Willie Randolph's Record Since Last Memorial Day: 76-79

Days Until Contract of Luis Castillo (1 for 4, 2 LOB, 1 Harebrained 2-Out Play) Expires: 1,226

Days Until Willie Randolph Is Fired: ?

Days Until I Give Up on This Listless, Unwatchable, Eminently Booable Team: -2

The sports-industrial complex to which we've all become attached keeps us on our toes. It makes sure we feel we're not doing our job unless we look ahead, sometimes way ahead, to ascertain results and consequences before they could possibly be known. The 2008 Mets, for example, have played 44 games and few us of are focused on the 45th for the mere sake of enjoying it. No, we've got to figure out it what it means in terms of The Big Picture.

What fun is sports without The Big Picture? I believe it was the Monday after the Sunday last fall when the football Giants raised their record to 7-3 that a popular talk radio show (talk radio being the home office of determining what will happen long ahead of the fact) opened not with a discussion of how Eli Manning, Michael Strahan and their mates mounted a win over the Detroit Lions the day before, but instead by announcing the conclusion to the Giants' season six weeks before the schedule would play out: they'll get to the second round of the playoffs where they'll be beaten by Dallas who will play Green Bay for the right to lose to New England in Super Bowl XLII. I have two t-shirts, a pennant and a DVD that say different, but that's neither here nor there.

As much as sports fans can be counted on to wallow in the past — Flashback Friday returns tomorrow — we sure do like to know, definitively know, what's next. Pencil in Santana to give us at least seven; pencil in a 5-2 homestand; pencil in Willie as gone after the West Coast trip. After a hit was reruled an error or an error reruled a hit, Bob Murphy would remind us that's why they put erasers on pencils. Erasers, however, aren't why we buy pencils.

Given the penchant for penciling in the unknowable and the desire to write endings in indelible ink before the final chapter is conceived, I wasn't surprised that the instant reaction from many Mets fans upon the news of Mike Piazza's retirement was twofold.

“The Mets have to retire 31.”

“He has to go into the Hall of Fame as a Met.”

Gauzy memories of what Mike meant (like the gorgeous ones my partner strung together) were almost secondary. The playlist of Mike's greatest hits could stay on pause. We had two results to sort out and confirm. We can no longer predict where he'll wind up come spring or if he'll move to first or when he's going to break that catchers' home run record or if he'll be ready for the Atlanta series or whether he'll re-sign with us or whether we have a chance to get him from the Marlins, so we have to have something to look forward to with Mike Piazza.

• Do the Mets have to retire 31?

Of course.

Is it fair that he jumps the line, that we crumble 31 crackers into the numeral soup that so far lacks the savory stock of a 17, a 36, a 24, a digit du jour? That he logged less innings here than an overlooked/underappreciated stalwart of your choice? That his Herculean homers, his Gunsmoke grit, his John Barrymore stage presence didn't add up to a world championship?

Don't bother me with details. Number retirement is perhaps the most circular argument in all of Met protocol, left wide open by the Mets' failure to act (or by dint of their principled reserve, if you like). Mike Piazza was the Met of Mets when the Mets were at just about their best, even if their 1998-2001 best wasn't quite good enough to be exchanged for the most valuable prize in the S&H Catalog, even if their and his best leveled off between 2002 and 2004, even if the organization posted signs from his locker to the exit throughout 2005. Mike Piazza was the Met of Mets for the bulk of eight seasons, the Met of Mets as only Tom Seaver was and was longer. Only Tom Seaver has a number retired for having been so.

Let's give 41 some company. Let's not wait so long that we begin to forget why 31 towered over Shea as it did. Let's not let well-intentioned arguments for other numbers cancel this one out. And if you want to arrange a dual ceremony in which 17 shakes hands with 31 and they both high-five 41, I'm all for adding them up on a wall together.

• Does Mike Piazza have to go in as a Met?

