I don't want to alarm comely Christine Glavine, but maybe I should have stayed in bed with her husband.

Though at long last I consider myself firmly entrenched as one of Tom's acolytes, perhaps I need to extend the above thought for clarity's sake:

Maybe I should have stayed in bed with her husband pitching a perfect game.

See, I flipped on the radio inches from my pillow in my usual Saturday afternoon groggy state around the third inning to hear Tom McCarthy oversell the fact that Tom Glavine had retired nine in a row to start the game.

Oh? Really? Too soon, but, uh, you know…nine in a row equals three innings and that's only six innings shy of…

I'm not going anywhere.

Glavine made it through four, then five without a single Astro reaching base. The gods and the Qualls were clearly choosing up sides. You can't screw with the possible Big One in progress. But I needed to get up already yet. What to do?

All the signs that this might be The One (believe me, I always find signs) demanded I hide under the covers with both ears peeled:

• The glorious symmetry of Buchholz, the Red Sox rookie, last week giving way to Glavine the 300-game winner this week

• His buddy Smoltz coming fairly close Friday night

• Seaver having been in the ballpark the night before to pay tribute to Gil Hodges

• My dim recollection of Eric Milton taking advantage of a similar sleepy, visiting, young, string-playing-out bunch (the Angels) on the second Saturday afternoon of September eight years ago

• The mystical presence of Pedro Martinez and Chris Burke in opposing dugouts two years and three months after their passion play

• My fleeting vision that Sunday might be the day Pedro does it because I'll be there and it would be awesome

• The strange coincidence that I wrote something about the Mets and no-hitters hours earlier (in the context of an MVP being something besides a no-hitter that we've never had) but shelved it lest I seem prescient

• Wright, whose sudden award boomlet was the impetus for that Most Valuable thought, bobbling but recovering Ty Wigginton's grounder for the 15th out in the fifth

• Wiggy, David's predecessor, having been the third baseman when Glavine carried a no-hitter seriously deep against the Rockies three years ago

• And my favorite sign: Five perfect innings.

On the other hand, I just had a sense that this wasn't The Big One. Glavine usually doesn't have the kind of stuff to keep a lineup, even one composed of apathetic Astros, off balance for three spotless go-rounds. Besides, my lifestyle isn't nearly sophisticated enough to permit me to wallow away an entire Saturday afternoon in bed, even with a 300-game winner.

I got up. I went downstairs. I turned on the TV. And just as I was deciding that Ralph Kiner's unbilled appearance in the booth was yet another positive indicator, our longtime nemesis Hoozhee McRandom singled. And there it went.

Maybe I should've stayed in bed. But probably not. Unlike my bitter disappointment when John Maine's somewhat more tantalizing attempt at shifting the Earth's plates crumbled in April, I viewed Glavine's no-hit bid as an ornament to the Mets' sudden run of steely resolve. The real prize, or at least the gateway to it, is suddenly in sight. The magic number isn't zero hits. It's 16 properly distributed wins and losses. It took no rationalization to decide seven beauteous innings from Glavine along with two more from the previously discredited firm of Heilman & Wagner was an Amazin' enough pitching feat for this particular Saturday.

Hours away is Pedro versus Oswalt — it's serendipitous that this game has been on my “go” list for months. I'm actually giddy over such a matchup, which seems like a recipe for Astros 9 Mets 7 disaster, but let's let the maestros tune their instruments and take it from there.

As long as I'm between morning naps, a couple of quick questions:

When did David Wright become the leading MVP candidate?

Somewhere down the list from another world championship and, yes, an eventual no-hitter, I'd like to see a Met named National League Most Valuable Player by a panel more official than the voice inside my head (from whence Carlos Beltran 2006, Mike Piazza 2000, Robin Ventura 1999, Darryl Strawberry 1990-1988-1987, Gary Carter 1986, Dwight Gooden 1985 — shared with Carter — and Keith Hernandez 1984 have all accepted trophies). Suddenly I can't go three clicks without reading a story about David Wright surging into contention or the actual lead in the MVP stakes.

Really? A Met? Fantastic!

