Joshua and I came back from the piney woods of Maine tired, happy and full of food courtesy of his grandmother. Oh, and ready to watch some baseball.

Maine is a wonderful place, except for the fact that in my folks' summer house across the river from Wiscasset baseball is strictly a nighttime affair. Not “nighttime” as in we're busy during the day — the whole idea of Maine is to remember what it's like not being so darn busy — but nighttime as in WFAN only comes in after the sun is well and truly down. Day game? Forget it. Night game? Depends when it starts. A 10:05 start on the West Coast (oh, sorry Omar — that's a 7:05 start and I'm creating a negative perception) can be listened to more or less as you would at home, except for the wow and flutter of random atmospheric phenomena. A 7:10 New York start, though, is going to be nothing but static until the middle innings at the earliest.

Over the years of our visits I've gotten used to this — it's the way things are, so you accept it as part of vacation time, and even come to enjoy it as a departure from the home-front hurry-up. It's getting dark, the dishes are cleared, the chipmunks and turkeys have given way to mosquitos tapping at the screens and big moths thumping at the windows. Let's find out how those Mets are doing.

Except they weren't doing well. Saturday's game was assessed via a quick listen before going out to dinner (if it had been a Western, I would have heard the part where Pedro's horse threw him, he landed on a rattler and slid rapidly toward the edge of the cliff) and confirmed later via a text message to Google on the cellphone. Sunday's outcome was discerned in the car on the way back from a restaurant in Rockland, with general happiness in Howie Rose's voice and the brief phrase “back to .500” emerging from the static to answer the what if not the how. I sat by the radio for the final inning of Monday night's debacle. Tuesday night I reported for duty late, after letting Joshua stay up two extra hours to chase and capture fireflies. (All later released — we're kindly sorts.) The FAN told me Ibanez had hit a homer just over Trot Nixon's head, which was clearly bad. I wondered what the score was before I realized I was hearing the recap, and soon enough the grim duty in Wayne Hagin's voice strongly suggested the Ibanez shot had not been an isolated blemish.

In this age of MLB.TV and Extra Innings and HD and GameCasts and blogs run by multiple obsessives it's briefly fun to go back to the way it used to be, to rely on your knowledge of the pitch of announcers' voices and your ability to piece together a narrative from one word in four to follow a ballgame that's taking place on the edge of radio range. And it's easy to forget how much has changed. One night about 15 years ago, during an ill-advised marathon drive, I listened to the Mets win on a car radio in the Georgia hills, FAN turned as loud as it would go, the faintest bits of syllables sneaking through borderline-explosive fusillades of static. Last fall I watched the Mets lose on a laptop computer while pondering the lights of France across Lake Geneva on an autumn evening. That's a long way to come — and all of it in the career of, say, Carlos Delgado.

But this evening the time for nostalgia was over. Joshua and I had missed our Mets, even with all their maddening habits. And so at 7:10 there they were — and why, we could barely understand what the fuss had been about. Jose Reyes ran wild. A rather perky-looking David Wright swung heavy lumber. The Mariners showed no particular inclination to field or, for a while, to hit. (And didn't it seem for a moment like this might be the night? John Maine stepping on a losing streak, the Mets refusing to get swept, the Mariners about to hit the road? But of course it's never the night.) The umpires umpired peaceably. The fans did not resemble bags of fertilizer, even to the newshound with the most overly sensitive nose. What had been all the trouble we'd heard rumor of from afar?

OK, so perhaps it's that the bats went eerily quiet after the early doings and the team's still under .500 and the third fourth installment of the Worst Day in the History of the Baseball World is about to be upon us. There's all that, I suppose. But after piecing together news by technological hook and static-ridden crook and finding the dispatches almost universally grim, we felt welcomed home.

CharlieH has alerted us that the late George Carlin is visiting Kiner's Korner right this very minute, right here. It's a rain delay clip identified as having run in the summer of '89 (though a reference in George's and Ralph's conversation makes me think it's from a year later, but whatever). It's also nine minutes of bliss, both men in tip-top baseball-talkin' form. I'd say it belongs in the Hall of Fame, but it's probably too good for Cooperstown. A YouTube where corporate copyright hounds keep their pants on would suffice, because these are nine transcendent Met minutes that deserve to be played in a loop for all and for all time.

