I rolled over this morning and snuggled with Baseball as I usually do. “Oh, you are the best!” I cooed. “The things you do for me.” Yet Baseball seemed a little distant.

“What's the matter honey?” I asked. “You were GREAT! You're always GREAT!”

“Uh, yeah, about that…”

“What? What about that? What about that pinch-hit you gave me? The one off Rivera that won that game 9-8. MY GOD that was great!”

“That came off the bat of a guy who would later be implicated by Kirk Radomski. Radomski said he sold him steroids the season after that pinch-hit and the guy denies it, but I thought you should know.”

“Mmm…I don't care. It was so HOT!”

“There's something else I need to get off my chest,” Baseball said to me.

“What, baby?”

“That series-winning homer against Arizona?”

“Oh that was ECSTASY! I could do that whole year over right now if I could. You wanna try?”

“That homer…it came off the bat of another guy implicated by Radomski. Again, he said the sale came later, after that home run, but he also said the guy bought something along the way from another source. I'm not sure when, but I thought you should know.”

“Baby,” I told Baseball, “you should know me better than that. I'm in this with you for the passion and the thrills and the satisfaction you give me. I know you make mistakes. I could sit up right now and make a list of them. But you give me so much! I can look past a few mistakes.”

“Well, that's good to hear,” Baseball told me. “Because there were some other 'mistakes'.”

“They don't matter to me.”

“That team record for homers probably wasn't achieved, shall we say, naturally.”

“Water under the Whitestone Bridge.”

“Some of that fire behind the plate you kind of liked these last couple of years — it may have been 'roid rage.”

“It's part of the game.”

“And you know that guy you wish had never been traded to Philadelphia? Well, he apparently started on some bad habits while you were cheering for him in New York.”

“Honey,” I said. “I'm not judgmental. I know that things have happened. Would I like it better if they hadn't? I guess. Would I sort of prefer not to know about them? Probably. But does it matter to me that they did? Not really. The swings have been swung, you know? When I think back to some of the great memories you've given me, they're not gonna be clouded by allegations or even evidence. I know how I felt when the homers were hit. I really, really got off on it. I always will. I can't stay mad at you, Baseball. And I can't get mad at any of my favorite players on my favorite team retroactively. What's done is done.”

“I'm glad you feel that way,” Baseball told me. “I thought this would be difficult.”

“For some other fans,” I reassured Baseball. “Not me. I'm easy.”

“Good. 'Cause Roger Clemens has been a big-time user, too.”

“What?”

“Imagine that. One of the greatest pitchers ever may have been getting the latter half of his career out of a bottle.”

“What?”

“That's probably at least three Cy Youngs right there.”

“What?”

“Helped him win a World Series with the Yankees.”

“WHAT?”

“In 2000. The year he threw at Piazza.”

“WHAT?!”

“Him and Pettitte. Same source for steroids, albeit later…though Pettitte was working out with Clemens and his trainer McNamee before 2000.”

“WHAT?!?!”

“Yeah, they rode down the Canyon of Heroes in 2000 with Chuck Knoblauch who was also implicated in all this.”

“WHAT?!?!?!”

“Say, wasn't Knoblauch in the middle of that interference call with Zeile that made you so angry?”

“GET OUT!” I screamed at Baseball.

“Huh?”

“GET OUT OF MY LIFE YOU BASTARD!”

“Honey, you said everything was fine. That what was done was done.”

“That was BEFORE you told me about this! Clemens and Pettitte and Knoblauch…”

“Denny Neagle too. He was mentioned. Didn't he start Game Four?”

“THEY CHEATED? AND THEY GOT TO WIN THE GODDAMN 2000 WORLD SERIES?”

“But you were OK just a minute ago when I told you about Matt Franco and Todd Pratt…”

“THE YANKEES CHEATED!”

“…and Todd Hundley and Paul Lo Duca…”

“THE WORLD SERIES! AGAINST US!”

“…and Lenny Dykstra. You knew Dykstra had been charged with DUI years ago and yet you stood and applauded for him at Old Timers Night in 2006.”

“OHMIGOD! THE YANKEES STOLE THE 2000 WORLD SERIES! THERE NEEDS TO BE AN INVESTIGATION!”

“There was an investigation. It was all over TV yesterday.”