I feel more passionate about the number than the plaque because, to my way of thinking, I — generic Mets fan — have (or ideally should have) some say over whom my team honors. I can't do a blessed thing about the National Baseball Hall of Fame. I've about given up trying.

I'm down on Cooperstown. I've stopped giving myself over to their machinations. I don't much believe in what they do anymore. A body that finds a way to laud Walter O'Malley, ignore Gil Hodges and turn its back on Buck O'Neil has lost its right to be considered august. Rest assured, however, I'll self-servingly change my tune for at least a winter's afternoon when Mike Piazza's election is certified.

About four seconds after the word goes forth in January 2013, we'll be jumping all over that question again: Does Mike Piazza go in as a Met?

If it were up to me, the answer is the same as the one applied above to the retirement of his number: of course. Of course he goes in as a Met. He was the Met of Mets, and not in the way that Bobby Bonilla was during his first term. He was the Met of Mets when being the Mets and loving the Mets were two of baseball's highest callings. He was the Met of Mets when that made Mike Piazza a household name from coast to coast.

You can make an intelligent argument, if you are so inclined, that Mike Piazza shouldn't go in as a Met. If you are a Dodgers fan, I would expect you to (you wouldn't be doing your job if you weren't). He became a baseball star in Los Angeles. He became a baseball phenomenon in Los Angeles. He began becoming the best-hitting catcher baseball has ever seen in Los Angeles. It is, however, my considered opinion, that he completed the job in New York, meant something more in New York, achieved greater fame with more layers of substance in New York. If I imagine myself in, say, Kansas City and were asked to proffer an opinion on the matter, I think I would say Mike Piazza was a Met who had been a Dodger, not a Dodger who went on to become a Met. But I can't say for sure, 'cause I'm not in Kansas City.

Somebody will ask Piazza what insignia he thinks should be engraved on the cap that is portrayed on his plaque. I predict he will choose the hat of a diplomat, even if the crescendo of the statement he released upon his retirement was one big hosanna for the likes of us:

I have to say that my time with the Mets wouldn't have been the same without the greatest fans in the world. One of the hardest moments of my career was walking off the field at Shea Stadium and saying goodbye. My relationship with you made my time in New York the happiest of my career and for that I will always be grateful.

(When the uninitiated wonder why we swoon over millionaire athletes, show them that, will ya?)

Upon retiring, Mike showed the presence of mind to namecheck Fred Wilpon, Nelson Doubleday, Steve Phillips, “Johnny” Franco, Al Leiter, Charlie Samuels, Bobby Valentine, Art Howe and Willie Randolph. I don't doubt he considers himself a Met when he considers himself a ballplayer. The same statement, however, was peppered with praise for the Dodgers — “you gave me birth to a life that never in my wildest dreams did I think was possible” — and even found a way to pay homage to his cameos with the Marlins, the Padres and the A's. Should some HOF apparatchik come to Mike in 2013 and tell him he will be immortalized as something other than a Met, he will probably approach it, accept it and embrace it like he did everything in the game: with as much grace and class as any superstar baseball has been privileged enough to host.

Pinning an objective identity on a player can drive a person crazy, particularly in this day and age of virtually unrestricted movement. To date, 831 players have played for the New York Mets. Ninety-six have been Mets only. The other 735 have been Mets to us. Jeff Conine signed a Spring Training contract to “retire a Marlin” this March, but he was a Met to us. We may not have wanted to have been saddled with Tommy Herr, but we think of him in Met terms because it's what we do. Dean Chance was just passing through, but he was a Met. So was Tom Hall, so was Willie Blair, so were both Mike Marshalls.

But that's us (and only a select few of us bother to drill that deep). If you take the broader view, you are not being a bad Mets fan if you ponder aloud…

• Keith Hernandez: Met or Cardinal? (Met; Cardinal Keith never dated Elaine Benes.)

• David Cone: Met or Yankee? (Pains me to tilt distastefully toward four rings and a perfect game even if he did come “home” to not pitch well at the very end.)

