All those Met fans you see at Citizens Bank Park? They're either staying with friends in Philly, or they're crazy. Man am I tired.

The inaugural visit by me and Emily to CBP couldn't have gone more swimmingly, however: quick trip down on the Amtrak, cab ride with our friends Jerome and Val (though the cabbie seemed to have no idea there was a baseball stadium in Philadelphia and needed some coaching from a somewhat-amazed Val), and then the park.

If this is truly what New Shea will be like, I'm reporting to Flushing with my sledgehammer first thing tomorrow morning, because it can't come soon enough. No, everything isn't exactly perfect in Philadelphia: That outfield wall is a bit too quirky, they should pipe the radio feed in more places, you can't see the field while strolling the concourses, and the retired numbers are hidden away. But compare this to Shea, where even a happy recap might include something along the lines of “the escalators were broken, the bathrooms were a lake, my seat kept dumping me in the aisle and the lady at the hot-dog concession was moving at the speed of continental drift.” There really is no comparison. Down with the old barn already.

I loved CBP: The sightlines are great, the seats are close, the architecture is interesting without being in your face about it, there are cool statues of Phillie greats (like Mike Schmidt and…um….), you don't have to wait for the bathroom, there are lots of food options (though I'm kind of regretting that cheesesteak as it turns the consistency of concrete somewhere in my innards), the Liberty Bell is cool (though it was ringing far too often), the Diamondvision is sharp…I'm in. I'm all in. The complaint that these retro parks are too samey? When I'm at Shea in the ass end of the loge ducking my head so I can see the arc of a fly ball, warily eyeing the mixture of pigeon urine, Pepsi and rust dripping near my head and wondering what substance has made the concrete simultaneously green and frictionless, I'm not exactly pondering what a downer it would be to look around and think our park reminds me too much like Camden Yards and Citizens Bank and Busch III.

Oh yeah, the game. That porch in left field? It's short. By now I've got enough baseball in me to not stand up in home-run anticipation on balls that drop into the shortstop's mitt, but I kept getting fooled tonight. And Jimmy Rollins flies out — no, wait, that's gone. And on and on and on, as Glavine and Ryan Madson got whiplash and the score mounted.

The crowd was an interesting element: I'd guess 1/5 to 1/4 of the assembled were Met fans, and they were the loud 1/5 to 1/4 — they even got the “Jose!” chant going for Reyes. The Phillie fans accepted these blue- and black- and gray- and orange-clad interlopers among them somewhat grumpily, showing less patience for the Phillies kicking baseballs around the infield, which they did entirely too much of. (OK, the crowd did boo a rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” but it was pretty terrible — this is not a tune that benefits from melisma.) I geared up for the game (black road jersey, Cyclones hat), but refrained from obstreperous rooting except when Wright went deep. You pay your money and you can do what you want, I suppose, but you're still in somebody else's house. If only because you're outnumbered and that City of Brotherly Love stuff has always struck me as one of those deliberately misleading monikers, sorta like Iceland and Greenland, one ought to err on the side of humility. Of course this Gandhi act did me precious little good — on the way out I accepted the high-fives of some tattooed Met fans, and Val reported that a gigantic Phillie fan eyed me all the way up the aisle with bad intent. (Sure, pick on the guy who looks like a blogger and not like a biker.) Steeped in beer and cheesesteak and ice cream and the happy glow of a 9-4 lead, I didn't notice, which was best.

Getting back to NYC at a semi-decent hour, alas, meant we had to leave after the top of the 8th. After which everything immediately started going to hell, with Aaron Heilman giving up a flyout home run to David Dellucci and Billy Wagner seeming nervous to be back under the Philly microscope. But then he escaped via the strike-'em-out/throw-'em-out as we arrived at 30th Street Station. We got on the train as the teams changed up in the mid-9th, and of course there was no signal while the train was in the bowels of the station, and of course the train just sat there, and of course I was going more than slightly insane.

And then out into the Pennsylvania night, Emily on one earbud and me on the other, and Wagner in trouble. Bad trouble. Except Wright makes a play that has the crowd gasping and the 1210 radio guys howling in disbelief, one I immediately file away as SEE THE MINUTE I GET HOME. (And it was worthy. Wow.) And then a Ryan Howard hit just to make us shudder at imagining a very bad parallel universe in which this game is tied and doom is on second with nobody out, and Aaron Rowand swings at a slider in the dirt, and we're 7 1/2 up, 11 on some other NL East team, and New Shea is a day closer, and all's (W)right with the world.

