The New York Mets would like to welcome their exclusive sponsor for the month of June, Kinko's.

Kinko's: For when you need every loss in a pile of losses to look and feel exactly the same as the loss before it. At Kinko's, we can rapidly replicate a single loss over and over and over again so before you know it, you're hauling a ton of losses back to the car.

Copiers hummed to perfection Wednesday night as a superior opponent outplayed the dogass Mets in all facets of baseball. Details available upon request for fussbudgets and masochists.

One other fact also keeps coming out exactly the same, however: We're still in first place. The schedule and the margin being what they are, we will, at the very least (which itself is often beyond our meager reach) end Friday in first place for the 38th consecutive East-leading day.

Fellow members of the Legion of Doom, I ask you for a moment to pause from mulling what is wrong with the Mets and instead devote thought to this:

How lame is our competition?

The Braves have picked up all of TWO games on us since we began sucking irredeemably. We've been 3-13 since winning on June 2. The Braves? They're 6-12. And the Phillies? The Winnin' Utleys who gave us the unkindest shove downhill? They're 6-6 since sweeping us. The brass ring would be theirs if they'd stepped up. But they, like the Braves, have not.

The Marlins have pulled from 9-1/2 out on May 27, when we swept them in Miami, to 4-1/2 back today. They were four under .500 then. They're three under now. Any gains the Marlins have made on the Mets have been purely coincidental. Though I'm admittedly in no position to look down my slumping nose on any team, if I have to start worrying about the Marlins, then it's probably not our year anyway.

T.S. Eliot never lived through this particular June, yet our Mets are still in first place. The lingering effects of April and May are doing a John McClane and dying hard. Unless someone discovers steroid-fueled gambling was at work (and passes a few rules to retroactively make it punishable by forfeit), the sublime spurt that sent us out on a commanding 35-19 start counts in the National League records. That's the only reason we're still in first place…that and the composite April 1-June 20 mediocrity of the Braves, the Phillies, the Marlins and, because they're still in the division, the Nationals.

It doesn't seem like it, but we play under lucky stars. Play atrociously, but play under them nonetheless.

It was a team of Cuddyers versus a team of cadavers Tuesday night. Who would your money be on?

I suppose there's no shame in losing to one of the pitchers if not the pitcher of our generation, but there is a mighty-Mississippi-wide difference between taking a few collars and tipping a few caps and meekly grounding, flying, popping and lining out 26 times — with one late K mixed in to keep the whole thing on the up and up. The Mets lost for the millionth time in their last million and three games. As has been the case for almost all of these losses, they looked pathetic, impotent and beaten from the start.

We were stymied on offense by the magnificent Johan Santana and overrun on defense by, if I'm reading the boxscore correctly, everybody who wore a Twins uniform, save perhaps for Ron Gardenhire. The four errors didn't help. The dreadful pitching by returned-to-Earth Jorge Sosa didn't help. Actually, nobody helped. Everybody hurt. This loss, much like just about every loss since June 3 when the current chain of pain began, was a total and complete Metropolitan Baseball Club of New York effort.

Go team.

Tuesday it was the Twins who were massively better than the Mets. Over the weekend it was the Yankees. Before them it was the Dodgers and the Tigers and the Phillies and the Diamondbacks. True enough that each of these units is a quality outfit. Many of them, as has been tirelessly documented, were 2006 playoff participants and every one of them owns a winning record in 2007. Oddly enough, so do we. We're still in first freaking place after not quite three of the most rancid weeks I've ever seen a Mets team compile. Gil help us once the Braves, Phillies and Marlins are no longer subject to American League opponents.

Can you believe it's not even three weeks that this has been going on? Three weeks ago at this moment I had drifted off on the couch to the blissful images provided by Jose Reyes bouncing, Armando Benitez balking and Carlos Delgado blasting. That was three weeks ago. May as well have been another lifetime. The next night Barry Zito dropped a Santana on us. Not quite as complete, but we tipped our caps and won the night after. Then in came the Diamondbacks and by the end of that series, the slide was in progress.

Well, that's not telling you anything you don't know. I wish I could pretend to have reliable sources and report the exact cure, but I don't and I can't. In lieu of certainty, any suggestions? I dunno. Turn over a buffet table? Reinstate kangaroo court? Hold extra fielding practice in the midday sun? Punish every miscue with a mandatory slice of that awful Sbarro pizza? Trade for…oh damn it, I don't want to talk about trade rumors in June. I hate trade rumors. Trade rumors are what fans of teams who are thread-hangingly in it or hopelessly out of it cling to for the balance of the summer — who we must trade for…and which Quadruple-A stat monster none of us has seen must come up…and who we must sign in the next class of free agents.

