June 30, 2000: I remember. You remember. The night before we'd come up short in John Rocker's return to Shea after running his mouth about the 7 train and its various inhabitants. We were out in force the next night, too — you, me, Emily and Danielle down the right-field line in the mezzanine, my friends Megan and Tim somewhere in the ionosphere of the upper deck. (Megan wasn't a Met fan, but she was eager to defend New York's honor, and she'd hedged her bets against a Rocker no-show in the first game.)

We were out in force to watch the Mets fall behind the Braves 4-0 and then 8-1 after 7 1/2. As things went from worse to much worse, my cellphone ran. It was Megan.

“Your team sucks,” she said — not rubbing it in, more annoyed and a little shocked.

I muttered something. Because even if I could summon up something eloquent, the scoreboard would have the final word: Braves 8, Mets 1. Yes, my team did pretty much suck.

“If the Mets come back in this game I'll eat my shoe,” Megan concluded.

Bell single. Alfonzo flyout. Piazza single. Ventura groundout. (8-2.) Zeile single. (8-3.) Payton single. Agbayani walk. Johnson walk. (8-4.) Mora walk. (8-5.) Bell walk. (8-6.) Alfonzo single. (8-8.) Piazza home run. (11-8.) Ventura groundout.

And through it all, the four of us in the mezzanine were desperately trying to keep doing whatever we'd been doing while our thoroughly sodden team improbably kept walking on water. Danielle was still pretending to read the New Yorker, even though I knew she was no longer even seeing the words on the page. Emily was veering between imprecations and cheers and yells. You were chewing on a cup and muttering to yourself and refusing to look at anybody. I was busy denying the entire thing to avoid breaking the spell. (At one point I went too far and tried to keep the jinx away by telling you that of course you understood they wouldn't actually do it, which violated your own negotiation of a deal with the baseball gods. I don't think I've ever seen you look so furious.)

When Piazza hit Mulholland's first pitch on a line over the fence, it was like an emotional volcano blew. Bedlam! Celebration! The stands swaying and bobbing, mad cheering and hugging, calling Megan on the cellphone to babble something triumphant. (Coincidentally, she just wrote me about that game a couple of weeks back. Her verdict: “Best. Game. Ever.”) There are about a million things I love about baseball, but near the top of the list is the way every pitch can ratchet the anxiety and terror higher and higher over agonizing minutes and hours, only to have the unbearable tension released in mere seconds. Baseball can be slow and take a long time, there's no doubt. But it can also be shockingly fast.

Games like June 30, 2000 help keep you in your seat or in front of the TV for years of games that go ugly early and are obviously destined to be lackluster, desultory, depressing, horrifying, numbing or farcical. Because you can't ever know when another shocker's coming, and if you aren't there when it does, you might never forgive yourself. A 10-spot? We'd only done that once before, on June 12, 1979 against the Reds.

Until tonight.

For emotion, tonight's uprising was probably more Doug Flynn vs. Cincy than Mike vs. Atlanta — we don't collide with the Cubs often enough to feel much anymore where they're concerned, and they're just trying to get through a nightmare season with some modicum of pride. But it did have the same out-of-the-ashes quality as 6/30/00 — El Duque was so stupendously horrible that I pawed my portable radio off my head in disgust and decided to eat hot dogs in the backyard with Joshua and leave the Mets to their fate. But I was so pissed that outside I became the El Duque of frankfurter grilling, burning buns and rolling dogs off the fire and onto the pavement. (Heck, nothing a dip in the kiddie pool couldn't fix.) Between fuming and grill-related slapstick I was rehearsing tonight's blog post. I had my headline, following up on Friday night's post. This Just In: We Ain't So Great Either.

But I let the TV keep playing in the house, and was mildly mollified when we came in from dinner to see it was 5-1, instead of the half-expected 134-0. (BTW, what a fucking tragedy this game was on ESPN, with statistical Flat Earther Joe Morgan as an eyewitness to our history-making instead of Gary.) The beginning of bathtime saw a bobble and two bloops, better than things had been but not exactly epochal stuff. Bathtime was just finishing when Cliff Floyd hit the same pitch John Hirschbeck had unaccountably called a ball two pitches earlier into the basket for a grand slam and a 6-5 lead. I let out a roar that startled Joshua, who then demanded to be walked through what had happened.

