I'd say Vienna's lovely, but it isn't really. Its great architecture is cheek by jowl with a lot of Soviet-style apartment blockery (this is pretty much Eastern Europe) and when you look closely you realize a lot of the city is chipped and flaked and graffiti'ed and grotty.

But it does have a lot of bridges. The Donaukanal is thick with them. Should I jump from Friedensbrucke? Rossauerbrucke? They're far from my hotel — how about Schwedenbrucke or Aspernbrucke? My body can wash up in Romania or some godforsaken place. I'll be fished out by some gypsy who'll look at the retired numbers on the forlorn t-shirt that encases my bloated, fish-eaten corpse and gasp, “A Mets fan?!” She'll make the sign of the evil eye and exclaim, “I'm surprised he pulled off killing himself!”

Sigmund Freud plied his trade here. I imagine if I visited some bearded successor of his, before I could rattle on about mother issues or toilet training he'd squint at me over his glasses and say, “You root for ze New York Mets. No vunder you are unhappy. You should try ze Yankees.”

Ah ha ha ha. I hope I'm still laughing Thursday, when we fall out of first place. And I'm not even trying to maneuver the baseball gods into a reverse jinx — I'm as certain the Mets will fall into second place two games from now as I am that the sun will rise.

Two of my colleagues on this trip are hardcore Phillies fans. At first their tentative optimism was balanced by their own freightload of bad karma — this was obviously just one more way for the Phils to torture their faithful. Since the Mets went to D.C. things have changed. This morning we had to be downstairs at 4:30 a.m. for taxis to Heathrow. I had woken up and stared in glum dis-disbelief at the 9-8 score, then watched Philadelphia and St. Louis stay tied until it was time to get a cab. The Phillies fans, Blackberrys in hand, would update me and the other Met fan on this trip as we trudged through the endless corridors of Heathrow, with our trip's lone San Francisco Giants fan providing Greek chorus.

It went something like this:

PHILLIES FAN #1: Still 4-4.

PHILLIES FAN #2: Man, it could be one and a half. Incredible.

[trudging, listening to polite, baffling British announcements]

ME: Who's in for St. Louis?

PHILLIES FAN #1: Isringhausen.

ME: Fuck me. Forget it.

[trudging, swearing quietly]

PHILLIES FAN #2: One and a half.

GIANTS FAN: That really sucks.

[trudging and brooding]

PHILLIES FAN #1: 7-4 Phils!

PHILLIES FAN #2: Amazing. Simply amazing.

ME: Where the fuck is our gate? Fucking Mets! FUCK!

METS FAN #2: Fuck.

GIANTS FAN: That really sucks.

PHILLIES FAN #2: One and a half. Amazing.

It was every bit as fun as it sounds. Jesus Christ I hate baseball. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to find Vienna's highest bridge.

It has come to this: A person can't take a nap without the Mets giving up six runs.

No kidding. It was a scooch past 8:30 when I curled up and closed my eyes on the couch, feeling relieved that John Maine hadn't given up the big hit in the fourth; secure he was positively reinforced after Lo Duca and Endy each drove home a run to extend our advantage to 7-3; and suddenly drowsy. It wasn't my intention to nod off, but at least I could snooze peacefully.

I woke up around 9:30 and the TV said it was Nationals 9 Mets 7 in the seventh. Then I just stared at the score strip at the top of the screen.

How on…

What?

Great meeting, guys.

Thankfully those few winks have come in handy because it allowed me the energy to stay glued to the Phillies-Cardinals marathon in St. Louis and, after hearing Philadelphia win it in the fourteenth (why couldn't the Cardinals have kept Ronnie Belliard?), I'm fully revived so I can stay up all night and panic. But panicking is such a short-term solution. Why panic when you can plan?

My plan is we might as well get this thing over with.

I know it would be more convenient if we all went to the respective bridges nearest us, but we should really jump as a group. More impactful that way — makes a bigger SPLASH!, if you will.

