Even as Citi Field rises, the Citi Field Preview Center maintains its space in Loge. It seems rather superfluous with the real thing sprouting toward reality, but I assume there are still Excelsior Club memberships to shill, the price of which, one imagines, stretches ever upward. While I haven't been inside the CFPC since my chilling visit last September (when everything going on at Shea, to be fair, was chilling), I have noticed a change regarding its exterior.

The Mets plastered on the CFPC last year lifesize pictures of the players we can look forward to paying StubHub for the privilege of seeing when their world-class home opens in April 2009. Of course there was No. 5 and No. 7 and No. 15 and No. 34…

No. 34? I wondered. Who the hell is No. 34?

Oh right. Mike Pelfrey.

Easy enough oversight to make on my part. Mike Pelfrey visited Shea between May and September 2007 less frequently than I did. He had started the season in the rotation but then rotated his way back to N'Awlins. Didn't mean to forget the big fella, just hadn't indelibly plastered his image into my consciousness.

This year when you pass by the Citi Field Preview Center, you don't see No. 34. You see No. 57 in his place. Well, of course Johan Santana would be pictured. It's impossible to picture Citi Field without him. It will be impossible to buy a morsel or a trinket without thinking of how much of the markup is attributable to luring him into the new park.

Pelfrey? I guess we can picture him coming to life at Citi Field, too, even if he's been painted over at the Preview Center. I guess we'd better, even if the world can change and change again in ten months' time. Santana was a Met pipe dream last August, even further from Flushing than Pelfrey. Last August, you would have penciled in Philip Humber for Citi Field before writing Johan in ink. Pelfrey's only now working his way from pencil to pen.

If every fifth day of this season is to be given over to the education of Mike Pelfrey — and it may as well be — one of the subjects I hope he gets better at is remedial arithmetic. Somebody's got to teach him to count, because the number of pitches he throws in every start is undermining him and us.

Check this out:

6/5 vs Padres: 112 pitches thrown, 6 innings pitched

4/9 vs Phillies: 100 pitches thrown, 5 innings pitched

That's eleven starts to date, all of them strikingly similar. He's made it into the eighth inning once, through seven twice, through six twice, including last night. Six times he hasn't lasted six full innings. Yet he has thrown between 95 and 112 pitches every time out.

This is not efficient. The whole staff, come to think of it, is not efficient. Santana and Maine have run high pitch counts as a matter of course, though Johan generally gives you a little more bang for the buck (four straight starts of at least seven innings, no more than 110 pitches in any one start). Maine's had only two starts out of eleven lasting more than six innings but only three that have come up short of six. I don't know if it's Rick Peterson or Brian Schneider or not enough Brian Schneider and too much Ramon Castro or Raul Casanova, but I can't recall another season when pitch counts uniformly rose so quickly in just about every game.

Oliver Perez threw only 36 pitches Monday night in San Francisco, but he recorded only one out, so pitch counts don't tell you everything. But when you match up Mike Pelfrey's (and, to a certain extent, Santana's and Maine's) pitches thrown and innings pitched with walks and strikeouts, they don't add up. Pelf does not walk an inordinate number of batters: three last night, one on Saturday, three the three previous starts, no more than four in any of his eleven starts. He also isn't a master of the strikeout, not yet anyway. He recorded only one against the Padres. Except for the last Dodger game, he hasn't fanned more than four in any start in 2008.

So what gives? Why can't big ol' Mike Pelfrey blow batters away? Or make them swing and miss a little more? Opponents tag him for hits, not homers — yay! — but mostly they seem to work him into more pitches than would seem necessary. They work Santana and Maine, too (while Ollie mostly does himself in). It's a veritable epidemic in this rotation and if it's doing anybody harm, it's the bullpen. It's why one dip in the road by a Schoeneweis or a Sanchez in their otherwise substantive seasons stands out as it does.

