The Mets finally hit a lot while they pitched enough. That part Saturday was swell; the end of the world — nigh after a three-game losing streak by our division champs — has once again been postponed.

Mostly, I hope Nick Johnson of the Nationals is up on his feet soon and attempting to torment 14 other National League teams in 2007. As horrified veterans of collisions from Hahn & Theodore to Cameron & Beltran, all we can do is hope the human being in the other uniform with the broken right leg recovers soon.

What a bad break toward the end of a season for a guy who was hustling all the way for a last-place team. Him and Kearns, the guy he got tangled up in. In a perverse way, it makes me laugh at those who think highly compensated ballplayers don't really care about the game.

Sure was nice of us to not clinch in front of Pedro Astacio.
Oh wait, we already clinched. We've clinched all there is to clinch. There is no pressing reason to win baseball games so, apparently, we have chosen not to.
Uh, not to be ungrateful in this new and exciting era of having that little “x” next to our name in the standings, but shouldn't these games come with a rebate? If the Mets aren't trying to win — and they're not exactly going out of their way to emerge victorious — can we get like 10% of our ticket price returned to us? Don't worry, I'll put it right back into the kitty. The $25 DIVISION CHAMPIONS shirt I'm wearing as I type is indicative of how willing I am to spend in the name of this team's success. If Fred was willing to invest in great players, I'm fine with throwing down currency for overpriced merchandise full of happy logos.
Surely I would have taken this deal in February, the paying for meaningless games in exchange for why they're meaningless. They're marvelously meaningless. I look above the right field corner and I see the first version of what I hope will be a very special banner. I look behind home plate and I see the Mets insignia has been enhanced by a descriptor of what they've been since Monday night. Success hasn't spoiled this Rock Hunter.
But going to this game and Wednesday's game, both enveloped in offensive torpor, is tough stuff. It's a fleeting quirk of circumstance, I understand, but it puts into question the concept of the Mets as a destination for the entertainment dollar. There was little entertaining about watching the Mets losing to the last-place Nationals, especially losing to alumnus Astacio, a guy I'm guessing most fans without a fantasy roster had no idea was still pitching.
Oddly, if this had been a crummy loss at the tail end of a crummy season, I'd probably be penning paeans to the beauty of baseball, even futilely fought baseball, noting that autumn is at hand and the icy grip of winter is limbering up and…hey, screw that. Still, on the heels of a couple of lame losses that do not really matter, I find myself growing snippy and impatient after schlepping to Shea for another subpar game.
New York Mets fans, welcome to the big time.

Sure was nice of us to not clinch in front of Pedro Astacio.

Oh wait, we already clinched. We've clinched all there is to clinch. There is no pressing reason to win baseball games so, apparently, we have chosen not to.

Uh, not to be ungrateful in this new and exciting era of having that little “x” next to our name in the standings, but shouldn't these games come with a rebate? If the Mets aren't trying to win — and they're not exactly going out of their way to emerge victorious — can we get like 10% of our ticket price returned to us? Don't worry, I'll put it right back into the kitty. The $25 DIVISION CHAMPIONS shirt I'm wearing as I type is indicative of how willing I am to spend in the name of this team's success. If Fred was willing to invest in great players, I'm fine with throwing down currency for overpriced merchandise full of happy logos.

Surely I would have taken this deal in February, the paying for meaningless games in exchange for why they're meaningless. They're marvelously meaningless. I look above the right field corner and I see the first version of what I hope will be a very special banner. I look behind home plate and I see the Mets insignia has been enhanced by a descriptor of what they've been since Monday night. Success hasn't spoiled this Rock Hunter.

But going to this game and Wednesday's game, both enveloped in offensive torpor, is tough stuff. It's a fleeting quirk of circumstance, I understand, but it puts into question the concept of the Mets as a destination for the entertainment dollar. There was little entertaining about watching the Mets losing to the last-place Nationals, especially losing to alumnus Astacio, a guy I'm guessing most fans without a fantasy roster had no idea was still pitching.

Oddly, if this had been a crummy loss at the tail end of a crummy season, I'd probably be penning paeans to the beauty of baseball, even futilely fought baseball, noting that autumn is at hand and the icy grip of winter is limbering up and…hey, screw that. Still, on the heels of a couple of lame losses that do not really matter, I find myself growing snippy and impatient after schlepping to Shea for another subpar game.

