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Wins: 53

Lead: 12

Magic Number: 63

David Wright: Only one.

And yes — he's priceless.

It takes a Metropolis to be as good as we've been throughout the first half, but sometimes you have to call on Superman to bail you of a pickle, especially one of your own making. Stuttery defense and unfocused baserunning made it look as if Marlin hustle and determination could outdistance Met miasma. But one swing from Diamond Dave cleared our heads and scattered those Fish back into their Tankersley.

They're a plucky bunch all right, but there are days when it's good to see the Mets, one in particular, put his foot down and declare in action if not words, “That's it. They're the Marlins and we're the Mets. Let's make that count.”

For our readers in Maine, it had all the makings of a quietly celebratory All-Star sendoff, the Mets definitely being the Mets early, particularly Nady and Glavine. But geez, the Marlins never give up. After slapping each other around a bit (Scott Olsen is not reticent to express his displeasure with teammates who don't measure up to his high standards, in this case Miguel Cabrera), they directed their aggression toward the Mets. First they tied us. Then they passed us.

But they didn't beat us. We tried to help them do that but Wright put a stop to that in the eighth. Wright and Ol' Sol, shining in the eyes of Reggie Abercrombie, the centerfielder who Joe Girardi called “all tooled up” in the Times' Play magazine last month. That was when the Marlins were profiled as underpaid, undermanned and decidedly underwhelming. “Our kids work so hard,” Girardi said then. “But half the time they're working hard at the wrong things.”

The Floridians have come a long way since then, but in Abercrombie's case, it doesn't look he's put in a lot of time on shielding his eyes from the sun. If he had, I'd be groping for excuses as to why losing a four-game series to these never-say-die comers wasn't a bad thing. Instead, Abercrombie groped and didn't come up with the fly hit by Lo Duca. Only one of those two gave up on the ball and, unfortunately, it was Paul who stood sheepishly on first while Jose Valentin (leadoff walk) dashed to third. Carlos Beltran brought home Valentin on a smash through the middle — 5-4 Marlins — but Paul's pinch-runner Jose Reyes, his splint downgraded to a bandage (Play Jose Play!), did not tag up on a Delgado shot to medium-deep right.

It was one out, runners on first and second, us down by one. It should have been at least first and third, probably just a man on first because the Lo Duca run should have scored on Beltran's smash.

You following this in Maine?

Well, doesn't matter. David Wright took Logan Kensing — isn't that a town outside of Kennebunkport? — deep into the Picnic Area. After that, with a two-run lead, Billy Wagner could give a run back (he did) but, again, it didn't matter. The Mets not only were the better team but they managed to play like it. The Marlins can go work on their grittiness and such. They're not gonna get us either.

That's the last baseball that will matter between this moment and 2:20 Friday afternoon, almost 116 hours from now. So savor the details, revel in the context and make with an ovation. The New York Mets are more than halfway to their seventh postseason appearance and fifth division title. We have 116 long hours to think about that. 116 hours of not gaming the Wild Card race. 116 hours of not wondering which vets we can trade for prospects. 116 hours of not not being securely in first place.

We pick nits (11-13 since The Road Trip), but how can you not applaud what they've achieved and what they have such a great chance to accomplish? One hand against the other makes a very nice, very appropriate sound.

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NOTE TO OUR READERS: We're in this together, Mets fans. Stay with your favorite blog through this interminable desert of All-Star inactivity and we'll deliver you safely and sanely to Wrigley Field with a full complement of Faith and Fear. We'll take our break in October November.

Jose Valentin is the Comeback Player of the Year, assuming he was ever this good before. Cliff Floyd's wakeup call couldn't have come at a better time; may his alarm stay on no worse than snooze through the break. John Maine is probably looking for something to mix with his Poland Spring. Carlos Delgado needs to stretch out on a hammock or something. Jose Reyes can slide with one head tied behind his back. And Mike Pelfrey is as tall as the tales made him out to be.

The Mets make good copy, yet I spent Saturday's doubleheader amazed by the Marlins. Aren't they something?