“THERE NEED TO BE SUSPENSIONS! IMPRISONMENTS! EXECUTIONS!”

I was seething at Baseball. Baseball tried to calm me down.

“Honey, you seem to be…”

“WHAT? WHAT? WHAT DO I SEEM TO BE?”

“Well, you're rationalizing.”

“I'M WHAT?”

“Well, you're taking the information about the players and the team you like and processing it one way and taking the information about the players and the team you don't like and processing it another way.”

“WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?”

“I didn't call you anything, but you are acting a little irrational toward me.”

“YA THINK?”

I gave Baseball a piece of my mind after that.

“Of course I'm irrational when it comes to you. How could anyone be very rational for very long when it comes to dealing with Baseball? Does anything I do with you make any sense? Does it make any sense the way the 2007 season ended?”

“Um, this has nothing to do with that.”

“SHUT UP! I'M TALKING!”

“All right…”

“IT'S ALL PART OF THE GODDAMNED BEAUTIFUL AND PERPLEXING TAPESTRY! Don't you understand that? Don't you understand the little deals we make with ourselves? Don't you know how hard I fucking rooted for players I absolutely hated because they were on my team? Don't you know how I couldn't stand the way my team was acting all this year and yet I kept trying to force myself to BELIEVE in them? Don't you think that if there were a pill or a shot I could have given all of them in September that would have made them NOT COLLAPSE that I wouldn't have shown up in their clubhouse quicker than you could say 'Kirk Radomski' and administered it? DO YOU THINK I CARE HOW THEY WIN?”

“I guess you don't.”

“No. I don't. Not really. Maybe after the fact. Maybe for a little while. You think I didn't cringe for a second or two when I saw Todd Pratt's name in that report? You think I didn't immediately scroll down to see it happened in 2000, not in '99? And that I didn't breathe a sigh of relief? You don't think I did the same thing for Matt Franco? That I was thrilled that whatever he bought or took came after he got that hit off Rivera? You think I want to think any of my best memories are tainted?”

“No?”

“DAMN RIGHT NO! And if I have to twist the chronology of everything that ever happened to make it so Pratt's homer to win the NLDS and Franco's pinch-hit to win that Subway Series game were untainted, then let me tell you, Baseball, I will make it so.”

“I see.”

“And if I have to — and I hate this cliché, but in this case it's appropriate because I would literally do it — throw ROGER FUCKING CLEMENS and his cheating, hypocritical, headhunting, bat-throwing, excuse-making, revolting ASS under the BUS to make myself feel better, then after all the time I've put into this game and after all the money I've spent on this game and after all the fucking tears I've shed over this game and all the vocal cords I've damaged yelling at this fucking game, then, Baseball, I am going to do whatever it takes to keep me sane in an absolutely insane fucking endeavor. Believe me, it won't be the first time either.”

Baseball grabbed me and held me tight.

“You're not mad at me?” I asked.

“Mad? Hell, that's exactly how I hoped you'd react,” Baseball told me. “Actually, it's how I figured you'd react. You're a Baseball fan. You're beautiful, but you're not that perplexing.”

“Oh Baseball. You always know just how to get to me.”

“Enough of this. Let's say you and I jump back into bed together. You can tell me again where you were when Pratt hit that home run.”

“Well, I was in the mezzanine, and at first I thought there was no way it was going out…”

A year after we sold out of the first batch, we've finally got our act together and are proud to make available a second batch of the famous Faith and Fear “numbers” t-shirts, seen over the last 12 months in photos of readers taken from Verona, N.J., to Venice.

Only difference between these new shirts and the original batch is the Web address on the back no longer has the “www' on it. Because we heard people don't do that in the 21st century. Also, we've gotten out of the order-fulfillment business — we've turned that over to a company called PrintMojo. (Along with making the shirts, which we figured we'd also be bad at.)

The newest batch is a bit small, because we wanted to make sure everything went OK with the new vendor. If they sell out, this time we can get new ones made by sending an email, instead of spending a year dithering and moaning. And that's what we'll do. So what are you waiting for? Click here to get yours today. (And if anything goes awry, email us and we'll put things right.) The shirts are about as cheap as we could make 'em, though the price might also have a certain numerical significance to Met fans.

(Big ol' photo here for the uninitiated. Beware ugly model.)

