“It’s like walking across the desert step by step and today he finally got to the oasis.”

That's Rick Peterson on Duaner Sanchez getting to pitch today in an intrasquad game, and with all due respect to the Jacket and bridge-potentially-too-far similes, both of which I approve of highly, throwing 25 pitches to teammates wearing hideous spring-training motley is nothing like an oasis after an arid hike. Spring training being spring training, it's more like a mirage, to be followed by five weeks' worth of further mirages.

Don't get me wrong: All hail Duaner Sanchez and his return to fighting shape and can-do spirit. Goodness knows we need him: Through the pitiless 20/20 of hindsight, Sanchez showing up in Port St. Lucie last spring heavy of flesh and light of commitment was the first sign that something might be wrong with the 2007 Mets, and when you finish one game out of playing extra baseball, you can point to any factor as the straw that might have left you with a quadriplegic dromedary. (Hey, we've got a desert theme goin' here, so help out.)

I've long since chalked up Duaner's fateful Aug. 1, 2006 Miami food run to the hand of fickle Fate, who doesn't usually hand back gifts like Oliver Perez in such situations. (Though perhaps Dame F. did steer Omar to the noxious Guillermo Mota.) But '07 was different: A combination of unforeseen physical complications and unwelcome attitude problems, and a cascade of at-first-minor trouble in the bullpen. You can recite the litany just as I can: The absence of Duaner begat the inconsistency of Aaron, which begat the overwork of Billy, while some burning bush told Willie to use Pedro F. and Schoeneweis oddly. (Desert theme again. I know I'm pushing it.) All the reports on Duaner are strongly enthusiastic so far, and that's an unreservedly Good Thing. (I'd say that of course all February reports are strongly enthusiastic — witness this, by the same Ben Shpigel whose testament is above — but I'm sure as I type that El Duque's waking up in a rented condo and discovering his leg has turned gangrenous, but he'll take it slow and be ready to answer the bell or something. For God's sake, put Pelfrey in the fifth slot!)

Anyway, Peterson of Arabia's report made me realize I'd reached a not-particularly-welcome mileage marker on my own spring journey: the first time that I catch myself grumbling that spring training is way too fricking long. It's that mirage thing again: About five days after hearing about pitchers jogging failed to cheer me up, we get Mets swinging bats and hurling balls in earnest. Ahh, cool water! Oh, wait — intrasquad game. If you can get enthusiastic about Team Sandy Alomar's 7-5 win over Team Jerry Manuel, my hat's off to you.

But wait! Over there! It's the real oasis of baseball … oops, no, it's the Mets playing the University of Michigan tomorrow. Mirage.

OK, so that one was more shimmer than sand — but look! Mets/Tigers on Thursday! Eh. I'll look at the box score, register my first worry at whatever known quantity got whacked around (it'll either be too early or he'll be too strong or he was working on stuff or his last couple of batters were better than the first few) and go back into my coma.

But what's that! Spring-training telecast Friday, with Johan on the hill!

(Mir … oh, heck, even I can't be cynical about that one.)

But post-Johan, there'll be a solid month to go. A month for silly quotes and dead-arm periods and someone to get in trouble in a mall parking lot and the rookies getting sent out and the NRI guys heading home or elsewhere and the Guy on the Bubble With the Inspiring Story getting cut and overheated chatter about the final one or two roster spots and the late-March dog-for-cat trade that scrambles all those projected rosters. And then, finally, it'll be time to pack away the blue and orange and white and black and hope for the world's least-effectual bit of revenge against the Marlins. (Of which I'll of course happily lap up whatever scrap I'm given.) And then April, and to work.

Spring training is wonderful — in abstract. Spring training is wonderful — compared to the depths of winter. When it's 20 degrees and you've lost whatever desperate interest you feigned in the Super Bowl, spring training absolutely is an oasis. But when you get there, the leafy palms and tranquil pools have moved just a bit farther ahead. Attaboy, Duaner. Now, could somebody wake me on March 31?

