“Waiting, waiting, waiting; enduring not so much the losses as the long stretches of nonwinning; because you've only really ever finally lost when you've given up the game.”

—Rick Perlstein, Nixonland

I had a dream, as Lionel Richie once put it. I had an awesome dream.

I dreamt of a weekend. A weekend not so long ago. A weekend when all that had been wrong with the world was turned right.

On the first night of that weekend, a heroic figure emerged from the shadows and took up our righteous cause.

On the second afternoon of that weekend, a more mysterious type came to the fore and furthered our cause.

On the third and final afternoon of that weekend, our cause was universal and all contributed to its validation.

In my dream, we were jubilant because it felt as if all we had ever wanted had been secured. Our cause was triumphant, and those who had held it back for years and years were vanquished. They would no longer stand in our way…and surely we would no longer stand in our own way either.

Like I said, it was all a dream.

It hasn't even been two years since the Mets went down to Georgia and accomplished what a generation of Mets fans thought impossible: they swept the Braves at Turner Field.

July 28, 29 & 30, 2006. Oh what a time it was. After countless indignities suffered on rotted soil and venal grass, the table and the tide were forever — yes, forever — turned.

Pedro Martinez came off the disabled list, struggled for one inning and then mastered his opponents and our nemeses for five after that. The Mets won 6-4.

Orlando Hernandez baffled Brave batters for eight innings while Carlos Beltran homered twice and drove in five. The Mets won 10-3.

Beltran launched two more homers the next day, one of them a grand slam. The game ended when Marcus Giles struck out and Willie Aybar was thrown out by Paul Lo Duca trying to steal. The Mets won 10-6.

The Mets swept the Braves at Turner Field.

The Mets scored 26 runs in three games.

The Mets raised their record to 63-41.

The Mets led the National League East by 13-1/2 games.

The Mets led the third-place Braves by 15 games.

Was it all a dream?

You couldn't tell it wasn't from the cold, stark reality of the past three day.

The Braves swept the Mets at Turner Field.

The Mets scored nine runs in four games.

The Mets lowered their record to 22-23.

The Mets trail in the National League East by 4-1/2 games.

The Mets lead the last-place Nationals — and no one else — by 3-1/2 games

The Braves are not a first-place team at the moment. When it comes to winning so far in 2008, what happens in Atlanta stays in Atlanta. They're a lousy road team to this point, but they sure make up for it at home. Even if nobody looks as good as they do when they're winning, if you had to bet, you'd bet they'll get a whole lot better on the road before they completely fall apart at home.

The Mets are very much a fourth-place team all across America. One looks for signs that they are something more. The best indicator one can come up with is they were really good in 2006.

That's not a particularly helpful indicator.

Though I'm not the resident marshal of the FAFIF chapter of the Chowder & Marchman Society, I do think Tim in this morning's Sun summed the precipitous decline and fall of the Mets since those heady days as well as I've seen it summed:

This team isn't even any good at being bad.

While the deathwatch over the managerial tenure of Willie Randolph kicks into third gear, old man Bobby Cox just keeps rolling along. Bobby Cox turned 67 on Wednesday. Bobby Cox was managing the Atlanta Braves shortly after turning 49 in 1990. Bobby Cox was managing the Atlanta Braves just after Bud Harrelson replaced Davey Johnson in New York. Bobby Cox managed the Braves to divisional championships while Harrelson, Cubbage, Torborg, Green, Valentine and Howe were not. Bobby Cox even snuck one in while Willie Randolph was getting his feet wet.

2006 came along and it was all different. The Mets were ascendant. Randolph was the manager with whom to be reckoned. Cox could go get himself ejected. There was a new sheriff in the East.

That lasted, huh?

Like I said, the Braves aren't in first place (the Marlins are — and we get them at Shea next week for the first time since the very end of 2007, oh joy). The Braves may not be nearly the juggernaut they appeared to be Thursday, Wednesday and twice Tuesday, but they're solid enough to have beaten us four straight, six out of six at Turner Field this year and to have re-established permanent residence in our heads, at least for when we visit them next. That won't be 'til September. I shudder to think where the standings will have us by then.

This isn't about the ol' Turner Field curse, 'cause what made the ol' Turner Field curse operable was that it put the whammy on us when we were doing well otherwise. Remove the Turner Field curse from the Bobby V years and you have an extra Wild Card or two, a couple of divisional titles, a pennant probably. Whether the Turner Field curse was buried in July 2006 and exhumed for all time in May 2008 or merely misplaced for a couple of seasons is irrelevant. What I do find telling is that those who turn the knobs and pull the levers in Atlanta…they don't leave easily.

Bobby Cox has been the manager since the middle of 1990.

Leo Mazzone was his pitching coach through 2005.

John Schuerholz was their general manager until last year.

John Smoltz has pitched for them since 1988.

Chipper Jones has hit for them since 1995.

Mazzone left. Schuerholz was kicked upstairs. Ownership morphed from one budget-conscious media conglomerate to another. Two Hall of Fame starters said sayonara (even as one never spiritually left and recently physically returned). They have turnover in personnel as does every Major League team, but they have rock-solid stability at their core in a manner almost unknown in precincts closer to our battered hearts.

Whenever firing the manager seems like the quickest route to what ails us, I find myself thinking back to a Carnac bit from the summer of 1979. Gas prices were soaring (a dollar a gallon!), the Dodgers were losing and something else that escapes me was happening. Thus spake Johnny Carson:

“[Somebody], Jimmy Carter and Tommy Lasorda…name three people who are going to lose their jobs soon.”

