When I first heard the name “Kelly Johnson” two years ago, I snickered the stunningly puerile snicker of one who had spent too many morning hours listening to Howard Stern.

Kelly = a shade of green.

Johnson = ah, you know.

It wasn’t funny then. It’s twice as unfunny after today. There’s nothing funny about a Kelly Johnson. Or his bat.

Suffice it to say that for at least one weekend, the Braves are The Aristocrats of the National League East. They’re quite an act.

In deference to the obscene final score, I’ll forego the Cox jokes.

I was unfair to my old hometown of St. Petersburg earlier this week — turns out there's a lot more going on downtown than when I lived there, complete with core-city lofts and their attendant cafes, boutiques and what-not. Not bad for a city chiefly known not so long ago for the advanced age of its population, and stuck with the cruel nickname God's Waiting Room.
Oh, and now they have a ballclub. If you're a reader of this blog, you know that means…everything.
Yes, Jace, there are Tampa Bay Devil Rays fans, of all shapes and sizes and genders and types. Slouchy college kids with variant-color TB hats and Crawford tees. Little boys and girls decked out in obviously beloved replica gear. Fathers and mothers pointing to the field to explain a point to sons and daughters.
Honesty compels me to report that those plucky Rays fans seemed outnumbered by fans of the visiting Indians, and both teams' fans were outnumbered by empty seats. But the Devil Rays deserve to be graded on the curve when it comes to fan ardor. Witless, negligent, stingy — almost any nasty adjective you can think of fits the way Vince Naimoli and Chuck La Mar treated this franchise and city. (The way St. Petersburghers say “Naimoli,” it ought to be represented in the paper by dashes or a bracketed “expletive deleted.”) A decade's worth of standings tell you all you need to know about the acumen of whatever plan produced what you see on the field; Rays fans told me horror stories about the team's relationship with its home city, with the D-Rays bungling the few efforts to reach out so badly that it would have been better if they hadn't bothered. Considering what they've been through, those little kids proudly wearing their Kazmir and Upton tees might well be braver than I had to be when I was proclaiming my love of the Doug Flynn-era Mets to the sniggering, dirt-bike-riding Yankee fans of Setauket.
Naimoli and La Mar are gone, happily, and the Devil Rays have promise — Carl Crawford is so freaking fast I thought he'd teleported himself to second base. But turning that promise into reality? Better be patient. The Devil Rays are awfully youthful, and youthfully awful. Delmon Young works a count like he heard strike one meant you're out, and he's not the only Devil Ray to whom controlling the strike zone seems like a foreign concept. The Indians won, 4-3, but it didn't feel that close: You knew the D-Rays were going to make the kind of quietly awful little mistakes that kill teams, and they did. (And not everything can be blamed on youth: Old friend Ty Wigginton, who ought to know better, got thrown out trying to steal third with two out.)
But here's the thing: There are a lot of reasons the Devil Rays were every bit as bad up close as I'd imagined, but the obvious one turned out to be a red herring. Because the Tropicana Dome, shockingly, wasn't nearly as bad as I'd expected.
Yes, it's a dome — my pal Will and I kept shaking our heads over the fact that we were willingly leaving a perfect spring evening for air-conditioned sterility. (Though in fairness, that transition would be a relief in August.) The Trop looks horrible from the outside, like a giant spaceship designed by an alien species that's built a society around beige, and all kinds of weird on the inside. The roof is canted forward, like it's sliding off the building, and the famous catwalk rings aren't where your mind thinks they should be, giving the Trop an oddly seasick feeling. The field looks tiny amid all that concrete, the seats are uncomfortable, the uppermost rows have been covered with tarps as a toupee for irreversibly bad attendance, and the sound system may be the worst I've ever heard in a stadium. When the Rays showed one of those Get to Know the Team video features, I could understand maybe every 10th word.
But.
The dome itself is set amid remnants of industrial St. Pete — cuts for old railroad tracks and canals — and while that sounds odd, it works, giving fans natural paths across what would otherwise be featureless asphalt plains. There's a wonderful sports bar close by (Ferg's) that has a huge choice of things to eat, drink, watch or do, and was friendly instead of fratty even in the boozy, crowded hours after a depressing loss. Well, except for the drunk out-of-towner screaming vile epithets at Derek Jeter. Because I'm classy that way.
And the Trop has a suprisingly nice rotunda, wide concourses, good food and lots of choices, many beer choices at reasonable ballpark rates (i.e., merely exorbitant), friendly staffers, clean bathrooms, and even some surprises — the Mets game was playing on the far right of a trio of flat-panels just steps into the concourse from our seats. (I rejected the idea of spending my entire evening at the Trop standing in a hallway watching SNY, though by then it was obvious the game was a horror show.)
The Trop has a horrible field and stands surrounded by some surprisingly nice amenities. As the game went on, I realized that I'd had a lot of experience with the opposite — and I kept thinking about things that hadn't happened at the Trop. For instance, I hadn't picked my way across a fetid lake to pee, been exhorted to join the Dallas police while doing so, and wound up throwing a paper towel in the corner where the trash can should be. I hadn't trudged cursing up a broken escalator or been barked by an ancient, grubby usher before he resumed the sleep of decades. I hadn't been left to perch on the edge of a broken seat while some unidentifiable hideous something dripped on me. I hadn't turned my head to the side to peer out at a thin horizontal slice of field for nine innings while fearing my feet would skate out from me because the concrete was covered in some slick God knows what. I hadn't been made to feel like I should apologize to a surly employee for wanting a carbonized hot dog or a mushy pretzel delivered at a pace marginally speedier than continental drift. I hadn't had to say, “Yeah, let's drink some beers after the game. Go across the parking lot toward the highway, if he cops will let you — oh, if you hit unpaved streets with feral dogs you went the wrong way — cross the overpass, turn right, then walk a long way down that street and, um, there's a crappy hotel with a lousy bar.”
Shea Stadium has real grass, sits under the sky, and has an apple that has a certain high-school-production charm. But that's all it has over the much-maligned Tropicana Field. (And even that sky is frequently filled with scary close-ups of the silver bellies of large airplanes.) I've got countless great memories about Shea, and room for 13 months' more. But all of them have to do with the baseball I've seen there and the people I've seen that baseball with. The rest? If anything, it's an impediment to those memories. I know Shea's going away, and Citi Field won't magically make pretzel vendors nice or ushers awake. (Or our less-civilized fans any better behaved.) I won't pretend I ever had much sentiment for doomed Shea. But I think my visit to the Trop has killed the little that was left. When you're cheered by the average — “The toilet hasn't overflowed! The hot-dog lady doesn't need to be timed with a sundial! There's something besides chop shops across the street!” — you realize you've come to expect and accept the dismal.

