When you're eternally the underdog, you dream of taking down the favorite. One very thin strand of me is in that position right now, with my alma mater, the University of South Florida, ranked for the very first time ever in the Top 20 of the AP college football poll. This Friday night, they…oh hell, we, the No. 18 team in the country, play West Virginia, No. 5. West Virginia is one of those football schools you've heard of. Making the AP list is hardly cause for their alumni to feel honest-to-god goosebumps this week. The game's in Tampa, but the Bulls are 7-point underdogs. If they lose, it's expected. If they win, the commuter campus I knew as a hotbed of apathy from 1981 to 1985 will go more nuts than it already has for its still youthful program.

This is the kind of underdog vs. favorite matchup I understand intrinsically. Everything I learned and loved about sports from the time I was old enough to distinguish between sides has been wrapped up in pulling for the underdog. My team has overwhelmingly more often than not been the underdog. I just assumed it always would be.

That's definitely how I figured it would play out if the Mets and Phillies ever threw down over any stakes of significance. It's all about where you came in on the movie, I suppose, but when I first paid any real attention to the baseball team from Philadelphia, they were far more Apollo Creed than Rocky Balboa. They were the champs in our division. Except for technically, we weren't really in their division. We weren't in their weight class. We were the lightweight tomato can whose stuff Mickey had thrown out of our locker and onto skid row.

Phillie history is synonymous with futility, I'm sure you've heard. They sure were futile when I first came upon them in 1969, a horrendous fifth-place team that only the expansion Expos kept out of last. They changed stadiums, changed uniforms, changed personnel, but the only tangible change in their performance all that movement brought them in the early '70s was a change from fifth to sixth. They began, however, to rise noticeably in 1974, the same year the Mets had their first losing season since I'd begun watching them in '69. They finished third. We finished fifth.

It would signal a lifelong pattern: The Mets had been good, the Phillies had been bad; the Phillies were getting good, the Mets were getting worse. They'd flip and flop for the next three decades, barely touching on their respective ways up and down. Oh, sometimes they'd both suck simultaneously, but that's not of much use to anybody.

The Mets and Cubs had a great recurring rivalry that even flared up during a Wild Card race once the two had been separated as Easterners. The Mets and Cardinals competed closely as a matter of course for several seasons. The Mets and Pirates duked it out once or twice. The Mets would go on to do memorable battle with the Braves. As documented monthly in this space, the Mets actually spent a year in genuine pursuit of the Marlins.

But none of those teams played anywhere near the Mets. The Phillies did. Thus, the rub. Wouldn't it be great, I thought as the Phillies rode roughshod over the N.L. East in the late 1970s and the Mets made themselves comfortable in its basement, if these two geographically aligned franchises went at it? I mean really went at it? When I was in high school, everything was Red Sox-Yankees this, Yankees-Red Sox that. I could read a map. I knew Philadelphia was closer to New York than Boston was. I also knew that New York was a National League town on hiatus.

Wouldn't it be great if we had a real Mets-Phillies rivalry?

That was my thinking in the winter of 1978-79 (post-Bucky Dent, not coincidentally). I became mildly obsessed with the idea that someday the Mets would ride the escalator up the National League East, past the Expos and the Cubs and the Cardinals and the Pirates and at last be pounding on the Phillies' door. The Phillies of Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton and Bob Boone and Larry Bowa and Garry Maddox and Greg Luzinski and, somehow, Tug McGraw and, all of a sudden, Pete Rose…they were so smug after finishing first three years in a row, leaving us a combined 76 games from first place. But someday they'd be taken down by my Mets. My Mets of Mazzilli and Youngblood and Swan and Stearns and Flynn and Henderson and Skip Lockwood, a better closer any day than that lousy turncoat McGraw.

I really wanted a Mets-Phillies conflict to explode. And if it did, I truly believed we would prevail.

