One of the definitive events in recent Met years happened on April 6, 2006 — Carlos Beltran, after being treated shabbily by the Shea faithful for much of 2005 and booed during a slump in the early part of his next season, hit a home run, circled the bases and then plunked his behind on the bench, obviously angered by the fans' sudden about-face and demands for a curtain call. As the cheers continued, Julio Franco came over and spoke quietly but pointedly to him, after which Carlos popped out of the dugout for a wave. It was quick and it was grudgingly done, but it was the end of booing Beltran — he and we were off on a magical season.

Fast-forward to yesterday, with Carlos Delgado mired in what's either a horrible slump or the middle stages of the end. After his second home run of the day — an old-fashioned Delgado no-doubter off the scoreboard — the fans who have booed him mightily at Shea of late wanted their curtain call. But Delgado wasn't coming out — and there was no Julio Franco to suggest he rethink that decision.

The tabloid and radio debate over whether that was a bad move will go on for a bit, with what Delgado does tonight against Pittsburgh having potentially serious bearing. Delgado said yesterday that that kind of thing isn't his style, citing respect for the game — and the Associated Press backed him up with the tidbit that he's only taken curtain calls for a four-homer performance and his 400th round-tripper.

Logical enough, but awfully facile as explanations go. Delgado's a smart guy. He knows fans, and he knows New York. He knows perfectly well that what he was given yesterday was a peace offering, and he declined it. Which is his right, of course — he's been treated poorly by a fan base for whom “the natives are restless” would be a perilous understatement these days, and I don't blame him for refusing to bask in the warmth of their fair-weather affection. On the other hand, that rejection is an invitation for even-heartier abuse — and the comment about respect for the game, with the insinuation that the fans lack it, won't be missed by the boobirds.

I've found myself shifting a little where Delgado's concerned. While I haven't booed him, I haven't exactly been in his corner. By even the kindest measure his play has been atrocious this year both at bat and in the field. But what continues to burn me is the ever-flammable subject of 2007. For all Delgado was hailed as a clubhouse leader when he arrived, I remember him being in evidence off the field twice last year — once during the farcical week when Paul Lo Duca was supposedly a racist, and again when he was telling the New York Observer that the Mets got kind of bored out there. Neither particularly endeared him to me. (Though on Saturday CW11's cameras caught him consoling Aaron Heilman in the dugout after Heilman absorbed his own latest blistering of the fans — a welcome sight, but the kind of thing I thought we'd get from him routinely.)

But this column by the peerless Tim Marchman moved me to a bit of pity — Marchman offers a cold-eyed dissection of Delgado's woes, with little hope for a turnaround, but tempers that grim analysis with the observation that “one just hopes that the fans and even the writers keep in mind that baseball is hard. Don't get down on the man: Even if it isn't enough, he's doing what he can.” And there's no reason to doubt that. Delgado appears to have gotten old a couple of years earlier than we'd thought he would, but that's not a hanging crime. Gary Carter and Keith Hernandez and Edgardo Alfonzo, to name just three, all had the same thing happen to them. I'd like to think I never would have booed them, no matter what the circumstances.

Saturday, too, was a bit of an eye-opener where Delgado was concerned. Sitting in the bleachers with Greg and Emily and Joshua was fun for a lot of reasons, but it was an eye-opener about some baseball basics that I'd never appreciated because of years of seeing balls in play primarily from the camera behind home plate.

1. Losing a ball against the sky is easier than you'd think. Endy and Church both struggled with fly balls Saturday afternoon, and from the bleachers it was easy to see why. The best possible description of the sky was “baseball-colored” — once balls cleared the top of the stadium, it was touch and go just where they'd gone.

2. He really isn't going to throw that runner out. Runner on second, single to center, runner is heading home, the center fielder has the ball — and then you mutter when the center fielder just lobs it in. There wasn't a possible play on him? Really? Really. The view from the home-plate camera is foreshortened. When Francoeur rushed home in the sixth on Prado's single and Beltran flipped the ball in, I knew by the timing of events that it was exactly the kind of play that would have had me wondering if the run was assured of scoring. Watching it from behind Beltran's position, it was obvious he had no chance at a play. That camera lies about just how far it is to home plate.

3. Most fly balls have no chance. I'm rarely fooled into thinking flyouts are home runs or doubles anymore (heck, just look at the outfielders if you can't figure it out off the bat), but there's no doubt at all from behind the outfielders. The sound, velocity and trajectory of a well-struck ball are instantly and obviously different from a long but routine fly.

