By walking off the field freshly triumphant after 13 innings, the Mets continue to provide free advertising for the most relevant blog of them all, and everything is fairly wonderful, but I'm surprisingly bugged that in his six May starts, including last night's sublime pitchers' duel, Pedro Martinez's won-lost record was 0-1.

That's not Pedro Martinez. That's maybe Pedro Feliciano. Or Teddy Martinez in mop-up duty. Pedro should have been Maydro. According to Metsblog, he posted a 2.14 ERA in the merry, merry month. How on earth is that 0-1 material? At worst, it should be 0-0-6 because I continue to be in Pedro's (or K-Dro's) Corner (or Korner) from last Friday night. He said then he didn't lose. He's right. He doesn't lose. At least he hasn't in 2006 from this vantage point.

I don't usually get caught up in pitchers' records because they're subject to so many variables. The only number that ever mattered was 20 and twenty-game winners are an extinct species in these parts; Frank Viola was our last. If starters, almost by design, almost never finish, decisions are bound to be community property with the bullpen. So why dwell on an ND when you can revel in an Endy? Besides, Pedro needn't win another game to gain induction into Cooperstown five years from the minute he retires. But he's entitled to those he's earned on our behalf.

There aren't enough words or awards to shower on this man. What he has done for this franchise is positively Keithish (the fierce first baseman, not the lovably loopy analyst). Yesterday, Lee Jenkins wasted a lot of space in the New York Times picking over the carcass of the Scott Kazmir trade as if we're all donning sea-green armbands every time he starts in St. Petersburg. I'm with the informed dissenters who are convinced that if Kazmir stayed, Pedro never would have come, that the overhaul of this team would have never taken place the way it has. When you consider where we were pre-Pedro, 2005 and 2006 to date have marked a remarkable renaissance for what was, twenty short months ago, a floundering franchise.

That's not to excuse a transaction that even I, who didn't hate it, can't defend any longer. It's just to say I like very much what's happened to the Mets since the end of 2004 and if we had to, in essence, give up a budding stud to get a transcendent one (along with a first-place future to be named not that much later), then I chalk Scott Kazmir up to the cost of doing business.

On the First of June 2006, I'm not worried about departed Devil Rays or decrepit palace intrigue. I'm not even overly overwrought about Pedro officially being 5-1 instead of the 11-or-so-0 he deserves to have next to his name…though his teammates not hitting Brandon Webb a lick is no shame. Like our ace, he was as crisp as a bag of Baked Lays. But Brandon Webb's not my cause.

Mets got the win, right?

Milledge threw out Counsell at third on a speeding bullet, right?

Jose Valentin owned second base on both sides of the ball, right?

Endy Chavez took drama lessons from David Wright, right?

Duaner Sanchez promises to take good care of Pedro's W, right?

Then all is right with the world.

Not bad for a night's work: a pitchers' duel from a bygone era, some pretty defense, clutch relief, a whale of a throw and a(nother) Met walkoff. And 13 innings in roughly the time to play one moderately long game of regular duration.

Brandon Webb was first sighted in this park three years ago, beating us in his first-ever start. Of course, that put him in a class numbering somewhere in the thousands, so it was a shock to realize how good this matchup promised to be. Brandon Webb? He's 8-0? Unscored upon since seemingly forever? Really? Strange things happen out in the desert when you stop paying attention.

The Webb hyperventilating sure wasn't some heat-induced delirium, though: With that sinker of his, it's a wonder he ever loses. Considering he doesn't walk anybody, waiting for the sinker or two per start that won't sink is a pretty tenuous game plan. Luckily, enter Pedro J. Martinez, who's rarely seen an occasion he can't rise to. (By the way, a pox on these interviews with players during the game. Is nothing sacred?)

Other random semi-insights and asides before we head into an off-day:

• I'd pay for a DVD of “Paul Lo Duca's Greatest Tantrums.” When Lo Duca loses it, he gets his money's worth — I'd put him in the Pissed-Off Pantheon with the likes of Dallas Green and Dennis Cook. After Carlos Beltran finished his third minute of writhing around on the ground (eeek), SNY cut over to Lo Duca and found him still trying to make Paul Emmel's hair catch fire by glaring at him. (No way was that a swing, by the way.)

