What you know if you watched, listened or, like me, went to the game Monday night:

A single, a steal, a walk, an eventually intentional walk and a hard-fought walk defined the positive 5-4 result from a practical standpoint. Throw in Tom Glavine bearing down, the bullpen manning up and David Wright going deep and you've got what you need to know in terms of the first-place Mets' second walkoff win of 2007. Take that, Michael Wuertz, whoever you are.

What you get to know because you came here:

I like very much when the forces of Faith and Fear rejoin in Flushing as they did for the first time since October 18. When Jason and I last saw each other in the borough of Queens, it was after Game Six through a pane of glass. I made the 7. He just missed it. Monday night we saw clearly another win and boarded the same train out of town. I found Jason's decision to treat Shawn Green (“you suck!”) like he's Steve Trachsel just because he's not Carlos Gomez curious. He found my enduring disdain for the Cubs (“you suck!”) a little much. Otherwise we found the game just fine.

I really dislike the Cubs. Always have. Always will. Maybe I should pity them, but I can't. Their followers show up in disturbing numbers at Shea, which is all it takes to set me off. Not as many as during the Diaz-Brazell Insurrection of 2004 but too many. It's like they're on tour. “Look at us — we're Cubs fans!” Handfuls of Brewers fans showed up Saturday and they blended in just fine, even in a blowout loss. The only Cub I wanted to see, Cliff Floyd, was held out of the lineup by their manager who couldn't wait to go home and skipper the Devil Rays a couple of years ago. I really dislike Lou Piniella, at least for this week. Surprised DiamondVision didn't air a Cliff tribute or at least a closeup of him sitting on the bench nursing a strain or a grudge.

I really dislike bad manners. No, not “Yankees Suck!” after a win over the Cubs or “clang clang clang” on the cow-bell, man (both are cool by me in small doses). Here's my beef: advance ticket windows around 6 o'clock; I'm behind somebody at one window; a woman is behind somebody at the window to my left; the customer in front of me finishes his business; the woman on the line to my left jumps in front of me; I say “excuse me” in a real huffy tone; she tells me she's been waiting longer; I tell her she's been waiting in a different line; she tells me it doesn't matter; I tell her I think it does; she tells me to relax, this will only take a minute, she has to return some tickets (you can do that?); I make some noises to remind her how impolite she is; I'm borderline self-righteous about it, but really, what the fudge is that? If she had asked, “Would you mind? I'm in kind of a hurry,” I would have said, “No problem.” There was plenty of time before first pitch and I'm not allergic to chivalry, but I don't cotton to doormat treatment either. I wonder if this woman is a doctor or nurse or medical researcher saving lives, because if she is, then there is a reason for her to be on this planet. Otherwise…I tell you what, this is the kind of behavior that pisses me off just thinking about it. Probably runs red lights while chatting away on a cell phone behind the wheel of an oversized SUV.

I don't like at all that the “best available” seats for a fairly random weekend matchup down the line was Section 48, the last section there is if you don't count the marina. The nice lady behind the advance ticket window, once I got to speak to her, told me Saturdays and Sundays are pretty much gone for the rest of the season. StubHub take me away!

I like when people notice what I wish them to notice about me. Monday night I wore a brand new t-shirt that says, in big script letters, Shea Stadium. The guy who scanned my ticket couldn't get over that the shirt had the same name as the place where we stood. Yeah, I said, if I get lost on my way here, I look down and remember where I'm going. We both had a good laugh over that. It's the first time I've ever shared any kind of simpatico with a ticket-taker/scanner at Shea. That only took 35 years. I gotta wear that shirt again. And the cap from last night: my Dave Murray/Steve Springer 1986 Tidewater Tides cap. “Excuse me,” said a fellow with impeccable manners, “is that a Tides cap?” Why yes it is, I said, showing off the autograph under the bill and explaining who wore it and when it was from. I gotta wear the cap again soon.

I really like when total strangers recognize me from blogging. I think I do. It never happened before Monday night. I was roaming field level like a free-range upper deck ticketholder in search of Daruma exotica during BP (when such indiscretions are permitted) when a voice called out. “Greg? Greg?” I didn't know him, but he knew me. Plaster your face under an unusual cap all over your blog and somebody is bound to notice. Nice young man named Tim passed on his compliments regarding the job we do here. I pass back our thanks right now.

