Well, who didn't see that coming?

It's one of those weeks. They occur from time to time in the life of a contender. Your starters carry you, you can't score at every dripping-wet opportunity and your bullpen conspires with a vengeful opposition to screw you over but good. It happened and happened and happened again this week.

It happens.

When did you know it was a done deal? In the first when Wright pissed away second and third? The second when Lo Duca desperately turned a single into a non-double? When we had four hits after two innings off Cole Hamels but no runs? When Beltran cleared Ben Johnson off the basepaths with a double play to short-circuit the top of the sixth? When John Maine pitched his heart out yet trailed 2-0 in the middle of six?

All that was easy to see. It takes a seasoned eye to have figured out that what followed wasn't going to do us much good by evening's end.

• Delgado wallops Hamels 450 feet. Impressive, but it's only 2-1. Solo home runs, except when strategically delivered, are almost uniformly useless.

• Wright triples…no, homers…yeah, homers. Definitely homers. That's pretty good news, even though it's a solo homer. It should be a very positive sign that the Mets were credited with four bases instead of three since David went to the trouble of driving the ball over the fence. The umpires caucusing after Lo Duca noticed on DiamondVision that they blew it in the first place (are there enough badly spaced advertising signs out there?) was also an encouraging development and their decision to tell Charlie Manuel to stuff his illogical reasoning that getting it right was wrong because they're not supposed to take irrefutable video evidence into account — that was just plain fun.

• Lo Duca homering on the first pitch after all that? After Wright trotted home all golly-goshous? After Reyes greeted him with a time-lapse body slam of congratulations? After Valentin tested his knee or leg or whatever was wrong with him that caused him to be out more than a month (I've actually forgotten) by jumping up and down in the on-deck circle? Three consecutive batters sending the Mets from 0-2 to 1-2 to 2-2 to 3-2?

That should have been the turning point from all the alleged turning points of the last two nights. The Mets took a 3-2 lead in satisfying and dramatic fashion, Maine marched to the mound and threw a scoreless seventh, all was swell with the world.

Yeah. Right.

The Mets didn't lose the game in the bottom of the sixth. They lost it during the 19 other half-innings. They lost it in those early innings when they flat out refused to score. They lost it in the bottom of the seventh when Johnson and Beltran couldn't convert two baserunners into anything. They lost it in the top of the eighth when Pedro Feliciano began the parade of hapless hurlers who could not honor John Maine's effort just as they brought shame on the houses of Hernandez and Glavine. They lost it in the top of the ninth when Billy Wagner proved that the Sandman can Enter but he can't be expected to hang around for very long. They lost it in the bottom of the ninth when, as has become their late-inning custom, they stranded the potential winning run short of home plate.

The tenth was just the predictable pile of Schoeneweis that was bound to follow.

The Phillies were due this week. We embarrassed their ass in the Home Opener and we wrecked their Wild Card chances all through August '06 (remember that foul ball that wasn't?) and we steamrolled them out of the division race last June and we even spoiled their playoff aspirations at the end of '05. They owed us one. Or three. How long are you going to keep Pat Burrell down at Shea Stadium anyway? We have cranes beyond the outfield wall. They brought a wrecking crew.

Not the end of the world, just the lousy homestand. Everybody's pressing, nobody's succeeding. It's annoying and distressing but it's still June and we're still in first place by 3-1/2 (or did you not notice the Braves have been losing all week, too?).

2007 may not bear ample resemblance to 2006, but look at the bright side: the Mets are going to Detroit at last.

What's everybody so down about? Didn't everybody make it with a beautiful MP tonight?

—Russell Ziskey, Stripes

Listen, I'm as mopey as everybody here about Endy Chavez and all the injuries and the three-game losing streak, but…ahem…I was talking to our very own Met the other night and…

What? Doesn't everybody have their very own Met?

Faith and Fear does. Our Met is Steve Springer. I call him Spring. He calls me buddy. And he thinks it's “awesome” that I have his cap.

It is awesome! It is so awesome not only that I have the Tidewater Tides cap worn by Steve Springer in 1986, but it is doubly awesome that the very same Steve Springer, an honest-to-goodness New York Met in 1992, was directed by his son (who was directed by Google) to read about my excitement at receiving his cap from Dave Murray last December. Spring let it be known that I should get in touch with him. So we e-mailed. And then we spoke.

I've met Mets before, some in that “hi, how are ya?” passing in a hotel lobby way, some in that “who should I make that out to?” way, even one in that “this is my friend Greg” way. The meetings were chance or merchandised or through somebody else's good graces because somebody else had their own Met. All those experiences were great. But I've never spoken to a Met because I wrote about him, certainly not because I blogged about him. I never wanted to be a sportswriter because I never wanted to not be excited by the first one-on-one, two guys shootin'-the-breeze chat I ever had with a New York Met.

It worked. I talked to Spring for like 20 minutes last week and I'm still excited. It's still awesome.

Now before you start thinking Steve Springer has nothing better to do than make overgrown small boys with blogs' wishes come true, there was a little piece of business conducted. No, I didn't pay him to talk to me, but I anxiously volunteered that I wanted to let our readers, guys like us who are “nuts” about the Mets and who may have kids who are old enough to benefit, know that he has an instructional hitting CD — Quality At Bats — designed to help budding players improve their game and their chances of today, Draft Day, being one of the greatest days of their lives.

“If the game wasn't mental,” Spring told me, “then every first-rounder would have ten years in the big leagues.” He pointed to David Eckstein winning the MVP in last year's World Series as evidence that it takes more than talent to succeed in baseball. I wished he hadn't used the 2006 Cardinals as his shining example of what works, but I got what he was saying.

It's too late to help me (physically and possibly mentally), but Spring sent me the CD anyway. I listened to it and Spring makes a lot of sense. His whole approach revolves around being mentally sound and not getting hung up on batting averages, simply having quality at-bats. That means going up to the plate with confidence, making your goal hitting the ball hard, attacking the inside part of the ball and helping your team win that day. Sometimes, Spring told me, you're gonna hit the ball on the screws and you're gonna make an out. That's OK. Don't get discouraged. Stick with your plan. The average will take care of itself and the scouts will find you. When you play ball, Spring says, you're always being evaluated.