As wait-out-the-tarp fare goes, it surely beats Beer Money. When it comes to rain delays and men named Carlin, accept no substitutes.

Kudos to archivist extraordinaire jphilips41 for fighting/flaunting the power and getting this up there. Kudos to the Brooklyn Dodgers fan from White Harlem who stuck by the Mets for many a decade. Kudos to Kiner just for being Ralph.

Life is more lively under Jerry Manuel, no doubt about it. He's a fun listen, a great gaggle interview. Let nimrod tabloids have their way with his words. I'll take Jerry's way.

That said, if it were as easy as switching managers for the Mets to materially improve, they wouldn't have had to have switched managers, would have they now? The previous manager wasn't helping matters, but it wasn't like the players were sitting on their talent just waiting for the right man to make like Hellmann's and bring out their best.

Monday night the New York Mets could have been managed by the Hand of God and it wouldn't have mattered. The Hand of God can't swing those bats, not against King Felix, nor against his court of random relievers. The Mets are still the team for whom adversity can be overwhelming on any given night; statistically speaking, it blows them away approximately every other night.

On Monday night, they were, to borrow a phrase from Casey Kasem, ponderous, man — bleeping ponderous. Figured, though. Shea Stadium was torpid, humid and a failure as a proving ground in the Mets' quest (if indeed they really care) to show they are ready to become anything more than a .500 team.

But at least it was refreshingly quiet.

Felix Hernandez was living up to the legend he is building in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest. He toyed with the Mets and outshone Johan Santana, who more often than not has pitched this year like a pretty good, sometimes very good pitcher but almost never like the kind of ace Felix Hernandez was pitching like. (Funny, but wasn't Santana that ace before he was a Met?) King Felix crowned Johan in the second by closing his eyes — Johan's description — and swinging with the bases loaded and two out and driving in four runs, including himself.

Lima Time, apparently, lives.

Maybe it was too weird a night to read anything into. You don't see an American League pitcher slam too often. If form holds, it won't happen again until 2045. You also don't see that same pitcher, already throwing and hitting beyond reproach, field like a novice and get himself rolled right out of the game one out from qualifying for a win (which, trust me, he was en route to). Carlos Beltran showed admirable hustle from third on Hernandez's fifth-inning wild pitch which didn't trickle very far from home. Hernandez, I suppose, showed admirable hustle in trying to cover the plate. He should have covered his ass instead, because Beltran got him inadvertently, right in the ankle. Ouch!

Mets fans are so screwed up right now that they cheered when Felix was writhing in pain (a cosmic no-no, of course). I don't think they were cheering the pain, rather merely approving the idea that Hernandez's invincibility had been pierced, with a run no less. When his limping evinced genuine injury, the cheering didn't stop but at least it lessened. Our karma was in the crapper from there on out.

Santana persevered for seven and saved the bullpen some miles (is that why we got him?). Wright…well, Wright's getting a day off, which is good. David Wright was actually booed, not immediately after the error that extended the second long enough for King Felix to reign around the basis, but upon striking out in the sixth. It wasn't the DP. It was the error still simmering in the mind's eye. Misplaced anger, if you ask me. Does David need a blow? Absolutely. Is David a fielding liability? For one Willie Bloomquist grounder he was, but he's been remarkably improved defensively this season. To blame him for Santana's four runs, even if three were unearned — that's fertilizer thinking.

Hernandez exiting in the fifth didn't make things easier on the lineup, which garnered all of three hits off his Seattle successors, only one before the ninth when it fell to ancient Arthur Rhodes to finish off what little sapling of a rally the Mets fleetingly contemplated nurturing. The sole moment of encouragement was the organic chant of LET'S GO METS! that went up as the home team suddenly decided to attempt to make a bit of a game of it. Understand, this wasn't any LET'S GO METS! This arose from the throats of fans who were not encouraged by public address overkill or DiamondVision cue. It was as if, despite the cheering of Hernandez's physical misfortune and the castigation of favorite son Wright's humanity, somebody somewhere was giving us credit for being intelligent.

