The recent passings of Jim Beauchamp and Don Cardwell demonstrate the power of association by distillation. They both had long and distinguished careers in the Majors but it is the instinct of the fan to boil it all down remember them for the one or two things they did on your team.

Beauchamp? He good-naturedly gave up No. 24 in May 1972 when the Mets acquired a centerfielder who may have been more readily identified with it. Pretty good righthanded pinch-hitter, too.

Cardwell? He drove in the only run of a 1-0 shutout in the second game of a doubleheader after Jerry Koosman performed the same unlikely hitting feat in the first game. Also, I hear he wasn't crazy about love beads.

Granted, Don Cardwell was about five minutes before my time and I wasn't terribly conscious of Jim Beauchamp until he was traded here with a flock of Cardinal bit players in exchange for Art Shamsky, whose 24 he donned for about a month before switching to 5 in deference to Willie Mays. I know Cardwell pitched a no-hitter as a Cub and, in the aftermath of his passing, have learned more about several of his 1969 contributions beyond that RBI single and those eight shutout innings in Pittsburgh. I recall Beauchamp as a Braves coach when they got good again in '91 and persevering there before he retired and they became intolerable at the end of the '90s.

But Cardwell drove in the only run of a shutout in the doubleheader in which Koosman did the same. And Beauchamp gave up his number for Mays. That's what I remember. That's what came to mind in the instant after I learned of their respective deaths, just as it was what came up every time their names were mentioned since they stopped playing. It may not make for a complete or representative portrayal, but it is what has stuck with me. It's probably what's stuck with most Mets fans.

What do you suppose we'll remember about Endy Chavez when his name comes up after he's not playing anymore?

That drag bunt single to win a game against Colorado, the homer off Pettitte, a big hit against the Pirates on the July 4 before last…plenty of good, strong contributions. If you want to recall him generically as architect of perhaps the most significant fourth-outfielder season in Mets history — 133 games as a stellar fill-in in 2006 — go right ahead. If he makes you yearn for low-fat dairy, raise three glasses of skim milk to him.

All that acknowledged, who're we kidding? You think Endy, you think catch. What else is there to think about? We'll remember the catch. We'll remember other stuff, too — he is surely no one-catch pony — but we're tethered to the catch. The next generation will know of the catch and the generation after that one, too.

The Mets have secured Mr. Chavez's services for another two seasons, agreeing on a two-year $3.85 million contract. This comes a couple of weeks after he aggravated a hamstring in winter ball. That wasn't the one he strained and missed a load of time over in regular ball last June. He played the last month or so of 2007, but it wasn't quite the same Endy from 2006. And now he's recovering from injury again.

If this were Player X, I'd be a mite reflexively grumbly that management just overcommitted, as it is prone to do, to someone 30, brittle, part-time and theoretically replaceable. But he's not Player X. He's Endy Chavez.

Endy Chavez made that catch. How much do you suppose that would be worth in arbitration if any one of us were the arbitrator? How much would have you given in the course of the evening of October 19, 2006 to have had Scott Rolen's surefire two-run homer retrieved and converted into a double play? For how long would you feel privileged to compensate Endy Chavez in appreciation of his dash, his leap, his grab and his throw?

Two years? Make it two eternities. One for now, one for later. It was that good.

Technically, the catch took place 15 months ago. Seems more like 15 years, doesn't it? A little? Doesn't that moment when the world froze for a handful of unyielding seconds seem from another era already? Endy was in left. Who were in center and right — Tommie Agee and Ron Swoboda? Is it possible that that same Endy Chavez who made in 2006, with all due respect to glorious Met outfielders past, the greatest postseason catch ever played on the 2007 Mets of badly constructed legend? What would a Mets team with Endy Chavez be doing coughing up a large divisional lead? No, impossible. Endy is associated with only goodness; he drinks his milk, he eats his yogurt and everyone wins!

Of the theories that have abounded and will always be bandied about where The Greatest Collapse In Baseball History is concerned, you don't hear much about the extended absence of Endy Chavez, how 133 games in 2006 were reduced by almost half in '07, how Chavez came to the rescue in Cliff Floyd's absence one year but was unavailable to do the same for much of Moises Alou's predictable recovery period, how a team rises to the occasion when it has an Endy Chavez and how it falls flat when nobody plays that role for months at a time.

To be fair, the Mets were muddling along in first place when Endy went down on June 6 (against the Phillies, appropriately enough) and were still masquerading as front-runners on August 28 (once more versus Philly) when he returned. A check of Baseball-Reference's gamelogs reveals he had slumped from .337 to .292 in the week-plus before his left hamstring gave out…reflecting eerily the southbound turn the Mets as a whole had begun to take. When he came back, he wasn't quite the same Endy, not the one from 2006. That's perfectly understandable as it's tough to miss 73 games and reconjure your magic all at once.

He also wasn't used that much down the stretch. With Alou healthy and hot, Chavez wasn't going to left. Among lefty Green and righties Gomez and Milledge, he got lost in the other corner shuffle. He started all of three times in September, all in right, not once after September 18 (when he went 3-for-3 and drove in two runs). I sat at one of the final games of the year, the Friday night loss to the Marlins, and wondered, amid the parade of pinch-hitters Willie Randolph was dispatching to the plate and welcoming back to the bench hit-free, where in the world was Endy Chavez?

