Instead of being honked off that Michael Imperioli makes for one dismal Met and that Sports Illustrated reports a project centered on “the beer-swilling, cocaine-snorting 1986 Mets” is being passed on en masse in Hollywood (and honestly, would you trust anyone to make that picture?), I'm here to let you know that there's a wonderful Met movie available right now, and you don't have to sit in a sticky theater to watch it.

Order yourself a DVD copy of Mathematically Alive: A Story Of Fandom. It's all about you. It's all about Mets fans.

Documentarians Kathy Foronjy and Joseph Coburn put out a casting call of sorts a couple of years ago, asking on boards and blogs and such for Mets fans who would like to tell their stories. Among those who responded were colorful characters. Thus, colorful characters carry the story forward. If you're like me, you're not a colorful character, certainly not on first impression. In fact, if you're like me, you kind of step aside when you're in the vicinity of a colorful character.

Funny thing, though. Mathematically Alive probes beneath the face paint. While not strictly a profile of superfans, one of the many strengths of this movie is deconstructing them. When you see one of them in a feature on the TV news, usually before or after a big game outside Shea, there is screaming. The superfan screams. People around the superfan scream. This is what big fans of sports teams do if you absorb them in three-second bites: they scream and make asses of themselves.

Not here, however. You can only scream for so long before you begin to simmer down and talk. And beneath the face paint and the wacky outfits and unburdened by the signs and placards, the colorful characters turn out to be fans like the rest of us. We can all relate to eternally loving our team even if we must be wondering why we continue to at this particular juncture of 2007. Our team squeezes us for every spare buck, removes more than 10,000 seats from our future in the name of economic efficiency disguised as modern intimacy, pokes us erratically as we enter the arena, blasts our eardrums with nonsense and, for good measure, trades Lastings Milledge for Ryan Church and Brian Schneider.

Still we show. Some of us show with our faces painted, our quirks on boisterous display, our personal-validation rituals in full force. Some of us need to show the team and the world and each other that we love the Mets more than anybody. Some of us don't need to show it in quite the same manner. We all speak the same language.

Mathematically Alive captures the heart of the Mets fan — our heart — gorgeously. It's sympathetic, not judgmental. It treats particularly extroverted Mets fans akin to how Wordplay treated competitive crossword solvers: good people, special bond, intense endeavor, happy to be among each other. Everybody who is spotlighted, even the ones from whom I might look to move to another seat in the early innings of any given game, won me over. You wear your masks and decorate your cars and cloak your houses and show up first in February for tickets and fire up the tailgating on Opening Day and lure Mr. Met to Rockville Centre to march in a St. Patrick's Day parade and painstakingly position yourself to wave to Mike Piazza all so Mike Piazza will wave back to you for the umpteenth time. I don't do any of that, yet I might as well. We all cheer. We all care. We all love the Mets. I feel you, you colorful characters. We are in this together.

Foronjy and Coburn follow their subjects (some more outwardly calm than others) from the beginning of '05 to the end of '06, right through Game Seven. Of course the afterloss is painful, but there was something that really nailed it for me right before that final contest of the NLCS. One of the movie's recurring colorful characters, identifying himself as a “man of leisure,” is interviewed outside Shea. We've seen him sporadically in the course of the film, but now there's something different. He's wearing his Mets jacket and he's ready to go inside Shea. I recognized the aura about him, about everybody the documentary caught up with in the late afternoon and early evening of October 19, 2006. There was a pure energy to those fans in those moments. I don't mean yelling and stomping. They positively crackled. Within that big blue thing lied their fate. They had to get to it, to help their team win.

I know that feeling. I felt it the night before Game Seven when I was there for Game Six; and twice the week before for Games One and Two; and twice the week before that during the NLDS. I always feel it at least a little before entering Gate E. I never feel it sitting at home…except while I was watching Mathematically Alive.

Give or take an unprecedented collapse, we've been pretty lucky of late when it comes to us being us and somebody recording it. We've gotten the movie Mathematically Alive. We've gotten the book Mets Fan. And we've gotten, partially self-serving as this will sound, dozens of really wonderful blogs detailing the fine points of rooting for the Mets. It's hard to believe how much we used to depend on a handful of newspaper beat writers to tell us about the Mets. Beat writers don't tell us anything about the Mets as we tend to interpret them. It is not to impugn their skills nor the narrowly defined jobs they hold to say what they cover is quotes and gossip. There's a place for that, a big one.