Stroll down the block to a newsstand near you and things look pretty good today. Back page of Newsday says we're Best In The Show, judged No. 1 in all of MLB. The Daily News, which can't quite shake its pinstriped myopia, has figured out that At long last, Mets are KINGS OF N.Y. …and maybe all of baseball. The Post? Same idea: QUEENS IS KING.

Those aren't Photoshopped, joke shop novelty back pages either. They're life as we know it in Metsopotamia in the pregame hours of June 13, 2006. That's what it's like to be a Mets fan today. That's what you can read without even logging on to anything electronic.

It's a good day for us not to add anything else — sometimes there are no words — except to tell you there are others in our virtual neighborhood, somewhere between us and the tabloids, worth checking out.

We're way behind in updating our links section (our method remains inscrutable — one of us holds the URLs, the other turns the computer), but some new voices have come online since the last time we got up to speed. A sample…

Brooklyn Met Fan: This colorful site speaks boroughs, not to mention volumes.

Blooming Ideas: Let's just say Steve Bloom is high on the Mets' chances.

American Legends: The guy's last name is English and he has a lot of stuff up about the World Cup, but when not distracted, Mark follows the Mets. And what could be more American than that?

Them Mets: As in How About…? Dude has us building a dynasty. I'm sold!

Milledge Facts: A one-joke blog, albeit a joke in more than 300 parts, most of which are downright hilarious and some of which are eerily accurate.

We'll get these and other gems posted on our soon-to-be all-new blogroll before you know it. Keep one eye to the left and you'll eventually be surprised.

As for the old breed among the New Breed, three of our comrades have moved in with a new host, so if you're looking for…

Lone Star Mets,

Getting Paid To Watch, or the dean of the medium,

Eddie Kranepool Society, you've found them again. Bookmark and keep up with all Dan, Bob and Steve have to say.

Sadly, one of our breed is leaving us for a little while, at least. Tip of the blog cap to one of the stalwarts, Metsville. Enjoy the sabbatical, Vinny. You earned it.

Meanwhile, another of the gang is one year old. Happy first anniversary once more to Mets Walkoffs, the only blog that can tell you how many Mets triples have completed Mets victories (admit it, now you need to know).

And happy honeymoons, either in progress or upcoming, to two who keep us up to date day after day, Matt from Metsblog and Ryan from Always Amazin' at NJ.com. We're sure you made wonderful choices in brides, though I can't help but question your respective decisions to get married in the middle of baseball season, particularly this baseball season; maybe they weren't your wholly your decisions.

Filling in for Ryan at the Star-Ledger's Mets outpost, it gives us great pleasure to note, is our own constant commenter, Jessica1986. Nice way to celebrate turning 20. Happy blogday to you!

At the other end of the age/experience spectrum, there is veteran Mets fan Ray, whose Metphistopheles is one of my favorites. Marooned in Buffalo (belated condolences on the Sabres), Ray keeps digging deep into his bag of Met tricks and comes up with some great stuff, particularly the peek last week at his report card from the 1969-70 academic year. Read what Miss Boehler put on his Permanent Record while the Mets were winning their first World Series. You'll earn a demerit for laughing out loud in class, but it'll be worth it.

Two other non-blog stops to get you to 7:05 tonight:

Dave Murray, the Mets Guy in Michigan, is subject to a grilling the likes of which would make Jeff Torborg squirm, Dallas Green cry and Art Howe nap. It's the Crane Pool Forum blogger interview conducted by yours truly. I'm tough but fair.

I'm also helping to sell soap these days. Well, not exactly, but the good folks at Manor Hall Soap Company decided I wasn't likely to repel people from their product and asked me to elaborate on some aspect of being a Mets fan, which I do in the current issue of the Manor Hall Scrawl (I even made the cover!). For those of you who remember Gary Carter pitching Ivory, you'll have to agree that the soap has gotten a lot classier since the Mets were last widely considered Best In The Show…even if the Mets-related soap “celebrities” have gotten pretty damn obscure.

