Carpet bomb 'em. You understand? Chew 'em up. Spit 'em out. So we understand each other, right?
—Mayor Lucy Rodell (Dillon, Tex.)
As we and us prepare to watch our team encounter their/our first postseason in six years, keep this in mind:
Six innings.
If we can get six innings from John Maine or Joe Vermont or whoever is going to take the ball, we have a fine chance. That's not an appraisal limited to Maine. Six solid innings from any starter and we're relatively golden.
This team's foundation is its bullpen. There'll be lots of bullpen from which to choose, with Royce Ring shockingly tossed into the salad this morning. He's the 12th pitcher, presumably (so much for the brilliant three-catcher strategy as DiFelice is dropped and Chris Woodward is the emergency everything). Oliver Perez takes El Duque's place on the roster as the Game Four starter. Well, he take's Maine's spot and Maine is in for El Duque who is out for the series.
When it comes to Met starters, we are all our own grandpa.
The pen, though, has been a rock all year. Even without Duaner Sanchez, whose presence is missed, it has held steady to spectacular. Its hiccups are in its past. Wagner is tough. Heilman is hard. Mota is unbelievable. You have to trust Bradford to get out righties and Feliciano to get out lefties. Roberto Hernandez can overcome a threat. Oliver can pick up others' slack.
This is baseball in the 21st century, more pronounced but not altogether different from what it was six years ago when it was as much the combined work of Rusch, White, Cook, Wendell, Franco and (occasionally) Benitez that saw the Mets through to the World Series as it was several excellent outings from Al Leiter, Mike Hampton, Rick Reed and Bobby Jones. Certainly Met victories in the second and third games of that year's NLDS and Game Two of the NLCS owed to bullpen excellence.
Our last postseason rotation doesn't jump off the page as phenomenal, but they were pretty substantial. Pretty substantial or at least pretty good is what this team needs right now. Pretty good has described its starting pitching over the past four months, since Pedro's aches acted up and Glavine slipped out of sorts. It's been about relief pitching when we're on defense. Give us six solid innings and I'll take my chances.
Quick, how many World Series did the supposedly stifling rotation of Mulder, Zito and Hudson win for the A's? How often did Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz steamroll the postseason competition after 1995? Which victory parade included Kerry Wood, Mark Prior and Carlos Zambrano? I don't mean to denigrate great pitching. When you get it, you're close to unbeatable. But I've heard over the past decade repeatedly in advance of October baseball how some ace or set of aces was going to dictate the terms of engagement and proceed to carry their teams on their shoulders to nirvana.
It hardly ever happens that way. Yes, a Schilling and a Johnson in their primes were something to see. They had the reps and they lived up to them. Otherwise? Was anybody fearing the White Sox rotation last year — especially in comparison to Clemens, Pettitte and Oswalt — before it proved infallible for a couple of weeks? Did the Marlins of '03 strike terror into the opposition until after the fact? How about those highly offensive Angels in 2002?
On Tuesday, Johan Santana pitched a whale of a game. His team lost. Jake Peavy came in considered a top gun. He didn't do so well. Would I hand the ball to either of them again? Of course, but it just goes to show that there's no telling what will happen in a game, regardless of the month it takes place.
You don't want your starters to go three innings and out. But it's a myth that World Series — or even Division Series — are won because you're sporting three famously strong arms. There are too many variables in a baseball game. Fielding is a variable. Baserunning is a variable. Managers' decisions are a variable. The bullpen is a variable. And a stacked lineup, like that of the Mets, does occasionally supercede good starting pitching.
I'd rather go into this with the pitchers we anticipated a couple of weeks ago, even a couple of days ago. That doesn't seem to be happening. But we're still here, with our bedazzling leadoff hitter, our gamer catcher, our all-world centerfielder, our imposing cleanup man, our clutchrageous third baseman and their assorted superfriends. The Dodgers are good, but they don't have Reyes, Lo Duca, Beltran, Delgado, Wright, Green, Floyd and Valentin. They don't have Wagner, Heilman or Mota either. We have some positive difference makers and very few negative ones.
We're also still here with John Maine, who was a very valuable contributor to the Mets in the second half of the year. He was gonna pitch a Game Four? So he'll pitch a Game One. They're all baseball games. We know how to win those.
If it ain't over 'til it's over, then it's damn sure not over before it's begun.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go start yelling at us. I'll let you know how that turns out.
And oh yeah…buy a shirt.