I hate that stuff. I'd rather join a fantasy league than feel compelled to think in those terms midyear. I loved last summer because I barely heard a peep of trade or minor league or December chatter. I'm sure it was there but I didn't listen to it. I tried not to indulge it anyway.

Now? For now I'm answerless. There's the occasional evening's peace when the Mets play like what we thought we could safely assume the Mets would be, but it doesn't last. The Mets haven't won a game directly following a previous win since May 29, since the Reyes-Benitez-Delgado bounce/balk/blast game. Monday night was the first game since June 2 to feature hitting, pitching and defense acting in concert. If it wasn't a can of whoopass, it was close enough, and if we could open anything approaching a can of whoopass on the Minnesota Twins for one night, you'd figure we could at least gather a collective pulse for the challenge of facing Santana the second night. But you'd have figured wrong.

The only saving grace I can find, other than Johan Santana will not be pitching Wednesday night, is we are not the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. This isn't a gratuitious shot at (youthful potential and Oriole chaos notwithstanding) the sport's worst franchise either. I fell into the Devil Rays-Diamondbacks game in Phoenix after our fleeting attempt at professionalism, and the Devil Rays have not grown one inch in their decade on the planet. Arizona fell behind 8-2 in the fifth, but Tampa Bay couldn't hold the large lead. Tony Clark hit a two-run pinch-homer in the ninth off previously unblemished closer Al Reyes to tie matters at eight in the ninth and Chris Young launched a two-run job off Reyes' 44th and final pitch in the tenth to make it Arizona 10 Tampa Bay 8, arrive home safely.

The Diamondbacks did to the fourth-place Devil Rays what we did to the Diamondbacks that first Thursday night at Chase Field when we were the team for whom no deficit was too big, no hurler too daunting, no circumstance too impossible. I was actually getting nostalgic for the 2007 Mets of April and May. I can't imagine our current crop of June bugs being any more than mere pests to a team of middling or better caliber. It's the same guys, mostly, but their hearts or their guts or their souls or their ability to play decent baseball for as many as two consecutive nights…let's just say that at this moment we're a first-place version of the Devil Rays. But just barely.

We're actually only seven games better than they are. And I wasn't planning on using them as our yardstick this season.

Granted, it hadn't done much to repair or losses or been much of a blessing to us recently. But last night was a night to remember the simple sweetness of what baseball's like when your team isn't trying to remove your heart from your body with a rusty box cutter while you bite through your own hand. I mean, sit on the couch, admire a good pitching performance, take in a little drama and then be able to relax? I could grow to like this sport.

Given our recent awfulness and the late rally that turned this one into a laugher, the Twins were kind of beside the point. Not that I know them anyway — I kept peering at the screen and wondering if that was Mauer or Morneau. Minnesota Twins … hmmm. It's the place where Jerry Koosman, Wally Backman and Rick Reed got exiled. The hats say TC, which baffled me as a child. There's a weird stadium and a baggie. Kirby Puckett played there. They beat the Braves in the best World Series I've ever seen. They never beat the Yankees in the playoffs. Bud Selig tried to contract them. Everybody forgets they're an original American League franchise. They're run cheaply and make up for it with smart GM-ing. And that's a wrap. (I know that sounds a lot like my mental checklist when we played the Tigers. What can I say? I'm not going to take AL Central for $100, Alex.)

I'm giving the Twins short shrift not to be insulting, but because tonight was so much more about us, about looking for positives and finding some and then finding a whole lot more and then finally exhaling because there were enough positives that you could select them randomly instead of counting them up. John Maine, last seen handing out souvenir dingers to the entire Dodgers lineup? He was terrific. Carlos Delgado? Hit a home run and came within a Jason Kubel half-tumble of driving in two more. Carlos Beltran? Had good at-bats and actually got rewarded for them with a rifle double up the gap. David Wright? Three hits, nearly hit a home run, continued his sharp play at third. Jose Reyes? Scampered about gleefully. Heck, even Ricky Ledee went deep.

It was a game from the template of April or May. It was baseball like it oughta be. And it was wonderful.

Update: If you followed the link from Deadspin, welcome. To be clear, we doubt there's any truth to the blog post whispering about some kind of racial divide in the Mets clubhouse. Or to Julio Franco stirring it up. By the way, our sources tell us Roger Clemens subsists entirely on a diet of live kittens. Pass it on!