Maybe he has a real chance at the award given that unlike his theoretical predecessors, it had barely occurred to me that he's a candidate (and what do I know?). The Mets' roster has seemed breakthrough-free this season unless you want to count Ruben Gotay as having a career year. Until recently I'd have said Wright 2007 wasn't anywhere near Wright 2006. But after a lackluster April, he has been the steadiest of first-place Mets. His August was downright D-Wrightful: 1.172 OPS, 21 RBI, his third month driving in 20 or more. He's got that potential 30-30 thing going. He homered in support of Glavine Saturday. I guess he's legit.

David's numbers pale against Prince Fielder's, though Fielder's team has taken steps to render unvaluable all individual Brewer efforts by blowing that lead they had, but they ain't dead. And Rollins has had the kind of season voters are often taken in by: he's been very, very good and the Phillies have been…wait for it..better than expected. Well, maybe Rollins expected them to be awesome, but with their lousy Wrightlike April, the Phils seem as if they've come out of nowhere. A Herculean/Yastrzemskian September in which Philadelphia comes very, very close — which is the traditional Phillie equivalent of winning something — would probably capture Rollins votes. I also hear there are worthy candidates on other clubs, but without monster years in the Bonds/Pujols vein, this may be a year in which a high-performer like Wright actually gets credit for helping the only consistently leading team in the league to its standing at the head of its class.

Imagine what that might do to vitaminwater sales.

Do we care about Craig Biggio?

It wasn't until Bill James produced a new Historical Baseball Abstract a few years ago that I realized how great a career the Astro second baseman had been having. James wrote in the 2001 edition that Biggio was the best player active in the game, the 35th greatest ever by his win shares formula. The traditional measurement for immortality among everyday players is 3,000 hits and Biggio surpassed that milestone earlier this year. Don't forget he came up as a catcher and put in team time in the outfield amid his star turns at second.

He's not the main attraction, but those of us attending today's game might bear witness to the final New York plate appearance of a Long Island boy who made very good. There's no reason to keep Craig Biggio out of the Hall of Fame. None at all. Should he start or just bat once, we will see somebody who is plaquebound.

But do we care?

Usually you get a player of that caliber on his last trip through town and you want to get up and give him a hand. Why not? It doesn't cost you anything. I reserve the right to withhold such treatment from anybody who's been a particular pain in the ass to the Mets (it's a long list in the N.L.), but Biggio's been a solid citizen and an honorable opponent. Yet he's been so unspectacular — so 2007 Metslike, if you will — in building his credentials that it's kind of hard to get excited about seeing this future denizen of Cooperstown in the flesh. If you knew you were seeing Aaron or Ripken or Gwynn step up at Shea for the final time, wouldn't you applaud by instinct? I'll have to remind myself to do it for Biggio if in fact he plays tomorrow.

FYI: Biggio has never won a Most Valuable Player award. He finished in the top five twice but hasn't received a vote in this century. In case young David doesn't get one this year or ever, it just goes to show even the greats miss out on some of these baubles.

And for our college football fan(s) out there, this final from late Saturday night: my USF Bulls topped the No. 17-ranked Auburn Tigers, at Auburn no less, 26-23 in overtime on ESPN2, a result described by the pinhead announcers as a potential “program-maker” for the most anonymous gargantuan school in the land. It wasn't an easy victory to come by as our kicker missed four field goals, our special teams unit failed to field eleven men at one point and our personality-deprived coach called play upon play as if he had taken Auburn and was laying the points. The Metsiness of my alma mater's flirtation with the big time shone through for me when I blurted out to no one but the cats at a quarter to one, “Why do I always have to root for teams that have no idea how to score?”

When I first subscribed to MLB Extra Innings in 2003, there were four teams whose telecasts were never made available: the Expos, the Blue Jays, the Padres and the Phillies. I assumed the first two had something to do with them being from Canada while the other two were a mystery. The Expos moved to Washington and that took care of their video. The other three teams until this season had to be watched via opponent feed or not at all. Then early in '07, the occasional Jaycast popped up (with Canadian commercials and everything). A couple of months ago I saw what a Padre game looked like through the eyes of a San Diegan (about what it always looks like to me: bleary). That left only the Phillies at large.

Until Friday night, when their game with the Marlins was beamed into my living room via not a Floridian cable, but one emanating from Pennsylvania. It was my first look at Phillies TV since I peeked up at a Citizens Bank monitor in June. I could tell it wasn't the Marlins' crew calling the game by the way Miguel Olivo's fourth-inning home run was greeted with television silence.

