A day-night two-stadium doubleheader is likely to be played during the second Subway Series to make up for Friday night's rainout.

Concomitantly, the worst day of the season is slated to take place on whichever day the twinbill is scheduled.

I wish I could share my co-blogger's pluck, his acceptance, his relative calm. But I can't. The only comfort I can take from yesterday's disaster is that Willie Randolph's firing may have gone from an “if” to a “when.” But how much agony do we have to endure before then? How many losses? How many boos? How much dismal baseball? How much finger-pointing?

And that's without even mentioning the controversy that's about to engulf this team. Billy Wagner all but openly called out Carlos Delgado, with collateral damage for Luis Castillo and Carlos Beltran. I believe Billy when he says he isn't talking about color but about individual players. But I also believe the talk-radio hyenas will blow this up into exclusively a question of color. And it's not just Delgado and Castillo and Beltran whom the fingers are pointing at. Which slumping player is the target of endless psychoanalysis and rumormongering? Jose Reyes. Who was the last guy called out by Wagner for being flighty and unmotivated? Oliver Perez. Who's now been called out by the press for ducking the media before his start against the Yankees? Johan Santana.

Let's be clear about this. I don't know who on our roster tries and who doesn't. I don't know what motivates or doesn't motivate Carlos Delgado — just as I don't know what motivates or doesn't motivate Aaron Heilman, or what was in David Wright's head as he wandered in the general direction of first base this afternoon. I'm not remotely qualified to guess how much players not talking to reporters has to do with language and cultural barriers, though I bet there's some of that — reporters whose first language is English gravitate to players whose first language is English because it's easier, and players whose first language is Spanish find it easier to duck pesky reporters by exaggerating the language barrier, just as players whose first language is English would if the roles were reversed. I wish none of this were happening. But it is, I can guess how it will be portrayed, and there's a real risk of it getting awfully ugly.

It would be a shame if that were the immediate cause of Willie Randolph's ouster, because there are so many other reasons for that to happen — most notably that his expensive, talented players continue to routinely do moronic and/or lazy things while in uniform.

Witness the frozen-in-amber shuffling of Castillo and Wright on the ball Austin Kearns dropped in the third. I don't know if Castillo would have scored on that play if he'd been at least running, but I do know he would have had a better chance than, say, Reyes did going to third a few innings later. I do know Wright damn well should have been on second. In a game that close, with everything that's gone wrong so far in this infuriating season, that's absolutely inexcusable. And spare me announcers making nice: Keith said that happens and you learn from it, but if the Mets have shown one thing since last Memorial Day, it's that they don't learn. As for the excuse of Castillo's leg, he'd bunted for a hit the previous at-bat. If he's got a bad quad that plagues him on random plays, put him on the DL. Otherwise, tell him to at least attempt to earn his absurd contract.

But for sheer baseball stupidity, the bottom of the eighth was worse. Reyes made a dumb play, as he does all too often lately. (Is it too early to suggest that Reyes, for all his electricity and thousand-watt smiles, is a dumb player?) But what really burns me is why Castillo was bunting. You've got six outs left — why on earth would you give one up when the guy on first is that fast? I understand having Reyes run and then bunting him to third with none out — Castillo may as well sacrifice, seeing as how he's otherwise useless — but with Reyes on first that play is idiotic, stone-age baseball. Even if it had worked, it would have been stupid. (And if Ryan Church had bunted with Beltran on first in the ninth, I really might have taken a cab to Shea Stadium and gotten myself arrested.)

The rest was miserable luck, from Willie Harris's latest dagger-in-the-heart catch to Delgado's ankle-high liner to Beltran being erased on a contact play. (That's the irony of Delgado's apparent refusal to talk — he hadn't done anything wrong.) But luck, as they say, is the residue of design — and this team desperately needs a redesign. If you've watched more than a few years of baseball, you can smell death in the air. The manager has lost his clubhouse. Too many of the players aren't accountable. The clubhouse is turning toxic. The press is out for blood. The fans have turned on the team. (And you can blame them less and less each day.) And we can expect no mercy from the 29 other teams, starting tonight with the Yankees — our third last-place team in a row, but that hasn't gone so well this week. (The Yankees at least have plausible excuses for being bad right now.)

