When the Marlins finally decamp for San Antonio or Las Vegas or Portland or Oz or whereever it is that they're going, I want a guarantee: No one will ever again play, practice, discuss, reference, allude to or think about baseball at Soilmaster Stadium ever again.

I could go over to Retrosheet and crunch some numbers, but it would be a futile and useless gesture, because those numbers lie. They're false memories and out-and-out fabrications, about as reliable as the moon landing, and I don't want to hear about them. In reality we're 0-97 here, or something similarly terrible, with every game reminding me of why I loathe this place more than any baseball stadium not infested with Yankees. Green cathedrals? Bah. Leave bread in some forgotten nook of the pantry too long in the summer and it'll turn green, but I'm not genuflecting.

This fricking place. The light's wrong. The dimensions are strange, not strange as in quirky but strange as in what moron thought this up. And terrible thing after terrible thing happens to us here. Aces get left on the table for the crime of giving up two lousy runs in seven innings. Reliable, begoggled relievers are left agog by line drives to the left and the right and line drives to the in between. Those line drives to the in between strike bases imitating pinball bumpers. Ironman third basemen get back spasms. Anonymous 15-year-old Marlins run through coaches' stop signs and incur no penalty. Lineups go cold. And you wonder how a team that a moment ago seemed primed for October suddenly looks like it was awoken in January and asked to take some swings.

I like the idea of the San Antonio Marlins, who'd quickly become the Missions or the Riverwalkers or the Surrounded or some such. We could swap them to the NL Central for the Pirates, who are like half-remembered strangers these days. The Spurned could maybe get a little rivalry going with the Astros or the Diamondbacks. Or maybe they couldn't; I've been to all 50 states but I must confess age is leaving my sense of geography a little frayed at the edges — these days I can tell you with great certainty that San Antonio, Houston, Phoenix and Manhattan are all west of Brooklyn, but ask me to get more specific and I'll distract you and run for the exit.

Which is what I wish we could do every time I see we're playing the Marlins and we're the visitors. If these particular young men went west, I could relax into the warm embrace of knowing I'd never, ever have to watch our team stumble through a listless Soilmaster evening again.

Got a great e-mail last night from a woman who took her kids to the game yesterday, presumably on the sly. Said it was a great day to play hooky from work.

Meanwhile, I had to work, yet felt I was playing hooky from baseball.

The last Mets game I missed in its entirety was Victor Zambrano’s very first start, in Milwaukee, on August 5, 2004 (Mets 11 Brewers 6; I’ll bet you assumed we lost). The next 262 games were cake. By luck or design, my schedule and the Mets’ schedule meshed so that business never dragged me too far afield from the field, the television or the radio.

Thursday, a client needed my presence in its — not my — office. They needed me only until early afternoon, they said. I knew they were unintentionally making a funny, that this was going to be one of those situations that would last at least double the time they said it would, maybe longer. That’s fine, as far as that goes. That’s business.

But there was the little matter of Game No. 263.

Would I be able to continue what I assume to be my longest-ever personal Mets streak? And was I actually worried about this? Missing Mets games didn’t keep me from going away to college, for instance. But I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now. Still, there’s a fine line between being Cal Ripken and being just creepy. Was I mismanaging my obsession or was I just being a fan who couldn’t stand the idea that a Mets game was in progress and I wouldn’t know what was going on?

That happens to people every time there’s an afternoon affair. Or had I forgotten?

Making the decision to go the self-employment route two years ago, believe it or not, had nothing to do with the Mets, let alone blogging. Midweek afternoon games were sort of an accidental bonus…a non-paying bonus, but a little extra in my mental envelope to break up the routine of working alone every afternoon, something more interesting than Air America to have on in the background and something to which, for an inning or two except under most severe deadline pressure, I knew I could casually devote my attention if I wanted. When you work for yourself, you make your own benefits package.

