The Nikon folks can exhale. They won't have to update their 75-candidate ballot for the Greatest Moments at Shea. We were what felt like one timely hit, pitch, bounce or something from having a 76th genuine contender on our hands.

July 26, 2008 – Mets and Cardinals compete in endless game that is still going on.

Alas, it wasn't quite to be. Those of us who attended Saturday night's/Sunday morning's almost endless almost victory will remember at least bits and pieces of it vividly for years to come. It goes down as a Mets Classic that will never be rebroadcast as such only because of the regrettable outcome. The final score — and much of what informed it — necessarily keeps us from categorizing this as a great moment for promotional purposes (though that Nikon ballot has as many holes in it as Dave Kingman's swing, but that's another complaint for another time), yet between you, me and the unsanctioned dancer on the first base dugout, that was a great game the Mets lost to the Cardinals in 14 innings.

A great and terrible game. More great than terrible, I'd testify under oath, despite their 10 edging our 8.

Perhaps my vision on this one is skewed since I took such a proprietary interest in this affair from long before first pitch. I was through Gate C — all the other Gates were not yet open — two hours before first pitch. I was in my fourth seat and sixth level of the night when the last pitch was thrown. I saw a pair of crazy comebacks that lifted me so darn Row Q high, that I never for a second thought a third and definitive comeback was out of the question. I saw a pitcher I'd never heard of until like a week ago throw the kind of first inning generally reserved for Hall of Famers when their teams need them most: a horrible one. But Brandon Knight, unlike he who shall not be named, pulled himself together after throwing a number of pitches (39) higher than the number on his uniform (28).

Knight settled down and the Mets got riled up. These are the new and improved 2008 Mets who ain't afraid of no ghosts. Yadier Molina? He couldn't even throw out Robinson Cancel. Joel Piñeiro? Last September's bad news. The Piñeiro who threw to Molina this July night was no Brandon Knight. Knight battled from the second through fifth. Piñeiro surrendered a four-run lead as quickly as he could. Brandon Knight actually outlasted Joel Piñeiro. Most of the Mets lineup out-and-out mugged Joel Piñeiro.

Knight hangs in and pitches through five. If we can get a little decent relief, we're golden. But we get very little decent relief at first. Carlos Muñiz becomes Duaner Sanchez, and not the good one. Joe Smith misplaces his magic. Knight's gone. Piñeiro's gone. The Mets' lead is gone.

But the game is just regetting good. Carlos Delgado hits his second home run of the night, his hundredth home run this week, I believe. It's 8-7. When it's 8-7, you begin to think it can be 8-8. It's just a matter of time….

It's just a matter of time before Fernando Tatis makes it 8-8 in the ninth! At that moment all your train schedule issues go out the window. And as the ninth becomes the tenth and the tenth becomes the eleventh you don't get hung up on schedules. The Mets aren't watching the clock, why should you?

Of course the Mets aren't helping the time pass productively. Baserunners are wasted in the tenth, the eleventh, the twelfth. Normally you'd be steaming except you're too happy with what the Mets bullpen is doing. It's not allowing anything over a prolonged period. Smith recovered from his sinful sixth with a saintly seventh. Sanchez recorded outs for the first time in six days. Schoeneweis bent but didn't break. All-Star closer Billy Wagner held the tenth and eleventh together without flaw. And Aaron Heilman, whose first batter was Yadier Molina of all things, was a gem in the twelfth and thirteenth.

It was just a matter of time before we would score. I swore it was. But the thirteenth ended with Aaron Heilman batting for himself with nobody on. The Mets were out of players, out of opportunities, out of relievers, too. All that coming back was so five innings ago. Shockingly, a game that, through thirteen, encompassed 16 runs and 33 hits required more offense to settle it.

Sadly, it came from St. Louis, especially Albert Pujols. You can't play fourteen innings of baseball and not have Albert Pujols heard from in the most resonant manner possible. He crushed the last reliever the Mets had, Heilman, and ain't that a shame? Aaron Heilman threw three pitches on Thursday and got credit for a win that was mostly the doing of Ollie Perez (the same Ollie Perez who was warming up for the fifteenth, FYI). Saturday into Sunday he gave it his heart, his soul and 57 pitches. Aaron Heilman got to be a starter again, sort of, and just as it started to feel like a good fit, that damn Pujols made it feel terrible.

The bottom of the fourteenth ended without incident and just soon enough for those of who abide by the entreaties to use mass transit to use it effectively. My companion for the evening has since relayed to me that New Jersey Transit, early on a Sunday, carries “a lot of drunks on the last train out of town”. I can report the Long Island Rail Road does precisely the same on the 1:50 to Babylon, and most of them, in their toasty, chatty state, are prone to address each other as “bro”.