Maybe we were better off not knowing about pitch counts. I never saw any displayed on a scoreboard until I visited Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego a dozen years ago. I found it distracting. Now it's standard fare. Now you can't ignore it, not as long as pitching coaches and managers don't. With pitch counts embedded into their statistics and our brains, your starter either has to go after the hitter with more confidence that he can make the batter swing and miss (something Pelfrey began to emit last Saturday) or figure out a way to throw ground balls to the shortstop and second baseman. Gary Cohen loves to tweak Greg Maddux over his tendency to pull himself after only so many frames, but you can't argue with Maddux's pitch counts in any given game. He's always gotten out of innings quickly, just as Josh Banks did last night. Bruce Bochy took out Banks after six just as Willie removed Pelfrey after six. Banks threw 71 pitches in the time it took for Pelf to throw 112.

Why does Mike Pelfrey have to throw 41 more pitches than Josh Banks?

It's a random coupling, I grant you, but have you noticed that Pelfrey seems to get outpitched or at least evenly matched by not the cream of the crop of the other team's rotation most games? Since he last won on April 15, he's faced Josh Banks, Chad Billingsley, Ricky Nolasco, Jair Jurrjens (twice), Jason Bergmann, Bronson Arroyo, Brandon Webb and Adam Eaton. Webb is a Cy Young winner and Arroyo too often has the Mets' number. Billingsley's been hot of late and Jurrjens shows every sign of being yet another annoying Brave. But Banks has made three big league starts, Nolasco is traditionally a Met snack, Eaton's what you'd kindly refer to as a journeyman and Jason Bergmann lowered his ERA to 7.45 at Shea on May 15. But Pelfrey hasn't been able to beat any of them or the Mets haven't been able to hit any of them on his behalf.

There's just something weird about the way all of Pelfrey's steps are of the baby variety, something increasingly unsettling. I'd almost feel more encouraged if he were walking six but striking out eight as long as he's going to throw too many pitches to last seven most nights. I'd believe we're seeing raw talent if not immediate results. I'd believe we'd have a weapon in development, not a very tall, very nice kid who doesn't show quite enough stuff to merit a place on the Wall of the Future and barely enough stuff to keep his place in the rotation ahead of Claudio Vargas. I suppose it's progress that Mike kept the Mets in another game last night when the offense forgot to unpack its punch. I suppose it's progress that last night he made it through six on the road for the first time in 2008. I suppose it's still way too early to form definitive judgments on a 24-year-old in his third professional season, even if I'm a little antsy about that remaining the default setting for measuring his progress.

Not that I trust the appellation of “No. 1 draft pick” to guarantee or even promise anything where the Mets and their sordid amateur selection history are concerned, but I still believe there's more to Mike Pelfrey than he's revealed in 28 big league starts. There has to be. The Mets weren't the only team to like the cut of his jib when they selected him as high as they did in 2005. Still, my hunch remains he was a little overvalued and my fear is he's being insufficiently taught. I look forward to watching No. 34 pitch at Citi Field nonetheless. I could do, however, without seeing No. 51 — and The Jacket that obscures it — coaching him or the rest of the Mets staff any longer.

Well, on the plus side Schoeneweis didn't allow a hit in the inning.

You knew this one would end strangely, and not just because the Mets were playing in West Kamchatka. Though that's often enough — I don't think I've ever watched a road game against the Padres and not felt like I was up in the middle of the night watching the Mets play in the Tokyo Dome. I know San Diego's no farther than L.A. or San Francisco — heck, I've been to the place — but it sure feels like it is. And it doesn't help when you're playing a lineup that sounds like a videogame maker didn't pay the MLBPA the rights for player names. McAnulty? Carlin? Banks? Who?

Mike Pelfrey's line looks OK, but he certainly had his Brian Bannister going on. You thought it was amazing that I got out of this straitjacket? Then watch me emerge from this LOCKED CHEST THROWN INTO THE RIVER! And now, for my next trick … oh hell, I've thrown 112 pitches. Never mind.