I've written in depth about performance-enhancing drugs twice on this blog.

The first time was when the San Francisco Chronicle established, to the satisfaction of all but the most-determined fantasists, that Barry Bonds had taken steroids (and insulin and HGH and Clomid and, for good measure, crap that makes cattle more muscular). I called Bonds's story a tragedy, and I stand by that. Not because Bonds is anything other than a surly jerk, but because the best player of his generation (which he was long before the Cream and the Clear) destroyed a legendary baseball career out of jealousy over the attention paid by dimwitted fans to Mark McGwire, a one-dimensional player and thoroughly dull human being who would have been justifiably forgotten by now. The tragedy of Bonds isn't whatever he's done to the game (it'll survive just fine) or to Hank Aaron (even more appreciated now that his record is besmirched). It's that a player of such enormous talents was so insecure or oblivious that he asterisked his entire life because of a player who could only dream of being him. By trying to make people forget McGwire, Bonds ensured they'll forever be part of the same conversation. It infuriated me last March; it infuriates me now.

The second time was a couple of months later, after it came to light that Jason Grimsley — whose tenure in 10 different organizations made him the Patient Zero of the performance-enhacing age — had been visited by the feds after they saw him accept a shipment of HGH. Grimsley talked with the feds for hours, about steroids and HGH and amphetamines and the game's drug culture and what players knew tests couldn't find. And he named names. That, I predicted, was going to lead to an avalanche of disclosure — and Grimsley's use of performance-enhancing drugs was a wake-up call that we needed to rethink our suspicions. Grimsley wasn't a big slugger or a flamethrower, but the kind of commodity middle reliever teams run through by the bushelful in search of a couple of tolerable weeks. If a guy like that was a user, the question we had to start asking wasn't “Who used?” but “Who didn't use?”

There have been some more revelations since then, but tomorrow comes the avalanche: the report by George Mitchell, based in part on discussions with Kirk Radomski, who was employed by the Mets as a clubhouse guy from 1985 through 1995, and who's pleaded guilty to distributing performance-enhancing drugs to dozens of big-league players for 10 years after that. The Mitchell Report is due at 2 p.m. tomorrow; according to one report, those who have seen it claim it includes as many as 80 names, including winners of the Cy Young and MVP award.

To be provincial for a moment, Radomski's Met connections all but assure us that there'll be a fair number of names with which we're very familiar. But that's nothing new: The roster of busted/fessed-up Mets so far includes Grant Roberts, Jorge Toca, Wilson Delgado (twice), Felix Heredia, Jon Nunnally, Matt Lawton, Guillermo Mota, David Segui, Lino Urdaneta and Mike Cameron, with Gary Matthews Jr., Scott Schoeneweis and Paul Byrd having fallen under suspicion. (And that doesn't include the minor-leaguers.) I'll admit that I've gone through 1995-2005 Mets in my head in recent days, from players I'd bet a huge amount of money were dirty to players I still hope were clean. The problem is that given the names we know so far, there is no steroid profile more specific than “baseball player.” Anybody who fits that definition, alas, is under suspicion.

For me, the one thing that's changed since writing about Bonds and Grimsley is I think I've developed a much thicker skin about the whole thing. The avalanche of disclosure is finally here, and though I could be wrong, I don't think I'll be particularly moved, even if some names dear to my heart are on it.

One reason for that? In his superb The Soul of Baseball, Joe Posnanski recounts how person after person would share their outrage about steroids with Buck O'Neil, expecting and almost demanding that O'Neil be outraged about performance-enhancing drugs too, and say that yes, of course he'd played in a purer, better age. But O'Neil would gently but firmly refuse. Every player he'd known, he'd say, had looked for an edge.

Baseball and the men who play it are far more ruthless than we think, lulled as we are by green grass and the arc of curveballs and all the other beautiful things about baseball. That beauty is baseball's bottomless well of strength and seduction. In the stands or in front of the TV, we can't see that a lot of the players are boorish and/or stupid, even though we know that's true. We can't see that few of them are crushed by a loss or the idea of one the way we are, though sometimes they're dumb enough to let that slip. We can't see that some of them will make more money in a mediocre year than we'll make in our entire working lives, though we know that's true. And we can't see that some of them (or a lot of them or nearly all of them) are shooting their bodies full of God-knows-what in search of the edge Buck O'Neil warned us about. We know all that's there, but on the field it's nearly always invisible, and the beauty of the game is so staggering that we forget about it.