Nice to see a little offensive pulse late in Friday night's game, but to paraphrase Jackie Robinson, a hit is not important except in the impact is has on other hits.
Met batters made no impact on Tim Hudson. He made the best lineup in the National League ineffectual and anything Mike Pelfrey did or didn't do moot. So for one night, it was meet the Moots, meet the Moots, step right up and…thanks for coming, arrive home safely.
Does the first inarguably noncompetitive loss of the season — though if Kelly Johnson doesn't make like Ordoñez and rob Reyes from one knee with the bases loaded in the fifth, it's 4-2 — bode anything serious? The Braves are in first by a half-game, they showed off some of that excellent pitching that used to be their regular-season trademark and Chipper Jones reminded us why he is a fungus.
It wasn't pleasant but it can be wiped away pretty quickly.
Oliver Perez, whose last turn in the rotation followed Jim McAndrew's, will have weather and stamina going for him, presumably. I'd mention how well he seems to do against the Braves but then I'd be forced to note how poorly he's done against just about everybody else. Let's go with he's due.
Pelfrey, I think, just needs to get comfortable. If he has to do it in New Orleans at some point, that's fine, too. He has too much talent, too much stuff and, I'm convinced, too much poise to not come along fairly quickly. Whereas Perez may never be consistent to our liking, if Pelfrey gets one excellent start under his belt, others will follow.
Also, if anything can be done to delete the smirk from Jeff Francoeur's face, let's make that happen.

