Congratulations and best of luck to the team with Tony Clark and the team with Kaz Matsui as they face off tonight for the honor of championing professional baseball's most venerable league.

How did it come to this? How did it come to the Diamondbacks and the Rockies in the NLCS? The recently insolvent and the eternally obscure? Mountain Standard vs. Mountain Daylight?

Don't take this the wrong way. Those are the two National League teams that deserve to be where they are. They won more games than anybody else, they defeated who they had to, they played the best. And now they are the best.

The Arizona Diamondbacks. The Colorado Rockies. One of them will be in the 2007 World Series. One of them will fall a little short. Neither of them is the New York Mets.

That, based on late-season returns, is to their credit. But would have you seen this coming as recently as, I don't know, three weeks ago? Wasn't this supposed to be our year? And if it wasn't, wouldn't you have thought it would be somebody else's year? Once it wasn't us, maybe it didn't matter, but at no point during the championship season was I thinking “we gotta watch out for the Diamondbacks and Rockies.”

Maybe I should have. Or somebody should have. They proved it where it counted. The Mets have scattered to their televisions, not unlike the Phillies, the Braves, the Dodgers, the Padres, the Cubs, the Brewers and the Cardinals, all of whom seemed more likely to have been in this position at some point since Spring Training convened.

Amazing how the two teams left standing refused to play this game on paper.

I'm at a bit of a loss to discuss with any authority the relative chances of the Rockies or Diamondbacks to advance to a pennant since the last time I watched either of them with total urgency was July 4. The Mets were done with both of them early this year, or should I say, they were each done with the Mets a long time ago. For the record, the Mets took four of seven from Arizona while Colorado beat the Mets four of six times. If a trend emerged from any of those series, it was that the Mets got worse the later it got.

Mets lost three of their final four versus the D'Backs, including two of three at Shea to begin June. You might remember June was the month when it all began to go to hell. Thank your Western Division champions for pushing us downhill.

Mets lost the last four they played against the Rockies, starting the day after the deceptively uplifting Endy drag bunt walkoff. The final three were astoundingly horrific beatdowns at Coors Field that came after the Mets had seemingly righted themselves versus Oakland, St. Louis and Philadelphia. Thank your Wild Card winners for sending us a message. Not their fault we didn't know what to do with it.

What I remember most of all about losing to the Diamondbacks and Rockies was how wrong it felt. It wasn't disappointing. It was unbecoming. We're the Mets! We're supposed to beat teams we hardly ever see and you hardly ever hear about! Enough of these nuisances! When do playoff tickets go on sale?

The sense of entitlement thing really doesn't work for us, does it?

My enthusiasm for the postseason usually runs in inverse proportion to our proximity to it. If we never had much of a chance (like when we were the team with Tony Clark and Kaz Matusi, albeit not quite simultaneously), then October is a delightful autumnal rebirth of baseball. If we were bounced from them or near them, I need at least one round to adjust. I watched little to almost none of the 1988, 1999 and 2006 World Series because I couldn't stand to look at what was supposed to our World Series. The divisional series last week were like that. I had no doubt we didn't deserve to go, but watching a ton of NLDS action that we were supposed to be in the thick of anyway — my Game Five tix are still atop a pile of stuff on my dresser (talk about “if necessary”) — was too much to bear. I checked in with the Diamondbacks and Cubs and the Rockies and Phillies only long enough to know what was going on.

The Mets seem a million miles away from this postseason now. They are happily irrelevant to what remains of our beloved sport in 2007. The fall festival is in full swing and I am ready to join it in progress, Chip Caray be damned. I have no overriding rooting interest in this one. I'll just be glad that National League baseball will be played and played with verve and vitality.

Note: On the off chance you're awaiting the rest of the 2007 retrospective promised on Monday, it should be up next week. Apologies for my lethargy, but it's not like last year is going anywhere soon.

Since the Mets' 2007 season went off the cliff, there's been no shortage of plans to get the Mets back on track, from trading Jose Reyes for Johan Santana to doing more or less nothing. A Met blueprint is a Rorschach test both of how angry you were at the 2007 club as it imploded and where you stand on the question of quantifiable vs. qualifiable and stats vs. intangibles.