If the Mets wanna do a three outta four this weekend, nobody here would argue the point…One at a time and all that, but would a series sweep be too much to ask for? You know, just for the heck of it.

—This correspondent, almost four days ago

Ask and ye shall receive.

The wonderful world of linking allows me to prove I didn't see this coming, but I sure hoped it would come. You can't always get what you want, but if you sweep sometimes, you get what you need.

If you ever plan to motor west, taking a detour through Phoenix for four games is the highway that's the best. Reincarnating Ebbets Field in the Shea Stadium parking lot is a waste of time. Let's just build one of what Arizona has. It's already our home away from home. Forget its given name — let's call it Chase Stadium. Say it out loud and it is home. We already have a built-in advantage, with 10 wins in a row there since 2004 to prove it.

The Diamondbacks have certainly snaked their way down the crapper, haven't they? Did Jason Grimsley steal their mojo on his way out? His potential revelations can't be the only thing killing them. This does not look like a team that had been taking its HGH anyway.

Normally, I wouldn't dance on an opponent's just-dug grave, but we're done with the Diamondbacks for 2006, unless we see them in the postseason, which doesn't seem all that likely in terms of…

(No, too easy, too tempting, too many ramifications for karma's sake to slam that Russ Ortiz pitch into the alley.)

Now that we're done with them, I can admit I look at Luis Gonzalez's diminished arm strength with a touch of sadness given all he did for humanity on a Sunday night in November 2001. I felt almost bad that we ran on him with such impunity inning after inning but I curbed that lack of enthusiasm every time I looked up at the scoreboard. I was warm all over given Alay Soler's Saturday night two-hitter and I practically needed damp towels for the way we went a'whackin' all day Sunday.

To prove I'm still very much a Mets fan who lived through all the years when we didn't lead the second-place team by 6-1/2 games and the tied-for-third place teams (one of them being the 11-time-defending Eastern Division champions) by 10 on June 11, I thought I saw flaws today. I worried that we weren't bringing enough runners home early. I worried that Pedro lacked command. I worried…I worried that I was nuts by the third inning when I realized my worries were for naught.

All cylinders were clicked on. Nobody who batted when it mattered didn't do something good. Pedro did what he had to. He'll have extra day rest for two of his next three starts. He was relieved in the sixth and I'm relieved by that.

Couldn't help but think about last August when we burned Arizona last (and to think they had just gotten through rebuilding when we lit another match). That seemed like a real turning point on our season but it was mostly a last hurrah before we descended our way out of contention. But there's one thing that stands out for me from that overwhelming four-game sweep.

Remember the to-do about Victor Diaz tagging up from second to third when we had a double-digit lead? While it was fashionable to tut-tut Victor's unwritten-rules faux pas, I was complimentary toward it because I think it reflected the best of Willie Randolph. This team began to hustle in 2005 and it hasn't stopped since. Even though I did feel a sympathy pang for Luis Gonzalez (he will always be a national hero), I was thrilled to watch us play nonstop ball. Only good manners kept us from winning 25-2 today.

I really believe this is Willie's doing. This is the sunny side of his professionalism rants. Never mind who high-fives who or what's supposed to be shaved or trimmed (he seems to have let up on that altogether). I don't love Randolph the way I did Valentine or Johnson but I do respect the hell out of what he's done with the players' collective attitude. They're a fun bunch in the dugout but they conduct themselves with dead-seriousness when they're on the field. That's infectious in the good sense of the word. Everybody from Beltran and Pedro and Wright to Alay Soler to Eli Marrero to Heath Bell seems to have contracted it.

One more connection to last year I think bears note. I don't remember where I read it, but somebody critiqued one of Ralph Kiner's appearances in the booth at some time in the last year. He had been asked if the 2005 Mets reminded him of any previous edition of the franchise. He said, with no hesitation, 1968. Whoever was critiquing him more or less rolled his eyes as if to say there goes Ralph, being a homer, trying to make us think 1969 is just around the corner in 2006.