Fred and Jeff, it's up to you. It's your $137 million lining the pockets of players who aren't earning it. It's your final hurrah for Shea that's rapidly turning into a bitter farce. If neither of those things moves you, consider how you'll feel opening your gorgeous new park and hearing the fans shower a catatonic manager and his uncaring charges with venom. That's where were headed. If you want to stop it, you need to do something very quickly.

Dorian Gray had a portrait that aged so he didn't have to. Maybe Aaron Heilman could try that trick.

With every bad outing, the portrait would get a little more squinty, a little more hangdog, a little more slump-shouldered, a little more looking like it just built into an industrial-strength lemon or walked into class and got handed a pop quiz. The advantage, of course, is this would leave the real Aaron Heilman looking not at all that way. He'd remain broad-shouldered and impassive, even as batters strolled to first and balls found holes and boos rained down on him.

Heilman is by all accounts a smart guy (and not just because, gosh, he actually reads books — he was the one who noticed the Reds had batted out of order) and a good guy, but his body language has always been terrible, and right now his pitching is too. And we're kind of screwed because of it. He doesn't have options, so he can't work out his demons in New Orleans. (And despite our anger with him, it would be foolish to expose Heilman to waivers.) He can't be turned into the second coming of Mike Maddux, because there isn't an obvious candidate to take over his duties. When he's right, he can get lefties and righties out. The alternatives? Pedro Feliciano and Scott Schoeneweis (sick today, apparently) are lefty specialists who get torched by righties. Duaner Sanchez has already stepped into some of what used to be Heilman's situations, and it's not clear to me that his stamina's back, or that his pre-crash velocity will ever return. Matt Wise (tired today, apparently) has pretty decent numbers against lefties and righties but just returned — and it isn't clear that he's mentally recovered from beaning Pedro Lopez last year. Joe Smith did well cleaning up Heilman's mess tonight but is still finding his way. (On the other hand, think of the riot in the stands if the Mets had actually sent Smith down and Jorge Sosa had come on tonight and pitched like Jorge Sosa.) There's nobody in the minor leagues who's a compelling audition — calling on Carlos Muniz or Willie Collazo or Ruddy Lugo would be less about them than it would be about indulging one's desire for Not Aaron Heilman. Pulling a Hail Mary and summoning Eddie Kunz? That kind of thing never works for us.

No, we're going to have to work this out together somehow.

Aaron's latest failings erased a game that was fairly interesting, all things considered — you had Claudio Vargas's perfectly serviceable debut (of course, we were offering Nelson Figueroa hosannas not so long ago too), some wretched luck for the Mets (did Ryan Zimmerman even see Beltran's liner before it tore into his glove?), some good luck for the Mets that didn't matter enough (the fielding misadventures of Saul Rivera began as comedy and turned tragic for our side), some oddities (David Wright's bat disintegrating on a flyout to medium center), a helluva home run by Zimmerman, and Moises Alou cussing out an ump like a player half his age.

But above all it was another loss — the homestand that was supposed to get the Mets well against weak competition now stands at 3-3, with our hopes for a series split with the mighty Nats (not exactly the stuff of war cries and sounding trumpets, is it?) resting on the uncertain right arm of Mike Pelfrey. Our record since last Memorial Day: 74-74. Just another interchangeable chapter in the continuing misadventures of The Mediocre-est Team Money Could Buy.

John Maine got the win last night…on the very first pitch of the game.

I didn't notice Nelson Figueroa responding to the Nationals' dugout antics Monday night, cocooning deep in my parka between innings as I was, but apparently the Nationals were acting like “softball girls” for encouraging each other on rhythmically. Given that they'd worked out five walks while Nelson was pitching, I might add they were softball girls with a very good eye.