Give this game credit, of an I-didn't-ask-for-this sort, for featuring not one but two moments where I couldn't figure out what was going on and was left goggling like a fish in the bottom of a boat. The first came when Kevin Kouzmanoff's groundout to Reyes caromed off Tadahito Iguchi, becoming a hit for Kouzmanoff (Gary's right, that's a stupid rule) but the third out of the inning. Between Iguchi twitching in the air like he'd stepped on a downed power line and Wright pointing and yelling, I was completely lost. Wha? It hit him? The second moment, of course, was the culmination of the Misadventures of Scott Schoeneweis, which left me spinning around in my seat to stare at the radio. Wha? It hit him?

So Kouzmanoff got a hit without ever reaching first and McAnulty got an RBI without swinging the bat. And Schoeneweis got this not-a-typo line added to his resume:

0.1 IP 0 H 1 R 1 ER 3 BB 0 SO 0 HR

Oh, and 1 L.

Not weird enough for you? I suppose it could have gone into McAnulty's shirt.

Need a Father's Day, graduation day, birthday, whatever day item? Just want to enhance your sense of Metsian self? Several items have crossed our proverbial desk of late that are worth your knowing about, perhaps worthy of adding to your baseball library, your baseball wardrobe or your baseball life.

The Faith and Fear T-Shirt

OK, I'm cheating a bit by leading off with this one because it's not new. Rather, it is the classic illustration of the Mets' four retired uniform numbers: 37, 14, 41 in Flushing orange, 42 in Flatbush red. Many of you have treated yourselves to FAFIFwear and are happier for it. Many have you denied yourselves. I feel bad for you if you're in the latter category. We recently heard through the shirtvine that some of you are waiting for an updated shirt that reflects the yet unretired number of Mike Piazza. I personally have been waiting for the Mets to retire the numbers of Willie Mays and Keith Hernandez for many a season, yet I enjoy my FAFIF shirt at every opportunity. As does Jason. As does this gal and this guy and this kid just about everywhere he goes. The Mets do not move with the dexterity of a lizard in numerical matters, so my heartfelt, objective recommendation is to not let year upon year go by without honoring the sacred memories of Casey Stengel, Gil Hodges, Tom Seaver and Jackie Robinson, just as the left field corner of Shea Stadium has since 1997. (We are aware of the honorary retiring of the name SHEA as well, but we're sabermaticians when it comes to shirts: we deal in numbers.) To gander, mull and, if you are so moved, order the classic Faith and Fear shirt, go here. The price is $17.31, so it's not like Mex and Mike aren't involved with the shirt in a very real way. As for Willie, you get 24 thank yous from Jason and me for your time and consideration.

Gary, Keith & Ron

Our beloved SNY announcers are lending their names and images to a shirt concern of their own, operated by Lynn Cohen, to raise funds for charities near and dear to them. I chose the “It's Outta Here!” model and it's sharp, I tell you what. The best part is you don't have to wait for Carlos Delgado to get into a power groove to wear it. Coupon code “yodaddy” will fetch you a 15% discount through June 15. Shirt-buyers are eligible to buy $10 tickets to Gary, Keith & Ron Day at Shea, July 10. Check it all out here. (Dana Brand has a nice story about meeting Lynn at his blog. Dana Brand also continues to have a wonderful book here.)

Ramets

My friends at the Crane Pool Forum get their Forest Hills on with merchandise that — Gabba Gabba Shea! — honors Mets history in the sedated style of Joey, Johnny, et al. I really like the “Grote” part of the shield. Check 'em out here.

Working at the Ballpark

From the same publisher who brought us the perpetually awesome Mets By The Numbers comes an insider's look at the game from those who work every angle of it: players and coaches, yes, but also the media, the scouts and the stadium personnel. I meant to mention this last Friday when I related the story of my brother-in-law the onetime Shea vendor but, well, forgot. For what it's worth, author Tom Jones found peanut and beer guys who seem less hostile about their ballpark jobs than my sister's husband was. But their tales are entertaining nonetheless. Find out more here.