• Oh what a throw from Lastings Milledge! That seed was the defensive equivalent of a no-doubter home run — the moment the ball left Milledge's hand, I let out a little yelp of happy anticipation, much the same sound you make when you see a ball leave the bat at that certain angle and velocity. Seeing Wright's glove pop backwards when the ball arrived on the fly was quite something, too. If Milo can do things like that on even a semi-regular basis, I'll forgive him whatever mustard he wants to anoint his game with.

• What was up with the back of Brandon Medders' head? Does he sleep on the rosin bag? Did the bullpen catcher peg him with it?

• I still don't know why Jose Valentin can't bat without his helmet flap folding the top of one ear over, but he can do everything else. That move to third on the ball hit to his right, after he saw the ball was hit slowly enough that baseball conventional wisdom didn't apply, was the epitome of cagey veteran. The only downside? If he keeps this up, we'll be too patient with apparently washed-up pinch hitters for years, remembering how wrong we all were about Valentin. (Seems like a fair deal right now, too.)

• It's official: Johnny Estrada is the worst bunter in major-league history. And he's a catcher! How many bunts has he seen from two feet away that he can't manage one himself? I'm glad he didn't get it down, but for Chrissakes….

• When Ramon Castro came up, Emily asked what would happen if somebody got hurt, seeing how the Round Mound of Pound was our final position player. I ventured that they'd move whomever could fill in best to the position vacated by the injured player, then stick a pitcher in the outfield and move him between left and right depending on who was up, shades of Orosco and McDowell in the Ray Knight/Eric Davis game. (Morning-after add: A move Davey swiped from Whitey Herzog, who'd sometimes do it just to conserve pinch-hitters.) And, I offered, it would be kinda fun to see. In theory, of course.

It went unremarked upon as far as I could tell that when David Wright had to sit out a game in Florida, Jose Valentin filled in at third and became the Mets' 132nd third baseman. With The David firmly ensconced there, it seems likely (barring everything) that the hot corner will be warm and snuggly for a good, long while.

But second base is a mess. Second base is usually a mess. Nobody counts all the second basemen we've gone through (it's 113). Nobody's written a song, as far as I know, to acknowledge that second base can't be satisfactory filled. One was written about the then-79 third basemen in Mets history. It showed up on An Amazin' Era, the 25th anniversary videocassette celebration. Third base was a lingering Mets joke then. Mr. Wright has at last made it the feelgood finale to an overlong romantic comedy.

But second base gets no love when it comes to earning angst. Second base has almost always been a problem child among Met positions. Well, a problem child whose misbehavior is more “maybe we should get him some help” rather than “YOU GO TO YOUR ROOM NOW!” After all, we won two world championships with four second basemen. Boswell and Weis platooned. Backman and Teufel platooned. Gregg Jefferies manhandled the position for a little while. Jeff Kent stood there for a time. Both would hit a ton, but not for us. We imported some very credentialed talent to play second. Roberto Alomar couldn't be bothered. Carlos Baerga was going through a phase. Second base has never been easily tamed.

There were a few individual success stories. Fonzie, of course, though only after he was yanked off third for Ventura. Ron Hunt early. Doug Flynn primarily with the glove. Felix the Cat could spray hits around and turn the pivot. But while second base hasn't exactly been the sack of shame, it hasn't been the sack of honor either.

Now it's a sack of…

The Mets are proving 50 games into the season that you can build and maintain a first-place lead without a regular second baseman. Conclusion: It's just not that important a position.

My logic professor warned against such inductive reasoning. But honestly, who's on second? And does it really matter?

2006 in brief has brought us this:

• Anderson Hernandez wins the job by default. Everybody's thrilled because he sure can field. Everybody gets a little less thrilled when it becomes apparent he sure can't hit. Then he gets hurt. Everybody takes a deep breath because…

• Kaz Matsui wins the job by default. Everybody's thrilled because he sure did hit an inside-the-park homer his first at-bat (that first AB bit proving most charming once again) and he gets to balls and hangs in on double plays like he never did before, like Willie was working with him behind Petco Park as soon as he returned. He got a few timely hits and the folks got off his back but then he stopped getting timely hits and the equation that worked pretty well for Hernandez — good glove, little bat — began to work against Matsui in popular and practical terms. He's benched and nobody minds because…

• Jose Valentin wins the job by default. He's part of a mix & match, actually, but we haven't seen Kaz anywhere near second and Chris Woodward continues to anchor the bench. Jose Valentin, it will be recalled, was perhaps the most reviled Met since Gerald Williams. But that was all the way back in April. The 99.9% of Mets fans who assumed he was utterly worthless (I'll count myself among the vocal majority) were delightfully surprised by his offensive surge in his outfield cameos and decided they couldn't get enough of him. What's that? He can play second, TOO? Who knew? Put him in! Put him in! He doesn't look particularly comfortable out there and we're bound to pay for it, but he is hitting, so no complaints.