I think Barry Bonds' story is a tragedy, but it's an entirely self-inflicted one, and I don't feel the least bit sorry for him. In fact, I don't feel sorry for any big-league baseball player. Why would I? It should go without saying that I don't feel sorry for the owners, GMs, managers, trainers, agents, commissioner and union jefes who looked the other way for years. And I don't feel sorry for the fans — even if we don't want to hear what Buck O'Neil kept saying, the blinding beauty of the game will get us through this, like it has everything else baseball does to itself.

But there is one group of people I do feel for. They're the only ones who truly have been cheated. And they're the only ones who won't be holding a press conference, or starting a Web site, or holding up some misspelled banner in April.

They're the guys in Rookie Ball or Single-A or Double-A who one day realized their abilities were marginal, or they were a little too small to overcome baseball's Pleistocene prejudices, or got hurt, or just had a run of bad luck, and faced a choice — the exact same choice many of their teammates faced. Only these guys, when faced with that choice, didn't do steroids or HGH or God knows what else. Because they were scared of what it might do to their bodies. Or their heads. Or maybe — and cynical as I become, there have to be guys like this — because they just wanted to play the game the way they thought was right.

What's the difference in ability between, say, Lino Urdaneta and somebody who washed out of pro ball after a year of short-season A and another in the Sally League? It might not be very much. Except Lino Urdaneta, eminently replaceable though he is, is in the Baseball Encyclopedia and has bubble-gum cards that maniacs put in The Holy Books and has bloggers cheer him for the rather underwhelming accomplishment of reducing his ERA below infinity, while that other guy is utterly anonymous. The minimum big-league salary for 2008 is $390,000. What do you think two years in the bus leagues does for your job prospects?

The difference between the Lino Urdanetas of this world and those forgotten teammates? In some cases, it's that the forgotten teammate didn't stick a needle in his ass. And because of that, he's thinking maybe if he works hard he might make $39,000 someday, instead of having a shot at making 10 times that — and if he got lucky, maybe much more. And because he didn't stick a needle in his ass, you and I have never heard of him and we never will.

If you want to find the tragedy in all this, there it is.

* * *

There's really no way to segue out of that, so I won't even try. Please excuse a musical PSA….

The best live band I've ever seen, the Figgs, are playing three dates in New York City this weekend. The three-borough tour begins with an opening slot at Cake Shop on the LES Friday night, continues at Staten Island's Cargo Cafe (very short walk from ferry terminal) on Saturday night and finishes at Magnetic Field on the edge of Brooklyn Heights Sunday. Now that the Replacements have gone to the musical great beyond, the Figgs are my favorite band, and I'm hugely excited about this weekend. The Sunday show in particular should be great fun: The Figgs are playing at the very-unrock-star time of 8 p.m. and are the night's lone band, so they should play for a good long time and still get you tucked into your warm bed in plenty of time to show up at work relatively unhungover and able to hear. Details on their MySpace page.

What do the Figgs sound like? I'd describe them as harder-edged power pop (rest assured they rock), but you can hear some songs by going to that MySpace page or entering their name in YouTube. Or go to Baby, You Got a Stew Goin'!, which has a stream of my favorite song in the world, “Jumping Again.” (Which, in a better world, would have anchored a post preparing for the 2007 playoffs.)

They've played together since they were high-school kids, so as a band they've gone beyond tight to borderline telepathic. And they're about the most-approachable band you'll ever find: At most concerts your chief worry is whether or not you can see; at a Figgs show it's not bumping into Mike Gent and Pete Donnelly when they decide it'd be more fun to play this next song from the middle of the audience. I'll wear my the Faith and Fear numbers shirt Sunday night; come to Atlantic Avenue and if for some strange reason you don't have fun, I'll buy you a beer. Hell, I'll buy you a beer anyway.

For everybody who complains that SNY never shows the obvious Mets Classics (and that would include everybody), tune in tonight at 7 for a replay of the Ten-Run Inning game of June 30, 2000, the signature contest of our last pennant season. Forget that the Snighsite refers to it as the “10 inning comeback” and that the digital readout on Cablevision says it took place on June 20 seven years ago. There's no mistaking which game this was.

