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.

Greetings from London!

London turns out to be very nice. It's got marvelous, monumental governmental architecture everywhere, which I assume reflects a greater acceptance of state power than would have flown when our own country was building edifices, but that's another blog. (And a pretty dull one, too.) Though speaking of government, for better or for worse there's a lot more of it here than most of us are used to — sex shops (Soho's main drag for CD shopping also turns out to be the boulevard of peep shows and porny DVDs and what-not) all note that they're licensed, the vinegar for my fish and chips (sans “mushy peas”) carried an incomprehensible, legalistic notice declaring it to be a “non-brewed condiment,” and everywhere you go there's evidence that an entire class of civil servants spends all day thinking of how exactly you should line up, where you should drive and what should happen to you if you don't do things that way. (I don't want to know what the duties of a British sex-shop inspector entail.) And there's an aura of default politeness that's really strange for a New Yorker — in London construction signs say things like “We Are Sorry for Any Inconvenience,” while back home all you get is ESCALATOR CLOSED FOR REPAIR UNTIL [DATE THAT'S NOW EIGHT MONTHS PAST.]

This is a pretty awesome city, one that's fun and really seems to work. There's tons to do and see, uniformed folks everywhere sweeping and fixing, and the (incessant) announcements in the train stations can be easily understood. Though today it was sunny and 75 — I wonder if I'll like it as well when it's clammy.

Walking around today (on three hours of sleep, wheee!) I saw the occasional Yankee cap as totem of Americana and passed a random store on Oxford Street that had an assortment of baseball caps — Yankees, White Sox, Pirates and Cardinals. But I did see something else that felt familiar, even if there was no baseball involved. Around noontime, every pub I walked by had a gaggle of guys in soccer jerseys outside, drinking pints and shifting their feet and looking fidgety. The here-but-not-really-here look of fans who are antsy for the game to hurry up and start already is universal.

And then the Eureka moment. At Trafalgar Square, I spotted a familiar shade of blue by the massive plinth from which Admiral Nelson stares down at the city. Could it be? It was — a faux Mets shirt, with a very welcome WRIGHT 5 on the back. The Mets may be having their problems with the Phillies, but they're on the board in London.

(By the way, so far this game sucks as much on MLB.TV at 7 p.m. in London as I imagine it does on old-fashioned TV at 2 p.m. in New York. Come ON, for Chrissakes.)

“Y’know, I’ve worked for your people a long time. They run this town. They run it a helluva lot better than the agents.”
—Artie to Hank Kingsley, “My Name is Asher Kingsley,” The Larry Sanders Show

I don’t like our new worst enemy. And I’m not referring to the Mets bullpen. Or even this crooked umpiring crew.

Come back Braves! Nothing is forgiven, but I liked and respected our rivalry, even before (but especially in) 2006 and 2007. Not so much the Chipper and the Andruw and the Francoeur and the Smoltz and the so forth, but I liked that when you schlepped up here from Georgia, you schlepped few of your supporters in tow. There’s always been a smattering of Braveophiles at Shea, just enough so that you knew we were playing America’s Erstwhile Team. When the Joneses did their damage, there’d be a very light and scattered mist of applause, barely audible amid all our booing. You’d see a Braves fan and you couldn’t really get mad. Mostly you’d get mystified.

I didn’t know there were actually Braves fans.

So we go out and once and for all (for a second year in a row) dispose of the Braves. The king is dead (again), long live the king. That was the other night. Do we get to rest on our laurels? No, two days later we have a new challenger to the throne. And I do not care for them one iota.

Yes, the Phillies have always been on the menu and Philadelphia has always been within easy traveling distance and sometimes Philadelphia has produced a quality baseball product. But none of that ever congealed at once into the big wad of hate that is currently visiting its blight upon Shea Stadium.

Get these people out of my ballpark! I don’t want them around. Visitors inflicting themselves on the home team? That’s our thing! We get to treat Citizens Bank like our summer cottage. They, on the other hand, are permitted no more than the allotted 150 tickets fans that every team should get under my Met Fairness plan (let them enter a lottery like everybody else who wants in). In all my years of attending Phillies @ Mets games, which is more than thirty, I’ve never seen as many Philadelphians appear in Flushing as those who have descended like mosquitoes these last two days.

If they’re going to bring the karma equivalent of West Nile Virus, the least they could do is bring cheesesteaks.

I don’t need their lame chants. I don’t need their lame chats. I don’t need to hear about the Eagles and the Flyers and the traffic on I-295. I don’t need all that woeful crimson. And I don’t need them to be happy.

As for who they’re here to urge on, I don’t need them either. I don’t need Jimmy Rollins’ obnoxious tendency to back up his words. I don’t need Aaron Rowand to perform up to the world championship standards he set only two years ago. I don’t need Brett Myers let out in public — nor does the public.

The Mets don’t need the Phillies anywhere near them. It’s obvious they’re not a good fit for our countdown and tuneup plans. They’re miserable September guests. They’re not welcome here in October. I’m one loss away from believing we may not be either.

Come back Braves and Braves fans. I’ve hated you people a long time, but you held up your end of the rivalry much less annoyingly than the Phillies and their crowd do.