Shea Stadium is as different from the average ball park as a jet plane is from the contraption the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903.

So reported a very early Mets yearbook, which also said Shea would be opening in the summer of '63 and that it would be “the greatest ball park ever built”. Well, we know Shea was different, we know it didn't open until April of '64 and, as far it being the greatest ball park ever built, did we mention…

• That the 21 runs of escalators will mean “no jamming before or after ball games”?

• That you can “forget your parking problems,” thanks to the 45 acres of parking spaces and $110,000,000 expressway program?

• That the subway station's pedestrian overpass measures “the width of a highway”?

• That taxis “go right to entrances” (provided you pretend to work there)?

• That eventually “the stadium will be domed in so that it will be an all weather stadium and rain checks will be a thing of the past”?

• That “for once you won't have to crane your neck or imitate a giraffe to follow all the action” because you will find “a perfect view from every seat”?

I'm sold. Shea Stadium was and is indeed a jet among prop planes, the greatest ball park ever built as long as you don't forget to consider the joy you've experienced there, the thrills you've received there, the memories you've made there. Take that into account and, yes, Shea has been indisputably the greatest.

Let us, then, bring in the greatest to honor it. And to do that, we are asking your help.

Perhaps you've noticed that when some other ballparks have had their final seasons, the resident ballclub has indulged in a delightful daily ceremony in which for every game remaining, a number has been removed from the outfield fence, 81 through 1. What makes it so enjoyable is seeing from game to game whom a team calls on to remove a given number — what individual or group gets to be announced to that crowd one more time, walk on that field one more time, soak in applause for an accomplishment or association with that ballpark one more time. It's a living history played out in 81 chapters.

We haven't heard if the Mets are doing anything like this in 2008 to mark the final season of Shea Stadium. We kind of assume they are, but only to the extent that we kind of assume the Mets will do anything we think they should do but don't (like retire uniforms…or induct Hall of Fame members…or hold Old Timers Days…or heat their pretzels). We don't know if the Mets will do a countdown or, if they do, count down to our satisfaction.

Hence, we are going to do it for them. All of us here.

During the course of March, Jason and I plan to unveil the Shea Stadium Final Season Countdown, offering up the Faith and Fear slate of number-removers a few at a time. We want to have our countdown done before Opening Day. We want it to be the Shea countdown like it oughta be. And for it to live up to that lofty goal, we want your input.

What we are asking of you, FAFIF reader, is to compile your own list of who you would like to see take down a number from Shea Stadium's outfield wall in 2008. You can send us one name. You can send us more than one. You can send us as many as you care to. You can suggest pairings or groupings. You can match individuals to specific numbers if you like. You can give us your reasons if you think an explanation is in order. We will take your suggestions under advisement, toss them into the horseshoe-shaped pot with our own ideas and begin our countdown during the first week of March. The only parameter we insist on is an undeniable connection to Shea Stadium, the greatest ball park ever built.

Give it some thought and e-mail us your ideas at faithandfear@gmail.com by Thursday, February 28. There are no wrong answers except to let the occasion of Shea's final season go by without conducting a proper farewell.

Thanks as usual to Joe Dubin for scanning and sending along those enthusiastic pages from the 1962 and 1963 Mets yearbooks, one of which is headlined, “You name it…SHEA STADIUM has it.”

Well, at least you boys'll get to see the old manse, the home where I spent so many happy days in the bosom of my family, a refugium, if you will — with a mighty oak tree out front and a happy little tire swing.

—Ulysses Everett McGill

Right now, our favorite ballpark is the former Thomas J. White Stadium, Tradition Field, whose tradition is primarily that of luring a baseball team from an actual city to what is still reportedly the middle of nowhere. Actually, until the end of the month, our favorite field is whichever one on which the Mets are preparing to back up their garrulous centerfielder's bold prognostication that his team will be successful (ah, February). Wherever they've got Kevin Burkhardt doing sitdowns with Olmedo Saenz will be fine with me.