Between innings there was a commercial urging all good Delaware Valleyans to leave a deposit on 2008 season tickets if you want a guaranteed shot at buying tickets for Phillies home playoff games in 2007.

OK, every team remotely alive in September pulls this scam every year, including us, and they're still in the Wild Card scrum, so I'm not going to snicker at the offer per se (at least not for the record), but what got me about this spot was that to cap off the montage of inspiring Phillie highlights that will have me going straight for my credit card they showed the play at the plate that ended the 11-10 game of August 30. You know, the one we lost and they won.

I had never seen any footage of it because I was en route to Milwaukee that day and, as I explained when I got home, I decided to take a vacation from my team, or at least my mania for them. Two things struck me:

1) I'm glad I didn't see it live. It was bad enough following it through the refresh button on my Sprint phone. I'm glad I didn't watch SportsCenter that night. I'm glad I didn't read more about it the next day beyond the perfunctory accounts that appeared in USA Today and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Except for Jason's post and what those who commented wrote in the course of that likely nonfateful day, I'm glad I did not go back and delve into my usual regimen of blogs except for the headlines that implied tragedy had transpired. I'm glad I didn't have to be immersed in my e-mail group's take of doom and gloom while the wounds were fresh. I'm glad I was nowhere near WFAN.

I wasn't kidding about taking a vacation from your team. As bizarre as it will sound come November when I'll wish I could watch Pat Burrell launch home runs for the sheer baseball entertainment of it, a day without the Mets isn't the worst thing in the world. Not a day like that anyway.

2) That 11-10 win's place in Phillies history appears destined to be obscured by their failure to follow up on it if in fact they don't straighten out over the next three weeks starting immediately. Natch, it is not in our interest for them to straighten out. But I can imagine the future Phillies blogger who has already enshrined this game as one of the greatest ever played. If the Phillies do not go to the 2007 playoffs (and depending on what they do in 2008 and beyond), that hypothetical fan will cherish what he will call “the 11-10 game” and tell every Phillies fan he meets later in life about what he was doing that great day at the end of August “when we beat the Mets.”

For a while his fellow fans will remember instantly. Then later they'll need more of a reminder. 2007? Didn't we suck in 2007? The future Phillies blogger will maintain that, no, we didn't suck. We just didn't win. We came real close. We had a great season. Don't you remember? Don't you? Then he will write heartfelt paeans to it and wonder why every other Phillies fan developed amnesia five minutes after the events of August 30, 2007 were history.

On some distant level, I feel for that future Phillies blogger. And with continued luck, I look forward to not being the Mets version of him for this particular season that ends in a 7.

PS: The Braves' pitch to have their fans buy tickets for their in-progress postseason run is, by dint of its existence, outright hilarious. The details — essentially management congratulating itself for not throwing in the towel at the trade deadline — make it even more so. Sometimes Extra Innings is a bargain.

PPS: If you're going to take at least part of a vacation with your team, you could do worse than taking it with the incomparable Metstradamus, especially if it's anything like the Cincinnati-Chicago jaunt he just tackled. (Note the unphotographed shirt sighting he mentions in the state of Ohio.)

Apologies to anyone who's had trouble accessing us lately. Our service provider is working on addressing the problem. Thank you for your patience.

Eleven days ago, the Mets arrived in Philadelphia for a four-game series, six games up in the NL East — and (in case any of us forgot) promptly got swept. Today, we're six games up in the NL East. And there are just 22 games to play.

Reading my co-blogger's memories of 1997 reminded me of something that Phillies fans are no doubt stewing about tonight — that in September, time is an even more implacable foe than your division rivals. Losing is bad. Seeing the team you're chasing win is bad. Seeing a precious day disappear from the calendar compounds whatever measure of bad you've had to suffer. In April, in July and even in August, a loss or the failure to take advantage of another team's loss can't be treated like life and death — rooting that way (or playing or managing that way) will leave you wrung out and ruined by September. But come September, the marathon turns into a sprint — and if you're still being philosophical, you're whistling among headstones.

It's not over, but 11 days have gone by and the Phillies have accomplished exactly nothing. (And are 3.5 back in the wild card.) Our magic number, meanwhile — and given the above, we can talk about it without expecting a crack of thunder from baseball-god heaven — is 17.