Sure, I thought, Ralph Kiner really has to kiss up to the Mets to get a break. The freaking television booth is named after him! And, as has happened more often than not in the past 45 years, Ralph seems to have been right. 1968 was the last Mets season I didn't see, but everything I've ever read about it indicates it was not to be judged by its record (ninth place, 73-89 — best ever to date for the Mets, but still ninth place, 73-89). The story of that year was Gil Hodges came in and, to use modern-day corporatespeak, changed the culture. You might not have picked them to go all the way one year later, but those who saw the 1968 Mets saw a difference in the making.

Similarly, one year later, I'm really feeling what a turning point 2005, with its naked-eye undistinguished 83-79/tied-for-third finish, was for the New York Mets. 1969 is not a perfect allegory for what has followed. These Mets make too much money to be considered a pure miracle in the making (despite some of the miraculous ways we've won this season), but it's not all about payroll and pricey free agents here. It's about guys who know how to do the job and don't take too many breaks from doing it.

It's one thing to import Delgado and Wagner. It's a whole other thing to get the contributions we're getting from Endy Chavez and Jose Valentin and Julio Franco and Orlando Hernandez and just about every new guy who's come in. They came into a situation that had improved markedly in 2005, as the cameos by Ramon Castro and Chris Woodward and, yes, Pedro Martinez reminded us today.

This thing has been building for a while now and it's putting down roots and it's picking up steam and it's spreading out all over the country, not just Arizona.

Next stop, Philadelphia. The view looks good from here.

Not to spread out the debate about Kaz and his departure over yet another post, but I keep thinking about this one. Why was Kaz Matsui's tenure in the orange and blue such a debacle? Why was he such a lightning rod for the fans? And should anyone get the blame?

What happened to Kaz? Was he just hurt all the time? Did he get old early? Was he too sensitive for New York? Was he too sensitive to leave the routine he knew in Japan? (Those last two aren't the same thing — there are baseball creatures of habit for whom dozens of little cultural and game differences would be intolerable. I'm guessing Steve Trachsel would be a disaster in Japan, as opposed to an annoying enigma here.)

Compare his Japanese stats to his American ones and you can't believe it's the same player. Were we expecting too much? If we're just talking raw stats. almost certainly: I dug up an interesting post by Aaron Gleeman, who wrote before his arrival that “Kaz Matsui sounds like a mix of Ichiro's speed and Hideki Matsui's power, all wrapped up into an outstanding defensive shortstop.” Gleeman then crunched the numbers, looking at what had happened to Ichiro, That Other Matsui and Tsuyoshi Shinjo in their first U.S. campaign in an effort to predict Kaz's numbers.

One question that came up then looks a lot more critical now: In 2003, Kaz had put up a .305 AVG, .368 OBP and .549 SLG while hitting 33 dingers, driving in 84 and swiping 13 bases in what would be his swan song as a Seibu Lion. A nice year, but a step down from his 2002 campaign: .332/.389/.617, 36 HR, 87 RBI, 33 SB. So which season to use as the baseline? Using 2003, Gleeman predicted American numbers of .275/.325/.445; extrapolating from 2002, the prediction was .299/.345/.499.

As it turned out, Kaz's first-year numbers in New York worked out to .272/.331/.396, suggesting 2003 hadn't been a bit of an off-year but the start of a decline. Kaz's power went off a cliff (Gleeman's SLG prediction would undoubtedly have been lower if he'd known Kaz would play in pitcher-friendly Shea), but the AVG and OBP wound up exactly as predicted. Kaz was incapable of taking a walk as a Met, but he'd been incapable of taking a walk as a Lion, too.

If the numbers had been examined more rigorously, Kaz might never have arrived at Shea. Jose Reyes might never have been asked to switch positions, with who knows what effect on his own development. Or if Kaz had been signed anyway, the expectations at Shea might have been tempered.

Well, except for that “outstanding defensive shortstop”. It would take something akin to willful blindness to suggest Kaz was anything more than average in the field, and even that might be too kind. And here, the mystery of what happened to him can't be quantified away. (Or at least I don't have the statistical chops to try it.) He had little range and bad hands, but he also didn't hang in on pivots and showed poor instincts. That's not an outstanding defensive shortstop. Yes, Kaz deserves credit for switching to second without undue fuss and worked hard at a new position — he looked dramatically better there this year. But let's not go overboard praising a player who changed positions after proving he couldn't cut it at the one of his choosing.

