Did you know the National League season just ended like half-an-hour ago? Yes, that was the Rockies and Padres pre-empting Family Guy on TBS. And it was quite a game.

Didn't watch every pitch of it (Stephanie was shocked that I wanted to watch any of it after my nonstop despondency since 4:30 PM Sunday), but found the back-and-forth fascinating. It was 6-6 through 12, when ex-Met Clint Hurdle sent ex-Met Jorge Julio into pitch and make it 8-6. But those indefatigable Rockies, on a leadoff double by ex-Met Kaz Matsui (whom I urged on vociferously, to my genuine surprise), tied that bad boy in no time off the Julioesque Trevor Hoffman (does he ever get a big save?). Troy Tulowitzki doubled home Kaz; then Matt Holliday, a more authentic MVP candidate than anybody in Queens, sadly, tripled home Tulowitzki. Helton was intentionally walked so Trevor could face Jamey Carroll, ex-Expo whom I always dreaded. Carroll was batting behind Helton because Hurdle pinch-ran him for Garrett Atkins; I missed that when it happened, but it didn't seem like a great idea in the 13th. But Carroll lined it to Brian Giles in medium-deep right and Giles, a good arm, fired home.

Michael Barrett, yet another ex-Expo who drove me nuts, blocked the plate beautifully. Holliday tried to slide to the outer edge of the plate but didn't touch it. Yet Barrett didn't handle the ball and Tim McClelland seemed more flummoxed than usual. The ball rolled around behind the plate while Holliday bloodied his face in the dirt. Barrett ran to pick up the ball and tag the dazed Holliday, but McClelland, after about an eternity, called him safe and the Wild Card belonged to Colorado, 9-8.

No argument from the Padres. Too crazy around the plate: Rockies descending on Holliday; trainer tending to his face (at first, Matt didn't get up, but he walked away all right); t-shirts and caps distributed. TBS did a lousy job of covering the moment of truth but offered the angles eventually.

Not sure if it was a great game, but it was a long one. And it felt, I don't know, fun to watch without the weight of worry that had attached itself to everything I had my eye on for the last couple of weeks. I'm sorry the Rockies aren't next flying to New York instead of Philadelphia, but I think I might actually look in on these playoffs sooner than I'd planned. I didn't think I was going to want to watch any of them.

There are teams I like a little in this postseason and some teams of whom I'm not fond. But I don't have a favorite and I'm really not in a mood to root against. Let's Go Baseball, I guess.

When it was over, when the disaster was complete, Joshua began to cry. That's the thing about being four — up until the third strike on Castillo, he really believed the Mets were going to win. It didn't matter that the Nationals were down 6-1 with two out in the ninth. He believed in them, too. When both of those beliefs were revealed as fantasies, he was genuinely astonished and grief-stricken.

I scooped him up and patted the back of his WRIGHT 5 shirt and said fatherly things. I told him that there were little kids and Moms and Dads who are Phillie fans who are really happy right now. (There are. It's true. I even know some of them.) I told him that in order to have miracles, you have to accept the possibility of disasters. I told him that this was the worst thing that had ever happened to a team in September, which meant he'll probably go his entire lifetime without another death spiral like this one. I tried to tell him that there was still baseball to watch, that it might be fun to root the Phillies or the Cubs or the Indians on to a championship.

It occurred to me, halfway through, that I might really be trying to comfort myself. But that wasn't it. Because I was OK.

No, I'm serious. I really was.

And coming from someone as fanatical as me, that should stand as one of the ultimate indictments of the 2007 New York Mets.

This isn't to say I was happy. By 12:15 I was losing track of conversations and spacing out, aware that game time was near and I had to get myself home. As Glavine neared fatal impact, I was unmanned by rage and unleashed a torrent of words not acceptable in our household. (Joshua: “Daddy, please don't say bad words.” Followed, moments later, by “this is the worstest game ever!”) When Ramon Castro lowered his hand, triumph derailed, I let out a scream of torment.

But after that, I was calm. Unhappy, but calm. The Mets lost. I watched the fans stare at the field and listened to Gary and Ron and Keith prattle on about the crew until word came that the Nationals had lost. And then I got on with my day.

I never liked this team. Early on, when they were ahead of last year's pace, I was vaguely embarrassed by this. Like a lot of us, I found myself groping for explanations, and worrying about why they left me cold. Was this the ugly side of raised expectations? Of the first stages of hegemony? Was this how being a Yankee fan began? What wasn't to like?