101 Reasons to Love the Mets

We don't seem to have been favored with a full-out coffee table book to remember Shea by (we deserve something along the lines of this imperial tome which, it pains me a little to admit, is spectacular if you love pictures of ballparks, even ballparks that are homes to teams you can't stand), but 101 Reasons is a nice, colorful history volume, arranged chronologically and written breezily. If you have a small coffee table, it's perfect. Look into it here. (This is not to be confused with the compelling text that is 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die, which you should also have by now, I should hope. Acquire them simultaneously and you'll be up 201 things and reasons over the less informed fan.)

The New York Mets: Ethnography, Myth and Subtext

I read this during the winter and held off on writing it up because, quite frankly, I'm not over the moon about it despite the intriguing title (and picture of Endy on the cover). I'm not sure I share much of Richard Grossinger's worldview on what it means to be a Mets fan — he's a little dour and a bit uncomfortable that he's devoted chunks of his life to such a lightweight concern — but he certainly gives the matter some thought and his story about working with Terry Leach is fairly gripping. Investigate further here.

Jewish Major Leaguers Baseball Cards

The latest edition of this glossy, glatt set is out and it's a beaut, featuring a salute to Hank Greenberg on the 75th anniversary of the rookie year of the original Hammerin' Hank. Met angles include new cards for Shawn Green and the surprisingly undepressing Scott Schoeneweis. You don't have to be Jewish to love Jewish Major Leaguers 2008. Kosher, collector or otherwise, they're a world of fun. Flip through 'em here.

Heckuva Day

The makers of the enchanting documentary Mathematically Alive are working on a new film, one in which Mets fans can wax rhapsodic (or, I suppose, vitriolic) about their Shea experiences. Info on their next group shoot here if you want to share your perspective for posterity. Chance to purchase their first DVD here.

The New York Mets: Essential Games of Shea Stadium

These discs, covering Game Four '69 WS; Game Three '86 NLCS; Game Six '86 WS; Game Five '99 NLCS; 9/21/01's return to NYC baseball; and Wright's walkoff hit that beat Rivera (plus worthy extras), deserve a more thorough going over, but a glimpse through the box's contents — I fast-forwarded immediately to the bottom of the fifteenth of the Grand Slam Single game — indicates a Mets fan wouldn't want to live without this set for very long. We all know every Mets game played at Shea is essential. I don't know that these are the six most essential the ol' ballpark has hosted (presumably rain delay favorite May 19, 2006 ranks as one of the most available for transfer to digital video), but you can't go wrong with any of 'em. Rumor has it Faith and Fear may be giving one or two away in the near future, but winning DVDs from us is never easy…certainly not as easy as enjoying a Faith and Fear shirt this summer (which is super easy). Essential viewing and ordering detail is here.

I dressed all wrong for it, of course. The game that Stoneham and I had fixed upon was a midweek afternoon meeting between the Giants and the San Diego Padres in late June — a brilliant, sunshiny day at Candlestick Park, it turned out, and almost the perfect temperature for a curling match. I had flown out from New York that morning, and I reported to Stoneham’s office a few minutes before game time. He shook my hand and examined my airy East Coast midsummer getup and said, “Oh, no, this won’t do.” He went to a closet and produced a voluminous, ancient camel’s-hair polo coat and helped me into it… [When] we went back to Stoneham’s office, I took off the polo coat, and Stoneham hung it up in the closet again. I suddenly wondered how many Giants games it had seen.

—Roger Angell, “The Companions of the Game,” Five Seasons, 1975

What can be viewed as a certain sameness to every baseball season can also be looked upon as reassuring if momentarily distressing regularity. You know there’s going to be the indignity of Sunday Night Baseball; you know there’s going to be the late night West Coast opener that your system and your team aren’t quite geared to handle; you know you’ll be cursing your talented but erratic (or erratic but talented) lefty deep into the next morning when that opener, in fact, is not well handled; and you know you’ll be waiting far too long to avenge the bad taste of last night’s 10:15 start with another 10:15 start.