New York Mets fans, welcome to the big time.

Welcome to Flashback Friday, a weekly feature devoted to the 20th anniversary of the 1986 World Champion New York Mets.
Twenty years. Forty-three Fridays. This is one of them.
In the days following the Mets' clinching of the 1986 National League East, much was made of the horrible shape the field was in and the horrible shape the starters were in after a night of reveling. Luck would have it that the first game after the clinch was a day game. Pete Flynn's grounds crew worked all night to create something playable and it worked. The Mets rolled out what in later generations would be called an A-minus lineup that beat the Cubs 5-0.
CF – Stanley Jefferson
2B – Tim Teufel
1B – Dave Magadan
RF – Kevin Mitchell
LF – Lee Mazzilli
3B – Howard Johnson
SS – Kevin Elster
C – John Gibbons
P – Rick Anderson
For the most part, that's not a bad lineup; makes you think the 2006 version (Ledee, DiFelice, Julio Franco playing third and batting fourth) was graded on a curve. A future MVP, a future biennial 30-30 man, a future .300 hitter, an ace pinch-hitter and half of what was then the current second base platoon occupy more than half of it. Of course Teufel never started against righties and a righty was pitching for Chicago, so that was different. The righty happened to be Cubs rookie Greg Maddux, but then he was just some kid making his fourth start (identified in one Daily News account as his brother Mike). And even if he'd been Greg Maddux, so what? The Mets had just clinched. Rolling out the A-minus lineup was apparently accepted protocol; then-scrubs Rod Gaspar, Bob Heise, Duffy Dyer and Amos Otis started after the 1969 clincher. However he rated his sudden elevation to the cleanup slot, Kevin Mitchell took his insertion as karmic payback for his excessive celebration.
“I may overdose on Tylenol…I can't drink tequila. I didn't even know where I was.”
The game would be closed out by Randy Myers, who one year later, right around the same time, would emerge as the Mets' main man out of the pen and go on to become a three-time league saves leader and the lights-out closer for a World Series winner. That that team wouldn't be the Mets and that the Mets wouldn't be a World Series winner again any time soon was, like so many other things about baseball — and life, unknowable in what was then the present.
What could we know about those who had just been plopped into our midst in the late summer of 1986? In years when things aren't going so well, it is traditional for the baseball fan to look forward to September for the callups. Who do we have who's going to make tomorrow brighter than today? It was usually a mixed bag. In September 1980, for example, we were introduced to Mookie Wilson, Wally Backman and Hubie Brooks, all of whom became somebody. We also shook hands with Scott Holman. September '81 brought us Ron Gardenhire, a marginal infielder; Brian Giles, whose claim to fame is that he wasn't the other Brian Giles; Charlie Puleo, traded to bring back Tom Seaver; and Mike Howard, whose only noteworthy act as a Met was to drive in the winning run in Seaver's return.
Late-season callups aren't so much a box of chocolates in that you never know what you're going to get as they are a bag of M&M's. You go through them very fast and, before you know it, the bag is empty and you're not all that satisfied. You don't take another bite until Spring Training. Did you get an Ed Kranepool (up in September '62, around through September '79), an Ed Lynch (1980-1986) or just an Ed Bauta (17 relief appearances, 0-2 between August '63 and May '64)?
Kevin Mitchell, three years in advance of his Most Valuable Player season (no other '86 Met had that prestigious an award still in front of him), was the only rookie to make a sizable impact on the team. His first cup of coffee came in 1984. World/747 was with the team from Opening Day and stuck the entire season, something no other rookie could say. (He also led the team in nicknames.) In the course of the year, other youngsters with no or limited previous experience would dot the roster. Their short-and long-term contributions ranged from memorable to trivial.
In that day-after lineup on September 18, 1986, the one following the clinch, Stan Jefferson jumps out as the quintessential afterthought. He was considered fairly hot stuff, a centerfielder of the future, so to speak. That was going to be difficult on a team that had two pretty solid centerfielders of the present, Wilson and Dykstra. Mazzilli, a relatively storied centerfield of the past, was still hanging around, too. I had hoped somebody would snap a picture of the four of them together, our own Willie, Mickey & The Duke and Stanley Jefferson. I don't know that anybody did. Jefferson batted 24 times during his shot of Sanka. He would be gone for Kevin McReynolds in short order, play for five other teams and become an officer in the NYPD much later. Don't remember the scouting report on him then, but eventually it would be accurate to say he had a real gun.