It didn't happen. It never came close to happening. I imagined it was happening at a crucial juncture of the 1980 season when the surprising Mets, in fourth place and on the fringes of the race that August, braced for a five-game series at Shea versus the big bad Phillies. Philadelphia wasn't in first at the time, but they would be any minute with a mighty assist from us. They stomped all over the Mets, taking five of five (40 to 12) and ending the whole Magic Is Back illusion in one cruel weekend's worth of flippin' cold reality check. Philly would win a World Series, their first, that October. The Mets would have their day a half-dozen years later, but by then the Phillies were a footnote to the proceedings. By 1986, I'd forgotten all about my fantasy feud. Nearby or not, the Phillies had ceased to matter where the Mets were concerned, even in my mind.

Reading George Vecsey the other day brought it all back. Here finally, he wrote, were the two potential pennant race pairings from the Great Northeast together at once: Yankees and Red Sox, as usual, and Mets and Phillies, first time ever. I suddenly remembered I had wanted this when I was 15, 16, 17 years old. I wanted this when I was looking up five spots in the standings to see the Phillies lording it over us. I wanted this when Mike Schmidt filmed a soft drink commercial in which he swatted home runs while a distraught generic catcher with blue and orange piping around his sleeve cuffs looked on in total dumbfoundery (while Schmitty was “Turning 7 Up,” we were finishing 24 out). I wanted this when we were the underdogs and they were the perennial favorites.

It never, ever occurred to me I would get it when we were on top and they would have to come after us. Once we became the kind of team that could be in first place in late September, I was never looking for any kind of rivalry.

Nevertheless, it came looking for us. By losing convincingly to Washington Monday night, we assured ourselves, after 46 seasons of doing no more than nodding and maybe exchanging some misdelivered mail, of our first no-holds-barred, all-the-marbles, down-to-the-wire pennant race with the Philadelphia Phillies. There will be no riding this thing out, no falling on the ball or taking one knee. When the margin is two games with six to play, you can talk all you want about destiny in your own hands and “just win, baby,” but there's no way you're not sweating the out-of-town scoreboard. The way we have pitched of late, we can't afford to be only Mets fans. Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday we are red-hot Braves fans because that's who plays the Phillies. There's a pretty good chance we'll be diehard Nats fans come Friday for the same reason.

The Phillies don't have Mike Schmidt anymore. There are nights when it feels like they have five or six of him and it scares me Schmidtless. On the other hand, we're not exactly a bunch of Mazzes and Hendus over here — though we could probably use Skip Lockwood right about now. We can win this thing. We can lose this thing. They can grab this thing if we're not careful. Even if we are, they might.

Approximately 110 miles from Shea Stadium to Citizens Bank Park. Six days from today to the end of the season. Two wins buffer us from them. We have to hang on to at least one of them.

Nope, definitely not the way I pictured it.

The final homestand is at hand. These seven games, starting tonight, will determine how many/if any games beyond them might be played in 2007. I have a suggestion designed to make the most of our final-week home field advantage.

Don't anger Shea.

It's been a matter of curiosity all season that a team with the best road record in all of baseball (47-34) has been only moderately successful at home. The rule is kick ass when you bat last and maintain when you're away. The Mets, being the Mets, have turned this directive on its head and made life just that much harder on themselves. Entering the series-opener with Washington, they're 40-34 at Shea Stadium, almost certainly guaranteeing they will have a better record on the road than at home.

There isn't another contender or quasi-contender in the National League that can say that. It just isn't done.

Why has this happened? Because the fans are inconsiderate of their favorite millionaires' feelings? Because the horde of media is that much more massive? Because the players are nagged by their significant others before leaving for work and are thus distracted? Because sometimes anomalies occur?

All mildly plausible explanations, I suppose. But I have my own.

Shea Stadium is pissed off. It's cranky. It's hurt. And it's taking it out on the Mets the only way it knows how — by not being home-field-advantageous to its home team.