“That's good, right?” he asked after I got done explaining it.

In my head, I was trying to figure out the script. Seems like a three-game set at Wrigley always features one ho-hum game, one hide-your-face disaster and one crazed donnybrook where the lead changes like six times and extra innings are needed to decide things, I thought. This would be the donnybrook, then. Hope it doesn't wind up being Bell-Lee II.

Then, amazingly, came Carlos Beltran's grand slam, heard on the radio in Joshua's room as he finished his juice and we neared the end of a dinosaur book. “I wanna see it!” he yelled, and we rushed over to Mom and Dad's room to see the replay on ESPN. (During the kid's bedtime you can go from room to room in our downstairs with the Mets either on radio or TV, like that ad from a few years back in which the soccer fan has TVs everywhere.)

The inning had taken up all of bathtime and most of reading time and still wasn't over. Maybe it would never be. Would the Wrigley faithful rush the field to string up poor Todd Walker? Would some empty suit from the Tribune Co. hand Dusty Baker his pink slip in the dugout? Would the ESPYs have to start at midnight? And then Wright went deep, and 10 runs in an inning was so last millennium.

Forty-one minutes. Sixteen batters. Seventy pitches. Two grand slams. Eleven runs. And fuel for watching the next six years of games that start with us on the wrong side of 5-0 in the 2nd.

Since this is a historically minded post, let's call the roll.

Woodward flyout. Beltran safe on error. Delgado single. Wright single. Floyd home run. (6-5.) Nady walk. Castro fielder's choice, Nady safe on error. Chavez single. (7-5.) Valentin single. Woodward fielder's choice. Beltran home run. (11-5.) Delgado double. Wright home run. (13-5.) Floyd walk. Nady walk. Castro flyout.

Yes, my boy, that's good.

Call it evidence of adolescence either delayed or hopelessly extended, but Stephanie and I remain aficionados of the totally awesome high school movie of the '80s and '90s. The market was flooded by the teen genre for more than two decades, yet only every few years did a really great one come along. This is our canon:

1979: Rock 'n' Roll High School

1982: Fast Times at Ridgemont High

1986: Ferris Bueller's Day Off

1989: Heathers

1993: Dazed and Confused

1995: Clueless

1999: Election

Those are seven titles that float above it all. Their brilliance is incandescent. Even TBS's hamhanded censors — you dick! jerk! — can't squelch Spicoli, y'know? Though I can watch the occasional Sixteen Candles or Can't Hardly Wait (or the underrated until it gets too gross for my fortysomething sensibilities Not Another Teen Movie), I can't in good conscience add anything else to the canon. Nothing else transcends teensploitation enough to make us want to buy the DVD or, in the case of Dazed and Confused, keep buying the DVD every time they lard up a new deluxe edition. Whether they were ultimately intended to or not, each movie here appeals to our generally adult way of thinking every bit as much as they reach our inner eleventh-graders.

There is one title that has always come close to making the list. I like it a great deal, but it's not totally awesome. It's just kind of awesome. And kind of awesome won't cut it.

Three O'Clock High came out in 1987. It has a universally appealing premise: The kid who's challenged to an afterschool fight by the legendary school thug tries to avoid getting his ass kicked. The kid, played ably by Casey Siemaszko, is a Regular Joe — neither a Matthew Broderick or a Winona Ryder, to be sure — who's put upon by unsympathetic external sources. And of course his parents are away. Parents are always away in these things.

Early in my professional writing career, I was enlisted to write nutshell descriptions by an advertising agency for the back of videocassette boxes, so without looking, I'll guess Three O'Clock High's reads something like this.