I wouldn't be surprised if they go back to their losing ways of the first quarter of the season when they were 11-31 because that's been known to happen to overachieving youth (see the 1980 Mets). Who knew at the outset of 2006 that they had ways in them that were anything but losing? I didn't give them a second thought after watching them trip over themselves in April. They had one pitcher, Willis, one player, Cabrera, about 20 clueless rookies and a handful of Wes Helmses. They played like it. We took two of two.

We caught them next in late May and were irritated that some nobody named Josh Johnson was outpitching Pedro Martinez. We beat them two out of three but it wasn't effortless.

Now, the season is older and the Marlins are older and, whaddaya know, they're on a 27-15 roll even after receiving an overdue (we were more due than them) 17-3 pummeling in the second game Saturday. That's 42 games when they were hapless and 42 games that they're happening.

And Josh Johnson, who outpitched John Maine in the first game, leads the National League in earned run average.

Is it too late for Florida to sink its line into contending waters? Probably. Their surge still leaves them 12-1/2 police barricades behind us. Though they play with the hunger that Clubber Lang displayed and the reigning champ lacked in the first third of Rocky III, there's no script that's going to catapult a team nine under .500 on July 8 past one that's sixteen over, certainly not a team as callow as that one. The '06 Marlins make the '69 Mets look like grizzled vets.

But they are not too many backstrokes removed from the Wild Card, which at the moment resides in L.A. They're six behind the Dodgers. At this stage of 2003, when they won a glorious World Series, the Marlins were 5-1/2 being the Phillies for the golden ticket. Surely if we were six behind anybody with almost half a season remaining you can bet we'd be contorting ourselves through the standings at every waking moment trying to figure out how exactly we might pass the eight teams ahead of us. Six out with 78 to play is the stuff that improbable dreams are made of, but what is summer for if not to dream?

The real problem, besides the immense lack of experience (though that also means they're too young to know they're not that good) is the nine-under. The '03 Marlins were a .500 club by now. This school of Fish is never going to shake that particular piece of toilet paper off its collective sole.

We know from personal experience how a wretched start can torpedo everything else that follows. In 1997, we went 80-60 over our final 140. If only we hadn't gone 8-14 at the beginning, that would have been us Wild Carding our way through the playoffs and perhaps the World Series. Instead, it was…the Marlins.

Those adorably resilient guppies have historically morphed into fiercely fighting hellfish when they're Wild. There's something about teal that makes a man who wears it bulletproof in the tenth month of any given year. I wouldn't bet on them right now but I wouldn't overlook them, not in this final game against us, not over the next month. They could just as easily regress but it won't be for lack of hustle or determination.

If my visions seems a little Marlinsighted, it's probably because when I added up the damage at the end of Saturday, I realized we outscored Florida 19-6 and still managed to lose a game. Fortunately, it was the first game, meaning we can dwell on that whale of a win in the second game as our most recent sample data.

The failure to hit in support of Maine in the opener? That was so two games ago. The latest OUCH! to Delgado? He's sat for an entire game since then, so surely he's on en route to healing. Reyes pinch-running and leading with his head into third base despite that charming splint on left hand? You can't tame a wild horse, can you? It's now appears rather likely that Jose will not start in the ASG. I blame Mike Jacobs for twisting himself into a soggy Shea pretzel, sticking his spike where Jose's hand was bound to land. A little lack of hustle or determination would be appreciated.

And how about that late dustup? Did you notice how quickly Girardi's charges rushed out of the dugout when the ump started flailing warning signals? There was nothing going on but a tiny, uh, tit…for tat, given the HBPs absorbed by C-Del and Cliff, but go tell a bunch of overeager neophytes about The Code that said Sanchez should sting Cabrera and everything would be even. They were ready to rumble like it was intramural softball and somebody had knocked over the keg.

Good to see that non-event took the fight right out of them before the sun rose on the nightcap. Liked the five in the first. Loved that it wasn't the last five they tallied as was the case against Pittsburgh Wednesday night. Still rubbing my eyes from Jose Valentin — not over the seven ribbies in the first two innings but that it's the second week of July and Valentin's the starting second baseman and we're solidly in first place because of that and not in spite of that. He's been in the lineup more often than not for two months. As with the Marlins, he no longer a fluke.