I have a strong suspicion that the Mets we have seen through 14 games represent the new normal. These are the 2007 Mets. Our team. Our time.
Totally this time.
Granted, it's a small sample, a mere 8.64% of the season accounted for, but have you seen anything from these Mets that worries you to any great extent? I don't mean the ding to Lo Duca or the nursing of Heilman or the continuing education of Ambiorix Burgos or that every time the camera picks up Damion Easley, he seems to be wishing he took that repairman's job with Maytag. Of course there are going to be physical limitations and mental blocks and moss that gathers on those rarely called on to roll. That's normal stuff to worry about. You're crazy if you don't dwell on something.
But the big picture…it's pretty reassuring, isn't it? We're 14 games through '07 and save maybe for a couple of uncomfortable innings by a starting pitcher here and there, one or two vapor locks in the field and a few too many LOBs a week or so ago, have the Mets done anything wrong?
Not really. They've looked great without actually looking their best. I'm willing to bet they can play better than they have even if it will be tough to improve on 10 wins in 14 games, which happens to be the best mark in all of baseball right now.
Tim McCarver liked to say and Rob Emproto likes to remind me that you're never as good or as bad as you look. But sometimes, I gotta believe, you are what you appear to be. The Mets appear to be awesome, even more so than they appeared at this time one year ago.
Our record in 2006, when first place was freshly painted, was the same, 10-4. Given the newness of our occupation and the floundering of the former N.L. East penthouse tenant, the vibe was heady and novel. After 14 games a year ago, we winged our way west to San Diego and San Francisco and back this way for a changing of planes in Atlanta. It was one of those death-knell trips we'd been programmed to expect, except the bell never tolled. I was pretty sure we were for real before that trip and the 6-4 run through those erstwhile killing fields confirmed it. I wouldn't necessarily say the rest of last season was a victory lap, but we knew we were good by the end of that very first month.
Now? I have a sense we're more than that. There has been no letdown by these guys after not scooping it all up in '06, the key words here being these guys. In this era of piping hot personnel turnover, the '07 Mets have remained relatively stable. Most nights seven of the eight position players are Met vets. The rotation is composed of familiar faces. Only Alou, a couple of guys at the end of the bench and a jumble of middle relievers are new in town.
There's significance in that, I think, on several counts.
1) After two seasons of mixing and matching and dutifully filling the recycling bin to the rim with Tides and pink slips every Monday morning, Omar has got the team he wants out there, at least as close as he can get to it for now. His eye for talent along with Willie's talent for drawing out performance are on display daily. It's nearly impossible to fathom anybody filled their roles directly before them because I can't envision anybody filling their shoes.
2) I really get the sense the players themselves are on a mission. It's a very fan-projecting way to think, I admit, but do you imagine that any of the vast core of this team is satisfied with the way '06 ended? They didn't care what flags and rings were being distributed in St. Louis. They didn't give a damn what Jimmy Rollins said about anything. They're still the loosey-goosey, mile-smile fun bunch we fell in love with last year, but there's just that little extra edge to them now. They're good and they know it and they're intent on letting everybody they come up against understand it.
3) For us, the base, there is a comfort level I haven't felt in years. The getting-acquainted maneuvers this spring were minimal. We know our guys now. We trust them. They did it before and, heck, they can do it again. As much as I loved acquiring the big names we now call Mets, I cringed just a tiny bit the previous couple of winters over the mercenary factor. The Beltrans, Wagners and Delgados no longer have that rented-stranger feel to them. They're Mets. They're us. They're still here a year later. And they're kicking ass up and down the East Coast.
They continued to do so Thursday night in a dozen pleasing ways large and small. John Maine needed extra rest? OK, he got it and he cruised. El Duque needed to go in regular rotation? OK, he did and he cruised. One troubling inning and everything else fell into place. It was as if his last shaky start never happened.
When I found out we were facing a pitcher of whom most of the western world had never heard, I shuddered. The Mets can't handle obscure rookies. Even the 2006 Mets could be blindsided by unknown quantities, and this one seemed to have an excellent curveball. But these are the 2007 Mets and the 2007 Mets just know what they're doing. They sized up Rick Vanden Hurk and they battered him as if he were Chris Carpenter.
Lo Duca out? Willie moved some pieces around. Beltran bats in the two-hole and pretends it's the three-hole: 4 for 6, homer, two ribs. Castro takes Paulie's position and he homers and knocks in three. Delgado still not quite there? Maybe not, but he sure has a knack for big doubles. Wright got a hit 'cause he always does. Alou got two 'cause it's April. Reyes was Reyes and all that implies. Jose Valentin is ungodly hot (and incredibly competent afield) and even the often stiff and awkward Shawn Green is swinging with ease and yielding contributory results.
I think that's everybody. Everybody chipped in and the Mets stepped all over the Marlins. What was the final score again? 11-3. What was it the night before? 9-2. Night before that? 8-1 over somebody else. It's almost as if it doesn't matter who they play or when they play them. Earlier this season — and this season couldn't be much earlier than it already is — the Mets won 10-0, 11-1 and 11-5.
This is Met baseball. They pound people and they don't give them much of a chance to respond. And they're not even playing perfectly. The cold spell up north sapped them of power. The pitchers couldn't get their feel and threw too many balls. Wright and Delgado haven't truly broken out by any means.
Yet we're 10 and 4, ahead of the world. We may not be as good as we look. We may be better.
I don't want to hear that we've played some fallow siblings. Were the world champion Cardinals an easy assignment? The revamped Phillies? The Nats I'll give you but the Marlins? They're not terrible and even if they were, since when has that ever mattered during crunch time between the sacks of Soilmaster?
As for the Braves, yes, we're 1-2 against our closest competition, having blown them off the map once and lost tight ones to them twice. Now that the Phillies have retreated to an undisclosed location for group therapy, it appears it will be us and the Atlantans for a while. Even that, though, is different from the version to which we became accustomed circa 1998. We're not looking up at any Braves this time around. They want to compete in this division? They have to go through Shea. Whatever they accomplish this weekend, if in fact they accomplish anything, they'll have to keep it up at a pace commensurate to the one we set. We are quite capable of setting a demanding pace.
I respect the Braves, if not for their pre-2006 accomplishments then for the excellent start they themselves have enjoyed in 2007. I respect every team, every square on the schedule, every possible exigency, every fateful detail that can swat a year awry. I respect the baseball season and thus take none of its potential whims lightly.
But as a Mets fan in 2007, I fear nothing and nobody.

