The Mets did today something they haven't done all year. Well, I suppose they've done a couple of things new to them in 2008 if you take into account a sixth consecutive win, but what's shocking is that they just won their first home weekday afternoon of the season.

That sticks because afternoons at Shea during the week have been horror shows 'til now.

• The Home Continuer: A dispiriting reminder that last year wasn't over.

• The Water Main Break: Pipes weren't working and neither were the Mets against Pittsburgh.

• The Great Impotence: A 1-0 loss to yet another lousy team.

• The Disaster In Stark Relief: Billy Wagner to anything but the rescue.

I was at the first three of those and came home every time in “that was fun but it would have been a lot more fun if we'd won” mode. I watched the fourth afternoon nondelight with only one eye on the telly yet it told me Willie Randolph was no long a winner all his life.

Small sample, but they were four trademark 2008 horrendous games and nothing feels worse, all bad things being equal, than having your day ruined by the Mets and then having all night to think about it. Especially in the middle of the week, especially when the game is at Shea. Those are the games you live for as a fan, even if you can't make it out there, even if you can't devote the entirety of your attention to them. Weekday afternoon games at home are what separates baseball from all the other sports, from everything else in the world. It's so, I don't know…illicit. It's not supposed to be taking place, but it does. It's not supposed to call out to you, but you hear it. It's like whichever horrible SUV commercial from a few years ago where somebody's walking down Wall Street on a Tuesday with a surfboard. Hey, a bystander thinks, people work on Tuesday. There are probably people who surf on Tuesday, but I got it. It's the thrill of the temptation of hooky — except this is hooky that is cablecast, broadcast and Gamecast.

The Mets went to work this Thursday and their labors finally paid dividends. We can all enjoy our supper thanks to Fernando Tatis, Argenis Reyes, Carlos Muniz and maybe even guys you'd given a single thought to the last time the Mets won at Shea on a midweek afternoon (which, for the record was the five-run ninth laid on the Cubs, May 17, 2007 — is there anything that game can't do?). When we win a game in the middle of the week at home, you can say everybody did their job beautifully.

Undercooked opponent, sure. Long-term doubts, no doubt. Alou, of course he's got a seriously torn hammy (get well, Moises; even if we never truly got to know you, I always kind of liked you). But the Mets played at Shea this afternoon, a weekday afternoon, and sent everybody but the small covens of Giants fans home happy.

What else is there to do now except have a pleasant evening?

Baseball makes an ass out of you.

It's a truism of the sport that teams are neither as bad as they look when they're stumbling around and getting beat nor as good as they look when they're rolling. And so it is with fans: When our team's bad, we can't imagine they'll ever be good, and yet a good week leaves us to blissfully forget all that's come before.

So it was that I managed to snooze through the last two innings of the Mets' rather convincing 5-0 defeat of the Giants. Though it should be said that the Giants hadn't given me much reason to fret. What we've been for long stretches since last Memorial Day, and could easily become again, is a mediocre team whose whole is somehow less than the some of its parts. That's frustrating, as we've chronicled in at least 100,000 words or so. But based on the evidence of the last two nights, the Giants would love to have such problems. They're plain bad, in an Is There a Plan Here? way. (You can leave nasty comments for me after they pound us in 12 hours or so.) Yes, Johan Santana was good — heck, he was very good. But the Giants helped by turning in limp at-bat after limp at-bat against Johan and three relievers, never looking like they were particularly interested in the task before them.

It was much discussed last night, but what on earth was Randy Winn doing in the fifth inning? Ray Durham had just worked out a walk despite possibly being in danger of drowning, because he knew it was in the Giants' interest to have the umps call for the tarp before the game was official. Durham probably didn't know that the monsoon pounding Shea was due to roll through in another 20 minutes, so he sensibly figured that if he could just prolong things long enough, the umps would put the fricking tarp on already and maybe the game would be washed away. (And if the umps knew the storm was going to roll through, I'd argue they showed too much deference to Santana. Not that I mind.) So Durham rather gamely watched Santana try to throw strikes (and remember a fastball could easily have slipped and approached his head at high speed in blinding rain) and wound up on first, to the almost-visible annoyance of Gerry Davis. So what does Winn do after watching this display of veteran savvy and baseball selflessness?

He swings at the first pitch.

Was Randy Winn the tying run? No. Is Randy Winn a veteran who should know better? Yes. Does Bruce Bochy need to go to Costco for comically oversized tubs of antacids? I'd imagine.

The Giants have pitching, Lord knows. Jonathan Sanchez made only one bad pitch all night, though why he made it to Ramon Castro with two out and Santana on deck is beyond me. And Tim Lincecum is wonderful to watch even on a bad night: His arms and legs come at the batter like sabres, a motion miraculously left alone by a succession of pitching coaches, and his thunderbolt fastball and CGI curve are even more dazzling considering he looks like the office intern whom everyone suspects disappears to huff printer toner.