Delgado's drive in the fifth — the one Mark Kotsay caught on the warning track and thought was the third out — was different. It was hammered, and knocked down just enough by the wind to stay in the yard. And then he got booed for it, by a crowd that included lots of people yelling excitedly for balls the second baseman reeled in 30 feet into the outfield. I wouldn't feel charitable after too many days of that either.

But finally, there's this difference between the two Carloses and their curtain calls. Beltran was beginning the second year of a long stay in New York, one that had begun on a difficult note. Handed an olive branch, he had to take it — or run the very real risk of having to hear about that refusal from the fans and the beat writers forevermore. This is Delgado's last Flushing rodeo — barring a Lazarus-like turnaround, he's getting bought out before Citi Field opens and either moving to the American League or hanging them up for good. Beltran had to come out, for any number of reasons enumerated hastily by Julio Franco. Delgado did not, and didn't.

I got to spend an extra half-hour with my wife. I got a foam finger. I got to meet a mezzanine icon. I got a kid an ice cream cone. I got my 89th starting pitcher. I got three substantial home runs. I got a fearless catch from a fearless rightfielder. I got my third win covering two ballparks in a span of four days. I got my fourth consecutive triumph over our most bitter rivals. I got the 4:24 at Woodside. I got home earlier and with less angst than yesterday.

I didn't get Carlos Delgado returning my appreciation for him. I don't get that it's a big deal.

I've been baseballing like crazy since the gun sounded on the home season. I tied an April record for most Shea games attended and, precipitation pending, I'm not through yet. Throw in the trip to Washington (reflections on Nationals Park still to come) and I've been incredibly indulged, mostly by myself, occasionally by others — such as my Sunday hosts, the legendary Chapmans. Go to a game with Sharon, Kevin and Ross and it is Chapmania all around in the best sense of the made-up word.

So we had fun and I had foam. I nearly didn't have the latter. I was enjoying a bagel and such with Stephanie this morning and opted for a later train than planned, knowing full well that only the first 25,000 would get fitted for their complimentary puffy palms, one of those items I don't really need but didn't realize how much I wanted until I saw I'd missed out on them at Gate E. It didn't annoy me until I saw the Gate B crowds were still getting theirs even though their tickets were scanned minutes after mine. Grrr…

I put aside my huffery over my lack of puffery and joined the gang for a game whose result never felt much in doubt, even if it was against the sworn enemies of Shea satisfaction, the Atlanta Braves. I chilled out soon after arriving with two helpings of lineless Carvel, one for me, one for Ross, payment for an autumn wager when his mom's school beat mine in some sport I can barely remember caring about. My spoon wasn't to the bottom of the helmet when the bat of Raul Casanova nearly produced sprinkles. In the spirit of asking what have Brian Schneider and Ramon Castro done for me lately? I sure do like our new catching platoon.

John Smoltz was as untroubling as Tim Hudson, which is to say neither man could hold a candle to the guy with all the J's in his name from Friday. Nelson Figueroa, meanwhile, continued to warm the cockles of his relatives and the rest of us. Happy to add him to The Log, happy to raise my lifetime regular-season home win total to within two of 200, happy and amazed to note I haven't seen a loss to the Braves since 2006…and I see the Braves a lot.

It won't show up in the boxscore, but I drew face time with the one and only Kowalski (or KOWALSKI 69, if you've only seen/heard him from a distance). It was a chance meeting in the mezz concourse somewhere off his Section 18 hyping spot, but it was a marvelous interaction. Beer and kind words were graciously offered. He shouts, we blog…it's all good. (Also gratified to meet commenter Dykstraw on the 7 yesterday; hope the Donovan's burger was a hit.)

The only item absent from a potentially extraordinarily happy recap as the game wound down was my damn foam finger. It says #1 FAN on it, and I refuse to acknowledge 25,000 people in my midst today ranked ahead of me. I'll step aside for Ross and maybe Kowalski, but the other 24,998 of you are on notice.

Not to worry, though, because I was experiencing Chapmania, and the Chapmans have a way of making things happen. Kevin, who coaches baserunners from his seat better than Matt Galante ever did from the third base box, scooped up someone else's leave-behind before I even had a chance to scavenge. I was foamy, I was whole. Spurred by my completion, I somehow found the right ramp, crossed the right street, got on the right superexpress and was whisked eastbound on the LIRR before I realized I wasn't going to have stare at my watch and tap my foot (as I did yesterday when Woodside trackwork got my goat).