But it's not the end game. Documentarians like Kathy Foronjy and Joseph Coburn, authors like Dana Brand and bloggers like a whole bunch of us cover the life. To me, that's what baseball is about: being a fan. I worry deeply about whether the Mets will win or lose every game and I obsess on whether they'll finish first, last or somewhere in between. That gives us our context, to be sure. Yet scores and standings are almost background noise against the act of being a fan itself (except for the Piazza chasers, it struck me how little of Mathematically Alive mentioned particular players; surprisingly, perhaps, they weren't missed). We've established if we've been at this thing we call rooting for as great a percentage of our existences as I think most of us have been that we're Mets fans through thick and thin many times over. We're fans if the Mets are playing a playoff game tonight or if we're nowhere near October. I like that so many able chroniclers of the life have come to the fore to dissect it so well.

The DVD's extras, not incidentally, contain what may be the highlight of the whole package. One by one, dozens of Mets fans contemplate a pair of questions:

What's your best Met moment?

What's your worst Met moment?

It's there that we really get the connective tissue that links all of us. The answers vary, but everybody can relate to what everybody else chooses. This is the family history. This the chapter and verse, whether it's the godfather of ground balls or the most treacherous trade of them all or whatever. Our respective best and worsts don't have to match up. We all know them, we all feel them. We take the good and the bad incredibly personally and we take the good and the bad almost uniformly universally. I realized in watching this section to what extent we as individual Mets fans celebrate together and mourn together even if we've never necessarily sat together.

Visit Vitamin Enriched Films to order the DVD of Mathematically Alive: A Story Of Fandom.

Quick clothing-related update: Our stash of shirts from Print Mojo is going fast, but we've ordered a whole bunch more in all sizes. They should be available in around two weeks — we'll post when the new batch is up. In the meantime, this is our first time working with this vendor, so if you have any problems, please let us know.

It's late January 1981 and for some reason, “Same Old Lang Syne” by Dan Fogelberg is played heavily on the radio. Shouldn't a song with that title have been out a month earlier? Regardless, it's one of the most evocative songs I will ever know. He steals behind her in the frozen foods; she went to hug him and she spilled her purse; and then it was off to her car to drink the six-pack they bought at the liquor store because all the bars were closed on Christmas Eve. Dan Fogelberg wrote those scenes like people talk, like people live.

Then as now, I see a particular Foodtown and a particular parking lot where I can imagine Dan and his old lover toasting one year going and one year coming while I'm inside the store rolling a cart down that very same frozen foods aisle, tossing a bag of Bird's Eye Mixed Vegetables onto a pile of groceries I have been instructed to pick up if I want to use the Ford later. There's a Kohl's now where that Foodtown was — and a Bed Bath & Beyond sits on the site of the formerly adjacent liquor store. Still, I see it. And isn't it, well, odd that at least around here on the day in December that 56-year-old Dan Fogelberg died in Maine that we experienced a nasty nor'easter in which the snow turned into rain?

“The Language of Love” by Dan Fogelberg is the No. 352 Song of All-Time, but I maintain a particular soft spot for “Same Old Lang Syne,” the only chart hit I know of whose title more or less refers to my birthday…and whose lyrics make me think of buying frozen peas.

P.S. Very first word of “Same Old Lang Syne” is Met.

Four good things to come out in the wake of the Mitchell Report:

1) I noticed a TV in a store window this morning beaming a flickering image of Roger Clemens. If this were the movies, a crowd of hard-bitten men in fedoras would have been gathered around, grinding out their cigars in disgust. You know said television wasn't featuring a story about another Cy Young award. Roger Clemens is no longer pitcher for the ages, what a competitor, biding his time 'til his next multigazillion-dollar comeback commences at his midseason convenience. He's the guy on TV who backed into that something extra on his fastball. Sure he wasn't the only one, but he's the star of the show now. Think he's still busy dictating which cap he's going to wear on his Hall of Fame plaque?

2) We don't now win the 2000 World Series by default, but for about an hour yesterday I entertained the notion that on Opening Day a new banner to that effect should replace the previous marker for that year over the right field wall. No, we don't win the 2000 World Series by default (RUN TIMO! RUN!), but it's nice to know the mere suggestion of illegitimacy regarding the accomplishments of the nominal champions drives their supporters to distraction. (2008 minus 2000, by the way, equals 8 years without a title; unlike certain alleged injections, it's hardly the stuff of a “magic” dynasty in progress, in case Daily News senior executive editor Robert Sapio can't conduct simple arithmetic.)

3) If you scrolled down to page D-25 of the report, you saw Paul Lo Duca's happy little memo to Kirk Radomski about his phone being “toast” and such. It sticks out like a sore catcher among all the ordinary copied checks and FedEx receipts, but what really attracts one's attention is Paul's use of the Dodger Stadium note paper…as duly illustrated by the groin-grabbingly good Ken Dynamo at Go Mets Die Braves.

4) A nation turns its lonely eyes to Faith and Fear t-shirts for solace. Order yours today!

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.)