Like all good-hearted people, I hate the Yankees.

When you break down that statement a bit, though, things get more complicated. The only members of the current roster whom I actually loathe are Satan and Miguel Cairo, and Miguel Cairo isn't worth more than passing bile. What I really hate is the franchise as a collective entity. And most of what I hate about it is the front-running, gimme-gimme fans with their sense of entitlement and their love of rooting for the overdog.

But only most of it. I also hate their cheap propagandists, Michael Kay and John Sterling and Paul O'Neill and Suzyn Waldman. A list to which we may as well add Joe Morgan and Jon Miller. Who, really, deserve our derision even more than the pitiable Lord Haw-Haws of YES and WCBS. Because Morgan and Miller are supposed to be neutral observers. They're supposed to be pros.

Watching tonight's game, you'd never guess who was in first place and who'd only just closed within double digits. You'd have no idea which team played an all-or-nothing game to go to the World Series and which was sent packing in the first round of the playoffs. If it wasn't Jeter's radiance it was Clemens' heroic journey back to the bank or Ron Guidry's ancient glory days. Those guys in the other dugout? Um, there was Jose Reyes, discussed mostly as Jeter's foil. And a couple of mentions of David Wright. El Duque got a retrospective of sorts — of his days as a Yankee.

Seriously, let's review some of the things I saw before I got so disgusted that I retreated to Howie and Tom:

* An “acrobatic play” by Derek Jeter that sure looked like a routine assist on a groundout to me.

* Did you know Jeter has cute little nicknames for his teammates? Like he calls Robinson Cano Canoe? That's why they call him Captain Intangibles. Championship stuff there.

* Later, Morgan went out of his way to praise Jeter for a tag play. The way he put his glove in front of the baserunner's hand was gritty and gutty and showed all the kids out there the way the game's supposed to be played, I guess. Only it was Canoe who did that. I mean Cano.

* A lame softball interview with Satan by Peter Gammons, who's so much better than this. Miller almost got in a mild dig at Clemens, noting that he was in fact with the team despite not pitching tonight, but then the Yankee chip in his head started beeping and he made Clemens' attendance sound like a tour of duty in the Peace Corps. And how did Clemens do against the Mets Friday night? Apparently he was beaten by Jose Reyes. No mention of who'd opposed him and thrown a shutout. None whatsoever.

* A while later, Morgan did recall (in chatting with Willie Randolph, who looked like he'd just been force-fed an entire lemon tree) that there'd been a Met pitcher in that game who'd done OK in the shadow of the Great God Clemens. And so he asked Willie about Odalis Perez. (I know they talked about Oliver a couple of innings later. Too little too late. And then Morgan came up with some tortured musing about the Yankees would have won if they hadn't had baserunners on at unlucky times. Or something. I got dizzy trying to follow it.)

Look, 8-2 is a beating. Chien-Ming Wang was masterful. A-Rod hit a ball to Montauk. Our various problems — crappy hitting, bad relief, dopey plays, whatever the hell's wrong with Beltran — weren't exactly erased by one good game by Odalis Oliver. But the bowing and scraping in the direction of Monument Park started long before the game cratered.

I've given up on respect in the tabloids and on talk radio — the circus is always going to be run by hucksters and suck in its share of rubes. But is it too much to ask that the self-appointed world-wide leader in sports do a little better than three hours of mash notes to one side of the room? The only saving grace of last night's loss was if you watched it on ESPN, you barely knew the Mets were there in the first place.

The New York Mets play the New York Yankees for the sixtieth time in regular-season competition tonight. That is if the weather cooperates. Three times the weather hasn't cooperated: June 11, 2000; June 21, 2003; and June 25, 2004.

I remember those rainouts. I remember almost everything about every Subway Series. A few details about a few losses have probably fallen between the cracks — there have been 34 losses spread over 11 seasons, so it is probably best to let a few slip away — but mostly it's all fresh in the mind's eye, no part more fresh than the segment that came first.

Imagine something for the better part of 35 seasons and once it finally happens it's pretty thrilling. That was what every New York baseball fan likely did at least once between 1962 and 1996. Mets versus Yankees? It may not have been a universal concern, but there were enough Grapefruit League and Mayor's Trophy games to make one wonder what if they actually played each other for real? And so, by aegis of the commissioner's office, it happened.