For this homestand, Mets management needs to tone down the Citi Field promotion. No more DiamondVision plugs. No more Preview Center. No more “let's get it done!” You don't need to advertise the wonders of Citi Field this week. Citi Field is in plain sight. Its obvious and impressive progress is its best advertisement.

By hyping it as much as you're doing right now, you're hurting Shea's feelings at the worst time possible.

Bad move. This is no time to tell our comrade-in-arms, our best ally, our oldest friend that we can't wait to place him on the curb for recycling. We need him. We need him desperately.

Should we manage a victory tonight, we are somehow tied with Arizona for best record in the N.L. It's almost slipped my mind, but we can still be the 1-seed and have HFA throughout the LDS and LCS should we make it that far. It didn't help us in Game Seven last year and our record would not indicate it's an asset this year, but those factors notwithstanding, wouldn't you rather more games be played at Shea than somewhere else?

I don't know how Shea is doing it, but Shea may be conspiring against us. Why should he display loyalty to us if management is not loyal to him? Why should he care about going out in a blaze of glory if he is reminded not so subtly that, like the merchandise in the chop shops across 126th St., he will soon be stripped down and sold for parts?

I'm also guessing Shea's sensibilities are offended by the desperation the organization shows in its unseemly appeals for enthusiasm. Shea remembers when “MAKE SOME NOISE!” was an Astrodome conceit. That much Shea has probably gotten used to and sucked up, but what's with this steady drumbeat of celebrity nonsense on DiamondVision? Kevin James may be bona fide, but he's wearing a cap promoting a move that's already out of theaters and he's got the cadence all wrong. He's sacrificing the good of “LET'S GO METS!” for a cheap laugh. Chris Rock has wavered back and forth between New York teams his whole life. He looks uncomfortable leading our cheers. Robin Williams has no connection to the Mets save for a Comic Relief appearance in the booth seventeen years ago. Adam Sandler is a Yankees fan, for crissake.

This is like the sainted “Let's Go Mets!” video being tainted by appearances from Scott Shannon and Mark McEwen and J.J. Kennedy, disc jockeys whose only interest in the Mets was the publicity it could lend their careers. Shea can smell such desperation. He's downwind from the Iron Triangle. He's smelled everything. The only non-baseball celebrities Shea needs to hear from on DiamondVision are the late Curly Howard and Peter Finch. The rest of us can handle LET'S GO METS! are on our own.

I tuned in early to the Phillies-Nationals game yesterday specifically to watch the farewell ceremonies to RFK. I don't know what I was expecting, but even with no expectations it was underwhelming. They rounded up seven 1960s Senators to trot out with current Nats to their positions. They couldn't find nine. Except for Frank Howard and Dick Bosman, the identities of most of them strained even my trivial impulses, though this was obviously an internal matter among Washingtonians. Still, they were remembering a blatantly unsuccessful franchise that played there a grand total of ten years more than 35 years ago while the current franchise has been in residence all of three years sans pennant. Plus RFK is a pretty beat facility, to be kind.

But ya know what? I was moved. They were saying goodbye to a ballpark and it was sweet. I'm always watching out for the soul of a stadium and RFK got, at the very least, a classy acknowledgement of its existence. It will continue to exist for non-baseball purposes. It was never intended as more than a refugee encampment for the Nationals anyway.

One year and four days from now, September 28, 2008, it will be our turn. No doubt the memory machine is already cranking behind the scenes and I'm confident the Mets will do a worthy job when the moment of departure arrives. But this week, fraught with postseason implications, is special beyond the standings. This is the last homestand of the second-to-last season of Shea, in essence the final “regular” or “normal” final homestand of a season we'll ever have here, the last time we'll leave it with the certainty that we'll come back to it next spring. Let us proceed with dignity this week. Given the stakes, let us cheer our team on toward better things and let us remind Shea Stadium that it is still the family homestead.

Ballparks, I'm convinced, have feelings, too.

Al Michaels: And it all comes down to just one man.