Jason predictably let me know he'd prefer the Brooklyn Bridge, but c'mon, that's a cliché, and besides, he left the country rather than observe first-hand our erstwhile seven-game lead melt to 1-1/2 (coward).

I was thinking the Whitestone because it's closest to Shea, or even the Triborough for its Metropolitan-connectivity symbolism — think about how the Mets have historically been about building bridges — but I say we all meet at Riis Park in the Rockaways and hike to the middle of the Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Bridge. Shouldn't our last act as Mets fans at least bring a little attention to our sainted manager? Maybe veterans committee members read the wire service stories about how the Mets' ineptitude literally killed us and think “shame that people take baseball so seriously…hey, that's right…Hodges was a really great player and manager…let's finally put him in the Hall.”

Unlike the 2007 season, our action will not have been for naught.

So do we leap right away? Or do we wait until we're technically in second place? Maybe hold off until we're eliminated from Wild Card contention, too? Oh, that's coming. I hadn't really paid much attention to how our record stacked up versus the consolation contenders, but it turns out we're tied with San Diego. Thus, if…HA!…when the Phillies race by us, we have no cushion. Except for the beckoning waters of Rockaway Inlet.

Oh crap. I just remembered that I have tickets for a bunch of games next week and I'd hate for them to go to waste. I'm gonna have to wait out the remainder of the regular season now. Well, it won't take long. Only twelve left. And on the off chance the Mets right themselves and win another game, maybe they'll win yet another and somehow remain atop the division. Or perhaps the Phillies will lose again. Doesn't seem likely; they're 6-0 since Thursday and we're 0-5 since Friday. But you never know. Besides, I'd hate to waste those tickets.

All right, we won't jump yet. But I'll start counting out quarters for any tolls we might encounter on our road to doom. I don't have EZPass.

Neither, as it turns out, do the Mets.

Brian Lawrence has been DFA'd. Best transaction agate since Chan Ho Park was invited for a long walk off that short pier. It doesn't compare to the hypothetical unconditional release of Guillermo Mota into the Pine Barrens (one can dream), but it's nice to see somebody get scapegoated when scapegoating is clearly called for.

It's easy pickin's to pick on the emergency starter du jour, yet there was no good reason that this failed experiment in pitching was a) called back up after the New Orleans season ended and b) handed the ball at a time of year when there are all kinds of arms floating around the organization (such as the left one belonging to Dave Williams, whose entire body has been brought up in Lawrence's place).

Brian Lawrence: 29 innings, 43 hits, 6.83 ERA. Good night, funny man.

Where were you one year ago tonight? In a very good place, I imagine.

Can you believe twelve months have passed since the Mets clinched their first division title since 1988? It was exactly a year ago, September 18, 2006, that Cliff Floyd cradled a fly ball from Josh Willingham and turned the Mets into official champs of the East. They began playing championship baseball April 3 and didn't let up until the third out of the ninth inning of that 149th game. Clinching was a formality…a very happy formality.

You might recall the Mets played hung over for most of the two weeks that remained in 2006, with Pedro struggling and succumbing to his pain and Willie resting his battered regulars. They went an indifferent 6-7 while preparing for the playoffs, finishing '06 with a record of 97-65 — fifth-best in franchise history and very fine on its own merit, if just a touch disappointing since they were on track for 100 wins much of the season.

97-65 looks very good from here.

Monday night was significant historically because the 2007 Mets fell to 83-66. Besides the obvious and urgent matter of the current standings, that record means:

• The Mets will not equal or top their previous year's won-lost record, the first time a Mets team will say that since 2003. There was a time when I thought the 2007 Mets were a near lock to better their 2006 total. It didn't happen. They do, however, remain eligible to extend their postseason further than their immediate predecessors, of course, assuming they…well, you know.