But they were, at least in my car, curious drunks, curious about this game that was apparently becoming legendary in the watering holes of Manhattan. Dressed as I was, I was asked repeatedly what happened tonight…we heard the Mets had come back, that the Mets had forced extra innings, that they had not won…but what happened?

Well, lots. Like I said it was a long day, what with all those innings and levels and runs. I met up with Sharon in Penn Station for the 4:49 and we delightedly found Charlie on our platform and the three of us made a cameo in the Diamond Club lobby ('cause they wouldn't let us in the Diamond Club bar, even though a guy in the Diamond Club store actually recognized me…and have I ever used “Diamond Club” this much in one paragraph?). Failing to cocktail with the Shea power elite, we settled for a corner of the field level where we could stand undisturbed during BP and curse out the Braves for not beating the Phillies and the Phillies for beating the Braves and ourselves for rooting for the Braves at all. Seventeen escalators later, it was off to the Upper Deck with the likes of us, Charlie to his barony in Section 22, Sharon and I to the people's air of Section 3, Row Q, where you get the idea that Mile High Stadium is alive and well well east of Denver, but where you can still see the U-Haul sign, so there.

And while we sat in Row Q, encouraging Brandon Knight to hang with 'em and thrilling to Delgado and Reyes jumping ugly on Piñeiro, we got our very own Greatest Moment at Shea, the kind that won't be on any corporate ballot. It was Dancing With The Fans, that worthless thing they do where two people — Choice A and Choice B — put on ugly hoodies and one of them eventually does the worm on one of the dugouts and somewhere Verizon presumably collects a rumpload of money for taking your texts. Pretty mundane between-innings entertainment, except for Saturday night.

Choice B had a partner. Choice B was dancing on the first base dugout alone initially, but then someone, presumably with very good seats, jumped up to join her. The joiner, also a she, wasn't wearing an ugly hoodie. She was, in other words, unauthorized to be Dancing With The Fans. Hence, while DiamondVision, as ever, featured Choice A and Choice B shuffling their feet, a Pepsi Party Patrol girl leapt up on the dugout and tackled the interloper.

John Stearns sacking Chief Noc-A-Homa it was not. Pretty it was not. In an instant, security got involved: one older man in an orange golf shirt joined the Pepsi Party girl in dragging away the unsanctioned dancer. And all of this — all of this — played out on the right half of DiamondVision while “Stayin' Alive” blared and Alex Anthony instructed us how to text our votes for Choice A or Choice B. Choice B's backup dancer was being wrestled to the ground. Choice A just kept boogieing to the Bee Gees.

After that, fourteen innings seemed like a sure thing.

Sharon and I thought we were onto something by moving from Row Q to an unoccupied Upper Deck box for the eighth. We sought egress, as Sharon put it in her best SAT. We just wanted to be able to make a cleaner getaway after the last out was all. It was in that Upper Deck box where we watched Tatis homer. It was also in that Upper Deck box where, as Endy Chavez was bunting away the winning rally in the tenth, that a woman decided to pose her family in several award-winning tableaus for a bushel of snapshots in our line of sight. (She must have really taken that Nikon sponsorship of Great Moments seriously.) It was only the tenth inning of an 8-8 slugfest. I could see where she'd need a diversion.

The game went on, our egress gathered momentum. Wanna try Mezzanine? Sure. So we scooted down a level. That didn't change the score. How about Loge? OK. (But only after a second curiosity-fueled end run at the now-closed Diamond Club and slightly surreal elevator ride that deposited us in a sterile corridor that appeared abandoned from the set of Being John Malkovich.) It wasn't Loge's fault, I don't think, that Pujols got to Heilman. Aaron held the lot of 'em for a while while we were there. It was while we were there, too, that we received that Shea treat almost as rare as friendly and efficient customer service: a fourteenth-inning stretch, with Clapton's “After Midnight” subbing for Monte's “Lazy Mary”. We received five hours and nine minutes of baseball, all the offense we could stand until, alas, we could stand no more, some fairly courageous (Murph's word) relief pitching and a trio of Dancing With The Fans dancers for the price of a pair. Our egress was sound in the end, too — sounder than it was for some unfortunate soul.

A great and terrible game, I tell you. A great and nearly endless evening. A great moment at Shea. If we'd managed a couple more runs, I might have had to have written it in as one of the Greatest.