As for how the fans reacted, there were different aspects to it — some of them understandable, some of them inexcusable, all of them unfortunate:

• First off, let's not overthink this: Kaz was bad. Yes, there were flashes of ability. Yes, he battled injuries. Yes, he worked hard. Yes, he seemed to be a good teammate. Those things deserve to be taken into consideration. But they don't change the bottom line: For three straight seasons, Kaz Matsui was a well-paid liability to a team with high aspirations. You may not deserve boos for that, but you're certainly not going to get cheers.

• I have no doubt that part of the convulsive booing of Matsui was a frustrated restatement of that original question: What on earth happened to this guy? We were told we were getting the Japanese Cal Ripken Jr., and the guy who showed up was the Japanese Russ Adams. Nobody's happy feeling they got sold a bag of goods.

• As our commenters have noted, you can't boo management, so you boo its proxy. That's not right, but it's not so mysterious. (Hell, I think the GM should have to be on the field and announced to the crowd before at least one game each month. I remember how thrilled I was a few years back to get the opportunity to boo the living shit out of Steve Phillips. Hurt my throat. Felt like victory.)

• Now throw in some bad body language: When Kaz looked bad at the plate he looked horrendous, taking weak hacks, bailing out and then trundling morosely back to the dugout. Not fair, but you see how it happens: Bad body language didn't help Carlos Beltran last year, either.

• Kaz's failures were inevitably paired with Ichiro's heroics, having to see a player with the same last name become an iron man for the Yankees, and wondering why the Mets never seem to have any luck fishing in Japanese baseball waters. Not fair, but not astonishing.

• I think the language/cultural barriers made things worse: Kaz's teammates all seemed to genuinely like him and expressed support, but players nearly always close ranks, so the reaction was, “So what?” And if you're going bad, deference doesn't play well in this town: Cliff Floyd is loved here unconditionally in part because he's candid to a fault, first and foremost about himself. And I maintain that Beltran won over Shea when he refused to come out for his curtain call, finally replacing blank-faced stoicism and monotone stay-the-course recitations with a flash of real anger.

• There's a rancor that's drifted into the stands at Shea in recent years that's just plain ugly. The idea that home fans never boo is a bit too St. Louis for me — hell, I've leather-lunged a hapless Met or two myself. But these days you hear willfully coarse, self-congratulatory booing. It's not just the meathead element, which will always be there, but fans who've somehow bought into the notion of New York as a tough town where “we” boo, leading them to let loose for most anything and to see booing as necessary hazing awaiting any new guy. (Booing Jorge Julio during player introductions was just astonishing.) Yes, this is a tough town, but the flip side of that has always been that it's a smart town, one in which hitting behind the runner gets cheered and a bases-loaded sac fly when three runs down with one out in the ninth doesn't. I don't know how this crept in and I don't think there's a way to escort it out again, but it's ridiculous. And where one commenter sees it as a sign of creeping Bronxness, I see it as something even worse: This reflexive, mean-spirited booing is Philadelphia stuff, the self-consuming vitriol of the longtime loser who turns on the home team at the first intimation that he'll be disappointed again.

None of us — not even Kaz himself — can say what effect the rough treatment had on Kaz, but it was seriously overdone and it didn't help. And ultimately, none of us will ever be able to say definitively what happened to Kaz.

Maybe it was everything: We signed a player whose decline had already begun and put him in a pitcher's park where that decline accelerated, he had trouble adjusting to some aspects of the game, was hampered by nagging injuries, never connected with management and let the fans' frustration and disappointment get into his head. A perfect storm, in other words.

I wish Kaz the best: Given all his hard work and his dugout demeanor, it would make me happy to see him bounding in and out of the Rockies' dugout during a lengthy hot streak, embraced by the fans and just having fun playing the game he presumably loves. (Doesn't apply when he's playing us, but that's just self-preservation.) But he's going to have to turn around a pretty astonishing decline to do that: Even in Colorado, he'll be the guy who arrived in New York as a hugely touted, $8 million man, but left in a deal for a utility player and didn't even get assigned to his new team's major-league roster.