You also know, or at least you may have noticed, that there will be one tiny gem tucked into the schedule most every year. There will be a weekday afternoon game in San Francisco.

There was in 2006: a Wednesday afternoon win following a Tuesday night win following a Monday night loss. There was in 2007: a Wednesday afternoon win following a Tuesday night win following a Monday night loss. And there it was again in 2008, the very same pattern made famous first by Brian, Barry and Billy and then by buzzcuts. This time around, Wednesday afternoon in San Francisco was more mundane if ultimately no less satisfying: score early, pitch well, feel unease, hang on, what’s for dinner?…ooh, they’re showing it again!

You can’t necessarily count on the West Coast trip breaking just this way — although vigilant reader Ben pointed out to me after Ollie’s implosion Monday that the Mets were poised to follow a seemingly irrefutable pattern, going so far as to note we’d won the Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon games by three and two runs, respectively, in ’06 and ’07…which is just what we did in ’08. You can’t necessarily count on anything in baseball, but you like the idea that you can, especially day baseball from San Fran.

I actually took off from work in 2000 to watch the Mets play an afternoon game on TV during their first trip ever to Pac Bell. My Baseball Tonight glimpses whetted my appetite that much. It was a terrible game and a terrible series, setting the stage for the Mets’ first several sojourns there. Pac Bell (and let’s just refer to it as such, for the constant jangling of its ever changing nom de phones just gives me a headache) behaved as Turner West at the dawn of the century. It took the Mets four seasons and thirteen tries to win a single regular-season* contest there, and that didn’t happen until Piazza, New York Catcher sacrificed his groin — so to speak — to avoid being hit by an inside pitch from Jason Schmidt. Mike was pronounced out indefinitely. Then the Mets finally won a regular-season game at Pac Bell. Talk about a tough way to change your luck.

(*Feel free to interject that the Mets won an enormous and thrilling postseason game in October of 2000 at the very same venue. That took the edge off any potential Pac Bell curse before it could start leaving threatening messages on our voicemail.)

The bad taste of any given loss drenched in San Francisco sunlight will eventually block out the good vibes I have coming in to every day game there, but those vibes are always good the next time around. Pac Bell remains the best-looking park in the National League for afternoon baseball, at least on television. It simply sparkles. It’s never cloudy…never — at least not on my watch. That green lawn beyond second base just expands out into forever. Not so good for Fernando Tatis, but a damn fine sight for the invention of color TV. The brickwork, the arches, the stationary cable car, the peekthrough walkway, the fanciful glove, the silly Coke bottle, the massive scoreboard that starts somewhere near Market Street and ends in Sausalito…plus where else you gonna get a whole bay to keep you company at a ballgame?

You can count on hearing the same things from the fellas when you tune in for day baseball from San Fran. You will hear that it’s a gorgeous day, that it’s 57 degrees (it’s always 57 degrees in San Francisco), that it was a little chilly last night but it’s 57 and gorgeous this afternoon, that this is so much more comfortable than it was at Candlestick, that Candlestick was, in more polite terms than is permissible to mention on SNY, the ass end of the earth. Pac Bell, according to Gary, Keith and Ron, is everything that Candlestick wasn’t. Too much wind at Candlestick. Too much foul territory at Candlestick. Too many roving biker gangs at Candlestick. Horace Stoneham had one nip too many one fine morning at Candlestick Point in the late ’50s and was convinced by crooked elements to stick a stadium out there on the edge of the Arctic. Horace took another nip and signed on the dotted line.

Here at Pac Bell, you’ve got the scenery and you’ve got the observations that come with it. There’s the Bay Bridge — it takes you to Oakland. There’s Willie’s statue — 24 Willie Mays Plaza, to be exact. There’s McCovey Cove — imagine how many Stretch would have hit here. There’s the kayak korps — whoops, they went the way of Barry Bonds. But what a nice place, huh? What a nice day for a game, huh?