Dads (and moms), it's a great teaching tool for your kids if they're at all serious about playing baseball, not just watching it like me. And actually, even if all you like to do is watch baseball, it's pretty damn neat to listen to the CD just to hear a major leaguer share a few stories, a few secrets, a few names. Don't take my starstruck word for it, though. College coaches (including George Horton of Cal State Fullerton who swore by Spring's advice all the way to a national championship), MLB personnel gurus, pro players…a lot of people who know what they're talking about talk about Quality At Bats like it's gospel. There are tens of thousands in circulation. It's worth checking out.

Spring knows his baseball. He has the CD, he's been a scout for the Diamondbacks, he's an agent for several current players (one of whom called in the middle of our conversation) and he had a long playing career. The four games with the Mets in 1992 and the four he had with the Indians in 1990 are the extent of his big league dossier (enough to rate him the hundredth invitation to celebrity golf tournaments, he chuckled) but he spent eleven seasons in the minors, most of them in the Met system.

“It could've been a lot better,” Spring told me. “It could've been a lot worse.”

It would figure that his Tidewater cap would seep out of Virginia and become available to the likes of Dave Murray in Michigan then me on Long Island because Spring was a Tide for a long time, a good enough Tide to have been inducted into their Hall of Fame. He was in Norfolk alongside a veritable living, breathing volume of The Holy Books, counting teammates like Lenny Dykstra, Billy Beane and Randy Milligan among the lifelong friends he made in the minors.

“Baseball's a pretty good fraternity,” he says, which is somehow reassuring to a fan like me who would like to believe that these guys are more than just mercenaries. Sure enough, Spring competed good-naturedly with Keith Miller to sign David Wright as a client (Keith got him, but David has the CD), recently hooked up with Rick Aguilera for the first time in 15 years and can't sing the praises of John Gibbons enough. Regarding the tussles the Blue Jays manager had with a couple of his malcontent players last year, Spring is adamant that “if you don't get along with Gibby, trust me you're the idiot. He's the best. He's gold.”

The name I didn't expect Spring to mention (as if I expected to hear any of them) was that of Tom McCraw, the Mets hitting coach when he finally made it to the Mets in '92. If he'd met him when he was 18 instead of 28, Spring might have moved up the celebrity golf tournament ladder, so good was his advice on the mental approach to hitting. “He changed my life,” Spring says. McCraw is why Spring understands the mental side of hitting and can pass it along.

Isn't that something? We watch these games, we see hitting coaches sitting on the bench next to reserve infielders, we see a few words pass between them and we don't think anything of it. This is their lives and their livelihoods playing out in front of us. That, too, is kind of awesome.

As long as I had a former New York Met on the phone, I couldn't resist a couple of topical questions. Since he mentioned Gibby and the Blue Jays, I asked him about that A-Rod play in Toronto last week. It had taken place the night before and Spring hadn't heard about it, so I explained Rodriguez was running from second to third and yelled “I GOT IT!” (or something) and messed up the Jays' infield's attempt to catch it.

Spring was aghast. “I've never heard of that!” he told me. “I've never thought to do that. That's crazy!” There's two things you don't do, he says: you don't fake a tag if the ball's not coming and you don't yell whatever A-Rod yelled on a pop-up. He says Jose Reyes dancing off third to induce Armando Benitez into a balk was fine. That the hidden-ball trick is great. But A-Rod's action does not have Spring's seal of approval.

Since there are only a few MLB boxscores that contain the name Steve Springer to comb, my friend Mark was quick to examine them when I told him I was going to be speaking with Spring. Mark noticed right off (as he tends to) that one of his games, with the Indians, was against the Red Sox, with Roger Clemens pitching. So I asked Spring if it's weird knowing that a guy he faced 17 years ago is about to pitch in the bigs again.

I expected some boilerplate about what a great competitor Clemens is and not a lot more. But like a lot of people, I underestimated Spring. He had a whole story about that game.

Spring went 4-for-17 (.235) in the big leagues, but he told me he should have gone 4-for-13 (.308) because he never should have faced Clemens on June 3, 1990. Spring wasn't in the starting lineup, but Clemens hit Stanley Jefferson (yes, ex-Met Stanley Jefferson) and tensions boiled over and Chris James got ejected and Spring was sent in cold to take his place as DH. His first at-bat, Clemens throws him a fastball and Spring hits it has hard as he can, and it's heading right between the five-hole and the six-hole but Luis Rivera (yes, ex-Met Luis Rivera) “shoestrings me” and “Roger Clemens did not throw me another fastball the rest of the day. He struck me out three times. I busted his fastball.

“I was a like a baby deer taking his first steps. And he's still pitching. He's amazing, obviously.”

Spring's tenure with the Mets lasted all of four games over eleven days. I had hoped he could tell me something about Shea Stadium from a player's perspective, but his entire New York career was one game. “I got there at noon, extra early to work, and I'm pinch-hitting against Mitch Williams at eleven o'clock at night.” Not an ideal National League debut (Wild Thing struck out our Spring) but the road was kinder. His first Met start was August 25 at Candlestick. The second baseman doubled off Trevor Wilson in the second and singled against him in the seventh. The Mets won 2-1.

Two days later, the Mets traded David Cone for “some stiff named Jeff Kent”. Kent, like Clemens, is still active and also possibly en route to Cooperstown (despite Mets fan misgivings in both cases). Spring didn't get brought back in September. He reupped with the organization and told me he was due for an “are you shitting me?” callup early the next year. That, he explained, is when other ballplayers see Steve Springer's name in the transactions box in the newspaper and ask “They called up Spring? Are you shitting me?” Alas, the Mets wound up in an extra-inning duel in Montreal and pitching reinforcements were needed and Spring was in short order off to new adventures.

Roger Angell once wrote about three middle-aged Tigers fans who were a lot like Jason and me and probably you. One of them, named Don, was a dentist who couldn't believe whose teeth were in his hands. He had to call his pal Bert to tell him.

“This is probably a violation of every professional canon, but I can't help it. Guess who I've got in the chair!”

“Chet Laabs!”

Chet Laabs, Angell kindly explained, was “a chunky, unremarkable outfielder” who played for the Tigers from 1937 to 1939.

