Scribbled on the back of a piece of paper at work for consultation later:

* Klesko not touching the bag, Beltran not going back. HOJO??!!!

* Maine's been Samson'ed!

* What a weird 1st inning. Mets + Giants conspiring to get nothing out of a lot. This has the look of a weird one.

* That sun's gonna play a role at some point. Carlos, get the glasses off your fucking bill!

* Eliezer Alfonzo — that's the guy who killed us.

* Spashdown! Get Elias on the phone — haven't we had tons of those? [editor's note — see below]

* The Reyes/Delgado dance is a wonderful thing.

* Catcher's interference. Tole ya.

* Gotay! Maine! Maine is really fucked up. And he looks stupid.

* Shawn Green looks ridiculous.

* Delgado! How did he do that?

* Bonds is back. I'm terrified.

* Heilman 1.0 is back. I'm terrified [editor's note — harsh and unjustified]

* Ha! Take that, Armando! And you too, Vizquel!

* I don't hate the Giants. I don't even dislike them. It's just such a long way from here and thus automatically taxing.

* Hmm. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Gotay is bunting.

And then I left work. This should not have been a big deal — my plan was to walk home over the Brooklyn Bridge, listening to (I hoped) a go-ahead run or two and Wagner locking it down. Only I didn't have my radio — it was in my bag at home. OK, not fatal — it so happens I have two or three other portable radios at work due to prior bouts of disorganization. So I grabbed one backup radio and a pair of headphones, checked that I had battery power, and was on my way.

And the goddamn radio didn't work. I got the Mets for a moment, long enough to ascertain that Chavez was on, Reyes was up, Armando was wild and then that something good had happened. But that was it. It wasn't so much that the radio wouldn't get WFAN as it was that it got every conceivable station all at once — and some political douchebag's ranting was drowning out Howie and Tom. I looked at the radio in fury, trying to remember where I'd bought it. Canal Street, I thought, though judging from the way it was working, perhaps I'd bought it off an upside-down cardboard box from a vagrant whose other inventory consisted of loosies and stray buttons.

And of course the streets were suddenly choked with people moving at the speed of continental drift, blind as cave fish to the desperation of a Met fan who couldn't witness the wonderful, improbable fact that his team was finally giving both barrels to Armando Benitez — that infuriating, bloated prodigal man-child of so many Shea disappointments who'd somehow become invulnerable against us. When I hurled the radio into a trash can it snapped free of the headphones and its outside speaker crackled mockingly to life — over in lower Manhattan the batteries are probably running out about now.

Once I escaped the commuter jam I got home smoothly and easily, walked in and turned on the TV. Commercial. Then postgame. That was fast. Tell me there wasn't a walkoff against Wagner. Nope. Woo-hoo, We won! Damn, I missed it. Woo-hoo, there's Mets Encore!

And then I dozed off in the ninth inning of Mets Encore. Some nights it just ain't happening.

* Editor's note re splashdowns: I was right. There have been 42 splash hits into McCovey Cove by the Giants (34 by Bonds) and 14 by opposing players. Of those 14, four have been hit by Mets — two each for Delgado (4/26/06 and today, with one as a Marlin for lagniappe) and Cliff Floyd (8/21/04 and 4/25/06). Four of 14? Considering how few trips we make to San Francisco, what are the odds of that?

Next-day addendum: Given our record, this photo is perfectly timed. (Yes, I am a big geek.)

Run, Jose! Run!

No, not around the bases. Away from your teammates. They're nuts.

I'd willingly endure the ostracism of 23 or 24 co-workers to retain my locks. I have very little going for me of a physical nature but at 44, I've got my hair and I'm keeping it until nature or something worse takes it. But nobody's coming for my head as far as I know (helps to be self-employed and in a profession that nobody tunes in to watch every night), so I'll get out of my own hair.

I don't mean to project my values onto those of a baseball team, especially one that just combed over Armando Benitez and took the rubber game in a ballpark where they used to take nothing but grief. I'm sure the Mets live a very different lifestyle from civilians like me and it entails a very different series of ethical decisions — and, as long as it's legal, I endorse whatever works to ensure the greater good.