The bundling-up of the San Francisco crowd is always duly noted. I bundled up on my one trip to date to Pac Bell — a Friday night in July — and I was overmatched by the elements. My friend Fred, not a huge sports fan but an observer-at-large second to none, chuckled when I told him how Stephanie and I required defrosting after seven innings: “Yeah, whenever they show highlights, I notice everyone at a Giants game is dressed like it’s winter in the middle of summer.” Given how frigid it gets at Pac Bell yet what a marked improvement it represents in climatological terms, I can only imagine that Candlestick must have been an ice cube tray in a deep freeze in Green Bay in a particularly harsh January.

One thing that jumped out at me yesterday afternoon was something I’m not used to seeing from San Francisco in this decade: swaths of empty seats. Paid attendance was 35,646. Similar crowds were announced Monday and Tuesday nights. Horace Stoneham would have killed (or maybe even sobered up) for such figures at Candlestick, but they’re a bit thin compared to what was the norm at Pac Bell for Mets games when the park was novel, when Bonds was productive, when the Giants were any good. Capacity in San Francisco doesn’t much exceed 42,000. For several years, the wind was against you if you wanted your choice of ticket. Now, no matter how pretty their park remains, it is a veritable breeze. Something for us to think about in parochial terms down the road…perhaps.

Something else: In 2006 and again in 2007, the Mets scored five runs in the first game they played after leaving Pac Bell. And they won. Should it happen tonight starting at 10:05, you read it here first.

From: Jason Fry

To: Greg Prince

Date: Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 10:44 PM

Subject: Re: Resting Easy With Randy Tate At Last *

you should tell retrosheet. seriously, they'd be thrilled.

meanwhile, tonight's game already really sucks.

From: Jason Fry

To: Greg Prince

Date: Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 11:28 PM

Subject: Re: Resting Easy With Randy Tate At Last

we're gonna win this damn thing.

From: Jason Fry

To: Greg Prince

Date: Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 12:09 AM

Subject: Re: Resting Easy With Randy Tate At Last

or maybe not

* I'm sure this will be explained by Greg at some point.

5: Wednesday, September 24 vs. Cubs

If this week is about anything, ladies and gentlemen, it is about this: closure. We say goodbye to Shea Stadium and we aim to do it definitively. We wish to put a bow on a yearlong celebration and tie it tight. We don't want our home of 45 years to be cast off without the most complete and satisfying ending possible.

We hope we can say the same about Shea's final season. That we can't do anything about at this point. If we could, we'd do it every year…and we'd present for your consideration directly a far larger procession than we are about to.

Instead, we give you two men who will team to take down number 5 in the Countdown Like It Oughta Be. They are well suited to provide closure to Shea Stadium because these two men provided the greatest closure there is at Shea Stadium.

They caught the final outs of the two World Series won by the New York Mets.

Ironically, their stories are as much about beginnings as they are about closure. Each man became a Met and elicited a great deal of anticipation for what he might one day bring to the team. In both cases, their output was suspected to be pretty good. Nobody could have rightly dreamed that each would grasp a baseball that would clinch spots at the top of the baseball world in their respective dream seasons.

Start with our first man. He commenced his Met career in the veritable dark ages, 1963, in a far-away land known as the Polo Grounds. While his big league debut predated Shea Stadium, it was just a taste of things to come. He didn't arrive as a full-time, full-fledged Met until 1966. It would take a little while for it to become apparent that everything fans were hearing about “the Youth of America” wasn't hype. It was the real thing. Come 1968, there could be no doubt Mets fans were watching not just a good prospect, but a leftfielder who was the finest everyday player the Mets had signed and developed to date. He'd hold that distinction for years to come and remains, even now, one of the crown jewels ever polished by the Met system.