Figueroa was pissed because, well, probably because he sucked his way off the 25-man roster but also because the Nats had violated some unwritten rule about comportment or enjoying themselves too much. Whatever it was, he was steamed and, presumably, his suddenly former mates on the baseball boys team (the one that lost 10-4) didn't take it too well either.

So what does his successor in the rotation to which he used to belong do Tuesday night? He hits the first batter with the first pitch.

And to that I say way to go John Maine — way to go! (clap clap!). Way to tell the Washington Nationals to cut out that extraneous, superfluous BS that had nothing to do with why the Mets lost Monday. Way to say you can take your cheers and rub them on your bruises if you don't like it, just as the Nats had said, through their steady scoring, that Nelson Figueroa could take his indignation, fling it wide of Brian Schneider's mitt and pack it off to New Orleans or destinations unknown.

I'm ambivalent where technically nonexistent codes and conducts are concerned. I've never been able to figure out for certain why a curtain call is supposedly showing up the pitcher, why a non-curtain call is supposedly sending the wrong message, why it's all right to toss your helmet after a walkoff home run, why some batters can stare at their deep fly balls without repercussion, why the best player in the sport is bush for yelling at the opposing infielder trying to settle under a pop fly, why it's OK to come inside, why it's wrong to come inside, why a good, clean takeout slide is definitively different from a supposedly dirty slide, why an effusive handshake is either too much or absolutely appropriate, why turning your headgear inside out and yelling “attaboy” is being a good holler guy, why urging on a rally from the dugout with a bit of creativity is akin to acting like, heaven forbid, a girl…it's all very confusing to me. Hence, my rule of thumb is thus:

• If the Mets do it, it's fine.

• If somebody does it to the Mets, it's not.

Hypocrisy is at home and logic takes a holiday, but do we really watch baseball to make Socrates happy? Or are we trying to advance the cause of whatever logo is on the cap we're wearing at night games even though caps are designed to keep the sun out of our eyes? Screw logic — Let's Go Mets (clap! or woo! or not).

Maine, by the way, said he was merely trying to establish the inside of the plate when his very first pitch just happened to get away and just happened to hit Felipe Lopez on the leg (Shawn Estes, take note). Another crazy coincidence, don'tcha think? Team that gets beat like a drum by a showy drummer seems intent on breaking the other team's drumsticks at the very beginning of the next night's set — John Maine has better control than that. But his judgment is even better than his control.

Let's not extrapolate this from message pitch to the specter of Bert Campaneris flinging a bat at Lerrin LaGrow. It doesn't always have to escalate or deteriorate. Last night it did neither. Putting the first runner on (there went the perfect game) doesn't mean, either, that you're digging yourself a terrible hole, not when you're the very competent Johnny Maine. Back during the Clemens Wars and such I was usually against manly retaliation because I didn't think the Mets could afford to give the Yankees extra outs. Top of the first, against the Nationals, the Mets could. That, too, is taking care of business. And hat tip to the umpires for not going overboard with warnings, even when Lopez glared at Maine.

Umpires should always let the players police themselves. Or the umpires should always take control of the action right away. Whichever one works to the Mets' advantage, whichever one makes me feel avenged at the operative moment.

John (or “Mainie Eisenhower” as I sometimes call him from the couch in terms more endearing than Nelson Figueroa might grasp) took matters in hand and then took the Nationals with him. Other than the homer to Ryan Zimmerman — sooner or later there's going to be a homer to Ryan Zimmerman — he was soothingly effective. Glad he got enough runs to literally get the win, too. It gave him five on the year which broke the three-way tie for team lead among himself, Santana and Jorge Sosa. In fact, until Saturday, Sosa was the staff leader in wins. Now Sosa, ERA 7.06, is Assignmentbound (frigid fans behind me were loudly advocating the activation of Matt Wise Monday night, so you had an inkling Sosa was literally and figuratively going down), same as Figueroa, ERA 5.12. Both succumbed to a club indulging in softball tactics. Thank goodness one night later Johnny Maine, ERA 2.81, came to play hardball.