That said, they're nuts with this head-shaving. What are they, twelve? Did they get tired of snapping towels at one another? Do they have any idea how they look? How Shawn Green looks? Poor guy, I want to lift him up by the ears and pour a drink from his head.

So my cap is off to you for saying no way, Jose. You don't need this tonsorial tsuris. You don't even need your cap. Don't let those bald bastards get your curls. They're yours. You're money.

Mets win! Mets win! I'm still thrilled, but they're still nuts.

That was nice of the Mets to shave their heads in solidarity with a bald, newly 38-year-old fan of theirs — a couple of hours before tonight's game I was in the barber's chair getting my biweekly buzz, unaware that 20 Mets were doing the same. Wright got buzzed the night before. Sele begged off for the moment because he was taking family pictures. Glavine said he'd do it after tonight's game. Reyes and Heilman were supposedly holdouts, though after tonight's game Lo Duca was claiming (or perhaps threatening) they were getting buzzed as well.

If you can, spare a moment of pity for the wives and significant others of major league baseball players. You're already dealing with the man in your life's job turning your own life into a Swiss cheese of road trips and homestands, and then you turn on the TV when sensible people are getting ready for bed and see he's — oh good Christ, what has he done? And then, when you ask why he'll be coming home looking like a member of a chain gang, the answer is: Because everybody else on the team did it, honey. I'm guessing here, but I bet that explanation works about as well for ballplayers as it does for the rest of us. And they actually have teammates, instead of just bros and pals and what-not.

Lots of dopey baseball hairstyles — bleach jobs, chin pubes, soul patches, underjaw beards, dagger sideburns — are proof of the theory that putting a bunch of bored young men together in hotels and clubhouses for hours leads to preposterous grooming. At least the Mets opted for a group buzzing instead of a bleaching, which would have led to them getting out the Clairol and the plastic gloves and the little caps with the holes in them. (Against my better judgment I did that for my high-school roommate once. Not the manliest moment of my life. And he looked ridiculous.)

Though, to quote Todd Zeile, the opener against the Giants was the kind of game that sends you straight to the hair salon. Remember Mike Piazza's platinum locks? My favorite part of that bizarre adventure was the Wrigley Field crowd cheering madly when Piazza's helmet came off on a foul pop.

Oh yeah, the game. Well, it was nice too — nothing like a bunch of doubles early to chase the memory of the previous horror, and then a slow cruise to the finish, with Bonds' home run merely cosmetic.

My favorite moment, though, had nothing to do with Tom Glavine: It was Pedro Feliciano locking up Barry with a deadly curveball with two strikes and two out. That has to be one of my favorite baseball set pieces: The pitcher knows the curve will break over the plate. The catcher knows it too. They both see the batter was looking for the fastball, and isn't going to swing. So when the pitch hits the glove the pitcher's already trotting toward the dugout and the catcher is leaning that way, leaving the batter to straighten up and ponder the cruelty of the universe with nobody but the umpire for company.

Today is May 8, 2007.

The Mets officially became known as the Mets on May 8, 1961.

Players who made their Met debut on May 8, include Cliff Cook (1962), Mike Phillips (1975), Chico Walker (1992), Cory Lidle (1997) and Alex Escobar (2001).

John Maine made his debut in general on May 8, 1981. I celebrated by watching Fernando Valenzuela edge Mike Scott 1-0.

I'm 0-2 at Shea on May 8. Twelve years after Fernandomania washed over me in Flushing, I saw the Mets record their very first loss versus the Marlins, 4-2, on May 8, 1993.

I'm 1-0 in other ballparks on May 8, having seen the Mets best the Diamondbacks in Arizona, 4-2, on May 8, 1999.

The last time the Mets won on May 8 was, in fact, May 8, 1999.

The Mets are 16-21 overall on May 8 despite winning every day on this date between 1962 and 1966, including a doubleheader split in '66. Since that start, the Mets are 11-20 on May 8.