How'd we get to this latest pass? By beating the crap out of the Astros. There was plenty to like here, from Mike Pelfrey's continuing maturation (10 hits in 5.1 ain't great, but his slider looked superb, and there wasn't a wheels-come-off inning like the ones that have doomed so many Pelfrey starts) to Lastings Milledge's great game (a home run that might have gone through the left-field fence and a catch that must have had Ron Swoboda grinning in the stands) to Endy Chavez reminding us that he can too outrun baseballs to the welcome sight of Carlos Gomez back on the field. Meanwhile, the Astros missed cutoff men, dawdled after balls in the gap, auditioned horrible relievers and forgot how many outs there were. Maybe it's a kindness showing Cecil Cooper why that “interim” tag might be a good thing.

Carlos Beltran's phantom catch in the top of the first reminded me of something. The trigger was the moment where the crowd was cheering, Lance Berkman had slowed between first and second, and Beltran was possibly the only person of the 50,000-odd in attendance who knew the ball was irretrievably over the fence. He did the only thing he could do — he showed Berkman the empty glove and shook his head.

Every time I see a play like that, I think of Steve Finley and Todd Pratt's blast just over the fence. And I feel a little twinge of sympathy for the devil.

Next time you see the replay, watch Finley — he comes down from the top of the wall, where he'd stolen many a home-run ball in better days for him, and there's a moment where he's just standing there, peering kind of quizzically in at the infield, before his chin drops like there's a magnet on his chest.

It's probably just a fan's overactive imagination, but I've always thought Finley realized — as Beltran did tonight — that he was the only one who knew he'd come up empty and the drive he'd failed to corral was a home run. Can you imagine that? His teammates are on tenterhooks staring out at center field. All those fans are staring down at him. There's Pratt, about to come out of his shoes near second base, and the Mets halfway out of their dugout. And Finley alone knows the terrible truth — the ball is gone and the Diamondbacks' season is over. And in a moment it will be his terrible duty to make that plain. But until he does, nobody will know — and it must be tempting to prolong that moment, to try to make what's just happened not have happened by not revealing it. But that's not an option, is it? And so Finley's chin drops, his shoulders slump, and it's winter.

A while back, I found myself musing about a time machine, one that would let this Met fan engineer a place in the Holy Books for Terrell Hansen and Billy Cotton. Inevitably, this got me thinking of other, more substantial ways the Mets might have been nudged into a better course of action.

Specifically, I got to thinking of things that should have been said in some front-office meeting or at a quiet moment in the manager's office, the clubhouse or the dugout. Because contrary to my original post, a time machine wouldn't be enough to lift Jose Reyes's drive in Game 7 of the NLCS over Jim Edmonds' glove. (Throw in a guywire and an invisibility potion and perhaps you've got something.) But maybe, just maybe, someone claiming to be from the future and explaining the doom that lay ahead might get a GM or manager or player to reconsider, and create a better future.

If you've read us for a while, you won't be surprised to find out even imagining time travel comes with some arbitrary, fussed-over restrictions. Therefore, the ground rules:

1. No trying to escape physical accidents and ill luck. You can't tell Kong and Straw not to break their thumbs, urge Cleon to play in against Qualls, or send in Dotel instead of Kenny Rogers.

2. Some bad fortune led to better fortune, so this power must be used sparingly. We needed to trade Kazmir to reach a moment of dramatic clarity, and I'd rather have Oliver than Duaner.

3. Some things just were never gonna work. Nolan Ryan, for example.

So, here we go. Funny and not, big and small, bitter and wistful. Clip and save in case a time machine ever does materialize in your garage. Because you never know when those things will go on the fritz.

“Chilcott looks good and all, but I really like this kid Jackson's bat.”

“Gil, don't take this the wrong way, but we want you to go see the cardiologist. He'll check you out, maybe ask you for some changes in your life. It may be tough, but please do it — you're vital to the New York Mets, and we want you around for a long, long time.”

“Shouldn't Whitey get a chance as GM? He could hold a grudge and come back to haunt us.”

'Get in there, Cotton!”

“I really think Stone should get a start in the series.”

“Tug? He's still got plenty in the tank. And he's the soul of this franchise. Let's table this one.”

“That's bullshit. Cleon deserves better. Anyone deserves better.”

“Let's add a little something to Vail's contract. No basketball. Oh, call him to make sure he abides by that.”

