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.

He's been a constant companion to this team even when thousands of miles away, even when the team was in first place and he didn't have a single IP next to his name. What's the latest on Pedro? Is he long-tossing? Making a rehab start? How'd he feel the day after the rehab start? When's he expected back? After the All-Star break? In August? When rosters expand?

Accompanying those questions were others — enough other questions to support a cottage industry of Gotham sportswriters. Was Pedro the best trading-deadline addition any team in the league would get? Would he restore the Mets' swagger? What would the Mets do if his rehabilitation went awry?

To be honest, sometimes it got kind of annoying, the waiting on Pedro. Not because of the man himself — he was down in St. Lucie or in the Dominican working his ass off to beat the knife, his own accumulated mileage and the doubts that can doom an athlete in twilight. No, what was annoying was the way the constant questioning gave short shrift to all the Mets had become. Few of us are sold on the 2007 Mets the way we were on the 2006 edition, but this is a first-place team without Pedro J. Martinez — just as the 2006 team clawed to within an extra-base hit of the World Series without him. Pedro was always a mournfully empty place on the roster and in the clubhouse, but to suggest the team was just treading water until his return was to insult the work of Wright and Reyes and Beltran and Maine and Perez and Glavine and El Duque and Feliciano and Wagner and all the other players who have brought the Mets to the brink of a second-straight magic-number countdown.

And yet yesterday was something special, as my co-blogger recounted. Down here on LBI, each time I looked at a clock in the morning there was a countdown in my head that hadn't been there the day before, even with the Mets trying to send the Braves into winter. 9:15 — four hours till Pedro. 11:30 — 90 minutes till Pedro. Charlie Hangley — a.k.a. CharlieH in our comments section — and I spend the same week on LBI, and had looked forward all summer to linking up. The day that worked wound up being Pedro's day, so around 1 Emily and Joshua and I headed up Long Beach Boulevard to their house for food and beer and kind-hearted camaraderie. (Many thanks to Charlie and Sarah for their hospitality — double FAFIF shirts pic coming when I can upload a photo.)

The buzz surrounding the game increased exponentially once we got our first look into the Met dugout. Over the years at weddings I've calmed a few nervous groomsmen who've worked themselves into tizzys over where they're supposed to look and what direction they're supposed to face. This is the easiest thing in the world, I've told them. You just look at the bride. Well, Pedro was the bride. Before Aaron Harang took the field, you could find Pedro simply by looking where the rest of the Mets were looking — and laughing and dancing. Whether it was an uncharacteristically animated Moises Alou or a characteriscally animated Lastings Milledge, one by one they waited for him, and once he came near they sprang to life in a way we're not used to seeing from professional athletes in their never-get-too-high, never-get-too-low worlds.

All very nice, but none of it would have meant much if Pedro had been hammered by Cincinnati. But he wasn't. No, he didn't have his killer arsenal of years past, but those weapons were decommissioned some years ago. What he had left was more than enough — he touched 90, changed speeds and threw strikes by the bushel. Defense and mischance undid him in the first (a Philliesque roller by Josh Hamilton, a bad break by Alou on a catchable ball, a Beltran heave to the plate that was just to the first-base side), but he shook it off and started simply erasing the Reds. Dunn. Valentin. Hatteberg. Encarnacion. Harang. Hamilton. Gonzalez. Griffey. Phillips. Nine Reds in a row retired before a spot of trouble in the fourth on more shoddy defense. So much for the gloomy talk about the difference between kids in the Florida State League and big leaguers.

And then the fifth, Hamilton on second, one out, Griffey at the plate with the deadly Brandon Phillips and slugging Adam Dunn behind him. At Charlie's house I think we all subconsciously leaned closer to the set. Whatever the radar gun showed, however the shoulder is now rebuilt, from the neck up the man on the mound was every bit the old Pedro. Looking in at Griffey, you could see him gather himself and narrow his eyes, his expression not growing cold so much as becoming blank, as if his will had shoved everything else aside. Pedro isn't a particularly big guy — he's got half an inch and a few pounds on me — but seeing that look on his face I would rather do anything than find myself between him and something he was determined to do.

He walked Griffey, I doubt with any particular regret, then bore down on Phillips and Dunn, coming back from 2-0 to get Phillips to fly out and getting Dunn to hit his pitch. And you know what? It wasn't particularly a surprise.