Hope Cliff's big day (five RBI) means the same thing. I'm already 80% resigned to his not being re-signed after this season in light of Lastings, C-Bel and Xavier tentatively accounting for three outfield slots in 2007. I didn't want him here when we got him. Three-and-a-half years later, I'm rehearsing my regret for the day he goes somewhere else. Cliff Floyd's a Met though. A Met for the ages. The guy would be the team captain except he's too cool for shit like that. It's been depressing amid night after night of general euphoria to watch him ache or slump or both. If we get the Cliff Floyd who was our Monsta last year in the second half, then it's going to be quite a finishing kick…for us this year and for him if he isn't asked back.

That leaves us Mr. Pelfrey's debut. All you need to know?

Six feet, seven inches; 22 years, six months; 96 miles per hour, 104 pitches, five innings; one win, no losses.

Mike Pelfrey is, by definition, our stopper. Upon early inspection, he's also pretty much everything for which one could have hoped. Allow for some nerves and jitters and it was a tremendous debut. Unafraid, no nibbling, stronger as his day grew longer (as if he himself could grow any longer). If he's not ready to stay on a permanent basis — John Maine, despite reminding me in aura if not stuff of John Mitchell, is more polished at this point — he will be very, very soon. He is as good as we hoped and dared to suspect.

His postgame press gaggle was almost as much fun to watch as his pitching. The kid not only answered in complete sentences (as did Milledge in May), but he never ceased smiling. Why should he? He's a big leaguer with a perfect record for a team in first place and his future has every likelihood of improving from there.

The denizens of the visitors dugout can be forgiven if they are teal with envy.

Lima Culpa. He's worthless. Get him out of here. I don't just mean DFA'd, which he's been. Jose Lima can be of no help whatsoever as a pitcher in this organization. That spicy meatball he threw Dontrelle Willis with the bases loaded? I can't believe he hit the whole thing. Nice fella, Lima, but let him loosen another team's dugout. Good night, funny man.

Jose Lima has to go and Jose Reyes has to go. No, not the same kind of go. Young Jose has to go to Pittsburgh Tuesday. Though the nick he took from the Marlin first baseman's spike (thanks a bunch Jakey — don't come back now, y'heah?) on that somewhat ill-advised dive into first was described as a fairly insignificant cut to the left pinky, I just heard on Geico SportsNite that he'll be sat through the weekend. Unfortunate, but if necessary, we can get by with Chris Woodward for a few games.

His trip to the All-Star Game may also be in some jeopardy. That I can't abide.

I understand I probably have it bass-ackwards, that it's the divisional showdowns (or what passes for them) that matter and that a contest with no impact on the standings, even if it “counts,” isn't high-priority. But fuck that. I want my boy in Pittsburgh. I want all our boys in Pittsburgh, but I get that won't happen. No Pedro, no kidding. Glavine won't throw, no biggie. Lo Duca still has thumb issues? I can live without him taking more than a bow. But not Jose.

Why? 'Cause he's my favorite player. He's been my favorite player since June 10, 2003 when he was called up to replace some chump named Rey Sanchez as our shortstop. He was the bridge from my post-Alfonzo depression to our 2005 revival. I love David Wright as every Mets fan does, but it was Reyes, not Wright, who gave me someone and something to believe in. Jose was here first. Jose showed me that there was going to be amazing talent on at least 1/25th of our roster. It was Jose who made the Art Howe Era something more than death's waiting room. Many celebrate the feats of Wright and Reyes. I revel in Reyes and Wright.

I've waited for the day when my favorite player would be voted to start for the National League All-Star team. I don't mean three short years, but all my life. Technically, it's never happened. Seaver and Gooden started All-Star Games but weren't voted on because they're pitchers. Fonzie was added to the roster once but never elected. Jose isn't quite in that personal pantheon yet, but he is the first “my favorite” to be chosen by the fans at large for something. So there was an extra jolt of emotion for me last Sunday when the starters were announced and my man, Jose Reyes, was revealed as the pick of a wide swath of baseball fans. Someone else noticed my favorite player besides us…besides me.