Bob Costas: Unfortunately, that one man is Squeak Scolari.

Public Address Announcer: Now shooting, No. 23, Squeak “Little Bitch” Scolari.

The above dialogue from the funniest and most misunderstood sports movie ever, BASEketball, came to mind Sunday afternoon as the bottom of the eleventh was about to begin. Gary Cohen set the scene by unintentionally channeling Bob Costas. Paraphrasing here:

It's 7-6, Mets, and look who's coming on to try to save it — Aaron Sele!

He may as well have called him Squeak.

We'll skip the other names Mets fans must have been formulating for their relievers so as to maintain the thin veneer of being a family blog, but Cohen's intonation was, essentially, you're not going to believe this, but Willie Randolph thinks he's going to escape this impending disaster with a washed-up starter turned discredited long reliever, someone he's used all of three times in September, someone he avoided calling on in a dire situation three nights earlier despite his having warmed up that very inning and someone who pitches almost exclusively when the Mets are far ahead or, as is more often the case, far behind.

If Gary didn't say that, that's clearly what he (and we) had in mind. Entering Sunday, Aaron Sele had made 32 appearances as a Met and the Mets were 9-23 when he pitched. So you don't think it was all a coincidence, Aaron Sele held a 5.29 ERA for 2007 from the beginning of the season to September 17 — six games earlier, which was the last time Randolph saw fit to use him. It's been a year plainly worthy of Kenny “Squeak” Scolari, BASEketball's resident luckless nebbish.

Except that after running through six relievers in five innings, Willie was down to his whaddayagonnado? corps, and Sele was the best of that lot. For the first time, in the 155th game of the season, Aaron Sele did what he had to do. Let the scorebook show…

One pitch to Hanley Ramirez: 6-3.

Two pitches to Dan Uggla: 8 (though not without a little Endy effort).

Either not knowing a good thing when he had it goin' on or deciding not to press his luck, Willie went to his ninth pitcher of the day, lefty Scott Schoeneweis, to go after a lefty batter, Jeremy Hermida. Schoeneweis, whose situational Squeakness has been largely ignored in the wake of Guillermo Mota's total Squeakness, needed but two pitches to induce a grounder to first.

The save was Schoeneweis'. The holiest of holds was Sele's. The sigh of relief from one end of Metsopotamia to another was audible.

Three wins in a row for the worst first-place team we've ever rooted for, the worst first-place team to maintain its lofty position for 131 days and counting, the worst first-place team to pick up ground on the scariest second-place team any fan base has ever felt breathe hotly down its collective neck from no closer than 1-1/2…now 2-1/2 back.

Baseball is cyclical in so many ways, as a freaky omen of sorts reminded me. Late Saturday night I listened to the Rockies beat the Padres on XM. When it was over, I was turning the dial back to Home Plate, their baseball news channel, planning to shut off the satellite radio altogether. Except I heard Gary Cohen's voice. It was one of their MLB Classics, from October 1, 2000, the final game of that season. It was a thirteen-inning affair between the Mets and the Expos, though other than the length and the Mets winning on an errant throw, there was nothing particularly classic about what was otherwise a tuneup for the coming playoffs. Nevertheless, I was at that game (with Jason and Emily), so I took a special interest in listening to it seven years later.

When I picked up the rebroadcast, the Mets were going down in the sixth to a middle reliever named Guillermo Mota. And when Gary and Bob (a chill in itself hearing him) were running down the out-of-town scoreboard, the probables for the important Seattle-Anaheim game not yet started were Aaron Sele for the Mariners and Scott Schoeneweis for the Angels.

The record compels me to report first-year manager Mike Sciosica opted for righty Mark Petkovsek instead of Schoeneweis (and lost), but still…hearing those three names on a Mets broadcast from a whole other era, none of them of more than the most passing interest at the time…it rated a “wow!” in the wee hours of Sunday morning for sure.