Dave Magadan competed for a batting title in 1990 and played in the Majors until 2001, but it's not unreasonable to say he's most remembered for replacing Keith Hernandez brilliantly for one night and not altogether successfully thereafter.
Kevin Elster snuck under the August 31 deadline to make the postseason roster, purely as managerial insurance. Davey Johnson wanted to be able to pinch-hit for Rafael Santana, and if HoJo were otherwise engaged, he needed someone to sub at short. Elster was sold as a defensive whiz. Looked shaky in his spot duty, but if you're 22 and thrust onto the best team in baseball from Double-A, so might you. Was a Met through 1992 with a very good glove, but never really developed into the all-around player the Mets hoped for. Drove in 99 runs in 1996 after having driven in all of 90 in the six previous seasons combined.
John Gibbons, drafted in the same first round as Darryl Strawberry and Billy Beane, was supposed to be the great young catcher who caught the great young pitchers in 1984. Got hurt in a spring game (fractured left cheekbone) and never regained the starting job, losing it first to Mike Fitzgerald and permanently to Gary Carter. His first Met stint in '84 yielded an .065 average. His second in '86 resulted in .474. Was called up in '85 and '87 but saw no action. That résumé makes him uniquely qualified to tell younger players of the ups and downs of baseball. He's managing in Toronto, at least for another week or so.
Rick Anderson threw the most innings of any Met pitcher who didn't make the 1986 playoff roster, but he'll be in the postseason in 2006 as Ron Gardenhire's pitching coach, same as he's been three times in this decade in Minnesota. Nice career coda for someone known otherwise, if at all, as a fill-in and a throw-in, the latter for David Cone, accompanying Ed Hearn, the rookie backup catcher in '86, to Kansas City in perhaps the greatest pro-Met steal ever. Hearn, like Gibbons, got hurt (and more seriously ill later in life), but he was a pretty good backstop in his one year of championship reserve duty. He has a story to tell everybody. Hearn usurped the job of Barry Lyons in May. Lyons was up with the big club out of Spring Training, down for good on June 23, back in '87 through '90. He's presently persevering after Hurricane Katrina hit him hard in Mississippi last year.
Anderson went five in his September 18 start against the Cubs, followed to the hill by John Mitchell. It was Mitchell's third appearance following a stellar season in Tidewater when he was named the International League's Most Valuable Pitcher. Shipped to the Mets with Bobby Ojeda for apparent stiffs like Wes Gardner, LaSchelle Tarver and Calvin Schiraldi before '86, Mitchell's promise threatened to make him the Leroy Stanton of the Nolan Ryan deal. Didn't exactly work out that way, but Mitchell, though not to as positive an effect as perennial cameoist Terry Leach, threw some yeoman innings in the Great Starting Pitching Shortage of 1987, keeping the defending champs from completely cratering.
Randy Myers, who picked up for Anderson against the Cubs, was hyped more than any other '86 rookie. He had one inning at the end of 1985 and 10 appearances as a Tidewater shuttler in '86, but big things were expected. He was a hard-throwing lefty the likes of which the Mets hadn't had. It wouldn't be long before he made Jesse Orosco obsolete and Roger McDowell expendable. His place in 1986 lore was cemented in Jeff Pearlman's The Bad Guys Won as the object of Ed Lynch's ire. Lynch was with the Cubs when the Mets clinched against them, his six years here having expired in June via injury, overcrowding and trade.
“It was,” Lynch recalled, “like living with a family the whole year and getting thrown out of the house on Christmas Eve.”
The Mets celebrated their first division title in the home clubhouse. Lynch was in spritzing distance of the fun, but it was no longer his fun. It was presumably one thing to see the Oroscos and Wilsons and Backmans, guys he came through the bad years with, get their due, but…well, here's what he told Pearlman about one particular 1986 Met callup:
“There's Randy Myers, who had been with the team about a week, and he's got his arm around two gals, and he's got a bottle of champagne in each hand. I remember just looking at him and thinking, 'Where's a grenade when you need one?'”