That's all we need right now, Port St. Lucie and whatever grass it presents on TV. Come April 8, however, we'll have two ballparks on our radar, Shea Stadium and Citi Field.

Judging by the proliferation of pictures and the corporate happy talk, Citi Field could be easily mistaken for a park in full once Shea's last Home Opener rolls around. I erred on the side of the future myself last September when my buddy Rich drove us to a game and found us a space right near the entrance — to Citi Field. For about three seconds, I was thinking, “Great. We won't have to walk very far at all…” until I realized the entrance he got us close to was the one that won't be unlocked until April 2009. That thing was going up uncomfortably fast last year and it shows no signs of stopping now.

As long as it's inevitable, I sure hope Citi Field both kicks and seats ass in pleasing proportions. Whether they're including enough chairs for the common folk we won't quite know for a few years, after the excitement of the newness wears off. I've sat in enough empty Shea Stadiums to know that there was a time when drawing 20,000, let alone 50,000, was an accomplishment. It doesn't seem like the greatest planning in the world to offer up a ballpark with 80% the capacity of the incumbent at the very moment the Mets are routinely drawing the biggest crowds of their life, but I imagine the bizheads who planned a 42,000-45,000 capacity knew what they were doing, or at least decided they did when they drew this bricky baby up. There's probably a formula underneath a pile of papers on somebody's desk that explains why goosing demand with lesser supply for the next several decades beats filling the demand that 2007 and 2006 and a few other very good years in the past proved exists for Mets baseball. Maybe whoever is assigned to that desk remembers those lonely nights in Flushing as well as some of us do.

We'll see if we can get a seat in '09 and get a sense by oh, '11, whether we are condemned to a lifetime of SRO or, once the Mets take a break from their Johan-powered dynasty, attendance levels off with performance. When the Mets have one of those seasons when the collapse comes in April instead of September (not that that will ever happen again, no sir), we'll have our truest test of whether Citi Field is magnetic or just there. You've seen games from the new parks across America. You've seen that in places where the team is no good that the park isn't a draw after a while. You know those are smaller towns with smaller budgets and — knock southpaw wood — that kind of decline won't happen here, but, well…you know. And we'll see. Maybe none of us will be fretting that we can't get seats down the line. If it's a function of subpar baseball, that won't be such a great fret to be rid of, but at least we'll know who the front-runners were by their eventual absence.

Let's hope that it is an attraction, though. Let's hope it's a showplace. Let's hope it's the best ballpark in town (the other one in another borough ain't shaping up too badly), not just a faux-neighborhood park in a neighborhood conspicuously devoid of neighbors. Maybe I've just stared at the sonograms of the unborn ballpark for so long that I've come down with a premature case of Citi fatigue, but a little bit of me has already transitioned from fearing the future because it obliterates the past to fearing the future because it might not be as swell as has been hailed.

Will Citi Field, even with its overbearing homage to Ebbets Field, kick ass? Will it be unique? Will the fan who's been to plenty of ballparks think, “Now this is something I've never seen before?” Will the fan who's been only to Shea or even the fan who's never been to any ballpark think, “Gee, this is pretty awesome?” I guess what I'm wondering is will this be one of a kind the way PNC and Pac Bell were when they broke previous molds or will this be our version of new Busch Stadium, which is the Cardinals' version of Citizens Bank Park, which is the Phillies' version of Minute Maid Park…and trace it all the way back to Camden Yards, which remains one of a kind no matter who else hauls it to Kinko's and copies it?

You could do worse than take your cues from Camden Yards (or Ebbets Field), but how many you take determines the ohmigod factor, your mouth hanging open when you walk in, when you look around, when you have nothing to say but ohmigod…and not because the toilets have overflown again. There are good new parks, there are great new parks, but there are few ohmigod parks. Will Citi Field take our breath away? Seeing as how it will take my Shea away, it had better.