Of course, the 2007 Mets themselves were a Rorschach test for this endless debate. You can read their Pythagorean record of 86-76 and conclude that they simply weren't that good, that they actually slightly outperformed their record and the rest is just noise. Or you can look at that now-infamous seven up with 17 to play, a team that statistics said would win the division 499 times out of 500, and conclude that a lack of character (whether in the clubhouse, the manager's office or both) had to be the difference — particularly when the veterans themselves were saying the team was complacent.

I like to fancy myself a stats guy, but I don't have the math chops for it — and this September has pushed me back into the camp that talks of intangibles and chemistry. When players collapse as horridly as the Mets did in those final two weeks, making ungodly errors and losing their composure and irking opponents at the wrong time, you can't tell me there isn't more going on than statistical snake-eyes. If intangibles mean anything to the sport, September 2007 was proof of it.

I'm still disgusted with the 2007 club — the sight of the clubhouse guy in the Kenny Lofton DHL ad pisses me off. That said, I'm glad the Mets decided against some spasm of vengeance. Willie Randolph should have kept his job, and did. And when you put 20-20 hindsight aside and look at a lot of Omar Minaya's 2007 moves in context, you see a fair amount of bad luck but not a lot of what any fair-minded person would call negligence or stupidity. Alex Nelson at MetsGeek did a bang-up job with such a review last week. It's worth reading, and I concur: I wasn't exactly upset when hefty arsonist Heath Bell was sent packing, thought the trade of tightrope-walking soft-tosser Brian Bannister for live-armed Ambiorix Burgos made sense, and didn't mourn trading two late-to-develop Double-A guys in Matt Lindstrom and Henry Owens for Jason Vargas, a promising starter with two plus pitches who'd shown some success in the big leagues. The moves that proved least-defensible were multiyear deals for Scott Schoeneweis and Guillermo Mota, but even here, it's easy to lose perspective: The Orioles gave Chad Bradford an insane three years and $10.5 million, a deal as certain to blow up on them as the sun will rise, and every middle reliever still on the market sang hosannas.

Did Willie handle the staff badly down the stretch? Hard to argue he didn't. Mota kept pitching, Schoeneweis and Sosa were used too much and Feliciano too little, and Philip Humber was left rotting on the bench while the deservedly anonymous Brian Lawrence took the hill. Still, plenty of comparatively reliable relievers had blow-ups down the stretch, too — it's not like any of us had much faith in anybody in September. And it's somewhat odd to think that players need a few years to develop and learn but managers can navigate every nuance of the interaction between strategy and personalities from the get-go. For a guy entering his fourth year as a manager, it strikes me that the key issue shouldn't be what Willie did wrong but whether he'll learn from it.

So, my vague blueprint. I apologize in advance that it's less a coherent plan than a series of bitter observations and diatribes. It goes without saying that I'd rather be considering how the Mets match up against the Diamondbacks.

First, some principles:

1. No More Half-Seasons: Why on earth does anybody think bringing back Moises Alou is a good idea? The Mets were 47-40 with him. Fantastic! But that means 75 times they were stuck figuring out who was going to play left field. I'd like to know how Moises being a year older improves on that scenario. It's hard enough mixing and matching veterans and kids and role players to make a World Series club; it's a lot harder when too many of those veterans are going to miss too much time during the season. Jose Valentin, El Duque, Carlos Delgado, Shawn Green — all aging players who missed significant time with a variety of ailments. One reason the 2007 Mets had trouble gelling? They were hardly ever on the field at the same time.