Congratulations go out to David Wright for extending his two-season hitting streak to 25 games and Met opponents for extending their 46-season hitting streak to 7,163 games
Both are Mets records.
There are, however, figurative asterisks attached to both marks. Wright, who has hit safely in the first 13 games of 2007, has 12 games to go to break the more widely acknowledged single-season Met hitting streak record, which still belongs jointly to Hubie Brooks and Mike Piazza. The opponents' streak, meanwhile, is even longer if its definition is stretched to encompass 74 postseason contests along with eight regular-season affairs that ended in ties.
That's 7,245 official games in which the Mets have competed and somebody has gotten a hit against them. Somebody. Anybody.
For the Marlins Wednesday night, that was Miguel Cabrera, whose leadoff single in the seventh inning — after a check-swing on a one-and-two pitch that was ruled a ball by first base umpire Laz “Angel” Diaz — kept the streak alive for another game.
Or another week of games.
Or month of games.
Or lifetime of games.
Oh for fuck's sake, I give up. We're never getting a goddamn no-hitter, are we?
9-2 romp over Dontrelle Willis and the Miami chapter of the Phillies is a heckuva consolation prize. Wright's single in the first was mostly a footnote by the time it was over, but so were Jose's four hits, Other Jose's three hits and the first Carlos's three ribbies. The lead was secure enough to get greedy, if indeed one can be greedy to have one, just one, of those shiny objects in the window, the one we can never, ever, ever fucking have.
Can we?
I was willing to settle for a big ol' win and feel pretty, pretty good about John Maine on eight cold nights' rest. He walked some guys, but he had the high heat cooking and the Fish flailing and even with two hits surrendered in the seventh, a performance that bodes well for the back end of the rotation (if, in fact, he's not already at the front end).
But then Mark Buehrle no-hits the Rangers. It was the White Sox' 16th no-hitter.
Some teams have 16 no-hitters. The Mets have none.
What do I have to do to get one of these? Not want one? I tried that! That was my on-the-fly strategy. By the fourth inning when it appeared history was within the grasp of a few dozen fastballs, I drowned out the voices in my head with one prevailing thought.
C'mon Marlins. Get a hit.
What the hell? Hoping the other way hadn't worked. So let's try this. Stephanie happened to enter the living room as the bottom of the seventh was commencing. She heard the word “no-hitter” and asked if she should go back on the computer which, after all, is where she was for the first six innings. I appreciated her assessment of the situation, but no, I told her. Don't worry about it. I don't want a no-hitter anyway.
Maybe, just maybe, if I could convince myself and the gods that what I wanted was a blemish under the H, then maybe, just maybe, they'd work against me in this matter as they always do. I thought articulating that desire would help the cause.
My mind is more useless than I suspected.
I've heard a Mets fan or two claim — without a game in front of them that would test their stance — that they sort of don't want a no-hitter. They seem to be serious. With a no-hitter, they argue, we're like everybody else (save for the Padres, the Rockies and the Devil Rays). Right now we're special. We get to ride a small bus and everything.
I'm not buying it, but I see it. Just this afternoon, I found myself responding to an e-mail from a guy I haven't known a week. He had written me about Leron Lee. Leron Lee is code for Mets fans, just like Jimmy Qualls and Joe Wallis and everybody from Antonio Perez on back.
Not long after Miguel Cabrera had his club membership stamped, I thought about that exchange. Me and Rich met last Thursday and in no time we're speaking the language. Other people say hi and ask how do you do? Mets fans say Leron Lee and ask one out in the ninth off Seaver in '72?
This is how we communicate. This is our native tongue. We are fluent in no no-hitters. Such is the language of yuck.
Being 9-4, winning 9-2…what a crappy night.