Jerry Mitchell is having a bad morning and it only gets worse when he accidentally incurs the wrath of the newly transferred school bully! Will Buddy Revell get the best of Jerry or will our hero calculate a way to make it through the school day safe and sound? Jerry relies on the help of understanding friends while negotiating a phalanx of uncaring students, teachers and administrators only to face the inevitable…a 3 P.M. showdown in the school parking lot! Will the final bell toll for Jerry? Also stars Jeffrey Tambor (The Ropers).

Actually, the guy I wrote these for would have thrown this back at me for using the word “phalanx,” but you get the idea. Three O'Clock High does a surprisingly good job of capturing the angst of encountering daily state-sponsored terrorism, a.k.a. walking the hallways of your local secondary school between the ages of 12 and 18. It's certainly engaging but it's not at the level of the aforementioned canon.

Why not? Jerry Mitchell's just a little too pathetic to turn to his Ferris-like wits when he needs them. Also, his tormentor comes off as a little too multifaceted to be believed when irony strikes (he's real juvie material, see, but he's also a trig whiz). In its effort not to be a John Hughes manipufest, it tries a little too hard. But it's a good try.

There's one scene that telegraphs too much how much Jerry is in for an all-day screwing, but the scene has to be in there to move things along. Our troubled protagonist tracks down a less threatening school bully and pays him off to be his muscle for the day (think Risky Business minus Tom Cruise meets My Bodyguard minus Matt Dillon). Since it happens midway through the movie, we know it's going to backfire; since it's made in the 1980s, we know it will contribute to a happy ending. The real bully beats up the hired bully. We understand this must happen but, as movie viewers who identify with Jerry Mitchell and not Buddy Revell, we're disappointed…it seemed like such a practical solution.

Since ESPN is holding the long overdue sequel to Mets-Cubs II hostage until six this evening (as an ESPYs appetizer, for cryin' out loud), I turned on the Yankees and White Sox hoping for some good news. I had been looking forward to the World Champions coming to the Bronx and beating the crap out of the Yankees, thereby saving us all. Finally, someone bigger and tougher was going to come to town and kick in the collective ass of the school bully who refuses to graduate to pennant race (and marketplace) irrelevance.

Instead the Yankees beat the crap out of the White Sox just like they would the Devil Rays. They completed a sweep them a few minutes ago. The halls of American League High simply aren't safe. Watch out Tigers, duck into your lockers Athletics, think twice before using the boys room Red Sox. If the the Guillen Gang can't take these dicks jerks out once and for all, can any of you?

As Saturday morning is traditionally Schoolhouse Rock time, 61 is a magic number — our magic number. Any combination of Mets wins and somebody else's losses adding up to 61 makes us division champs.

The Phillies have the fewest losses in the East among teams that aren't us, so they're the still the bottom half of this magic coupling. But I see they're no longer in second place. They're a percentage point (actually one one-thousandth of a percentage point…decimals never get their due in a pennant race) behind our old frienemies the Atlanta Braves. Each of them trails us by 13 games. The Marlins are 14 back, with the same number of losses as the Braves, but two fewer wins.

In any event, 61 is a magic number.

Let's not kid ourselves: There is no division derby anymore. We've been saying that here for a solid month and the big picture is still solid. We're enjoying our largest lead of the season as we speak and it's in no practical danger of being obliterated.

Those years when legendary chokers were blowing monumental margins have generally been a bit misstated. Take your 1978 Boston Red Sox, often reported as having given up a 14-game lead. While, yes, they did lead the Yankees by that much, it's not like it was a 14-game shadow over the field. At their apogee, the Red Sox were nine games up on the second-place Brewers; the Yankees were five behind the Brewers in fourth place. Think of it as Milwaukee blowing a five-game lead for second, and then Boston blowing a 7-1/2-game lead to the Yankees, which is where that team was in relation to the Red Sox when it passed Milwaukee.