I got to my seat as the top of the first was ending and detected a certain flatness in the park. Maybe it was the moisture that literally filled the air. Maybe it was the specter of King Felix figuratively suffocating the offense. But I wasn't hearing the hum I was used to. Eventually it hit me: none was being manufactured. Nobody's urging us every three seconds to clap our hands, nobody's suggesting we make some noise and nobody's accompanying our batters to the plate with a stentorian soundtrack. All my fondest wishes for Shut The Fudge Up Night were actually coming true. Not completely — the sponsored stuff was still carried out, and late in the game, the A/V crew couldn't help itself and just had to dump Kevin James' atonal mangling of our credo in our laps, but mostly they shut the fudge up. It took a bit of acclimation to appreciate 21st century baseball without blare, but it's something to which I could grow accustomed.

The game was a donut, no question, but the occasion, it should be remarked, was an absolute cupcake: a treat. I was at Shea Monday night at the invitation of Metstradamus and his brother Fredstradamus (it's true, those are their real names). Fred lives elsewhere and was in town only for a bit, so the 'Damii made the most of a fertile opportunity and convened a Monday night group big enough to rate a scoreboard mention. We were listed as Cincinnati Fred & Mets Bloggers, and that's as fine a Metsopotamian assemblage as I've been in in quite a while. Kindred blog spirits My Summer Family, Pick Me Up Some Mets, Toasty Joe and Riding With Rickey, loyal opposition gadfly Darth Marc (who came in peace), peripatetic blog reader Dykstraw and FAFIF commenter emeritus/transcendent Shea denizen Laurie were all on hand. A couple in our gang even scooped up Bubba Burger boxes (they contain t-shirts and coupons, no meat). Thanks to all of them, along with the 'Damus brothers, for the superb company, the kind words and the questions about my cats.

There, was that so hard?

Absolutely not, and that was the beauty part. Sunday's win was so simple, all its key elements simply described: more than competent pitching from the steadily progressing Mike Pelfrey, a trademark triple to lead off by Jose Reyes, an RBI single off the bat of David Wright, a Carlos Beltran bomb, nearly spotless bullpen work for 3-1/3 and Beltran's glove ending the thing.

There, there, there: Mets 3 Rockies 1.

That's all we want. That's all we need. Nice, simple wins, our guys outplaying the other guys.

Perfect game? Not necessarily, but you don't need perfection every day. You'd like to see Pelfrey last longer. You'd like to see a genuine rally. You'd like to see more runs tacked on.

Those, however, are challenges for other days, like the night before when Ubaldo Jimenez stymied the Mets between nearly inconsequential three-baggers and Pedro Martinez suddenly vanished into Denver's thin air. Games like Saturdays are simply horrible. They're excusable if they're once-in-a-while events, far less so when you've grown used to them being the rule over too much of 2007 and 2008.

But then comes Sunday afternoon and you don't feel so bad about Saturday night's extremely unenthusiastic and nondedicated loss because Sunday afternoon — even if it's the Rockies, even if it's just one game — has as much a chance to become the new normal as it does to stick out as an aberrant exhibition of quality baseball skills.

What does any fan want? Reasonably good baseball and a chance to think your team will make a go of it. That's general admission, that's all you can ask for. You can't ask for championships or playoff berths and expect them automatically. Just make July viable in our minds when it's the last week of June. And if July is viable, August can loom in the distance as vital. And if August is vital…

Well, you get the idea. Few are the teams and their followers who can count on anything. We were there a couple of years ago and, in hindsight, it was a privilege. But it was unusual, not just for us but for almost everybody. Having a chance, though, that's not too much to ask for. Being decent enough to have that chance…no, I don't think it's too much at all.

Seventy-four games have been played. The Mets have seemed mostly terrible and yet they're .500. They're Stengel-Stengel: 37-37. No need to defend the recent past or explain it away. It's done. They're on the borderline now. They're a game away from being a statistically satisfying enterprise. They're only a few feet from first place, which is probably not worth worrying over at this juncture except that it's good to know it's in sight. That's all you can ask to see, a generous glimpse of the goal, your eyes actually able to size up the prize. You can't drive yourself to distraction over 3-1/2 back when there are 88 to play. But you can indulge in the slightest schedule-studying and let yourself wonder.