• Lenny Dykstra: Met or Phillie? (Bigger star as a Phillie, more Nails right here.)

• Felix Millan: Met or Brave? (All-Star in Atlanta, instantly beloved in New York…1973 trumps whatever came before.)

In the Hall of Fame business, we take great pride in rattling off which Mets are in. As long as there's a line on the plaque that specifies NEW YORK (N.L.) and the date is 1962 or later, they're in as Mets. Richie Ashburn, Duke Snider, Yogi Berra, Warren Spahn…you may have arrived there without us, but we're there with you. Nolan Ryan, Willie Mays, Eddie Murray…you didn't really need us, but you've got us. Rickey Henderson…when they come to get to you, you might remember us (or you might not, but we remember you). Gary Carter…

That's the precedent that seems to have come up a lot this week. Gary Carter was granted a plaque in Cooperstown in 2003. The fine print mentioned he was a Met, just as it noted his participation on the Giants and the Dodgers. But the emblem on his headgear is clearly that of a Montreal Expo, the team on which he started, the team on which it became abundantly clear that he was a Hall of Famer to be, the team where, for what it's worth, he finished up.

The Mets were where Gary Carter became a world champion (and a champion of Ivory Soap). The Expos were where Gary Carter became the guy the Mets had to have. Gary Carter was never quite the Met of Mets; the '86 Mets contained at least four transcendent individuals. Gary Carter was — no offense to Andre Dawson — the Expo of Expos in his time there. The Expos' time was limited upon Carter's Cooperstown induction. Within fifteen months of his speech, there would be no more Montreal Expos. I would have liked to have seen Gary Carter go in as a Met. I could easily get why Gary Carter would go in as an Expo. It didn't diminish a bit my joy for a player who had given me so much of the same a generation earlier.

There wasn't much discussion over what Tom Seaver would go in as. Well, maybe a few Cincinnatians grumbled, perhaps a South Sider or two thought differently, but who would have figured Tom Seaver's plaque wouldn't show off a Mets cap? More than half of his career and almost all of his Amazin' feats came as a Met. I suppose I would have cried foul, screamed bloody murder and howled to the heavens if Tom Seaver hadn't gone in to the Hall of Fame as a Met in 1992. But that was never a serious option.

The whole cap thing is a relatively recent phenomenon. Comb the HOF archives and be surprised at how many plaques portray players — from the era when they endured all or most of their careers with one team — with blank or no caps. Mel Ott, for example, has a fine head of hair but no insignia to indicate his two-decade tenure as the New York Giant of New York Giants. I don't recall it ever being mentioned as an overriding issue until Reggie Jackson rather blatantly decided to be “officially” remembered as a Yankee rather than an Athletic because (reportedly) George Steinbrenner promised him a job if he would. Dave Winfield supposedly went the other way to secure employment in the Padre front office. Nolan Ryan skipped straight to his last team, the Rangers, even if he established his legend as an Angel and burnished it as an Astro.

I didn't really have a problem with any of those calls. Jackson, Winfield and Ryan absolutely were, respectively, a Yankee, a Padre and a Ranger. They were also absolutely were an A, a Yankee and an Astro/Angel. It's not as if the cap blotted out what they did in the NOT PICTURED portions of their careers. Of course the whole thing was thought to have raged out of control when Wade Boggs allegedly made a deal (eventually vetoed by the Hall) to go in as a Devil Ray, despite having worn batting crowns as a Red Sock, even though he rode a horse as a Yankee. But even then, it wasn't off-the-charts crazy to picture him in a TB cap for all time. He collected his 3,000th hit as a Ray; he kissed home plate as a Ray; he finished up as Ray because he grew up in Tampa. Would it really have corrupted the Wade Boggs legacy had visitors to the Hall of Fame glanced at his plaque, seen a Devil Rays logo and moved on to Ryne Sandberg and Bruce Sutter?