Keeping with the baseball-is-cyclical theme, is it possible the cycle of losing that was going to break us has passed with us having lost only one game off our ragingly adequate lead in a week's time? It doesn't feel like a three-game winning streak, but once more, truthiness doesn't matter here. The legitimate truth is the Mets found a way to win on Friday and Saturday and, at last, Sunday — despite no help from the relatively dependable Feliciano, Heilman (who jiggled his right shoulder after every pitch like something's terribly wrong with him) and Wagner (spasm-free but rusty) but because of loads of help from the generally dismissed and/or despised Sosa, Mota, Smith, Sele and Schoeneweis.

We ain't too proud to beg. We begged the Nationals to not roll over against the Phillies, and they didn't…even though we are hours from begging them to lay down like dogs at Shea for three straight nights. And we ain't too proud to accept a St. Bernard's keg of bourbon, first aid and outs from the Treacherous Three no matter how many times we've cursed out mutts like Mota, Schoeneweis and Sele. It's late September. Everybody who can contribute meaningfully is welcomed back into the family with open arms.

It's not much of a formula for winning to have John Maine strike out nine, leave at the first sign of stress in the sixth and then shuttle arms in and out like Ollie North dealing with the Iranians and the Contras, but if it works, it works. It's not ideal to have Carlos Beltran smack a knee into a wall in the midst of his second game-saving catch in three days, but you gotta hope he rubs some dirt on it and is rarin' to go sooner than later. It's not inspiring to hear the undisputed Hit Streak King tell Kevin Burkhardt that playing every day has him gassed and looking for Red Bull, but Moises, baby, you had the shank of summer to not play. All hands on deck.

Here's a worry I'm ready to release into the atmosphere because it seems valid despite no current trend in its favor: we're gonna stop hitting any minute now because it's exactly what the Mets do. They've been able to afford to indulge in deadly round after round of bullpen roulette because the offense has clicked to record-breaking proportions. The Mets have scored at least seven for six straight days. They've never done that before. Who here thinks they'll keep that up? There was a similar stint in August (also when we were playing mostly second-division clubs) that we lit up the runs column. Then we stopped. You know the relief pitching will tighten up the second Alou's streak stops, the moment Paulie remembers his hand hurts, the very night neither of the key Carloses can any longer swing, when even David isn't of all that much Value. And then we'll be off on another thrilling baseball adventure.

Just a horrible hunch. Hope I'm wrong. I find it better to articulate my darkest fears and then root like hell that I look silly in retrospect than keep it all bottled up. Better for me to feel silly than Sele to be Squeak…so to speak.

The scoreboard presented a fact all through Saturday's game: the Mets were beating the Marlins. But my considerable gut told me different: the Mets are in trouble.

This is what this season and this September have come down to — feeling the game instead of following it. Even though the Mets led and were never in anything remotely resembling trouble against the Marlins, I never watched or listened calmly, not for a single batter, not until the 27th Marlin out was recorded.

The truth is the Mets won easily; that's a fact. The truthiness of the matter — and isn't that what Stephen Colbert has been teaching us to feel for two years? — is nothing feels easy anymore.

That a problem? Only in that it reflects the state of the Mets heading into their final eight days of the regular season, hopefully not their final eight days of 2007 baseball altogether.

Devoid of context, Saturday gave us a glorious game, featuring the strikeout stylings of Oliver Perez, a power burst by the almost but never quite forgotten Ramon Castro and some fairly Valuable David Wright action. Moises Alou continues to set the Mets' hitting streak record and the Mets have something that is technically a winning streak.

In context…phew!

All I could do, for the most part, was count down from 27 to 1 and cross every digit that flexes that Ollie was up to a complete game or the modern-day equivalent: an eight-inning masterpiece. It's both the truth and the truthiness that says relying on the Mets' bullpen to not lose a Mets' win is very, very dangerous these days.