That Argenis Reyes can play a little, huh? When your team is going as well as our team is going now, you really come to appreciate all the swell storylines that go into weaving the greater narrative. The lead headline is METS EXTEND FIRST PLACE LEAD. The sweet sidebar from Friday night — among others — is the second baseman, enjoying his first month in the Majors after more than five years in the minors, hit the first home run of his big league career. In half a season as a Zephyr he hit none. What a heartwarming sight it was, A. Reyes taking B. Thompson deep, the Mets' dugout quickly huddling and perfecting its no big deal straight face for three beats before embracing the kid en masse.

“We had to break him in,” Carlos Delgado grinned afterwards. When your team wins, your team grins.

Yes, save for the nagging inability of Duaner Sanchez to retire a single opposing batter this week, all is peaches and cream to the blue and orange. What keen chemistry! What an amazin' mesh!

What's that Gary Cohen said? That Luis Castillo has been cleared for baseball activities? That he's going to start playing rehab games in St. Lucie? That he could be back with the Mets next weekend?

Oh.

Hmmm…

Y'know, it's not Luis Castillo's fault the Mets felt compelled to enrich him beyond his and our wildest dreams over the winter. He has taken, as far as we know, no oath of self-deprivation, so of course he was going to accept the absurd amount of money ($25 million) and the insane number of years (four) with which the Mets plied him in the offseason. So what if the only party in any of this to find the transaction objectionable was us, the fans? Like you or I wouldn't have accepted $25 million over four years to display limited range and zero power. It's not like his diminishing skill sets were a secret. Luis seems like a nice enough guy. You're never supposed to wish injury on anyone not named Yadier Molina, so on a strictly human level, it's welcome news to know that whatever it was that placed Castillo on the DL a few weeks ago — a hip flexor — is getting better.

But, um, does he really have to come back?

The semi-dark side of loving the currently configured Mets is wanting nothing to do with those who played a role, however benign, in torpedoing the ship before things got good. Don't bother me with your logic that almost all of those responsible for raising us from the depths and keeping us afloat of late were part of that crew, too. I've completely forgotten that I used to find Mike Pelfrey and Carlos Delgado part of the problem before they emerged front and center to comprise the solution.

But Castillo? He's kind of a reminder of not-so-better times. That whole taxi squad of mending Mets who are still technically Mets because of contractual obligations looms and hovers uncomfortably in the subconscious.

The Mets have climbed into first on the backs of contributors like second basemen Damion Easley and Argenis Reyes. Neither is as accomplished in the context of an entire career as Luis Castillo, but both are here now and getting it done. Castillo was here when the Mets collapsed and when the Mets muddled. It's hard to reconcile his abilities (pretty fair hit-and-run type, turns a nifty double play) with the better days that have coincided with his absence.

Ryan Church…sure I want him back. I'm thrilled to hear from Kevin Burkhardt that Church's eyes offer a window, not a wall now, that he doesn't seem dazed and confused post-concussion. As potential Recidivist Met Xavier Nady has been definitively cast into the flaming abyss of unlikability, Ryan's return to right becomes that much more critical, the sooner the better. Still, all of Church's yeoman Met work is from that dark period when the team wallowed in misery. It's illogical, but I see him and I see the Mets of April and May and June and my instinct is to look away.

When it was reported Angel Pagan was done for the year, I was less unhappy than I should have been for a fellow human being to say nothing of a Met. Pagan contributed mightily those first few weeks. But those first few weeks were painful in ways that had nothing to do with Angel Pagan.

When word trickled forth that El Duque was finally getting it together (until he wasn't), I sighed more than exulted. El Duque? El Duque had nothing to do with the lackluster 2008 Mets, but I was actually a little sore when it was threatened that he was rumored on the road to recovery. El Duque has had a way of ducking out on us at the worst times. How dare he think he can waltz back into our lives? No danger of that, it turns out. Duque's right foot won't be waltzing into Flushing or onto any mound for the foreseeable future.

Moises Alou…Brady Clark…Matt Wise…Trot Nixon…they were all 2008 Mets when I could barely tolerate the 2008 Mets. They're all getting paid somewhere in this organization to heal. I've lost track of Nixon. The others, I think, are out for the season — like Jose Valentin, who shouldn't be held accountable for any of the mess that went down after he went down in the middle of '07, but where was he and his veteran leadership when we needed him and it most, the addled side of my fan brain asks. I'm a louse for thinking such thoughts, but I think I don't miss any of these fellows, not even Moises.