Carlton Fisk played more for the White Sox than the Red Sox. Carlton Fisk's Red Sox career alone didn't earn him admission to the Hall of Fame. Carlton Fisk set the catching records that pushed him over the Hall hump in Chicago. Yet he would go in as a Red Sock probably because the first thing everybody thinks of when they think of Carlton Fisk is Carlton Fisk willing a ball fair in Fenway Park. Game Six of the 1975 World Series is what is memorialized on Carlton Fisk's plaque cap.

There's something eternally romantic about Pudge the Red Sock, something almost pedestrian about Fisk the White Sock. He was a bright-eyed kid in Boston, a battle-scarred veteran in Chicago, landing there because of a contract mishap in Boston (and winding up at loggerheads with Jerry Reinsdorf before he was done). If we're going to pick this two-team catcher as a precedent for Piazza, wouldn't that mean the Dodger cap has an edge? Isn't L.A. where muscular Mike first flexed and awed? Isn't that where his youthful bloom blossomed into a Rookie of the Year stampede, a perennial All-Star berth, an insane .362 average? Wasn't Mike Piazza already a Pert-endorsing superstar at Dodger Stadium? Wasn't it essentially bad faith on the part of Fox that chased him from Chavez Ravine in 1998?

But…

Didn't Mike Piazza play his only World Series as a New York Met, and play it quite memorably? (Come to think of it, didn't Gary Carter, too?) Didn't Mike Piazza stride from baseball famous to actually famous as a Met? Didn't Mike Piazza leap to legend at Shea? Wasn't it here and for us that he hit the homers everybody associates with him? Who was at the heart of the single most dramatic game imaginable in September 2001? Where did that take place? Where did he not fade from sight but heartfully bid adieu? To whom did he give his utmost regards in October 2005 and August 2006 and May 2008?

Mike Piazza should go in as a Met. Yet he might not. I'll probably be more outraged than I'm letting on, but I hope if that's the case, my ire will be tempered by knowing that if he doesn't wear a Met insignia on his cap on a plaque, that he did so in real life on a helmet for most of eight seasons…and will continue to do so for as long as I think of him.

Which will be for a very long time.

Well, the New York Mets are now officially what we've been saying they are for some time: a .500 team.

Stumbling to that dismal pass tonight, however, I had a dreadful thought: One of Willie Randolph's defenses for his tenure, as expressed to Ian O'Connor before Willie started seeing conspiracies at work in the SNY production trucks (a bout of lunacy he's since apologized for), amounted to “Hey, I'm not Art Howe.” But watching the 2008 Mets dreadful night after dreadful night, don't they kind of remind you of an Art Howe team?

They're a more-talented, more-expensive bunch of listless dullards, to be sure. But underachieving is underachieving whether you're a 71-win team that probably should have won 77 or 78 (and what an accomplishment that would have been) or a .500 team that should be on pace for 90 wins. What's the difference in how they go about their business, exactly? Does Carlos Delgado wave in the vague direction of passing base hits with a verve that Todd Zeile could only dream of? Are Luis Castillo's failures with runners on base gritty and life-affirming, whereas Danny Garcia's were placid and soul-killing? Do the 2008 Mets lose by seven with a fire that the 2004 Mets sorely lacked in similar situations? Art Howe was bland and sunny; recent descents into paranoia aside, Willie Randolph is bland and surly.

Is the comparison exaggerated? Of course it is — you'll forgive me if I get a little worked up while watching my team sleepwalk through getting its collective ass handed to it again. But who is Willie Randolph to be roasting Art Howe over the coals, considering he's 76-78 since Memorial Day with a far better team than Howe ever sent onto the field? The cliche of the Art Howe era was that his Mets battled. Wouldn't you like to see Randolph's Mets battle?