Much of my professional work involves interviewing people and writing what they say in a fairly detached manner. I don't mind doing that as a rule. I certainly don't make myself part of their story. But I didn't want to interview Steve Springer per se. I just wanted to talk to a guy who played for the Mets, one whose cap wound up via circuitous route on my head long after he recorded those two hits off Trevor Wilson of the Giants to help Sid Fernandez gain his eleventh win of the 1992 season.

Thus I had one final question for our honest-to-goodness New York Met. Spring, I asked, what do you make of guys like us, me and my buddy who write blogs like this, me and my buddy who got me your cap, me and everybody who goes nuts over what guys like you did for a living?

“I think it's awesome,” Spring told me. “I've never changed. I'm still the guy I was, treating people with respect. Does it hurt to say 'hi' to somebody? It makes people feel good.”

It sure does.

We may be standing on the unanticipated and unwanted resumption of the Ricky Ledee era. At least I assume that's who'll get the call from New Orleans, though the way things are going with anyone unwise enough to set foot in our outfield, perhaps it'll be Ron Swoboda. Or me. They're saying that what struck down Endy Chavez was a hamstring strain, but that sure didn't look like any hamstring strain I've ever seen. That looked like a six- to eight-week gunshot.

I don't think I agree with Gary Cohen that this had the feeling of a pivotal point in the season. Yes, the Phillies have shown a much better bullpen, and Jimmy Rollins and Shane Victorino played their guts out tonight. (Memo to all baserunners: Do not fuck with Shane Victorino.) But the Phillies still made plenty of mistakes, enough to doom them on a night the Met offense was firing on its normal number of cylinders. And, well, they're the Phillies. Jimmy Rollins' talent and fire have never been in question — even when the Phils were getting shoved around Shea in April, he acquitted himself perfectly well. But I doubt it'll be enough. I doubt they'll be able to get out of their own way when it matters — not with that bullpen, that manager and that peculiar lethargy that seems to creep into their clubhouse no matter how hard the likes of Aaron Rowand and Rollins and Victorino play.

Meanwhile, we're a very good baseball team scuffling through injuries and a cold offensive stretch, and what we're doing or not doing in early June most likely will have nothing to do with whatever happens in September or later months, should we be allowed to partake of extra baseball. I don't think tonight's game — a heartstopping, marvelous and ultimately horrifying game — was any kind of referendum on 2007. But it did bring something into focus for me, and that's the difference between 2007 and 2006.

In 2006, Heilman giving up a three-run laser to Rollins would have just upped the drama. In 2006, with the equivalents of Ruben Gotay and David Newhan (Xavier Nady and Michael Tucker?) on base and Endy up, you knew there'd be a clean single up the middle, a play at the plate that just went the Mets' way, then maybe a shredding of the hapless Phillies bullpen on the way to talk about resilience and picking each other up. You just knew it, to the point that sometimes you even shook your head at the blissful cheesiness of the script, of walkoff after walkoff and comeback win after comeback win, so that if the scoreboard showed you were within two in late innings, you almost felt sorry for the other guys.

That happened so often early in 2006 that you fell head over heels in love with the Mets — if you had any liking for baseball or human achievement or drama, how couldn't you? And the Mets fell head over heels in love with themselves, and before any of us could catch our breath the momentum was unstoppable and we were pennant-bound. The 2007 model Mets have a decent-sized lead of their own and statistical superiority over all comers, and they're perfectly capable of running off 5-of-7 streak that will make us all relax — heck, they did just lose a third-straight game for the first time all year. But the feeling isn't the same, because the ridiculous, giddy drama isn't there. This year, that bouncer up the middle might be hit hard enough to be a double play. Last year, you knew Endy would just beat it out anyway. This year, he needs to be helped off the field.

We won't remember it for long, but until then this was a pretty neat game, what with El Duque doing his usual chemistry experiment on the mound (Ugh! Smoke! Things breaking! Hang on … fiddle fiddle … Got it!) and Carlos Beltran pulling a reverse Dave Augustine. And I thoroughly enjoyed pulling an A-Rod on the Useless Liability Formerly Known as Pat Burrell, razzing him foully and smugly during his at-bat as the one guy I'd want to see up in that spot. Unfortunately he was only the second out, and he was followed by Rollins. Then came the change-up from Heilman that was supposed to go outside and stayed in, and the rally that wasn't, and the images of Paul Lo Duca sitting morosely in the dirt behind home and Endy downed in the grass beyond first.

It's 2007, the scripts have been torn up, and we'll have to find our own way.

One of the greatest series of all-time will have its conclusion televised to its rabid followers in a few days. And I don't necessarily mean The Sopranos.

I hope everybody who has SNY has been able to catch at least a little of the 1969 World Series, Games Two, Three and Four these past three Mondays. Even if you haven't, tune in for Game Five Monday night, 7 PM — three hours before the Mets-Dodgers game and 21 hours after we find out what becomes of what's left of the New Jersey mob.

Whichever T.S. you prefer, Tom Seaver or Tony Soprano, these figure to be can't-miss affairs. I may have even found something tangible to link them.

If you've been watching The Sopranos since 1999, you know Tony is obsessed with keeping the old ways alive or at least relevant. As the program comes to an end, we are learning how difficult it is to maintain long-accepted traditions and folkways (hint: the whacking doesn't help). Baseball, of course, is enmeshed with traditions and folkways, lots of “in my day…” bemoaning from fans who have been around long enough to have judged that today is not their day.

I've never strictly considered myself one of those fans, even with nearly 40 seasons in the bank. I'd like to believe the best game ever will be tonight's (can't be much worse than last night's). Yet I'm also not immune to thinking myriad aspects of baseball were better at some point prior to right now.

Rewatching the 1969 World Series — I've seen at least portions of these broadcasts a few times over the decades and am blessed with a handful of memories from when they were new — is a great exercise not just in nostalgia but comparison. I tend to think of the entire continuum of my rooting as eternally compressed; if I've been around for it, it couldn't have happened that far back. Nevertheless, 1969 was 38 years ago and I am compelled to concede that indeed baseball looks like, feels like and was a substantially different enterprise from what it is in 2007. The broadcasts have certainly revealed those differences.