What was it like to sit out in right field for it? Click here.

Where does the mightiest blow of the evening rank in the Piazza pantheon? Click here.

And just how iconic is that swing? Click here.

Mets down 8-1 to Atlanta going to the bottom of the eighth…what happens next?

Enjoy!

Santana — we haven't got!

Dan Haren — we haven't got!

The D-Train — we haven't got!

What've we got?

Good question. If we eliminate heart — and based on the events of September 14-30, you'd kind of have to until further notice — we've got OK starting pitching, maybe even more than adequate starting pitching. We've got Pedro, more formidable and less of a question mark than we could have envisioned during his layoff; John Maine and Oliver Perez, who entered 2007 as maybes and go to 2008 as definitelys if not perfects; El Mysterioso Duque, who will likely have a fine two-thirds of a season; the Pelfrey-Humber Experience…or inexperience, if you will. One of them is bound to be pretty good if draft position and scouting reports ever mean or meant anything.

There's Mulvey down there somewhere until we are told that, oh no, he isn't actually much of a pitcher. There's Heilman, who could probably give it a go if asked — and by give it a go, I'm thinking run over his grandmother and grab the ball if told he gets to throw it in the first inning. There's some Japanese expatriate the organization is high on, isn't there? Or am I thinking of Yusaku Iriki, the guy who was suspended (and deported for all I know)? And yes, there's Livan Hernandez, destined to be a Met starter eventually, given his wear, his tear and his stubborn mediocrity, though the dude can hit.

Could be worse. Could be better. What else is new?

As of now, we don't have whoever it is we were supposed to be spending our Citi bonus on. Fearless forecaster that I am, I'll go out on a limb and predict either we will or we will not have that guy by Opening Day. We'll trade for one of those aces or acelike pitchers or get by with what we've got and the likes of Livan. Give me maybe three extra outs per start from Maine and Perez, something resembling staying power from Pelfrey/Humber and enough innings from one Hernandez to make up for the presumed partial absence of the other, plus a full season of Pedro, and I'm not going to sweat the rotation in advance of it actually decomposing.

Call me a wildly wide-eyed optimist, but I don't think our starting pitching is so horrendous that it requires the undignified lengths to which we've collectively been willing to throw prospects and stars at the feet of those who hold the contracts of other pitchers. The process reeks of desperation, as if the Mets are post-divorce Kirk Van Houten trying to score a phone number.

Let's trade Carlos Gomez.

Let's trade Carlos Gomez and Fernando Martinez.

Let's trade Gomez and Martinez and Pelfrey.

Let's trade Gomez and Martinez and Pelfrey and Humber.

Let's trade Gomez and Martinez and Pelfrey and Humber and Mulvey.

And we'll throw in Aaron Heilman!

And Carlos Beltran!

And Jose Reyes!

I've never been all that protective of prospects. Shoot, I didn't think Kazmir for Zambrano was the end of the world at the time. I had seen way too many Mets prospects not pan out for about thirty years to automatically throw myself on that kind of trade proposal like it was a live grenade. But the rush this winter to hypothetically include in trade talks everybody we've ever heard of…well, forget for a moment that almost every package that has been pitched for pitchers like Santana, Haren and Bedard has been returned to sender. It's the general willingness to just give up so quickly on anybody who might grow into the job, who might rise to the occasion, who might mature as a Met and not cost a zillion dollars and half the farm system that's added yet another dispiriting overtone to this offseason.

Whatever happened to patience? To reserving judgment? To that word at the top of the page, faith? I don't think it's Pollyannaish to hope the Mets will try to improve from without while not automatically throwing in the towel on what they've got within. They've already done it once this winter by sending Lastings Milledge down I-95. Do they have to do it again and again? Do we have to be nothing more than an agglomeration of wealthy rented strangers?

And that's just the prospects. What has also poisoned the atmosphere by my reckoning is the willingness, stated by many, to trade away just about anybody who isn't David Wright (and just wait a couple of weeks). Heilman? OK, not untouchable, but you better have a dependable replacement in mind for his innings. Beltran? I can't believe how often I've heard his name floated. Does anyone remember that one of the 119 million reasons he left Houston was the Astros' refusal to give him a full no-trade? And that the Mets gave him just that? Why exactly would Beltran waive it, other than to not hear himself come up in absurd rumors?