• Twenty-two of the past 48 games have been played in California, Arizona or Colorado. That's it, though: no more trips west of Central time. The worst of the travel is over. In fact, only three series outside EDT remain.

• Seattle in for three starting tonight. The Mariners have the worst record in all of Major League Baseball, which means nothing to us. Washington has the worst record in all of National League baseball and anybody see us rolling over the Nationals this season? Felix Hernandez pitches for Seattle at Shea this evening, thunder and lightning permitting. Felix Hernandez coming to Shea in '08 could be like Johan Santana coming to Shea in '07 which, if you watched SNY's reportage on trade negotiations over the winter, you were reminded constantly was child's play for the visiting star pitcher. Just so happens we have Johan Santana on our side in '08. Santana vs. Hernandez tonight. It's a better proposition than Sosa vs. Santana last June.

• Subway Series, four games, including one in the hole of hell as part of a day-night kick in the head Friday. That requisite fatalism stated, it's the Mets and the Yankees. Except for 2003, that traditionally means anything could happen to or for anybody.

• On the road to St. Louis and Philadelphia, eight against the two best teams in the N.L. who aren't the Cubs. Proving grounds, to be sure. Mets gotta prove they're worth worrying about beyond July 7.

• Six at home with two nominal dregs, the Giants and the overly familiar Rockies. We're only recently and maybe momentarily nondregs, so I wouldn't get too haughty about it.

Point is the next 21 games up to the All-Star break are, in more than clichéd or obvious terms, the season. It's not so much that the Mets have to go 16-5 against the Mariners, the Yankees, the Cardinals, the Phillies, the Giants and the Rockies. I never, ever set won-lost goals for my team. It's silly to think in those terms, particularly in June and July. What matters is the Mets don't go 5-16, that they build on whatever momentum they seem to have stirred, that they play some more crisp Sunday-type games and play many fewer soggy Saturday-type games. The caliber of the opponents between now and July 13 varies almost evenly: three very good teams, three rather lame teams. Very good teams don't always trip up the Mets (theoretically, none of them is that much better than us), rather lame teams don't always lay down for the Mets (theoretically, none of them is that much worse than us).

This is a fantastic opportunity for us to see what our team is, if it's definitively stopped being an embarrassment on the field — we've seen too much of what they're capable of off it — and if it's capable of competing in the second half, at the very least capable of giving us hope for a viable July and a vital August. There is both a hint of light for the Mets now and an overwhelming cloud that hasn't fully dissipated. Let's not kid ourselves that we're over a hump. We're not. But we are at the hump. Given the depths with which this team has flirted since March 31, that's all you can ask for.

Bill Maher refers to the tendency to sit and watch a movie that you come across while flipping channels even though you own the DVD of it and can watch it any time you wish, as Shawshank Syndrome.

There's an even more insidious affliction emanating from your cable system. It's the tendency to sit and watch a movie that you come across while flipping channels, even though you've seen it plenty, you don't like it and you know you never will, yet you convince yourself that maybe if you watch it now, since nothing else is on, that it will somehow get better.

I call this Being Gung Ho For No Discernible Reason Whatsoever, named for the 1986 Michael Keaton film about what happens when a Japanese automobile manufacturer buys the economically endangered car assembly plant in a depressed Western Pennsylvania town. Part comedy, part drama, part social commentary, Gung Ho is total dreck. Its topicality has turned to datedness over two decades. Ron Howard's direction, featuring many nods to the MTV ethos of the day, is hamhanded, another victim of time. Keaton's appeal as a leading man is better covered by a cape and a cowl. His character, a Chevy Chase ironic wise guy but with a heart of gold, makes no sense in the context of his job, which is saving the factory, rescuing the hard-working, blue-collar men and women of his community, relating honestly to the Japanese executives and learning to grow. The cast includes a hodgepodge of the miscast: John Turturro, George Wendt, Mimi Rogers and Clint Howard. Put simply, every time I see Gung Ho — whose title is taken from a phrase that means, literally, “extremely enthusiastic and dedicated” — it gets a little worse…yet I'm somehow a little surprised that it's really as terrible to watch as it is.

