Lying in the dark after the Mets got the bejesus beat out of them by the Pirates, I came — reluctantly — to a conclusion. Even started working up the post in my head. And then wavered. Memorial Day seemed like a better time to make the point. Even though I doubted anything would change by then. Which means I shouldn't have wavered.

Tim Marchman's not wavering. And I agree with every point he makes.

It's time.

11: Wednesday, September 10 vs Nationals

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight our Countdown Like it Oughta Be takes us back to an event in the history of our nation and our city that was undeniably tragic. But it also reminds us of how we as a people can unite and lift ourselves up from rubble when brutality confronts us.

It was seven years ago tomorrow morning that the skyline of New York was irreparably ruptured and the United States' sense of its security was forever challenged. The acts undertaken by despicable human beings on the morning of September 11, 2001 will never be forgotten by any soul who witnessed them or by anyone unfortunate enough to be touched, closely or remotely, by them.

But out of tragedy, there was uplift. And it began at, of all places, Shea Stadium.

In the days that followed the attacks of September 11, a baseball facility was converted into a vital staging area for humanitarian response. Those who sped to New York to help in the immediate and necessary municipal recovery operations were directed here.

They gathered supplies here.

They loaded trucks here.

They helped in any way they could here.

They rested here and then they went back to work here.

Many were called. Many more came. They were joined, as no more than concerned citizens, by members of the New York Mets, on- and off-field personnel alike, all of whom put in their own long hours to help their neighbors. Everybody gave of themselves and none sought fanfare for doing so. In the wake of those sad September days, as George Vecsey so eloquently put it in the New York Times, Shea Stadium was “sanctified”.

And that was before a single pitch had been thrown in competition in New York City after September 11. It is now the stuff of legend to recall that the first major sporting event New York saw, ten days after those dastardly attacks, was a game here at Shea, the Mets defeating the Braves 3-2, the crowd roaring not just at the result but at the fact that a game was being played at all.

Shea Stadium was where the road to normality in this city commenced on September 21, 2001. We won't forget the horror that came directly before it nor the immediate response of New Yorkers, Americans and good people everywhere to it. We will long remember the game as well; the players who played it under trying circumstances; the famous and the unknown who lent their labors to make the night extraordinary; and the thousands to whom we rightly referred then and refer now as heroes.

Any number of men and women connected to the recovery efforts that followed September 11 have a place with us on the sanctified grounds of Shea Stadium for this occasion tonight. It is to slight no individual or group that we have asked only a single person to walk out to right field and represent those collective contributions on behalf of all of them. No one in baseball and few in any endeavor were more committed to aiding his fellow New Yorker in the weeks, months and years that unfurled in the wake of this city's worst day.

Ladies and gentlemen, returning from Japan to remove number 11, please welcome home the manager of the 2000 National League Champion New York Mets, Bobby Valentine.

Number 12 was revealed here.

I don't know. At a certain point it was so off-the-chart bad — it got funny. My central nervous system was telling me something.

—Aaron Altman, Broadcast News

Let's be clear that these things happen in the course of a season, no matter how good a club is. Teams lose badly sometimes. It can happen with no warning, even at home in the middle of the day in the middle of the week. The Mets have a history of such degradations falling out of the bright blue sky and onto their heads — even the really good Mets.

The 1969 Mets were spanked hard in a daytime doubleheader July 30, a Wednesday afternoon at Shea, by the Houston Astros, 16-3 and 11-5; things got so unseemly that Gil Hodges marched straight to left field to legendarily inform Cleon Jones he was injured. The 1986 Mets, behind Dwight Gooden no less, took it on the chin and probably up an orifice or two from the Reds, 11-1, on the Wednesday afternoon of July 9.

It happens. It doesn't necessarily reflect your overall operation. It doesn't mean you are what you ate, even if you just ate it big time.

Sometimes, of course, it does. I don't know that the Mets losing this afternoon, another Wednesday, by an undeniably embarrassing tally of 13 to 1 means they are the kind of team that is barely good enough to beat an otherwise lousy Pittsburgh Pirates one night and horrid enough to get their heads kicked in by them the next day. I do know that since the truly scintillating evening that Armando Benitez balked Jose Reyes around the bases and Carlos Delagdo took him deep into the Flushing night, your New York Mets are a strictly break-even proposition: 69 and 69 dating back to May 30, 2007. That's 138 games. That's 84% of a full season, all managed by Willie Randolph, all masterminded by Omar Minaya, all featuring the stars David Wright, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, John Maine, Oliver Perez, Billy Wagner, Aaron Heilman and others.