As for Reyes as a possible chip, even for Santana…that Jose would even be mentioned shows mental illness runs rampant in our streets. What is it about the Mets that inspires those who are theoretically looking out for their best interests to suggest trading their starting shortstop, leadoff hitter and, unless you've got Hanley Ramirez in your back pocket, immediately irreplaceable cog? Did you notice that when the Twins were entertaining offers from top American League teams that those clubs' fans (as far as I heard) weren't offering up their marquee starting position players?

Why the hell should we? What is wrong with us? What's in the water that makes anybody think it's a good idea to give up 24-year-old extraordinarily recent franchise pillar Jose Reyes, lousy September notwithstanding, for a pitcher who will pitch once every five days? Why do Mets fans (some; not all; enough) race to the edge of the cliff without being pushed?

Then there was the alleged Dontrelle & Pudge deal that was allegedly kiboshed because the Tigers insisted Rodriguez would have to go with Willis, and Rodriguez would, in turn, insist on an extension on his already lucrative contract. I heard Joe Benigno rail at the Mets for not grabbing at this alleged straw. Granted, Benigno's a weather vane with three hours to fill, but I've found his “JUST DO IT!” philosophy fairly common among Mets fans of late. Thus, let's say the Mets gave up whatever it was that would get them Willis and Rodriguez, thereby acceding to the catcher's demands for more years and presumably way more money. The Mets would be into Pudge for more than $30 million into the 2010s, I'm guessing. He's been a wonderful player, but he's 36 and he's a catcher. Even if he's an exceptional catcher, he'd be an albatross waiting to happen. Think that would go over big ten minutes after his inevitable decline kicked in?

I admit I'm wading onto hypothetical shores here, complaining about a trade that didn't and probably isn't going to happen, but I believe this kind of talk is just one more indicator over how screwed up our thinking has become. We're not worthy! We're not worthy! Take everybody we have and give us whoever you deem necessary! There's one Johan Santana. He merits intense consideration in terms of barter. Everybody else…be very, very careful, because whatever the benefits of getting a Dan Haren (whom I have to admit I confuse with Rich Harden) or Erik Bedard or Dontrelle Willis, somebody's gotta play short this year and left and right next year and pitch on all the other days every year. I think this radical brand of strategizing is called building and maintaining a ballclub.

OK, quick quiz: If I told you that the Mets had just swung a deal in Nashville (they haven't), and included a link where you could find out the details, what would be your emotions as you clicked through?

If you chose “anxiety,” “despair,” “dread” or a similar word as your answer, welcome to the 2007 offseason.

I mean, honestly. Somehow the Collapse of Sept. 30 has only grown since that terrible day, slowly becoming an avalanche wiping out everything in its path. I thought the excision of Tom Glavine, whom any sane person knew could never wear blue and orange again, might cure it. It didn't. I thought the simple passage of time might do it. It didn't. And this offseason of discontent certainly hasn't done it.

I don't know if Lastings Milledge will be the next Manny Ramirez, Rondell White or Alex Escobar. None of us do. But I do know nonsense when I hear it, such as when Omar Minaya stammers that he's improved the pitching staff by adding an old catcher who can't hit and a platoon corner outfielder. Omar referenced the Kris Benson trade in counseling patience, and in doing so accidentally touched on the probable reason for Lastings' exile: off-field issues. But there's a big difference between the Benson deal and the Milledge deal. We all knew Kris Benson's probable future, because we'd seen all too much of his present: At the time (in what may be, for other reasons, the most-trafficked post in Faith and Fear history), I compared him to “a bath that took 20 minutes to fill at the end of an exhausting day and was lukewarm the second you got into it — not so cold that you pulled the plug, but not warm enough to keep you from repeatedly dunking your knees until you realized you were enduring what you thought you'd be enjoying.” Benson was an overpaid, brittle, eminently replaceable journeyman — his mouthy wife may have been the reason he got run out of town, but his essential uselessness was the reason I didn't care about seeing him go.