2. I Believe the Children Are the Future: And, y'know, we've got to, like, give them a sense of pride. There's such a thing as too much faith in intangibles. Lastings Milledge is a brat, but he's a better player than Shawn Green in every respect except deportment. Carlos Gomez and Ruben Gotay may be a bit raw, but one can imagine them as productive big-league players in 2010, when Moises Alou and Luis Castillo will be playing golf. You can roll the dice on aging, brittle veterans not falling off and/or getting hurt, or try to develop players who have potential. Because baseball is so insanely conservative, teams get stuck doing the former when they ought to do the latter: The Yankees saved their season almost by mistake, as injury after injury forced them to rely on youth, and youth turned out to be a good bet. Even then, they got Pleistocene when it mattered: With the season on the line, they gave the ball to a 45-year-old Satanic mercenary with a bad hamstring, watched him pitch like a 45-year-old with a bad hamstring, and only lived for another day because a 21-year-old and a 22-year-old rescued them. They got beat by a young Indians team anyway, as their scouts were preparing dossiers on two young teams in the Rockies and Diamondbacks.

3. The Myth of the Incentive Deal: Of all the fancies of WFAN callers, this one is my favorite — the idea that Player X should take a one-year deal with lots of incentives. Paul Lo Duca is 35 years old and has spent nearly two decades squatting behind the plate listening to his knees pop and taking foul balls off his thighs, shoulders and thumb. He should take a one-year deal because fans in New York City are vaguely mad at him? Luis Castillo is a 32-year-old with bad knees and 11 big-league seasons on his resume. Players like Lo Duca and Castillo are looking for that last three-year deal, not some one-year flier. In their shoes, you'd do the same.

4. Eat Your Mistakes: One of the principal benefits of being an obscenely rich club? It's being able to shrug off a bad $6 million here and a hard-luck $8 million there. A regrettable two-year deal for a middle reliever can kill the Kansas City Royals' hopes, and that sucks — but it's not our job to right that wrong. Guillermo Mota is owed $3.2 million in 2008, and a blind Irish setter could tell you that he has no business being near a pitcher's mound any longer. For God's sake, eat that contract.

And now, some prescriptions for individual players….

Not Even a Question: Shawn Green, Jose Valentin, Aaron Sele. They have no future here.

Only a Question If You Weren't Watching: Tom Glavine. Glavine torched the Mets' season in less than an inning on the mound, but it was his postgame comments that destroyed his future with the club. Sitting amid the wreckage of the season, the Manchurian Brave uttered his usual alibis about balls finding holes (two he threw found Dontrelle Willis with the bases loaded and a phantom fielder playing 20 feet behind David Wright) and then lectured us on the difference between “devastated” and “disappointed.” Anybody who'd want Tom Glavine back probably also thinks it would have been a good idea to have Kenny Rogers start the home opener in 2000.

Thanks for Services Rendered: Moises Alou, Luis Castillo, Paul Lo Duca. I like all three of these players, and their only sins are age and questions about their ability to stay on the field. But at this pass, those are sins enough.

Let's Pretend We Didn't: Guillermo Mota. Summoning the Pink Slip Fairy for Mota is a helluva way to spend $3.2 million. But have you seen what this man does to games?

Stuck With You, Part I: Orlando Hernandez. El Duque is owed $6.5 million. He's a legend, and his annual vacations used to be kind of cute. They aren't cute anymore, and as a starter he's blocking the likes of Mike Pelfrey, Philip Humber and Jason Vargas, about whom more needs to be known. El Duque as a middle reliever or a long man is an intriguing idea, but I'd bet El Duque is the least-intrigued guy in the room when that particular conversation comes up.

Stuck With You, Part II: Scott Schoeneweis. He's signed through 2009. It's hard to see him going anywhere unless he turns into Mota. (And hey, he's already been named in steroids reports.) This leaves us stuck hoping that since he's been good in the past, he might be good in the future. With middle relievers who aren't named Guillermo, that's not entirely insane. Particularly if he's used properly.

Stuck With You, Part III: Carlos Delgado. He's owed a jaw-dropping $16 million in 2008. He's a horrible first baseman, his value as a hitter has dropped to near replacement level, and his leadership disappeared in 2007. Yes, he said the right things about focus and lessons learned after Game 162, but before that the only times I remember him registering as a clubhouse voice were a) the farcical day when Lo Duca was supposedly a racist; and b) when he admitted the Mets got bored. Since his contract is immovable, at least I have my scapegoat for 2008.