Hence, with a lead so bulgy that a virtual forfeit to our most serious rivals barely registers, I'm primarily caught up in whether Jose Reyes is capable and/or permitted to play in a meaningful exhibition. I don't demand nine innings Tuesday. Let him go out into the field and avoid charging baserunners. Let him lead off for the Senior Circuit, bang a line drive and, if he's not held on, slide feetfirst into second. Let Carlos or David drive him in. Then take him out, ice his pinky and get him ready for the Cubs on Friday.

Jose has earned his star. He has built on everything that was said on his behalf leading up to June 10, 2003. He overcame all the pulls, pops and strains that tripped him up. He learned. He gets on and he runs. We've never had anybody like him. I want the world to see him: Now Tuesday in Pittsburgh, then October at Shea. One inning is all I ask.

Confidential to our Maine readers: After one perfect, hard-throwing appearance, Henry Owens has been handed the seventh inning in my head. Heilman is free to resume starting after the break. Oliver deserves all emergency starts pending the fortunes of John Where You Are in the opener today. You may now return to wrestling bears or whatever it is one does there in Southern Canada.

What were we even worried about? We can beat the worst team in the National League three in a row. And since everybody but us is pretty much the worst team in the National League, I think we can still project a 142-20 record. Well, on nights like this, it feels like it will be 142-20, and Stephen Colbert would tell you to overlook mathematics because how it feels is what really counts.

It was a night to fret needlessly and drink beer in the upper deck. I did both with my friend Jon, a Mets fan who can be summed up in four words: He's one of us. I would know that even if I'd never met him because the damning evidence is right here.

Anyway, Jon and I hadn't taken in a game together at Shea in nearly two years. Then it was an evening of Art Howe Must Go and Take Joe McEwing With Him. So much has changed.

Or has it?

Practically the first words out of Jon's mouth, maybe eight seconds after hello, were “I don't like Willie Randolph.” Not much later, I wondered when Carlos Delgado was going to start getting booed; I wouldn't boo him but I would understand if others are fed up by the way he continues to eat shift. We watched Cliff Floyd gather another ache and/or pain and Jon opined that Cliff overreacts. We agreed that we love him but I didn't disagree that he's a touch dramatic in his presentation. Neither one of us is a professional athlete, but we sure know how they feel, huh?

Elsewhere, Chris Woodward irked us, Aaron Heilman annoyed us, Eli Marrero got under our skin and Billy Wagner and his trumped-up, justly failed All-Star bid put us on perilous edge.

This is how two P1 Mets fans treat a team that never trailed and was in the midst of extending its divisional lead to a season-high 12-1/2 games. Our criticisms, sprinkled in among less pointed, more relaxed conversation, weren't bristling. It was just our Mets fan instinct kicking in. There's still enough 2004 and other such years stuck to our souls to betray dissatisfaction and expectation of imminent disaster. We assumed Joe Randa would do us dirt at any moment. We were ducking for cover from Ronny Paulino and Nate McLouth. We concluded that Armando Benitez and Billy Wagner were practically synonymous, except Armando didn't blow as many saves before September.

At the end, we were giddy and high-fived and that sort of thing, perfectly happy to have completely misread the team we obsess on 25 hours a day (which I assume is how long Jon's nights are since the May 12 birth of his son Ivan). I was even more perfectly happy around the fifth inning when Jon bought me a Bud Light in a blue aluminum bottle emblazoned with — and elevated by — a Mets logo. I don't really drink beer but I wanted the container for my BevMet collection.

“I'll just have a sip,” I thought. “I'll just have another.” As I tend to do with beverages, I just kept drinking until I was gulping. I've spent 17 years making my living in and around potable liquids, so I'm highly beverage-conscious. I no longer remember if I'm thirsty or just on a two-decade taste test. Whatever, I found myself downing the icy cold Bud Light in pretty short order.