You may have forgotten a lot about 1997, but you haven't forgotten June 16. Even if you don't remember the date, you remember Mlicki. We all remember Mlicki. We're all still lining up, if we're any kind of decent people, to buy Dave Mlicki a drink or a car or some token of affection for putting the Mets up 1-0 in all-time competition versus the Yankees ten years ago yesterday. Dave Mlicki was one of the most frustrating right arms the Mets ever had. He should have won 15 games every year. He never won more than nine. The year he shut out the Yankees 6-0 — we beat the Yankees! — his record was 8-12. While he was on the job, Dave Mlicki could be irritating in his determination to not get the third out, not throw the third strike when he needed it.

Do you remember that? No, you remember 6-0 on June 16, 1997. You remember barely controlling your excitement and/or your angst if in fact you bothered to try. From the first pitch of that first game, Andy Pettitte to Lance Johnson, I needed weighted boots to keep my feet on the ground. Strip aside playoff games from '88 and key pennant race games from the years surrounding those and this was the biggest game since Game Seven against the Red Sox. In the Self-Esteem Division of the Emotional Well-Being League, it was the biggest game ever.

We led from the first inning on. We never trailed. We won. What if the Mets played the Yankees in a game that counted? The Mets would win 6-0. We had our answer.

So why did the question have to be repeated 58 going on 59 more times?

If we had stopped with Mlicki and 6-0, that would have satisfied everybody. We would have had our win for all time and they…well, what do I care about them? Part of the social contract of following one team in a two-team market is the implicit understanding that you don't have to bother with the other team. Prior to June 16, 1997, I didn't have to think about the New York Yankees very often if I didn't want to. I didn't want to. If I did, they were right there for the following when I started with baseball. I went with the Mets and that was that. The Yankees had their downs and ups and their cycles (some lasting distressingly longer than others) but they existed in somebody else's vacuum for my purposes.

That changed as of June 16, 1997. They weren't just a psychic enemy by dint of obnoxious co-workers and classmates, they were opponents. They were on the schedule. You could ignore the Yankees to the best of your ability — preblog media making that a tough enough task — but now you had to stare them in the face three, then six times a year every year whether you wanted to or not.

It's easy to bash Interleague. It's easy to point to any game that involves the Devil Rays or Royals taking on a National League team, or the Pirates or Rockies going against an American League team and snottily dismiss it with “well, there's a rivalry everybody wants to see.” To which I say, what do you want from these clubs? They're part of a larger structure, they have to play somebody. I imagine there was a moment in baseball history when the Pirates playing the White Sox would have caused quite a stir, maybe around 1960 or 1972. I tuned in briefly to their game last night and saw loads of empty seats at PNC Park, no different than it would be if the Pirates played just about anybody these days.

So Interleague isn't a panacea through no fault of its 30 participants, some of whom undeniably suck regardless of matchup. But it does rock New York and a few other intracity locales as has been well documented by the Attendance line at the bottom of boxscores since 1997. People show up. Hardly anybody claims to like it anymore, but I'm waiting for the first Subway Series game in which you can walk up to the ticket window an hour before first pitch and purchase four on the aisle in either Queens or the Bronx. I made it my business to go the first one at Shea in 1998 for the sake of history. I relished the chance to go the next couple of years because, duh, it was the Mets playing the Yankees. Since 2001, I simply hate the idea that a Yankees fan's ass might be taking up my rightful space.

Hmmm…I wonder how much more they could charge for admission if they marketed it as “Don't Let Those Bastards Sit In Your Seats.”

It's not like we don't get our money's worth out of the Subway Series. Pound for pound, Mets-Yankees games have to be the most breathtaking of any games in the Majors in just about any year. Tell me each side doesn't play its heart out even after they spew quote after quote about how it's either just another game or, worse, a pain in their excessively compensated ass. Think how many games you can instantly identify by name since 1997. The Mlicki Game. The Matt Franco Game. The Shawn Estes Game. The Mister Koo Game. Think how many obscurities spring to life through the prism of the Subway Series and how instantly incandescent they become. Shane Spencer…Ty Wigginton…Richard Hidalgo…and that was just one weekend in 2004.