Mentally, Pedro Martinez can beat anyone in the game. We and he had grown so used to this that it was frankly shocking to him and us alike to realize, in those dark days against Atlanta and Pittsburgh, that his body had failed to the point that that will was unmoored and useless. Red Sox fans had seen him annihilate the Indians with half an arm; we'd really half-believed that with no arm he was more valuable than most pitchers. Of course that wasn't true, but whatever arm surgery and rehab have given him sure look like enough to give that will a vehicle to work through, and to electrify a ballclub and its fans once more.

When Joshua is older, I'll tell him about lots of players he's now too young to remember. And when the conversation comes round to Pedro, I'll tell him that 90% of what he'll read about intangibles and “beyond the box score” is claptrap. Then I'll tell him that Pedro Martinez was the other 10%. With Pedro, every legend was absolutely true.

“Don't give me pills! I already have plenty!

“Exactly!”

—Dr. Leo Marvin's prescription for Bob Wiley, What About Bob?

It wasn't intended to be a break from the Mets. Actually, that's always the worst part, the separation pains. I couldn't even leave them behind practically until the FAA demanded I do so. There I was, sitting at LaGuardia, Gate B3, careful to find a window for the first inning on Thursday afternoon. Perfect reception. Imperfect results almost immediately. It was 2-0 Phillies as boarding was beginning.

It was 10-9 Mets when I landed. I fiddled with the Web function on my presumably ancient (three whole years old) Sprint PCS phone. As we wandered through the terminal of a mostly unfamiliar airport toward a completely unfamiliar van service, I barely looked up. It's 10-9? And we were down 5-0? And he has HOW MANY home runs against us now? I'm not that swift with anything that isn't a simple telephone call, so it was all just a big blur of Burrell on my cell.

We get in the van to take us to our downtown destination. I'm focused on the little numbers and notations that are indicating it is no longer 10-9. It is now 10-10. Billy has thrown like 40 pitches. How long has he been in? Everybody's stealing. Oh crap. The winning run is on. The Mets have finally decided to score runs but neglected to keep from allowing them. What happened to El Duque?

C Utley, the screen reported, singled to right. T Iguchi scored. NYM 10 PHI 11.

I grumbled softly about the result as we sped up the Interstate. I had kept Stephanie informed of every development that I could refresh, knowing full well she was absorbing maybe 20% of what I was prattling on about, processing half of that. I know she doesn't care about Met details, but I always offer her the service (besides, it makes me feel I'm watching the game…or the data with somebody). Anyway, she was playing with her iPod while in the row ahead of us, an old lady who wasn't nearly as loaded with taciturn wisdom as she fancied herself explained she and her husband were in town for a World War II reunion of some sort. The husband, the actual veteran, didn't say much. The driver didn't shut up. He was very intent on playing tour guide.

He was so intent on pointing out the joys of the local art museum and casino and, yes, ballpark, that he was apparently oblivious to the construction all around him on his city's major artery. For while he talked and the old lady yammered and my wife Podded and I stewed over a four-game sweep and a two-game lead, it was left to our emissary from The Greatest Generation to be a hero once more and point out forcefully yet calmly to the driver that you're about to run into that barricade in front of you.

The driver did a quick right swerve. “I didn't see that,” he admitted. Neither did the rest of us who hadn't seen action in The Big One. Like the Mets most of the week, we didn't hit anything. But it was close.

What's wrong with Wagner? I kept wondering.

Unharmed by this closest of calls — I didn't realize how close it was until Stephanie painted the word picture later — I continued to click away at my Sprint, looking for bits and pieces of information that would describe if not explain how the hell we lost 10 to 11, how a seven-game lead had become two, how, how, how? Right out of the van, into the hotel, through check-in, up the elevator and into the room. Wha' hoppen'?

Our hotel's cable system was sadly lacking. ESPN yes, but no Deuce, no News. No telling when video of the Mets and Phillies was going to come up. SportsCenter? When's SportsCenter on again? When would that be in this time zone?

Then, epiphany. I'm on vacation. I'm somewhere else. We didn't come here to sweat the Mets. We're here because people go on vacation and sometimes forget about their — not problems, because if my team's my biggest problem, then I've got no problems, not really…but maybe sometimes you have to unobsess on something that you are normally wrapped up in a little too tight.