• From the night after the 2006 clinching through Monday night's utter embarrassment in Washington, the Mets happen to have played the equivalent of a full season and have posted a 162-game record of 89-73. That's a mark that's borderline Wild Card at best most years, one that probably needs to be exceeded in calendar year 2007 to clinch a second consecutive division title.

At the risk of Lou Brown-ing an unknowable equation, can the Mets win seven of their final thirteen against three sorry-ass opponents (to reach 90-72) while hoping the rampaging Phillies don't go better than 8-4 (halting their progress at 89-73)? Should it have ever come to this? The answer to the first question is of course and the second is of course not.

When the Mets are in an awful way the way they have been since Friday, I find it impossible to envision they will win another game. They won't win tomorrow; they won't win next week, they won't win next year; they won't win ever. Thus far that recurring anxiety has never reached fruition; the Mets eventually win another game. But there is nothing to take from the previous two games — combined score of 22-10, combined error accumulation a team record ten — to quell those darkest fears on a rational level.

After watching the Mets garner four runs and give back three times as many to the Nationals, do you have any confidence they'll ever win again?

A little extreme, I grant you. This division, if it hasn't been already, won't be settled on the inadequate shoulders of Brian Lawrence, for whom a cozy unconditional release just has to be waiting. There's not much to recommend the cavalcade of inadequacy that followed him to the mound, but I guess you can't go clogging the waiver wire all at once.

You know who's been kicking ass on a regular basis for most of the past five-plus weeks? Besides the Phillies when they play the Mets? We have one player who's been on fire dating to August 10: 11 homers, 39 runs batted in, a .336 batting average and six steals along with Gold Glove defense across 35 games. And his name isn't David Wright (the Gold Glove part should have tipped you off). Ever since emerging from his abdominal miseries, Carlos Beltran has been every bit the Most Valuable Player candidate he was the summer before this one, before he ran into that fence in Houston in the service of a spectacular catch.

Does anyone even notice how good he is? After his blast in the first inning at RFK, he's tied with Wright for the team lead in homers (30) and has the most RBI (101). It's only news when he doesn't come up with a ball; I laughed in amazement after he misplayed Rollins' liner Saturday because one voice in 55,477 was heard to bellow “GO BACK TO HOUSTON!” Thank the good lord and Scott Boras that Carlos Beltran came here from Houston. When he isn't hurt (which it's easy to forget and insipid to dismiss that he was earlier this year), he is by far the best player this club has, the best everyday player this franchise has ever had.

We wouldn't have clinched a year ago tonight without a lot of contributions and if we are to clinch in the next two weeks, with whatever record we attain, the same will be said. To me, the undersung common denominator plays center, bats cleanup and doesn't say all that much.

In 2006: 41 homers, 116 runs batted in, 127 runs scored, 18 for 21 stealing. In 2007: he'll be a little short on the power side, but is running more now that he doesn't have a quad bugging him, and he'll probably earn another defensive award (earn it, not just accept it). With Delgado out, he has flourished in the cleanup spot for the most part. And he just does it so quietly, which, despite the Mets wallowing in one of their periodic dregs when they are said to need more holler from their main men, I find pleasing.

I couldn't prove it, but I believe Carlos Beltran to be the Met most like me in terms of temperament (to be fair, I could be a lot like Brian Lawrence, but as Crash Davis said about reincarnation, nobody wants to believe they were Joe Schmo). Remember when he showed up for his first Mets spring? He made this big point of inviting David and Jose along for his Gold's Gym workouts, the ones that earned him his 119 large. That was after standing up at his introductory press conference and christening his new workplace the New Mets (he wasn't wrong, incidentally). It's obvious after watching him for nearly three years that Carlos Beltran was trying really hard to be outgoing from the get-go and that it didn't fit him well, that it's his default mode to keep to himself.