Come to think of it, save for Piazza being Piazza on multiple occasions and Wright and Floyd using Yankee Stadium's upper deck for target practice on June 25, 2005, does it strike you odd that so many of our triumphs against baseball's best-funded corporate entity have been won on the wings and prayers of relative obscurities? Even obscure for the Mets? Would you be able to differentiate Dave Mlicki from Robert Person or Mark Clark if not for the Subway Series? Would Steve Bieser's Q rating be anywhere near as high as it is if not for the balk he teased out of David Cone on June 18, 1997, two days after Mlicki had his passport to Amazin' immortality stamped? Would Tsuyoshi Shinjo's orange wristbands burn as brightly in memory if he hadn't given over a quad to beat out a play at first, thus setting up Mr. Mike's midnight roughshod ride over Carlos Almanzar on June 17, 2001?

Perhaps it's a function of not having that many stars, at least not until fairly recently. Who does the damage for the Yankees? Not Carlos Almanzar or Enrique Wilson or Tanyon Sturtze, cherished goats from our perspective. It's Jeter and A-Rod and Jeter and Posada and Jeter and Giambi and Jeter and, earlier, Williams and Jeter and Martinez and Jeter and O'Neill and Jeter.

It's always fucking Jeter, isn't it? He kicks our brains in and then he's selling us a Ford Explorer. Can somebody please screen these ads ahead of time?

We play the Yankees just about as much as we play any N.L. Central or Western opponent. Mets-Astros games may have their own particular flavor but there's no denying a unique culture has sprung up between the Mets and Yankees. There are five essential types that can describe just about every Subway Series game.

• The joyous bizarrofest won by the Mets, definitely the class of the genre of which The Matt Franco Game of July 10, 1999 is the archetype and patron saint.

• The inane choke lost by the Mets, such as the end of the world brought to us by Billy Wagner on May 20, 2006 but honed to imperfection by Armando Benitez on June 14, 2002 and Braden Looper on June 26, 2005.

• The scintillating pitching & defense duel won by the Mets, last spotted Friday night, previously spun May 18, 2007 via Oliver Perez and Endy Chavez.

• The slopfest lost by the Mets — you know, like Saturday.

• The dull Yankee win, representing probably a bulging plurality of the 34 Met losses since June 17, 1997, particularly on Sunday nights.

Ah yes, ESPN games are a notable subgenre of the Subway Series. They used to present the occasional uplifting breakthrough (Luis Lopez sac-flying home Carlos Baerga while Brian McRae dawdled around first on June 28, 1998, thus saving us from completely losing Shea face; Al Leiter stopping the coach-firing, losing streak madness of June 6, 1999 and sparking up a 40-15 run for glory), but ever since the first Subway Series rainout — Ventura flopping around on the tarp with a fake Mike mustache which was funny until it wrought that horrendous shame-of-the-franchise day-night doubleheader of July 8, 2000 — Sunday nights have increasingly morphed into episodes of embarrassment. We actually won the first four ESPN games we played against the Yankees. Yet after Sunday night June 16, 2002 — Mo Vaughn hammering David Wells at Shea — we are 1-7 in the Simpsons/Sopranos slot, up through and including the unawaited debut of Tyler Clippard on May 20, 2007. Lifetime with Joe Moron and Jon Imbecile bungling the action, we're 6-8. You can keep prime time.

Let's say you have a game like Saturday afternoon's. I'd rather not, but we did. Even as it dragged on until Carlos Beltran courteously ended it with one swing, we were guaranteed the agony of 24+ hours without a chance for revenge. That's the worst part of the Subway Series, save for the 34 losses. The waiting is indeed the hardest part. I don't do or think anything special for games against the Phillies or the Nationals or even the Braves unless circumstances dictate otherwise. For 15 regular National League and 13 intermittent American League opponents, it's generally enough to pay a little attention beforehand and turn on the TV once the clock strikes 7.

Not with these games against the Yankees. I try everything including trying nothing. When the Subway Series was still novel, even when it was getting old, I allowed myself to get sucked up into the hype Subway Series Fridays brought. I bought all the papers, I stayed glued to the FAN, I watched the idiots-screaming-into-the-camera features on the news. This past Friday, I decided to go unspoiled. I read nothing. I heard nothing. I watched nothing. I didn't even wear a Mets t-shirt. Because my strategic disengagement worked (that and Ollie), I tried it again Saturday. The results were mixed, then abysmal. Once it was 10-5, I pulled out a trick I use only in dire circumstances. I dropped all television and radio contact, which is different from simply turning off your sets right there. We needed to pick up a few things at Stop & Shop, so pick up we did. Pick up and leave Channel 11. No earbuds, bud. No concern for what was going on in the late innings. None evinced, anyway.