So what did this latest horrible game feature? Well, Mike Pelfrey got victimized by an error by the singularly useless Luis Castillo (only 1,227 days until we're out from under that contract, Omar!) but then showed very little grace under pressure. The relief pitching was bad, the hitting was nonexistent, and Moises Alou appears to have hurt himself standing in the outfield, which sounds like it should be a joke but isn't.

* * *

You know what? Enough. We've got all year to talk about this crappy baseball team.

One of the sad parts of Willie's meltdown was it took away from what should have been an outpouring of honors for Mike Piazza, now formally a former baseball player. At first, I admit, I didn't take much notice of the announcement — after leaving us Piazza had become a Padre and then an Athletic, a retreat from New York baseball consciousness that only could have been furthered if he'd begun 2008 playing in Hokkaido or on Mars. But amid the gloom of the doubleheader loss, I kept finding myself thinking about Piazza — and not about the farcical move to first, or the way I always wanted him to be a general instead of a lieutenant. No, I was thinking about the fact that you never, ever went to the bathroom if Piazza was coming to the plate, and about all the games I saw him win, and about all the joy he'd brought us. I wound up pouring all that out into a piece I wrote for the Wall Street Journal Online today — which, if you like, you can read here.

* * *

Aw, what the heck: If you'll allow me one more indulgence, this is the 100% true story about how I tried and tried to see Bruce Springsteen in concert when I was 17 and he was my musical hero, and how I finally did see him — when I was 38.

It all turns out OK; it'd be nice to say the same about the 2008 Mets.

He threw six innings. He wasn't touched in the final five of them. He took a seat. And he smiled the broadest smile I ever saw from him.

The devil bared his fangs.

In the detritus of September 30, 2007 (as we continue to live in a post-September 30 world), it makes me wonder all over again why T#m Gl@v!ne ever left Atlanta.

John Schuerholz was under pressure from AOL-Time Warner six years ago to reduce payroll and Gl@v!ne, as much of a modern athlete (and Players Association big shot) as anybody, saw the potential pile of money on the table in another city and lunged for it, but honestly, how much money do these guys need? Not once in five seasons in a Met uniform — if not exactly a Met — did T#m Gl@v!ne ever look remotely as happy as he did after his six innings of light tossing Tuesday afternoon. Likewise, I watched his welcome back press conference last November and he was more at ease (with reporters, of all things) than I've ever seen him. It's obvious being an Atlanta Brave agrees with T#m Gl@v!ne, never stopped agreeing with T#m Gl@v!ne.

Maybe it's the fabric they use down south. Maybe it's the proximity to The Varsity. Maybe it's the soothing presence of Coxie and Smoltzie. But we never got that smile, that relaxation and, way more importantly, that kind of wriggling out of a first-inning jam and segueing into a rocking chair for five more frames, not when the world depended on it.

To be fair, between 2003 and 2007 Gl@v!ne never had the benefit of facing the Mets in that situation.

If T#m Gl@v!ne had gone into life insurance or become a pharmacist and he had never come to my attention and somebody tried to tell me about this swell guy who was an ideal co-worker and a real smart cookie, I'd nod and maybe say that sounds like someone I'd like to hang out with. Instead, he went into baseball and we know the route his career took — straight through our gut several times, kicking us in the intestines from all angles. Thus, it's impossible to hear his former teammates and the media that covered him sing his praises as a human being and not want to retch for a couple of weeks straight. Baseball brought him to our attention. Baseball is why we give a damn about total strangers we'll never meet or know. Baseball is why I tune out every he's-a-jolly-good-fellow endorsement from every otherwise trusted source — even our trusted trio of announcers.

For his diabolical doings as a Brave from the late '80s until the early '00s; to his job-blocking of hard-working, well-meaning ballplayers who got caught up in a labor mess not of their own making; to his wary, tenuous tenure as a half-decade Met; to his disastating, devappointing farewell; right up to yesterday when he grinned the grin of a canary-swallowing cat after yet another afternoon of short-circuiting Met hope and Met happiness, he remains now and forever T#m Gl@v!ne, pronounced just as he's spelled.