The Mets played one other doubleheader on May 8, losing two at Candlestick Park on May 8, 1977, the second game of which they were losing 10-0 in the seventh when it was called for rain. The Mets filed a protest regarding the decision to stop playing or play at all; I vaguely recall they had the protest upheld but it still wound up a 10-0 loss.

I received my first replica Mets batting helmet on May 8, 1971.

Jon Matlack should have been wearing protective headgear on May 8, 1973. He was struck by a line drive off the bat of the Braves' Marty Perez and sustained a hairline fracture.

The New York Mets were joined by a second reigning champion in New York when the Knicks won their first world title on May 8, 1970.

The only Mets who have homered on May 8 in this century are Mike Cameron (2005), Desi Relaford (2001) and Edgardo Alfonzo (2001).

The Mets traded Jay Hook for Roy McMillan on May 8, 1964, twenty years before releasing Dick Tidrow on May 8, 1984.

There has been no Mets game on May 8 ten different times.

But there is one tonight, May 8, 2007. So I would kindly ask my co-blogger, born on May 8, 1969, to see if he can get us a birthday gift that we can all enjoy after the clock strikes midnight.

(Fancy way of saying Happy Birthday Jace…now go see if you can do something about this absurd May 8 drought.)

We lost this ballgame!

We lost this ballgame on play piss-poor

Lost this ballgame…

Lost this ballgame by 9 to 4!

Oliver Peh Rez

Was cruising right along

Oliver Peh Rez was

Pitching very strong

He was beating Zito

Who didn't sign with us

Who needs Barry Zito?

Ollie's fine with us

Molinas all play catcher

I hope there's only three!

Don't you remember?

We lost this ballgame…

We lost this ballgame on play piss-poor

We lost this ballgame!

We lost this ballgame on play piss-poor

Lost this ballgame…

We lost this ballgame by 9 to 4!

Umpires always blowing

Controversial calls

Who cares when balls are reaching

The tops of outfield walls?

We just want a third out

And to give up nothing more

But a single and two errors

Opened up the door

Grounder eludes Easley

Fly ball turns Shawn green!

Don't you remember?

We lost this ballgame…

We lost this ballgame on play piss-poor

We lost this ballgame!

We lost this ballgame on play piss-poor

Lost this ballgame…

We lost this ballgame by 9 to 4!

It's just another Monday

On a tired road trip

I've got to get some sleep soon

Or off to nap I'll drift

Baseball at Pac Bell

Or whatever's now its name

May be scenic in its beauty

But the Mets it does defame

Don't tell us that Vizquel

Is getting old for sport

Looking for a base hit?

Stop hitting it to short!

I'm looking out over McCovey Cove

Not seeing any New York runs…

Don't you remember? (remember? remember?)

What's your least favorite West Coast stop?

The Giants who never stop!

Urdaneta's lifetime Eee Are

Aay's now Sixty-Three!

Don't you remember?

We lost this ballgame…

We lost this ballgame on play piss-poor

Lost this ballgame…

We lost this ballgame on play piss-poor

Lost this ballgame…

We lost this ballgame by 9 to 4!

Lost this ballgame…

We lost this ballgame on play piss-poor

Lost this ballgame…

We lost this ballgame by 9 to 4!

(We lost, we lost this ballgame)

Lost this ballgame…

(We lost, we lost this ballgame)

Alternate mix here.

Both your bloggers offered somewhat fitful attention to Sunday's finale.

While Greg was occupied with cultural matters, I was planting stuff in our backyard, radio at my back. To which I supplied my own soundtrack. Dammit Pelfrey. Come ON, Pelfrey. Just relax, Mike. Big pitch here. You can do this. C'mon, Pelf. This game's FUN, dammit! PELFREY! COME ON! Call it impatience among the impatiens.

(Blogger ducks.)

Happily, somewhere between the last planting of the day and heading out for dinner (Sunday night babysitter — wooo!) Pelf finally came on. Or at least he acquitted himeself in a way that made you somewhat hopeful for the future, except for the walking people and the hitting people with baseballs. But you know what? Mike Pelfrey is 23 years old. If we play in October and he's an enigmatic fifth starter, that's fine. If much of his 2007 gets spent in New Orleans, that's fine too. Even if Pelfrey hasn't quite arrived by the time we're getting used to Citi Field, he'll still have much more in front of his horse than behind his cart.