I like the sushi stand on the third base side. I'd already had dinner before coming to Shea but didn't let that stop me from purchasing a salmon roll. Heard a guy walking by comment “Sushi at Shea? That's different!” I resisted the temptation to point out Daruma's been selling sushi at Shea for nearly a decade. That would be bad manners. Instead, I suggested to the woman who runs the stand that she set up a concession upstairs, they usually chase me out of this level when I try to buy your excellent product because the house apparatchiks can't fathom that somebody without a field level ticket only wants to come down to buy something that's available only on field level, not to sneak into the orange seats like a second-grade truant. She smiled and gave me my change. Good manners.

I like the upper deck more and more at this late date. I've gone through a Metamorphosis over the years. I used to think field level was the ultimate. Around 1993, I decided loge kicked ass. Around 2001 I got very comfortable in mezzanine. Now I'm beginning to think the high point of Shea is the high point of Shea. Just as well, perhaps, that Shea has only one season after this as I will soon run out of decks. I like the view. If you're not above Row L or not in a section beyond the mid-20s, you can really see some things out in the great wide Flushing.

I don't much like two new things I've noticed at Shea this year. One is the secret Citi Field showroom behind Loge 13. I guess it's not a secret in that it's there in plain sight, but it seems a little nefarious with its locked door and unarmed (I think) guard. I'm told it's something of a dry-run luxury suite for the joint next door, with swatches and cushions (made of materials so comfortable that our unsophisticated asses couldn't possibly comprehend them) being put through their paces. I'm guessing the Trilateral Commission is meeting in there. Or the Stonecutters. The other new addition I could do without is the enormous Dunkin' Donuts cup in the visitors' bullpen. My Shea kitsch tolerance level is extraordinarily high, so high that I wear a t-shirt that says Shea Stadium to Shea Stadium. But that Dunkin' Donuts cup looks like garbage. Literally. It's like somebody bought a Coolata and dumped the remains on Bob Wickman and nobody ever saw fit to mop up.

I don't like or not like so much as I do not care that Baltimore and Toronto were in a tight one when Washington and Atlanta were in a tighter one with a zillion times more significance to us, the Mets fans. MLB Update is a between-innings feature in need of an overhaul. Or an enema.

I do not like at all that it felt 20 degrees cooler on May 14 than it did on April 23. My 1998 blue and gray fleece with orange NY barely did the job. I hope Mr. G and Linda Church explain this phenomenon Thursday.

I like to believe this might happen this weekend: Media hordes collar Darrell Rasner, who is slated to pitch in the Subway Series for the first time, and breathlessly badger him to confess how much awe he feels knowing he's entering Shea Stadium for the first time, how intimidated he is to know he'll be toeing the same rubber that Seaver and Koosman toed, how overwhelmed he is to stand so close to the Home Run Apple and the Keyspan sign and all those landmarks he's only seen on TV. And I really like to imagine the young man will answer that it's always been a dream of his to compete on such hallowed ground and, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get a better look at the Dunkin' Donuts cup.

So Cliff Floyd is back at Shea and so are we — we'll both be in attendance for the first time in 2007.

Upper deck, Section 5, Row L, seat 4 and adjoining. If you're so motivated, get some oxygen bottles and Sherpas and come say hi. We'll be the guys going on about baseball cards or how that double play reminded us of a 4-6-3 Tom Paciorek grounded into on July 19, 1985.

But you already knew that.

My friend Tom was kind enough to offer tickets he couldn't use. Emily (approached somewhat tentatively) thought it was a great idea. And so it was Emily and Joshua and I were suddenly off to Shea, Land of the Pink Visor to the First 25,000 Female Fans, for Mother's Day.

Joshua was excited. He's got his Reyes/Wright combo picture now, he's following the game much more closely (presented as evidence: “Daddy, what's a good hitter's count?”) and he's learning his Mets, thanks largely to our wiffle-ball sessions in Cadman Plaza Park. He's usually the Mets. I've been, at various times, the Tigers, Phillies and Brewers. I flatly refuse to be the Yankees, no matter how I'm beseeched, cajoled or threatened. (I'm 38. Why do you ask?)

So the kid knew we'd been beaten but good on Saturday, and was eager to see the Mets make a better showing of it. He was also eager for treats — Shea, to him, is a verdant garden of forbidden nutritional delights, from its helmet cups of soft-serve to its giant Q-tips of cotton candy to whatever else he might be able to wear down parents into buying. And for the adventure of it: How were we getting there? Does the LIRR go aboveground? Does the 7? Why doesn't the 2/3? How many stops are there on the 7? (2/3 to the 7, it turned out. Yes, but irrelevant. Yes. Because. Several billion.)