Does that make sense? It always has to me because Boston never commanded its world by 14 games. If they had, then you'd be talking an otherworldly collapse, like that of the '51 Dodgers, whose lead with 48 games remaining in its season, was 13 games over the second-place Giants. (We're up 13 with 72 to play, which theoretically gives our opponents more time to catch us, but also gives us more time to further distance ourselves from them.) The difference between those Giants and today's NL East pretenders is that the Giants, even before their historic 37-7 roll, were a good team. They were eight games over .500.

This is important. The great comeback teams, like the '51 Giants, have to come back from somewhere plausible. Likewise, the '69 Mets, even when stuck in third place, down 10 to the Cubs on August 13, were eleven games over. The '78 Yankees, at their 14-games-back nadir on July 19, still sported a winning record: 48-42. The Braves and Phillies are each eight games under .500.

It's highly unlikely we'll be the '64 Phillies (up 6-1/2 with 12 to play) or the '95 Angels (ahead by six with 16 to go) because those teams didn't have 13-games lead at this stage of their seasons. That's the beauty of a comfortable cushion over subpar opponents like those in our rearview mirror.

Need another example? Look back only one year to the 2005 White Sox. They nearly blew a monster lead in the AL Central…nearly. Chicago led Cleveland by 15 on August 1. The Indians whittled that down to 1-1/2 on September 22. Good thing, then, that Chicago had built as large a lead as it did because the Tribe wasn't able to decrease it any further. They had a good scare, but the White Sox overcame it — and a sluggish 17-22 stretch — to gear up for a postseason pretty much unmatched in recent years for its combination of dominance (11-1) and drama.

That's worth mentioning since the Sox' blah final lap supposedly doomed them for October. I actually heard a ninny radio host on an obscure sports station the other day insist that the Mets have to pillage their way to 100 wins to set themselves up for a championship run, 'cause 99 isn't going to do it. 99 wins is exactly what the White Sox wound up with in 2005…but who remembers that? It was so long ago.

One month ago today, the Mets finished their never-to-be forgotten 9-1 stampede through Los Angeles, Arizona and Philadelphia. We came home 19 over and 8-1/2 up. Today we are 18 over and 13 up. We're fine.

But we knew that. What we don't know — I sure as heck don't — is who we're against.

Right now, the only two rivals that really matter are the day's opponent and the injury bug, and not necessarily in that order. The perennial pitfalls and pratfalls of Wrigley Field notwithstanding, we have a good chance of handling the Cubs for the next two days. Bumps and bruises, however, continue to linger. Reyes needn't rush. Beltran can take a day or two. Delgado probably ought to do the same. Floyd? Stop attracting baseballs. Pedro? Come back soon, only to prove that you can.

I assume nothing, but let's assume we hew to the statistical models laid out above and let's assume the Goodyear Blimp doesn't emergency-land on David Wright's head. Who, then, are we against?

The standings are no guide. When the All-Star break arrived, the Dodgers loomed as our first-round opponent. Two days since the break ended, the Reds have taken over the Wild Card. Are we to make a choice between these two? Should we be cheering for some lesser-known, less-tested quantity like the Rockies to surge into the best second-place record in the league? Do we want to avoid travel outside our time zone and pull for Cincy? Is it important that Houston lose so we don't fall into the Bermuda Triangle of Oswalt, Pettitte and Clemens? Are we haunted by Bill Hall and Carlos Lee and bats like theirs or would Milwaukee make relatively easy pickin's?

Come to think of it, should we not worry who the opponent in 2-1/2 months will be and instead turn our attention to maintaining a bulge over the Central-topping Cardinals so we secure intraleague home-field advantage? We're up 3-1/2 on resurgent St. Louis and 5-1/2 ahead of San Diego, first in the West.

Not that we ever control anything on the chess board save for our own moves, but play at this level, there's no ordinary venue. It's surely different from our 2005 stance of simply wishing ill on everybody ahead of us — one team's very like another when your head's down over your pieces, brother — and it's a far and happy cry from those non-contending years where we might pull for some team on a whim because it won't matter to us way down where we reside. All we can do, I suppose, is BTO this thing: Take care of business every day.

But there are other games going on and I do pay attention to them even if I don't know what to do with them.