Until the ball that goes under his glove leads to the run that dooms Pedro when Brandonmania kicks into high gear, if in fact Valentin is starting tonight, and I'll assume he is. Pedro deserves every hot Met bat he can get.

None of these fellows is the 2006 answer. Randolph has already ruled out the return of Anderson Hernandez any time soon (though rules are made to be broken). Kaz seems lost. He's seemed lost before only to surge to the brink of being found, so maybe there's a tiny bit of hope there. Jose Valentin has proved himself the moral equivalent of Chase Utley for May; we'll see about June. I think Chris Woodward's still on the team.

Yes, it's a stew. But so were Backman and Teufel. So were Boswell and Weis. Those stews weren't as ingredient-heavy as these, but maybe we can get by. Maybe Jeff Keppinger will eventually be judged to have paid his debt to society and be released from a Virginia prison. Maybe, as suggested somewhere downblog, Mark Grudzielanek, a name-brand second baseman and the assumed December answer to our second base spelling test, will finally get his geography straight and head to New York. Maybe Edgardo Alfonzo, released by the Angels, will come home and…damn, he's already signed with Toronto. And he's batting .089.

Maybe Keith Miller's not busy.

I don't have a solution. I don't have a strong preference, other than for routine competence on both sides of the ball. It's second base on the Mets — I don't think I can expect much more.

If you're looking for highs in the course of a season, you start with wins. But next to those, I can't think of anything more uplifting than the big-time position prospect who makes an unexpected middle-of-the-schedule debut. It's little wonder that we all got fairly excited when Lastings Milledge became the 789th Met Wednesday. He didn't look scared in doing so and he didn't sound scared talking about it afterward. The scary part is wondering what's next.

For a hotshot to get a shot between Opening Day and September 1, it usually means something has gone wrong, often terribly wrong. Appendicitis striking your starting rightfielder would qualify.

David Wright was that rare phenom who got the mid-season call when things were going reasonably well for the big club. The Mets hadn't yet fallen out of the 2004 playoff picture and Ty Wigginton was representing professionally at third. Wright was a case of we can't keep 'em down on the farm anymore. Jose Reyes' promotion a year earlier reflected his readiness but also the dreck that the 2003 Mets had shown themselves to be. Or was anybody particularly satisfied that Rey Sanchez was our starting shortstop?

Neither Wright nor Reyes, for all their advance pub, was the classic franchise-saver, the five-tool power bat we'd been promised since the day we signed on as Mets fans. Wright was going to be a real good hitter, it was said, but I don't remember being guaranteed a classic slugger. He hit more homers last year as a Major Leaguer than he did in any one season in the minors (though his combined bushes/bigs total in '04 was a nifty 32). Reyes was about defense, then speed and then hitting, certainly not power-hitting. Even today, he is patronized after home runs with “you sure hate to see him do that.” Yes, I can't stand the way he drives in runs and matures at the same time.

As you indicated, there was no one whose recall was more hyped than Darryl Strawberry. What had gone terribly wrong to precipitate his arrival was the Mets as a whole. 1983: Seaver starts his emotional homecoming and the Mets win on Opening Day. Craig Swan starts the second game and the Mets win again. Then it was toilet time in Flushing. We were 6-15 when the clarion call to Tidewater went out. Up came Darryl and Tucker Ashford. Tucker Ashford? Yeah, the Mets called up two players to make their debut on May 6, 1983. Ashford was the pack of gum you buy at the CVS so the cashier doesn't think you're some kind of weirdo for buying whatever the other, far more obvious thing is.

Tucker Ashford very briefly took over for Hubie Brooks at third. Darryl Strawberry replaced a vacuum in the heart of the Mets' batting order, one that had been sucking the life out of rallies since 1962. There was almost always a hole there, but in 1983 it was astoundingly noticeable. You could drive the National League East through it. Darryl Strawberry becoming a Met had been a dream since that Sports Illustrated article introduced him to the world. Hey, we have the No. 1 pick in the draft… We had waited almost three full years for Strawberry specifically, let alone all of our lives for anyone remotely like him.