Calves are vulnerable body parts this time of year. To guard against absurdly common injuries, why not wrap your right calf in a FAITH AND FEAR t-shirt? In fact, best to swaddle your left calf in one too. That'll only leave your two arms vulnerable. Hmmm. Four shirts might be wise.
Ha ha! Gallows humor, wheeee!
Seriously, if you want a shirt, please email us with how many you want and what sizes. More details here. Sometime in the next day or two we'll get the order out to the t-shirt company and email everyone to confirm, ask for payment (exact amount TBD, but based on the number ordered so far, I'm betting they'll be about $15 delivered) and get mailing addresses.
Seven hours to go. Everybody hang in there. And remember, ya gotta believe.

Calves are vulnerable body parts this time of year. To guard against absurdly common injuries, why not wrap your right calf in a FAITH AND FEAR t-shirt? In fact, best to swaddle your left calf in one too. That'll only leave your two arms vulnerable. Hmmm. Four shirts might be wise.

Ha ha! Gallows humor, wheeee!

Seriously, if you want a shirt, please email us with how many you want and what sizes. More details here. Sometime in the next day or two we'll get the order out to the t-shirt company and email everyone to confirm, ask for payment (exact amount TBD, but based on the number ordered so far, I'm betting they'll be about $15 delivered) and get mailing addresses.

Seven hours to go. Everybody hang in there. And remember, ya gotta believe.

We're a little too into sports in this country, I think we gotta throttle back. Know what I mean? People come home from these games, “We won! We won!” No, they won — you watched. — Jerry Seinfeld
It's one of the rules of being an adult: You realize that you're not, in fact, a member of your favorite team. You will never throw a perfect inning, line a double off the wall or even stand in the batter's box quivering while three barely glimpsed fastballs roar across the plate. You watch the team, you root for the team, you analyze the team's strengths and weaknesses, but you know you are a fan, not a player. And so, above all else, you do not say “we.” You say “they.” Or you invite ridicule.
Well, you know what?
Fuck that.
There are two kinds of people who don't say “we” — people who are passionate fans of a given team and people who aren't. There are billions of people in the latter group. Many of them are decent, intelligent folk. I've got dozens of friends who fit into that category. I love some of them dearly. But I don't give a good goddamn what they think about this issue, or anything else related to sports.
That leaves the first group — passionate fans who nonetheless turn up their nose at “we.” And they're the ones I don't understand.
I wonder, fantasize, exult and worry about the fortunes of the New York Mets 365 days a year — 366 every four years. And for six months of the year they are the focus of, at minimum, approximately a quarter of the hours I'm awake. My co-blogger is no different. (In fact, double those numbers for him.) Nor are many of the folks who comment here.
While I'm the same me year after year, shifts in hair and waistline notwithstanding, the New York Mets barely hold still. They come and go in a blur: So far, there have been 799 of them to 1 of me. They come up young and leave old, are revealed as heroes and heels, succeed and fail and do OK, get drafted and signed and called up and hurt and benched and traded and released and reacquired, the names above the numbers changing as the seasons tick by faster and faster. The team has been and will be managed by different men, coached by different men, put together by different men (and even a few women), even owned by different men and women. The only true constant? It's us. People who look up from some chore in the middle of the winter and realize they've spent the last hour fuming about why Timo wasn't running, or why Yogi didn't start George Stone, or what in hell Kenny Rogers was doing. Who ride the subway to work fantasizing about the World Series ending on a David Wright walk-off, or an above-the-fence grab by Carlos Gomez, or a no-hitter for Philip Humber. Who find themselves walking down the street grinning like a fool at the memory of the Grand Slam single, or Pratt hitting it over the fence, or Ray Knight grabbing his helmet in disbelief as home plate looms.
We go to the games. We spend the money. We wear the gear. We read the articles, the books and even a crazy, wordy blog or two. We cheer and boo and do mock Tomahawk chops and call the FAN and sing “Jose Jose Jose Jose.” We don't play or make out the starting lineup or acquire players, that's true. But so what? We do everything else. We are the custodians of tradition and the tellers of tales, the ones whose job it is to explain to children and new arrivals and casual fans and interested bystanders what the Mets are like and what Met fans are like. We'll never be in the Baseball Encyclopedia. But who's meant more to the New York Mets? One of us — or, say, Dave Liddell? (We are the ones who remember Dave Liddell.)
And above all else, we give a big chunk of our hearts to a ever-shifting assemblage of rich young men to do with as they will. The cruel irony of sports is that we let our happiness and perhaps even our sanity depend on the outcome of an activity that we are, realistically, powerless to affect. Perhaps that's why some fans insist on this symbolic display of standing apart — perhaps that's their refuge from letting their days and nights be wrecked by something as ultimately small as a “tough loss,” or as cosmically inconsequential as calf pain for a Cuban man of undetermined age.
But if you've come this far, stop kidding yourself. It's a big thing, giving a piece of yourself over to something larger than yourself. It's an even bigger thing to give that loyalty to something that's out of your control, that you can only be witness to. But if you're reading this and aren't a casual passer-by, you've already done that, right? In the eyes of casual fans and non-fans, you're already a lunatic. It's too late to change now, even if you could.
On this blog we use that forbidden pronoun. And we use it proudly. Tomorrow, “we” will describe thousands upon thousands baying in the stands and watching in terror and joy on their couches and standing with the radio pressed to an ear and muttering about calves and rotator cuffs and MRIs — and it will also describe the 25 guys in orange and blue at the center of all that attention. “They”? That doesn't describe David Wright and Jose Reyes and John Maine. It describes everybody else.
I'm sure glad we're not them.