69 and 69 is more alarming than 13 to 1. 13 to 1 is just plain ridiculous. Take it from one who witnessed nine frigid innings of it from Section 1 of the upper deck.

Yes! Yes, I went to this abortion of a debacle of a fiasco of a game! Yes, this was my chosen midweek afternoon in the sun! And yes, this was the absolute worst pounding I ever saw the Mets absorb at Shea Stadium in 36 seasons of Logging such matters. Except for one night in Detroit in 1997 when I was more concerned with the ballpark than the ballgame, I had never seen the Mets lose by as many as a dozen runs.

I have now.

Statistically, it was the worst home loss I ever experienced. Emotionally, it wasn't in the same ballpark as the Day of Devastation exactly seven months earlier, but having sat through September 30, 2007 and April 30, 2008, I detected some eerie parallels:

• Seven runs in an early inning off a starting pitcher who showed no gumption as things got worse and worse.

• Luis Castillo unhinging the starting pitcher with a fumbled double play ball.

• Luis Castillo making the last out.

• The Mets looking like amateurs against a team allegedly not on their level.

• No crowds to fight through on the way to the exits.

Differences? That was a numbing afternoon for reasons that have been exhaustively documented. This was just farcical. Also, today was like 40 degrees colder and the entire season was not at stake. Plus, we didn't start on time this time. I was with my friend Rich whose wife is expecting in about six days. Her water has yet to break, but the Mets' did. Add “been at a game delayed because a ruptured main wouldn't allow hosing of infield” to my lifetime attendance record.

Either way, the Mets delivered a twelve-run, bouncing loss.

Omar help us if there are any more days like this at Shea Stadium, but I mildly pity anyone who hasn't sat through one of these from late start to silent finish. Seriously. This was one of those days when you could really understand the instinct to boo, but after the umpteenth Met miscue, you didn't have the energy to take part. This was one of those days when you remembered what 1978 felt like every day, when you imagined what 1967 felt like all year. It was blustery and sparse and bad but not the end of the world because it wasn't the end of the season. You can handle this a little better in April, even on the final afternoon of April. This was one of those days when the Nikon Camera Player of the Game was either the school group that kept up a LET'S GO METS! chant as the innings grew late and the sun grew elusive or the school group that filed out after the eighth but not before shouting toward the field, BYE METS!

I hope we're not all saying that soon where the 2008 season is concerned.

Some nights we invoke Bob Murphy and offer a happy recap. Some nights we channel Gary Cohen when the big hit is outta here! Some nights we are thrilled to make like Howie Rose and put it in the books! Some nights we even have to agree with Fran Healy that Shea Stadium is rocking!

Tuesday night brought to mind the unlamented Steve Albert because the Mets won a game he might have called scintillating — except unlike Steve, we make no pretenses about our sarcasm.

That was not one of your more scintillating walkoff wins. But the key, after eleven innings, is it was a win and 187,932 fans or whatever fictional figure they posted as the paid attendance left less unhappy than they might have had it not been. Surely it could have gotten surly late.

But don't call me surly. Even if Santana's gopher is still nibbling a little too heartily. Even if Sanchez and Wagner have forsaken perfection as their guiding principle. Even if Reyes' sextet of on-base appearances was overshadowed by his inability to keep one Pirate off base at the worst possible moment. Even if Heilman…ah, you know from Heilman. And even if Delgado was burdened by no vexing decisions regarding curtain call or not to curtain call. Don't call me surly, because a win is a win is not a loss.

Let us not accentuate the negative. Let us glory instead in Ryan Chruch's lefthanded jacking, which can be impressive. Let us note the six times Jose Jose'd his way on base. Let us remember why we fell in love with Endy Chavez those two years ago, first and foremost for the offensive spark we see again now that Endy is playing and regaining traction (at least until Moises Alou returns and inevitably winds up in traction). Let us not forget that the only homers Johan surrendered were soloists and that he was otherwise clean. Let us hand it to Scott Schoeneweis for covering home as he did and to Raul Casanova for shoveling Schoeney the 2-1 assist that cut down Jose Bautista at the plate in the seventh. Let pause and ponder what kind of manager sets the wheels in motion so someone named John Wesley Van Benschoten can pitch to someone named David Allen Wright with the bases loaded in the bottom of the eleventh with less than two out.