If he'd smile his Satanic smile out of SNY camera range, if he'd flash his demonic dimples in someone else's faces, I'd not feel any need to dredge him up again. But there he #@! was yesterday, looking relaxed, seeming pleased as punch with himself, still #@! revolting us to high heavens and ever deeper hell.

Will September 30 ever #@! end?

That was the highlight of Keith Hernandez's story of finding himself in his first tornado around 1974: He opened the windows because he'd heard somewhere that the pressure differential could destroy a cheap apartment building, only his new stereo was getting wet, so he closed the windows, but he was still worried about the pressure thing, so he “ran outside into a gully” — and, shockingly enough, quickly found himself chest-deep in water.

Definitely one for the Crazy Keith files — and I quietly filed away the information that if I'm in an emergency in the vicinity of Keith Hernandez, I should not assume his cerebral cool on the ballfield means he's going to have good ideas. But metaphorically, Keith's tale of bad ideas and compounding mistakes was an accurate enough description of Tuesday, May 20, 2008 in the annals of the New York Mets. Let me see if I've got this right:

* Willie Randolph, apparently having decided the Mets need more distractions, had to answer a bunch of questions about a racial conspiracy theory, and this one didn't have anything to do with Paul Lo Duca or Billy Wagner — he seems to have thought it up basically on his own.

* Off to an apparently roaring start, the Mets ground to a screeching halt against T#m Gl@v!ne and got manhandled.

* They then got their butts handed to them by some anonymous pitcher, dropping the second half of a double header in ignominious fashion.

* Ryan Church, the 53rd out of the day and a player who missed time with a concussion less than three months ago, wound up face-down and bleeding in the dirt when everything was over and needed to be helped off the field. (Postgame update: Mild concussion.)

Did that cover everything? Or have I forgotten something else awful because my neurons are overcrowded after an endless day of Met awfulness? It's quite possible. (Oh yeah, Mike Piazza retired. He was already retired, but having it be official still sucks.)

Assuming Church is OK (and Yunel Escobar too, because let's be decent about things), you have to give the 2008 Mets credit: No team does a better job confounding any attempt to figure out what they're really made of. The team's obviously terrible — can't do a damn thing against a horrible Nationals team that might actually recruit pitchers by taking the guys turned down by the Dallas police after responding to the ads above the urinals in the upper deck. Well, no — they beat the Yankees in convincing fashion, working counts, having smart at-bats and running up the score. So they're actually pretty darn good, right? No — after an off-day they come out and play 18 innings of prairie-flat baseball, marked by giveaway at-bats, dimwitted baserunning, indifferent fielding and lousy pitching.

It's easy to be average — just plod along and win some and lose some. But that's too simple for the Mets of late — they have to be average by yo-yoing from bad to good and bad again at a truly fearsome velocity. It's no easy thing to be at once fundamentally mediocre and completely exhausting, but they're managing it.

If a Union Carpenter or Contractor wants to bury a Braves jersey beneath Citi Field, it's fine with me.

Provided T#m Gl@v!ne is wearing it.

7: Monday, September 22 vs Cubs

Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived in the final week of the 2008 baseball season, the final week of regularly scheduled competition ever to take place at William A. Shea Municipal Stadium. One week from now, pending potential playoff participation, the New York Mets will cease to call Shea Stadium home.

Not only does it feel like this last season of Shea just began, but we are left to wonder, with seven games remaining from the start of tonight, where did 45 springs, summers and falls go? Where did the 45 seasons of Mets baseball go? Where did all those games against all those worthy Met opponents go?

All but seven contests have been played to their conclusion and all but one National League rival has made an appearance as part of this season's separation process. Since there is no home game without a visiting team, we want to use the number 7 to pay homage to the role that the one team which waited until tonight to touch down in Flushing in 2008 played in building the legend of Shea Stadium long ago.