The Giants won the pennant, won the pennant 55 years ago today.
Brad Clontz didn't even do as well as Ralph Branca 7 years ago today, unleashing a wild pitch that turned Melvin Mora into a de facto Bobby Thomson as the Mets tied for the Wild Card, tied for the Wild Card.
And on this date in 2004, Todd Zeile hit the shot heard 'round the Zeile household.
October 3 has been a fun date to take to a baseball game in my lifetime, even my pre-lifetime. Thomson's swing in the Polo Grounds ensured the New York Giants would become my historical fetish. Clontz's errant throw ensured the Mets would live to see another day in 1999 (it turned out they survived clear to past midnight on October 20). There was nothing more at stake than a warm feeling on 10/3/04, but in retrospect, your co-bloggers and their friends wound up watching a horrible Met era end on a poignant up note.
I was going to tie all of this together. I was going to plug a remarkable new book by Joshua Prager called The Echoing Green, I was going to tell you how last week I saw the author along with his prime subjects, Mr. Thomson and Mr. Branca, in Manhattan and how astounding that was. I was going to tie the Brooklyn Dodger fan festering wound from that one-game playoff to something I just watched on HBO about the Cubs' sorry history and I'm sure I would have woven in Melvin Mora and Ralph Branca's son-in-law Bobby Valentine and Joe Hietpas and the death of the Expos and something about the Marlins and I would have helped us count down the hours until 4:09 tomorrow afternoon.
But now, unfortunately, I have real news to report: El Duque might not go tomorrow. Willie announced at his press conference that Orlando was running in the outfield, felt something in his right calf, is receiving an MRI and his start may be up for grabs. No definitive word on Hernandez's health or who might replace him.
October 3 giveth. Let us hope it doesn't taketh away.