Thus, I almost forgot that Mets fans are routinely deprived of daytime baseball action, that following a game on the sly, in bits and pieces, becomes necessary. That’s how I did it in my magazine days. Usually I sat near a window, so WFAN reception was OK and I could at least keep up. If there was a 1:10 or 1:40 start, I’d time my lunch “hour” for well after two, maybe closer to three, that way I could go somewhere with my Walkman and catch the meaty part of the game. I was known to extend those hours like a rubber band if it was a close one. Delayed at least one pointless “let’s redesign the book” meeting while I sat in Washington Square Park and listened to Jay Payton bang a walkoff homer off of Juan Acevedo (and I was still pissed off I couldn’t stick around, feed the pigeons and hear it again and again on the postgame).

My distractions were generally indulged by employers and associates. If you work productively in a generally creative environment (I did), and your services are reasonably valued (mine were), you can acquire a certain status as the office something-or-other. I was always the office Mets fan. It was cute, so nobody kicked. “Oh there’s Greg listening to his baseball game again. Isn’t that adorable?” When I’d disappear for several innings, it was just understood that that’s what I’d do. I’d be back and I’d stay late and it was no problem.

But when you’re a hired gun as I am now, nobody knows your quirks. It’s your services, not you they’re interested in. Again, fine. I love that somebody wants my services. But they don’t know that the Mets are trying to sweep the Phillies and that I’m trying to punch a 263rd notch in a very hole-y belt. I can’t rightly say, “listen, those are all good ideas, but it’s getting to be a little after one, so I recommend we all take three hours to think about what we’ve discussed, maybe a couple more if it’s anything like the other night when it went fourteen and reconvene in this windowless room when we know more.”

Dratted windowless rooms. They are a scourge on the American workplace. There was one embarrassing period on one of my old magazines when I lost my window. Did I say embarrassing? I meant distressing. No FAN reception at all. That was the year I subscribed to the mlb.com service that broadcasts play-by-play on your newfangled computer machine. It was good as far as it went but when I realized the feed was a minute or two or more behind real life, it seemed a fraud. I once got a call from a friend who was telling me how annoying it was that all these Yankee fans were at Shea just to cheer that non-entity, Tino Martinez of the Cardinals, and I didn’t know what she was talking about because Martinez hadn’t yet come up to bat on my PC. That was when I knew I had to quit that place.

Yesterday’s big meeting surged past 1:10. Limped past 2:00. Must’ve been 2:30 when we finally got a break. I don’t work there, I’m wearing a visitor’s badge, yet I know what I have to do: Scour the premises for an empty office with a view and float unnoticed toward that office widow and furtively plug my ears into my tinier-than-life radio — with all the gadgets going around, I’m sure it looked I was on a very important call from Hong Kong — and hope that the game isn’t in commercial or out of reach.

In all my existence, I was never so glad to hear Chris Russo’s voice. It was the epitome of better than nothing.

Yes, as direly predicted the other day, my lifeline to the 263rd consecutive Mets game I’ve managed to catch at least a little piece of was an ignorant, spittling, gurgling, speech-challenged San Francisco Giants fan. But he was all I had. Chris Russo took me through Brett Myers striking out Cliff Floyd and let on that it was 3-3 after five. It wasn’t much and it wasn’t good, but it was my window into the Mets game. I managed to grab two more smidgens before the meeting was over, the second of which was Eddie C. saying, “Chase it must feel good to get one” and I could figure out he didn’t mean a seat on the we-just-got-swept express. If I had a larger window, I would have stuck around to confirm that, but I had to go on instinct and go back to my meeting.

My two snippets of game action plus the highlights I heard on my way home (very long meeting) revealed Russo and Francesa were having a good time even if few listeners were likely to be having the same. As much as I’d like to, I can’t criticize too much, and not just because of my reluctant gratitude that Mad Dog at Shea served my purposes like Murrow on a London rooftop during the Blitz. I didn’t hear more than a half-dozen pitches live. Barely good enough for the streak, but not nearly enough for a critique.

For an informed appraisal, I will turn this over to that thoughtful reader I mentioned at the top. I will not reveal her name because in her e-mail to us, she indicated that she might have, uh, cough, cough , come down with a little cold yesterday morning and, uh, you know cough, cough, she wouldn’t want to infect the rest of the office and, uh, cough, cough, if she just gives it a day’s rest, she should be fine to come in tomorrow because the Mets are in Florida by then.