Time to Step Up: Jose Reyes, Lastings Milledge, Willie Randolph. Jose came down with a bad slump and a chronic case of the stupids, but you don't exile a young player for being a young player — particularly not when he's the most electric player in the game. There's a fine line between enthusiastic and bush, and you'll consistently find Milledge just on the wrong side of it — his antics on the second-to-last day of the season woke up a Marlins club that should have been left to slumber. But I stubbornly believe Milledge will be worth the wait. In both cases, adult supervision is needed, and will be rewarded. Not coincidentally, more adult supervision has to be on Willie Randolph's to-do list. I've been won over by his calm demeanor and the patience with which he brought along the likes of Reyes and Wright, but now he's got work to do. I hope 2007 showed him the dangers of being too calm — it would be a wonderful world if every veteran played with Willie's passion and poise, but some of them need the whip hand now and again.

Bring 'Em Back: Jorge Sosa, Ramon Castro, Damion Easley. Sosa showed enough to deserve further consideration as a starter or setup guy. If Castro's back doesn't betray him, he should be the starting catcher. I think Easley would be a good bench guy. Update: And Marlon Anderson, who never should have left in the first place.

Stick With 'Em: Oliver Perez, John Maine, Joe Smith, Billy Wagner, Aaron Heilman. (None of these guys is a free agent.) They didn't have perfect seasons — Perez's final start was all kinds of ugly, Maine seemed to hit the wall a couple of times, Wagner and Heilman had avert-your-eyes weeks and Smith wound up exhausted. But they all either maintained a high level of performance or matured sufficiently in 2007 that you can hope for better things in 2008.

Blameless: Pedro Martinez, David Wright, Carlos Beltran.

So where do we go from here?

The Mets need a Goldilocks offseason — one that's not too hot, not too cold but just right.

Too hot is a danger. The Mets are no longer a cheapskate outfit scorned by run-of-the-mill free-agent catchers — they now spend money like the big-market colossus they are, and they're about to have a lot more of it. The final game witnessed by ownership might well have been the darkest moment in the franchise's history, and they're going to be sorely tempted to do something big to try and make us forget about that. But how big is wise? I can't see the Mets acquiring Johan Santana without taking an ax to the core of the team, and I shudder to think of Jose Reyes in a Twins uniform, to cite one hot rumor. No offense to Santana, but we would regret that one forever. Reyes is the engine of the team and the darling of the fanbase. Yes, I was mad at him in September — but I want to summon Joshua home from college to see a graying Reyes wave farewell and No. 7 go up on the CitiField wall. He's ours — don't you dare touch him.

There's another brand of “too hot” that I admit I can't get out of my head: A-Rod is about to be seeking $300 million over 10 years. Yes, he's emotionally needy and socially maladroit, but he also just put up 54 home runs and 156 RBIs playing in a cauldron. And tell me the Mets wouldn't enjoy that back-page knife to the Yankees' heart, as well as the chance for everybody to say bad things about Steve Phillips. Besides, starting in 2009 Citibank would pay two-thirds of the freight. It's tempting, isn't it? Sure, something about it makes the head throb, and there's the small matter of him not having a position. (A-Rod to third, Wright to first, Delgado becomes a $16 million bench player? Um, no.) Still, 54 home runs and 156 RBIs, no Jeter to treat him like Martha Dumptruck, and he'd be playing for the team he loved as a child.

More realistic would be to try and pry Dontrelle Willis loose from Florida — he had a lousy year, but he'll be 26 on Opening Day, he's left-handed and he speaks his mind in that clubhouse. I'm not going to say Rick Peterson could fix him in 15 minutes, but I bet 15 weeks could do it.

Then, of course, there's too cold. Don't like A-Rod? Think Dontrelle's done? Too in love with Heilman and Milledge to imagine them on another team? Just think how you'll feel in February, reading the same interchangeable stories about how new Met Livan Hernandez is in the best shape of his career and Moises Alou has been doing flexibility drills — and suspecting that none of it will make a damn bit of difference.

Two people who deserve a smoldering afterlife:

This clown who works for the Daily News. No, not Filip Bondy, but a copy editor who last week not only said he was giving up on being a Mets fan but would be switching over to another local team because they're such winners. Wonder who his new team is today.