With them present at last, we recall the first genuine rivalry in which the Mets ever battled for high stakes, a rivalry forged in the heat of Shea Stadium's first pennant race and a rivalry at the heart of the most unforgettable season the patrons of this ballpark ever experienced.

Tonight we remember the New York Mets and the Chicago Cubs and 1969.

It's a happier story told in Queens than it is in Wrigleyville, but it's a story complete only with the acknowledgement that there were two sides to the miracle coin. One team's and one fan base's eternal joy is somebody else's cause for sleepless nights and teeth gnashed to the gums. Nearly four decades later, it would not be sporting to say to the Cubs and their followers “we couldn't have done it without you.”

Even though we couldn't have.

On the other hand, Mets fans have learned some painful lessons in recent seasons, lessons in being ahead and falling behind, lessons that expectations sometimes exceed results. If this doesn't necessarily put Mets fans in league with Cubs fans, then at least they might now speak two dialects of the same language.

In any event, to Mets fans in 1969, one Cub represented all that was imposing about the team they hoped to overtake in the course of the summer. He was one of the best players of his time, some would say a Hall of Famer in everything but title. Few National League third basemen were surer bets in the field or at the bat and few Chicago athletes have grown as revered as this man, Ron Santo.

Nobody could have imagined in the summer of '69 that the Mets would bring Ron Santo to Shea Stadium to sing his praises. It was, after all, Ron Santo who drew the ire of the Mets and their fans for his habitual clicking of heels after Cub victories. It was Santo who was seen as the overbearing leader of the team that was standing in the way of the miracle that would change us all. Goodness knows Ron Santo never sought a spotlight at Shea. In fact, his exact words in 2007, upon being asked about the imminent final season of this ballpark where the Cubs' hopes have crumbled before his eyes as a player and announcer, were:

“I would come personally back here to blow it up. I'd pay my own way. Maybe even just to watch it.”

In another time, those would be fighting words. But this is the end of time for Shea. It's hard to think of Shea without 1969 and it's impossible to think of 1969 without the Mets playing the Cubs in September, winning a tight one one night and a laugher the next. So we asked Ron to join us on this September evening from the Cubs' broadcast booth. We didn't pay his way, but the Mets did make a sizable donation to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, a cause Ron has supported vigorously for many years. When it comes to fighting disease, the only enemy is the malady itself.

So please welcome Ron Santo to the field.

Ron, as you can see, is happily hitching a ride in the Met bullpen buggy that's been recharged for the final week of the season and he is heading now to the rightfield corner to remove number 7…he is exiting the cart now and he is approaching the wall…he is about to take part in the most sacred honor Shea Stadium has to offer…

AND WHAT'S THIS? It's a Black Cat! A black cat, just like the one that crossed in front of the Cub dugout and around the Cub on-deck circle on September 9, 1969 as the Cubs were en route to falling out of first place. The black cat, likely one of the dozens of feral cats for which Shea is so well known, has frozen Ron Santo in his tracks and…the black cat has leapt up in front of Ron…and the black cat is peeling lucky number 7 down with its teeth and its claws! The black cat appears to have gotten it all in a couple of swipes and gotten the best of the Cub great once more.

Ron Santo is shaking his head in dismay, making what looks like a gesture of pushing a button, as if he wished he'd stuck to his original plan of blowing up Shea.

That, of course, was never an option.

Our mysterious feline interloper — and folks, this was totally unplanned and unforeseen — delivers 7 to Ron Santo's feet, one final gesture to remind this North Side icon that accomplishing what he has set out to achieve at Shea Stadium is a task that will perpetually elude him. Ron is getting back into the bullpen buggy and is driven through the centerfield gate never to set foot on Shea soil again. Goodbye Ron Santo — we hate to see you go.

The black cat appears to be clicking all four of its heels. I believe we hear some purring, too.

Number 8 was revealed here.

Number 6 will be counted down next Monday, May 26.