But I struggled to warm to them during the spring, and when they stumbled through the summer I stopped fighting it. I let a bit of hard-earned cynicism take over, dissecting fandom like social scientists examine human attachment. I told myself that when they made the playoffs, I'd find myself liking them just fine. But then the second half of September came, with the second horrible body blow administered by the Phillies, the inept handling of the pitching staff, the idiotic displays of temper, and the repeated assheaded baseball. And finally, those horrifying quotes by Delgado and Glavine and Pedro, the astonishing admissions that yeah, the team was bored and complacent. That right there was the end of the pretending that I would change my mind.

And that, oddly, made the rest easier. I will always love the 1985, 1999 and 2006 teams, despite the fact that they never won titles. I was never going to like this one, even if it wound up rolling down the Canyon of Heroes. (Maybe that's a massive rationalization. I wouldn't know — until now, I hadn't had any experience analyzing my feelings after the worst collapse in major-league history.) The 2007 Mets were the smug, self-satisfied hare to the tortoises of Philadelphia and San Diego and Colorado. Badly constructed and badly led, in the end they got exactly what they deserved.

After it was over, Emily and I watched in bewilderment as a few stubborn fans remained behind the dugout. What could they possibly be waiting for? I actually hoped they wanted stuff to sell on eBay, because the alternative was so pathetic: At the conclusion of this self-inflicted disaster, who would want to lay eyes on a single member of this band of choking loafers or their bloodless, self-deluding leadership?

There were fans crying after that third out. I cried last year, but why would I shed a tear for this team? For whom, exactly? For Tom Glavine, now undressed and revealed as the Frank Viola of his Met generation? For Willie Randolph, who never stopped issuing pronouncements about winners from the mountaintop while his team died in the valley? For Jose Reyes, regressing before our eyes as a ballplayer? For Billy Wagner, running his mouth and then trying to weasel out of his own words? For Lastings Milledge, jogging after balls with the season hanging by a thread? Those crying fans had never been complacent or bored. They hadn't decided they were such good fans that they could start caring when they needed to. In the end, they cared far more than those to whom they'd entrusted their hopes.

There are 2007 Mets I never want to see again. There are others I'll forgive and find myself cheering for with all the wild hope of fandom. But I didn't want to see any of them after that final out. I didn't even want to think about them. I know that will change, but I can't tell you when it will be. And yet those fans waited behind the dugout, the stadium emptying around them, the season dead. Why would they possibly want these Mets to return?

And finally I thought of something.

“Maybe,” I said to Emily, “they've filled their pockets with rocks.”

First pitch minutes away. But there's always time for a good show tune*…

Join us

Our way

Let's Go Mets. Let's Go Nats.

*Pippin was advertised incessantly on local TV in September and October 1973 in a commercial much like this one. You Gotta Believe in timing.

All right brain, you don't like me, and I don't like you. But let's just get me through this and I can get back to killing you with beer.

Tom, we've had a strange relationship for five seasons. I made no secret that I never wanted you to be a Met and you always gave me the impression that the car to take you to the Delta terminal was idling out front. But you stayed and I learned to respect you. I celebrated your 300th victory along with everybody else, and when — on that day they gave you 300 golf balls — you said you understood how we had felt about you because you had felt the same about us, I found myself truly liking you for the first time.

So we're in this together, you and me. I know you're a cool, calm customer, I know you've pitched World Series games and won them. I know you pitched some big playoff games right here last year.

This is bigger than all that. This may be the last time you pitch for us. It's surely the first time I've felt you're pitching for me. There is no distance between us any longer. You're my favorite Met today. You're my man.

Go pitch the way Tom Glavine can. Do it for us one more time. Do it for me this once. If other occasions arrive in the near future, we'll deal with them then, but for now, there is only today. There is only you. You and me, Tom. We can do this.

Let's Go Mets. Let's Go Nats.

Yesterday I would not have believed

I am alive again

—Chicago (the group, not the Cubs)

Five straight dreary night games gave way to a Saturday afternoon like few others in the history of the old multipurpose stadium hard by the Grand Central. Shea had, however, but one purpose as of 4:15 PM:

Mets. Victory. Tomorrow…now today.

Baseball gives us 162 games. May as well use them all. The Mets decided to take advantage of their full-season plan and show up for the penultimate date of the year like they haven't shown up since…who can even remember? And for those 99.99% of us who were writing off the 2007 Mets after only 98.76% of the games were accounted for, we have one purpose, too:

Root like hell to the very end.