“We're sending a free agent a telegraph? Isn't this kind of a new world? Maybe we should pick up the phone.”

“Mickey Lolich? But he makes Rusty look thin!”

“Whoever's been calling Dick Young needs to stop right now. Tom Seaver is this franchise. Period. You don't understand that, clean out your desk.”

“No, M. Donald, you are not the face of the Mets. In fact, you're not the face of anything any more. Take a hike.”

“I'm not sure Hebner's gonna like it here. And isn't he kind of a dick?”

“A MULE? Let's not.”

“I think we might have something with this Reardon kid, actually.”

“Maybe we ought to protect Seaver from the draft. He could be valuable with these young arms we've got coming up.”

“I know Doc and Darryl have had some issues, but I'm not sure Mitch is the problem. He can really hit.”

“I know he's like No. 9 on the depth chart, but tell that kid Cone to get his pinkies back when bunting. Because you never know.”

“Ojeda, we hired a guy to help you with the gardening. At least through October.”

“I don't care how well you get along with Klapisch, we're reviewing what that column's gonna say first.”

“Yeah, the guys are a little out of control. But it's not like they're throwing explosives at children. And they win.”

“But what if Juan Samuel is washed up and hates New York?”

“Torve! Get back here! That's the wrong uniform number.”

“Do we really want to start Julio Valera in this game?”

“Vince Coleman? Isn't he kind of a dick?”

“Jeez, maybe we should stop asking infielders to play center.”

“You know what, Bobby? On second thought, the New York media probably will be able to wipe the smile from your face.”

“Get in there, Hansen!”

“I don't care if it was on the original uniform design — that tail looks fricking stupid.”

“I don't care what marketing wants — these white hats look fricking stupid.”

“Avery just crippled Vizcaino, Bobby. I expect you to fuckin' hit him right in the fuckin' knee.”

“Mel Rojas? But he sucks!”

“Jason Bay? We're sure he doesn't have a higher ceiling than that?”

“I don't care what the commissioner's office says — these Mercury Mets uniforms look fricking stupid.”

“Is renting Mike Bordick really worth giving up Mora?”

“When I tell you to run, Timo, you fucking run. Don't look at the ball. Don't clap your hands. You fucking run.”

“If that douchetard so much as looks at you funny, Mike, you go out there and beat his ass.”

“Robbie Alomar? Isn't he kind of a dick?”

“Rey Sanchez? Isn't he kind of a dick?”

“I know you think it's just pot, Bobby, but let's take this press conference seriously. Because we already look like idiots.”

“Wait, didn't A-Rod grow up as a Met fan? Is the 24+1 thing really fair?”

“You wanna chase skirts, Skill Set? You can do it on somebody else's dime.”

“Pratt doesn't look finished to me, actually.”

“Yes, I do think Olerud's worth some extra dough.”

“I dunno, Fred. He didn't light up the room for me.”

“You know, Kaz, maybe New York's not the right place for you.”

“Maybe we should stop picking on Reyes and just let the kid play shortstop.”

“Is it really Lima Time?”

“Tell Pedro to be careful — it's slippery back there.”

“Let's emphasize one thing to the fellas — Spiezio can't hit a changeup with an oar, no matter how many times he sees one.”

“Remind Beltran to look for the hook.”

In Birmingham, I once heard tell, they love the governor, while in the South in general, they love their college football. So in deference to Atlanta's most popular team, the Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech, I'm calling an audible.

See, I was just about to write something to the effect of well, it's too bad we lost and the Phillies won and closed the gap between us to four games, but it's nice that if the Phillies had to beat anyone, it was super that it was the Braves because, well, they're the Braves.

Then I checked the ESPN.com scoreboard one more time to see if the Phillies 8 Braves 6 score from the ninth had gone final. It had. Except a Matt Diaz two-out, bases-clearing double off Brett Myers (a lot to choose from there, huh?) made it Braves 9 Phillies 8.

Holy Lemke! Braves help Mets yet again!

So to sum up:

• We took the day off in Cincinnati. Efficient of Willie to get the hung over, post-clinching game out of the way early.

• But we maintain our five-game lead and reduce our, dare I say it, magic number by one to 19.

• Because the Braves who we sw…sw…swept in Atlanta just took two of three from the phetid Phillies.

• And even with the win, the Braves are a hundred miles out.