Emily and I go out every Saturday night. Every so often, there's a Saturday night game. Every so often, we decide one of these Saturday night games is a must-see: It's Mets-Yankees, or it's a big game against the Braves, or it's an attempt at clinching. So we wind up in a bar or a pub together, parked in front of the TV.
Sometimes when this happens, we fall into conversation with some fellow Met fan. And the process is always entertaining. The first time Emily says something about the Mets or the game, she gets a polite nod or a brief look, and then the Met fan goes back to chatting with me. The second time she says something, it's much the same reaction. About the third or fourth time (depending on how smart the Met fan is), you can see the newcomer starting to recalibrate. Wow, she's talking about Endy Chavez. Hey, she knows Billy Wagner's been lights-out since the All-Star break. Gee, she knows about Duaner Sanchez and his injury.
And then things change — the fan, if not frightened off by his scrambled gender assumptions, stops treating my wife like a baseball afterthought and starts discussing all things Mets as fervently with her as with me, if not more so. It's happened often enough that now we practically wait for it from the moment some guy at the next table or the next barstool looks over and asks, “Met fans?”
I'm an insanely lucky man. I didn't rate a woman who would endure my mile-long list of faults. Somehow I wound up with one. I didn't deserve a woman who's smart and beautiful and ferocious. Somehow I married one. I certainly didn't deserve a woman who loves baseball and the Mets and knows what catcher's interference is. But somehow I got one. (If you're thinking my luck is Emily's utter lack of it, well, hush. Don't blow this for me.) One summer evening before Joshua was born, I suffered through some 7 train mishap and didn't arrive at Shea until about the third inning. Emily had broken out her full complement of baseball knowledge and was chatting amiably but a trifle coolly with a drunk guy in Jets regalia who was now clearly lovestruck.
“If only you didn't like the Giants,” he sighed, “you'd be perfect.”
No, Emily doesn't watch every pitch of every game — a three-year-old bolluxes up your schedule something fierce, and she takes the early shift, so the sixth inning is often the end for her. She doesn't pore over Hagerstown stats or moon over the enigmatic career of Rich Sauveur or wonder if there's a decent picture of Al Schmelz on the Net. But that kind of thing doesn't make you a fan, it makes you a lunatic — and one lunatic per marriage is enough.
All of this is preamble for tonight's game: Emily attended it with her dad, while I tried to convince Joshua to eat chicken fingers and apologized for repeatedly breaking the unwritten laws of how to color dinosaurs. After four innings, I had a wild hope blooming in my chest: Sure, I got to see the clincher, but she could see history. An end to the Curse of Nolan Ryan. The disbanding of that stupid club. Why not? Didn't David Cone flirt with a no-hitter after his aneurysm? Wouldn't that be a perfect chapter to add to the legend of Pedro Martinez?
Of course, it wasn't to be — the count stalled at 15 to go. (Nowhere near, but hey, we're Met fans.) Then Pedro lost a little something, got a little unlucky, and before you could blink it was 4-1. Not a bad outing by any means, though it was another Rorschach in how to view Pedro. I think Pedro is incredibly smart not only about the game but also about himself — he wasn't going to do something foolish out of pride or stubbornness in a meaningless late-September game, but when there's bunting on the stands and October in the air, the artist will look at the baseball in his hand and find a way. Maybe I'm right. Or maybe even Pedro can't outfox Father Time.
Still, it wasn't a meaningless late-September game for Emily.
Over the years my wife's had to put up with innumerable Met-related rages, a smaller but not insignificant number of bursts of overexuberance, impromptu lessons for our son in spectacularly foul profanity, black depressions, winter muttering, complaining that spring training's too long, complaining that spring training's too short, moaning that it's an off-day, moaning that it isn't a double-header, moaning about the All-Star break, hours spent on obsessive Internet searches, hours upon hours of blogging, hours spent on online and offline baseball-card hunts, half-assed conversation because the other husbandly ear is listening to a game on a headphone, and various and sundry other annoyances and offenses.
There have been rewards. She was there for the 10-run inning, for the wild pitch that allowed Game 163, for Pratt hitting it over the fence, for the Grand Slam Single, for Agbayani's homer, for the game of Bobby Jones's life, for Timo leaping into the air to make the pennant arrive earlier. But in recent years she's had too few chances to go to the park. Saturday-night games are rare, the Mets' schedule hasn't meshed well with Joshua's grandparent visits, and the price of being a Met fan instead of a Met lunatic is the lunatic goes to more games. Tonight was different. Nice evening. Pedro pitched. The only thing wrong was the score.
Sorry, sweetie — I wanted this one for you. Here's hoping the Mets and I can make it up to you in October.

