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.