Sounds like a great day, huh? So why is it I'm hearing and reading that the big thing that happened this cloudy but beautiful Sunday was that Carlos Delgado, he who smashed two very round-trippers, didn't take a curtain call? We mezzanineans who were supportive with our applause even before his first swing didn't seem to mind we didn't get a bow, a tip or a wave. Would have been nice if we had, wasn't so bad that we didn't. We understood why he might have been reticent after the April he's endured, a month when his slumping ways were little tolerated by a vocal minority. By the time it was obvious Delgado wasn't curtain-calling us back, we had moved on to encouraging Casanova some more, just as we had relentlessly acknowledged Ryan Church for his spectacular catch and body bounce at the wall moments earlier. We were too overjoyed by the final result in progress to get hung up on a pointed lack of communication from our maybe moody (and highly compensated) first baseman.

I had a fine seat, good company and a great win. I was even given the finger in the best possible manner. Delgado didn't act extraordinarily grateful for being heartily feted one day after he was ridiculously booed for booming a ball that was caught at the track? When you read later or tomorrow that “the fans” were disappointed or spurned by Carlos Delgado, understand that at least one of us — and probably a lot of us — were perfectly pleased by their Sunday in the park with Mets.

How is it remotely possible that Shea and I got to its last year together without me and its bleachers making mutual acquaintance? It's no longer a relevant question because (cue the Colbertian fanfare), I DID IT!

So much excitement for sitting as far from home plate (non-vertically) as you possibly can, but it's been my mildly holy grail since 1979 when the bleachers first went up in left field. I've been almost haunted by them. That fall, eleventh grade, Joel and I took a bogus class called Business Law whose textbook offered a hypothetical verbal contract between two people regarding the resale of two tickets to “the bleachers at Shea Stadium,” which was strange because there had been no bleachers at Shea Stadium when the book was published. We informed our teacher of how bizarre we found this example. He didn't care. And neither did the Mets. The Mets couldn't just sell bleachers tickets like every other team that had a bunch of benches. They made it a thing…a generally unavailable thing.

I'll get there eventually, I thought. Sure, they say they're only for groups of 50 or more, but those bleachers have to open their golden chain link fence to the likes of me. I'll get with a group. I'll make 49 friends. I'll find a use for these seat cushions they keep giving me that would just be perfect under my rear end out there. I just know I'll reach those bleachers.

But I never did. Never did the Pepsi can-or-bottle thing after it became the Pepsi Picnic Area; just didn't have the Wednesday afternoons free to stand in line. Once in a while, usually when it was freezing and the Mets were putrid, mets.com would invite me to rush over if I printed something out. That didn't work for me either. But my chance will come. I know it will. I would go on to sit in Diamond View Suites and Metropolitan Clubs and right behind home plate and adjacent to a dugout and in front of Tommie Agee's marker and within peeling distance of the Apple and all the way up in Row V where the world doesn't get any higher. I'd sat everywhere except the one place I really wanted a crack at.

The seasons passed. The opportunities did not present themselves. Until today.

I wasn't attached to a group per se, except for the traditional all-star cast of Faith and Fear's extended family (Jason, Emily, Joshua). Our in was a fundraiser for the Epilepsy Foundation of Long Island, part of the Jack Lang Day festivities. For the first time I could remember, crashing the gates of the bleachers was as simple as buying a ticket, one that included a charitable component and a little buffet action.

Hell yes! Bleachers here I came!

I'm happy to report they didn't disappoint. They were as exotic as they were accessible. It was like being at Shea and having Shea in front of you and being in another Shea all at the same time.

Why did they hide this from me for nearly 29 years? I loved it for some reason. For many reasons, actually.

• There was the legendary picnic tent, at least from the time somebody handed me a bureaucratically tangled wristband until the setup was arbitrarily put away in the middle innings. It wasn't extravagant, but it was the picnic tent. All that was missing was Mike Piazza taking Ramiro Mendoza to its roof.

• There was the Keyspan sign not as an unimaginable target but as a tall neighbor.

• There were the championship flags over my left shoulder.

• There was a bathroom with no lines.

• There was Mr. Met, a pro's pro who gave Joshua a big league hug and his mom ample opportunity to fish out her camera. Honest to god, the difference between Mr. Met and Sandy the Seagull is the difference between the majors and single-A.