Or, as Aretha Franklin put it, I don't know what we're doin', but we must be livin' right. (Except for Delgado's hip flexor.)

I can't totally dismiss Turner's worms because 7-1/2 back with 22 for them to play isn't totally buriable, not when they have three more chances against us (that's not Braves juju talking, just simple math…and maybe a little Met mojo). But they're pretty darn close to done. Magic number to eliminate Atlanta: 16.

No, Willie Harris does not bother me. Does Mark Teixeira bother you? Tell the truth.

Nothing to do with most of this, but I have to share: College football, of virtually relatively no interest in New York, is huge in the Midwest, too. The Appalachian State upset of Michigan was a major development throughout Big Ten country, which includes Milwaukee where we just spent a few days. The news crawl for the ABC affiliate in town was sure to highlight this result. And they did. According to the station, the Wolverines lost to…Appellation State.

Appellation State: The finest name in college football.

The same station ran this title over the bumper or tease for the story that would be coming up after the next commercial:

BUMP TITLE GOES HERE

WISN, Channel 12, Milwaukee…I don't know what they're doin', but they must not be livin' right.

For those of you keeping score at home, the Mets were 5 games ahead of the Phillies after the games of August 27 and they are 5 games ahead of the Phillies after the games of September 4. Both teams went 5-3 in the intervening week and a day.

Hence, nothing happened, right?

Wow does baseball make every single one of us who loves it look, feel and sound stupid every so often.

C'mon everybody, let's all admit it in unison so none of us has to feel ashamed: We know nothing about what's going to happen next.

I don't. I'm dumb as a plum when it comes to figuring out this game. I've spent every sentient year of my life focused like a laser on it and I haven't the foggiest. And I'm no dumber about it than any of you.

Having officially gone expectation-free since the second weekend of August, I've officially carried no expectations about what the Mets were likely to accomplish across the remainder of their schedule, but unofficially, I've had my thoughts.

I thought once they got on a roll against the Pirates and the Nationals, that it would carry over against the Padres. It didn't.

I thought once they expanded their lead to seven during the Dodger series that double-digits were just around the corner. They weren't.

I thought once they, with the help of their closest pursuers and their closest pursuers' allies in blue, coughed up one…two…three games in Philadelphia that the noose was tightening. It wasn't.

I thought a trip to Atlanta…well who the fudge would have guessed Turner Field would be so darn hospitable?

Now they've beaten Cincinnati two in a row, which seemed predictable enough. There, finally, something I figured out ten minutes in advance of it happening. Look at me! I'm a baseball genius!

Yeah, I rock. I'm so brilliant that I had grown tired of Carlos Delgado and Paul Lo Duca as if they were last year's models. I was becoming convinced that David Wright did not add up to the sum of his hype. I didn't bother to defend Shawn Green's viability any longer. I looked to skip John Maine in the rotation if at all possible. And I'd included Mike Pelfrey in every possible trade I could conjure.

Good thing I don't do this for a living…though judging by the constant stream of unprovables and wrongness that flows out of the mouths of everybody paid to assert and predict, I'd fit in as well as anyone. All I need is to preen and make lousy trades for a few seasons in a major media market and I could be a very hot commodity on some network.

Mets versus Reds today. You know what's gonna happen? Neither do I.

Not an inspiring slogan, perhaps, but it fits tonight's game well enough — a bleary, fuzzy mess of a game, one in which the Mets looked at best mildly interested, but the Reds' parade of horrible pitchers (Todd Coffey came in with a 6.04 ERA and saw it go up) ensured they'd fall up into a rather ragged W.

Still, every season's going to bring at least 10 or 20 of these games — a contest that's “less than scintillating,” as Keith Hernandez called it, one of many points at which he seemed amazed that anyone would still be watching. So you may as well win them. As far as I know Elias doesn't keep track of teams' records in “hideous baseball games that would get neither team taken to the Tastee-Freez afterwards,” but maybe it should. Because they all count the same in the end, and being on the wrong end of that 11-7 crapfest could mean the difference between the camera dwelling on Fox flavors of the month bundled up in your stadium and Tommy Lasorda telling a sad man wearing your colors to get out of the tree.