So we arrived in time to see Oliver Perez make it 2-1 on Rickie Weeks, and I looked at the scoreboard and the little players and blinked. 27? Newhan? No, Newhan's 17 because they torment Keith about it all the time. Ben Johnson? Isn't he hurt? It's obviously not Lastings. Could it be? Holy cow, it is — it's Carlos Gomez! That's when I began to feel lucky — Gomez is one of those prospects whose debut I would have dropped everything that could reasonably be dropped to see, and I hadn't had to drop a thing.

Oliver Perez is something to witness, with that ungodly stuff of his and his equally iffy location. That turned out to be a great fit for an aggressive club like the Brewers. Leaving the house, Emily had asked why I was bringing my radio, and I'd raised an eyebrow and offered: “The kid's melting down and we have to leave in the 7th in the middle of the first no-hitter in Met history, I'm going to be glad I brought this radio.” That looked mildly prescient as Oliver rolled through the Midwesterners like a combine, until Capuano's ridiculous little dunker. Of course I brought up the radio conversation later and noted that he'd nearly done it. This little speech came with one out in the ninth and promptly yielded Bill Hall's dinger and Oliver's departure. He got a well-deserved standing O. I got a well-deserved scolding. From now on I shut my yap until things are in the books.

The amazing thing about Perez isn't his pitching like his hair's on fire (a description I suppose can now only apply to Aaron Sele), but that I've come to expect him to take the no-hit countdown at least into mildly interesting territory — and wouldn't be surprised at all if he's finally the one to dismantle the Clubhouse of Curses. It's taken us a while to evaluate Perez fairly, probably because he arrived in the emergency trade Omar made after Sanchez's car accident. At the time we were depressed at exiling the likable Xavier Nady to the NL Central, stunned that Duaner Sanchez had suddenly been downgraded into Roberto Hernandez II, and barely noticed that we'd also taken on a wild reclamation project. Given a couple of years, I think most Met fans will struggle to recall that Hernandez was part of the deal, or that it sprang from odd circumstances. It'll be the Oliver Perez trade, and rightly viewed as one of this club's great fleecings. Should you ever need a reason to trust Omar, there's one: Forced to make a midnight trade from a horribly weak position, he turned a platoon outfielder into a potential ace.

Granted, Oliver got help. Our vantage point behind third base in the mezzanine was perfect to see the geometry of Beltran, Endy and young Mr. Gomez going from Points A to whatever Points B were required. Gaps? There were no gaps today — while Endy's leap and Gomez's diving self-rescue made the highlight reels, I kept watching balls head for the alleys, then wind up in an outfielder's glove with another outfielder in range. The batwork of Shawn Green and Moises Alou has been more or less beyond reproach, but this one might have turned out a lot differently with the two of them manning the corners.

So we all had a blast — Joshua got to see the apple go up twice, screamed his head off for Ramon Castro and the rest of the blue and orange (“it makes them happy to hear me,” he said very seriously, and I let that statement stand, remembering saying much the same thing myself), got his ice cream and kept most of it off his mother on her special day, and was endlessly entertained by our section mates.

Oh, our sectionmates. Our section was the domain (perhaps just today, though I suspect regularly) of a youth named Kowalski, who had a scarifying voice borrowed from death metal's Cookie Monster vocals (no, really), married with the energy of a sugared-up 10-year-old. If Kowalski wasn't already a folk hero to his section, he is now — if he wasn't bellowing harsh-sounding but supportive entreaties at various Mets, he was spinning his Mets belt buckle or just soaking up the adulation of his fans, who divided their time between spelling out his name in chants and general adoration. (Yeesh, he's on Flickr. The Internet is fricking scary.)

Kowalski was terrifying at first but ultimately kind of sweet — he knew his stuff and somehow never managed to blunder into vendors or other fans while rushing to the head of the section to bellow something at the field. Well, with one significant exception: At one point he felt compelled to roar “Happy Mother's Day, bitch!” at some unfortunate Brewer (the only thing he said all day that I frowned to have my kid hear) and a young woman walking up from the mezzanine boxes somehow concluded, despite Kowalski's having supplied 110-decibel evidence to the contrary for at least an hour, that he'd yelled this specifically at her mother. Off she went flying to get security, who after a brief confab forced Kowalski's exit. That infuriated Kowalski's girlfriend, turned the crowd on his accuser (later dubbed the Unhappiest Woman in the Universe by me and Emily), and brought various security functionaries back to mill around bemusedly, trying to keep not just the girlfriend but the entire section from turning on Kowalski's prosecutor.