The Mets lost a crusher. Let's go take a walk and find some dinner.

And that was how I conducted myself on our trip to Milwaukee, just completed. I didn't forget about the Mets. I wore my black and blue Mets cap, three different Mets t-shirts (including the most beloved if unintentionally elusive Mets t-shirt ever manufactured on a limited basis) and participated in recurring patter with Milwaukeeans who wanted to know what we New Yorkers were doing in, as one store clerk put it, “One Horse Town, Wisconsin,” but I otherwise took a vacation from my team.

Even as I craned my neck left at the out-of-town scoreboard at Miller Park on Friday night (resenting that I had to follow what was happening at Dolphin Stadium every bit as closely as what I was monitoring from Turner Field)…even as I noodged the fellow with the BlackBerry — a Shea season ticket holder also on a ballpark expedition, if you can believe it — for John Maine specifics…even as I heartily applauded the visiting Xavier Nady and the late Warren Spahn when their names were invoked by the PA…even as I flipped my phone back on Saturday afternoon to see what was going on in the Fox broadcast I could have insisted on sitting in the room to watch but didn't…even as I sat on an efficient Milwaukee County Transit System bus and shook my head over six innings and one hit…even as I revived my college-era habit of grabbing the sports section first thing in the morning and poring over every line of the boxscore…even as I carried myself as a Mets fan in full, I took two entire games — against Atlanta in the heat of a division race — off.

It was kind of nice. And it went on just long enough.

Today we flew back into LaGuardia. A van picked us up. Without prompting, WFAN was turned on; 1-1 in the second, according to Howie Rose. “Music to my ears,” I told the driver, a professional who could talk and watch the road simultaneously. He and I spent the ensuing ride deconstructing the bullpen, signing Santana to a long-term contract and hating on the Braves and Phillies with comparable fervor.

It was kind of nicer.

Let me be the 40 gazillionth or so person to note that while it can be good to go away, it's even nicer to come home, especially to…

…this!

…then this!

…and most delightfully THIS!

Sometimes you get away from the Mets. The Mets never, ever get away from you.

When you go to the beach, kids, don't assume there'll be an Ethernet cable waiting for you.

Anyway, this half of Faith and Fear is up and running on Long Beach Island, meaning baseball has taken its rightful space alongside sand, sun, water, trips to the grocery store for beer/grilling stuff/etc. and the continuing results of an experiment in how much sugar a four-year-old can hold without exploding.

In my case, of course, “its rightful place” means playing softball with kids one-handed because the other hand has a radio cupped to the ear (like some cut-rate version of Radio Raheem); interrogating all comers from the house about the score, inning, how Pelfrey looks, etc.; and generally fretting and agitating.

Happily, Pelfrey looked superb from each and every report — his story is a small part of the 2007 Mets, but he still could be a large part of 2008 and beyond, and it was nice to know that a difficult season included at least one afternoon in which all comers could see exactly what he can do. And hey, the much-abused bullpen did its job. I howled in anguish when Guillermo Mota entered the game, rejoiced at the double play that allowed him to escape, further rejoiced when he didn't return, heartily applauded Feliciano's pefect inning of work, prayed for at least another run so Wagner's vacation could continue for another day, got that run, and then sat on the beach goggle-eyed as Feliciano absolutely erased the middle of the Braves' order in the ninth. Relievers go through cold streaks; sometimes relievers go through them all together. But they can get hot, too. Right?

Oh, and it's nice doing a cartwheel in the sand when Carlos Beltran hits a home run. (OK, I can't actually do a cartwheel. But I did stick my feet in the air and flop over joyfully.)

And now, today. Rumor has it the safest place in the National League is being a team the Mets are trying to sweep. And I've heard this Smoltz fellow is a pretty fair pitcher. But that's all right — I also heard (sometimes within my own head) that we were dead men walking, and now we seem to be up and running.

Layered into the manifold embarrassment of growing up nonathletic was gym class and the indignity — the season or sport didn't matter — of being picked last or close to it. In my case, there was usually someone considered slightly more pathetic than me so I didn't necessarily go down as Mr. Irrelevant, but being in the final four was hardly solace.