Total props to the Damned Duo of Guillermo Mota and Scott Schoeneweis from Friday night for bailing their team out after a lengthy rain delay (and after Pedro Martinez bailed himself out with those frozen-custard strikeouts of Cody Ross and Miguel Olivo). They reversed a biblical flood of bad fortune, no doubt about it. But do you expect anybody in this pen — those two in particular — to replicate such competence on consecutive days? That's why I was rooting for Randolph and Peterson to forget this is 2007 and pretend it was 1968 when it was still legal to send a starter out to begin the ninth.

Failing that, the best we could hope for in these Wagnerless times was Heilman, a five-run lead and a lousy three outs. The most frightening image of this game was the recurring shot of the Mets' bullpen: all those sorry pitchers lingering on directors' chairs set up down the third base line; it looked like a casting call for the gates of hell. Heilman struggled to throw 24 pitches but escaped the fire down below. It was only the five-run lead that made me confident he wouldn't do us in. And I consider myself a solid supporter of Aaron Heilman.

Tim McCarver (who is a back spasm to listen to when not leavened by the genial grace notes of Ralph Kiner) did echo a point that had been hatching in my head these past couple of days, that this is not the way you want to go into a postseason. Just get to the postseason, of course, and then we'll quibble, but boy…what a mess in terms of health this roster is. Beltran was out there despite the bruise to the knee he took Friday. Delgado rushed back at probably well less than 100 percent. Lo Duca's been hanging in there with a battered hand. Green was hit today. You can hear Castillo's knees barking through the television. Alou is always one stiff breeze from dismemberment. If you can't admire this team for the way it's been playing, at least admire that many of them are playing at all.

They are on the field, they are trying and, for two straight days, they are succeeding. It should feel good. Most I still feel anxiety. It's so different from early in the season when the Mets would be trailing by some disturbing margin and I'd think, “all we gotta do is get a coupla guys on.” These days I look at a five-run lead over a last-place team and wonder how we can possibly avoid blowing it. The truthiness — the feeling surrounding this club — is still quite shaky.

Good thing the standings reflect only the truth.

It's been a long time since I had no idea what the New York Mets were up to. Sure, there's been a game here and a game there that saw me nod off in the middle innings or when it was the 12th with no end in sight, games that left me to wake up the next morning wondering what happened. But that was easy enough to repair — just pad on over to the other room and pull up My Yahoo.

This is different. I'm in a Mets-free world. We're coming to the end of three days in Milan, and staying in a hotel on the outskirts of town, in what is basically a forlorn office park. The hotel itself is more like a slightly upscale hostel. It has Internet access, but getting it is mind-boggling: Scratch off a card, enter an ID, put your cellphone number in the Web form, get an SMS message on your phone, enter that as your password. This, I suppose, is the Italian urge to make straightforward things extremely complicated. I mean, really. Why not have the password delivered by carrier pigeon, or materialize in the entrails of a spring lamb? My cellphone is currently a borrowed one with a SIM card bought in London. My phone number? That remains somewhat theoretical. I managed to send Emily text messages, but neither her replies nor that password ever showed up in return. Some combination of the UK code minus the London prefix plus or minus a zero would do the trick, but only if you are much smarter than I am. I fussed with the card for a while, fussed with the front desk, and then gave up. (Besides, not to be disloyal, but staying up until 4 a.m. was kind of messing with my ability to be a decent employee, which is why I'm over here.) No Net. No Mets.

Yesterday morning the colleagues with Blackberrys (which between the nervous editors and IT guys would be everybody else) gave me the crushing news of Miami Part 1. This morning, though, is our free day. No info. So I went to Venice.

I didn't have to go that far — they have Internet cafes in Milan. But I wasn't inclined to spend my free day in Milan, which has some nice things but is fairly unlovely overall — there's the Duomo and a lot of buildings that have that important, stolid Federal Reserve look, but otherwise it's a gritty, working town rather than a tourist spot. There was Lake Como, where I could hobnob with George Clooney and act out stilted dialogue from Attack of the Clones, but tomorrow we'll be in Lausanne, which I'm told looks somewhat similar. Venice was three hours away by train — far, but I've spent 38 years on Earth without ever seeing it, so who can guarantee I'll get another chance? And there's the whole global-warming thing.