And this clown who writes Op-Ed sports pieces for the Times every few months swearing off or allegiance to the Yankees based on how they're doing. In May, when they struggled, she said she was through with them. Later, when they were doing well, she said she was back in love with them. As of Sunday, they were all right with her. One assumes she's fallen hard for the Cowboys since last night. (I particularly like that she had to be informed by a Royals fan that you root for your team, win or, heaven forefend, lose.)

Adam Sommers and Jane Heller…this year's Worst Persons in the World!

I felt a little fear

Just keep on walking

—KT Tunstall

So this year Fear knocked out Faith in the 162nd round. But I can't just keep on walking. Not just yet.

As was the case for Henry Bemis in The Twilight Zone after the H-Bomb proved it was capable of total destruction and before our bank teller's glasses slip off his nose, we will have time enough at last to look ahead at what needs to be done to repair the New York Mets. Goodness knows, they can use all the help they can get. But indulging my trusty rearview instincts, I'm going to devote the bulk of my blogging this week to trying to trying to make a little sense of 2007. I doubt there is great appetite to relive its final chapters, but there are a few questions about this season that continue to nag at me, so if you don't mind, I'll nag them at you.

First off, was 2007's Met denouement the Worst Collapse in Baseball History?

Does it even matter?

Once you're in the conversation, you're not really gaining anything by avoiding the No. 1 ranking. The 2007 Mets are squarely in the conversation. Whether they made a statistically louder or softer thud than all those other teams you've understood as shorthand for “collapse” all your rooting years is irrelevant. There was a collapse. What was there ain't there no longer. And anything times zero still multiplies to zero…y'know?

If there's any overarching good news on the subject of historic collapses it's that this happens to most everybody sooner or later. While we were in the midst of joining the Legion of Decline & Fall, I saw various lists of Worst Collapses pop up with the regularity of Jose Reyes. Some entries were what card collectors would call commons; some teams you see always see on these lists. Others had grown obscure. But almost every franchise's name gets called.

It's not just us.

Will 2007 Mets really become synonymous with collapse? Will it really replace 1964 Phillies in the lexicon? Will it be mentioned for all time alongside '69 Cubs and '78 Red Sox and '51 Dodgers? Or will it fade into the maw of the memory hole where the 1934 Giants and the 1987 Blue Jays and the 1983 Braves and the 1995 Angels and others who haven't been quite as mythologized reside?

As we are barely one week beyond the expiration date of the 2007 season, I'd say we don't know yet. Because it took place in New York and there is a tendency to withhold benefit of the doubt from the Mets among the brain dead media, I'd guess this will come up the next time the Mets have any kind of lead with any kind of time on the clock. Then again, I would have guessed the five losses in a row that ended our 1998 would have stood eternally as a touchstone of collapses, but that has clearly reverted to family matter.

What might work in our favor (that is, not drip-drip-drip on our heads for the remainder of our lifetimes) is that the 2007 Phillies were eliminated so quickly from the postseason. If they had enjoyed overwhelming October success, the backstory — “you know, Joe, the Phillies deserve the credit for being here, but you can't ignore the fact that the New York Mets held a seven-game lead on the Twelfth of September and…” — would have become cemented as legend. With eight teams in the playoffs and things moving as quickly as they do these days, the 2007 Mets' misfortune may prove more transient on the grand stage than we could possibly imagine right now. Right now, the Cubs, Phillies and Angels look no better than we do.

I would also contend there was no signature moment of collapse in 2007, no single signature move that backfired, no obvious failure of philosophy or strategy, so it will be tough to construct an enduring myth around what happened. Essentially, our starting pitching was almost uniformly inadequate and our bullpen was spectacularly abysmal. You could argue much more could have been accomplished, much more urgency could have been applied, somebody didn't have to slap somebody else such an emphatic high-five (that's “the Mets made the Marlins mad” storyline, which, by the by, I don't buy as an alibi as it lets failure of execution way too easily off the hook), but the air escaping from '07 can't be automatically pegged on something systemic. Willie Randolph's proclamation that the Champagne would taste sweeter once sipped through adversity may have already carved itself on his eventual managerial tombstone, but standing arms folded and motionless in a windbreaker while all about you crumbles isn't quite as sexy as Gene Mauch repeatedly starting Bunning and Short or Charlie Dressen opting to give away home-field advantage after winning the tiebreaker coin flip.