Profuse thanks to CharlieH and PedroM for providing whatever good there was on this particular Saturday at Shea before it all went to Philad-hell…and if anybody tomorrow brings four empty whiskey bottles bearing the names Emmel, Iassogna, Scott and Kulpa, I promise to look the other way.

At one point during last night's game, I turned to Emily and said something along the lines of “If this were Game 163, with a playoff spot on the line, Met fans all over the city would be dropping dead of heart attacks.”

As it was, it wasn't anything like that. (And no heart attacks. We're going to the playoffs. Really, we are. Relax already.) Without the threat of cardiac arrest, we were left with nothing more than a taut, marvelous game between a team battling for its life and a team playing remarkably good baseball. One with guys clawing and biting and scrapping for every base, and one following the leads of an MVP candidate and emerging superstar and a Hall of Fame pitcher. And the latter team in great-looking uniforms we should really see more often.

I mean, there was Wright's ice-breaking drive over the fence, followed by his remarkable, Keith Hernandez In Reverse spearing of Jamie Moyer's pop bunt for a double play. There was Chase Utley playing his Ut-most as usual, one-upping Wright's solo shot with a crucial two-run blast of his own. There was Tom Glavine making everybody in red and gray but Utley look silly, and Moyer turning aside rally after rally from those in blue and orange. There was a huge crowd roaring “MVP! MVP!” and “Jose Jose Jose!” and booing every move Jimmy Rollins and Pat Burrell made. There was an umpire making an idiot out of himself — somebody tell Paul Emmel that nobody comes to the park to see him reinterpret the strike zone to make a point of etiquette to Jose Reyes, watch Phillie relievers twitch as he accordions between strike calls at the knees and no such calls, or throw gasoline on the flaming torch that is Paul Lo Duca.

Still, I wasn't too bothered by Emmel — he was playing the role of mutually agreed-upon heel. No, everything about this game was marvelous except for the ending — engineered by that curling foul pop that a scrambling Mike DiFelice caught with his neck instead of his glove, and Aaron Heilman's too-hasty throw to second. Those were really the Mets' only blemishes, and they proved fatal. But then this was the kind of game in which you sensed the first team to make a mistake and allow extra outs would pay dearly for it. And now that there's a chill creeping into the night air, isn't that the way baseball's supposed to work?

Why can’t we beat the Braves Phillies? We never beat the Braves Phillies when it counts. If we don’t figure out how to beat the Braves Phillies and soon, we’re going to be screwed.

Same yips, different series.

It helps to have a lead bigger than your hand when you decide to lose your sixth in a row to your closest rival, whoever they are. It helps to have perspective that in the middle of September it’s awfully hard to blow 5-1/2 games in two weeks…though we are facing the franchise whose predecessors once did worse. It helps to remember the real magic numbers of any Friday night with a Saturday afternoon running right behind it are 162 and 1:10.

Just one game. But what a lousy one to lose.

Culprits? Plenty.

Paul Emmel Funny, my ticket for the very first row of the upper deck box behind home plate with a better than usual view of the plate said I was going to a baseball game, not the The Paul Fucking Emmel Show. Congratulations, you’re the star of the evening. HEY! LOOK AT ME! I’M PAUL EMMELS! I COULDN’T TELL BALL FOUR FROM BALL FIVE FROM BALL SIX! I JUST CALLED OUT JOSE REYES! I’M AWESOME! Then as an encore you can’t just turn away from one of the starting catchers and let him vent? Turn in your chest protector.

Paul Lo Duca Learn to shut the fuck up, sometimes, OK? We get it, you’re passionate. Channel the passion into the passion of serenity. I thought catchers and umpires had some sort of simpatico going. Nice way to blow whatever credibility you had with that breed of idiots. Paul, you’re not helping.

Mike DiFelice OK, you were cold. OK, you’re barely active as it is. But it was a popup that was in your freaking mitt.

Aaron Heilman What is it with you and throws and the Phillies?

Jose Reyes The Professor needs a class in remedial hitting.

Jeff Conine Whatever number you’re wearing, I’m beginning to suspect it shouldn’t be on a Mets jersey.

The Iron Triangle The wind was blowing in from the chop shops, the area the city has tried to ignore all these years by not installing sewers. Tonight it was apparent…and redolent.

The Phillies Batboy From Box 700A, seat 1, I watched you chase down a foul ball and sit on a stool by the Mets’ dugout for an entire at-bat. One Phillies uniform among a crowd of Mets. That seemed rather bush. Plus you left Jamie Moyer’s jacket unattended in their on-deck circle. Whose nephew are you anyway?

The Phillies Fans It took you all these years to find out the New Jersey Turnpike runs north? Maybe I’ll see you at Shea later today. Sunday, too? Eagles don’t kick off ’til Monday at 8:30…c’mon, enjoy Phillies baseball while it lasts.

Dog Night Get off the field.

The Scoreboard Operator Great that you gave Cyclones updates when they led. Odd how they disappeared by the fifth.

Lousy night in Queens. And Brooklyn. And, though we pay no attention officially, Boston. At least the Braves won…and it doesn’t help them one little bit.