Surprise!
Greetings from Florida, where I am living proof that the Mets' no-no-hit streak can resist absolutely anything, even the self-pity and self-absorption of bloggers.
My hotel is about a half-mile down the waterfront from a house I lived in as a teenager, and haven't particularly missed — if you've never been to St. Petersburg, it looks vaguely like L.A., except it's more humid and there's less to do. I'd just settled in at a beach bar (sounds great, but it was raining) and noted that the Mets were up 8-0 in the sixth when I suddenly realized I had a long-ago connection to this hotel. Twenty years ago I'd hop off my windsurfer to catch my breath on their beach, only to get shooed away lest I bother the vacationers. Huh. The things you forget.
Anyway, I called Emily and found her oddly guarded.
“If the Mets game is on, you ought to watch it,” she said.
Huh? Ohhhh. 8-0. In the sixth. I get it.
“I understand,” I said, thinking (and not for the first time), my wife is so much cooler than I deserve.
I asked the girl at the bar if they could get the Marlins game (I know, it's the Mets game, but think vaguely local) and she scowled. The beach bar didn't have a dish — it got the same channels as the hotel rooms. They couldn't even watch the Tampa Bay Lightning.
And that's when I knew the Mets would pitch their first no-hitter. Because really, from my perspective it was perfect: I was sitting in the rain in a vaguely moldy beach bar half a mile from a house where my only good Mets memory was Anthony Young somehow not losing a game, watching the Yankees pound the Indians because that was the only baseball I could see. Obviously the night would end with Lo Duca (bone bruise and all) hoisting John Maine high. Did Maine even know the Mets had a no-hit jinx? Probably not. He'd be vaguely amazed and bemused when told, but the knowledge of all those years and all those pitchers would roll right off of him, because — marvelously, finally — it wouldn't matter anymore.
Maybe I could take my burger back to my room, get the complimentary wireless access fired up, and get an MLB Gameday subscription in time. But that would surely jinx things. I'd get connected just in time to see Dan Uggla bloop one in. I sat back down. No, it was fate — I'd watch the Yankees and hope ESPN would break in with an in-game update. Emily would TiVo the ninth — hmm, no she wouldn't, she knows way better than that. SNY would show it 50 times before the week was out. I was fine, in the sense of “not actually fine, but not totally left out.” Greg and our ace commentors would make me feel like I was there, I'd watch the brand-new UltiMets Classic Sunday night, and it would all be fine. I shouldn't be disappointed, even if my role on our long-awaited date with history was to witness A-Rod and Giambi going back to back.
Of course the 7th lasted too long on the crawl and when ESPN cut in and Miguel Cabrera was standing at the plate I had a feeling they weren't spotlighting a particularly nifty strikeout. Then it was 8-2 and just another night of the world's longest streak.
Oh well. I'll leave the details to my better blogging half. In the meantime, to paraphrase Tom Terrific, whatcha crying for? We won the game, 9-2.
Update: And Mark Buehrle did what Maine couldn't? The 16th no-hitter in Chisox history? I swear, this game….