After about 10 minutes Kowalski returned, to thunderous cheers as the security guys tried not to laugh. After a few minutes of barking support at the field, he threw his arms heavenward and roared “HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY … EVERYBODY!”, after which it's possible he could have carried Flushing (or at least Sections 16 and 18) in a mayoral election. The rest of our time in the kingdom of Kowalski was a merry farce, complete with the Unhappiest Woman in the Universe storming up from her mezzanine box to further accuse Kowalski as the boos rained down on her, Kowalski's girlfriend becoming indignant all over again, the security guys trying (with less success this time) not to snicker, and Mets circling the bases pell-mell to turn a taut affair into a laugher. Through it all Kowalski just looked mildly bewildered — at one point, while the UWITU was berating security for their failure to overreact, he wound up chatting, apparently perfectly genially, with the supposedly wronged mother. On the way out I slapped hands with him (he wasn't letting anyone in the section leave without a celebratory high-five) and asked Joshua if he wanted to do the same. Kowalski, proving his bark had absolutely no relation to his bite, offered Joshua a high-five that was perfectly calibrated for a kid — gentle but not patronizing.

But it was that kind of day — the reclamation project was an ace, the phenom was a phenom, security did the right thing and even the local Visigoth turned out to be pretty nice. Happy Mother's Day … EVERYBODY!

My sleeping habits of late make Saturday night/Sunday morning snoozing a twinbill. I tend to flake out on the couch for several hours sometime after the stray Channel 11 airing of Frasier and find myself surprised to find myself still on the couch in the dawn's early light. I'll stay up for a bit, force myself to bed (five hours on the couch the refreshment equivalent of ten minutes leaning against a pole) and eventually nod off once Ed Randall talkin' baseball has lulled me toward the end of the alphabet…zzzzzz. If there's no game, I'll roll over and over and over and try to stay asleep until King of the Hill. But if there is a game, I will flick the FAN back on as soon as I have enough alertness to do so.

And when I do, on Sundays like today, an alarm goes off in my head when I hear Howie Rose or Tom McCarthy or Ed Coleman whisper an unexpected name into my ear.

“Gomez on deck.”

That's all I had to hear to pop out of bed in the bottom of the first. There was enough motivation, hearing it was already 2-0 Mets on Easley's homer and that now it's 3-0 with Castro driving in Wright, but Gomez? On deck?

Tell me I'm not dreaming.

Yes, Carlos Gomez became a New York Met while I slept. My first thought was “Is Alou OK?” I saw him leave yesterday's debacle but didn't know it was that serious. I assumed Moishe was sent to the DL. My second thought was “Gomez? Already?” I knew Milledge was hurting in New Orleans, but I wasn't expecting to see — or hear — the kid so soon. My third thought, just ahead of “I really have to go the bathroom,” was “Milledge….”

Wasn't it just a year ago we were all happy to love Lastings at first sight? Now Gomez, like Milledge in May 2006, like Alex Escobar in May 2001, like Preston Wilson in May 1998, like Darryl Strawberry in May 1983, was nudging in as the future on a fine spring day. It's always surprising when it happens. It's never clear what will happen next. Darryl became Darryl. Preston was sent packing. Alex couldn't hack it. Lastings is in limbo. I began wondering what the days and weeks and months and years that follow would hold for our newest wunderkind. Would they follow at all? Would they be postponed after a glimpse? Would this be the start of something magical?

The start was certainly promising. Two hits, two runs, a spectacular sliding catch, key components to an Oll-out rout of the Brewers. I learned Carlos the Third was technically replacing Pelfrey, sent down to universal satisfaction, which means maybe Alou really is day-to-day. It also likely means a new pitcher will be here by Thursday, probably not El Duque, who knows who else. Carlos Gomez may be a one-week wonder for now or a mainstay for the summer and seasons to come. He was sure a pleasant sound to wake up to today.

Let Mike Pelfrey go.

I write this without a hint of anger — as Willie Randolph notes sagely in today's Times, “with fifth starters, you don’t trip about this. All young pitchers go through that transition or phase. You have to get over that hump. Once he does, hopefully he’ll just take off.”

Wise words. But I think it's asking too much to demand that Pelfrey get over that hump in the big leagues, in a situation as public as public gets. It's not too much to ask for our sake — he is, as Willie notes, the fifth starter. But it's too much to ask of him.

Mike Pelfrey has less than 118 innings pitched in his entire professional career. If he disappeared until the first day of business at Citi Field, he'd be 25 years old. He is very young. He has time. But he looks like he needs it. His emotions seem to run too hot, particularly at the beginning of games. His attention wanders. His fastball is straight enough that he badly needs his secondary pitches to complement it, and his secondary pitches come and go rather unpredictably.