He'd hold something else as well. He'd hold a fly ball hit in the bottom of the ninth inning of the fifth game of the 1969 World Series. There were two outs when Baltimore Orioles second baseman Davey Johnson hit it toward him. When he caught it, there were three — and the Mets had reached their sport's pinnacle.

Ladies and gentlemen, the man who caught the ball that made the Mets world champions in 1969, Cleon Jones.

Our second man took a different route to Shea. His started on another club, in a different country. His reputation as one of the best at his position preceded him. It's what made him so attractive to the Mets and their fans. When he was acquired in exchange for a hefty bounty of young talent, it was agreed that he was truly worth it, that he could be the honest-to-goodness difference between the Mets being fine and the Mets being, as they were when Cleon Jones played left field, Amazin'.

This man, a catcher, indeed constituted that kind of difference. He played hard, he played hurt, he played brilliantly. He was a rock behind the plate, a fearsome threat when he stood at it. His mere presence transformed the Met lineup in 1985 and established it as the one that would dominate throughout 1986. And when he went into his final crouch of the 1986 postseason and caught a pitch that Jesse Orosco threw and Marty Barrett swung through, he, like Cleon Jones, found in his mitt not just a baseball, but a switch. When he grasped that ball, it was akin to pulling the switch that electrified an entire city.

Ladies and gentlemen, the man who caught the ball that made the Mets world champions in 1986, Gary Carter.

Cleon, Gary, you honor us by peeling No. 5 together, by reminding us for one more moment apiece what it was like at Shea Stadium when the Mets ascended to the top of the baseball world. To honor you back, the New York Mets and the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation are thrilled to announce the creation of two installations that will greet visitors to the Queens Museum, adjacent to the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park.

One is of a leftfielder cradling a fly ball.

One is of a catcher snapping shut his mitt on strike three.

You'll find their faces and forms very familiar.

Cleon Jones' and Gary Carter's defining Met actions will then, for all time, be represented on the site of Shea Stadium's spiritual sibling, the 1964 World's Fair, symbolizing for generations to come the moments when they and their Met teammates made Flushing the undisputed capital of the baseball world.

Number 6 was revealed here.

Number 4 will be counted down next Monday, June 9.

Bill Parcells (or maybe it's John Madden) likes to glorify football players who so come to play that you can toss the coin in the parking lot and they'll line up at midnight and knock the other guy on his ass. Wherever, whenever…they're ready.

I can dig that. I can dig the Mets winning wherever, whenever. As one who has meticulously inscribed the result of every single Mets game he has ever attended and as one who cherishes every single Mets win for which he has had the pleasure of inking a big ol' W, I'll take 'em where I can find 'em, wherever they put 'em, whenever I have to come and get 'em.

That said, even with the 201st win of my Log career easily secured and safely ensconced between 8:07 PM and 11:02 PM last night, even having benefited from whatever charge Johan Santana got out of an additional six hours and fifty-seven minutes' rest, I hereby introduce a measure to abolish Sunday Night Baseball.

Get it out of our lives. We don't like it, we don't need it, we don't want it.

We don't want to be on Sunday Night Baseball. We don't want to sit and stew for seven perfectly good hours on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. We don't derive any bonus from the exposure on Sunday Night Baseball. My apologies to any Mets fans outside the immediate New York area who are grateful for a few dozen innings a year they wouldn't otherwise see, but it's not helping the greater good at all.

Find me the Mets fan who is relieved that Gary Cohen won't be doing play-by-play, who is enriched by Jon Miller. Find me the Mets fan who is so sick of Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling that he welcomes the insights of Joe Morgan. Find me the Mets fan who enjoys eschewing familiarity with his team for obnoxious relatives who barge in three or four times a year to get your story completely wrong, the kind of people who make you swear you will never, ever invite these people over for Thanksgiving again. Are you out there, mythical Mets fan who actually appreciates SNY getting Sunday off in favor of ESPN interpreting your team as some kind of poor relation? As some kind of auxiliary club activity for bored Gothamites?