Of course it was a jolt to have him here in the flesh, but the occasion of his promotion was also tinged with sadness. From May 6, 1983 on, there would be no more looking forward to the day Darryl Strawberry arrived. This was it. If he failed, there'd be no “well, at least we still have Darryl Strawberry on his way…D'OH!” I felt a little of that with Milledge Wednesday just as I've felt it with every gonna-be-great Met since Straw. It's a perverse endorsement of the “Me & Bobby McGee” school of scouting: I'd trade all of their tomorrows for one single yesterday of imagining what huge stars they were going to be.

Darryl? Can't say he wasn't a huge star. Can't say he was Ted Williams in any shade either. It's not a wash. He did become the No. 4 Greatest Met of the First Forty Years. He also became at least the second-greatest disappointment among human beings in Mets uniforms whose youths were so promising. I'd rather not go on about this, because Lastings Milledge isn't Darryl Strawberry.

There are some others I sure hope he's not.

I hope Lastings Milledge is not Jeromy Burnitz. Burnitz, like Milledge, like Straw, was a No. 1 draft pick. He wasn't quite as ballyhooed but he did serve as a glimmer of hope amid a present of mud, his future arriving in June of 1993, the world's worst season. Jeromy was a raw rookie, the way I've always read Ron Swoboda was. Very strong. Very unpolished. Like Rocky, you just kind of knew it was never all going to come together for Jeromy. Let's not sell Burnitz altogether short, however. He's had a productive, power-hitting career in distant precincts. His Mets tenures were honorable if ultimately lame. Rumor has it he's still plying his trade in the National League Central.

I hope Lastings Milledge is not Alex Ochoa. Ochoa brought “five-tool player” into our vernacular, almost exclusively as a laugh line. Too bad. Technically, he was a September ('95) callup, but he was tearing up AAA the following summer when he was resummoned for real. As with Straw's '83 and Burny's '93 milieus, 1996 was a Met disaster area. Perfect for a phenom. And Alex was phenomenal. Hit for the cycle in Philadelphia in the eleventh game of his second stay. Was hitting .390 after that. New York profiled him as The Cuban Missile. But the Missile missed most of its targets. Sold to us as the key to the Bobby Bonilla deal (as if Damon Buford and getting rid of Bobby Bonilla weren't plenty enough), Ochoa simply came up short. He didn't work any of his tools all that consistently or superbly; great arm, though. He was sent away for Rich Becker — pretty close to the ultimate insult — and persevered as a helpful spare part on other clubs, eventually earning a ring as a reserve outfielder on the 2002 World Champion Angels. Hasn't played since.

I hope Lastings Milledge is not Alex Escobar. Goodness gracious, I hope Lastings Milledge isn't Alex Escobar. This Alex got his call to glory in May of 2001 for Nadylike reasons. Shorts in the outfield necessitated two shots of Escobar before his time. Neither Jay Payton nor Tsuyoshi Shinjo played Wally Pipp to Escobar's Iron Horse. Alex seized no opportunities. When he returned very late in 2001, he displayed a little pop, just enough to supplement those glowing organizational reports that said Alex Escobar was three matching jackpots on a dollar scratcher. Next thing we knew, he was swapped to Cleveland for Robbie Alomar. It was a trade that helped nobody. Escobar recently resurfaced in Washington. As a National, not a lobbyist.

You can name your own examples of guys we waited and waited for only to be kept waiting. Some, like Payton, had numerous false starts, succeeded for a time and then went away unmourned. Others, like Preston Wilson, never finished their cup of Shea Stadium coffee before moving on (with our slightly reluctant blessing) to tealer pastures. And the Ken Singletons and the Dan Normans and the Gregg Jefferieses and…ah, you know.

But we're not always wrong. We as a people were all over a bonus baby first baseman who debuted to great fanfare on September 22, 1962. Ed Kranepool would come to bat six times in the Mets' first season and get one hit. He was 17 years old. Noted Leonard Koppett amid the luxury of post-Miracle hindsight, “The funny part was, there were Met fans who said, 'This may be our first championship player.'”