(Clap clap!)

Alert the dairies: we need to post pictures of people on the sides of milk cartons. Lots of people. The boxscore says there were 45,321 in attendance at Shea Stadium Monday night, but my educated estimate tells me we started with no more than 18,000 and simple fingers 'n' toes counting says we ended with approximately 800.

Where did everybody go? And can we save one milk carton for the Met momentum that's gone missing again?

Better yet, make it ice cream. Or iced tea. Or just ice, like the glacier that Shea froze into between frigid Sunday and bitter Monday.

Very bitter Monday.

This was, as my partner suggests, one of those games you associate with a winter night, not so much because you should think of it in winter, but because I can attest first-hand that it was in fact played in winter. Seems like an all right idea when the calendar indicates it actually is winter. I've experienced those baseball-crazed January evenings when I've thought, man, it would be great to be at Shea right now, even if outside is as cold as the inside of a Slurpee cup, even if the wind is howling like a Crazy Eddie commercial and even if I'm wearing so many clothes that my old Nixon Administration cronies in the Pentagon call me Melvin R. Layered.

Forgive the subtopical references, for it was sub-subtropical weather and then some on Monday night. It made Sunday afternoon feel like, well, a good day for baseball. There haven't been many of those this season — nor much good baseball.

I honestly thought we were scaling a hump after the weekend. The Mets seemed so competent twice against the Reds and so all-around able before leaving L.A. and pretty darn good in Phoenix. Peel the layers of the onion, however, and you remember that it was all potentially illusory: we always win in Arizona and we always beat up on Brad Penny and Cincinnati is Cincinnati when Bronson Arroyo isn't pitching.

We're still not all that ept. We're still in a two-season .500 groove, 74-74 at last check from May 30, 2007 through May 12, 2008. We're still capable of looking overmatched by the Washington Nationals on nights barely fit for taking on the Washington Redskins. It may be a different year, but with the Nats piling on the extra points and the Mets' prevent defense preventing nothing, it may as well have been last September.

Except it was warmer then.

Given that I had barely withstood six innings of elements on Sunday and that weather.com was giving me no better than a 40% chance of not precipitation (and a 60% chance of feeling my extremities), I was in the counterintuitive position of sort of rooting for a don't-screw-with-us rainout until about three in the afternoon. That was when my friend Mike Steffanos told me he was leaving from his home in the wilds of Connecticut to reach Shea by car, train, subway and sleigh. Once Mike begins his journey, it would be cruel not to play — in theory.

Mike, high-quality company regardless of low-grade score, graciously secured the best seats I've sat in this season to date: Loge, Section 3, Row B (providing a vantage point so fine it deserves capitalization). This is the part of Loge that's treated by Shea personnel as Field Level, Jr., akin to a Forest Hills living room where plastic covers the ancient sofa because oh no, we don't sit on that. An usher actually bothered to chase strays out of noticeably vacant Row A in the late innings. “I could lose my job,” he pleaded to a father who was miffed that he and his two boys were booted after three innocent pitches.

You mean there are firing offenses at Shea Stadium?

I wish no man deprived his livelihood, not a humble just-followin'-orders usher, not a sweet kid from Lincoln High who couldn't find the strike zone with a compass (though I'll have to get back to you on the older kid from Brooklyn who doesn't seem to be managing very well this year or last). I would, however, like to stop scooping small solace from being among the hardy handful that sits through 13-1 and 10-4 beheadings to their completions as spring then becomes the winter. The fine print on the back of the ticket declares nothing about the pursuit of happiness where competitiveness is concerned. I thought it was kind of implied that the Mets could hang with the Pirates or Nationals on any given date this season. Maybe not.