But with their offense seemingly eager to ponder the joys of room service and a veteran like Winn making you wonder if he was watching the same game everybody else was, you have to feel for the likes of Sanchez and Lincecum and Matt Cain. By the looks of things, they're going to be fairly calloused up by the time help arrives.

Mike Pelfrey went seven, but details, details…it was a complete game win for the Mets Tuesday night. Honestly, it felt like the first one all season.

The Mets were a complete team for once. They played with complete effectiveness, completely overwhelming the opposition. There've been a few other lopsided scores in their favor this season, but those felt like outliers. This felt like what we were sold and told before the year started.

The 2008 Mets were the undeniably better team on the field last night. They had Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado, and instead of that implying inning-killing at-bats, it meant power. Beltran delivered the keynote address with a three-run bomb in the first and Delgado all but sealed the deal in the sixth by launching one “deep into the New York night,” as goofy, unpredictable Wayne Hagin put it (aside: I really like goofy, unpredictable Wayne Hagin). The Carloses, 90 games in, are at last all asset and zero liability.

There were other goodies as well you didn't have to search too hard to find: another Tatis tater; Argenis Reyes' first base hit and first trip around the bases; the continued offensive blossoming of 38-year-old Damion Easley; Jose topping .300; the evisceration of SI cover boy Tim Lincecum; and, the real highlight in an evening of highlights, Mike Pelfrey winning his fifth consecutive decision. Pelfrey, intermittently grumbled at by certain impatient dopes earlier this season, is the Mets' ace in everything but title at the moment. More nights like this one and his reputation will catch up fast.

Two games above .500 doesn't exactly set the heart atwitter, but tied for second and one back in the loss column sure as heck makes the pulse race. Four wins in a row ain't bad either. It's a long way off the “roll” Matt Yallof was touting the Mets as on afterwards, but the Mets are at least on a croissant — the hot and flaky kind.

Those can be delicious.

Ryan Church is back on the DL (Evans returns as Alou gets a rehab start for Binghamton). His MRI came up negative, but I'm beginning to worry a bit over his long-term state, never mind what it means to right field. Migraines don't send you to the Disabled List. Migraines recede inside of fifteen days. Concussions, two in less than three months…who knows?

Get well Ryan.

The Mets didn't look good winning. Sure as hell beats looking great losing. When they issue style points, I'll worry.

—April 5, 2006

I still haven't seen the plus/minus column that tracks style points. Give me a shout when those count as tiebreakers.

—May 6, 2006

Style points are still not issued and style points still don't count. Good thing. Surely we lead the league in shoddy victories.

YES, YES, YES, a W is a W is a W. Nothing changes that if we've mysteriously accumulated more runs at the end of the evening than the other guys. Got it. But still, don't ya sometimes look at a win like last night's and feel deep down that it, like several others this year, wound up in our mailbox by mistake? That by all rights you should hand it back to your letter carrier so it reaches its intended recipient?

Could have the gods really wanted us to win this one? Why would have they forgotten to tell Damion to slide Easley, slide? Why would have they turned Ryan Howard's interference double into an on-second-thought homer? Why would have Tatis stretched a single into an out? Why would have Gary Cohen fate-temptingly referred to Pat Burrell's inevitable infliction of power and punishment as fleeting and innocent? Why would have that comedy of mental errors known as All-Star closer Billy Wagner's twentieth save unfolded in so demented a fashion? It wasn't, we are happy to acknowledge, a Phillies walkoff; it was, we must admit, a Mets slinkoff. Hope they slinked off the field, out of the clubhouse and onto the bus before the official scorer noticed there were only two outs when the game ended.

Damn Things are fun once every eighteen or so years, but this continues to be mildly ridiculous. We have become the Motels of the senior circuit, walking the loneliest mile, smiling without any style and playing altogether wrong — no intention, indeed, of doing this, whatever this is, the easy way.

Maybe the Mets' psyches would be better off if they tried one of those “cooperative games” your do-gooder social scientist types recommend for children, activities in which the bottom line is:

• Everyone plays

• No one gets hurt

• Everyone has fun

• Everyone wins

That sounds nice. Let's get them one of those enormous inflatable earth balls and let's work on building up their self-esteem. Otherwise, we are destined to be sucked right back into taking seriously 25 Sisyphii whose boulder is the National League East standings. Handling it as the Mets do, it's bound to roll downhill sooner or later and it's likely to crush us all in its wake. No wonder Ryan Church has such headaches.

But wins remain wins and yeah, we are 2-1/2 out of first on a three-game winning streak. Can't say we don't beat the Phils, 'cause we do. Can't say we're not in contention, 'cause we are. Can't say boo tonight, 'cause the Mets who take the field against the Giants are doing exactly what they're supposed to do: they're putting together wins or at least avoiding losses slightly more often than they're not.