Good night to night games. Good afternoon, sunshine. Good morning and welcome back to a tie for first place. Mets maul Marlins. Nats nip Phillies. After an incredible Saturday in the park, don't you know we're feeling alive?

Yes, I was at the game yesterday. Yes, it was an extraordinary experience. No, I didn't see it coming. No, I can't quite believe what's happened on the heels of everything else I couldn't quite believe happened. Yes, we are alive again. And yes, when I said goodbye to somebody who sat near me Saturday, I uttered words I never thought I'd hear myself saying after Friday night:

“See you in the playoffs.”

That wasn't Mets Marketing Dept. “Your Postseason Has Come” bravado, trust me. That wasn't the haughty, arrogant, presumptuous attitude that nearly killed us before the 162nd game. That was plain and simple confidence. It's too late for anything else.

Oh, here's another word I didn't utter for a very long time Saturday: no-hitter. In the wake of the pennant race developments that are foremost in any happy recap of this sanguine Saturday, it's not exactly sidebar material that the first no-hitter in Mets history was one squibbish roller and three outs away from occurring. John Maine, as you're probably keenly aware, had it Goin' On. This was the John Maine who was once National League Pitcher of the Month, who was once an All-Star candidate, who was once a pleasant surprise. This was that John Maine times a thousand.

Fourteen strikeouts. Overpowering. Untouchable. And 23 outs without a hit. The phrase I kept coming back to was “All right, John — let's go.” I heard myself saying it in the fourth after a pitch, so I just kept saying it. “All right, John — let's go.” And John went as long as he could. He still hasn't given up anything like a legitimate base hit. The dagger in the heart of history of course rolled 45 feet and not foul. When Paul Who?ver half-swung, half-bunted and totally fucked with our hearts, time kind of stopped. It wasn't going to get to Wright and Wright wasn't going to get to it and it wasn't going to cross over a line and this nonentity of a third-string catcher actually had the nerve to run instead of doing what big-shot ballplayers do when they're not sure where a ball is going. Doesn't Paul Who?ver know to just stand there and get thrown out?

With John Maine's 115th pitch, he was removed (I was already envisioning him lifted after eight regardless of no-hitter because Pitch Count Is All). I knew what was next. I knew we had to stand up and applaud Maine's brilliant stab at Met immortality. Then I knew we had to continue as he walked to the dugout. But I didn't have it in me. I clapped weakly and trudged away. I hadn't been to the bathroom the whole game (who's superstitious?) but mostly I had to go hit something (the vacated cheesesteak stand did nicely) and slam something (men's room door) into a wall lest I moisten anything (like a tissue).

Yeah, I know. Fourteen strikeouts. One hit. A large shutout in progress. Alive again where it matters. (And we're not the Pirates.) Why cry? But I think I can speak for the 54,675 in attendance when I say as Mets fans, we wanted this. We really wanted this after going without for 46 years. The first guy sitting near me who said, maybe in the fourth, “Maine looks good” was immediately shushed by three people. We knew we wanted this. What a sudden possibility the first no-hitter in Mets history became. How quickly it departed.

The longest no-hit bid in three years would come amid the first certifiable Mets brawl in eleven years. What a marriage of sublime and ridiculous. I watched highlights later and heard explanations on the radio, but from what I can tell, the Mets were letting out their pent-up frustrations and the Marlins suck as human beings. I'd seen the benches clear between these two teams six years ago (when Todd Zeile informed Brad Penny he could “suck on this for Shinjo” after a close shave and a homer), but never twice in one game and never with real action.

If they ever want to juice baseball ratings, they need to work in more mêlées. The crowd loves a good fight. The crowd instantly redeemed Jose Reyes' numbskullishness (RUN! IT'S FAIR! EVEN IF IT'S NOT! RUN!) after being the target of Miguel Olivo's rabid doggery. Who said nobody cares about the Marlins?

Fights are fun — you know it's fun when you see Paul Lo Duca playing peacemaker — unless you have a pitcher who has a no-hitter in progress sitting on the bench for an extra ten minutes. You just hoped Maine wouldn't run out there…and hoped that maybe Dontrelle Willis would be very proactive and maybe sacrifice his left arm for the honor of the teal and black before the morrow. No such luck on the latter as far as I know.