The 25-man roster has apparently been decided. Several things jump out.
1) Three catchers. DiFelice joins Lo Duca and Castro, freeing up Ramon as a potential righty pinch-hitter. I like that aspect. RC was swinging the bat very well over the weekend. Sure, it would be nice if he could bring a pinch-runner with him, but he may be the righty bat we can count on for a bit of pop. With him and Franco (hot, at last) and Woodward (who used to be good), the bench doesn't look as bleak. DiFelice will presumably sit on his hands unless an emergency arises. And whoever heard of a backup catcher getting into a playoff game? Next thing you'll tell me a future Hall of Famer once got hurt, was replaced by his caddy and that guy smacked a series-winning home run off Matt Mantei.
2) Eleven pitchers. That's probably all we need. If you're dipping into a twelfth pitcher, you're going home anyway. Everybody in the pen is a reliever by trade. Not much chance that John Maine will be the long man, which isn't the worst thing, considering he made only one relief appearance in the regular season. Pedro's calf 'n' cuff probably paved the way for Roberto Hernandez, who was my odd man out when we our starting was more imposing. As composed, Bert is seventh on the depth chart, depending how desperate we are to use Darren Oliver. Gads, I love our pen, the two situational guys leading into our big three. C'mon starters, six innings apiece. Is that too much to ask?
3) No Dave Williams or Oliver Perez. At least not for this round. Perez could have been a secret weapon or he could have blown up in our faces. Williams never stopped intriguing me, and part of me wants to hand him the ball for Game Three over Trachsel or Maine, neither of whom I trust completely (and both of whom I distrust not a little). I think he made only one cameo down the stretch, so I guess he was never considered.
4) Michael Tucker. He's my dark horse candidate to get a big hit (nice cursing him with expectations, stupid). I'm probably reading way too much into that tater he toasted in Washington in August, but I see him as a latter-day Matt Franco minus the famous uncle. He's the lefty stick off the bench to be sure. The other one will be some combination of the three outfielders who aren't Beltran.
5) Cliff Floyd. Wow, he is not running well, not at all. But he can still swing. I don't think there's anybody who's watched him for four seasons who doesn't, ideally, want him in left, in the lineup with a chance to do something great. But I don't think there's anybody who doesn't wonder whether he's capable of being ideal in his condition. With Shawn Green at last not lunging at every low, outside pitch he sees, I feel OK about him in right. Then it comes down to Cliff or Endy. For starting, I have to go with Cliff, not because of longevity or emotion or because he's walked to the plate with the Sanford and Son theme in the background or because he makes deep and clever observations about the light at the end of the tunnel or who in his family makes the doughnuts or even because we feel bad about him losing his sister. I have to go with Cliff because he looked pretty formidable at the plate in D.C. and I don't have enough confidence in him as a pinch-hitter. I'm guessing it's harder to go from the bench to the lineup than the other way around and expect a solid contribution. Endy's been coming out of the dugout all year and I suspect he'll be finding the field yet again.
6) No Lastings. I really thought Milledge would make a case for himself Timo-style in September. No such luck. I wonder if his omission is a not-so-subtle message from the higher-ups as regards his behavior or just the result of his not quite setting the world ablaze. I'd like to have that speed and that quickness (two different things), but there are still liabilities in his game. I imagine if Cliff can't make it to a next round, if there is a next round, Lastings would get the call. Gosh, I hope he would, considering the alternative would be Ricky Ledee, who's also not on the roster and I'm not complaining about that oversight. Milledge sure doesn't seem like the next great product of the farm system as he did in early June, does he?
7) No Anderson Hernandez. There's no Kevin Elster role available on this team. Nobody's gonna pinch-hit for any of our infielders. But his glove is nonpareil and he did show a flash or two of offense of late. In the era when you could carry nine or ten pitchers and not sweat it, I'd want him around. I didn't feel that way a month ago. His stock shot up in September.
No other surprises. Glavine, Duque, Wright, Reyes, Delgado, Valentin are the only other names not mentioned or alluded to above who will trot to the foul line Wednesday afternoon.
Though his absence will not doom us, I sure do miss Pedro Martinez.
To fill the void, how about a shirt?