We arrived home for the top of the ninth, groceries in, garbage waiting to be taken out. I'll just sit and watch this disaster, now 11-6, go final and then hit the dumpster, figuring I'll see the Mets there in about two minutes. Then Delgado gets a hit. And Lo Duca. An out but then Castro gets a hit. Gotay doesn't, but Gomez battles Rivera so hard that it must elicit a reflexive smile from Art Howe in Cincinnati with the Rangers. It's 11-7. Stephanie hands me a rainbow roll from the Stop & Shop seafood department. I chew on it as if it's the most important thing in the room. I can't invest outward interest in what's on the TV. I walked away from this game and now this game has come crawling back to me. If I embrace it, it will only turn on me in anger.

Reyes's turn to not give up the ship. And he doesn't. It's 11 to 8. I'm out of rainbow roll. I just sit and stare and Beltran. If I make too much out of the bases being loaded and our technically best player coming up, there will be nothing to come of it.

I act like this at Shea once in a while. And I certainly twist my thoughts into pretzels dozens of times a night so as to bring good luck or not bring bad luck to the Mets. But this kind of thinking, this kind of anxiety, this brand of intense, insane, insipid ohmigodibetternotscrewthisupforus contortionism doesn't happen when the Mets play 15 regular National League and 13 intermittent American League opponents.

I don't know if I should credit or blame the Subway Series for this strain of behavior. Anything that makes you feel baseball this much is probably a worthwhile if utterly unhealthy endeavor. I love beating the Yankees. I hate losing to the Yankees. Fifty-nine times since June 16, 1997, I've experienced the sweet and the bitter ends of this particular rainbow roll repeatedly. Both are tastes you never quite get out of your mouth.

But on the eve of my sixtieth bite, I wouldn't put up much of a fuss if they decided not to serve us any more after this. Really, I was sated after the first helping ten years ago yesterday.

Scratching out two singles makes him just a bit less Wilson Delgado and a bit more Carlos Delgado for the day (though that fifth-inning cutoff clank which allowed Cano an extra base and eventually an extra run was worthy of Marvelous Marv Delgadoberry). Alas, if one can take a slight breather from mulling What's Wrong With Carlos Delgado?, one must now join in progress the vigil as regards What's Wrong With Carlos Beltran?

On an endless afternoon when everybody hit somebody sometime, Beltran didn't hit at all, didn't get on base, didn't show any signs that he is Carlos Beltran, millionaire, who owns a mansion and a yacht. 0 for 6. Oh for six. Six times up, no times on. There isn't a way to term it or type it that makes it any less unappetizing.

What's wrong here? The knee? Getting his timing after taking time to heal the knee? Retraining his eye? Not that the game wasn't lost many times in many ways by many Mets between innings one and eight, but how on earth could a man who is so incredibly skilled at taking pitches (ahem) swing at the very first one thrown toward him by Mariano Rivera after the Greatest Blah Blah Blah Ever is obviously waaaaay the fuck off his stride? Rivera threw 32 pitches to 7 batters and allowed 5 hits in the ninth. He throws 1 pitch to Beltran and Beltran swings at it and Rivera slithers away essentially unmolested.

I can't imagine how one differentiates, from the batter's box, in nanoseconds, between a good pitch to swing at and a good pitch to take. But after a closer in a non-save situation — which always screws them up — has struggled to get three simple outs against one very simple team and has afforded said team a gaping if undeserved shot at redemption, I can differentiate between a good opportunity to take and a good opportunity to swing and pop up and call it a night.

Delgado wallowing in a slump I can live with somehow. I've seen it before and we persevered together, he and us. But Beltran, lordy, he's just too important to this team. When he sucks, we suck. I've given the matter a great deal of study and have reached the considered conclusion that he just can't be doing that.

They pull a knife, you pull a gun.

He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.

They start Clemens, you start Perez.

That's the Met way.

In five games this season against the despised Braves and the detested Yankees — the intersection of haunting nightmares and the uncontrollable shakes — Ollie's ERA is 1.26. He's 5-0 against our most bitter rivals. If you need someone to take out a ghost or two, Ollie is obviously your man. Throw in his respectable work from seventh games of championship series and it appears this fellow might very well be a keeper.

Oliver Perez is clearly the most interesting starter on the active roster. It's no longer a question of not knowing what you're going to get. You know you're likely to get quality. You're just not sure how you're going to get it. Friday night I found it fascinating that both Billy Wagner and Jorge Posada, who presumably did not compare talking points, both called him effectively wild. That's a lot different from “oh dear, he's gone three and oh again.”