To look at me you wouldn't know it, but I'm kind of a lightweight when it comes to alcohol. So for about two innings, I was floating a tiny bit above the upper deck. Not crazy buzzed or anything, just a little less anchored than my public reserve normally dictates. I don't really drink beer, but I can sure see why others do.

The beer bliss has worn off but even Pedro's hip trip to the DL can't kill my baseball buzz. We root for a very, very good team. Rest assured, however, that people like Jon and I (and my co-blogger, natch) will by habit or impulse continue to put a damper on our own good times as the second half unfolds.

Guys like us, we have incredibly long memories but remarkably short attention spans.

I hereby interrupt this return to our normal winning ways to announce in advance that yes, it's all my fault.

Last year at about this time I went off to Maine behind the wheel of a Mo Vaughn-sized U-Haul truck and terrible things immediately started happening to the Mets: Looper and Pirates and Cota, oh my! I ignored my co-blogger's urgent pleas and returned home after the break, when it was too late to do more than kick at the ground and act chastened.

Well, tomorrow night Emily and the boy and I are headed back that way, about 90 minutes before the clock inexplicably strikes Lima Time! again. So of course I kept this from my co-blogger until the last possible moment, knowing his likely reaction. Didn't matter: The Mets decided to get their licks in first.

Jace? It's Omar. We're calling up Mike Pelfrey. Yes really. Go to Shea to see his debut? Ha. You're not even going to get to see it on TV. You're not going to get to hear it. Carve a Pelfrey totem out of birchbark and pretend it's on the mound, you stupid woods-loving sonofabitch.

Gulp. But family being family and plane tickets being expensive, I accepted my fate. Pelfreyless it would be.

Of course that wasn't enough.

Jace, Omar again. Just wanted to tell you we also decided to call up Henry Owens. Triple-A? Nah, we're bringing him right to the bigs. That K/IP was just too ungodly for us not to see with our own eyes. Oh, did I say 'see?' Because you won't get to see or hear his debut either, will you? Have fun cavorting with bears, dumbass. Oh, we'll make sure Howie and Keith show him on TV just to torture you before you go.

OK, OK, I get it. But family's still family and plane tickets are still expensive, so off we still go. (Not being completely insane, I've got a line on borrowing somebody's XM radio for the duration. At least I think I do. Wish me luck.)

At least it won't be the Pirates doing terrible things to us while I gaze into the unfathomable darkness of the non-city and one or both of my parents say helpful things like, “I thought they were doing really well this year.” (The Marlins are more than capable of doing terrible things to us — more capable then the Pirates, no doubt.) Leaving aside greed, taking three out of four from the doormats of the NL Central was the kind of tonic we needed to feel better about ourselves. “We'll worry about October in October” now sounds properly swaggering again, instead of kind of pathetic the way it did when we were crawling away from the AL East.

Tonight's game was properly reassuring: This time, our offense didn't get off to a roaring start and then come to a screeching halt for seven innings. Reyes ran wild (and Joshua gulled me into delaying bedtime for 10 minutes by craftily announcing he wanted to learn the “Jose! Jose! Jose! Jose!” chant), Wright hit an opposite-field homer, Floyd (apparently) survived another HBP and Wagner refused to be unmanned by some defensive lapses behind him. Even the immortal Jonah Bayliss beaning Trachsel was more odd than troubling: Trachsel himself seemed baffled by it, as if he might say, “Are you kidding? It's me, Steve Trachsel — the patron saint of all things tepid. You think you're going to start some kind of beef by hitting Steve Trachsel? You or some other alumnus of the Altoona Curve want to get me worked up, send over a bottle of something corked.”

Keith Hernandez had quite a night, by the way. Our own Captain Jack Sparrow came over from the radio side feeling feisty, cracking that his rainbow of highlighters was so he could recreate the cover of Cream's Disraeli Gears. That was the equivalent of Bette Davis warning everyone to buckle up for a bumpy ride: Within a couple of innings Keith was ranting that no one played 162 games anymore, that Trachsel should go nine, and that everyone in Triple-A was a useless junkballer. By now he's probably running around the parking lot spray-painting cars.

I love Keith when he's being coolly analytical. I also love Keith when he transforms randomly into your crazy uncle.