“Well, I guess we're beginning our night by heading around the corner,” Emily had said when she found out about the 4:40 start. (I love my wife.) We ate nachos and drank beer while Livan iced Ramon Castro on an evil third strike and David Newhan (who I assume has a moment in him somewhere) hit one of those balls that looked good off the bat but not so good up in the air. We hung around just to see Lino Urdaneta reduce his ERA to finity, even though that looked perilous for a moment as a hop ate up David Wright and his doofy-looking zebra shoes — and during the inning I thought Urdaneta might be hyperventilating to the point of having a heart attack, which would have been a terrible way of proving that yes, he could have a worse outing than that long-ago day against the Kansas City Royals. You think having a career ERA of 81.00 is bad, try having one that requires Topps to go download some special character set. (Actually, as custodian of The Holy Books I must report that Urdaneta has no Topps card.)

With Lino's moment over, we wandered down to Lucalli's (go!) and wound up pursuing a Family Circus-style tour of South Brooklyn while awaiting a table. Lucalli's is BYOB, so we backtracked to a wine store that we'd noticed had the Mets game on. (Coincidence? What site are you reading?) We got our $9.99 bottle of something or other as the TV announced the baleful tale: Diamondbacks 3, Mets 1.

The wine-store guy was surly and morose. Sure, maybe it had nothing to do with the Mets, but we like to project. We shrugged it off. Rest for the weary, Rustoleum for the underused, a learning experience for Pelfrey, the best day of Lino Urdaneta's major-league life (so far), and three out of four in the desert.

Today was ballet day in New York. Since the blog era commenced, the Mets have never won on ballet day. But they've never lost in Arizona. Something had to give.

Our offense, apparently.

The ballet du jour was a big-deal production of “Romeo + Juliet”. Sad to admit I'd forgotten most of the details since I read it in ninth grade, even since I saw Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes have their go at it ten years ago. At intermission I was thinking, well, this is kind of a downer, but at least there's a happy ending.

So I was off by a couple of suicides.

I was briefly content that this performance's conclusion coincided with the fourth inning and the lone successful Met rally of the day. Five-plus innings of baseball remained beyond that, but not much of a happy ending there either. Picking up bits of play-by-play between Lincoln Center and the new P.J. Clarke's on Columbus (don't order the chicken pot pie) and then peering over the bar for silent video of Pelfrey struggling and Hernandez cruising and then whatever I absorbed heading in and out of the subway to Penn Station, punctuated by my first full-blown cursing out of a David Wright at-bat, brought no joy beyond the joy that I didn't miss all that much Mets baseball on a Sunday afternoon turned evening. After 13 straight wins in Arizona and an otherwise lovely outing with my ballet-liking wife, I guess I was being greedy.

But I was not the only one in New York being that today.

Tonight it's National League Cy Young Award Winner Brandon Webb versus New Orleans Zephyr Jorge Sosa. If that adds up to a thirteenth consecutive Mets win in Arizona, then maybe I'll just lie back and enjoy.

Jorge Sosa versus Brandon Webb added up to a thirteenth consecutive Mets win in Arizona.

I think I'll take my own advice.

ADDENDUM: After lying back and enjoying it, I still can't get over Sosa, who looked so bad all last year and all spring. I had read his New Orleans pitching coach tinkered with his arm slot. Is that really what it was? An arm slot? Didn't they say more or less the same thing for Aaron Heilman when he turned his career around in 2005, that Rick Peterson changed (or restored) his arm angle?

Arm slot? Arm angle? These guys get to the Majors, struggle until their jobs are in jeopardy and then it's something as simple as “hey you, move your arm this way, you'll throw more strikes”?

Wow. Who says pitching coaches don't earn their paychecks?

If you're hungry for more, check out hot dog vending at Shea through the eyes of an amateur. You'll never look at your frank the same way. (Thanks to Loge 13 for the link.)