I used to think being on national television was some kind of reward or recognition for a team, that it meant you'd made it, that you had earned extra attention, that everybody getting a look at you confirmed your progress or your status. Instead, it's punishment for us, the hardcore fans. We get nothing from it, not a damn thing. We're not privy to fantastic announcing we'd otherwise miss. We're not receiving a brilliant perspective from fresh eyes that will help us understand the big picture. We get Jon Miller's tired blowhard act and Joe Morgan's pompous nonsense.

And we get 8 o'clock starts. On a Sunday. On a Sunday! Who on earth wants to wait around until 8 o'clock to watch a baseball game that could easily be played at 1 o'clock? And who on earth wants to wait around until 8 o'clock to attend a baseball game that not only could easily be played at 1 o'clock, but was supposed to be played at 1 o'clock, that was scheduled to be played at 1 o'clock?

Some weeks ago, my friend Joe asked if I wanted to go to one of the Dodgers games. Sure, I said, how about Sunday? Fine, he said, I'll get tickets. And he did. And very quietly, the damn thing was rescheduled. It's not a particular hardship for me as I keep pretty malleable hours. But Joe, like most adults, has to get up very early Monday morning. Joe would rather shred his scorebook than leave a game before it's over. Rubbing his eyes red, we stayed.

We were not in the majority. It's unfortunate enough when the Mets go in the tank as they have so often this season and the seats empty well ahead of the ninth. But on a pleasant night with a lovely win in progress, thousands and thousands headed to the exits ahead of the conclusion, especially families. By the ninth, it was mostly drunken 17-year-olds holding sway in the mezzanine.

Why the abandonment of ship by so many? It's not because they don't like baseball, it's not because they don't like the Mets winning, it's not because they choose to flaunt their prosperity by not watching all the game they paid for. It's because it's frigging late for people. It's a school night, for goodness sake. If you live in Flushing or Corona, it's convenient. If you live anywhere else, it's not.

Now if the ticket said “8:05 PM,” then caveat emptor and so forth. But it didn't. ESPN makes this call. ESPN could have made this call months ago. ESPN could have figured out media market 1 was playing media market 2, that by the first of June neither team's marquee value or competitive prospects would be spent, that its phoney-baloney Joe Torre story line would be in effect and it could have issued an edict unto the Mets that Uncle ESPN Wants You. Instead, tens of thousands of seats were sold to an afternoon game — a Sunday afternoon game whose conclusion generally averts bedtimes of all ages — and thousands of seats no doubt went wasted because, hey, people have lives, even baseball fans. Many of those who didn't waste their tickets had to issue themselves a curfew.

Seven hours later than planned for. An hour later than a normal night game. Font for confusion among uninformed ticketholders. Fodder for Phil Mushnick. Three excruciating hours of Miller and Morgan. An excuse to cancel the Mr. Met Dash.

I'm not asking ESPN to get out of the baseball business. They do several things well. They produce wonderful research. They have that handheld camera that records homers going official when the batter steps on the plate. They have on their side many able minds, even if none of them belong to Steve Phillips. They can do a doubleheader some other night of the week. I'll complain far less if they can start on Sunday nights at 7:00, which is prime time for the rest of television. If they wanted to show only West Coast games on Sunday nights, when at least those would be 4:00 local games there, that would seem mildly fair to somebody. Instead, it's the same thing year in, year out. They take our Sunday afternoons and rob them from us. They stick our team on Sunday night and they shove their atrocious announcers down our throats. They keep us out past midnight or they chase us from our seats by ten. They get me griping after a 6-1 win, for gosh sakes.

I like the Mets winning. I like Johan finding his groove. I like Carlos Beltran blasting a “390-foot home run” to the base of the scoreboard (somebody get Shea a tape measure). I like Ryan Church standing and remaining in one piece and hitting, too. I like going to a Mets game wherever they put it, whenever they put it. But Sunday Night Baseball's unique charms are completely lost on me.