Actually, Shawn Green does get to go to the Tastee-Freez, because he quietly had himself a superb game. I'm not Shawn Green's biggest fan — Emily and I were amazed to discover during tonight's game that he actually has a Gold Glove for his work in the outfield — but he was terrific tonight. The three hits were obvious, as was the nice stab made as Delgado's substitute in the ninth, but what stuck out for me was a play that went unremarked: In the sixth, with the score tied, Delgado on second (after some remarkably laxadaisical baserunning, to use the Keith coinage) and Alou on first, Green smashed a double. We all saw that, but as Alou headed home, the camera briefly caught Green venturing far off second, practically windmilling his arms at the outfielders. Knowing Alou is Alou, he was trying to draw the throw, willing to give himself up to ensure the score would be 7-5. Impressive — and then a pitching change later, Green read Lo Duca's little parachute right off the bat, ensuring there would be no play at the plate and it would be 8-5.

On the other hand, if Keith's heading for a Tastee-Freez anywhere near the Ohio River, I strongly advise the manager to turn the lights off, lock up, and hide behind the counter. What got into our favorite crazy-uncle announcer tonight? Emily and I were fascinated, amused, and slightly fearful. My God, the Reds have cheerleaders, and those cheerleaders are packing a few too many Michelins to be cheerleaders. What the hell will Keith say? And on and on, with Gary Cohen of course goading Keith at every opportunity, whether it was about his encounters with the Met faithful in coffee shops or what he was doing in the bowels of Riverfront Stadium or simply the Reds' stubborn inability to play baseball. All praise Pete Mackanin for not dropping the dangerously named Coutlangus back into the equation tonight. That said, it should be noted that Keith did immediately spot Delgado wincing on a swing in the ninth and drop all goofiness on the spot. The man's entertaining, but he's also really good.

Really good, and more than a little crazy, whether it was the spinning in his chair (like a kid in a luncheonette, Gary said in one of many great lines) or fretting about his fading red marker. After tonight's thoroughly entertaining, slightly edge-of-the-seat performance, I'm fascinated to hear what Keith will bring to a 12:45 matinee. Will SNY producers have an intern with a blowgun at the ready? (Marlin Perkins voice: “My assistant Jim will now attempt to take down the crazed color commentator….”) In 12 hours we'll find out.

Some of you may remember the mental anguish I and my compatriots in loge experienced at the vocal stylings of the Norris Hopper guy. To refresh your memory, he was…

“…a fellow in a white tank top, the kind of garment unfortunately nicknamed for one who would abuse one's spouse. He has many tattoos. He is very hip-hop in his bearing. He is, as the Offspring so memorably phrased it, pretty fly for white tank top guy. As he and his party take their seats one row behind us, I instantly hear his story in full with 30 seconds of his pulling out his cell:

“'Yo! I'm in Queens! I'm at the Mets game! I'm here for my boy Norris Hopper! I know Norris from the 'hood! Norris was supposed to leave us tickets! I had to buy tickets! I'm sitting in the blue shit! Like 30 rows back! Norris was supposed to leave us tickets! He's supposed to sign a ball for my son! I wanna get a ball! I'm not even a Mets fan! I'm a Yankees fan! I don't even care though! I'm here for Norris Hopper! That's the only reason I'm here! Norris is my boy! I know him from the hood! He was supposed to leave us tickets! He's gonna leave us tickets tomorrow! He's gonna sign a ball for my son!'”

The fellow repeated that tale countless times and made an ass of himself in countless other ways until security evicted him from the building. I came to the reasonable conclusion after that unwelcome Ralph Kiner Night intrusion that the Norris Hopper guy didn't know Norris Hopper at all. I could find no record of Hopper ever living in the New York area nor did I get any sense that the Norris Hopper guy spent any time in Hopper's documented home state of North Carolina.

It is only fair to note that I got an e-mail a few weeks later from someone I trust who knows how to get in touch with baseball players. He told me that someone he knows asked for his help in locating a friend of his:

He wants to get in touch with a guy on the Reds that he knew from a LONG time ago…Norris Hopper! Turns out that Norris did grow up in the 'hood…North Jersey…moved [back] to North Carolina in middle school. He was getting into a lot of trouble…that's why he moved. No joke!

Since we are playing the Reds again, I felt I should publicly point out:

1) So maybe the Norris Hopper guy in loge wasn't making up his association with the actual Norris Hopper.

2) That didn't make the Norris Hopper guy in loge any less of a jerk on July 14.