The taxi squad could pull up to the players' entrance at Shea and drop off one of its healthier ghost passengers at any time, and that particular spirit of 2008 past — some guy I've developed an allergic reaction to considering part of the spirit of 2008 present — could awaken and be a huge help to the Mets directly. Being a fan, I will embrace that tanned, rested and ready Met I've all but forgotten about and kind of written off. One base hit in a key spot, and Luis Castillo can be the new Argenis Reyes in my affections. It wouldn't be the first time I've turned that easily. But right now, with everyone who's here representing so darn near perfectly and everyone who's not, well, not, it's hard to imagine.

Then again, it was hard to imagine mere weeks ago being so enamored of the 2008 Mets at all.

Get well, Luis. We'll see ya when we see ya.

Amid the hand slaps, fist knocks and hip bumps the victorious first place Mets exchanged with one another after the final out of this afternoon's game, there was an embrace. David Wright hugged Carlos Delgado.

David was hugging Carlos for all of us. There isn't a Mets fan I know of who doesn't owe Delgado a hug. Hindsight being what it is, the time for the hug was a couple of months ago when Delgado was dragging and taking the team, we were sure, down with him.

We're not that pure of heart. We are, bottom line, results-oriented. We are often not as smart as we think we are. We saw a washed-up ex-power hitter who couldn't or wouldn't move around first and we were ready to trade him, release him, place him in the blue and orange bin that goes by the curb.

We sure like him now.

Were we wrong to declare our frustration with Carlos Delgado when he was batting in the low .200s, when he was leaving runners on as if abiding by a Do Not Disturb sign, when he was more likely to grunt or hide than take responsibility for his bad days? No more wrong than Carlos Delgado was washed up. We're human like he's human. He had a bad stretch, we reacted. He's having a great stretch, we react differently. If Delgado knew better — that he wasn't done, that he was busting his rear to correct what was awry, that he understands baseball more than all the fans and all the media combined — then let's be glad it's manifested itself in moments like the eighth inning today, the eighth inning when he conquered J.C. Romero, when he went down the left field line with authority, when he drove in the two runs that propelled the Mets into sole possession of first place.

Delgado isn't done and neither are we. I'm very happy we're still going together.

Ollie Perez…Aaron Heilman…Billy Wagner two games in a row…Jose Reyes last night…same deal. Their earlier 2008 shortcomings were obvious and expounded upon here and elsewhere. They all stepped up, manned up, moved up into first this series. They all overcame that Pendletonian nightmare of a ninth from Tuesday night. They all forgot how the Phillies haunt us. The Phillies don't haunt them. The Phillies, for now, trail them.

Mets in first, everybody else follows. It's an ideal alignment.

And for everyone who has scoffed and scoffed some more at the presence on this roster of Robinson Cancel, tell me that guy doesn't have a touch of the Mora in him. Cancel gets a chance and delivers three times now. Three times Cancel has literally rallied the Mets to a victory. Cancel seemed as preposterous when he arrived as Fernando Tatis did. There was a time when another manager trusted has-beens and never-weres named Rick Reed and Matt Franco and Benny Agbayani and Melvin Mora to make all the difference in the world. Those guys seemed preposterous or at best mysterious before they meshed with Mike Piazza and Edgardo Alfonzo and Al Leiter and Robin Ventura and Turk Wendell and indeed made all the difference in the world.

That was my team then. My team now leans on Fernando Tatis and Robinson Cancel and Argenis Reyes and Damion Easley and Jose Reyes and Billy Wagner and Aaron Heilman and Scott Schoeneweis and Ollie Perez and John Maine and Carlos Delgado and David Wright and Carlos Beltran. Some nights they let us down. This afternoon, they lifted us up. Way up.

First place Mets. Let's hug it out.

Hey, we moved into our third first place tie in a week Wednesday night. That means we are, every bit as much as Philadelphia, in first place, co-leading the pack, co-kinging the hill, sharing the whole schmear fifty-fifty-like.

Hard to believe after Tuesday night, but we're no worse than anyone in our division and statistically better than three-quarters of our competitors. One afternoon win today is all that separates us from claiming sole possession of Eastern supremacy.

I have a hard time believing it, and I'm one of those folks who learned young and never forgot that you gotta believe.

It's not pinch-me disbelief, just…geez, a team with Endy Chavez batting second, Marlon Anderson batting sixth, Carlos Beltran bunting in front of Robinson Cancel, everybody leaving thirteen runners on, John Maine struggling early and Billy Wagner representing our last best hope vis-à-vis life, death and Shane Victorino…this is a first place team? Even a co-first place team?