But I sit and watch it more often than not, especially if, like last night, I'm sitting up with a nagging headache and, you know, there's nothing else on. Last night I caught about two-thirds of it, declared it a disaster, watched something else until (with my head still kind of bothering me) I discovered Gung Ho had started again on one of HBO's West Coast feeds. Then I watched the part I had missed earlier to determine that, no, neither the movie nor my head nor my judgment was improving.

Why we sit and stare at programming that is obviously and predictably dreadful, that we've seen too many times and that doesn't soothe our aching heads one little bit I'll never understand.

There is nothin' like a honeymoon period, nothin' in this world. There is nothin' you can name that is anythin' like the glow of a team winnin' under an interim manager.

The Mets are now officially honeymooners, with the stars Jerry Manuel…John Maine…Carlos Beltran…and the 2008 New York Mets who — bang, zoom, straight to .500! — sit a mere 4-1/2 games from first place.

The Mets have pussyfooted around the break-even mark previously this year…all year, in fact. They've never been more than four games over it or three games under it. This morning they cool their heels right at it for the twelfth time in '08; thirteen if we count 0-0. It's not much of an accomplishment on paper for the Mets to reach .500. In spiritual terms, however, it's one giant leap for Metkind.

It's not about numbers at the moment. It's not about games out in the loss column (a trifling three) or position in the standings (an encouraging third) or watching the scoreboard (although that's exactly what I just finished doing as the Athletics harpooned the Marlins in eleven, meaning we picked up ground on them and the Phils and the Braves). It's about a feeling and a sense and a sensation that right here at good ol' .500 things are finally starting to look up.

It's the honeymoon, all right. A week ago, the Mets beat a so-so opponent 7-1 and as John Koblin assessed in the Observer, hardly anybody at Shea cared. All observers quoted in his article (including this then-at-the-end-of-his-Met-rope blogger) agreed this baseball team had problems that far transcended baseball games, even baseball victories.

A week later, the Mets beat a so-so opponent 7-2 and all seems marginally right with the Mets' world. If this baseball team has problems, none is so daunting that it can't be cured by a few baseball games, especially baseball victories.

Jerry Manuel has a .667 winning percentage as Mets manager and only a killjoy would point out that's a simple matter of 2-1. Manuel's winning streak is best expressed by acknowledging everything he's touched has turned to gold, everything he says is platinum. For instance, he's come up with a new batting practice regimen of fewer swings per player, taken on the road before the home team hits the cage. In the game that followed, his batters addressed the ball (hello ball…), scored five in the second and then tacked on a couple more later. Asked whether his BP philosophy and, by extension, his stamp on the team was truly taking hold, Manuel cracked a little smile and addressed himself directly to ownership. “Jeff, Fred,” he said, give me “three years” and he will surely make an impact.

That Jerry Manuel's one frisky sonofagun! Not to get caught up in already-stale comparisons, but can you imagine the previous manager of the New York Mets spouting anything but defensive clichés to explain why the Mets looked good out there tonight? We'd be told that that's what his guys do and they played the game well and he has confidence and zzzzz…

It's not the manager's job to entertain, but it doesn't hurt. It is the manager's job to motivate and innovate and articulate, and that's what really helps. Jerry Manuel's got this team playing hard and loving life. Didja see the inmates let out in the exercise yard…I mean the dugout before the ninth? Guys were up on their feet and slapping each other on the back and doing that thing where their mouths open and their teeth are evident but not in a menacing way.

Smiling! That's it! And the grins grew only wider a half-inning later when the 7-2 win was won. It was what we used to call a routine win but it was processed in Denver and through the television screen as much more. This team is waking up and discovering a) baseball doesn't have to be treated as Excedrin Headache No. 162; b) the mediocrity that predominated across April, May and half of June is neither inevitable nor irredeemable where the rest of 2008 is concerned; c) a game is called a “game” for a reason. These Mets right now are, shocker of shockers, kind of fun to watch, definitely fun to get behind.