Venezuela, I learned. His sister died. He went home for the funeral and would miss the final series.

2007 was almost never the same as 2006. There were dozens of factors that went right previously that simply underwhelmed later. In one year, a journeyman utility outfielder first steps up and then jumps up and makes a breathtaking catch for the ages and an incalculable difference to our fortunes. In the next year, he's the same man, yet he can only do so much. He can't do anything when he's hurting. He can be a bobblehead promotion and he can be the one universally beloved component of the “Sweet Caroline” video, but he can't play if he can't play or they won't play him. Subtract such a glaring disparity between '07 and '06 and you wind up deleting the extra from extraordinary.

None of which makes me think of anything but that catch when I think of Endy Chavez. Whatever he does in 2008 and whatever he does for however long he plays for the Mets, he makes that catch. That thought sticks with me.

Last week when I was very sick, my friend Joe Dubin, a charter member of the New Breed, cheered me up as he is wont to do by sending me a copy of an old Mets radio broadcast of a game I recently wrote about but missed the first time around. I returned the favor by transmitting my cold to him via e-mail. To make it up to him, I'd like to share with you something he shared with me last year, a lovely stream of recollections regarding the new ballpark in Queens…the first time such an edifice was constructed.

Feel better, Joe D. — and thanks for your memories.

Drove by Shea yesterday and was able to get a quick glimpse of Citi Field's construction site while heading to and from the Grand Central Parkway. There it was, the old making way for the new. It made me think of the first time I saw Shea 43 years ago.

Remember your reaction the first time you saw it? I'm not thinking as much when entering the park but rather that experience when first approaching it close up, either from the expressway or pulling into the Willets Point station.

My experience might be a little bit different than yours since I first saw Shea when it was the newest ballpark in America and light years away from the old Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium and anything east of Dodger Stadium (except maybe D.C. Stadium).

Games started at 8:05 P.M. so it must have been around 7:15 P.M. when I got my first glimpse sitting in the car as Dad drove onto the Whitestone Expressway. It was overcast and the sky was dark, allowing the stadium lighting to be seen in its full brilliance. The upper deck lights were much brighter when looking straight at them than they are today. Most of the exterior was open (unlike now, when it's partially covered by blue painted masonry with bulbs arranged to look like ballplayers), so the entire perimeter was a silhouette of neon lights coming from both the outside and the ramps and pedestrian walkways peaking through from within.

I'm glad my first trek to Shea was at night because the effect would not have been as dramatic or beautiful without that gorgeous lighting. My first two words were “holy s–t”. I couldn't believe the ultra-modern stadium I was seeing! It was like being in Disney's Tomorrowland.

We parked, purchased our general admission tickets, took the escalators to the upper deck and sat behind third. All I had ever seen on TV was a Shea drenched in shades of black and white. This park had tiers of yellow, orange, blue and green seats with a rainbow of lights protruding onto the white shell covering the scoreboard. We saw color slides of each player from the square screen on the top.

About the game? Well, it was a Wednesday evening in late July against the L.A. Dodgers, the middle of a three-day on-field celebration of Casey Stengel's 74th birthday. The Mets scored three in the bottom of the first off Joe Moeller but the flood gates opened in the top of the second and my first experience was a washout!

Dad was unprepared for inclement weather and purchased from the concession stands a clear, gray-tinted plastic poncho (with no Met logo or hood) stored in a small travel case to protect him from the rain. Harry M. Stevens came well prepared back then; at that time there was no such thing as a Met Shop behind home plate selling all types of apparel.

Probably because the event was so impressionable I remember so many of the details, including the game being stopped by rain in the top of the second. Or, maybe it's because the Mets scored three runs in the bottom of the first and actually were ahead of the Dodgers 3-0 when the rains came (how often did the Mets lead L.A. by that margin back then?).

Well, the game was a washout but not the memory of my first visit to Shea. That's how I'll always remember Shea — no DiamondVision, no Budweiser advertisement filling two-thirds of the old scoreboard, Jane Jarvis, the green outfield wall.

When it opens, Citi Field will be gorgeous to see but somehow I doubt I will experience anything like the awe I had when I first saw Shea, for I'm obviously much older. I will see the construction as it progresses and despite all the new conveniences, the park itself won't be as unique compared to its contemporaries as Shea was in 1964.

I'm sorry you were too young to have experienced Shea when it first opened and the exciting, unbelievable first glance as seen through the eyes of a 13-year-old at a time when most ballparks were ancient and the world was not surrounded by the Internet, cable, computer video and other forms of communication that today take away the thrills experienced by the 13-year-old in each of us.

John Strubel of MetsNet, a terrific and comprehensive site devoted to all things orange and blue, was kind enough to invite me on MetsNet Radio Saturday for a little chat regarding various aspects of Mets nostalgia and a touch of potential trade talk. The most interesting thing about the session to me is that I don't sound nearly as bad after a week of marathon sneezing, coughing and noseblowing as I thought I would. Pull me out of a sickbed in the middle of winter to discuss the 1973 yearbook cover, and I apparently get well in a hurry.

You can listen to the show here. I come on at about the 42:00 mark and go for about 15 minutes (good guests precede me as well).