I'm not sure, upon reflection, how that could have been avoided once Endy was balked to second and bunted to third, but it sure seemed more fait accompli than it had to. You put on Reyes, you let him take second and you then pitch to Castillo who walks. Could have the Mets, even our hard-to-hug Mets, not cashed in? Against the Bucs? David comes up, the annually feisty if perennially futile Pirates go down. One pitch, one fly ball, one win that couldn't be avoided, done deal. For Pittsburgh, he says at the risk of offending the gods, I suppose simply asking somebody to retire Wright and Beltran was not an option.

The vengeful spirit of Hans Wagner notwithstanding, what really spooked me was the matchup that had Duaner Sanchez facing Xavier Nady in the eighth. July 31, 2006 and everything after flashed before my eyes. Sanchez gets into a cab; Nady gets onto a plane; Oliver Perez comes into and out of his own; Guillermo Mota and Shawn Green arrive with much baggage; '06 grows less certain; '06 just misses being a year for the ages; '06 becomes '07; '07 becomes '07; '07 becomes '08; '08 becomes the year we look for excuses to be relentlessly pissed off at our team…or the excuses seek us out on their own. Maybe all that arguably sprung from the events of that red-letter date in Mets history is why even walkoff wins around here can sometimes seem a little less than scintillating.

But we'll take them. And don't call me surly.

An out-of-town tryout used to be a staple of the theater. It was where producers ran their musicals up the flagpole to see what was saluted and what sagged in the breeze before fixing up the rough patches, packing up the trunks and transporting the whole shooting match to the Great White Way. Like those barnstorming tours that wound their way from Spring Training north to Opening Day, you don’t get out-of-town tryouts much in the theater anymore.

The audiences for these Broadway-bound previews were generally in the Northeast, not far from New York, yet worlds away: Philly, Boston, Baltimo’, as the itinerary went in Kiss Me Kate. New Haven, too. Washington? Not so much as far as I know. Yet last week, I felt I was privy to a dry run of sorts: Another ballpark op’nin’, another show — one season before the spotlight will be beamed directly onto the Great Blue & Orange Way.

Of course I wanted to go to Nationals Park because it was there. Every Major League ballpark I’ve seen (and I’ve seen 32 now) is Everest to me. And of course I wanted to go because the Mets would be playing. But there was a little extra curiosity factored into my D.C. travel plans. The Nats would be playing their eighth home game ever in their new digs. Though I’d been to a few stadia in their first season, I’d never shown up this early in the life of a park. Thus, I wanted to get a sense, just under one year from the curtain rising on Citi Field, what an almost pristine ballpark feels like.

It feels pretty good, in its out-of-town way.

Ya gotta load up any assessment you make of a ballpark as a visiting fan with a suitcase of asterisks. It’s different for you because you’re there tonight and you’re leaving tomorrow. Even if you plan on returning, it’s not home, not yours. Even if the place has still got that new park smell, yours aren’t the nostrils that are unclogged after breathing in the stale air of its predecessor. The diehard Washington Nationals fan, however rare and relatively novice, is the one who just escaped from RFK. It may take that creature months to detect any drawbacks in anything that isn’t the Federal Baseball Penitentiary.

Nationals Park offers much nicer surroundings. The now-reabandoned RFKFBP was any port in a storm for the post-Expos. It was the Hooverville of the National League East. It was Olympic Stadium without the élan. Anything that succeeded RFK — with the possible exception of the Days Inn where I bunked for the night — would have been an improvement.

It was instructive to wander the concourses of Nationals Park, to gaze at the shiny seats and scoreboard, to try to figure out why they put stuff where they did and wonder what it will be like next year when it’s us getting the lay of our own land.

With Citi Field far along, I don’t know that the Mets are looking for cues from their divisional rival. They could do worse than to borrow generously from their DiamondVision or NationalVision or whatever it’s called. It’s huge and it’s clear. They could also note what the Nats missed, like a permanent tracker of what the batter did in his last at-bat(s). With so much high-def hardware at work, there should be relevant data always at the ready, not just Marlon Anderson’s height.

My friend Jeff and I sat in some very fine what we’ll call field level seats in short left last Wednesday night, pretty comparable to where I was eight nights earlier at Shea. There is definitely something to be said for seats that are tilted toward home plate. There is also something to be said for sloping the steps in such a way that once somebody stands up in your midst (to buy a hot dog, to sell a beer, to mindlessly stare), you the seated are not blocked from the action. Mild-mannered Jeff rightly morphed into a bear as backs and shoulders and heads kept us from seeing a damn thing. Given the genuine obstacle to line of sight this non-action represented, I’m guessing getting up constantly is a cherished local tradition.

