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.

666 is SO 6/6/06. On June 7, it was all about .667.

Two outta three, two outta three, two outta three. If the Mets wanna do a three outta four this weekend, nobody here would argue the point. But after one hellish night, we'll take our two of three and pack for Phoenix with no complaints.

Win more series than you lose. When you lose a series, as we did to the Giants, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start winning series all over again the way we just completed doing against the Dodgers. That's a habit to which we had grown accustomed when we were recently routinely (if often dramatically) taking two of three from the Yankees, two of three from the Phillies, two of three from the Marlins and two of three from the Diamondbacks. That's five series out of six. If that's a lifestyle choice, it's a good one.

The 666 thing, the business about omens and demons and whatnot, is the day before yesterday's news. Sure, Rafael Furcal is Satan for certain, but he was only one of nine opposing batters. Tom Glavine, pitching more than badly enough to lose, held up against the rest of the Dodger order just well enough to be rescued by his jury-rigged lineup. Glavine got a win he didn't really deserve? How's that for throwing the change-of-pace?

Any Met win is a great win but any Met win that includes major contributions from the village elder — Julio Franco starts, drives in two and scores a third from first — and the Milledge child — Lastings triples home Julio, homers home two more and guns down Garciaparra at second on a pea from left — eases gnawing concerns that this will be the roadtrip from hell. Or to hell. Hopefully, it will be just another visit to the dry heat of Arizona. 2-1 down, four to go.

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.

What's larger than a gully, smaller than a canyon and feels like an abyss?

A ravine.

• Like Chavez Ravine, where Dodger Stadium was built five years after Walter O'Malley bolted Brooklyn for Los Angeles.

• Like the Chavez ravine that opened up in the middle of our lineup last night when a slap-hitter named Endy stepped into a hole created when a slugger named Cliff stepped into a hole in Chavez Ravine, swallowing whole our slugging out of the six-hole and slapping our chances somewhere over a cliff.

• Like the seemingly bottomless ravine that a West Coast night game creates all day and well into the evening back east.

Games like Tuesday night's, battered as they are with bumps, bruises and BS, are horrible at any longitude. But yes Mr. Petty, the waaaaaaiting is the hardest part. I can't believe how wide the chasm is between 7:10 PM EDT and 7:10 PM PDT. This is about as much fun as being told the doctor's running a little behind, it'll be just a few more minutes…three nights in a row. Bring a good book.

There may be entertaining things to watch and productive things to do in the interregnum, but I swear the world slows to a crawl when you're counting down to a California start. The struggle to make it to the first pitch may be more tormenting than the battle to remain awake for the last out.

Right now, it's late afternoon in New York. And there are still more than five hours to go. No game 'til 10. No Floyd 'til further notice. No certainty about Reyes. Just one long noooooo stubbornly ensconced in our collective gut from last night's nocturnal debacle. And miles to go before we sleep.

I hate Walter O'Malley.

So. Did we have fun?

Let's see. There was Jose Reyes getting scratched before things even started, leading to the somewhat odd sight of Chris Woodward at the top of the lineup. There was Cliff Floyd turning over on an ankle and having to be helped off the field, leading to the somewhat odd sight of Endy Chavez in the middle of the lineup. Then there was Carlos Beltran showing the trainers what he'd hurt after landing hard on the warning track, at which point I may actually have blacked out for holding my breath.

I didn't think any of that was fun.

Oh, the non-injury part of the game? There was Pedro realizing he'd come out of the bullpen weaponless and trying to make it up as he went, only to have even his legendary improv skills desert him. (I tried to convince myself that having been lights-out in May with nothing to show for it, Pedro would logically get a win when he didn't deserve one. Guess not.) There was Heath Bell, doing very little to indicate he's about to reward the faith statheads and stathead wannabes keep putting in him. (Imprison Heath Bell!) And worst of all, there was Jose Valentin trying to figure out what to do with a glove that had suddenly turned to stone.

That wasn't any fun either.

Our 7th-inning insurrection? OK, that was fun — I dared to hope after Saito came in and promptly walked Wright, bringing the tying run to the plate. But is it a crime to have wished for more fun? When Valentin came up, I was thinking redemption, atonement, and all those good qualities baseball can provide to the patient and the pure of heart. And then … Martin set up on the outside corner … and Saito threw a fastball that missed. In fact, it had a good chunk of plate … and Valentin popped it up.

That was particularly no fun.

After Valentin's pop-up came down, I was thinking that tomorrow's the rubber game. Because much as I like Milledge, and much as I believe in our team's heart and moxie and can-do spirit, the baseball gods had spoken.

The New York Mets would like to apologize to the Los Angeles Dodgers for taking a series-opening win from them Monday night. It was just, they swear, their way of soothing the hurt feelings of San Francisco Giants reliever Steve Kline who was critical of Lastings Milledge's momentary lapse of accepted decorum and gauche display of a pulse Sunday afternoon.

Lastings Milledge would like to keep on apologizing to all who are miffed by his youth, exuberance and talent. He feels terrible about that run he drove in against Brett Tomko in the sixth. If Tomko was offended that Milledge all but knocked him out of the game, then Milledge apologizes for that, too.

Mets fans who sat down the right field line Sunday have signed a letter of apology to Milledge for sticking their hands out, palms front, for him to slap in the wake of his dramatic tenth-inning, game-tying, career-first home run. They now see they placed a terrible temptation in the young man's path and are filled with remorse that they may have led him astray.

Jose Reyes would like to apologize to the Dodger Stadium scoreboard operator for showing him up by leading off Monday night's game with a home run. It's very showy to put up a 1 right away and Jose feels terrible about it.

Carlos Delgado would like to apologize to his slump for the two-run homer that followed. The slump was shown up something awful by Carlos' swing, and Delgado is a professional and never would have done that had he realized it could be taken the wrong way.

Jose Valentin would like to apologize to Kaz Matsui for hitting and fielding well. Valentin now knows succeeding at second base is really just another way to show up Matsui, who was calmly and professionally batting .205 before giving way to his reluctant successor.

Alay Soler, through an interpreter, says he is deeply sorry that he shut down the Dodgers for seven innings and earned his first big league win. He reserves his most sincere apologies for the Philadelphia Phillies and Arizona Diamondbacks, the two teams that might feel shown up because he didn't pitch nearly as well against them and now they are left wondering if they were offered a true test of his abilities.

Chad Bradford sincerely hopes Billy Wagner didn't take his saving the opener against the Dodgers the wrong way. Chad understands now that it is wrong that anybody besides the designated closer secures a victory. He'll see to it that it doesn't happen again, though he can't promise anything. And for that, Bradford apologizes some more.

Pedro Martinez would like to apologize in advance to his teammates for the guilt and shame with which they will be racked when they won't score for him Tuesday night. He is ashamed already.

Willie Randolph sends regrets to the New York Yankee clubhouse staff for forgetting to return their very long and pointed stick upon leaving their organization to become manager of the New York Mets. It had just been up his ass for so long, he explains, that he forgot it was there.