Examining the teams who qualify for the Worst Collapse conversation (as interpreted by Nate Silver at Baseball Prospectus) gives me hope on one very fundamental level: This sort of thing does not mark the end of a franchise's life. Just about everybody has one of these skeletons in the closet. There really is a next year, sometimes a very good next year. The Dodgers, shot 'round the world and through the heart as they were, won a pennant in 1952, then '53, then '55 (when they won a World Series), then '56. The '34 Giants eventually became the 1936 and '37 National League champs. The Cubs didn't win in 1970, but they remained competitive.

What do years after bode for the 2008 Mets? Only that there will be 2008 and there figure to be Mets. Hell, even the Phillies showed up for Spring Training in 1965.

Whether the 2007 Mets' collapse was worse than those proffered by other teams of the damned is something I really don't know. But now I'm wondering whether it felt worse than other horrible Met episodes. More specifically, how does 2007 deserve to be remembered? I mean after the immediate shock and disgust have worn off? (My own level of shock has subsided eight days after the fact, but my disgust lingers.)

I tend to grade on a curve. To my generally forgiving mind, there are 90+ loss disasters, then there's 1980 when the Mets flickered with hope for a few months. There are third-place finishes, then there's 1997 whose tenth-anniversary flag I've waved frequently and forcefully on Fridays this year. There are gut-wrenching near misses, there there's 1999, whose final moments Shawon Dunston and I will never forget for all the right reasons. My rule of thumb is if a year gives me something to truly treasure, I'm willing to overlook a lot of bad as water under the Whitestone.

So what was 2007? Solely one of the Worst Collapses in Baseball History? Or a year whose undeniably awful ending didn't completely wipe out what could be kindly considered its saving graces?

Was 2007 worse than the abomination of 1977? You can substitute 1993 or 2003 or 1965, if you like. The question boils down to, was losing at the end worse than losing all year? Is it better to have been in the thick of things — to have led the thick of things — even if you know you blew your part of the deal? Or would have you rather not bothered getting your hopes up so high? Would it have been just as well to have wallowed in last place since the one thing the '07 Mets have in common with various of their sad sack ancestors is they didn't see the postseason for themselves?

I'd say I never want to go through a collapse like that we just endured ever again. But I'll take my chances with spending most of the year in first place regardless of the possibility that what happened could have happened, even the certainty that what happened did happen. 2007 can't hold a hellish candle to 1977 and 1993 and the other six last-place finishes I've lived through as a Mets fan. Same for most of the too-plentiful next-to-lasters. Those were veritable 162-game collapses. I'll get my hopes up, thank you very much.

Was 2007 worse than the mediocrity of 1971? Though I don't remember a whole lot of details from 1971 as they occurred, I do remember it being a typical Mets year from my youth: It seemed we might be good, we made a little run (two out at the end of June), we had our collapse in the middle of the season (9-20 in July), someone else (the Pirates) proved much better; the hitting was lame; the pitching was good; we finished with 83 wins.

I'd sure want to have Tom Seaver any year, and '71 I've always considered his best year (20-10, 1.76 ERA, 289 K's), but years like this — and a handful of others from my youth that fit the pattern — were somehow more disappointing to me on the whole than 2007. I like knowing my team has a chance. I'd rather live most of six months with the chance things might work out than merely avoid disaster by not having much of a chance all year.

Was 2007 worse than the runner's stumble of 1987? This is a very pointed challenge. On paper, the '87 Mets contended to almost the bitter end and won more than 90 games. They were also coming off a world championship, so you'd figure there'd be some goodwill in the air. But I hated that year. I wouldn't say I hated the Mets (I rooted for 'em), but I hated the arc. I hated the inability to ever pull into first place or nose ahead of the Cardinals. I hated the bickering. I hated the Terry Pendeton home run and assorted other September calamities. For all the talk of how unlovable the '07 Mets became, I never found them out-and-out unlikable. I really didn't like the Mets as a group in '87 and they grew tough to take as individuals.