Not that I would know how that goes.

I attended today’s game with my kids and was surprised to see that some 50,000+ other people felt the same way I did. What a great day to play hooky from work and go see a game! Unfortunately for the Mets, they lost in kind of boring fashion to the Phils.

More unfortunately for those of you who had to listen at home, Mike Francesa and Chris Russo were at the mic. I pity you if you had to listen. I never thought I’d say this but I’d rather listen to Sterling. Yuck. I took my jogger AM/FM radio with me but as soon as I heard Chris’ whine, I turned it off. You should know that when they announced that Mike and the Mad Dog were in the booth today at Shea, the fans BOOED!

I listened to Mets Extra in the car while stuck in traffic on the way home. Russo’s home runs calls were cringe-inducing. “It’s GAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” No “n” in “gone”. Apparently the Mad Dog doesn’t enunciate. Russo’s voice is to the ears what Lindsey Nelson’s jackets were to the eyes. But at least Nelson could call a game without making the fans reach for the barf bag. Ugh.

What on earth were the suits at the WFAN thinking? Poor Murph must be spinning in his grave.

I love reading your blog. It’s a great escape from work!

Well, the most important thing is who El Duque isn't: He isn't Jose Lima or Jeremi Gonzalez. That makes me happy. Yeah, I'd seen Julio's stuff and thought big thoughts, but teams with 2 1/2 starters can't be picky, and as we're currently constituted Julio was a reliever searching for a role. And before anyone asks, who cares that Kris Benson is an Oriole? Beyond the fact that I don't ever remember calling you up and yelling, “Greg! We gotta go to Shea! BENSON'S PITCHING!”, beyond the relief I feel at not hearing the beat guys repeatedly ask Carlos Delgado if it bothers him that Anna thinks he's a traitor and a flag burner, if we had a time machine built expressly to undo trades, I think we'd be off to Tampa Bay, Cincinnati and Anaheim during the Nixon administration, not Baltimore.

Granted, El Duque was once a Yankee, and the Empire's Guild of Vile Propagandists made it sound like he escaped Cuba on two logs wrapped together with the twine from a baseball, when in fact it was a 30-foot fishing boat with a 480-horsepower diesel engine. But you know what? That was a long time ago, and putting on our colors absolves him of any misdeeds that can now only be glimpsed in the rearview mirror. (Funny what a change of laundry can do.)

But here's the least-important thing about El Duque, Met, that pleased me the most: I too saw the news on SNY, with Omar live. I love that we've got one of these shiny network things of our own, so I don't have to find out about trades by squinting at the bottom of the ESPN ticker. I love that they were trumpeting it like Mideast peace. (Isn't it?) I could get used to it.

Oh yeah, and I love that after METS TRADE JORGE JULIO I didn't see AND LASTINGS MILLEDGE.

El Duque's a Met. Jorge Julio isn't. Trade between Mets and Diamondbacks nets us an ex-Yank icon. Injuries and pennant races make strange bedfellows.

Omar's on SNY explaining that Orlando Hernandez isn't 50 and isn't washed up. He's certainly experienced in big situations. So is Christy Mathewson, but Hernandez is still active. Looked good for the White Sox last postseason, so I'll buy it.

Beats unknown quantities and quantities we shouldn't have gotten to know in the first place. I have to be careful as I tend to think pitchers I've heard of have to be pretty good, but El Duque (we can use his nickname since he's, uh, one of us now) I've seen. He might do us some good. He can't be any worse than Lima or Gonzalez. He's supposed to be better than his 2006 bloated ERA. Aren't we all?

Haven't gleaned whether he'll jump in ahead of Jeremi tomorrow. If not, I'd still throw Heilman out there for one start because it is against the Phillies. But now Aaron's anchored to the pen presumably for the long haul.

Had come to have marginal faith in Julio. Marginal. Glad he won't stick around long enough to smash that to bits. There was a window when Mel Rojas wasn't so bad either. It hardly matters now, but Jorge Julio exceeded expectations here, the expectations being nothing but disaster. Didn't grow an attachment to him, but, you know…good for him.