Shea is the park we're going to see a lot more closely in 2008, of course. Shea is the only one of the two off Roosevelt and 126th that will be open for 81 ballgames and one concert. Shea is the one that goes away at the end of the year. Shea kicks ass this season no matter how poorly the plumbing works.

On that happiest of Wednesdays two weeks ago when Johan the Magnificent was introduced in his spiffy new top, I took a beat out from my elation to feel an involuntary chill. Over Santana's shoulder, on the wall of dancing logos that no team can conduct a simple Q&A without, was the insignia the Mets are plastering on everything this season: SHEA STADIUM 1964-2008. It wasn't the first time I'd seen it but it was the first time I really looked hard at the dates and realized how final it appeared, how this isn't one of those logos that celebrates an anniversary, how it's one of those logos that accurately forecasts a death.

Oh the finality.

I'm mildly impressed that the Mets have gone to the trouble of sewing those patches on their jerseys, that they showed the imagination to acknowledge Shea used to look different from how it does now. Obviously there is sentiment to milk and merchandise to sell, but they could have opted for a different route. They could have sewn on a COMING IN 2009 patch. They could have sold the space to Citi. They could have gone with some sort of hologram, so depending on the angle at which you view a player's right sleeve, it would have switched from a picture of Shea to an image of Citi to (718) 507-TIXX. I wouldn't have put it past them.

But they didn't, and for that I am grateful. When you know the date of death of a member of the family so far in advance, I suppose you're thankful for small favors. I was quite thankful that at the press conference announcing the Billy Joel “Last Play at Shea” that a couple of Met executives stood and said nice things about the old joint without reflexively putting in a plug for progress. It would have been unbecoming. I certainly wouldn't have put that past them.

In 1990, as the Chicago White Sox pounded their drums on behalf of state-of-the-artistry and reminded every White Sox fan how lucky he or she was going to be to get a new Comiskey in 1991, they conveniently remembered that the original Comiskey, from 1910, still existed and could still be make for a targeted sales pitch. Douglas Bukowski, author of the wonderfully rueful Baseball Palace of the World: The Last Year of Comiskey Park, a day-by-day diary recounting the death of the home where he spent so many happy days in the bosom of his family, noted on August 16, 1990 that the White Sox program cover of the moment featured the caption, “AS THE SUN SETS ON THE BASEBALL PALACE OF THE WORLD.”

“A sentence fragment here is bad form,” Bukowski added, “so let's finish it: 'Stadium Officials Are Getting Excited over that New Parking Lot that Will Go North of 35th Street.'”

Now let me be fair. The Mets are sinking a whole lot of money into Citi Field. It is the current regime's baby. They didn't make the call on Shea's multipurpose nature two generations ago. They didn't design its football-friendly contours. They're the ones who work there every day. They're entitled to be more excited about what they're building than what they're tearing down. Still, my insides churn a little bit every time I read quotes like this from the team's COO:

“There isn't that much of Shea we want to bring over. Shea was a dual-purpose stadium in the '60s, and it served its purpose.”

Lord, that kind of dismissiveness makes me cringe. The admittedly “not that nostalgic for Shea” Jeff Wilpon is trying to build a dream house and I support it being as dreamy as possible, but do ya have to be so blunt about it? Do ya have to write it off with one season of unmade memories to go? If this were a nominating contest, your new park is McCain and your old one is Huckabee. Your guy has won. Be gracious. Just say, “Shea'll be great in '08, Citi will be superfine come '09” and leave it at that.

To offer pesky context, Wilpon was confirming the Sheaiest of Shea totems, the Home Run Apple, will magically reappear at Citi Field, but was a little hazy on whether it would be the 1981 Apple that's been bobbing up and down gamely for nearly three decades of dingers or a more highly polished apple to be named later. Since a speck on the Citi CGI has always been devoted to what appears to be an apple (if you squint), it wasn't really news when it hit the wires as such last week. Nice to know somebody's thinking about it though.