None of that is a terrible flaw — it's just evidence that he's 23 and hasn't pitched enough. He needs to get a bit tired of the whole thing, to reach the point where the novelty of pitching in pro ball wears off, to find that muscle memory is doing things without being directed by the brain. All the things that only come through repetition, from learning your craft so thoroughly that the neurons fire in the right bedrock patterns without being consciously directed. It'll come — I have no doubt of that. But it's becoming cruel to ask him to put the work in as a New York Met to make it so.

Let Pelfrey go down to New Orleans with the promise that he'll be back in September — maybe earlier if things go swimmingly. Let it be made clear to him that there's nothing more to this than that he needs more professional innings on his resume. Let it be widely known that he did nothing wrong — rather, he just needs to get more automatic in doing things right. It's not a this-minute type of thing — if El Duque needs a bit longer, another Pelfrey start won't be the end of the world. But it doesn't look like Pelfrey's turnaround is a start away. It looks like he needs another 100 or 200 innings — at least. So let him get them in a situation where the result is a write-up sent to the big club, not a dozen microphones and tape recorders in his face.

He has time. Let him have it.

I had the uncommon pleasure of watching today's game from an orange seat a mere eight rows from the field and behind a net. Practically on top of home plate I was. I've only sat in seats whose number begins with an “X” a handful of times previously and not in a long while, so this was, result aside, quite a treat.

When everybody playing ball is so close to you, it doesn't feel Major League. It's more like wandering down to the schoolyard, leaning up against the chain link fence and peering out as the neighborhood kids put together a game.

There was the forlorn, tall kid who couldn't pitch and looked like he'd be happier taking violin lessons.

There was the virtually unknown kid who just moved here, playing second, barely managing to catch a lazy fly and then not knowing how to throw it home.

There was the big, goofy kid at first who forgot how many runners were on base.

There were the big kids on the other team, some of whose fathers obviously used their influence with the league office to get them in the game (if indeed this was organized ball, which it barely seemed to be).

There was the quiet kid with the weird haircut who never gets to play getting a chance and finally hitting the ball real far, but because his team lost, it didn't matter so nobody will remember by the time school starts on Monday.

Actually there were a lot of kids with weird haircuts.

And there were me and my friends. We were either filling the roles of overbearing Little League parents shouting instructions to our kids or found ourselves reborn as wide-eyed youngsters from the neighborhood quite surprised that they let us get so close to the diamond. Either way, we could yell all we wanted, but nobody was going to pay any attention to us.

Bottom line, of course, was the big kids from Milwaukee made our boys — save for David Newhan — appear very unskilled and all of us rather sad. Mr. Fielder's son and Mr. Gwynn's son and Mr. Hardy's son (whatever it is J.J. Sr. does for a living) bullied the Mets from the first to the ninth. Ruben Gotay and Carlos Delgado played like their minds were on their Xbox (two runs on a pop fly that was caught in short right?) and Mike Pelfrey may have punched his ticket for the City of New Orleans. The Brewers played like baseball's best team and the Mets showed no evidence that they are even close, even if they are. If ever there were cause for an “oh well,” this was it.

Oh well, the Mets got stomped. But I got to sit eight rows from the field and behind a net, which doesn't happen every day. In fact, it hasn't happened since 1999 and, given the inexorable Armitron ticking down on the life of the ballpark, it may be the last time I ever do. I'm keenly aware that everything I see or do may be The Last Time I Ever See/Do it at Shea, so I particularly appreciated this up-close-and-personal view, everything from the pronounced crack of the bat (except maybe Hardy's), to the break of the ball (which wasn't working for Pelf) to the generosity of the first baseman (less Delgado's decision to give Milwaukee an extra run in the fourth than the way he tossed three balls into the stands while standing on deck).

For this rare pleasure, I thank FAFIF commenter extraordinaire KingmanFan for a) being in a job that gained him access to this shining spot on the seating chart; b) having a wife and daughter who chose to get their hair done this glorious Saturday; c) thinking of this blog when looking to fill his suddenly empty chairs. I also tip my blolleague cap to the one and only Metstradamus, whose original invite to today's game was the only reason I was within 500 feet (SkyKing distance) of the field level offer. KF was gracious to absorb MD's generosity and treat us both to the primo perspective. I, on the other hand, technically sponged off the both of them. Great guys, great fans, great seats, great time.

Lousy game, but you can't have everything.