New rule: If you have a rookie pitcher setting the world on figurative fire, stand and clap. If it’s the third inning and nothing’s going on but a 2-1 count, sit the fudge down. Perhaps the “tennis seating” decorum I’ve seen employed in other places (even Philadelphia), where you are momentarily kept from returning to your seat while baseball is in progress, should be de rigueur. Given the price of a ticket, you should be entitled to see as much of it as you (or Jeff) paid for.

Not that Nationals fans, even the one who lobbed a snide junkball about the high Met payroll (which explained why we won, according to him), struck me as rude. I’m not sure I saw a whole lot of Nationals fans, at least relative to the ton of outlanders who descended on Washington last week. If there is one tradition that trailed the Expos to their final resting spot, it was that we, as in the Metropolitan we, were everywhere. No tension because of the crowd composition, at least not from where I sat and craned. No booing of Mets by Mets fans for a change (we’re all in this together when we congregate elsewhere). No escalating drunken bravado on a Wednesday night à la what reports suggest has become the norm in certain slices of Citizens Bank. The Nats didn’t come close to selling out their eighth game ever in their new park and that was with a generous helping of us on board. As some have been known to suggest in the seat of government regarding other invasions, they should be greeting Mets fans with flowers and chocolates.

If they did, however, would they know where to find them? While Nationals Park did give lie to half of the old bromide that Washington is a city of southern efficiency and northern charm (I liked the line of golf-shirted greeters who profusely thanked us for coming), it doesn’t appear that all the kinks have been ironed out. Concessions still seemed a bit overwhelmed, even without an SRO audience. The dreaded taking of the bottlecap, which I thought was a Shea-only pre-emptive punishment, was exercised at one stand, but not at another. Uncertainty of how to work all the levers extended to more visible facets of the operation as well.

When Duaner Sanchez entered the game, the massive scoreboard identified him as UNKNOWN. Innings earlier, Angel Pagan, No. 16 on the Mets, was billed as Jay Payton, No. 16 on the Orioles — there was even a picture of our 2000 centerfielder in his Bird garb to complete the illusion that the Mets might win a pennant this year. (Payton was in the system, Jeff inferred, because the Nats played the O’s in an exhibition game, one of those dress rehearsals intended to, yup, iron the kinks out before the ballgames count.)

Anybody could make if not those mistakes then something like them. Shea was several decades old when its board ops declared Jason Phillips’ first Major League hit belonged to Vance Wilson. It was even older when it randomly assigned Pedro Martinez’s 3,000th strikeout a year ahead of time and to nobody in particular. At Shea, it’s quirky. At a brand new facility, it’s time for another run-through. For Citi Field, it’s a cautionary tale to really think through everything (like where to not mount a mile-high home plate camera), really test everything and really teach everybody how to use everything.

It’s perverse fun to nitpick — even Natpick — but there was a lot to like about the new place. It’s easy as hell to get to by Metro, which, in turn, is always easy as hell to navigate. Nationals Park is one block from the Navy Yard station which is already more efficiently coordinated after a game than the 44-year-old Willets Point-Shea Stadium stop. There are nice if not expansive nods to Washington baseball history around the main concourse and, let’s face it, there’s not all that much Washington baseball history to show off. The Nats even tip their caps to greats of the game from other cities (perhaps they understand much of their trade will come from elsewhere). Though you have to be pretty high up to notice the Capitol dome and such, the cherry blossoms planted above the outfield are a phenomenal District touch. Balls don’t seem to fly out of this joint any more than they did RFK, so the saplings are probably safe from falling objects.

The Nats skipped the bricks and the overwrought homages to a mythic baseball past. The clean, well-lighted, modern approach was refreshing even if red brick can serve as an effective Pavlovian cue to get fields-of-dreamy about one’s surroundings. You don’t always, however, need to be enveloped by a manufactured past. That said, there was something about Nationals Park that made it feel — and this isn’t intended to come out as derisive as it will — like a very nice and very large Grapefruit League park. It wasn’t sterile as much as not yet defined, not yet lived in. Maybe after eight games, it’s not supposed to be.