I'm gonna miss him up in the Pelfreyless State.

Those commercials in which Tom Glavine and Duaner Sanchez awkwardly and unconvincingly invite us to Discover Queens must be rubbing off on the Mets. No longer mercenaries, they and their teammates are playing like genuine homeboys.

Take Wednesday night when the Mets (no doubt sufficiently loosened by the unifying presence of Jose Lima) plated five runs in their half of the first and then, in the best tradition of the playgrounds of New York, told the Pirates to go ahead and take your ups. Sure enough, the Pirates essentially batted for 24 straight outs and never produced a thing.

This was high-priced stickball — the overmatched team extended the courtesy/insult of being told to stay at bat and try to hit it if you can. Don't bother pitching to us. We've scored all we're gonna need.

Yes, five in the first held up quite nicely. The story would be perfect if the Mets hadn't actually gone through the motions of taking their own ups. We were no-hit from the second through the eighth, mostly by Kip Wells, the same rehabbing chap who was so utterly clueless in the first. Perhaps The Kipper was suddenly a helluva hurler. Perhaps the Mets were conserving their excess thunder for Trachsel (they usually do). Perhaps Travelocity was featuring great fares for Sunday evening, cracking our lineup's concentration a few days before the break. Whatever it was, I was a little disturbed at how effectively we shut down our own attack.

Not to be lost amid discerning this silver cloud's dark lining was the rendering irrelevant of Buc ups by Orlando Hernandez. If he's gonna be as effective as he was over seven shutout innings, call him El Duque if you must. Call him “Chief” like the countermen in any good deli would and include a sour pickle with his corned beef sandwich. He already knows about pitching in New York and against the Pirates, he was the toast of the town.

Duque, Chad and Duaner — we can be familiar with them since they're now so woven into the fabric of the neighborhood — combined to give the Mets their first second-consecutive win over the same opponent since we swept Philly. Neat trick that a team that's been so darn mediocre for almost three weeks still maintains a luxurious double-digit lead (11-1/2 sewers) over everybody in its own division. It's nice to live in the penthouse when everybody else is confined to a basement flat.

Take Pittsburgh. The Pirates were awesome Monday night. They were feisty Tuesday afternoon. They were what their record says they are Wednesday. Their record indicates a success rate of 33.7%. The record of the entire National League is abysmal. We're the only team that is as many as eight games over .500 — twice that many, actually. I note this to counteract any suggestion that there's nothing impressive about beating the team with the worst winning percentage in baseball. There are a lot of Pittsburghs who will be coming onto our playground between now and the end of the season. We have to beat them all. Some nights it might even take more than one inning.

Joshua, Met fan in training, made his big-league debut two years ago, watching Kris Benson get poleaxed by the Dodgers. Last year he saw the D-Train mow us down. So for his third-ever game, I was kind of sweating it. The kid's 0-2, what if he's a jinx?

Kind of sweating it, ha. The mezzanine was the approximate temperature of the surface of the sun, with the crowd on slow boil as the Mets failed to hit, muffed plays, relieved crappily and generally looked the way they've looked since clearing Customs. (And I didn't even know Jose Lima was back in the building for some unfathomable reason. The Neanderthal conservatism of major-league front offices, sheesh. Genghis Khan looks progressive by comparison.) Beyond the fact that it was too hot to move (though not too hot for my son to insist on being on the lap of whichever parent looked marginally further from heatstroke), the crowd's annoyance was held in check only by the fact that the Mets looked as irritated with themselves as we were with them. After Glavine failed to handle Zach Duke's bunt, he batted it back toward the pitcher's mound with his glove. Then he did it again, and for a moment I imagined he might just keep on swiping at it, muttering all the way, until ball and pitcher exited through the bullpen gate.

But then the worm turned. My son was dwelling in a parallel universe by then: The kid had spent a lively two-plus hours cheering for the Mets by number (“Get a hit, Number 11!”), then by uniform (“The man in the white shirt is my friend!”), broken briefly by disapproving of my hollering at Angel Hernandez (“You shouldn't say he's a BAD MAN, Daddy!”) and crying because Number 7 had to wait his turn before he could bat again (with Reyes our only offense for much of the game, I felt the same way) until hot dogs and ice cream and heat and the lack of a nap had left him a ranting, overstimulated mess, more interested in trying to dismantle Shea than in whatever those guys down on the field were failing to do.