• There was a brief glimpse inside the Braves bullpen, a long enough look to cast an effective evil eye on the otherwise impenetrable Tim Hudson.

What I missed in sightlines to the infield was more than made up by understanding a little better what fly balls look like to the outfielders. We couldn't see DiamondVision but we heard it just fine. And when the organized fun of the eighth-inning singalong broke out (“I'm A Believer,” an honorable selection if you have to have one at all), it was kind of kicky when the ooohs boomeranged back at us from the regular seats.

The regular seats…how the other 99/100ths lived. Poor saps. They didn't get to stretch out in the sun. They didn't get to stamp their feet and make aluminum noise. They didn't get to wander around and around a four-row fiefdom like Joshua did. They didn't get not just their choice of ziti or pasta salad but BOTH! It may come as a shock to my system Sunday afternoon to learn the mezzanine doesn't offer the same all-you-can eat ethos.

It helps to be 1-0 in games at which I've sat in the bleachers. After Friday night's “don't just do something, stand there” approach to offense, I was wary that Saturday would wind up a wasted day in the Pepsi Panic Area. But, no, Gustavo Molina and the Mets used their allotted one inning of scoring to collect enough runs to withstand the slings and arrows of Braves dreaded and unfamiliar. John Maine gritted his teeth through five and it took a bullpen of millions to hold them back, but a win is a win — and though there were no shots over its fence, sitting at last in Shea's bleachers turned out to be a personal home run.

“In the realm of sports, yeah, no question, it was a devastating loss. It was a devastating loss for us as a team, certainly for me as a player, and for the fans, no question about it. As a fan of sports and sports teams, I understand that feeling. But I guess I was approaching it more from a life standpoint and not so much from a sports standpoint. … Was that the right time for me to try to make that distinction? Probably not.”

Finally. Now go away anyway.

Ladies and gentlemen, here they are, your 2007 New York Mets!

Wait, what's that? You're sure? But I see…

…a pathetic lack of offense

…indifferent defense

…inefficient starting pitching

…scattershot relief

…mental mistakes

…can-do blather from authority figures

…no indication that anybody wearing the uniform is ready to stand up and say enough's enough.

I thought that extra-inning win against the Phillies had finally lanced this infection (don't listen, Schneider), with the first two games at the Ex-Vet letting the poison drain out. But I was wrong. By too many indications this is the same badly constructed, poorly led, sadly complacent team I came to thoroughly dislike last year. Last summer I found out something I pretty much knew anyway, and would happily have gone to my grave never having confirmed: It's no fun disliking your favorite team. It turns one of the nicest things in life into a trial, and the best part of the year into a sweaty version of winter. I'd really, really like never to feel that way again, or at least not to know that dreadful feeling more than once a generation or so. But these days and nights feel horribly familiar.

I know I don't want to feel that way again. I take it on faith that most of the guys in the clubhouse and running the team don't want to feel that way again. But I can't do anything about it except type while steam whistles out of my ears. Since that's not true of them, I have only one question: Which one of you is going to put your foot down and inform all concerned that it's not acceptable for this year to be like last year?

They've got all kinds of banners and signs posted in Nationals Park. They might want to add this one around first after last night:

Under this glove pass the loveliest double play balls in the world.

To paraphrase from Jackie Mason's description of Ronald Reagan's presidency, Carlos Delgado is a wonderful baseball player, a terrific baseball player, a marvelous baseball player…it's just that baseball isn't his field.

Cripes. I know Oliver Perez decided to start the second game of a doubleheader in the middle of the one that was going just fine…and Aaron Heilman joined Jorge Sosa in popularizing the new Mets bullpen slam dance craze…and that Angel Hernandez remains, as my partner pointed out to me, an unindicted war criminal…but it was Delgado's inability or unwillingness to bend sufficiently down that I recall most miserably this groggy Friday morning. Carlos can be pissed off at the Worst Umpire in the World for smirking and muttering his calls, but he should be more pissed off at himself. Twenty-two, twenty-three guys who dress similarly can feel the same way.

So much for the knock on the Mets that they only win against lousy teams since they didn't do even that much Thursday — though to be fair, they did kind of defeat themselves.

Your 2008 Mets: They could be better, they could be worse, they don't look, after an eighth of a season, like they'll have much to do with the playoffs. And I could make pretty much the same assessment of Nationals Park…which I'll get around to doing in the very near future.