I'm not clear whether his general flashiness was a flashpoint in any of this, but Lastings Milledge played and hit two home runs and apparently didn't speed around the bases with his head down to somebody's satisfaction. It was wonderful after wondering if he'd retired or something to see Lastings with the lid off, sparking this club on offense like Maine did on defense. Big game for everybody, I suppose — David Newhan drove in an entire run, for goodness sake — but Milledge really bubbled up. Hope Willie doesn't decide Veteran Experience trumps the Lastings effect and start lefty Green (or lefty Staub) versus lefty Willis today. I'd also like to see Castro hitting and throwing though Glavine seems to prefer pitching to Lo Duca. I prefer Glavine not gag as he has lately on this, probably his final regular-season start as a Met, ever.

A day in the sun really whets your appetite for another. The Friday night crowd, as faithful as it was, had its share of Characters. Met Mobile Met Man and Met Cape Man and Met Man Who Feels Need To Lead Cheers, Man were all on the loose and drawing attention to themselves…how come Mr. Met isn't good enough for everybody? Though he didn't wear a costume, I got quite a kick out of the guy sitting next to Jim who insisted Ollie's control problems were for the best because hitting the Marlins three times in one inning intimidated them — as their 7-4 win would indicate.

They only come out at night, I suppose. The Saturday afternoon crowd in the mezzanine wasn't any calmer, just less bizarre, perhaps because the game was bizarre enough. I should qualify this assessment, however, to account for the sighting of what I must term The Four Morons of the Apocalypse. While the Mets were mounting their big lead, a quartet of, well, schmucks in Phillies caps and t-shirts proclaiming in blue and orange lettering CHOKE '07 paraded by with a Mr. Met doll in a noose. Wow, I thought, this Utley crew is really asking for it, both in terms of rocks and garbage (security escorted them out for their own safety) and karma. The Phillies have spent exactly one day alone in first place and your first move is to taunt the team behind them that was still technically alive? Hours later, they got it in spades.

What a bunch of Lohsebags.

You know what kind of day it was? After the no-hitter dissipated and after the top of the eighth ended and while the XM Singalong was touching me, touching you, a gentleman in an American flag t-shirt several rows behind me stood and began to sing, in full operatic splendor, “God Bless America”. I feared we had just invaded Iran. Never got an answer for why he did this. My friend, Jodie, a Saturday Section 10 regular (I think, based on her own reaction to the end of the no-hitter, that she's also my long-lost if non-identical twin sister), said he wasn't some highly cultured Kowalski; she'd never seen him there before. His spontaneous rendition reminded me of how Archie Bunker would attempt to stifle all argument with Meathead by bursting into patriotic song. Except this was actually beautiful — the dude could belt it out. We were all genuinely moved to join in.

“God Bless America,” indeed. When your season stops being over before it's over, you're not shy about invoking Anybody who may have had something to do with it.

Two other Saturday oddities:

• I saw Coop from My Summer Family again. When I say again, I mean as usual. I mentioned seeing her two weeks ago at the final disastrous Phillies game. Well, I ran into her Thursday night. And not only did I see her Friday night, but I was sitting behind her cousin (he was our section's self-appointed cheer squad). Saturday she was sitting two rows in front of me. 54,675 tickets sold and two bloggers wind up within easy phantom high-five distance of one another…again. We agreed that one of us is stalking the other. I assume I'll see her at Shea today. You can be certain I'll be there.

• I was supposed to change at Jamaica to get the train to Woodside on the way to the game but didn't. That may not sound like much, but it was momentous. I've never not gotten off at the right stop for a Mets game. Most of our train assumed we'd get a Woodside platform but we didn't. I kind of knew better — there was no announcement but the digital readout was a great hint. I just didn't act. I saw Woodside whoosh by and I wasn't terribly alarmed. Thus we had to go all the way to Penn Station and then grab a Port Washington train east to Shea.

Don't you see? I willfully, maybe passively ignored the danger signs that indicated I wasn't going to get where I was going the easy way. I let it go so far that I was bumped off-track from the route to my destination when in fact my destiny had plainly been in my own hands. I made it more difficult on myself than it had to be. Yet everything worked out all right in the end.

Sound like any team or season you know?

Getting your bearings when you show up in the middle of a radio broadcast is always hard, and generally at least mildly comical.

