on his abbreviated quest for .400. The feeling, after fourteen seasons, is suddenly mutual.

Sure, he tells Glier, he likes Shea Stadium because he sees the ball and hits the ball so well, but “having to deal with the Mets year in and year out, all those games that were so important, the history of the love-hate relationship, the passion of their fans, it makes it special to go there.”

Obviously nobody is left on the Mets from those Mets who battled those Braves so fiercely when we were learning Chipper's real first name. Nobody's left, that is, but us, his Greek chorus. The only '99 Braves who remain in that uniform this week (accounting for injuries to Smoltz and whathisname) are Bobby Cox and Chipper Jones. Cox is simply a bore. Jones…I dunno. There comes a time when you almost, sort of, just a little begin to feel something that isn't total, complete and burning animus for a player you've always loved to hate.

I won't feel this way for Pat Burrell when he grows grizzled, believe you me. I'd tell you what I dream of for Yadier Molina down the road except it would incriminate me in a court of law. But Chipper Jones, father of Shea Jones, constant tourist aware enough of his surroundings at his surroundings' end to admit that he wants a piece of his veritable home away from home, that he and his kid will be taking pictures together on his final trip in next month? Him I can respect.

While booing the crap out of him tonight per usual.

Avoid Monday afternoons with or in Pittsburgh and the record shows we'll never lose another game — at least not another irritating game larded with baserunners stranded and bullpen imploded.

Oh right, can't win 'em all. Sorry. I'd gotten used to the contrary over the preceding six days.

If I can gloss over the tired bat (Delgado's) and alarming arm (Sanchez's) that did us in in the eighth, it was a very good trip. Of course it's supposed to be fun in the sun when your itinerary includes the Nationals and the Pirates and nobody else. To our way of thinking as fans of a contending entity, we have no business losing to lousy teams, and bend over backwards as I might so as not to stir the sensitive gods of competitive fires, the Nationals and Pirates are plainly undistinguished.

May the Nats redistinguish themselves this week against the Phillies. And may the Braves, whose record is the same as the Bucs', forget they were ever our archrivals. It's tough to make reads from the schedule, but we and Philly have almost the same slate the rest of the way. We each have to deal with the Brewers (them four home, us three away); we each have to brace for the Cubs (them four at Wrigley, us four at Shea); they host four with the Dodgers who just swept them as we welcome the Astros — who just swept us — for four. The rest is divisional opponents and each other. The Marlins are still around, but one overriding concern at a time.

Last September we had, on paper, a favorable stretch drive. The last two weeks loomed as the lousy Nationals, the lousy Marlins, the lousy Nationals, a makeup against the lousy Cardinals, the lousy Marlins. We know how that worked out. I wouldn't make any automatically optimistic presumptions regarding the six we have left with Washington or — can't believe I'm saying this — the nine we have left with Atlanta. That said, you want to believe those are eminently winnable games. The other 22 remaining contests are against teams with winning records, 18 against clubs in certain contention as we speak. But ya gotta play with the big boys now if ya wanna play with the big boys later. It occurs to me this season's hopefulness has been built on the carcasses of the National League dregs, namely the six before the break against the horrible Giants and Rockies and the six before today against the pathetic Nationals and Pirates. Subtract that 12-0 from the overall ledger and the Mets are 56-57.

But why would you subtract them? You play who you play and you beat who you beat and you hope you don't lose too many otherwise. If you're going to cherrypick results, you can't overlook nine of thirteen won versus Philly…nor can you get out of your craw the four-game sweep in San Diego, to say nothing of that stunningly awful afternoon against Arizona in mid-June — nor the sorry results of this Monday and last.

This is all one long stream of schedule consciousness that leads to a river of uncertainty as regards what happens next. I kind of wish I knew. I'm kind of glad I don't. The season contains not quite six more weeks. We are leasing a lead of 1½ over Philly, 4 over the Marlins. I'll take knowing that much.