Less than an eighth of the season is gone, which isn't anywhere near enough time to draw conclusions about a player, team or pennant race. But we're fans — what are we supposed to do, turn off the set and take the long view? Nah, we draw conclusions every night, shifting our stances until eventually all is said and done and what happened looks inevitable. (And more often than not we say we knew it all along.)

The conclusion about the 2008 New York Mets, fresh from Game 20? It's that they're stupendously average.

Yeah, they beat up on bad teams — particularly teams as punchless and inept as the Nationals, who right now are trying Manny Acta's much-revered patience with their complete inability to do anything. Yet they then, in turn, get beaten up by better teams — witness the recent manhandling by the Cubs, and the earlier unpleasantness inflicted by the Brewers. That's a classic sign of an average team. So too is the complete inability to have any kind of momentum — the Mets went from playing tight, taut ball against the Phillies (albeit the Jimmy Rollins-less Phillies, who are a very different club) to looking mopey and confused against the Cubs. That too fairly screams “average.” And — again, like average teams since time immemorial — they make it all but impossible to think that all will be fine once Problem X is solved, because Problem X keeps mutating. One night it's the crappy middle relief. The next night it's the thin bench. The night after that it's all those aging regulars in extended spring training. Give it another night and it's all the nagging injuries. And more and more nights, it's thinking that moving Castillo and Delgado around in the batting order just obscures the real possibility that the best spot for them both is in someone else's batting order. (Except Delgado is untradeable and Castillo is untradeable and will still be untradeable in fucking 2011, when he'll likely be playing second base by dragging himself around on his hands in a box, like Eddie Murphy in “Trading Places.”)

Yet every fifth day things are different. Every fifth day we know there's a good chance Johan Santana will remind us how above-average baseball players can be.

Tonight while I was hustling Joshua through some part of his bedtime routine, I heard Emily yelp, “I love Johan Santana!” Why? I couldn't guess — because there were too many answers to that question. Was he cutting through Nationals like a combine? He did that. Was he making a superb fielding play? He did that too. Was he helping his own cause by cracking a double? Hell, he did that twice.

Watching Santana, you feel like Met fans of a different generation must have felt watching Tom Seaver in '67 or '68 — a great player willing a less-great team to keep up with him, daring and all but demanding they be great as well. Which is fine, except we aren't supposed to be watching the '67 or '68 Mets. The '08 Mets supposedly have greatness within them. They're supposedly the class of the National League. Maybe in the Lake Wobegon League, but not here, not so far.

This isn't to say the new season is without its pleasures. There's baseball on a warm spring night, which is one of the grander parts of life whether you're 11-9 or 9-11 or 3-17. (OK, maybe if you're 6-14. Let's not overdo it.) There's the sharp, smart play of Brian Schneider and Ryan Church, which hasn't erased wondering why Lastings Milledge was exiled, but has lessened the sting. There are the feel-good stories of Angel Pagan and Nelson Figueroa and Duaner Sanchez, though one hesitates before proclaiming the rest of the chapters will be so uplifting. There's Billy Wagner, literally unhittable so far. (Though you know one of the next three guys he faces will get a hit. He's a Met, ain't he?) There's watching David Wright become an even better baseball player than he was last year, and wondering just where his ceiling lies.

All of that is nice. But it's not the same here-we-go oomph of watching Johan — and there's the problem. Every fifth day may be something to look forward to, but the other four were supposed to be must-see stuff too.

(Too gloomy? Quite possibly. Greg will be along by morning with a first-person report from D.C., which might be more cheerful. Though I doubt he'll be able to shed any light on that weird home-plate camera angle we kept seeing tonight. Kind of like watching baseball from a low-flying plane or a Tom Clancyesque spy satellite, wasn't it?)

13: Sunday, September 7 vs Phillies

It is not exactly a family secret, ladies and gentlemen, that the Mets who took up residence in Shea Stadium 44 years ago weren't worldbeaters. Their records in the Polo Grounds? 40 and 120, 51-111. The trend continued for the first two seasons at Shea: 53 and 109, 50 and 112. Saying the Mets finished tenth four straight years was a nice way of saying they couldn't finish twentieth. That is why as much as the fans were in love with their team, they also came out to admire some of the great stars the National League had to offer in those days.