That's something I would do, albeit without the grace and athleticism and the seven-year contract. I find myself at parties and the like where I don't know many people, and I'm determined to socialize my ass off precisely because it's something I hate to do (unless the party is a division-clinching), but maybe if I force myself, I'll get better at it or at least relax. I'll keep up the aggressive chatter for about five minutes before I realize what a fraud I am and then I alternately sip my soda and glance at my watch for an eternity. I'm like one of those speed horses at the track: I break out of the gate well but I know I'm going to finish well off the pace if I finish at all.

Wright or Reyes may reach Beltran's level on a consistent basis someday, but they're not there yet. Reyes, whether it's physical exhaustion or addlemindedness, has regressed. Wright is close, but you can just feel him pressing. I'd love to believe they're learning from their older, more accomplished teammate. I have no idea if they are. Delgado gave Beltran's shyness cover in 2006 if we are to believe the urban mythology of the Met clubhouse. With the other Carlos in a funk all year and unavailable of late, I don't know if Beltran is doing more than showering and dressing after games or if he's comparing batting stances with his younger teammates. The guy's emerging as a serious Hall of Fame candidate (seven 100-RBI seasons in the eight seasons in which he's played at least 86% of his team's games). It would be a shame if he kept it all to himself. But it may have to be good enough that he shares it with us day in, day out.

Statgeek dream site Baseball Prospectus recalculates the playoff odds after every game. Using some kind of amazing stats, they simulate the rest of the baseball season a million times, and tell you what percentage of the time each team winds up winning, taking the wild card, or finishing out of the money.

According to BP, that three-game sweep at the hands of Rollins and Utley and Co. dropped the Mets' odds of winning the National League East from 99.46215% to 97.11782%. Overall odds of making the playoffs dropped from 99.80080% to 98.95142%.

I don't know anything about math, but right now I could not find math more comforting. It's obvious that BP's calculations are the stuff of sweet, irreproachable science.

Sure, if the Phils could play us every game from now on, that 2.88318% chance would go up approximately 50-fold. But the Phils have to play other teams, against which their bullpen turns to mush. I like our chances. Of course, I have to like our chances: The alternative is that I throw myself into the Thames, which would mean lots of paperwork for nice British people and members of the American consulate. Funny thing is I went off to London fuming that the Mets would clinch while I was away. That'll teach me.

No substantive report from London today: Spent most of it in meetings, where somehow no one was wearing a WRIGHT 5 shirt, and at a dinner. The British cannot make a steak to save their lives — they cut it across the grain or something, so it's like chewing a leather strap. (And I gave them two chances today, mostly so I could gobble down Bearnaise sauce.) And their Dr. Pepper inexplicably tastes like ditchwater. On the other hand, they excel at all pastry-related foodstuffs.

I'm watching MLB.TV even though the chances I'll make it until last out around 3 a.m. are low. (Lotsa wine.) I can't get SNY — instead, it's MASN. The color guy sounded very familiar — I was briefly disoriented until I realized it was Don Sutton, for years the voice of smug superiority with the Braves. Extrapolating from an incredibly brief sample, as is my God-given right as a slightly drunk blogger, I will say that Sutton is a bitter, bitter man. He spent a good deal of time mocking the Mets' home record, and invited Met fans out to some event to meet Jesus Flores, since he's one of ours. You shut up, Don Sutton!

So I sat through 28 solid innings of certifiable suck at Shea Stadium this weekend. Went to all three games, absorbed all three losses and came away with this conclusion:

I had it better than a lot of people.

I got to attend three baseball games featuring the team I root for with people I like in the stadium I love.

That the results were, on none of these occasions, the ones I would have chosen is undeniable. But other than that, I had it pretty good.

When I heard the weekly playing of “God Bless America” in the seventh-inning stretch, a ritual that I think is misplaced in this setting (but that, too, is another blog), I thought of those men and women on whose behalf we are directed to sing it and who are elsewhere these days. They would probably welcome the chance to watch their team get swept while schmoozing with friends in the ballpark of their choice.