David Wright has now hit in 24 consecutive regular-season games, tying the franchise record set by Hubie Brooks in 1984 and equaled by Mike Piazza in 1999. Wright has done it across two seasons which makes it a different animal from its predecessors, so even if he hits in a 25th straight tonight in Florida — which would be excellent — Hubie's notch on the Mets' statistical bedpost appears safe…for at least a couple of weeks (I heartily endorse gang-breakage of every Met offensive record in 2007, save maybe for Joe McEwing's).
Mike Piazza is an era of Mets history incarnate. His 24-game hitting streak was appreciated mightily between May 25 and June 22, 1999, but is it one of the first things you think of when you think of Mike Piazza the Met? First 24 things?
Hubie Brooks? That's a different story. He's not to be wholly defined by what he did between May 1 and June 1, 1984. Though it would land awfully high on theoretical Hall of Fame plaque, it would be a tad unfair to boil two honorable Met hitches encompassing six Met seasons to one month of a fine player's career.
Given that The David has vaulted the topic of Met hitting streaks to top of mind, I thought it appropriate to revisit the Met career of The Hubie, primarily as recounted in 2005's One Hundred Greatest Mets of the First Forty Years, in which our Mr. Brooks ranked No. 60.

***
It is, sadly, the human condition to lock in one's perception of a situation even when faced with evidence to the contrary. For example, the New York Mets have never been able to do anything with that nettlesome (or Nettlesless) third-base position.
We all know that throughout their entire history it's been one disaster after another, from Cliff Cook to Joe Moock to, god help us, Joe Foy. It's a charming enough storyline to have inspired the ditty about the Seventy-Nine Mets Who Played Third on An Amazin' Era, the team's 25th anniversary video. Yessir, playing third for the New York Mets is like drumming for Spinal Tap: Sooner or later, you're bound to blow up, and not in the way the kids mean.
Except that by 1986, the third-base curse was, for all practical purposes, reversed and buried by Hubie Brooks. The organization did its best to perpetuate the tepid image of the hot corner even when confronted with a competent practitioner. Called up in September 1980, Hubie was handed No. 62, as if to say, third base will eat you alive, kid, don't even bother.
After acquitting himself reasonably in his trial (and working his way down from 62 to 39 to 7), Hubie showed up to spring training 1981 to find Joe Torre handing the job to outfielder Joel Youngblood, who didn't want it, and then catcher John Stearns, who stepped on a ball and couldn't play it. Left with only a third baseman to play third base, Torre had no choice but to pencil in Hubie Brooks at the 5-slot, and Hubie Brooks stayed there for the better part of the next four seasons.
He didn't move off of third until, team man that he was, he shifted to short to make room for Ray Knight in the late summer of '84. Hubie was shortly thereafter packaged for Gary Carter, a trade nobody could rationally dispute.
He left two legacies in his wake:
1) Brooks was followed at third by, roughly, Knight, HoJo, Magadan, Bonilla, Kent, Alfonzo, Ventura, Alfonzo again, Wigginton and Wright. Sure there were some gaps and yeah, the total's grown from 79 when that song was recorded to 134 (including exactly one inning of one game played by Kevin Morgan in 1997, the only inning of the only game he ever played in the Majors), but the position's been held down by reasonably able men for decent stretches of time.
2) When Mike Piazza hit safely in 24 straight games in 1999, it was Hubie Brooks' 15-year-old mark that he matched with an eighth-inning homer off Vic Darensbourg. Gary Cohen announced it with something like “Move Over Hubie!”
It's not so bad to root for a team on which Hubie Brooks could endure so long as an aspirational figure, even for the greatest-hitting catcher of all time.