There's been a groundswell of support to move and maintain the Apple we know and occasionally love. I think I signed the heartfelt petition at SaveTheApple.com to be neighborly about it, but I don't know if I really want the '81 Apple to remain on the active roster in new surroundings. For goodness sake, save it, display it, do something respectful with it (if it doesn't disintegrate on contact; if you've ever leaned over the right field seats to get a good glimpse at it, you know that's not fresh fruit that's been ripening out there in the sun all these years). Don't toss it into the same Dumpster-brand trash bin with our memories. Save the Apple? Absolutely. Transplant the Apple for another three decades of dingers? I'm not so sure. Citi Field deserves its own memories, its own furniture, its own knickknacks, even its own produce. (Besides, if we're going to save a piece of Shea, I say we save all of Shea.)

In the meantime, we'll get 81 more bites of our big juicy blueberry of a ballpark — more if we're lucky; add one if you got through for Billy Joel on Saturday — and each one will be worth savoring because once they're all gone, it will be all gone. The Mets won't be shy about selling us Shea even as they prepare to remove it from our grasp. They won't be the first to traffic in and profit from sentiment. And I won't be the last to buy in.

BUT THIS WILL BE FREE

Tune in tomorrow for an important FAFIF announcement regarding our own tribute to the final 81 regular-season games scheduled to be played at Shea Stadium and how YOU can be a part of it.

Upon arriving in camp, Carlos Delgado was asked by reporters to explain himself, his lousy last season and his team's horrific nosedive. In the course of offering his take on 2007 (not as if we didn't see or couldn't figure it out for ourselves), he gave a shoutout to its predecessor:

“I think 2006 was a magical year. It was an extraordinary year. We went out and played great baseball from the start to the finish.”

Perhaps the subtext of CD's remarks is you can't expect to live that kind of charmed life every year. Perhaps it is Delgado's way of gently wriggling from responsibility for the worst you-know-what in baseball history because ordinary years, by definition, occur more often than extraordinary years, and boy weren't the 2007 Mets ordinary when it counted? Perhaps it's nothing. I'm doing my best not to read into what every Met says about every little thing for the next week even though there isn't much to be gleaned from Spring Training at this point other than every little thing every Met says. Maybe Delgado was just trying to get through this little rite of arrival — the peppering of uncomfortable questions for which there are no easy answers — with a minimum of fuss so he could get over to the cage and let his bat clear its throat.

What interests me for the moment is 2006, the year that was indeed magical through roughly the middle of October. Yes, it was extraordinary. Yes, they did go out and play great baseball from the start to the finish. Yes, we had some bananas.

So where did those 2006 Mets go?

I don't mean in the competitive sense. I mean literally, where'd they all go? Like every good fan in February with nothing better to do because there is nothing better to do once the yay!ness of St. Lucie sightings has worn off, I was constructing an Opening Day roster in my head and I noticed something numerically startling.

Do you know how many Mets who played in October 2006 against the Dodgers and Cardinals are likely to be 2008 Mets six weeks from today?

Ten. No more than 40% of those who line up in Miami on March 31 will be able to say they were part of the payoff to that magical year. There are five position players: Reyes, Wright, Beltran, Chavez and Delgado. There are five pitchers: Maine, Perez, Wagner, Feliciano and Heilman. And that's it.

Mind you, the math is a little skewed when you take into account three pitchers (Pedro, El Duque and Sanchez) who were injured two Octobers ago, one catcher (Castro) who was glued to the bench, two players who played then and are in camp now but likely won't survive the spring (last-chance invitee Jose Valentin and perpetual pinch-runner Anderson Hernandez) and, for the hell of it, one current Met who was a former Met who then was playing against the Mets (brief Dodger Marlon Anderson). When you apply all the asterisks, maybe it's not as startling as it seems.