Is it better? Worse? Just evolutionary? Could we rightly expect 1969 to resemble 2007 any more than 1931 would have resembled 1969? And how much isn't all that different? I'm reading Crazy '08, a wonderfully frothy account of what author Cait Murphy unabashedly calls the best season in baseball history. That's the year of Merkle's Boner and a whole lot else. One of the many points I'm picking up from Murphy is 1908 is a surprisingly linear ancestor of modern times. “If you were to beam yourself back to a 1908 football or basketball game, the play would look unskilled, the strategies primitive, and much of the action incomprehensible,” she writes. “Take yourself out to the ball game, though, and you would be right at home.” Cosmetic niceties aside, it's much the same game between the lines now versus a century earlier.

If baseball can withstand a hundred years and remain reasonably constant, 38 years should be a drop in the bucket. And yes, the Mets and Orioles who came to play on October 15, 1969 (I'm using Game Four, which I just watched Monday, as my prime research material) do not look like visitors from a distant planet vis-à-vis 2007. But as one who has managed to live and watch baseball on a constant basis since 1969, I was struck by a lot, catalogued below.

I'll be shifting in and out of tenses since baseball past and present seem to have merged in my mind.

Dirt. When it's windy at Shea in 1969, dirt flies everywhere. They must be using better dirt today. Chalk that one up as a point for progress.

Smoke. Hey, what's a good World Series game without a cigarette? You wouldn't have known in 1969. No smoking allowed in the stands today. Score one for the nanny state.

Camera Angles. NBC used the behind-home angle for most pitches, had one camera stationed to capture plays at first, had another that would show us the pitcher in conjunction with a runner leading off first and a centerfield camera that was not yet the industry standard. Maybe there were one or two others. Special effects were limited to a diagonal split screen featuring the first and third base coaches. Today you see almost everything from almost everywhere. The more you see, the more you learn.

Daytime. Who doesn't think baseball doesn't look better in daylight? Especially its crown jewel? Practical matters dictate the games are at night now. In 1969 the World Series was a big enough draw that you could place it in the relative warmth of the October sun and attract an audience. Today they don't like to have LDS games before 8 o'clock. More people can watch at night which is no small consideration. But daytime remains ideal.

Music. What music? Between pitches…nothing. Between batters…nothing. To announce pitchers…nothing. (How would the Sandman know when to Enter?) There's a little Jane Jarvis here and there, which is charming as all get-out (she played “Meet The Mets” after a breathtaking 10-inning World Series victory, for goodness sake), but nothing obtrusive. And of course DiamondVision is 13 years from construction. My instinct is to say that's the way it should be, but not so fast there, fogy. I like the way the crowd, me among it, is revved up today. I like the Peter Finch exhortation to go to my window and such. I like Ace Frehley accompanying me back…back in the New York groove. There's an excess of noise, of course, but I think in small doses it genuinely gooses the atmosphere in a positive way. So bring back the organ (Ms. Jarvis is still around) and spin a few MP3s and beam the Curly Shuffle all anew, but do it in moderation. 1969 was just too darn quiet.

Sound. I don't think NBC's microphones worked very well. Lindsey Nelson and Curt Gowdy kept going on about the boisterous Shea crowd and then all I heard were crickets. Even owing to the relative reserve of a World Series gathering — all the swells nabbing all the tickets — I didn't hear more than a little Metsish enthusiasm peep from the seats. I've been told it existed. Hell, I was told all through childhood how crazy we were. But I can't hear it resounding from 38 years ago.

Umps. Damn they looked good in their suits and little caps. Shag Crawford seemed well within his judgment to dismiss Earl Weaver. He seemed dignified doing so. Since no horrible calls went against the Mets, I have to say umpiring was way better then.

Suits and Ties. Even if we allow that high-powered clients of advertisers received all the field level seats and then doled them out to their cohort, that's a well-dressed baseball crowd right there. I even saw a few straw boaters. A disdain for hypocrisy, however, impels me to admit I don't find this a fine thing. I would wear no upper-body garments but Mets t-shirts for the rest of my life if decorum didn't call for me to own one or two items with buttons and no printing. It's a ballgame! Yet you see virtually no baseball apparel. Replica teamwear is simply not in the circulation it would gain in later decades. Not more than a handful of Mets caps either, though a few Mets batting helmets were on some kids. You don't see that much anymore.

Lindsey Nelson. We'll assume he sported a plaid number as was his trademark. I don't care what he wore. Man he sounded great! Having spent the last 29 seasons without him, I forgot, quite frankly, how awesome he was. He's warm, he's authoritative, he doesn't screw around on Donn Clendenon's home run. Too bad MLB no longer invites a home voice to join a flagship announcer for the World Series. Lindsey was home, but he was no homer. I've read football was truly his game, that you get outside of New York and he's best identified with calling Cotton Bowls and such. If so, then what a pro for being that good with baseball. Hearing that syrupy-smooth voice brought back a lot of fantastic feelings.

Curt Gowdy. When Gowdy died last year, there was much media mourning, appropriate given his longevity and his peripatetic presence on big-time sporting events. That had to be it because, also quite frankly, I didn't like him. I didn't care for him when he was in his prime and I really began to despise him hearing him from 1969. He conveyed no sense of the moment, no feel for the history being made by these Miracle Mets besting these powerhouse Orioles and completely botched the aftermath of the Swoboda catch. You know what he talked about? How heads-up Frank Robinson was in not tagging up too soon! Yes, it was a big deal, tying the score at 1, but how about some props for Rocky? Gowdy was more impressed that Brooks Robinson hit the ball than he was that Swoboda extended himself in such a memorable fashion to catch it. I was incensed enough to file a protest with NBC like one of those cranky fans who thinks the national crew is rooting against the local team until I remembered this took place nearly 40 years ago.

Analysis. There was none. I'm not sure I missed it, even amid a 2-1 duel of fairly epic proportions. Despite my misgivings about Gowdy (he reminded me why I was so happy when ABC got half the baseball contract in 1976), I'd still take him and Lindsey over Buck and McCarver for a game like this if given the choice. As I told Stephanie, give me announcers like these in 2007 for a Fox or ESPN Mets game and you wouldn't see or hear me turning down the sound on the TV in favor of the FAN (even in favor of Tom McCarthy who, by the way, has not grown on me).