Can he reverse all that? I don't think he can. I'd like to be wrong. But I think he has a far better chance of proving me wrong in Colorado, making it the right move for him and for us. The 2006 New York Mets are better off with a utility guy who can catch and has surprising speed than with another underwhelming choice fighting for time at second. Whether it was his fault or our fault or nobody's fault, in the end that's what Kaz Matsui had become.

Didja notice the advertising sign behind home plate in the top of the first? It advertised swimming pool enzymes, something, judging by what they build over their right field walls, that they apparently use a lot of in Arizona. The brand name?

Natural Chemistry. On the off chance Jason Grimsley was watching his most recent former teammates soldier on without him, he must have turned off his set right there.

Without knowing what or if anybody was using, the Mets sure seemed to have natural chemistry going for them Friday night. The batters drove each other in. The pitchers picked one another up. The standings aligned beautifully.

A tip of the cap to the tied-for-third Washington Nationals who defeated the second-place Philadelphia Phillies in twelve innings and dragged the Atlanta Braves down to their level in the process. The Braves were losing again to the Astros. They're nine behind us. They're closer to last than they are to Lastings.

Roofs were retracted all over the Southwest Friday night. Houston rolled back its ceiling and allowed more air to escape from the Braves' sagging balloon. Arizona allowed us a glimpse of the desert sky, and passing spacecrafts a gander of Met might, particularly that of Carlos Beltran — 4-for-5 with two big bangs. If you chalk up last year as a $17 million practice round, the guy may wind up being worth every penny we're paying him over the next 5-2/3 years.

Think the 'Stros are still smug about replacing Beltran with Willy Taveras? And, on a side note, whose press conference from January 11, 2005 seems like a better idea now: Carlos Beltan's or Randy Johnson's?

The other Carlos hit two out as well. He seems to have a lot to write about in his diary again. And we have plenty of reasons to not doze off despite these ill-conceived 10ish starts and 1ish conclusions. The West Coast and nearby environs are still a pain in the patoot for the nodding fan, but the 2006 Mets make us wanna stay up late.

Heck, any time's a good time to play at the erstwhile BOB. We've got a friend at Chase Maricopa…an accommodating one. Do you realize we've taken eight in a row in Phoenix? It's some kind of Turned Inside Out Field for us. We go there and the home team is cursed. Brandon Webb could change all that Saturday night, given that we didn't touch him at Shea, but we didn't touch Miguel Batista there last week either. Yet Friday night, his pitching lacked poetry. He couldn't even beat Steve Trachsel who was at his most disturbingly prosaic.

I don't know about sweeps or road records or anything. I just recognize a good foot and an available throat when I see it. No soft bigotry of low expectations for these Mets. Keep winning, fellas. Distance from Shea isn't killing you and a little more distance between you and the Phillies wouldn't hurt.

Kaz Matsui shouldn't have been a New York Met. It was wrong for him, it was wrong for us.

This was not Reggie Jackson and George Steinbrenner, one of whom was a liar and the other was convicted, thus they deserved each other — as an overwrought, overbuzzed Billy Martin so memorably and accurately framed it. We didn't deserve Kaz. Kaz didn't deserve us.

We both deserved better.

To this night, when we learned that our long international nightmare was over, I never understood how Kaz Matsui became a pin cushion for Mets fans. I mean, yeah, I get that he didn't succeed and those who don't succeed aren't generally treated royally, but how could you boo that face? I spent 2-1/3 seasons just feeling sorry for the guy. I'd like to believe the negative reaction was to his presence and performance, and that it was nothing personal, though I'm not sure why I'm still worried about it.

Kaz Matsui never uttered a cross word (at least one that was translated) about his tormentors in the stands. He never let on that he didn't like how he was being used (not that he gave his managers much choice). He never sat off in a corner of the dugout by his lonesome, George Foster style. The other night, after Milledge's second homer, Kaz was jumping up and down and congratulating a guy he presumably barely knew. That, I thought, is a good teammate.

That said, there was no good reason for his being signed to play here. Given the money ($8 mil a year for three years), the domino effect (shifting Reyes to second) and the allocation of resources (Jose had just staked his claim to shortstop, so WTF?), you could argue that it was the dumbest high-profile free agent acquisition in Mets history that didn't involve Vince Coleman's signature.