Of course he had help. It's about time somebody on the Mets helped somebody else on the Mets, each of them riding around the last road trip aimlessly, 25 Mets in 25 directionless cabs. Carlos Gomez certainly threaded the needle in left, the needle being morons with outstretched hands. There was a little pinch of Endy on display, though certainly not as polished. He does have that “Skates” quality in his stride; two or three times I was sure he pulled something he needed for running.

Back in the era of good feeling, I was ready to stamp Carlos the Third's ticket back to N'Awlins, having watched his average spiral and his savvy fail to sprout. Seasoning is why we relocated our triple-A operations to the home of Cajun cooking, right? But the Mets are in no position to send back a player, no matter how undercooked, who can create a run and save a couple more. And this unexpected accumulation of Major League service time might not be so bad. His career trajectory to date is a bit reminiscent of his big brother Jose Reyes. Jose was up too soon, it was said, and could have used a little more good Tideing. But between injuries and pervasive team lousiness in 2003, Reyes was never shuttled off to Virginia and, growing pains notwithstanding, I think it was to his benefit. We could see it with Gomez. Let the trial be by fire. But somebody make sure the kid stays on his feet.

Had to love the bunting on Clemens and his fatigued groin (boo frigging hoo). It's just smart baseball. You've got the tools, use them. Ron Darling noted fielding bunts is one of those disciplines drilled into you during Spring Training and hey, guess what, Clemens didn't bother with Spring Training. But he and his agent did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last month.

Six-and-a-third innings of two-run ball, as representative an outing as it was for (grumble, grumble) a Hall of Fame pitcher, rates a million bucks? Now that's smart baseball! Why bother with the fundamentals when all you have to do is show up in June, stick around the premises only as long as you feel necessary and not be expected to complete seven?

Apropos of nothing except my enjoyment of The Ballclub's recurring and regularly compelling Lost Classics feature, I found myself recalling the last two times the Mets faced the, oy, Rocket. He was an Astro and he was good.

May 16, 2004: 7 IP, 0 ER, 2 H, 1 BB, 10 SO

April 13, 2005: 7 IP, 0 ER, 2 H, 1 BB, 9 SO

Clemens as an Astro didn't pack quite the putrid punch as did and does Clemens the Yankee only because Strychnine presumably doesn't taste as bad as Drano. Don't get me wrong. I was steadfast in my desire to watch the mound open up and swallow him and his rapidly fatiguing groin with one enormous suck during his Houston hiatus, but I was willing, in the abstract, to grudgingly admire his pitching output if not the outputter himself. Mike Piazza's two-out, ninth-inning, game-tying home run off Octavio Dotel to cost Clemens a victory at Minute Maid in '04 (Jason Phillips getting his wallop on to win it in the 13th) and Kaz Ishii — remember him? — matching Clemens pitch for pitch the following April at Shea (Reyes singling home Victor Diaz in the eleventh for walkoff closure) positions each of these as Lost Classics candidates, but what seals their respective nominations is the fact that Roger Clemens started, Roger Clemens excelled and Roger Clemens was no-decisioned as the result of Met lightning striking.

I'd give Clemens plenty of credit for striking out eight Mets during his lucrative if abbreviated Friday night stay, but those of us who remained awake through the Los Angeles lossquake know that isn't terribly impressive (4 through 8 in the order: 0 for 19 with a walk), especially since three of those K's were Delgado, Delgado and Delgado, with more Delgado striking out a fourth time after Clemens left. CD really is in Montañez territory right now. Here's what I mean:

Wille Montañez 1978

First Met Year

Age: 30

Games: 159

HR: 17

RBI: 96

BA: .256

OPS: .712

Willie Montañez 1979

Second Met Year

Age: 31

Games: 109 (traded in August)

HR: 5

RBI: 47

BA: .234

OPS: .594

Or try this:

Bernard Gilkey 1996

First Met Year

Age: 29

Games: 153

HR: 30

RBI: 117

BA: .317

OPS: .955

Bernard Gilkey 1997

Second Met Year

Age: 30

Games: 145

HR: 18

RBI: 78

BA: .249

OPS: .755

As for the present:

Carlos Delgado 2006

First Met Year

Age: 33/34

Games: 144

HR: 38

RBI: 114

BA: .265

OPS: .909

Carlos Delgado 2007

Second Met Year

Age: 34/35

Games: 62

HR: 10

RBI: 39

BA: .221

OPS: .687

Delgado owns a deeper portfolio of accomplishment than Montañez or Gilkey, but he's also older as he teeters. His predecessors in disturbing falloff surprised the Mets with their acquisition-season productivity; Gilkey tied the team ribby record (in his walk year — also very smart) and Montañez's 96 runs batted in were actually third-most in Mets history at the time…and driving in nearly one hundred 1978 Mets was a feat of mind-boggling proportions considering how doubtful it is that one hundred Mets actually reached base in 1978.