Last night, I took in the end of the Phillies-Giants game. San Francisco had come from behind and led by two in the ninth. Well, good, I thought. We can extend our lead over Philadelphia. But is Philadelphia really a concern anymore? I couldn't root for Philadelphia, but should I be concerned that the Giants, still very much a factor in the Wild Card scrum (a half-game back), might be a pain come October? And who's closing for San Francisco but Armando Benitez? Do I have the luxury of nursing an ancient grudge where he's concerned? I decided I didn't. The Giants held on. Yea, I guess.

One more West Coast game remained and it was a doozy. The Braves and Padres traded proverbial punches all night. An early check had Atlanta up by four. San Diego stormed back, taking a one-run edge into the ninth. Hating the Braves and never trusting them, even double-digits out and divisionally dead in the ground, I don't want them winning a single contest the rest of the way. But, Hell's Bells, look who's coming in to attempt the save for the Petco Pooches…the biggest All-Star dog of them all, Trevor Hoffman!

For a dozen years, I've sailed through life not thinking about Trevor Hoffman much and all, and when I have, it's been vaguely positive. Since Tuesday night, he's Public Enemy No. 2 for costing us his league's champion home-field in the World Series. So I'm looking at the always-hated Braves and the suddenly hated Hoffman and I don't know who I like less. Aesthetics aside, I don't know what it means for us. Are the Padres, with Peavy and Young and Piazza and potential 11 o'clock starts, a team we want no part of up the road? Can the Braves, their lineup still damp with all the names that make your stomach churn, possibly right themselves into a Wild Card? And do you want to see Turner Field in October?

As has been the case many times a night this summer, there was plenty to root against, but nobody to root for. Thus, I just sat back. I got a kick out of Hoffman blowing yet another save, turning San Diego's 9-8 lead into a 9-11 deficit. But then I delighted in Jorge Sosa proving incompetent per usual for the Braves in the bottom of the ninth. You can never not Atlanta-bash. The Padres evened the score at 11 — Cameron struck out with the winning run on second — and the game went to the tenth. The Braves chalked up another run (Hoffman was long gone) and led 12-11 going to the bottom of the tenth when Bobby Cox did something I don't think I'd ever seen. Up one, facing runners on first and third and nobody out, he had the Braves align for a double play…conceding the tying run in extra innings. I scoffed and the Pads tied, but it worked! The Braves pounded the next San Diego reliever in the eleventh and wound up with a nutsy 15-12 win, saved by Mets turncoat Tyler Yates.

One hopes it's just one game and they go back to scuffling and are never heard from again. Yet there they are, the Braves, who have relieved as badly as FEMA after Katrina, eighth among non-division leaders in the NL, but “only” 5-1/2 behind Cincinnati in the Wild Card race in the middle of July. Improbably but not impossibly, Atlanta is one of eleven National League teams we could face in either the first or second round of the playoffs.

So who are we rooting against? For now, everybody but us.

And I don't say that to taunt them — the juice has slowly gone out of our once-great rivalry since they left the NL East, and the Bartman Etc. collapse was crueler than anything I'd wish on the fans of any baseball team. OK, 29 baseball teams.

As a lifelong Met fan, I know bad. I know raw-and-too-young bad, tired-and-too-old bad, put-together-wrong bad, hatred-in-the-clubhouse bad, too-far-to-go bad, and lots of other varieties of the disease. But the Cubs look like something worse: They look like no-longer-give-a-rat's-ass bad. They played today like it was getaway day in late September, like they were simultaneously sleepwalking and underwater. While we were moving runners and taking out second basemen and doing all the not-in-the-box-score things that get games won, they were swinging at anything and everything that came near the batter's box.

The jaw-droppingest exhibition of badness today? It was the bottom of the 5th. A monsoon imminent, game not official yet, Steve Trachsel on the mound, and what did the Cubs do? They went out on six pitches. Six! And then, as if on cue, it started to pour. OK, maybe they knew the forecast was for a brief shower, but c'mon. Hope for strange weather. Make the notoriously finicky Trachsel fight through the 5th in heavy rain so he comes back flustered or the bullpen has to expend innings. Do things fucking right, for fuck's sake.