Even if the Mets weren't the only MLB team that saw something special in him based on his stellar Japanese career (and his potential Asian-American fan appeal), they simply didn't need him. This wasn't the '93 Braves enhancing a rotation of Glavine, Smoltz and Avery with Maddux. You can always use more great pitching. You can only do so much with two shortstops, especially if the new one isn't Alex Rodriguez.

The Mets had no business trying to convert Reyes to second. Once that was deduced, it was a shame Matsui couldn't pull off that switch. He was as inept at second in 2005 as he was at short in 2004. Definitely looked fine defensively this year, but he never came close to mastering Western pitching on a going basis. Maybe getting the whole package was too much to ask for, though at these prices, you're entitled to inquire.

I'm a little sad to see him go not because I was anticipating a Matsui resurrection in the second half and not because he left behind such a stacked résumé of Mets accomplishments. Actually, I'm not sure why I'm sad to see him go. I guess it's because he did show flashes of ability and he did seem like such a nice fellow and he did deserve better. But since he shouldn't have been here in the first place, this is better.

In late 2003, Kaz was the cornerstone of Jim Duquette's Catch The Energy, let's get athletic rebuilding program. Tonight he was traded to Colorado with two sacks of cash for Eli Marrero. At this point, we would have accepted Eli Whitney and a cotton gin to be named later.

To recap, Kaz Matsui is a Rockie. Anderson Hernandez and Jeff Keppinger are Tides. And your everyday starting second baseman in everything but name is Jose Valentin, who's become pretty darn good at it, hitting and fielding. Even a month ago, did anybody see that coming?

Wha? Grim? What is there to possibly be grim about after El Duque took a gleeful, terrible revenge on the team that just got done trading him? Why, the old man carved that lineup up like they were a bunch of El Rooques. Carlos Beltran smacked his 15th homer, putting him one behind last year's total, though he probably should have got credit for an extra homer, considering his shot was hit so hard that fans out in right probably saw it arrive before they heard it struck. Heck, young Mr. Milledge can even juggle.

I enjoyed it. I really did. But it was like enjoying the sunshine as dark clouds gather and the TV keeps beeping with a hurricane warning. I apologize in advance for this, but I'm gonna go over some news of the last day or two — not because I think it'll be new to most of us, but because it's going to be the background for a lot that's to come in the next weeks or months. We'll be familiar with it soon enough; may as well start now.

Back in April Jason Grimsley, a journeyman middle reliever with the very Diamondbacks we just beat, was told by his wife that some men were at the door to see him. The men were federal agents. They told Grimsley they knew he'd just received two kits of human growth hormone in the mail, and asked him to fetch them and come with them for a talk. He did, and they talked for hours. Hours in which Grimsley said he'd taken steroids, HGH and amphetamines. He said he'd stopped taking steroids when baseball instituted a new testing regimen, but kept going with HGH, perfectly aware that no urine test could detect it, that blood tests for it weren't totally reliable, and that the collective bargaining agreement didn't allow for blood tests anyway. He talked of the drug culture in the game, saying Latino players and players from the California teams were sources of amphetamines, saying that sleazy doctors at wellness clinics were sources of HGH, and naming names. Here's the affidavit — take a look at all the stuff that's blacked out.

Those names won't stay blacked out for long — and they don't just include players, but the ubiquitous “conditioning coaches” whose role seems to increasingly triangulate between trainer, hanger-on and middleman for dirty business. Deadspin is already working its sources to fill in some of the names, and while its guesswork is still just that, it's informed guesswork. And it already points — on Day Two — to a possible connection that, if true, would be a crushing blow to the game.

And there will be more. Much more. For in Grimsley the feds found a perfect tour guide for the Steroids Era — he came up in '89, with the hideousness of this era just beginning to bloom, and he's played for the Phillies, Indians, Yankees, Royals, Angels, Orioles and D'Backs, not to mention minor-league stints with the Brewers, Astros and Tigers. That's a third of MLB organizations right there.

And you know what? It's more frightening that Jason Grimsley is the face of HGH than it is that Barry Bonds is the face of steroids. Because Jason Grimsley is anonymous. He's the interchangeable middle reliever, the guy you run through a dozen of during the season in a grouchy quest to find one or two who don't totally suck. If those guys are on the juice, how far does it go? Look at this list: Rafael Palmeiro is the exception, not the rule. This list is minor-leaguers and guys on the end of the bench. Wanna say that the stars are clean, that they don't need to juice, and it's the guys scrambling for jobs who yield to the temptation to go dirty? Good luck with that.