Even still. A scant sixteen months ago, we cheered our hearts out and screamed our heads off for a particular set of individuals who repeatedly made us not believe our eyes (gladly paying through the nose for the privilege when we got so lucky). For ten games in October 2006, those were our live-and-die Mets, the Mets we'd do anything for if we thought it would help them win us five more games than they did. Yet come the last day of March 2008, a majority of those Mets will be long gone long.

If I were to call the roll of those who have split, you might shrug. I wouldn't exactly be shedding a tear over their individual absences either given that several of them earned their way out of town in the ordinary year that ensued. For many, it was simply time for them to go. Yet they were most of the 2006 Mets into whom we threw ourselves with as much force as we've done anything since the turn of the century, and now they're not here anymore, they're not Mets anymore. It's not ten years later. It's not five years later. It's not even two years later. October 2006 was practically yesterday and suddenly it's tomorrow once more.

Geez, that was quick.

If you wanted an early indication that 2008 will be psychologically different (and who among us doesn't want that?), you can't get more of an early indicator than Carlos Beltran, of all people, giving the Philadelphia Phillies bulletin-board material.

After a fairly typical, mild-mannered give-and-take with reporters, one taken from the G-rated part of the hymnal Crash taught Nuke on the bus, Beltran said the following: “Let me tell you this: Without Santana, we felt as a team that we have a chance to win in our division. With him now, I have no doubt that we're going to win in our division. … So this year, to Jimmy Rollins — we are the team to beat!”

I couldn't have been more surprised if David Wright showed up smoking cigarettes and packing a switchblade, or if Pedro had hid from reporters and issued a statement through Jay Horwitz that he'd be content to be in the mix for the fifth-starter job. This is Carlos Beltran, whose most-demonstrative statement in his Met career has been not doing something — referring, of course, to the famous April 2006 evening in which Beltran, steaming over a season's shabby treatment by the fans, refused to acknowledge their sudden demand for a curtain call until Julio Franco all but carried him onto the field. (Say what you will of Franco's later failings, but Beltran and all of us owe him big-time for helping arrange a second act in Beltran's orange-and-blue life.)

The Mets themselves seemed a bit taken aback. Wright went into custodian-of-the-game mode, saying February talk was cheap before hurriedly realizing this was Beltran and recasting his words as a sign he'd step up. Willie Randolph rather charmingly offered: “Wow! I guess when you have a little baby girl you get a little confidence.” Jimmy Rollins hasn't shown up to camp yet (slacker), but across the state Charlie Manuel paid respects to Johan Santana and then grunted that players should “let Louisville do the talking.” (By which he presumably meant “other players,” since it was arguably his own MVP's spring-training boast that started to change the Phillies' perennial settle-for-second-best clubhouse culture.)

In a sign that not all the world was askew, Billy Wagner was vaguely critical, warning that with such pronouncements “you create more of a target. Now, you have to lead.” (Oh, and in another sign of more-normal life, Beltran is recovering from dual knee surgeries and probably won't play in the first few Grapefruit League games.)

Carlos Beltran is probably never going to be a leader of men — it'll be startling if we hear as much from him as we did yesterday before the All-Star Break. And Wright's correct: Talk is cheap, and February talk is cheapest of all. Moreover, it's not like the 2007 Mets had a confidence deficit — their own blithe assurance that they would win helped ensure they would not. But I was happy to hear it nonetheless.

If Jose Reyes had played Jimmy Rollins, we'd want him to shut up and focus on running balls out and not trying to steal third with two outs and Wright at the plate. If Wagner had said it, we might once again wonder if Billy will ever stop being slightly too candid when the scribes come calling. (Cliff Floyd got away with it because he was funnier.) If Carlos Delgado had said it, I at least would immediately have wondered, “Where the hell was your voice all last year?” Coming from Beltran, though, this kind of swagger seems welcome. I take it as a sign that September tormented him, the way it tormented us. The difference is that he can do something about it.