But for all my morning moaning, I can say, for the second time in a two-week span, I was there. I was there at the end of one of these things. I was among, I swear, maybe 800 people when Saul Rivera retired Carlos Delgado to put it in books nobody will ever check out of their local library. When I deduced that the final out would probably be registered by Delgado, who bore the brunt of the boos that weren't directed at Lastings Milledge (what'd he do other than change uniforms at the Mets' behest?), I figured Carlos would hear it but good. But he didn't. When there are 800 of you in the stands and one of them on the field, you're kind of in this together. A Mets fan who remained to the 195th and final minute of yet another abortion of a debacle of a disaster of a game probably wasn't the kind of Mets fan who stuck around to boo.

Or if he was, he knew not to because Delgado could easily pick him out from 800 people and come after him with a bat — and tap him to the second baseman.

The baseball gods have a vast assortment of cruelties, but one of their better tricks is the rainout-turned-blowout: You think there's no way the game will be played, only to have the weather hold off so you get a game after all — and then this gift turns out to be a numbing basket of suck that leaves you wondering why it couldn't have freaking rained like it was supposed to.

You knew that eventually the Nats' collection of ex-Mets would punish the current Mets, that Jesus Flores and Lastings Milledge and Odalis Perez would find a way to victimize us. (What? Joe Morgan's convinced Odalis is a Met, so he ought to count somehow. I don't mind if my facts are wrong, as long as they're gritty facts that present themselves right.) I'm sure Lo Duca was putting the whammy on the Mets somewhere, too. Between all that and the sucking, why watch a mess like this? Well, because it's part of the contract — but also because during the winter, when the trees are bare and the grass is covered with snow and the howling of the wind makes you think of wolves on the Russian steppes, you stare out the window and try to think what you wouldn't do to watch, say, one crappy inning of the Mets going down 1-2-3 against the Nationals with 5,000 people vaguely watching. Well, remember this one in nine months — this is what it looked like.

But hey, it's baseball. You never know what might happen — a second baseman might turn the 14th unassisted triple play in baseball history. (Oh, sorry — that was 500 miles to the west.)

Since there was no triple play, what to take from this one? Nothing I didn't already know. Damion Easley should be our second baseman. Joe Smith should stay on the team. Jorge Sosa should be DFA'ed. Elijah Dukes shouldn't lead cheers on the bench, though it's only fair to note that's the least-scary thing he's done in some time. It shouldn't be 52 degrees with 25 MPH winds in mid-May. And to ease the annoyance of games like this, they should play baseball most every day.

Oh, wait — they do. Score one for the baseball gods after all.

The odd part about the Reds batting out of order in the ninth was I heard about it in the car on the way back from the train station. That was odd because something even more unusual than a team sending up the wrong batter had occurred: I left a game early enough to be home in time for its conclusion.

That’s right. Far rarer than a violation of the every batter bats when he’s supposed to — rarer still than the starting pitcher who steals second — is your correspondent suggesting in the fifth inning that leaving Shea Stadium would be an agreeable proposition.

Talk about out of order!

There was a game in 1983 when a headache so got the best of me that I told Joel, that’s it, I got to leave this place, I don’t care what these people think. There was a misguided attempt to catch half of a Mets game and the beginning of a Cyclones game in 2003, winding up seeing no Cyclones and missing the retirement announcement of Bob Murphy altogether. There was a midweek afternoon in 1998 when I showed up alone in the third with the Braves kicking the Mets’ ass; I ate a turkey sandwich, watched the Braves kick the Mets’ ass some more, and gave up by the seventh.

Those are the glaring exceptions. I’ve arrived a little late from time to time, I’ve infrequently bowed to fatigue or peer pressure or commutation and given up ninth innings that could be safely projected as moot, but I almost never clear out before Lou Monte hectors Lazy Mary into getting up. But Sunday was one of those days.

Why? Because, I reassuringly discovered, I am capable of mild selflessness. I wasn’t sure I had it in me.

Twenty-one years ago yesterday the Mets played the Reds in Cincinnati. It was an utterly inconsequential game that coincided with a spectacularly consequential event.