There is nothing in the rule book that says they have to do it with verve and panache. If they want to be lousy at being swell, that's their prerogative. It would be easier to lengthen leads instead of yielding most of them, far less taxing to prevent comebacks instead of enabling them, but what do we know? We just watch them almost come apart over and over again. They're the ones who somehow keep it together.

Let's Go Mets. You're the only Mets we've got.

Holy shit.

I'd say “the Mets win the damn thing, 10-9,” but of course Gary and Howie beat me to it. (Can't outblog either one of those gentlemen.)

I mean, oh my goodness. We were headed for an easy walk down Redemption Road with Pedro J. Martinez, who took the mound with a hint of doom showing on his gunslinger's face but then had much better location and a month's worth of run support for Johan Santana. And that easy stroll was just fine with me.

Oops.

In the sixth, Damion Easley came gently into home plate after Pedro singled up the middle off R.J. Swindle, who looked like he was about five feet tall, and seemed to shrink with every ball lashed off of him. Easley offered Chris Coste the gentlest of how-do-you-dos, and who could blame him under the circumstances? Turning 10-1 into 11-1 isn't worth it with 12 outs to get, not if it means a collision and the possibility of Plan C at second base after Plan A wasn't exactly a capital idea. (I suppose Plan C would be Argenis Reyes, who the other night was standing next to a furious, possibly injured John Maine and staring out at something, transfixed with a big smile on his face. The camera coincidentally pulled back and revealed that the Other Reyes was watching the Kiss Cam. Or maybe the Phillies too had named an official pudding, and Argenis liked the idea of taking in a ballgame while snacking on a glob of thickener and sugar. Either way, I'm not sure he's on the same planet as the rest of us.)

Anyway, these are the kind of thoughts that go through one's mind in the middle of such a game — in a laugher, some runs are more sacred than others, so don't get yourself worked up.

Or so you'd think. While I slunk off to catch the rest of the radio, R.J. Swindle seemed to grow two feet taller, Pedro got tired, Tony Armas looked mortal and Aaron Heilman started channeling his spring self, whom I'd be willing to wager neither of us had missed. The Mets were seven up with eight outs to go, and it was barely enough. I returned hastily to my proper station in front of the TV for the ninth, by then numb with terror. Our bed is one of those platform things with drawers underneath, which I've always liked until tonight, when I realized that means there's no way to hide under it.

Of course Billy had to confound every one of the 1,000 expectations I threw his way while reminding myself to breathe. Victorino doubled and we were doomed, doomed, doomed. The SNY guys were making much of Charlie Manuel taking Utley out when it looked like a long night for the varsity, but I wasn't fooled — and sure enough Bruntlett walked. Tying run, Howard at the plate. With the baseball gods now having made plain that they were on some sort of sadistic acid trip, of course Billy vaporized Howard with sliders and got Pat the Bat to pop harmlessly to Endy, if anything hit more than 15 feet in the air can be said to be harmless in this broom closet of a stadium. Two outs and against Pedro Feliz Billy looked genuinely on instead of perturbed and uncomfortable, quickly getting to 0-2. Which of course meant he'd give Feliz something too good when he was protecting and it would be 10-9 and of course Jayson Werth was up again. Honestly, I wouldn't have been surprised if Werth had won it with another blast, or by running all the way around the bases on a dropped third strike, or if the Rapture had occurred. It was that kind of night.

And on top of it all, they've pulled me back in, the stupid sexily mediocre Mets. All they had to do was whisper to me of being 2.5 back, of who the hell were the Marlins, of Pelfrey rounding into form and Easley and Tatis finding the fountain of youth, of how the season can never be chronicled until it's over, of the fact that it's baseball and they know I'm addicted and they've got what I need even if I'm far from sure this is the year to want it too feverishly.

You just know now they'll get swept by the Giants.

You know that Kozy Shack they hand out outside our own cozy shack of a stadium before some games? Next time you accept one, you can spoon yourself with the reassurance that you're sampling the Official Pudding of the New York Mets:

The creamy treat, available in rich chocolate and original rice pudding flavors, will be on sale at Shea Stadium throughout the baseball season, adding a delicious natural choice to the menu of popular, classic stadium snacks, like hot dogs, pizza and peanuts.

The turnstiles (which remind some of us by the squeezing we do to get through them to lay off the creamy treats) were already emblazoned with the Kozy Shack logo. I was wondering if that was a renegade action. Nope, it's official. We've got ourselves our own pudding…the Roy Hobbs kind.

Natural.

The Phillies long ago had a player named Puddin' Head. Tonight let's not play his descendants as if with tapioca stuck between our ears.