Tommy Lasorda managed the Dodgers clear into 1996. Between his lousy season in '79 and the health issues that forced him out seventeen years later, Lasorda won two World Series and guided L.A. to the playoffs three other times. I personally couldn't stand Tommy Lasorda any more than Fletch could, but the Dodgers sucked it up when they had to and Lasorda rewarded those who employed him. Same as the Cardinal dynamic has been with Tony La Russa when they've floundered between flags, same as happened in Colorado for five seasons until Clint Hurdle led the Rockies on the hottest streak imaginable. The Braves, too, remained patient when those Cox suckers ran out of steam in 2006 and didn't get it all back in 2007.

Managers don't always get the axe when things go rotten. Managers don't always deserve the axe when things go rotten. Bobby Cox never got the axe even when things in Atlanta went unseasonably tepid, even when October became the shortest month of the year. He's still there. They're doing well again. He looks revoltingly happy. Chipper, too, who told Ed Coleman last night he wants to bring his son Shea to Shea one time to take pictures and arrange to purchase signage (if a Met felt compelled to name his progeny after the stadium in which he hits well in the clutch, there'd be a lot of Nowhere Delgados and No Place Reyeses running around the clubhouse on Player Family Day). And wasn't that John Smoltz testing his arm so as to do what Met pitchers rarely do: come back from an injury?

The Braves have not fired on all cylinders. They are dreadful when they're not Tedful. They've been paying Mike Hampton for nothing but tutoring since 2005. Allegedly, Kelly Johnson isn't Chase Utley plus Dan Uggla against the rest of the world. Yet we don't see it. We see the Braves as they've always been: smart, competent, skilled, making great pickups (Kotsay, Teixeira) and adding them to awesome homegrown talent (McCann, Francoeur) and never letting the foundation of their franchise crack.

I hate the Braves like any right-thinking Mets fan. I hate their manager, I hate their players, I hate their chant, I hate their chop, I hated the Superstation that until dropping their telecasts dubbed them America's Team (now that they're not, I can say that for the first time in my adult lifetime, I'm really proud of my country). I generally disdain what their sycophants in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution write on their behalf, but what columnist Mark Bradley posted on ajc.com the other day hit home:

[N]ot for the first or even the hundredth time, we see why the Braves remain the gold standard of communal harmony. They don’t throw 25 players together without consideration for compatibility… The manager never creates problems; he defuses them.

Willie Randolph has dug himself a probably unclimbable hole. He muses about how and why various forces are out to get him; he backtracks like a DVD search function and now he doesn't get his calls returned by ownership. Even if the players are too cocooned in the shell of their own unimpressive heads to be affected by the swirl he conjured all by himself, it's not what a manager is supposed to be doing. In the years when Lasorda and La Russa and Hurdle and Cox did not have their teams at their best, did any of them have a week quite like the one Willie Randolph brought upon himself? La Russa drove drunk, which is menacing to society. Cox was once arrested for domestic violence, which is just as despicable. Lasorda always blustered too much for my taste, though I don't think that's against the law. But only Willie Randolph set himself up for laser-like scrutiny by demonstrating that if he is to be judged by the content of his character, then he is to be judged by the thinness of his skin.

I'm not endorsing the aforementioned managers as human beings — La Russa's work on behalf of pets notwithstanding — and Willie might make better company for 15 minutes in a cab (not that I'm necessarily trying to get him driven out of town). But these other managers did stick around and they did manage to manage well after rough stretches. Could Willie? Could the latter portion of 2007 and the first quarter-plus of 2008 be the aberration? Could the stagnant mess we call our favorite baseball team actually be the fault of others (players, front office) more than Willie and could the manager who improved his team by 12 in his first year and by 14 the year after that be the wrong person to off because his calm and cool, if given the time, would prevail once the humidity of the moment dissipates?

Probably not, but we don't know for sure.

I don't remember any of those other skippers digging exactly the kind of “everybody's against me” gully Randolph dug for himself in his Ian O'Connor chat. If they did, they didn't do it in New York in an atmosphere where everybody's already on edge, where the year before was an unqualified debacle, where the Met metric to which we might pay heed is a won-lost record of 27-35 since last September 13.

Eight games under .500 once the c-word began, not close to winning as often as losing since the heat was turned up.

Too much of this roster seems beyond managing. Advanced in age, unable to get around like they used to, waiting on their check as if enrolled in an entitlement program that glitched out in their favor…they don't need a manager — they need managed care. But they're here and unless somebody's willing to absorb as many losses on the ledger as have been absorbed on the field, they're not going anywhere…except, perhaps, to rehab.

So what do you do then? The obvious answer is Willie, or more specifically the lack of him. The next answer will be Omar, the genius who mailed Luis Castillo a contract sealed with a FOREVER stamp. After that, it's a matter of waiting out the pacts that will expire at the end of 2008 and not picking up their options; if somebody in the executive suites of Queens really needs to see Moises Alou smoke line drives for two healthy weeks a year, stockpile quarters and take him to the batting cages in Astoria.

And then…well, maybe by then, David Wright can devote his clubhouse gaggles to reconstructing wins not issuing alibis on behalf of his less outwardly motivated teammates, Johan Santana won't be left to shrug off an unsupported performance pocked by the most (walks/hits/homers/pitches thrown) of his brilliant career, somebody in a Mets uniform will stand upright and perform capably and make pleasingly substantive statements in deed and in word and, because the line between inertia and stability is currently too fine to detect, somebody else will man the visiting manager's office at Turner Field three times a year, maybe somebody who will have nothing for which to apologize.

Whenever that next dreamlike state is achieved, Bobby Cox will likely still be managing the Braves.

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.