It was May 11, 1987. As I’ve told the story several times here, I snapped off my radio with the Mets on the verge of being blown out and opened my eyes to find I was about to commence upon on a lifelong winning streak. That was the moment I came into contact with my future wife. I would marry her. She would marry me…and the Mets.

Yesterday the Mets played the Reds at Shea. Twenty-one years after our relationship began, the three of us got together again…the four of us, I guess, counting, as we occasionally do, the Reds.

All these May 11s since 1987, all these night-we-met anniversaries we have toasted, yet this was actually our first May 11 at the ol’ ballpark. I have a standing invitation extended to Stephanie for every Mets game I think of attending. They are almost without fail graciously demurred upon. One game once in a great while? Swell. The steady diet on which I subsist? Night games in April? Day games in which Sol threatens to bear down a little too aggressively on my literally fair lady? Weather Channel-checking affairs for which I’m unfurling longjohns and convincing myself “it won’t be so bad”?

I should go and have a good time and tell her about it later.

This, however, was May 11, which is our day of days. And it was May 11, which implies, you know, spring. This invitation — I didn’t even have to sell the complimentary pink cap angle — would not be demurred upon. It was accepted, graciously.

But boy was it windy. Not Wall of Voodoo hot wind on my shoulder windy either. This was hot dog wrapper, cotton candy bag, Pat Leahy considering a change of career wind. It roared in from Flushing Bay, swirled around an inbound Delta, bounced off the chop shops, laughed its way through Citi Field, skipped over the outfield fence, blew with strength up the middle, over Beltran, between Reyes and Castillo, shooting up Schneider’s goalie mask and landing in the mezzanine like a javelin.

The wind never stopped. At most it paused. It wasn’t the toughest wind I ever faced down (the 13-1 gale two Wednesdays ago seemed, like the Pirates, more punishing), but it was plenty petulant. Throw in a graveyard cough I’ve been hacking around for a couple of days and you wouldn’t have known you were sitting in the park one day in the merry, merry month of May.

Yet so what? It’s a Mets game. It’s Shea Stadium. It’s windy. It’s always windy half the time, as some skipper or another might have put it. I’m hardy. I’m battle-tested. I can take it.

But I was in these elements in a different element Sunday. Stephanie was with me and, no matter how rugged she is in many ways, her fan-by-marriage contract does not include a stiff and steady third-and-long breeze, not on the eleventh of frigging May for god’s sake. She was bundled some (trenchcoat with hood and lining, both gloves on), but not quite enough. To be bundled quite enough for Sunday, she would have had to have been in waiting on the 6:41 to Penn Station in January mode. And unless there’s a Fall Classic in progress, no sane person should have to sit at a baseball game in those conditions.

But ya know what? She never complained about it.

Twenty-one years minus four days since our first chilly evening in Flushing, she’d never begged out of Shea, save for a rainy Saturday in 1999 when my six innings of gallant umbrella-holding couldn’t convince her that it wasn’t so bad (the umbrella was shaped like a baseball cap and the effect was to form a rain gutter that drizzled onto her shoulder). She didn’t today either. She took pictures and noted the bizarre posting on the scoreboard of each player’s mom’s name in italics — “like it’s supposed to be an insult that Luis Castillo’s mother is named Faustina” — and respectfully applauded Ken Griffey and laughed when I called for Ryan “to take these people to” Church (inside joke) and rose more than once for Carlos Beltran and delighted in everything Oliver Perez did on the mound, at the plate and along the basepaths.

But she never said I’m cold, I want to go.

So I did.

It was in the bottom of the fifth, an official game already, the ballyhooed Johnny Quest having proven not up to any great adventure, Carlos and Ryan having gone deep, Junior not making any kind of history, Ollie not having heard me think that if Jim Bunning was going to pitch a perfect game on Shea’s first Father’s Day that he would pitch at least a no-hitter on its last Mother’s Day.

“After this half-inning is over,” I said, “Griffey’s gonna lead off the sixth. After he bats, ya wanna get out of here?”

“You mean ‘get out’ get out?”

“Yeah.”