Did Milledge have his own off-field issues? Sure, from “Bend Ya Knees” to getting suspended to stupidly waking up the moribund Marlins. When it comes to baseball mores there's a thin line between exuberance and obnoxiousness, and you could usually find that line by locating Lastings and then moving a couple of steps back. Granted. But he was also 22. He had demonstrated enticing ability on a big-league ballfield, he was cheap, and his future was yet to be written. How that kind of player yields a no-stick catcher and a corner guy who needs to stop listening to Bible thumpers is absolutely beyond me. If Omar turns around tomorrow and trades Estrada and Church as part of a package for Erik Bedard, I'll quiet down fast. But do any of us really believe that's coming? Or does the Milledge deal smack of the bad old days, of a hypersensitive ownership that would rather have a mediocre team of controversy-free nobodies than the occasional back-page blowback of a team with an actual personality? This feels like the dismantling of the late-80s teams, like the dead-ass early 00s squads where everybody was whispering in ownership's ear. Milledge is gone, Lo Duca is gone, and I have trouble believing that what we're witnessing are purely baseball decisions.

What's next? What will Omar return from Nashville with? And what will he pay to get it? Will Carlos Gomez and Mike Pelfrey and Philip Humber — all far too young to write off in my book — vanish from our ledger? With Santana, Bedard, Haren and the others seemingly out of our reach, what retread with a dull present will their futures be sold for? (Think that's pessimistic? If I'd told you Milledge had been traded to the Nats for two players, would Ryan Church have been in the top five players you picked? And would you have ever guessed Brian Schneider?)

At least there's the free-agent market. Come on down, Livan Hernandez! Plop your indeterminedly-aged body between whatever's left of Moises Alou and Luis Castillo, the oldest 32-year-old in baseball. Luis is here for the next four years — at which point he'll be playing second base with a walker. Seeing how you're supposedly under 50, Livan, I'm sure we've got at least two years for you too. (Seriously: When we sign Livan Hernandez, just kick me in the head so I'll be in the proper frame of mind to react.)

I'm a Met fan. I've been through plenty of lousy seasons. I've seen a couple of Septembers turn to ash in the final days. But I've never seen an offseason where I found myself bracing for a punch in the gut every time I saw my team's name on the Web. The solution to this, as with so many of life's problems, is for baseball to hurry up and return, even if it's only the sublime pointlessness of spring training. But we just got the first snowfall. It's not even Christmas. And I find myself scared to think what will come by the time we get to Valentine's Day.

Many Mets fans have fervently hoped for years that Gil Hodges would gain induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Now it turns out that by being denied access, the honor is all his.

After yesterday's newly rejiggered Veterans Committee subcommittee election results were announced, we learned a plaque will hang in Cooperstown for Walter O'Malley. This is who the Hall of Fame sees fit to deify: not someone who brought joy and grace and runs batted in by the boatload to the loyal borough of Brooklyn, but someone who packed up the plantation and shipped it to Los Angeles.

Walter O'Malley is a Hall of Famer like the Ayatollah was Time's Man of the Year. His impact was undeniable, but that's Nook of Notoriety stuff, not the hallowed Hall we spend so many hours idealizing and so many more hours figuring out how to get to without hitting a deer or anything. You don't schlep through dark roads and miles of highway anxiety to stare at a plaque devoted to a man who destroyed so much collective and individual happiness. If he bested Brooklynites with a big bat like Musial's or a live arm like Spahn's, OK, that's fair, that's baseball. But he did it with an airplane and a fleet of moving vans.

That's just wrong.

Pete Hamill is the spokesman for the half-century of heartbreak, anguish and disgust that defines the post-1957 Brooklyn Dodgers fan, and in today's Daily News he nails most magnificently the injustice of Walter O'Malley's enshrinement in Cooperstown:

For some of those people who roared and cheered, the hurt would last a lifetime. Many felt like naïve fools. Baseball wasn't a secular religion after all. It was a business, as cold as any business. That disillusion was permanent.

If O'Malley made money on the West Coast, then he got his reward. He got richer. If baseball grew more lucrative because it forged a footprint on the Pacific Coast, then O'Malley's peers and business descendants have already collected their honor. They got richer. That's worthy of praise on some level, some ledger somewhere. Just not in the Baseball Hall of Fame, an institution I once wished would accept Gil Hodges but I now understand is no longer worthy of association with a truly great icon of baseball.

The Veterans Committee subcommittee on executives also elected Bowie Kuhn yesterday, proving there is hope for errand boys everywhere.