When I landed in Mezzanine 18 and discovered I was in the land of Kowalski (and his legion of Kowannabes), I thought of Jason, who is making the most of his trip to London, to be sure, but definitely would have rather been home or here (or both) with Emily and Joshua. Kowalski, I fear, kind of ran out of steam and disappeared not long after our team did. But six innings of Kowalski goes a long way.

When I was asked several times why I was wearing a Montreal Expos cap, I thought of those fans in Quebec, however many or few there were, who were left without a team to cheer on, without the option of a Sunday or Saturday or Friday of baseball. I wear the cap now and then to remember something that was a part of our baseball lives for so long and is now gone. I also wanted to change our luck (the Expos' only postseason series victory was over Philadelphia in 1981). Plus I feel it's pretty sharp.

When I was walking toward the 7, and a couple of older Phillies fans — not at all in bearing like the frat house jerks who represented the City of Brotherly Love on Saturday — asked me about the Expos cap, I asked them in response and without rancor, “so…are you guys gonna make the playoffs?” Instead of strutting around like they were a few days from ownership of the East (god knows they'd be entitled), they were all “not if San Diego keeps winning”. They began to tell me the Padres' schedule and remind me that it's been a long time since their team won anything. Maybe they were playing it down for risk of inciting the ire of a New Yorker in his moment of despair (we're at our most dangerous when we're cornered), but mostly they seemed resigned to this sweep meaning their eventual disappointment had been postponed three days. “Good luck,” I said. I only meant it as far as I could tell these were True Believers and on some level, we're all in this fan business together.

They won three and they seemed pretty glum. We lost three and I was…happy to have been there. Three baseball games at the tail end of summer, one evening and two afternoons with friends, a full weekend of doing what is ensconced at No. 1 on my All-Time list of things I want to be doing where I want to be doing it.

I must be out of my mind. These were horrible losses. We lost Friday because we couldn't score three. We score three Saturday and we lost because we couldn't score five. We score five on Sunday — the third, fourth and fifth of them in energizing, uplifting fashion — and we lose because we allow five more than that immediately.

Friday I grumbled and pointed fingers.

Saturday I lashed out at those who would dare take pleasure in what had occurred; I actually had to take a long walk before finding the train home to blow off steam so I wouldn't be tempted to take out my frustrations on supporters of the opposition.

Sunday…I know I should be mad and fuming and intricately deconstructing a disaster that encompassed eleven walks, six errors and no more than one clutch swing (Beltran's fleetingly epic blast) by the home club, but the worse it got, the more I gave in to the inevitable — that I was attending all three thirds of a sweep of the Mets. And after Jorge Sosa gave up Guillermo Mota's grand slam to Greg Dobbs that more or less ensured this weekend was lost, lost, lost, I was left thinking…

…that's the way it goes sometimes.

How can I say I had a horrendous time when:

• I, along with my Sunday benefactors, the eternally gracious Chapmans of Central Jersey, sat in the KOWALSKI section? That meant lots of Ah! LOOOUUU! chants and, when Moises delivered, that meant lots of TIP YOUR CAP KOWALSKI — TIP YOUR CAP! curtain calls. Tip your cap, indeed, you and your backup, the guy in the WHOLE MILK jersey, and the gal on loan from Fenway wearing a t-shirt that explained in 25 words or more how the Mets would play the Red Sox in the 2007 World Series for the sake of Bill Buckner. You guys are fun when the game is close and know when enough is enough when it isn't.

• I got up to visit Laurie, seated far away from Kowalski Kountry, and met, at last, the prodigy Jordan who, at 7, is not only totally her aunt's niece (Mets are No. 1, Yankees are No. 0, she reminded me), but is totally a daughter of Long Island? (With Jimmy Rollins at bat: “I'm going to get my daddy to drive his truck over him.”)

• I had not one but two encounters with Coop, the second time even better than the first because we traded cat pictures and she introduced me to a guy whose first words to me were “I'm so drunk,” which removed any potential awkwardness right off the bat?