“We don’t have to go.”

“It’s freezing. You’re freezing.”

“I was thinking we could walk around and warm up.”

“We could just go.”

“No. We don’t have to do that.”

“The Mets are up 6-0. I’ve seen two home runs. I’ve seen Ollie Perez throw one-hit ball. It’s not going to get any better. In fact, if this game has an exciting conclusion, I’m going to be pretty disgusted.”

“We’ll walk around and warm up. We don’t have to go.”

“It’s not like I’m going to be disappointed if we do.”

The Reds were changing pitchers. C’mon, I said, this would be as good a time as any to at least walk around and warm up. We went to our respective restrooms and re-emerged for that stroll that was going to raise our temperatures (pausing to watch Griffey walk on a blurry monitor; it’s not like I set my watch by what he does, but it occurred to me this was likely my last in-house look at him). As we wound from third base side to first base side to right field, a ramp beckoned. I reiterated my highly unusual offer, an offer so unusual that if I were a Toyota salesman, I’d have to go check with my manager before making it.

“We can go. We can make the 3:24 at Woodside even.”

There. I threw a train time on the table. I was serious. Yet she was seriously demurring. Either 21 years of exposure to me had created a monster fan I had somehow never noticed or she didn’t want to take me away from my beloved team and my beloved stadium because she is too thoughtful toward me for her own good.

Finally, she said OK and we hit the ramp. An instant later, however, a big Shea groan went up. From the radio, already plugged into my right ear, I relayed that Ollie just threw a wild pitch, now it was 6-3.

“Well, we’ve got to go back,” she said. She didn’t mean home. She meant to our seats. It was 6-0 when we got up, now it was 6-3. How could we leave when we had already taken half the lead with us? We have to go save the Mets from themselves.

It was momentarily tempting to stay. Stephanie had already turned in the general direction of our section. It wasn’t going to get any warmer, but how much colder could it get? And if we left and the Reds chipped away any further and what’s a few innings when there are so few innings left in the life of Shea Stadium?

But I reconsidered reconsideration. “No, let’s go,” I said and, at last, insisted (neither one of us is insistent by nature, so when one of us insists, it gets noticed). I remembered why I’d suggested the early exit. Stephanie was cold on my account. I could miss an hour of Mets on hers.

It wasn’t exactly “The Gift of the Magi,” but we did make the 3:24 with minutes to spare. The batting-out-of-order caper revealed itself in the car and was still in progress as I turned on the living room TV. It reportedly took twelve minutes to sort out. I can’t imagine either one of us would have been enriched by shivering through the dispute and being pushed back to the 4:49, probably the 5:24.

Stephanie and I will be at Shea together in July for a concert. And we’ll return on September 28, a Sunday afternoon when I’ve already warned my wife of 16-1/2 years, my love of 21 years, that we won’t be leaving early, no matter the weather (“not even to beat the rush?” she deadpanned). Maybe I’ll get her to un-demur for a less momentous game between now and then, which would be wonderful. Maybe not, in which case I’ll have a good time and tell her about it later.

Not long after poking fun at the Mets for entering the brick business, my sister and brother-in-law, not regular readers of this blog, generously gave me for my birthday…a brick. Yes, I who have sniffed at and scoffed at Citi Field will be a “permanent part” of it after all. Technically, I was given a brick certificate. It was up to me to fill in the inscription. I struggled with it for months. Didn’t like anything I came up with. As an afterthought, I asked Stephanie, “you wanna be a part of this?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Really?”

“Sure!”

I submitted the inscription last week:

OUR FIRST DATEMETS 8 GIANTS 3

MAY 15, 1987

She may make only cameo appearances at Shea Stadium in the course of a season and she may understand the nuances and niceties of baseball strategy just marginally better than does Dusty Baker, but my wife takes our three-way marriage to heart, in her way, every bit as much as I do. I am continually grateful to be reminded of her devotion to the Mets via me and grow more elated daily that 21 years since it began my winning streak remains intact.