That made it official for me: The Cubs had long since proven they can't do anything. But in that inning they showed they also can't do nothing.

And you know the worst part? I actually felt sorry for Greg Maddux. That's probably because his location isn't what it was and without it he's not just hittable but poundable and it's always ugly to see a great player coming unraveled. But I think it was also because he was so utterly alone out there.

Here's what Maddux said after the game: “I love playing in Chicago, no question. I understand there are choices that have to be made. The city and the organization have been great to me. But whatever happens, happens. Either way, I'm good with it.”

And here's what the voice in his head was screaming: “GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF THIS HELLHOLE! FUCK! I MEAN, FUCK! DID YOU SEE THAT FUCKING SHIT? I'VE GOT 311 WINS AND THEY ALMOST RENAMED THE CY YOUNG AWARD AFTER ME AND NOW I'M THE FUCKING FEATURED ATTRACTION AT FUCKING AMATEUR NIGHT IN CLOWN COLLEGE! I'LL GO TO DETROIT! I'LL GO TO TEXAS! I'LL GO TO SAN DIEGO! I'LL GO CLUTCHING THE SKID OF A FUCKING HELICOPTER LIFTING OFF THE ROOF OF THE TRIBUNE BUILDING UNDER FUCKING ENEMY FIRE! JUST GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!”

P.S.: Amused myself tonight by watching Pelfrey's debut on TiVo. Boy did he look raw. And the Gene Simmons tongue thing is very, very strange. I hope somebody told him he might be a 10-year veteran before he sees 17 runs worth of support again. Seeing Henry Owens was a bonus. I knew he had ungodly numbers, but that motion is pretty otherworldly, too: He looks like a man who's being attacked by bees.

My favorite moment of the whole thing, though, was this exchange between Keith and Gary:

Keith (musingly): I wonder where we'll be in 50 years?

Gary (immediately): Dead.

At last at last at last.

The All-Star break is over and the Mets are returning. Though it feels like they never went away, between my co-blogger's tireless efforts (thanks for making Maine feel a bit less far away), the adventures of David Wright and Carlos Beltran and Paul Lo Duca in Pittsburgh, Wright on Letterman and Beltran, Wright, Lo Duca, Carlos Delgado and Jose Reyes making the cover of Sports Illustrated. The article, by the nigh-peerless Tom Verducci, is good clubhouse gouge (of the universally positive sort), and the cover photo is irresistable, with Delgado's million-watt smile alongside Lo Duca's obvious, gleeful insanity. It's even better than the Best Infield Ever cover as far as making you want to run around with it held over your head grinning before finding a game, because you can't look at it without wanting to see your team play this instant.

Anyway, a last tidbit before Flashback Friday and a return to box scores and recaps: A kind soul sent me an Excel spreadsheet sent out by Met PR types listing the players (most of them) and various fun/dull/odd/inane facts about them as a get-to-know-you crib sheet. And what can we glean from it?

* The Mets are dog people: The pet parade includes 26 dogs (Slider, Dixie, Muddy, Scoots, Crushy, Rocky, Little Rocky, Gucci, Cookie, Lucky, Otis, Oliver, Jax, Rin, Sara, Homer, Toy, Zion, Napoleon, Lobo, Coco, Rookie and Lady Bug, plus various canines not named), with not a single cat admitted to. The only Mets to duck the dog trend? Steve Trachsel has fish. Victor Zambrano has horses. And Heath Bell has a hamster named Blossom. That zany Heath Bell. We'll hear more from him.

* The Mets are focused: Chad Bradford, Juan Padilla, Trachsel, Billy Wagner, Zambrano, Lo Duca, Julio Franco and Beltran all offered bat/ball/glove in various combinations as their favorite childhood toys. Philip Humber's favorite magazine is Men's Health. Matt Lindstrom, Jeff Keppinger and Jose Valentin favor SI. Mitch Wylie opts for Baseball America. Anderson Hernandez goes for ESPN The Magazine. Ramon Castro's favorite TV show is “SportsCenter.”