But honeymoons are supposed to be fun. You're doing something wrong if yours comes off as work. Almost every interim Met manager, at least those appointed when there's been enough season left to salvage, gets one and usually makes a little something of it. The '75 Mets won the first two they played under Roy McMillan and Yogi Berra's replacement was instantly hailed as the new Gil Hodges. Joe Torre reeled off seven of eight in '77 after Joe Frazier was shown the door, the hallway and the parking lot. Hondo Howard goaded the '83 Mets into an 11-10 run. Dallas Green's charges went 5-7 after Jeff Torborg buried 1993 out of the box at 13-25; for 1993, 5-7 was the moral equivalent of 108-54. And let us not forget the patron saint of Met managerial switches, Harrelson in for Johnson, when 1990's 20-22 beginning was wiped away (after a 1-4 getting-acquainted spasm) by a 27-5 cyclone of winning, winning and winning some more.

None of it, not even Buddyball, lasted long enough to make a definitive dent in the schedule. McMillan, Torre, Howard and Green all guided their teams to indifferent or dismal finishes. Harrelson brought the Mets into September in first place, but he was outmanaged and the Mets were outplayed by Jim Leyland and the Pirates down the stretch. None of those other managers achieved anything of lasting value in a Mets uniform. Neither, unfortunately, did skipper Bud Harrelson. The feelgreat story of June and July 1990 dissolved into fractious backbiting by the second half of the year; the beloved sparkplug shortstop of 1969 was a managerial goner before 1991 was over.

(Fascinating aside from a Dave Anderson column I recently ran across in the Times from late September of '90: In comparing the strict and effective discipline of Hodges to the way Harrelson was getting regularly rolled by certain of his players, an old friend of Gil's speculated that if he were still alive and managing, “I don't think he would have tolerated Ron Darling's griping, especially when Darling wasn't getting anybody out.” I guess Darling's Sovereign Bank credo that “wherever I go, I make sure I'm comfortable” extends back to his attitude in the clubhouse during his Met twilight.)

The best, the absolute best we can hope for from Jerry Manuel is an adrenaline shot like the one Buddy administered to the uptight Mets of eighteen Junes ago, when the atmosphere needed cleansing, the air needed clearing, the manager who had come one game from a World Series two years earlier needed supplanting. Harrelson's Mets began to click in earnest on June 5, 1990 when the normally spectacularly useless Tom O'Malley blasted an eleventh-inning walkoff home run versus the Expos' Dale Mohorcic. That was the beginning of the streak that made Buddy Harrelson look like a genius. I thought of that particular adrenaline shot when Damion Easley took Justin Speier deep in the tenth Wednesday night. Easley's not spectacularly useless, but the Mets as a whole had been.

Until further notice in 2008, maybe not so much.

Reporters covering this team, naturally, want to reveal a trend. They want declarations. Every interrogator of Manuel after the game Friday asked, eventually, if we're witnessing the first signs of an authentic Met turnaround, adding the caveat — as if required by law to save them from sounding like impatient dopes — that “we know it's early.” Manuel said many smart things after the game (he used the word “permeate” which made the editor in me swoon), but the most intelligent instinct he displayed was not taking the bait. He's been manager for three games. The Mets have won two. Right now, he's a brilliant tactician and a beautiful mind. Of course he is. He's on his honeymoon. Let him enjoy it. Enjoy it with him.

And don't come a knockin' if his team starts a-rockin'.

By the way, though the Daily News quoted me accurately when they found me wandering out of the Mets Clubhouse Store in Manhattan (where I was just browsing) on Friday, I wouldn't go so far as to say I characterized the subject of this story as “a winner” or that I added to his “host of hoorays”. But at least it didn't quite come out as EVERYBODY LOVES YANKEE GREAT per the usual News formula.

Life is too short, time is too precious and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been.

—Hillary Rodham Clinton

Yesterday's news, literally, was the Mets' stirring comeback win against the Angels…that's yesterday as in Pacific time, though as I heard somewhere time of day is strictly a matter of perception. Gary Cohen called the extra-inning triumph the biggest win of the year. I'm fairly certain the Mets have collected the biggest win of the year about a half-dozen times in 2008, yet it's unlikely that each simply outshone all of its predecessors and we know for sure that none of them had any legs in terms of what came next. I have no idea whether Mets 5 Angels 4 in 10 was the biggest win of the year. Let's take the Bobby V route and say it was since it was the only game they played Wednesday and today is Thursday.