I'm happy I got up and navigated the train system with the minimum competence required. Because Venice is soooo worth it. Every street is interesting. I've been here about three hours, and you do not get tired of walking over bridges or darting down little calles or just looking at colorful houses next to canals and wondering what it would be like to live there.

But until I got to this Net cafe, Venice brought me no closer to the Mets. Instead, I was left fussing and worrying and trying to extract portents from random sightings: There's a cat sitting on that railing above the canal! Right in my view from lunch! I like cats! Greg Prince loves cats! The Mets must have won!

And hey, they did. On the other hand, if the cat had plunged into the canal, I suppose I could have just written off October. And maybe followed my furry messenger to the bottom of the Adriatic.

Doesn't it seem like the Mets have been playing one endless game since Monday, with the score Opponents 39 Mets 36, heading to the top of the 47th? They've been in a mostly empty stadium that isn't Shea; the fans are mostly Mets fans; they score early but it doesn't seem to matter; they give up runs, they give back runs, they have runs tacked on to them; they are thrown out, they fall down, they are carried off; we endure total and complete apoplexy…yet because the other team isn't much good either, somehow they sometimes win.

Oh — and sometimes it rains.

As familiar as one game atop another on this numbing road trip has felt, however, sometimes you see something you've never seen before.

***

These are the strangest of possible words:

“Martinez to Mota to Schoeneweis.”

Trio of Met arms, two for the birds,

Martinez and Mota and Schoeneweis

A starter whose rehab's complete

Two pen men we urge take a seat

Friday night in Miami they accomplished their feat

“Martinez to Mota to Schoeneweis.”

***

And sometimes you see something else you've never seen before.

***

Twenty-three was iconic

Like Junior Griffey's nerve tonic

No Met had ever managed to hit in more

Cleon started the tale

He'd share it with Mike Vail

They established a streak

That others would seek

To break but fail

Until Huuuuu-bee!

Went twenty-four consecutive

Until Huuuuu-bee!

Went to the plate and was selec-u-tive

Hubie Brooks set the hit streak mark

Occasionally would hit 'em from the park

Our man Huuuuu-bee!

He hit in twenty-four…

Along came Piazza

Stronger than a matzoh

There wasn't much this catcher couldn't do

Batting was his forté

Like hearing Hendrix play

While swinging for fences

He upset defenses

Ev-e-ry day

Mike Piaaahhh-zza!

Went twenty-four consecutive

Mike Piaaahhh-zza!

Became the record's co-executive

Mike Piazza tied the hit streak mark

Occasionally would hit 'em from the park

Along with Huuuuu-bee!

He hit in twenty-four…

Now there's a big old asterisk

By the name we all know as David Wright

Dave streaked across two seasons

But for fairly plain reasons

A two-year streak simply doesn't count

It's not the Wright amount

Moises Alou is

Not some Johnny Lewis

Or any random garden-variety Met

He healed his aching quad

Drained base hits from his bod'

At forty-one

He's having fun

Where no Met's trod

Moises Ahhhhh-loo!

Went twenty-five consecutive

Moises Ahhhhh-loo!

Has issued a direc-u-tive:

“Brooks and Piazza…they were fine;

But the Met hit streak mark you see is mine”

Moises Alou

Has hit in twenty-five

(Straight games!

Straight games!

Moises Ahhhhh-loo!

Has hit in twenty-five

Straight games!

Straight games!

Alou's the guy…

Who hardens his hands…

Oh gross!

Hit more!

Hit more!)

Sincere regards to the inspirational figures of Franklin P. Adams and Terry Cashman, parodied with affection in this space, I assure them.