* The Mets are musically diverse: Willie Randolph goes for Miles Davis. Chad Bradford likes Hank Williams Jr. Tom Glavine likes James Taylor, which I was happier not knowing. Bell opts for Linkin Park and Audioslave. Aaron Heilman opts for Pearl Jam, as does Wright (who also name-checks the Red Hot Chili Peppers). Humber goes for Lynyrd Skynyrd. Trachsel's favorite band is the Killers; Wagner likes Kenny Chesney. Keppinger's pick? Tom Petty. Chris Woodward picks Creed. Cliff Floyd and Victor Diaz like Jay-Z, with Victor also favoring Kanye West; Delgado and Beltran like Marc Anthony. The most-popular pick? The reggaeton duo Wisin Y Yandel.

* The Mets are cartoonally not so diverse: Willie Randolph's favorite cartoon character is the Roadrunner, perhaps foreshadowing problems with Heilman, who picked Wile E. Coyote. Trachsel and Lo Duca like Underdog, which makes me like Lo Duca more and find Trachsel slightly more annoying. Chad Bradford picked Spongebob. David Wright picked Bugs Bunny, as did Xavier Nady. Chris Woodward, perhaps inevitably, picked Woody Woodpecker. But the runaway favorite (Valentin, Beltran, Diaz, Floyd, Redman) is Tom & Jerry.

* Now and then the Mets will surprise you: Heath Bell loves to bake and sold gingerbread houses to make money in high school. Yes, really. Zambrano's hobby is going to horse shows. Anderson Hernandez likes to sing and play the congas. Floyd's favorite childhood toy was a Green Machine. Tike Redman's was Voltron — and he likes to draw. Bradford's first job was on a cricket farm. Wagner says the best thing about New York is “New Yorkers' bluntness.” (Or at least he thought so in April.) Kaz Matsui thought there should be a mercy rule added to the game, but then defined mercy as 29-1. (We defined it as “sent to Colorado for a utility guy.”) Cliff Floyd wants the NL to adopt the DH, which I will now erase from my memory and refuse to admit happened. Glavine's favorite show is “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Wagner likes “Dancing With the Stars.” Lo Duca likes to watch “House and Garden.”

* A few Mets will consistently surprise you: Aaron Heilman speaks a little German, would like to meet the Dalai Lama (and the Pope), reads Scientific American and Popular Science, and likes to watch the Discovery Channel. (So did Matsui.) Steve Trachsel's oenophile tendencies are well-known, and we just found out he likes the Killers, but he also likes to make pecan-crusted pork chops, play Scrabble and watch “Two and a Half Men.” While it's hard to get around the Creed thing, Chris Woodward says his favorite book is The Lord of the Rings and he'd like to meet Bill Clinton, which in your average major-league clubhouse is just slightly less surprising than wanting to meet Noam Chomsky.

* The Mets have/had their secrets: Asked what most people don't know about them, most Mets kept quiet. But Glavine admitted his shyness drives people away, Randolph said he's “a little bit nuts,” Duaner Sanchez copped to being “a sensitive guy” and Floyd said “I'm just a cool guy.” Jose Reyes? He admitted that “I tend to know everything,” while Wright subtly insulted himself by offering that “I'm fairly intelligent.” (I hadn't assumed he wasn't.) Oh, and Lo Duca said he's actually 5'7″ instead of 5'10″. While not an answer to this particular question, Victor Diaz said one of his hobbies is “relaxing.”

* The Mets are practical: Asked what they'd take to a deserted island, Sanchez, Zambrano, Nady and Valentin opted for water. Heilman settled on matches. Juan Padilla picked a cellphone. Delgado skirted the rules by picking a cellphone and food. Julio Franco would bring prayers. Bradford opted for the Bible. Glavine, Beltran and Lo Duca would bring their wives, Bell and Ramon Castro their families, and Floyd his kids. Victor Diaz would bring “a girl.” Endy Chavez would bring “a good girl.” If you wondered why Endy's starting over Victor, wonder no more.