I hope those were some signs we saw, not just another aberration amid the mediocrity. Wright reaching out and touching K-Rod was a great sign. Wright reaching out and foiling Kendrick — give that man a Gold Hand Award! — was a fantastic sign. Reyes and Easley you can figure out for yourself, signwise. Endy regains his Endyness the more he swings, which is gratifying from a good ol' Endy perspective but really a godsend considering that this batting order, dominated by bench guys and castoffs, looks like something out of 1943. Whatever their merits as hustlers and gamers and, for a night, achievers, it's tough to monitor a procession in which Anderson, Nixon, Easley, Chavez, Castro and Tatis are prominent and not think, “The healthy guys are off to war, these must be the 4-Fs.”

The best sign of them all was watching Oliver Perez endure his standard awful inning and being left in to deal with it. No disrespect to the departed Rick Peterson, he whose jacket was stripped in the conversion to Tuscany tile, but I was thrilled that New Pitching Coach Dude (still trying to learn their names) didn't spend a lot of time pouring ketchup on Ollie's ice cream and that Jerry Manuel didn't pull Perez after the usual inning from hell. Ollie and the Mets survived the Angels' four-run fifth. Maybe it was the DH being in effect, but Perez coming back for a 1-2-3 sixth felt more solid than hardwood flooring. Giving your starter some rope and showing your starter some faith is the way you can manage the game when you're not scared for your job. You make the starter pitch and you don't run through relievers like Skittles.

Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta.

The Angels, though it was hard to notice amid the Sturm und Drang that surrounded this series, are a swell team to watch, rightly praised by Gary and Ron for their aggressive, loosey-goosey style of play. It doesn't take much to convince me the Angels are a quality outfit. They're my nominal favorite American League team since 2002 and Vladimir Guerrero is the only opposing player who puts me in mind of what it was like to watch Hank Aaron when I was a kid. You didn't want Hank Aaron to beat you, but if he did, so what? He was Hank Aaron. I used to refer to Vlad as The Greatest Player Who Ever Lived in deference to the overwhelming hype he received at every at-bat. I wasn't, however, being ironic. I'd prefer he not beat us, but Vladimir Guerrero doing so almost doesn't bother me. There's nothing not to like about him and he will carry no asterisks en route to his Hall of Fame election.

OK, so I consider the Angels a team that hovers above us mere mortals, but that's not my point here. My point is the way they play the game, the Bingo Long zest and all that? If the Mets tried it and got thrown out trying to take extra bases as often as the Angels do, we'd hear without end what unprofessional morons the Mets are. LAA's a perennial contender and Scioscia is as stable leading his team today as he was placid hitting demoralizing home runs against our team twenty years ago and they must be doing many, many things right out there by I-5. But if the Mets were pissing away baserunners the way the Angels did when Willie Randolph won his last game and when Jerry Manuel won his first game, whoever was managing the Mets would be skewered to within an inch of his professional life. Or worse, fired in the middle of the night…since it's always the middle of the night somewhere.

Speaking of he whose shove-off came to light in the wee small hours of the morning, Willie Randolph seems to have led the Mets about as long ago as Salty Parker did, doesn't he? Talk about yesterday's news. On SNY's SportsNite, after a recap of the Mets' rubber-game win, there was a piece on Willie's Side of The Story, essentially how Omar's version of events is full of it. I tend to believe Willie in this latest tapping of the hoary sitcom dueling-flashback device (“you should get down on your knees and thank your maker for a friend like Omar!”), but I tend to believe with much greater fervor that I'm no longer interested in Willie Randolph. As in the case of Peterson, there's something invigorating about not having Randolph around. When his picture shows up on TV or in the paper, it's a downer. It's a reminder of all that went wrong. It's a shame, too, because of the good he did when he did it, but I don't think I quite appreciated how badly this dugout needed a change. As faintly unsettling as it is to stare at these mysteriously appearing coaches and, to a certain extent, Manuel as manager because I'm just not used to seeing them in their newly assigned roles, I'm fairly grateful that what was no longer is.

I can only dream of how special it will be when there's a new GM.