Clinch today. Clinch in Pittsburgh. Clinch in front of Xavier Nady. Clinch in front of Jeromy Burnitz. Clinch in front of Ty Wigginton and Marvell Wynne and Tim Foli and anybody else who used to be a Met. Clinch and send them a check.
Clinch today. Clinch on your own. Or clinch by the hand of Wandy Rodriguez. Clinch when the Astros beat the Phillies if you can't beat the Pirates.
Clinch and call Keith Hernandez's car service and get home. Clinch and trot out onto the field Monday night as division champs.
Clinch today. Clinch on the afternoon of September 17, 2006, not because of the neat symmetry of clinching on the 20th anniversary of clinching our second-most recent to date National League Eastern Division championship (though that's well and good) but because of what might very likely happen on the night of September 17, 2006.
Clinch today. Because if you don't accomplish that small task with a magic number of 1, then another team, whose magic number is momentarily 4, will clinch before us. They get to play their 2006 patsies (speaking of dogs) during the day and again in the evening. A win for them is a loss for the team directly behind them. Who doesn't think it's quite possible to probable that the Yankees will sweep the Red Sox Sunday? They do that and they've clinched on September 17.
We must clinch September 17. First. In the daytime. Before them. This is not negotiable. This is not “gee, it wouldn't be as much fun to clinch while they're in the clubhouse” or “gosh, I have a ticket [and I do] for Monday night” or, heaven help any Mets fan, “Zach Duke is on my fantasy team.” This is one of those few times in the course of this extraordinary season when there is a MUST win. For us. For Houston. Whoever. Preferences are no longer an option.
I do not want to live in a world in which we are not the first New York team to be division champion this particular season.
I do not care how it is done.
Clinch.
Now.

Hindsight being 20-20, I should have known we weren't clinching about 11:10 this morning.
That's when Emily and Joshua and I walked into Madison Square Park, home of Shake Shack — and site of some American Kennel Club carnival that looked like it had been put together late last night by a couple of AKC volunteers who'd been smoking pot and knew this guy who kind of had, like, some A/V gear? The PA — if you can call one speaker that — played a succession of calculatedly inoffensive, dog-related hits, like (wait for it) “Hound Dog.” Hi-larious! And the AKC folks had forgotten how to play musical chairs. Really, it was avert-your-eyes sad.
But as part of this event, there was the black spot from Friday night — a Pup-Peroni banner.
Pup-Peroni? What the fuck? Will Paul Maholm arrive and offer to strike me out? Will Jason Bay show up, snatch away my Shackburger and tell me I can't have it until tomorrow?
We should have known, but we didn't. Preparing for our Saturday evening out, Emily and I perused the various Met blogs before (duh) I realized our own blog had a link to Mets bars. (Honest. It's down there on the left.)
I'm not a stranger to booze or booze-related misdeeds. Quite the contrary, in fact, as too many stories and my expanding middle will attest. But baseball and booze don't particularly mix for me. I don't like drinking at Shea because it's expensive, you miss things while peeing, and the subway ride home becomes a horrifying test of bladder elasticity. Bars are better, but the sound's rarely on, after a few I lose track of the little things that make baseball rewarding, and if we lose the boozy belligerence means running the risk of saying something stupid and getting my ass beat by someone a lot bigger and meaner than me.
But tonight was different: The babysitter was coming, Emily and I were headed out, and we needed a Mets bar.
As site of last night's Metsblog frustratapalooza, McFadden's seemed steeped in failure, and was a little too UES for our us anyway. Broadway Dive Bar sounded good, but 102nd Street may as well be in Vermont. I tossed Scruffy Duffy's out because it violated a basic principle — never go to a bar if you'd be embarrassed to die there and have the name of the bar in your obit. We thought of Loki Lounge in Park Slope, but I'd had a previous misadventure there and wasn't eager to return. In the end, we decided to forget about Mets bars (that said, if anyone has a good one, email us) head down to the northern precincts of Red Hook (Cobble Hill West, if you wanna be all realtor about it) and try the Moonshine, a excellent dive bar just north of Hamilton Avenue with a lovely view of the Brooklyn Motor Inn.
There weren't a lot of Met fans to be found, sad to say — the Moonshine had Access Hollywood on the TV when we arrived, in fact. But they switched without argument and we sat at one end of the bar and watched most of the game while drinking Stella, munching peanuts, and trying not to be filled with dread. Which all worked just fine while the Pirates kept getting doubled off first and El Duque kept getting out of leadoff-runner troubles.
Emily had a good feeling in the top of the 7th. I'm not sure why. Then, around the 8th (I was drunk by then, so my recall may be off), the black spot appeared: Pup-Peroni. We didn't score. They did. Emily was off to the bathroom before Joe Randa even touched home plate.
Well, fuck. Anyone up for some afternoon champagne?