* Except when they're not: Willie Randolph would bring Haagen Dazs to that deserted island. Trachsel would bring his best bottle of wine. Woodward would show up with his golf clubs. Wright would bring “my puppy.” And Billy Wagner would bring “Copenhagen.” If that refers to the European city and not dip, put Billy in the practical category with my apologies.

* The Mets are playing ball today: And that's the best fact of all.

Everything I needed to know I learned on the backs of my baseball cards…

• Tom established himself as one of baseball's premier pitchers as he led the Mets to their amazing pennant and World Series triumphs.

• Won first game the Mets ever defeated Sandy Koufax, led I.L. in ERA in 1967, and also set strikeout record at 15.

• Paced club in Hits, Doubles, Walks & Stolen Bases last season.

• Won 2 games vs. Orioles in the World Series.

• His handling of Mets staff was a vital contribution to the championship effort.

• A strong hitter, Don has slugged 15 homers in the NL.

• Holds degree in engineering.

• The 54 consecutive errorless games Bud played, 1970, tied major league mark for shortstops.

• Donn was 2nd on the Mets in Homers & Batting in 1970 and set a new club mark for RBI's.

• Acquired by the Mets during September, Dean got his first taste of NL competition.

• In 3 years of Bronx Federation League competition, Ken hit .385, .365 & .425 with 36 homers.

• Co-holder of Mets' club mark with 23 consecutive scoreless innings, August, 1969, Jim is a veteran of Little League ball.

• Ray played baseball & basketball in high school & helped pitch team to undefeated season & prep title in 1958.

• Especially tough in clutch, he hits ball where it's pitched.

• The Dominican League's Rookie of the Year for 1967-68 season, Ted is fine utility man for Mets.

• On Sept. 7th he had distinction of becoming 34th centerfielder in Mets' history.

• The Mets' 7th pick in June, 1968 draft, Charlie was born within walking distance of Shea Stadium.

• Had 8 CG's in 1971.

• An able backup receiver behind Jerry Grote, Duffy hit dramatic 2-run Homer vs. Cubs in 10th inning, 6-23-70, to give Mets 5-game series sweep.

• Possessed with excellent speed, Don's defensive ability is 2nd to none.

• He & Tug McGraw give Mets fine righty-lefty bullpen duo.

• With newly-acquired Jim Fregosi slated to play 3rd base, they'll be contenders all the way.

• John was an all-state high school star in baseball, football and basketball.

• He was groomed for stardom the moment he became a pro, Jon had a remarkable high school career which included 8 no-hitters en route to a 22-1 record.

• A valuable man to have on a ballclub, Bill plays five positions.

• Ken was injured for a portion of 1972, he returned to action in the later part of the season and was one of the Mets' hottest hitters in September.

• Phil played semipro ball in the Kentucky-Indiana Collegiate League before signing with the Tribe.

• Hit 2 homers for Mets against Astros, August 21, 1972, to celebrate his 33rd birthday.

• One of Ron's hobbies is dancing.

• Ed was elected to his High School Hall of Fame.

• Tied record by going 6-for-6 in game vs. Giants, July 6, 1970.

• Harry likes to play handball.

• Rusty is a gourmet cook.

• Twice fanned 10 batters in one game for Braves, vs. Cubs in 1970 & vs. Phillies in 1971.

• George likes marshmallow milk shakes.

And the things I continue to learn…

• One of David's agents is former Mets infielder Keith Miller.

• In a 10-game stretch in May 2005, he legged out seven triples!

• Victor was the first Mets rookie ever with 10 RBI in April.

• Steve likes to start hitters off with a big, slow curveball.

• Aaron used April 15 to file a 1-hitter versus the Marlins at Shea. Only Luis Castillo's fourth inning infield single was exempt from the righty's masterful form.