Emily and I go out every Saturday night. Every so often, there's a Saturday night game. Every so often, we decide one of these Saturday night games is a must-see: It's Mets-Yankees, or it's a big game against the Braves, or it's an attempt at clinching. So we wind up in a bar or a pub together, parked in front of the TV.

Sometimes when this happens, we fall into conversation with some fellow Met fan. And the process is always entertaining. The first time Emily says something about the Mets or the game, she gets a polite nod or a brief look, and then the Met fan goes back to chatting with me. The second time she says something, it's much the same reaction. About the third or fourth time (depending on how smart the Met fan is), you can see the newcomer starting to recalibrate. Wow, she's talking about Endy Chavez. Hey, she knows Billy Wagner's been lights-out since the All-Star break. Gee, she knows about Duaner Sanchez and his injury.

And then things change — the fan, if not frightened off by his scrambled gender assumptions, stops treating my wife like a baseball afterthought and starts discussing all things Mets as fervently with her as with me, if not more so. It's happened often enough that now we practically wait for it from the moment some guy at the next table or the next barstool looks over and asks, “Met fans?”

I'm an insanely lucky man. I didn't rate a woman who would endure my mile-long list of faults. Somehow I wound up with one. I didn't deserve a woman who's smart and beautiful and ferocious. Somehow I married one. I certainly didn't deserve a woman who loves baseball and the Mets and knows what catcher's interference is. But somehow I got one. (If you're thinking my luck is Emily's utter lack of it, well, hush. Don't blow this for me.) One summer evening before Joshua was born, I suffered through some 7 train mishap and didn't arrive at Shea until about the third inning. Emily had broken out her full complement of baseball knowledge and was chatting amiably but a trifle coolly with a drunk guy in Jets regalia who was now clearly lovestruck.

“If only you didn't like the Giants,” he sighed, “you'd be perfect.”

No, Emily doesn't watch every pitch of every game — a three-year-old bolluxes up your schedule something fierce, and she takes the early shift, so the sixth inning is often the end for her. She doesn't pore over Hagerstown stats or moon over the enigmatic career of Rich Sauveur or wonder if there's a decent picture of Al Schmelz on the Net. But that kind of thing doesn't make you a fan, it makes you a lunatic — and one lunatic per marriage is enough.

All of this is preamble for tonight's game: Emily attended it with her dad, while I tried to convince Joshua to eat chicken fingers and apologized for repeatedly breaking the unwritten laws of how to color dinosaurs. After four innings, I had a wild hope blooming in my chest: Sure, I got to see the clincher, but she could see history. An end to the Curse of Nolan Ryan. The disbanding of that stupid club. Why not? Didn't David Cone flirt with a no-hitter after his aneurysm? Wouldn't that be a perfect chapter to add to the legend of Pedro Martinez?

Of course, it wasn't to be — the count stalled at 15 to go. (Nowhere near, but hey, we're Met fans.) Then Pedro lost a little something, got a little unlucky, and before you could blink it was 4-1. Not a bad outing by any means, though it was another Rorschach in how to view Pedro. I think Pedro is incredibly smart not only about the game but also about himself — he wasn't going to do something foolish out of pride or stubbornness in a meaningless late-September game, but when there's bunting on the stands and October in the air, the artist will look at the baseball in his hand and find a way. Maybe I'm right. Or maybe even Pedro can't outfox Father Time.

Still, it wasn't a meaningless late-September game for Emily.

Over the years my wife's had to put up with innumerable Met-related rages, a smaller but not insignificant number of bursts of overexuberance, impromptu lessons for our son in spectacularly foul profanity, black depressions, winter muttering, complaining that spring training's too long, complaining that spring training's too short, moaning that it's an off-day, moaning that it isn't a double-header, moaning about the All-Star break, hours spent on obsessive Internet searches, hours upon hours of blogging, hours spent on online and offline baseball-card hunts, half-assed conversation because the other husbandly ear is listening to a game on a headphone, and various and sundry other annoyances and offenses.