There are 15 teams who are National League opponents of the Mets. If you're trying to list them, I'll bet I know which one you tend to forget.
The Pirates have faded so far from their glories of the '70s and early '90s, become such a non-factor in the competitive scheme of things and, most relevantly, been scheduled at such odd intervals against us that they're pre-eminently mind-slippable.
But remember a few things as if you need motivation beyond that “1” that just sits there and sits there and sits there.
The Mets have been clinched against five times in their regular-season history, twice at the hands of the Pirates. They won their first and last division titles in our faces in 1970 and 1992 at Three Rivers Stadium. Worse yet, the '70 loss eliminated us (and the Cubs) simultaneously.
(The other three? Expos mini-division in '81, the Braves' 10th consecutive division in '00 and the Marlins' Wild Card in '03.)
PNC Park, the most beauteous of any in the senior circuit, has produced little of value to the citizens of Metsopotamia. We opened the joint in an exhibition series in '01, where the Mets learned of the death of Brian Cole. They were there on 9/11 and returned there a week later to play the first games that followed a national tragedy. The Mets swept but, honestly, who cared that much?
In September 2004, we were introduced to Jason Bay as we were saying goodbye to Art Howe. A nice confluence of everything that had gone wrong for the Mets in the previous couple of years: a budding superstar frittered away in a dopey trade was sticking it to his old team while a manager who never should have been hired and who had just been quasi-fired was sticking around essentially for the free trip to his hometown.
And of course July 8, 2005, probably the most injurious loss, mentally speaking, of the Faith and Fear era.
We need a new memory, a good memory from this place. Tonight.

Hey, no worries.
Truth be told, I wasn't happy about the idea of a back-in anyway, and I was less happy about the price of a back-in being another W on the ledger of the Antichrist himself. (That didn't happen, though the Phillies did somehow survive second and third with none out.) I know, I know, I'm being a picky little bitch and if my March self could see this he'd vault ahead through time and give his slightly older self a smack in the chops for being spoiled. But still: Mets in street clothes popping champagne in little groups at the hotel bar because Roger Clemens won a game? Ick. I'd rather wait a day.
Still, there's such a thing as taking this too far, and I'm already on dangerous ground. If the Astros win tomorrow before we take the field, I'll probably shake my head a bit, but I'll immediately vault into the ranks of the 0.00001% happiest people on earth and stay there for hours or days. If the Phils stave off division-title execution and we celebrate on the field, add a few more zeros to my altitude in the happiness stratosphere. If the chase goes into Sunday? I'll manage to whoop it up something fierce. Monday? I've got a ticket; I'll find a way to have champagne on hand. (Or maybe just the champagne of beers.)
As for tonight, I don't blame Pedro or Paul Maholm's left arm or some plays not made or jetlag or anything else. You know what I blame? That weird ad for Pup-Peroni. It was hypnotizing; from the moment they put it up behind the batter, my eyes got dragged to it. Pup-a-What? Do people really buy that? Why? Dogs will eat stones and bark if you just toss them in the air, and that shit's free. What do pizza dog treats do to dog breath? What's the count? What inning is it again?
You get the idea. Once the invitation to buy strange dog treats arrived, I couldn't concentrate on anything else. Which was just as well, as “anything else” chiefly consisted of Mets hitting into double plays.

MY LOVELY WIFE: So, no champagne tonight?
ME: Well, we could if the Phillies lose.
MY LOVELY WIFE: Or we could have some and buy some more tomorrow.