Standing around in a dwindling semicircle as the faster, stronger kids who were inevitably assigned captaincies chose first those comparably capable to their skill sets; then their popular friends; then the less inept-appearing strangers and kids who had just moved into the district; then some kid who I knew I was better than; then some kid whose left arm was in a cast; then some kid who had to be convinced to put down his looseleaf notebook because he'd rather do algebra extra credit than sports; then me…that's a cliché, no matter how authentic its roots. The phenomenon has been covered well on television from Les Nessman's haunting right field flashbacks on WKRP in Cincinnati to Bill Haverchuck's vengeful phone calls on Freaks and Geeks. Funny how there's always a writer around who can relate those feelings years after the fact.

Y'know what didn't help (even if it did in the F&G softball episode, a total classic of the genre) was the well-meaning phys ed teacher who took the schlubs of the class and made us the captains for a day. First jock-type I'd pick (after making a statement by choosing one of my own leadfooted kind) would immediately complain that, “oh, we're not gonna win if Prince is on the team.”

Come to think of it, any time one of the teachers wanted to be a gym class hero and tell one of the regular captains to pick me or a member of my cohort for a change, I'd hear the same thing. Sometimes I'd just shut up and take it, sometimes I'd speak up and mention that's a pretty lousy attitude — how are we supposed to win if you've already decided it's the fault of the (theoretically) worst player in advance of the game?

I may not have had much in the way of talent or stamina, but I sure had desire. I took this stuff so seriously that I still consider the nicest thing anybody wrote in my high school yearbook to be these encouraging words from the gym teacher who took notice of my first-one-on/last-one-off Super Joe tendencies for any game we played: “You're really better than you think. —Mr. L.” (He couldn't have been talking about dodgeball, however.)

This particular rite of humiliating passage occurred to me recently when I was considering the plight of our friend Damion Easley. As noted the morning after the night he went down with that third-degree ankle sprain, I thought of how sad it is that Easley has been playing in the bigs since 1992 and never made it to the playoffs and this appeared to be his golden shot at it and now, barring miraculous rehab and roster rejiggering, he's out of luck.

Bad break for Damion. Nobody's at fault, per se, but it got me wondering about others who have not made it to the business end of October. I've heard all my life, for example, what a shame it was that Ernie Banks never played a postseason game. Given that there are so many more opportunities for a player to move around and for a team to earn a playoff berth, it's not surprising that, according to Baseball-Reference.com, Banks still owns the dubious record of 2,528 games played without a sniff of a championship tournament. It was always “poor Ernie, stuck with the Cubs.”

I guess that's a fair assessment of his fate. I mean Ernie did his part, 512 home runs and tireless lobbying for a schedule that included a daily doubleheader, but I never cared for the implication that as a member of a team, it was all the crappy Greg-like players who dragged him down. Ever hear of putting the team on your back, Ernie? You and Santo, who's also high on this list? I also don't like the Cubs, so how can I expected to go overboard with sympathy for “Mr. Cub”?

Easley was leading all active players with most games played sans playoffs when he went down (he's since been passed by Jeff Cirillo whose recent acquisition by Arizona and unsprained ankle may remove him from the rolls). Was it Damion's doing? Should Damion Easley have on his own dragged terrible Tiger teams and atrocious Angel armies and post-hangover schools of Marlins to October? Hard to imagine the bulk of the futility surrounding him was entirely Easley's fault. But he must have wondered more than once why he couldn't have been picked by a more able team.

Other Mets dot the list of most games played without a postseason appearance. How responsible should we as Mets fans (thus representatives of the Mets) for the bottom line fruitlessness of their long careers?

Let's see…

Joe Torre Sixth all-time with 2,209 games and no postseason appearances. Torre ended his playing days as a Met when the Mets were at least nominally contenders, especially in his first year, 1975. Hard to say it's his fault we didn't make it to the NLCS against the unstoppable Reds (would have more Wayne Garrett taken care of business?), equally hard to say it's our fault he didn't make it. We bear some responsibility for keeping him out in '73, I suppose, when the Cardinals fell short. But that's our job. Of course Joe Torre has more than made up for his October deficit as a manager, so as one of my favorite magazine art directors would have said, “Miss Torre? Screw her!”