Incidentally, Ed Kranepool is 13 years and 9+ months older than Julio Franco. Julio Franco is 26 years and 7+ months older than Lastings Milledge. Ed Kranepool, at 17, was no more than 22 years younger than any 1962 Met (Gene Woodling, whose career ended the same week Eddie's started). The spread between Franco and Milledge is unprecedented on any Mets roster. Warren Spahn, born in April 1921, and Krane, hatched November 1944, set the record, if it can be called a record, in 1965. Julio Franco (August '58) and Jose Reyes (June '83) broke that record* on Opening Day. Franco and Milledge (April '85) set it anew last night.

So what else is old? The last player born before Franco to make a Mets debut was Pat Tabler in 1990. The last Met born before Franco still playing as a Met? Tim Teufel in 1991.

It's 2006.

On the other side of the age coin, Milledge is the most recently born of all 789 Mets, bumping Reyes back one notch. They are two of thirteen Mets to have been born in the 1980s. In chronological order of first Met appearance:

2002: Pat Strange

2003: Reyes, Danny Garcia

2004: Wright, Craig Brazell, Jeff Keppinger, Victor Diaz

2005: Royce Ring, Mike Jacobs, Anderson Hernandez

2006: Brian Bannister, John Maine, Milledge

Three of those guys are on the roster right this very minute. Three have lately seen the DL. Three others are rattling around Norfolk. The other four have scattered to the wind.

It's 2006.

With Reyes and Wright, the team that spawned the Youth of America is nicely making up in quality what it clearly lacks in fresh-faced quantity. Lastings Milledge isn't supposed to stick around all that long for right now, but maybe he'll be our next championship player.

Him and Franco and the 23 other kids who first saw light somewhere between 1958 and 1985.

*I consulted a very helpful spreadsheet shared by Ultimate Mets Database on the Crane Pool Forum to check dates and make assumptions. If I failed to cite an age spread that topped Spahn-Krane before Julio Franco-Reyes did, it's my fault for not being more diligent in looking.

So Lastings Milledge made his Mets debut tonight, accompanied by an enormous wooden cross, enough hype to launch several score circuses and approximately 50,000 mentions of Barry Zito and/or Dontrelle Willis. Collected his first big-league hit, too — a well-struck double off Miguel Batista to lead off the seventh.

Now that we've taken care of the historical record, let's admit that Milledge's debut is the only thing anyone will remember about this game, a listless tropical affair in which Alay Soler ran out of gas after a 10-pitch at-bat and most of the Met lineup looked like it had never filled up the tank in the first place. OK, people who brought dogs to the park will remember it, I suppose. Nothing against man's best friend, but the thought of being seated next to a panting dog on a night in which the stadium already felt like the bottom of an aquarium…ugh. After Milledge got his hit, the cheers vanished so quickly that you'd have thought someone unplugged something. Kid got his hit, it's 7-1 and hot as hell, Willie already threw in the towel by not pinch-hitting for Oliver, we're surrounded by dogs…let's go.

Can't say I blame 'em: I did think of going, but heat, tiredness, parenthood and rumor that Milledge might not make it to Shea in time kept me home. Sorry, Milo — I'll do better by you going forward.

The last big debut I remember swearing I'd attend was David Wright's, and that time I honored my pledge — I grabbed a friend from work and headed out to Shea on July 21, 2004 to see the phenom go 0 for 4 in a 5-4 win for the good guys against the soon-to-be-extinct Montreal Expos, a game about which I remember absolutely nothing except the cheers for Wright. The next day, without me looking down at him (but, if memory serves, with Greg in attendance), Wright would go 2-for-4 and the rest would be recent history.

Had I gone tonight, I would have missed an interesting stat from Elias, passed along by Gary Cohen: When Darryl Strawberry made his big-league debut, he was 21 years and 55 days old. When he took the field tonight, Lastings Milledge was 21 years and 55 days old. Too good to check, as they say in the less-reputable parts of the newspaper biz.

Not that any of us want to be in the business of comparing Milledge to Strawberry. Darryl arrived as “the black Ted Williams” and the savior of a downtrodden franchise, neither of them labels that did him any good. Milledge is, at least officially, just getting a taste until Xavier Nady returns from his appendectomy, and this team doesn't need saviors. (Though another back-of-the-rotation starter would not be turned away.) Straw came advertised as a prodigious home-run hitter; Milledge is still growing into himself, but is more of a contact-and-speed guy. Darryl won a World Series ring for us, but we all thought he'd wind up with more. Milo? Check back in a few months. And then there were worse things for Darryl, none of which we hope to see on Milledge's resume. Oh yeah, and Darryl wound up as a Yankee. Let's not even think about that.