Come the 8th, the crowd's near-savage exultation fit his mood perfectly: He cheered madly for Endy's double that left us on the brink and then enjoyed his insane father waving him in the air like a boy turned American flag when Nady sent Wright and Chavez home to somehow give us the lead. Then Billy Wagner didn't make us incredibly nervous for once (maybe Heilman had already squeezed all the incompetence out of the relief sponge) and we were free and clear and my kid finally had a Met victory for the first page of what I hope will be a long ledger.

Later, walking the approximately 25 miles back to the car, the play at the plate on Chavez left me pondering an apparent paradox: Since Angel Hernandez is both incompetent and out to get us, how was Chavez safe? Had our otherwise-inexplicable employment of former Hernandez partner-in-crime Michael Fucker caused our least-favorite ump to abandon his ancient grudge? Or had Angel's primeval urge to screw up a call trumped his hunger to screw the Mets?

Imagine my astonishment when I finally queue'ed up ESPN Motion and it looked like Angel, by golly, got the call right. I suppose I should apologize, at least in some half-assed way, but let's not kid ourselves. This has been a week in which Angel Hernandez called a close play correctly and Alex Rodriguez came through in the clutch. If the sun rises in the west tomorrow, I won't be a bit surprised.

(Oh, and Greg — the guy in the aisle next to us got skulled by a foul ball. My thumb emerged intact, as did my child, but that was through no action of mine — I watched the ball arrive in mute, useless astonishment. Anyway, strange things are afoot in Faith and Fear lives. Let's be careful out there.)

Blowouts that go against you figure to be dreary business. Rare that you can attend an 11-1 loss and come away thinking it was one of the weirdest nights you ever spent at Shea Stadium. Yet despite the lack of eventual intrigue in the final score, it was.

I imagine that somewhere in the decisive fifth inning when Jose Castillo was at bat, Gary Cohen mentioned that one John Maine pitch was “fouled back into the crowd”. Well, I was in that crowd. My left thumb was the leading edge of that crowd. I still have my thumb. I don't have the ball.

Through the thoughtful invitation of my friend David and the unidentified patron who favored him with two choice loge seats behind home, we had the unique perspective that loge can afford. You could really see the ball. You could see it being pitched, you could see it being belted and you could see it coming at ya. Like Castillo's foul.

It was coming at me. Not at my face but just to the left of me. It's making its way up over the boxes and into the reserved. And I have time for one thought, which was…

“I can catch this.”

That was just silly. I couldn't catch it. I'm still following the advice of Marvin the Fifth/Sixth Grade Counselor from Camp Avnet, the sage who told us to leave our gloves in our cubbyholes as we filed on the bus for Shea Stadium 33 years ago next week 'cause “you'll just lose 'em.”

If I wore my glove Monday night, I probably would have lost Castillo's foul, too. But it would have been healthier. I wouldn't have put my left thumb in the way of sizzling Major League harm. This was no lofty foul. This was the essence of “fouled back into the crowd”. It glanced off my left thumb — the first time I've touched a foul at Shea after at least 2,700 innings of waiting — before hitting the guy sitting behind me on the arm and apparently beaning a woman sitting behind him before bouncing into someone else's hands (that was one magic horsehide). The lady was eventually presented with the ball in recognition of taking the worst Jose Castillo could mete out.

It's times like these that I'm thrilled that I've never been broken of the habit of chewing my thumbs. It's a lifetime of thumb-chewing, even through six years of braces, that has given me a marvelously strong callus which is where Castillo's foul hit. It felt like when you whack your funny bone provided your funny bone resides in your left thumb. It buzzed for a couple of innings but nothing was broken and nothing was bruised; nothing was gained, but nothing was lost.