Roy McMillan Tenth all-time with 2,093 games and no postseason appearances. Roy had the misfortune to leave the Reds before they made the '61 World Series and join the Braves just past their Milwaukee prime. He was a Met from '64 to '66. He couldn't have possibly been thinking World Series. As he's credited for helping bring young Buddy Harrelson along, I'd like to think his spirit was on the field against the Braves and Orioles in 1969.

Jim Fregosi Nineteenth all-time with 1,902 games and no postseason appearances. I sure hope Fregosi didn't think in 1972 what those bastards in my gym classes were thinking all those years. “Oh great, I'm on the Mets, I have no chance right now.” If you had been either better or not here, the '72 Mets might have made a stiffer run at the division title. Or if you had been less bad, you might have been kept on for the run to glory in '73. But you not only sucked, you cost us Nolan Ryan (well, lots of people cost us Nolan Ryan, but never mind them right now). Fregosi, like Torre, got a bite of the October apple as a manager though unlike Torre, not repeatedly and not altogether successfully.

Frank Thomas Thirty-second all-time with 1,766 games and no postseason appearances. The lousy Mets of 1964 practically stamped Thomas' ticket to the World Series by dealing him to the lock of the year, the Philadelphia Phillies. No way the 1964 Phillies would blow a big lead and lose the pennant, right? Well, there was a way, but don't blame us — hell, I don't blame Thomas for our not being instantly successful.

Jimmy Piersall Thirty-fourth all-time with 1,734 games and no postseason appearances. Piersall's brief stay with the Mets (made possible by the trade of Gil Hodges to Washington so Gil could hone his managerial craft out of town) in 1963 is noteworthy for his running around the bases backwards on the occasion of his hundredth home run. You'd have to be thinking backwards to believe we were your pass to a championship match.

Jeromy Burnitz Thirty-eighth all-time with 1,694 games and no postseason appearances. I blame Burnitz for our not being better in 2002. If he had been, instead of finishing 75-86 and in last, we're probably good for 79-82 and creeping past Florida for fourth. OK, he wasn't alone in dragging us down. If anything, I'm mad at Roberto Alomar for ever having gone to the postseason…which he did for the three teams he played with directly before playing for us. (Somebody's gotta take the fall.) As for Burnitz, he managed to miss Cleveland's multiple joyrides to the playoffs by not making the '96 roster and then getting traded to Milwaukee. We did what we could for him by sending him to the Dodgers as they pursued a division title but they fell short in 2003. I always kind of liked Jeromy, more so during his first unsuccessful stay in '93 and '94, but he seemed to have had a Schleprock thing floating over his head no matter his affiliation.

Hubie Brooks Forty-fourth all-time with 1,645 games and no postseason appearances. Dear Hubie: We're sorry. We're sorry we weren't a little more highly developed in 1984. We're sorry we traded you before 1985 even though getting Gary Carter was a primary reason for our reaching The Promised Land in 1986. We're sorry that we brought you back in time for the great decline in 1991. We're just sorry you never got a better deal. It's our fault, not yours.

Willie Montañez Forty-fifth all-time with 1,632 games and no postseason appearances. Willie, unlike Ernie Banks, put his team on his back in 1978 and lifted the Mets from a dismal 64-98 to an uplifting 66-96. No harm, no foul, I suppose. Montañez was another of those players whose best bets for October were foiled by bad timing, leaving the Phillies just as they started winning division titles and returning just after they were about done. I honestly thought he'd get us out of the basement and push us at least ahead of the Expos and Cubs. He didn't.

Easley's ninth on the list among playoffless Mets at the moment, No. 50 all-time with 1,599 games and no postseason appearances. Somewhere down the line behind him are Joe Orsulak, Ron Hunt, David Segui, Jerry Morales, Jim Hickman and Joel Youngblood. Every one of these luckless fellows was on the Mets when they were in the toilet and no single player could have been expected to make much of a difference.

In fact the only Met player with a long Mets career (parts of nine seasons) who never saw the postseason with the Mets or anybody else was Todd Hundley. Hundley was a coffee-cupper on the last-gasp 1990 Mets and the main man on the surprising 1997 Mets. You could make a reasonable case that if he had adapted better to left field in 1998 and hit like he had pre-Piazza, then maybe the Mets make up that one-game deficit on the Cubs and Giants and win the Wild Card.

Maybe. Maybe not. It's hard to pin a team's failure on just one hapless participant. So to the other kids in the gym classes of my youth…get off my back.