Research. When Weaver was ejected, Gowdy phumphered about the last time a manager was thrown out of a World Series. Did it ever happen even? Eventually word filtered down from a few wags on “press row” that it indeed occurred in 1935. Imagine that — research based on rumor, recollection and codger. Let's hear it for Elias and others who prepare this stuff today. You wouldn't wait more than a few seconds for the info in 2007.

Replays. One replay, one angle, move on. Hardly ample for the World Series but it probably seemed pretty progressive. Every ground ball merits at least five replays today. If it's overdone now, it was underdone then. The viewer benefits from information. Imagine a play like the ball that ricocheted off J.C. Martin's wrist (judged his back by Lindsey) not being dissected to death. But at least the scant replays were cut to without a raft of network logos. (I hate Fox.)

The Outfield Fence. Shea's was green then. It's been blue since the middle of 1980. I liked when it went from green to blue. I kind of miss the green having seen it again. I've grown used to the walls doubling as ad space since the mid-'90s but watching a game with none of that makes me think the “YOUR MESSAGE HERE” culture we live in currently is astoundingly minor league.

Shea in its Youth. On one hand, it's almost haunting to watch our doomed park in its salad days, completing just its sixth season. Oh Shea if only you knew… On the other, harsher hand, the whole joint looks cheap and underdone, bringing to mind John Franco's latter-day assessment that anything built by the city isn't going to be that nice. They've actually done a pretty decent job of sealing some of its edges (cutting down on the wind that blew that dirt around so much) and making the presentation somewhat festive versus 1969 when the team and the fans had to carry the day. Those wooden seats don't look like any bargain either even though I know they were perfectly fun to sit in from 1973 to 1979.

Running to First. That first-base camera seemed to record one bang-bang play after another. It didn't. It was just that in those days, by cracky, players hustled from home to first on every ground ball and they ran — ran — through the bag. Nobody (except Tom Seaver conserving his energy in the eighth) gave up on the possibility of beating out an infield hit and everybody gave it all they had. It was one of the most refreshing retro qualities to this game. I remember a gym teacher telling us to run through the bag like that. It's sad to think I hustled more down the line than, say, Carlos Delgado does today.

Sliding. You mean you don't have to risk life and limb and dive face-first into bags and spikes? Somebody show Jose!

Tom Seaver. There was an All in the Family episode in which Edith dragged Archie to her high school reunion and one of her classmates drove Archie to distraction with her assessment of Edith's old boyfriend Buck Evans by repeating incessantly, “Gawwd, he was beautiful!” Well, watching 24-year-old Tom Seaver pitch…he was singularly glorious. He got the ball, he threw, it was a strike, he got it back. He struck out Dave May in about nine seconds. He was the embodiment of power pitching and didn't waste a moment or a motion. Tom was also in that “if you don't get to him early, you're not going to get to him at all” mode. The Orioles had a chance early, in the third, and Seaver stopped them cold, retiring 19 of 20 until the ninth. That's the Tom Seaver I fell in love with as a six-year-old. My voice was practically cracking explaining to Stephanie that she should watch this Tom Seaver and just forget the bloated, enigmatically bitter one with whom she came in contact on Channel 11 from 1999 to 2005. There is nobody like him in the game today. There hasn't been for my money since Tom Seaver.

Mike Cuellar. Kind of a forgotten ace (23-11 in '69), but he wasn't bad either, I exclaim by way of understatement. Not only did Cuellar give up only that Clendenon blast over seven innings, but he warmed up alongside the Oriole dugout during the pregame introductions. Has any pitcher done that in any ballpark since 1969? You only see that in The Stratton Story.

John Powell. Boog to everybody else. John during the reading of the lineups. Damned if I know why.

Crowd Shots. The cast of Julia or Bonanza or anything else on NBC's fall schedule was not featured in the first row. Unless a foul ball landed in the box seats (and we saw only the box seats), we didn't get closeups of this fan or that fan Looking Concerned when the situation grew tense. The only concession to the people off the field were the recurring peeks at tam o'shantered Nancy Seaver, so famous by game's end that she was asked for an autograph.

Filing Out. The Mets win on a ludicrously improbable play in the tenth inning, go up three games to one and the crowd files out calmly moments later. No hugging and bopping and Takin' Care Of Business. How anticlimactic from the perspective of this century. Even the players' congratulations were far more subdued than for your average 2007 walkoff. I missed the emotion. How did they keep it in? Without expansive commercial breaks, the game was over in 2:33, or right around 3:40. Was this suit-and-tied crowd heading back to the office? Out for vodka gimlets and highballs? To sit in those boats masquerading as cars while the parking lot slowly emptied?

The Mets Bullpen. Uncalled upon for ten solid innings. No talk of Seaver's pitch count. No pitching changes for our side. He was on deck in the tenth before Martin was sent up. Taylor and McGraw warmed up a bit but since we didn't go to eleven, neither came in. Though I knew the outcome and have known it for 38 years, I'm always a little sorry to see the Tugger not get a chance in the 1969 World Series.

The Mets Hitters. No wonder the Orioles were so honked about losing. Cleon may have hit .340 and Tommie may have led off with power through the season and Clendenon was Clendenon…but geez, you won 109 games and couldn't stop a lineup dotted by Bud Harrelson, Al Weis, Ed Charles, Ron Swoboda and Jerry Grote before he learned to hit? We had great pitching and great timing, didn't we?

Graphics. What are those? The score occasionally popped up in the left-hand top corner of the screen and one or two facts seeped out (Agee homered 14 times at Shea during the season), but how about a balls-and-strikes count now and then? The things we take for granted today.

Bambi. Second baseman Davey Johnson's presence in an Orioles uniform is quite legendary given his final out in the fifth game and his later career path, but the Bird who really caught my attention was pitching coach George Bamberger. Just like that I was transported from the bliss of 1969 to the disgust of 1982. Get off the field you bad memory! After Jeff Torborg, Dallas Green and Art Howe, it's hard to remember just how much I disdained Bamberger and his whole “it's not my fault they can't throw strikes” tenure. But seeing him again did conjure this observation. He and Johnson were Orioles. Hodges managed the Mets. Berra coached first. Buddy played short. That's five Mets managers in uniform in the same game (along with plainclothes Casey Stengel throwing out the first pitch). I've tried to piece together the possibilities based on future coaching tenures and who was playing where when between 1962 and now, but I can't come up with another circumstance besides the 1969 World Series that brought five Mets managers into the same game. If anybody would like to offer a potential skipper-laden scenario, please let me know.