'Cept the game, but that was going to happen anyway. When we weren't watching fouls make a beeline for our personages, we could see Maine (a surprise starter so surprising that I had no idea he was the man until I heard the third pitch of the game on the radio and no idea that Soler was gone; shucks) look unhittable for four-plus innings. His command abandoned him all at once.

In less than five frames, he was way over 100 pitches. That was weird.

The first-place Mets were hitting more than the last-place Pirates for most of the night, but not better, certainly not well enough to register a safety with someone in scoring position. That was weird.

By the time the Bucs began to slip away from the Mets, our relieving began to appear worse than our starting. That was weird.

And in the eighth, the mostly dependable Pedro Feliciano gave up two of the longest and hardest hit home runs, back-to-back, that I've ever witnessed from wherever I sat. That was very weird. Weird and disconcerting. I don't know the Pirates very well, but I do believe one of their eighth-inning sluggers was named McLouth. You can't spell McLouth without clout, that's for damn sure.

It wasn't just any 11-1 defeat, so it figured that the reactions would be somewhat out of the ordinary. Even though I don't sanction it, I'm surprised there wasn't more booing. Most of the hostility in our part of loge was funneled through one fan who kept telling Willie that he was “stupid” and should “go back to the Yankees.” Maybe the promise of fireworks kept everybody seated comfortably.

Two attendees were determined to be just that. I prefer sitting on the aisle because it gives me more legroom. As compensation, I have to get up a dozen or two times a game, maybe more, to let people in and out. Once in a while it gets on my nerves but mostly it goes with the territory. Well, one row down from David and me, there was a lady on the aisle who wasn't having any of it, not by the ninth. Late in the game, a family of three had gotten up to do whatever and came back together. They wanted to return to their seats in the middle of the row. The aislekeeper put her foot down…or, more accurately, nailed her ass down. She and her son wouldn't budge to let them pass. The father in the threesome began cursing her out. She said nothing. An usher was awakened to settle the dispute.

Finally the lady burst out with her complaint: “I CAME TO SEE A BASEBALL GAME! I DIDN'T COME TO STAND UP AND SIT DOWN!” I can't argue with her logic, but since when does logic have a place at Shea Stadium? In exchange for being coaxed into standing for five or six seconds — “THIS IS THE LAST TIME I'M GETTING UP!” — so the aggrieved party could sit down, the usher moved her and her son into a few rows down into a box seat. The squeaky wheel got the grease but, judging from the applause of several in our section, nobody minded the appeasement.

When it was 8-1, I reminded David that I was here six years ago on another Fireworks Night, the Mets down by the same score. But this wasn't that night and even on that night, I didn't hang around for the Gruccifest. Thus, I bid David adieu once the final out sealed the Mets' fate. They've been outscored 27-8 since Sunday night. I'm 2-6 on the year. I've seen eight different starters and the only wins I've enjoyed were secured via Glavine and Pedro. A little foreboding, no?

On the Pirates: They're atrocious? They played like the Red Sox did last week. I don't suppose it had anything to do with their common opponent. Every game I see the Mets lose to the Pirates is a blur of futility. They lose by 9-0 and 5-0 and 4-0 and 5-1 and now 11-1. The only NL teams the Mets have a losing record against when I'm in the neighborhood are the Braves (13-21) and the Pirates (11-12). I should hate the Pirates more than I do, but look where hating the Braves has gotten me.

My favorite thing about Fireworks Night is that if you leave after the game, you have the easiest trip of the year out of Shea (unless the year is 1993 and the trippin' is automatically easy). 54,000 filled the stands/seats Monday night. Maybe 4,000 departed in advance of the postgame show. Walking unmolested to the 7 — no pushing, no shoving, no waiting — I fantasized I had a police escort. Clear the way, folks! Clear the way! Half of Faith and Fear has to make his train at Woodside! My fantasies are pretty tame.

Made that train. Was on it in Forest Hills when I saw colored lights filling the northern sky. It was those Shea fireworks after all. Got to see 'em and got to walk in the door before 11:30. The Mets still lost, the night was still weird and the foul ball was still elsewhere.

There's no moral except maybe that more kids should chew their thumbs.