Grimsley was never a Met, but we're not immune. Five guys in The Holy Books — Grant Roberts, Jorge Toca, Wilson Delgado, Felix Heredia and Matt Lawton — have already been nailed, as have four Met minor-leaguers. How many Mets would claim places in The Dirty Books, if all were somehow revealed?

Try not to think about it. If you can. Don't start thinking of Mets since '90 or so and wondering. If you can.

I'm not going to put my suspicions in print, because there's too much of that stuff in Blogland already, but there are Mets from the last 15 years whom I cheered for and whom I'd now bet any amount of money were dirty. And there are more and more Mets from that period whom I don't openly suspect, but whom I wouldn't be shocked to find occupying the pages of TDB. And there are more and more Mets about whom I no longer feel safe assuming anything at all. Which points to the worst part of all this: The internal debate is moving, almost too quickly for us to keep up, from “I wonder if So-and-So was dirty” to “I'm pretty sure that at least So-and-So is clean.”

It's vile, corrosive stuff, this doubting, and in the midst of El Duque's superb performance I found myself looking around the field, wondering. Wondering at chiseled physiques, at rebounds from injury, at performances defying age. Wondering about things and players I'd never wondered about before. Until finally I was just wondering.

ESPN has a poll up about the issue now, and two numbers on it stand out: 93% of fans believe Grimsley's statement that “boatloads” of players are using HGH, and 58% said if their favorite player turned out to be dirty, they'd feel deceived. (Hell, if my favorite player turns out to be dirty, I might never believe anything again.) Put those two numbers together and you have a train wreck, and not a far-off one, either. It's right around this next bend. Don't think for a minute we're going to walk away unscathed.

I'm reading a pretty good book called A Great Day in Cooperstown about how the Hall of Fame came to be and the festive occasion its opening was. All the immortals who were still alive in 1939 — Walter Johnson, Cy Young, Tris Speaker, a recently retired Babe Ruth — came to Upstate New York and caused quite the commotion. I wondered what it must have been like to have witnessed modern baseball in its formative years, to have seen these players create the game as we know it, to possibly bump into one of them on Main Street when they showed up to get enshrined.

It must have been tremendous, I decided, but it's all right that I wasn't there then because if I had been, I wouldn't be around now. And if I weren't around now, I wouldn't be seeing Lastings Milledge in his formative years recreating the game we will know in the 21st century.

That's how far gone I am over this kid who's been a Met for a week and change. I had held it in check until last night, but by this morning, as I savored the back page of the late edition of the Daily News which documented his ARM & HAMMER…well, WOO! as the scoreboard often says. I'm head over heels for Lastings Milledge.

Yes, he's to be mentioned with the residents of Pantheon Row. Of course I'm searching my mental database for whether we've ever had anybody like him (we haven't) or whether we've produced and employed a trio of homegrowners like Reyes, Wright and him simultaneously (we also haven't). I've skipped over the ifs in record time, slid around the ands, and slammed the buts over the leftfield wall. No ifs, ands or buts, Lastings Milledge is as awesome a Met as I could imagine.

Xavier Nady? Swell fella. I hope Willie finds him some at-bats.

I've flipped through all the obvious precedents. He's not Ron Swoboda. He's not Mike Vail. He's not Alex Ochoa. He's not Benny Agbayani. He's not Victor Diaz or Craig Brazell or Mike Jacobs even. I have no evidence, only intuition, and I'm likin' what I'm feelin'. He's not Darryl Strawberry, either, though after watching him do everything right last night, I no longer mean that in the “don't compare him to a superstar yet,” but rather “Darryl was no Lastings, not at this stage of his career”…career meaning, if I'm not mistaken, eight games to date.

It's not much of a sample, but what sample it is makes me want to order the complete set right now. Lastings Milledge has filled up my senses like a night in the forest, like the mountains in springtime, like a walk in the rain.

Holy Honus Wagner! He's hitting, he's running, he's throwing, he's got me channeling John Denver.

I'm gone, baby. Waaaaaaaay gone.