Nationals Park may not be the coziest bed & breakfast of ballparks, but it’s at least a reasonably functional Marriott. It’s very much worth a visit (though you should probably ante up for a reasonably functional Marriott if you’re staying over and eschew the Days Inn of Silver Spring, Md.; trust me on this one). The Mets will be back in August if it’s the Mets you want to see. I’d suggest seeing it before they sell the naming rights because, honestly, the best part of this particular ballpark relative to those I’ve visited in the past half-decade or so was the lack of a suffocating corporate presence. No kidding. I realized as I loped about before the game how nice it was to not be reminded every six feet that some great financial institution or fine American brewer was bringing me this baseball game.

That may sound like projected carping over World Class Citi Field, and maybe it is a little, but the way I noticed there was no corporation sponsoring everything is the way I used to notice when there was one. Know what I mean? It used to be strange to see a company name plastered all over the place. Now we accept it as a part of doing business like we accept so much of everything in this world. For a night, corporate naming rights weren’t a fact of ballpark life and it was a surprisingly welcome sight to not see.

As for trying to discern, pesky aesthetics aside, what our nights and days will be like as we edge closer to our new stage, you cross your fingers and you hold your heart that it will be worth the hype and worth the wait and worth the sacrifice of what many of us adore and are instinctively reluctant to let go. What will it be like when the new ballpark isn’t someone else’s, but ours? Duaner Sanchez’s mysterious D.C. identity notwithstanding, that is the great unknown.

12: Tuesday, September 9 vs Nationals

Often this year, ladies and gentlemen, as we have tackled our Countdown Like It Oughta Be, we have spoken to the extraordinary versatility of Shea Stadium and the kinds of events it has hosted. This grass and these walls have provided temporary grounds to icons spiritual, presidential and rock 'n' roll and to outdoor sports of all stripe.

But when you get right down to it, when you think of Shea and you think of something besides the Mets, you think of one other name. You think of the Jets.

Tonight we honor Shea Stadium's other long-time team-in-residence, the gang that called Flushing Meadows home for two solid decades. During their tenure here from 1964 through 1983, they made history, they wrought cheers and they made some very cold Sundays feel a little warmer.

Join us now in saluting an organization that started in the Polo Grounds, cultivated a new breed of fan and conjured a miracle of its own.

Join us now in welcoming home your New York Jets.

Football requires eleven men on the field at all times, thus we have gathered together eleven New York Jets greats who represent the team's most spectacular Shea Stadium achievements.

You can't have football without a kickoff, and no kicker was more identified with the tricky winds of Flushing Bay than he who battled them, ultimately successfully, for ten seasons before finding friendlier climes slightly to the west — Pat Leahy.

Playing special teams, one of the dangerous return men of his time, he led the entire National Football League in all-purpose yardage and three times in kick yardage; give it up for Bruce Harper.

On defense, four men who formed an unforgettable unit and heated up the Jets in their rise back to playoff contention in the early 1980s. Quarterbacks could never sit on their portfolios when the New York Sack Exchange was open for business. Give one more Shea Stadium welcome to these unstoppable defensive linemen: Abdul Salaam, Marty Lyons, Mark Gastineau and Joe Klecko.

From the offensive line, a player who spanned the two periods of Shea Stadium Jets glory, a member of the 1981 Jets team that played the final postseason football game ever at Shea Stadium and a rock for the '68 Super Bowl champs and '69 AFL Eastern Division winners as well, say hi to a guard for all seasons, Randy Rasmussen.

Staying on offense, we have three of the great weapons of the Super Bowl III champions, a trio of the most shimmering stars of the American Football League.

• He led the AFL in touchdowns scored in 1967, the year the Jets rose to respectability, and earned all-pro honors in 1968, Emerson Boozer.

• In the AFL championship game right here on December 29, 1968, he rushed 19 times for 71 yards and scored the first points of the Super Bowl two weeks later in Miami, Matt Snell.

• His six catches for 118 yards amid the bitter chill of Shea, including two for TDs, ensured the Jets would prevail over Oakland for the right to take on the Baltimore Colts and eventually secure supremacy of the football world. He is a pro football hall of famer and surely a Titan among Jets. At wide receiver, Don Maynard.

Finally, to lead his teammates down the Shea Stadium field one more time, there is no Jet more appropriate than he who will remove, yes, number 12, from the right field wall. Little more needs to be said than…ladies and gentlemen, from Broadway all the way back to Roosevelt Avenue, the greatest New York Jet of them all, Joe Namath.

Number 13 was revealed here.