Straw's debut? It was the night of May 6, 1983, at home against the Reds before 15,916 — and unlike tonight, it was a memorable game for reasons beyond personnel. Unlike Milo, Straw would have to wait for that first knock — he got it on May 8, which just happened to be my 14th birthday. On May 6, however, he struck out in the first, popped to third in the fourth, struck out in the seventh and ninth, walked in the 11th, and..well, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Tom Seaver started and went eight, leaving down 3-1. But the Mets tied it on a two-run homer by Dave Kingman with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. The Reds grabbed the lead back in the 10th; the Mets tied it on a solo shot by Hubie Brooks with two outs in the bottom of the 10th. Then, in the 13th, Darryl drew a two-out walk and stole second. Mike Jorgensen walked, and Frank Pastore gave up a walkoff three-run homer to George Foster. The winning run? A technicality, but it was scored by Darryl Strawberry.

Whew! Take a look for yourself — we would have blogged this one to within an inch of its life.

Nady out an indefinite period for an emergency appendectomy. Coming up from Norfolk, according to WFAN, is Lastings Milledge.

Yes, that Lastings Milledge. The guy we haven't traded so this moment could materialize. Not like this (recover quickly Hawk, we need ya), but here he comes. First Xavier, now the Savior. Except we don't need saving, so we'll see how young Milledge, born in 1985 (!), copes.

(Say, whatever became of Victor Diaz?)

It's dizzying to be a Mets fan these days, isn't it? The Tigers are a great deal of fun thus far and the White Sox are gamely defending their championship when Ozzie Guillen commands them to and the Cardinals are in first place with a new ballpark and the entire N.L. West is finding itself, but are any fans having a wilder and, on all counts, more successful season than us?

Comeback after comeback. Walkoff after walkoff. Character heaped upon Character (that's Upper-Case Character). First place and Lastings, too.

If you have a minute, grab the current New York magazine for an insightful profile of the best team in town (that's not the angle, but it's fun to say). Chris Smith, who does one “the Mets are a strange and wonderful thing” Mets piece per year, traces our surge to superness to the trade for Delgado. He is The Man in and out of the clubhouse, according to the article. Carlos D. may be in a slump, but who would argue the greater point?

It's the June 5 issue of the magazine, the one whose cover story puzzles out what the city might look in the next ten years. My guess is it will have a lot of Mets in it.

The holiday weekend was also my 15th college reunion, so tonight was my first chance in a couple of days to really focus on orange-and-blue dramas. Sure, I did my share of one-earing it over the weekend, which isn't coincidental: As a high-school senior I wound up picking between New Haven and Boston, and opted for New Haven because I thought I'd be able to sometimes see and usually hear the Mets there. (In 1987 the Mets were way up the dial on some low-powered station; as it turned out, even in New Haven listening was hit and miss at night after some Toronto station jacked its signal strength. Boston? No chance.)

Anyway, while keeping an occasional ear on Met doings I did manage to curse Tom Glavine: I tuned in Saturday afternoon to hear a certain excitement in Howie's voice; it was obvious just from the way The Eventual Met's pitches were being described that Something of Import was happening. As I suspected, no Marlin had reached base; no sooner had I started fretting that I'd anger all my friends by spending the next 90 minutes huddled in the fetal position while Glavine pitched the first no-hitter in Mets history than Reggie Abercrombie put an end to that. Oops. Sorry, Glav.

By the time I tuned in Sunday El Duque had departed; tonight I was determined that it was me and the Mets. Well, me, the Mets and endurance: Two rain delays and Trachsel was cruel, and the way Trachsel pitched was crueler. That aside, this one had little pieces to remember even before the extremely satisfying denouement: Lo Duca's ballet for hand, second base and Orlando Hudson's glove was entertaining, as was his double down the third-base line that hit…the bag? (No.) A rock? (No.) The lip of the grass? (Yes!)