We blew 2007 to the Phillies, but at the very (very) least, we didn't give it up to the Braves. The late '80s Cardinals were the Braves cubed. It's a split hair, but losing to Charlie Manuel's Phillies didn't annoy me nearly as much as losing to Whitey Herzog's Cardinals.

Was 2007 worse than the choking precedent of 1998? The Mets had not won in other regular seasons when winning was an option, but never quite like 1998. Before “seven out with 17 to play” became a catchphrase along the lines of “I Like Ike” and “Where's The Beef?” you didn't have to think twice at this juncture in 1998 to understand the meaning of “five straight losses to end the season.” Blowing the Wild Card by effectively not showing up against Montreal and in Atlanta threatened to shadow everything that would ever happen again for the Mets. I'll never forget Jason reintroducing me to someone in September 1999 whom I hadn't seen since September 1998 with “…and you remember Greg from collapses of seasons past.” Of all that is remembered about those eventually heroic 1999 Mets, it is mostly forgotten what a fantastic job they did of diminishing the stigma attached to the '98 Mets. “Five straight losses to end the season” did not become our long-term franchise calling card. But we didn't know that in October 1998. All we knew was failure.

I had a history teacher in high school who pricked holes in the Cold War “Who lost China?” argument by insisting China was not the United States' to lose. It belonged to the Chinese. In that spirit, I would say there wasn't as much to lose in 1998. We didn't have the kind of stranglehold on a playoff spot nine years ago (one up with five to go) that we had less than four weeks ago. We could have, but we didn't. Also, it was a Wild Card. I'm rarely elitist on this, but we weren't clawing for a consolation prize in 2007. We had first place in our grasp. The '98 Mets finished 18 behind the Braves. They seemed plausible, but never probable. They were in thick of it even if they didn't lead it. When you come down to the wire twice and get tangled up in it to the point where you can't breathe twice, it's almost impossible to differentiate between the two fatal events. It's a virtual tie, but I'd have to say 2007 was ever so slightly worse given what there was to blow.

Congratulations 1998 Mets: your losing streak has finally ended.

Was 2007 worse than Called Strike Three in 2006? It was heartbreaking to lose World Series in 1973 and 2000, League Championship Series in 1988 and 1999 and absolutely devastating to not win the pennant last year. But those were postseason losses, implying postseason berths were won. Even the most painful postseason loss — and Beltran frozen by Wainwright's curve still sears the soul — is better than not playing.

2007 was worse than 2006. Definitively. It was worse than the other non-championship playoff years. It was worse than the less painful near misses of '84 and '85 and '90 in my book. It was worse in its way than a few of my esoteric favorites like '80 and '97. Maybe if you were starry-eyed in 1962 and hard-bitten in 2007, losing this lead late was worse than losing 120 to begin with. I don't want the pig to O.D. on lipstick. I don't want to come off as preternaturally Sunshine Sam. Believe me, I've been Gloomy Gus for almost every one of the past 192 hours. There was loads to not like about 2007…loads to hate it for, too, I suppose.

All I'm saying is not only could have this entire Met season been worse, entire Met seasons have been worse. As slogans go, it's not as rousing as “Your Season Has Come,” but it's probably more truthful.

In the interest of Eastern Division solidarity, it's high time we rouse ourselves from our stupor and extend our heartiest congratulations to the Philadelphia Phillies and wish them all the luck in the world as they pursue a world championship. Go get 'em in the NLDS, guys!

Wait a sec…I'm just being handed a bulletin…I see…really?…three straight?…you sure?…no, it's fine…it's more than fine…this is AWESOME!

Um, just to clarify the above remarks, we extend our heartiest congratulations to the Colorado Rockies and wish them all the luck in the world as they pursue a world championship. Go get 'em in the NLCS, guys!