Editor's Note: I did a little checking and there were combinations of Stengel, Berra, Westrum, McMillan and Miwaukee catcher Torre in uniform for a Mets-Braves series in early 1965; Westrum, Berra, McMillan, Harrelson and Torre when those two teams played later in '65; and Westrum (by then managing the Giants), Harrelson, Torre, McMillan and Berra when the Mets hosted San Francisco in 1975. So there were indeed other instances of five Mets managers in the same game, but Casey throwing out the first ball makes it six in '69…so there.

Sideline Reporters. They're mostly useless but between Weaver's ejection and Martin not being called out, it would have helped had Tony Kubek been deployed differently (which was against the rules in those days). Come to think of it, what did they do with Tony during Game Four? His interview with an ebullient Nelson Rockefeller in Game Three was a chestnut.

Infomercial. Curt Gowdy harped on 1969 having been a great year for baseball, that Nixon invited the All-Stars to the White House, that an all-time team was chosen for baseball's hundredth anniversary. It seemed more like an MLB advertorial than the hybrid sports-entertainment platform for the network, which is how Fox uses the World Series, sadly. It's all intrusive, but it was a lot less so then.

Airplanes. A roaring jet brought explanations of Shea's proximity to LaGuardia. Seems planes have been rerouted for playoff games in the last few postseasons. Good move…unless the air traffic was one of the reasons the Birds were so spooked.

Charlie Lau. The Orioles were mentioned as employing their ex-catcher as a hitting coach, which wasn't in vogue yet. The Mets wouldn't have an official hitting coach until 1975 when it was Phil Cavaretta taking the job. Ralph Kiner noted Saturday there were no hitting coaches when he played. It begs the question as to why baseball waited so long to create a job that doesn't seem so extraneous. The Orioles had budding guru Lau and they could certainly hit…though not that week.

Colors. Damn, those Mets uniforms looked good. The Orioles' too. This must have been the first World Series ever between two orange-accented teams. Who doesn't love the stirrup look? And extra credit for Grote's orange knee guards. Sweet! NBC's living color, however, died a little as the sun moved west — unless they painted the fences shocking green around the seventh inning.

Second Base. Jerry Grote's tenth-inning double is usually described as a bloop that just fell in. It wasn't quite the fluke it's made out to be. Belanager ran a mile for it (if he caught it, it would have to be paired with the Swoboda catch among miracle grabs, but Belanger wore the wrong uniform in October 1969). But kudos echoing down the halls of time for Grote running hard from the second he hit it. When David Newhan placed a ball just beyond the firm grasp of Aaron Rowand last night, it was stunning to see him wind up on second because nobody runs like that anymore (now who's the codger?). But Newhan, taking nothing away from his modern-day hustle, is actually fast. Grote was not. Good move by Gil pinch-running Gaspar there.

Appeal Plays. If Grote or Hendricks didn't like a ball call, they sucked it up. It was nice not having that bit of obnoxious theater disrupting this pitchers' duel.

Who Would Have Guessed? Any rebroadcast, reproduction or other use of the pictures and accounts of this game…did anybody in 1969 dream anybody would show an actual broadcast of some old baseball game way in the future? The first rebroadcast I can recall of any kind was when Channel 11 repeated the Bucky Dent game in the winter of '79 (WPIX sportscaster Jerry Girard joked a Boston station would pick up the feed, but only for the first six innings). SportsChannel showed this very special Game Four as part of Baseball's Greatest Games circa 1992. MSG, when it was trying to make nice to the Mets, did the same about 10 years later. Now this airing, albeit minus the fifth and top of the sixth, lost to “a power outage”. It's a fantastic innovation, and it doesn't seem to take a great deal of effort by today's cable channels to favor us with these treats. So thanks to SNY for dusting it off, for not mustaching the Mona Lisa with lots of irrelevant 21st-century fun facts as they did the '86 Series and, if I may be so bold, SHOW US MORE OLD METS GAMES!

I like finding new old things to get riled up about.

A while back Emily and I lucked into a little windfall — not win-the-lottery stuff by any means, but enough for a bit of irresponsibility. Whereupon I broached the idea of HDTV.

Where HDTV was concerned, I'd been waiting for next Christmas for several Christmases now, determined to get a big flat-panel set with various bells and whistles for a bargain price. Somewhere along the line, I'd grown comfortable with next Christmas turning into next Christmas, forever and ever amen. I wasn't an HDTV refusenik, I just understood what I wanted and was waiting for the world to come to me. Or so I told myself.

When I raised the possibility of HDTV post-windfall, Emily agreed immediately. So immediately that I quickly realized something: My wife had been ready for HDTV for some time now, and with other things to do with her time, had resigned herself to waiting for her stupid husband to come around. I'd gone from our house's technology tester to its Luddite laggard without even noticing.

Last week I finished my due diligence and bought a 46-inch Sony Bravia LCD TV and a whole lot of gear to go with it, some of which we might actually need. When I told a colleague who made the HDTV plunge years ago, he asked how I liked it and looked aghast when I said I wanted to wait until I had all the gear on hand before I hooked things up. He shook his head pityingly and said, “That's another game you're not watching in HD.”

And he was right. Since getting things cabled and labeled and assembled, I've watched some Discovery HD (dude, that beach looks soooo real) and a DVD (“Pirates of the Carribean 2,” arrrr) and they were cool and all, but they're just distractions from the real purpose of HDTV, which is to watch baseball.

Tonight was my first chance to really sit back and take in a game in HD, and it lived up to the hype. The first thing I noticed was that I could see the spray pattern of the blue airbrushing on the Mets' helmets, and the little ridge of the NY decal. Then I saw I could practically read Ron Darling's score card. Sweat, dirt, rosin, stubble — all seemed like they might jump out of the set. I could count the growth rings on Jamie Moyer and Tom Glavine, those oldsters who used to never face each other and now do all the time, and Antonio Alfonseca's sixth finger was finally not just a blur of pixels that I felt vaguely guilty for trying to stare at. But the real jaw-dropper was looking at the live shot from that camera high behind home plate, the one that surveys the entire field, and realizing I could read the out-of-town scoreboard.