Sure is. We weren't believing it in Field Level (cap tip to Matt Silverman and the mysterious corporation that occasionally favors him with its swell box) until it was all over. After the monkeyshines of the night before, would you have trusted this team to carry a three-run lead across the finish line? Into fifty percent of first place? Past the hungry eyes of Jimmy Rollins? The Duaner Sanchez Follies — featuring the interpretative arm waves of Luis Aguayo — left us a tad cynical, far more than you'd figure fans of a team that had just beaten its archrival for a share of the big lead would be. Honestly, we were kind of giving up when we didn't enhance our three-run bulge in the seventh, eighth or ninth.

But that's our problem. Some people don't overthink these things. Our party was trudging out in “we won?” triumph when we found one of those guys who congratulates everybody else when his team comes out on top. “TIED FOR FIRST PLACE! TIED FOR FIRST PLACE!” he exclaimed as he leaned over a railing dispensing high-five after high-five. “And we can be in first by ourselves if we win tomorrow!”

Yeah, I guess we can. Who'da thunk it one night after the world came to an end?

Terry Pendleton tied the Terry Pendleton game. Tied it. Didn't win it. When it was lost, 22 games remained to do something.

Mike Scioscia tied the Mike Scioscia game. Tied it. Didn't win it. When it was lost, a veritable best-of-three series remained to do something.

Brian Jordan's second home run put the Braves ahead, but the Mets had a half-inning to do something.

Luis Sojo put the Yankees ahead, but the Mets had a half-inning to do something.

Yadier Molina put the Cardinals ahead, but the Mets had a half-inning to do something.

The whole September '07 crew of vandals — Greg Dobbs, Ronnie Belliard, Austin Kearns, Joel Piñeiro, Jeremy Hermida, you name 'em — did its damage and it was all there for the taking anyway. The Mets were tied for first after 161 games and had nine innings to do something.

By comparison to all of which is cited above, the 2008 Mets, after what was without a doubt the absolute worst setback of a season pockmarked by spectacularly dreadful defeats, have it easy.

They have 62 games left on their schedule.

They have 62 games left to make up a one-game deficit in the standings.

They have 62 games left to erase the impact of a night when everything went wrong at the worst time imaginable.

They have 62 games left to learn how to undramatically secure 25th, 26th and 27th outs.

They have 62 games left to extend their starting pitchers.

They have 62 games left to sort out bullpen contingency plans.

They have 62 games left to recognize baserunning situations, such as when to keep running and when to stop running.

They have 62 games left to understand the immense value of tack-on runs.

They have 62 games to work on the fundamentals of fielding.

They have 62 games left to do something.

And not do what they did last night — which was evoke images of Terry Pendleton, Mike Scioscia, Brian Jordan, Luis Sojo, Yadier Molina and September of 2007.

Don't do that anymore, OK?

1. Every run is sacred. Endy getting thrown out at home plate twice is not cute, no matter what the score is. It's leaving the door open for the wolf.

2. Don't be cavalier about who's closing. It's a tougher job than you think. I take back several weeks' worth of abuse, Mr. Wagner.

3. There is nothing wrong with Johan Santana that wouldn't be cured by his supporting cast not repeatedly and horrifyingly spitting the fucking bit. Fire Joe Morgan already put this far better than I could. Mr. Sperkleman should be very angry about the work of Horflitz and Przyblr on the assembly line tonight. So should Mr. Santana.

4. “If the ball's coming to me, what do I do with it?” is a question every fielder should have in mind at all times. You gotta know who's running, who's heading for second, and where the sure out is if things go awry. It might not be at second base.

5. Sometimes you think that a seemingly cosmetic home run that makes the score 5-2 in the eighth is not a blemish but a premonition of doom. The vast majority of times, you're just being paranoid. There is nothing to do but pray each such occurrence is part of the vast majority of times.

6. Some games you never, ever want to stay up to see recapped on SportsCenter.

7. When every frothing-at-the-mouth psychopath on the FAN is going to be justified in whatever bile they spew, don't listen to the FAN. It'll just make things worse.

8. So Taguchi is actually the Devil. Don't turn your back on that little bastard. Not even for a second.

9. Sometimes even Ryan Howard makes the pickup on the short hop.

10. Being one game out on July 23 isn't worth throwing yourself out a window over, no matter how many games you feel a cosmic gut-punch of a loss should be worth in the standings. (Honestly, if Bud Selig had declared us now five games back because of Rule 639a, would you have been surprised?)

11. It's easier to abide by No. 10 when the highest window in your apartment is only 10 feet off the ground.

12. There's always tomorrow.

13. If there isn't tomorrow, compensate by holding a grudge against Tom Gl@vine until the sun goes dark. He deserves it.