All right, so I haven't had my head that far down in the sand not to have noticed the Rockies made quick work of our nemeses this week. And I'm not so numb that I didn't enjoy the three blinks of an eye it took to complete the division series round in the National League — and not just because it means fewer Frank TV ads. I wouldn't have completely minded the Cubs getting the monkey house off their backs already yet after 99 years, but I can never quite bring myself to root for them even in benign circumstances (probably because they as a people are still sniveling over 1969), so nice job, Diamondbacks. The Rockies' conquest of the Phillies, however, required no sorting of the mixed emotions.

The Phillies are dead! Grab a seat next to us, fellas.

You can't be a Mets fan and not have been drawn to the one intimately familiar presence in those neat-o Martian jerseys the Colorados wear. I've actually read a little grumbling here and there that of all the Rockies to blow the P straight off those red caps, why did it have to be our former shortstop and second baseman Kaz Matsui who led the charge? We liked that somebody was batting .417 and driving in six runs versus Philadelphia…but did it have to be Kaz?

Damn right it had to be Kaz! I for one couldn't be happier that it was our wayward leadoff batter, the world's most misunderstood international superstar during his 2-1/2 years in New York.

Don't take this as revisionist history. I was relieved (relieved more than glad) when Omar Minaya sent him to Denver for Eli Marrero. It was just time to say goodbye to a bad fit and give a player who was given some poor guidance to start over. Kaz's contract was up after '06 and I thought he'd hightail it back to Japan, deciding the grass and dirt infields of America just weren't his kind of playing fields.

But he stayed and he became part of the feelgoodiest story in baseball in 2007. It's not like he put up Rickey Henderson numbers in the leadoff spot for the Rockies, yet he seemed to have truly found himself two-thirds of a continent away. He wasn't Kaz Matsui global savior at Coors Field. He was just Kaz Matsui, baseball player. On a team that never marketed the spit out of him, that was plenty. When he began slicing and dicing the Phillies' pitching staff, it brought a Mr. Met-size smile to my face. True, any Rockie doing that would have generated such grinsome behavior, but it was just nice to see it from Kaz.

There shouldn't be any “well, the Mets let another one get away” misgivings to mull here. We saw it wasn't going to happen here. We saw he wasn't comfortable in Queens. We saw that all his effort was mostly for naught despite flashes between 2004 and 2006 of the kind of offense he delivered in Game Two at Citizens Bank Park. So we shouldn't rue Marrero-for-Matsui nor spite a speck of his success in Colorado.

But we ought to ask ourselves a question: what's wrong with us anyway? As quickly as I would categorize Kaz Matsui among the almost indisputable “he needed a change of scenery” types who have left Shea to blossom elsewhere, I have to wonder why there are so many of those types and if we have a disproportionate share.

Kaz Matsui had to leave the Mets to blossom.

Jason Isringhausen had to leave the Mets to blossom.

Jeff Kent had to leave the Mets to blossom.

Kevin Mitchell had to leave the Mets to blossom.

Mike Scott had to leave the Mets to blossom.

Nolan Ryan had to leave the Mets to blossom.

With everybody leaving and blossoming, how does our garden grow?

Kaz was treated shabbily by the vocal contingent in the stands, no doubt. Kent didn't exactly win over the fans who weren't in the mood to be won over by a drugstore cowboy. But the other fellows in question weren't targets for the boobirds. Maybe country boy Ryan just needed to get regular work. Maybe Scott needed to learn to scuff the ball. Maybe Mitchell wouldn't have been held above suspicion long enough to get the at-bats to become an MVP. Maybe Izzy needed to get his head together and embrace a new role. Maybe none of them were “New York guys”.

But what does it say of New York? What does it say of the Mets and Mets fans? I suppose we've gotten a few in return, guys who came here and were uniquely suited to New York after finding only failure elsewhere, but it's hard to think of too many players who meet the equivalent test. Who was run or driven out of another town only to come here and explode like Matsui has of late or the others did in the course of their careers?

The Hernandezes and Carters and Piazzas weren't in this mode. They were already superstars when they came to New York. And I'm not thinking of an unknown kid like Jerry Grote or a surprising pickup like Rico Brogna or a disregarded journeyman like Rick Reed or a discarded veteran like John Olerud. I'm thinking of somebody else's washout, somebody else's pariah, somebody else's outcast.

I'm still thinking.