We know Carlos was extremely streaky in 2006. His April, however, set the tone for the new, improved lineup and when he faded for extended intervals, it barely mattered as everybody else was scorching. It felt like Delgado got back half his power numbers in about three weeks in August (a month when he swatted eight homers and drove in 26 runs), thereby piecing together one of the better slugging seasons we've ever seen in these parts. That batting average was eerily low, but he was getting on base and driving the ball enough to write off that .265. Now .265 is sadly aspirational.

Don't mean to take the edge off a sweet victory, considering the circumstances, the opponent and the opposing and losing pitcher, but I'll feel a lot better when Delgado is cleaning up something besides the dregs of what was a fabulous career.

When they brought the Antichrist back, it wasn't a sure thing we'd face him. Then it looked like their rotation wasn't aligned for another meeting. And that was fine with me. It's an old hatred by now, a grudge that involves vanished players and distant times. I can reach back and bring the causes back to life, but a lot of the hatred has become ritualistic, received wisdom — Greeks and Turks, Shiites and Sunnis, Hatfields and McCoys. Long ago something happened, and now we hate.

It didn't help that yesterday was one of those rarest of days in a baseball season — a day your baseball team isn't playing and you're glad. It seems crazy — in January you'd traverse the desert to see three scoreless innings between the Angels and the Rangers — but it does happen, and Thursday was proof. Did any of us want to see the Mets take the field after their humiliation by the Dodgers and apparently mute acceptance of same? They needed a day off. We needed a day off. But with Clemens and the Yankees on deck, that day off was inevitably spent bemoaning everything that had happened and fretting about everything that might happen.

Tonight was our final night on LBI, and Emily and I hijacked the TV and provided a running lesson in Met history and hatreds for our housemates. Two of our friends have an eight-year-old son, and we were off and running when he asked, “Why do you hate him so much?” I left the explanation to Emily and she provided, delivering a capsule biography that included Piazza, the bat shard, headhunting and hiding behind the DH. (I might have removed myself from consideration by telling Joshua, “You know how we say we don't want bad things to happen to any person? Well, that doesn't apply here. The Yankee pitcher is a very, very bad man, and if an asteroid crushes him, Mommy and Daddy will be happy.” Oh, and I also tried to convince the eight-year-old that you could see the stump of his tail. And if I were in a court of law, I would have to admit to saying he colored his hair with the blood of innocent children. What?)

The game itself was light on historical digressions, because they never would have ended. How could you sum up the rancid brew of emotions that churned in our guts when Oliver lost the plate and finally threw a strike that wound up with Carlos Gomez feeling for the left-field fence on a ball that was obviously going to be a home run? I mean, where to start? Todd Zeile hitting a ball to pretty much the same spot, only in that game the smartest Yankee fan on earth is in the seat and doesn't touch the ball, and Timo Fucking Perez doesn't fucking run and Derek Jeter does what Derek Jeter does and Armando Fucking Benitez walks Paul O'Neill and we're doomed, doomed, doomed. And of course it's hit by Miguel Cairo, one of the more useless Mets of recent memory who regards his time at Shea like we regard three hours spent in the DMV. And Gomez is a baby whose outfield play has been a little shaky considering all his talent and there are 55,000 baying on the biggest regular-season baseball stage of all. Telling the backstory of that one would scare any eight-year-old away from the game — best to avoid any sport where one home run barely sneaking over a fence can unleash such a geyser of bile and pain.

Only it isn't a home run. Two Yankee fans whiff on the ball. Gomez makes a great catch. Hideki Matsui is halfway to third for no apparent reason. Inning-ending double play and Oliver has escaped the hangman.

And while our offense was still pretty slumbery (the baseball newcomers were introduced to the concept of the golden sombrero courtesy of poor Delgado), Reyes' satellite-killer and Gomez's wheels were enough. Clemens disappeared (no doubt to turn into sulfurous vapor in the shower), Joe Smith got A-Rod, Captain Intangibles' double didn't kill us and we were home free. I'm not sure how exactly 2-9 feels like a ticket to the Promised Land, but it does.