• I tasted Protein Tastees Gourmet Crackers, a foodstuff handed out for free before the game and abandoned in droves during it? Protein Tastees Gourmet Crackers would fail in a taste test versus drywall, but like Ah! LOOOUUU! swatting fly balls as Billy Smith did pucks in his prime, they should be experienced once just for the wonder of it.

This stuff doesn't happen in real life. There are no Kowalskis leading us in vocal battle with Section 16 when I'm on a conference call. There are no Jordans counting off all her different Met “hotties” when I'm at Pathmark deciding whether four bananas are sufficient given their ripeness. Coop and Zoe don't break into luxury boxes as I ante up for my Visa bill. And I don't while away hours with people like Sharon and Kevin and Ross on Sunday and Charlie on Saturday and Rich and his mom on Friday if I'm not at Shea Stadium.

This, when I don't have something else I must do, is what I want to do: go to Mets games and enjoy them. Management is not responsible if the Mets don't cooperate to make it a fully optimal experience.

Bad baseball on the Mets' part? No doubt, no duh. Hurt them in the short/long run? I dunno. We're still in better position than the Phillies (to say nothing of the Expos). Our team wants to clinch a division and play in October, they'll go to Washington and beat the Nationals and then Miami and do the same to the Marlins. Due respect to 93% of our remaining schedule, but we couldn't ask for an easier slate to finish up with. If the Mets are serious about providing more than a pleasant diversion for another two weekends, then they'll win some games starting now.

If they don't, they don't. I can't break it down any better than that. They have problems. They need Delgado back. They need at least two more relievers to reveal themselves as at least risky (because risk implies the possibility of reward — right now all Mota and Sosa and probably Schoeneweis amount to is guaranteed failure). They need to stop gripping the handles of their Louisville Sluggers as if they're paid to produce sawdust. They need to bring the shortstop into the cage to work on his mental approach to everything. They need to drown out the suggestions that they are MVPs and the like because it seems the more they hear it, the more they desperately try to live up to it. They need to stop running for a minute so they can stop and think.

They need to catch the ball.

There's really nothing new that can be said about the Mets' sudden downfall, because we've seen it. We've seen them go down and we've seen them come up. We thought the last uprising meant the cycle was complete and that we had this season figured out. But now it's Phillie vu all over again and questions abound. Three-and-a-half may be too many to give up in two weeks' time, but otherwise we've been here before. After the mid-June swoon. After the Rockie/Astro sleepwalk prior to the break. After the determined mediocrity versus the Bucs and Nats at the end of July. After that previous Phillie melodrama. There's always a temporarily happy ending to those grim bedtime tales.

Now another chilling chapter has unfolded. I have no idea whether we get through it safely or if this is the one that trips us up…the end. I don't know. I'm still trying to figure out how the Mets lost three consecutive games right in front of me and I left Shea after the last of them feeling pretty good about life.

This fan business can be strange stuff.

In the last few hours, I've seen or heard myself on the radio, on television and online.

How odd.

Listen to Jason and I discuss the Mets with Mike Silva on NY Baseball Talk. Click on the Rivalry Weekend link and look for us at about the 36:00 mark.

See me (among several others) confirm 1992 was a very bad season whenever SNY reairs the current Mets Weekly. (They ran it tonight while they waited for the Jet debacle to end, so you never know when it will pop up.)

And get a gander not just at me but, better yet, Coop, the keeper of My Summer Family. We bumped into each other on Expo Appreciation Day at Shea Sunday where I was quite happy to see The Numbers in action. Tip of the tri-colored hat to Zoe of Pick Me Up Some Mets for snapping our photo.

It's fun to be on the radio, on television, online. I'd trade these 15 minutes of low-level fame to reverse the Met fortunes of this weekend…which is why I suppose I find myself on the radio, on television and online.