There have been rewards. She was there for the 10-run inning, for the wild pitch that allowed Game 163, for Pratt hitting it over the fence, for the Grand Slam Single, for Agbayani's homer, for the game of Bobby Jones's life, for Timo leaping into the air to make the pennant arrive earlier. But in recent years she's had too few chances to go to the park. Saturday-night games are rare, the Mets' schedule hasn't meshed well with Joshua's grandparent visits, and the price of being a Met fan instead of a Met lunatic is the lunatic goes to more games. Tonight was different. Nice evening. Pedro pitched. The only thing wrong was the score.

Sorry, sweetie — I wanted this one for you. Here's hoping the Mets and I can make it up to you in October.

I now understand there are two kinds of nights at Shea Stadium. There are nights when the Mets clinch their first National League Eastern Division championship in 18 years and there are all other nights.
Surprisingly, Wednesday was the latter. I was surprised because since shortly after 9:30 Monday night I've been riding and writing on a cloud. The Mets clinched and stayed clinched. That's the way I've always heard it should be. That's the way, I assumed, it will always be.
But once every 18 years is once every 18 years. After staving off fallibility despite a most fallible lineup Tuesday, they actually went out and lost a baseball game Wednesday. Kind of annoying, but on the other hand, I checked to see if we're still clinched. And we are. We're even officially home-field advantageous, with St. Louis losing and us having beaten them the season series.
Thus, losing is now completely albeit temporarily statistically harmless. Live long enough and you'll see everything.
Noteworthy from tonight's 19th 2006 appearance by yours truly:
• There was no sign anybody snuck champagne (or Champagne) in. Luckily, it proved unnecessary.
• Paid attendance was 37,911. The third of that figure of somebody's imagination that didn't show should be ineligible to attend any postseason games in 2006. Their credentials as fans are to be reviewed as well. I'll take the first 4,213.
• This was my first game since October 2, 1988 that featured the Mets as active N.L. East champs and my first loss ever under those circumstances. Such a thrill I wasn't seeking.
• Slipped back under .500 to 9-10 on the year. But really, the clinching counts as like a thousand wins, so I'll shut up about my record for a bit.
• Matchup of the night from the out-of-town scoreboard:
ATL
WAS
Why, yes. ATL WAS. They ain't no more.
• Our sixth starter, Oliver Perez, looked pretty good. We have six starters.
• Dontrelle Willis is an SOB: Stunning Offensive Batter. Most of his batting average and practically all his RBI are against us. As my companion noted, he deserves a trip to the dirt.
• And speaking of my companion, Wednesday night marked the rain-delayed debut of Mike of Mike's Mets and me of Faith and Fear as seatmates. Two bloggers from two different blogs out in public at once? What are the odds? I felt bad that the Mets lost but, you know, not that bad. We are champions, I saw it with my own eyes. But Mike…geez, the guy makes his one dry trip to Shea Stadium from Up There, Conn. and the Mets pick that as the night to give the Marlins something to feel good about. Given those odds, I'd want to knock the D-Train off his tracks as well. The bottom of the ninth looked promising for a minute and I hoped like heck (saving hell-hope for the playoffs) they could give Mike a 1-0, me a 10-9 and themselves a 93-58, but no. With all due respect to a fine Met blogger, a great Met fan and, based on two meetings' experience, a swell guy, oh well. My can't-hit-lefties, can't-get-out-pitchers, can't-avoid-bad-signs antenna is still on holiday.
All that matters in the interregnum is Go Pedro.
In news so lesser as to be inconsequential, we're no longer the only champion in baseball. Congratulations to the New York Yankees who lowered themselves to celebrate a silly divisional title — backed into yet! — even in the face of A-Rod and the Giambino starring in a remake of Heathers as scripted by Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated. Paul O'Neill, despite being technically alive, must be rolling over in his grave.
How very.