Today we have one of the greatest with us. Simply put, he personifies pitching — inconceivably excellent pitching — for a generation of baseball fans and remains the standard by which every flamethrowing lefthander who comes along is evaluated. A native of Brooklyn and a good friend of the Mets organization every spring, please welcome back to Shea Stadium, Sandy Koufax.

Now, as happy as we are to have Sandy visit us today, we have to admit he is not here solely for his own accomplishments, as plentiful as they are. You see, Sandy inadvertently became a yardstick for measuring what, in retrospect, may have been the first significant leap of progress in Mets history. You might even call it the first Mets miracle.

Not that Sandy Koufax didn't pitch well against all comers, but he enjoyed an incredible hold over Mets hitters from 1962 on, racking up a 13-0 mark over his hometown team by the latter portion of their fourth season, a résumé that included his first no-hitter. The idea that a ragtag bunch like the Mets could ever defeat Koufax…well, that seemed impossible to Mets fans who could only dream of competing on anything approaching his level.

But the impossible turned actual on August 26, 1965 when Sandy Koufax was outlasted — it seems blasphemy to say outpitched — by another lefty, this one just shy of his 21st birthday. The southpaw the Mets sent to the Shea mound that Thursday had all of one major league victory to his credit, but his performance earned him another. The great Sandy Koufax and the eventual world champion Dodgers were beaten 5-2, the first loss ever taken against the heretofore hapless New York Mets by the indomitable immortal.

The winning pitcher? An up-and-comer named Frank Edwin “Tug” McGraw.

As you know, ladies and gentlemen, it wasn't the last time Tug McGraw would have something to do with miraculous events at Shea Stadium. Tug would eventually convert from starter to reliever, become one of the best in the National League at closing games and then, in the summer of 1973, begin spouting a phrase that helped inspire the Mets on an Amazin' journey from the bottom of their division to the top of the flagpole.

Nobody pitched like Tug McGraw did down the final weeks of 1973 and nobody ever believed the way he did…or made Mets fans believe so wholeheartedly that anything is possible.

No individual in the history of this franchise or this ballpark represents the spirit of the New York Mets like Tug McGraw. Nobody ever showed a love of life or baseball more in or out of a Mets uniform. To honor his memory today in our Countdown Like It Oughta Be, we ask his onetime opponent, Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax, and his son, one of the most beloved recording stars in the music world, Tim McGraw, to take down number 13 for someone who brought this team better luck, greater hope and deeper faith than any Mets fan could have ever aspired to before he came along.

Number 14 was revealed here.

Afternoon games at Wrigley…idyllic, no?

No?

Not this one. And that was the only one we get for 2008, which is OK from here. The Cubs are good and the Mets are relentlessly so-so, making it difficult to enjoy the ivy for the trees. The charm of America's most charming ballpark dissipates when you're losing 8-1 the day after the night you lost 7-1.

You can analyze the poor fielding by Delgado and the poor hitting by Delgado and the poor relieving by Delgado (what fun is blaming Jorge Sosa?), but I won't. The Mets defy useful analysis at the moment. The slippery slope of trying to unravel their ennui runs from “what's wrong now?” to “what's wrong tomorrow?” to “will it ever be righted?” and in about 15 seconds you're hosting one of those enlightening shows on SNY wherein second-tier WFAN talent shouts each other down for half an hour.

Let's go back to Wrigley instead. It looks so good on television. It looks so good in real life. It looks great in daylight. Get Ronny Cedeño the bleep out of there and you can't do any better for a few hours' commune with nature and baseball.

It boggles the mind to realize that not only was the darn thing built in 1914, it was built to play home to a Federal League team. A Federal League team, for cryin' out loud. Shea was sort of planned for a Continental League team, but it's not quite the same. Nothing's the same as Wrigley, no matter how many bricks are used by those who would be inspired by it. Compared to Wrigley Field, all those places are brick teases.

'Twas pointed out by Gary and Ron how Wrigley's the “template” for so many of the retro parks of the modern age — though not for limestone-based Nationals Park, the Mets' next stop and mine, too. We won't be seeing any more of Wrigley Field this season though a Mets prism, but we may as well get used to what they've got in D.C. as we play them down there nine times this year and nine or ten times every year for years to come. (Rumor has it we play nineteen different clubs in 2008, but mostly we seem to play the Washington Nationals.)

I look forward to telling you what it's like on the inside. If the Mets play the Nats like they did last week, it will be a far nicer place than Wrigley Field was this week.