So it was with me, back in New York more or less for keeps. The second the plane from Salt Lake City hit tarmac at JFK, I flipped on my radio. Something big was going on — that much was obvious. The crowd was roaring “JOSE! JOSE! JOSE! JOSE!” The crowd sure didn't sound like it was on the wrong end of a 7-1 score. But then Howie and Tom were talking about a fracas, something Jose was in the middle of. Jose Oliva Alomar DiFelice Not Thrown out Bucknor Now at Third JOSE JOSE JOSE JOSE. That's what I was left trying to process, with my ear and the earbud and the radio and my hand and the airplane window making a rather ludicrous sandwich.

Oh my goodness, I thought — have the Mets finally engaged in their first fisticuffs since Pete Harnisch decided Scott Servais's attitude would be improved by some shots to the jaw? I was briefly pleased — it's fairly amazing and somehow faintly unmanly for a baseball team to go 11 years between dust-ups, and Reyes seemed not to have been excused from the proceedings. But then I got paranoid. Maybe things aren't so good after all. Maybe I'm hearing the crowd finally releasing all its emotions because the Marlins are up 4-1 but the Mets are being rather literal about showing some fight.

Nope. As if he'd known I'd be coming in late, Howie Rose rather breathlessly noted that there was a lot going on for a game that was only half-over. The Mets are up 10-0 and John Maine is throwing a no-hitter, he explained.

Oh. OH!

It took forever to get home — JFK to the Van Wyck to the LIE to the BQE, with traffic all the way. I didn't care. The cabbie had the game on, and obligingly turned it up for me. As Maine came closer and closer to history, I found myself fretting. How typical for the Mets' first no-hitter to be a deck instead of a hed. (Newspaper talk, but you get the idea.) One of the first Faith and Fear blog posts I ever wrote in my head was about the aftermath of that impossible-to-imagine feat. After Andino's ball took a funhouse hop off Wright's knee to Reyes' glove, I started wondering if I should stick to the program and unleash that long-ago-composed post, or scrap it for the bigger news of the day. Mike Jacobs struck out as the taxi neared Brooklyn Heights (five outs to go), so I started worrying about jinxes. What if I walk in the door and some Marlin call-up immediately gets a hit? Shouldn't I stay out on the stoop listening to the radio? But that's insane — Maine was recording outs when I was 30,000 feet over the Midwest. And all the time I'm worrying about the Phillies and tomorrow and what it all means, annoyed with myself for being preoccupied with the sideshow of the no-hitter when we were still trying to ram our way back into the big top.

The Mets being the Mets, Maine of course didn't do it — Paul Hoover's little worm-killer won him admission to the Clubhouse of Curses, and Maine had to content himself with a performance that was merely godlike. Paul Hoover, Jeez Louise. Tom McCarthy was going on and on about how the Marlins' lineup was now without Hanley Ramirez and Miguel Cabrera (whose pathetic sloth would probably have gotten him thrown out, had he switched places with Hoover). Tom clearly thought this was of import, but I was shaking my head. Didn't he know it's always the guy you've never heard of — the Kit Pellow or Jimmy Qualls of the roster? Paul Hoover is a 31-year-old journeyman catcher who arrived at the ballpark today with eight career hits. Of course it was going to be him. If you'd told me the Marlins would keep us in the no-no cold with a 45-foot dribbler with two outs in the eighth and showed me the roster, I would have pointed right to Hoover. Because I'd never, ever heard of him.

And you know what? Who cares. Maine pitching a one-hitter, Maine pitching a no-hitter, Anderson Hernandez getting the win in emergency relief in the 23rd inning — the only thing that mattered today was that W. And we got it, and the L from Philadelphia a couple of hours later. (And a much-needed L from San Diego not long after that, with the Padres' postseason celebration was delayed by Tony Gwynn Jr. Baseball doesn't need surrealists — the surreal is built into the very fabric of the game.)

Our season could have ended today, but it didn't. And now matters are clear: Win, and get to play at least one more game. For a team that's battled complacency and a fan base that's struggled with its own expectations, that stark simplicity should concentrate the mind marvelously. Tomorrow is enormously simple and simply enormous.

We rooted like hell. They played like crud.

We the fans may be Mets in every emotional way, but it was proven again Friday night that we the fans cannot hit, hit with power, run, throw, catch and pitch.

And…wait for it…neither can the Mets.

Either way, we're all on the outside looking in now. We are not in first place, which is in and of itself not a crime. I would contend, however, vacating first place two games before the season's end after holding it so seemingly tight for so long should be.

Then again, having to be a part of this team looks like punishment enough from here.