As we fought back and coughed the lead up and fought back again, I found myself thinking about baseball teams and the long season. It's an unhappy fact of baseball life that lots of times what gets you to the postseason (or X distance into it) ahead of the other guy is everything breaking right: Major guys don't get hurt, platooners and bench guys and middle relievers have career years, balls land on chalk instead of just beyond it, and so on. With that in mind, if you want some more hopeful spin I sure saw some stuff rotating tonight: Once again we were behind late and I wasn't in the least bit scared — I had a feeling things would line up somehow.

Carlos Delgado is ice-cold? Cliff Floyd is heating up.

Kaz Matsui has finally run out of Met lives? Jose Valentin has found himself.

Xavier Nady can't hit in the clutch? Endy Chavez does nothing but.

Baseball teams sometimes get referred to as machines, but if so they're rarely drive-me-off-the-dealer-lot Ferraris. Instead, they're kit cars whose hoods are always up, with the daily drive a mad scramble for new parts and old parts and slightly reconditioned parts and parts banged into place while cursing and parts extracted and left for some other sucker to make use of. Sometimes the car winds up on the side of the road by June and it's a long walk to next February. Sometimes you get into September babying it and hoping, only to see the dash turn into a sea of red lights. And sometimes….

Shit, I ain't jinxing it. Let's just say that sometimes you get to the end of May and listen approvingly to the engine and flip the dial and hit the fourth great song in a row that's just beginning and you think, Baby, let's floor it.

So just to set up for the week ahead, we've got Trachsel Monday night against the Diamondbacks (last year, no game on Memorial Day, this year a night game; we're getting there), Soler on Tuesday followed by Pedro on normal rest. After an off day, it will be Glavine Friday, Hernandez Saturday and back to Trachsel on Sunday.

Do you know what that means? It means barring the unforeseen — and there's been lots of that — we have an actual rotation spinning on its own axis every five games. It includes a rookie with just one start and an ancient who's put in only five innings (four lovely, one icky) as a Met, but it shapes up as…let's just say it shapes up. Since the dehammyfication of Bannister and the zapping of Zambrano, we haven't been able to say that much. It's shown.

Yet here we are, still in first place by a reasonable margin despite a month or so when 40% of our starts have been taken by the lame and the halting and 20% more thrown by somebody who isn't Pedro Martinez or Tom Glavine.

Glavine's clearly the MVP of this club to date. He hasn't tossed a single bad game yet. Probably not a bad inning. It would be co-MVPs except Pedro and wins have been strangers on a train lately. He was right, though, the other night when he told the assembled reporters at his locker that he didn't lose to Florida just because he got tagged with an L. I haven't seen him lose since he's become a Met. Sometimes the other team wins is all. Hell, I'd say there haven't been any no-decisions where he's concerned. The decision to sign him was brilliant, the decision to space out his starts has been genius, the decision to not score on his behalf…well, there we could use a little less indecisiveness and a few more runs.

Not a problem for Orlando Hernandez who was spotted four in the first and took care of Marlin business thereafter. The second inning was a little slimy (as Fish, even the baby ones, tend to be), but he righted himself and the Mets were smart enough to score a few more on his behalf. They generally score for everybody but Pedro. I haven't kept track, but it seems Beltran's doing the inverse of last year. He'll homer for you and you and you and you, but not you, Pedro. You already got yours.

Let's assume the “neggies” (the downcast stats and trends sunshine-minded PR departments don't care to disseminate; the beat men on the '62 Mets popularized their calculation) will even themselves out and that the pozzies will keep pumping as they have. Let's assume that because it's no fun to go the other way.

• Let's assume Glavine is the living embodiment of what Leo Mazzone said about him a generation ago: “Payback is a bitch with Tommy Glavine. Just look into his eyes sometime.” I don't know whom he's paying back, but I like this effectively vengeful side of him.

• Let's assume the offense will sign a Louisville Slugger of apology and present it to Pedro.

• Let's assume Alay Soler won't become Julio Valera (he wasn't bad his first start either).

• Let's assume Trachsel is, you know, Trachsel.

• And let's assume Orlando E.D. Hernandez is capable of four splendid innings for every occasional clinker, a ratio beyond the grasp of John Maine, Jose Lima and Jeremi Gonzalez. Unless we're primed to recall Jim Palmer, Jack Morris or Juan Marichal, let's stay away from J-boys, OK?

Assume all that and you're spinning pretty good for yourself.