Alas, what I saw with this hallucinatory clarity was a mess. Not an unexpected mess, but a mess nonetheless. We're not hitting, between whatever's wrong with Wright (could Keith Hernandez just go chat with him, or at least buttonhole Rick Down?) and whatever's wrong with Delgado and Beltran coming back from injury. And say what you will about the limitations of Moises Alou and Shawn Green and Jose Valentin, but without them guys like Damion Easley and Endy Chavez are exposed for what they are: supremely useful players and members in good standing of a championship-caliber club, but not everyday players.

This isn't to say we should overreact, or even react too much. All teams slump. All teams have to fight through injuries. Even superb setup guys (like, say, Pedro Feliciano and Joe Smith) are going to roll snake eyes now and again. We're not the Phillies, at least — my goodness, remember when Pat Burrell was scary, instead of this pitiable lummox who can't field and runs the bases so poorly that his manager didn't trust him not to screw up trotting home from third? We'll come through this, maybe tomorrow or this weekend or next week or on the other side of Hell Month, and I'll be surprised if we're not in good enough shape to put the hammer down and head for October.

But we're not there yet. And being confident the down nights will soon pass doesn't make them any more fun to watch. Even when you're marveling at the details.

Can a smaller ballpark whip up a bigger menu? A better menu? Our mouths are watering at the possibilities but our boilers are gurgling considering the source.

Noticed on MetsBlog that Aramark has reupped as the Mets' food concessionaire for the first thirty years of the Citi Field era. In fact, we (and/or our descendants) will be attempting to swallow what Aramark sells us after the initial Citi name-licensing deal expires in 2029.

I hope whatever the 'Mark is cooking is a vast step up over the prevailing Shea cuisine which has presumably been its responsibility. We just kind of assume it will be tastier because what's the point of building a whole new ballpark if you're not going to improve everything that can be improved? My latter-day romanticizing of Shea stops square at the knish counter. The food, with the occasional quirky exception (keep Daruma!), has been uniformly lousy and overpriced forever. It's a mortal lock to remain overpriced but maybe the culinary scouting report will improve when we move ever so slightly east.

According to the Aramark release, they handle a whole slew of ballparks, some of which I've attended, a few where I've dined not unhappily. They don't have Busch, which is too bad, because the food selection was awesome at Busch last summer. Things I hadn't even thought you could stand on line for (a fairly short line at that) and buy at a ballgame without going through some fancy-pants restaurant were off-the-charts delightful: a club sandwich, for example. A root beer float, for crissake. Get me a club sandwich and a root beer float and I'll be one happy camper.

Aramark's got Citizens Bank Park among its clientele. I didn't have the patience to wait for the cheesesteak in Philly three years ago and bought nachos. The cheese sauce was whipped by the wind, but what we managed to recover from our shirts wasn't bad. That's a good sign, I suppose.

If Aramark forgets to pack the chicken tenders for the move to Citi Field, they'll have my everlasting appreciation. The last time I saw the Diamondbacks at Shea before Friday night was August 2004. That was also the last time I had the chicken tenders. “Tender” does not describe my postgame reaction to them. Just knowing they are still served somewhere behind where I sit stirs the queasiness quotient. If chicken tenders are running amok in the mezzanine, can we be sure we won't be trading for Armando Benitez again?

I have indigestion issues to begin with and given my ballgame volume of late (eleven this year), I've taken to traveling with my own turkey sandwiches in gastric self-defense. But quite frankly I get bored by my discipline and peckish by the seventh. Last Friday I broke down and paid $4.75 for the Nathan's fries. Well, $ .25 for the fries, $4.50 for the grease. That doesn't happen at Nathan's.

I'll keep an open mind and, not surprisingly, an open mouth. But I hope this isn't like re-signing Bobby Bonilla and expecting him to be not Bobby Bonilla after all your experience with him has indicated he will never be anything but Bobby Bonilla.

Who I think may have grabbed a few chicken tenders on his way out the door.

2007 is one-third and one game over. Geez, doesn't it seem like Opening Night in St. Louis was maybe last week? It was more than two months ago. That's baseball for you: a long season that disappears way too quickly.

What kind of year has it been? Quite good, if you enjoy the Mets being 15 games over .500 and in first place by 3-1/2 games. Not so good if you're the kind of fan who worries over every little thing that doesn't go right. Most of us veer toward the latter after a dispiriting loss like Sunday's when we're shut down by a Diamondback who isn't Brandon Webb and drop a series in the process. But we shouldn't do that. As discussed in loose statistical terms a week ago, we are in the second year of a two-year roll. The first year doesn't do cut much ice in the '07 standings but it's no doubt changed the way we can look at things.

A year ago at this juncture, we were 33-22, two games off the current pace, 4-1/2 games up on the Phillies, a lead one notch better than what we've got on the Braves. You could say it's a wash regarding which one, last year or this year, feels or is better. 2006 informs our sense of the moment. We're not pinching ourselves over being in first. We more or less expect it. Then again, we were never headed in '06 whereas we trailed the Braves as recently as May 15. Plus, the Phillies — no offense to the dangerous, room-temperature club coming in for three — were the Phillies. The Braves are the Braves.

Having tasted the smuggled champagne of a division-clinching last year, can we assume another batch will be sprayed in our direction come September? I would assume nothing. A lot can change in two-thirds of a season, but right now one lousy stretch of baseball could put us not only behind the Braves but in a scramble for the Wild Card. The Central is a mess but the West is a rootin'-tootin' scramble with well-rounded L.A., the pitching-powered Padres and not-terrible (when we're not playing them in Phoenix) Arizona each showing signs of legitimacy. We'd do well not to engage in a lousy stretch of baseball.

Might we? Anything is possible, but the good news is while we always seem to be missing something or somebody, we don't fall apart. Imagine if the Mets click on all offensive cylinders for a week or two instead of selectively firing our pistons. Imagine Delgado hitting not just those satisfyingly majestic homers but filling the at-bats in between with two singles and a double per night in the next series. Imagine Wright truly, finally breaking out. Imagine J!4 lashing a few more extra-base hits and running just a bit wilder.

It can happen. It's exactly what happened exactly a year ago. The 2006 Mets threw off the last vestiges of their training wheels as June got going, heading west to Arizona and Los Angeles and, ultimately, well north of Philadelphia. That was The Road Trip, 9-1 in case you've forgotten. That was pretty much the clincher for '06, emblematic of how almost everything set up beautifully for the balance of the season.