I've made the mistake of flipping on the Mets' flagship radio station during the day this week and being told that Mets fans weren't showing up and weren't showing support. Of course I'm only some guy who's been out there among tens of thousands of Mets fans for three consecutive nights, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but there have plenty of Mets fans at Shea this week and there has been plenty of support. Anybody who thinks this fan base hasn't gotten behind its team to the cusp of the bitter end is clearly looking or listening for a storyline that does not exist.

These fans, of which I was one of 55,298 (more or less), were great last night. With every reason in the world to turn our collective back on the Mets, we didn't. We roared from the first pitch. Even when succeeding pitches proved inadequate, we kept roaring for our team. There was no mass booing, even though there was every reason to produce it…if, in fact, you are the type who is inclined to empty corrosive fluid out of your lungs.

Perhaps it shouldn't be noteworthy that fans of the local team attended the local team's sporting event and cheered enthusiastically for the local team, particularly with the local team tied for first place and time running out. Perhaps it shouldn't be worth noting, but after so many losses in so short a span with such dreadful consequences for the local team's position in the standings, I think it is.

The Mets did not play nearly as well as we rooted. They fell behind, but we rooted for them — hard. They stayed behind, but we rooted for them — harder. I tend to forget that a lot of people who show up to Mets games are relatively uncomplicated people. They don't overthink the issue. They show up and they want their team to win. They don't come up with reasons to be down on them away from the ballpark and they find ways to encourage them once they're there. That's who was at Shea Friday night: Mets fans who wished the Mets would win. It was the best part of this game and maybe this season.

My night began as it almost always does, on the 6:11 to Woodside. As I rode and listened to my Amazin' playlist (you don't wanna know what's on there), I found myself recalibrating the default memory of my fanometer. I was no longer set on 1998, the choke. I clicked forward a notch to 1999, when the circumstances were maybe more dire (seven consecutive losses and a bigger Wild Card lead being blown) but the outcome (win, win, win, a little help) much more rewarding on the final weekend. I realized I was no longer rooting for the 2007 Mets. I was rooting for just the Mets — the institutional Mets who are capable of pulling a 1999, the Mets who give us reason to believe and hope even when they stumble, even when they fall as they did in 1998. I was rooting for the Mets who made me the fan I am today, all of them. It just happened to be 2007 while I was doing it.

I think that's what a lot of the people at Shea Stadium were doing Friday night. The names they wore and chanted and beseeched may have corresponded to those on the field, but this wasn't all about Lo Duca and Beltran and Wright and Reyes and Alou and Green. It wasn't necessarily about Piazza and Alfonzo or Knight and Backman or Agee and Koosman either. It was about being a Mets fan, being in it for better or worse, thinking that worse isn't what this has to be. Thinking that maybe if we do our best for them, they'll do their best for us. If that's a clichéd portrayal of what a Mets fan is, then just say we spent Friday night at Cliché Stadium.

If the Mets did their best, their best isn't very good. Their best hasn't been close to worthwhile for weeks. Maybe these Mets just aren't very good.

I didn't take a train home. My friend for all seasons Jim had parked in the Southfield (they named the lot across Roosevelt this year like a gated community for some reason) and offered me a ride. By the time we pulled out, we were fuming at the result as you'd expect. I'm loyal. Jim's loyal. Jim's so loyal that he eschewed his threat to drink six beers and boo everything in sight so he, too, could root like hell. But our loyalty doesn't cloud our judgment. And as Jim drove and Willie Randolph and David Wright offered their critiques and excuses on Mets Extra, we fumed more.

Jim and I were owed at least one beer for our trouble, so we stopped in a watering hole he knew not far from where he grew up. And after letting loose an ear-steaming monologue probably far more entertaining than anything I am capable of piecing together at the moment, I noticed I had become another cliché: my head was literally on the bar and I was figuratively crying in my beer.

I'm somewhere between my cliché personas now. There are two games left for the second-place Mets just as there are for the first-place Phillies. Those need to be played and I'm still capable of acknowledging that games that aren't yet won or lost are still up for grabs. The Mets could win Saturday. The Phillies could lose. For technical reasons, I will continue to root like hell when I make my fourth consecutive appearance at Shea today. But otherwise, I'm nearly as resigned to the fate of the 2007 Mets as the 2007 Mets indicated they are by their dismal actions on the field Friday night.

If they played the way we root, this thing would have been wrapped up in August.