We could all use our own Ricky Ledee. We could all use a caddy to go in and play for us the day after we've had a big time the night before. We could all use a guy who might go 0-for-4 in our stead but nobody would notice and few would complain.
I wasn't technically hung over Tuesday. I mean half a metallic Budweiser and 187 milliliters of Pommery Pop? Get a good look — that's not a lightweight anchoring the right side of your picture.
Emotionally was another story. There was no way my head was leaving Monday night behind so easily. Nor was it hitting a pillow 'til dawn's early light. I recorded Mets Fast Forward at 5 A.M. but decided to sit up and watch it as it aired. Can't see Josh Willingham fly out to Cliff Floyd enough. Kind of defeated the purpose of setting the DVR, but I'll sleep when we're last.
While waiting for the rebroadcast, I read a very funny thread on a very busy Mets message board about what the back pages might look like Tuesday. The running joke was that the New York tabloids are so obsessed with the doings of another team that…well, read it yourself. I especially like #13.
It turned out the local papers did themselves proud. The News abandoned Cap'n Cock…y for one morning and gave us our poster boys, David and Jose, drenching themselves silly in the clubhouse. That was good. But Newsday devoting A1 to Our Fellas out on the field as the Toast of the Town? That's New York Long Island Honda Dealers Good!
Young David looks awfully comfortable with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a cigar in the other. Let's make sure we see some variation on that theme a few more times this year and regularly for the next 15 or 20.
Hey, you know what never happened? The Pirate series. It's a typical soap opera convention, one I recognize from my decade as on occasional (OK, mostly constant) viewer of The Young & The Restless. You have a very intense storyline on which everybody's lives are focused for a time and then, after it doesn't catch on, you just write the next episode like it never happened.
Pirate series? What Pirate series? Everybody in Genoa City knows the Mets romped to their clinching unimpeded and undefeated.
Adult beverage consumption did not end in Section 4 Monday night. Last Friday, when the air was thick with nonsense about the necessity of clinching in Pittsburgh, I visited my local liquorium and spent 14 big ones on a bottle of Korbel Extra Dry. (In 1999, I celebrated the Wild Card with a more inexpensive bottle of Rheingold Extra Dry…it was a very good year.) The California champagne — some would claim that its geographic origin makes it merely sparkling wine, but some also claim you can overcelebrate a division title, so some are morons — grew icy cold in the fridge over the clinchless weekend. This was not a bottle that had a chance of sneaking under the nose of Inspector Cloushea, so in the fridge it sat as the last out was made and the fifth title was earned.
Hung over or not Tuesday, the Korbel needed to come out and play. Mrs. Prince earned her taste, and not just in the Met abstract. When I called her on the way home post-clinching, I asked her if she watched. No, she said. Before I could ask what the hell is wrong with you, you just sat and watched three dreadful losses with me and now that we win, you don't even peek, she volunteered, “I was afraid if I did, they'd lose.”
Wow. Nineteen-plus years of me and this have really done a number on her.
Anyway, we popped our cork in advance of the pregame show and, discovering we don't own champagne glasses, filled a couple of Mets beer mugs given me by Jim Haines a couple of birthdays ago. I felt compelled to compose a toast on the spot, telling Stephanie that I had never thought in terms of a divisional title per se, but I would have been surprised when we got married in 1991 if I'd been told it would take this long before we would see one together, and that it's all a lot more fun sharing it with her. Then we raised our mugs and swigged. We're not a drinking couple, but we are capable of gettin' swiggy wit' it once or twice a year.
Stephanie grew flush after three sips, but I began gaining momentum, refilling my mug and telling Avery, whose first anniversary as our kitty was Saturday, what a great cat he is…get your face out of that Iams and give Daddy a big kiss! It was shaping up as quite an evening, but at 6:32, half the power went out in our building and on our block. Very strange. The kitchen was light, the living room was dark, the TV was blank, the radio worked. It wasn't much of a power outage, yet it was powerful enough to put a damper on my drinking. How am I supposed to develop a taste for this stuff when I have to call LIPA and complain coherently?
I wasn't really paying attention as the Mets lineup stepped in DiFelices. When the lights came back on at 7:36, there was still a little Korbel left, but it was getting warm and my divisional buzz didn't need any more enhancement. The dregs went down the drain…the champagne, I mean, not Ledee.
Aw, no reason to be hard on this instant trivia classic of a batting order. They won, right? Of course they did. It is traditional; furthermore, it is historic. In the five seasons when the Mets have played games after clinching playoff spots (including 2000, but not 1973 and 1999), the Mets are 28-8 for the remainder of their schedule, including last night. No power outage or momentum stop for our fellas, even when the guys playing out the string are barely Our Fellas.
Avery, did I ever tell you what a beautiful cat you really are? Gimme another kiss!