Can we have that now? I don't know. We are due some hot streaks. Somebody somewhat unlikely usually does just enough to push us over the top of late. The exploits of the Endys and Rubens and Ramons and spare Carloses add up to one gargantuan godsend, but I have a theory I'm too lazy to back up with any real research: when your career offensive years are coming from your least likely sources, something's a little off. My precedent is the not altogether fresh example of 1987. Twenty years ago around now, the Mets were getting great stuff out of pinch-hitter deluxe Lee Mazzilli and unusually hot shortstop Rafael Santana and surprisingly strong Howard Johnson and successfully shuffling platoon second baseman Tim Teufel. It was the lack of consistency from Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter that was holding us back.

I love the pop provided by those Gotay guys. Believe me, I'm not throwing it back. But ya gotta think one superlative June from Reyes, Wright or Delgado — addressing the healthy Mets for now — would make all the difference in the world. Reyes' OPS plunged 300 points from his April Player-of-the-Monthliness in May. Wright and Delgado, conversely, made a big turn from April to May, but they have anecdotally been lacking true consistency, that hella good week, ten days that can carry a team, the kind of run (and runs) produced by Reyes and Beltran in April. If it sounds a little greedy to want one from Delgado and Wright after they've each had some very big hits since May dawned, well, greed is good when it comes to your big guns.

Now let's get Sunny Sam in here so he can tell Gloomy Gus to consider some context. The Mets have been absent of their left fielder, their right fielder and their second baseman for extended, concurrent periods of time. Their centerfielder has been nursing a bruise for a few days, too. If they've done as well as they have with Alou, Green, Valentin and Beltran not around, imagine how great they'll be with everybody contributing.

I suppose. Even if we overlook Carlos B.'s random bouts of brittleness and concede he's not in the same ballpark as the other three when it comes to the wear and tear wrought by age, we still have the other three. I'm not overly concerned with Moises, Shawn and OtherJose's capabilities. I am significantly concerned with their well-being in light of their accumulated yearage. Alou had a great April. We were told throughout April that he always has great Aprils. April is over. He's even older than he was when he went out in the middle of May. It will, presumably, take him a little while to rev it up; it's already taken him longer than suspected to come back. Valentin…same thing at least a little. Green…his injury was a bit freakier but, c'mon. He's Shawn Green. Who doesn't figure he's one extended ohfer from a spiral of dismal? (And I'm the big Shawn Green fan here.)

It's quite possible it all seeks its own level, that the reasonably healthy Mets of the very near future — with returning starters approximating if not duplicating the fine things they did in April; the starters who haven't gotten hurt heating up in simultaneous fashion; and the benchmen asked only to chip in, not haul loads of playing time — will improve upon the performance of the contemporary Mets who have acquitted themselves respectably (7-6 in their last thirteen) under less than ideal circumstances. It's hard to tell there's been a problem when you look at the top line of the N.L. East.

It's also hard to tell from the Mets' pitching, which has been damn near brilliant. We hoped for adequate. We got so much more. Oliver Perez pitched well enough to beat the Diamondbacks Sunday. If the bats hadn't wilted at the sight of Doug Davis, he would have. Similarly, John Maine simply picked the wrong Friday night to take the ball, going up against Brandon Webb when he was recertifying his own greatness. I'm not crazy about Maine's intermittent struggle for command (who would have thought that it would be Johnny, not Ollie, walking more than 4.5 batters per nine innings?), but are you ready to declare them both bona fide No. 2-type starters? I am.

Jorge Sosa has done nothing to not inspire confidence in 2007 except for having been Jorge Sosa in 2006. If we can look past his pre-Jacket body of work and assume that the relevant sample is the one he's building, then what a No. 5 starter, huh? If you told me nine weeks ago that Mike Pelfrey wouldn't pitch nearly as well as Jorge Sosa, I would have guessed Pelfrey's ERA was in the 20s. But Sosa has been the Damion Easley of the staff — a lifesaver. The Easley magic has been a little spotty of late, which has nothing to do with Sosa per se, but reminds us, just a bit, that some sources can only be tapped so successfully for so long. But honestly, who saw five wins from Jorge Sosa by June 4? Everything else is gravy for the guy.

Expectations do change. My expectation for Maine and Perez, more like my hope, was one decent start, one very good start and maybe one clinker for every three. With our lineup, I figured that would suffice. Maine and Perez between them have had, what, maybe five undeniably poor starts between them out of 22? And Sosa's had one in six? Even with Glavine valiantly fighting Father Time and El Duque regularly subject to the AARP wing of the DL, the rotation has become the rock of the Mets. It's the who-woulda-thunkiest positive of this season's first third.

The bullpen's been so sound that it almost escapes my attention on a daily basis. Wagner can drive you nuts now and then because that's what closers do (it's in their contracts), but he hasn't really blown anything worth complaining about, has he? Heilman has had his rough patches, Mota gave in to Stephen Drew Friday night and Scott Schoeneweis is the 21st-century answer to Doug Simons until further notice, but Met relief pitching has been the best kind of relief pitching — the kind you barely notice (kind of like our Steady-Endy glovework). Kudos to Billy (or Rube Wagner as my new pal Rich affectionately dubbed him last Tuesday), to Aaron, to the only Pedro we've got thus far and to Smitty the Kid. And our catcher probably has something to do with all this fine pitching.

We haven't beaten the Braves enough and we haven't played the Dodgers and Padres yet and we have some tough assignments from the other league on the docket and nobody's handing us a free transfer to October. We're not 55-0, which is the only prescription for some Mets fans' happiness (and even then we wouldn't be winning by enough) and the back pages are going to be a problem beyond any sane person's control for a little longer. We're not completely healthy and we may never be, given our 40-man's CBS demographics. We're not a sure thing to get everything we want out of the 107 games that remain on the schedule because you just can't be a sure thing on June 4 without a 10-game lead.

But we're 15 games over .500, we're up by 3-1/2 over Atlanta, we're authors of heartstopping keepsake victories over Colorado, Chicago and San Francisco and we're just plain better than anybody and everybody we've faced. So what kind of year has it been?

You have to ask?