El Duque's a Met. Good for us?

I've got another Jason in my life. He's also a Mets fan and I also met him online and he's also very, very sharp; I have good luck with Jasons that way. The one I'm talking about here sent me the gift of prescience Tuesday:

Today marks 7 years since The Schilling Game. Which marks the day when I knew for sure that the '99 team was going to be a special team. And here we are playing the Phillies again. Let's hope that means good mojo…

I'd say Mr. Mojo is risin', wouldn't you? Mr. Beltran, Mr. Reyes, Mr. Oliver and all the Messrs. Met are plenty aloft these days and nights.

Mostly nights.

Have I mentioned that was one delightfully freaky win? I don't mean this was one delightfully freaky win. Don't misinterpret: At 14 pitchers used, 15 Met hits, 16 innings played, 17 runs total and 18 unconscionable teases that the end was near, it was delighfully freaky to the extreme. But I mean I must have mentioned some variation on “that was one delightfully freaky win” about a dozen times this season. Nationals, Padres, Giants, Pirates, Braves, Skanks…what's another breathtaking, heartstopping, pulsepounding, headscratching baseball game for the ages?

Someday, perhaps when the events of 2006 are known in full, this, like that day in May 1999, will be obscured by an incredible September and an unbelievable October. Maybe this, like the Sunday at Shea against Philly when Curt Schilling entered the bottom of the ninth up 4-0 and left it down, out and Oleruded 4-5, will become a footnote to another Pratt fall, another grand slam singular autumn — recalled by heart only by impassioned defenders of the Faith.

In a season that's 44 games old and already larded with surprise endings and shocking continuations, who would be surprised or shocked if we forgot a chapter here or there? How much more are we expected to remember?

We must remember this:

• Down 0-2, we tied it on homers by Wright and Floyd.

• Down 2-6, we chipped and chipped back to 5-6.

• Down 5-8…well, I wasn't thinking comeback or even tie. I was thinking about a Mets-Phillies game from 15 years ago, kind of the inverse of the Schilling game. It went only ten innings but it schlepped on for nearly five hours. The Mets had innumerable chances to win but chose to lose. It was the gakkiest of gakoff losses and that, I must admit, is where I thought we were headed again. Unlike my auxiliary Jason, I lack imagination.

• Down 5-8, the Mets would lack gak. We got to within 6-8, and then noted power hitter Jose Reyes golfed — eagled, Philadelphia — one to right.

• 8-8. A highly improbable 8-8 at that.

And so it stayed and stayed and stayed. Except for his being a Phillie, I really admired the hell out of Ryan Madson. Wanted to snap him like a twig, but he would have just regained his form and retired Carlos Delgado. He's my Schaefer Player of the Game…would be, except for his being a Phillie.

The guy I was rooting for to end it — understanding that I'm not picky and anybody we traded for in the course of the evening whose last name wasn't Bin Laden or Jeter would have won my unyielding affection with a timely, well-placed single — was Carlos Beltran. I think he's been, in his librarylike fashion, our best player for weeks. Not perfect, not noticed, not lucky (I think he got his hand back on the bag, but my thoughts don't count for spit), but steady. Even in a slump, he's whisper-quietly gotten his share of big hits and nice catches. The only thing missing was something that isn't missing anymore.

Good for the man I referred to as Belly in a fit of nickname auditioning. Certainly had fire within it in the sixteenth. That appellation came somewhere back in the early innings, or what archaeologists will no doubt refer to as the Trachsezoic Epoch, a period of spottily recorded history that few will remember given its utter irrelevance as it pertained to the Evolution of Met, a phenomenon that went something like this on May 23, 2006:

He oozed out of the muck.

He learned to crawl.

He straightened up a bit.

And now he walks, head held high.

Walks off with a win that looked impossible for hours on end, that is.

Suddenly, I'm so very tired.

But not of games like these.

…Steve Trachsel was bad.

…Gavin Floyd didn't get a rainout.

…Pat Burrell was around to kill us.

…Sal Fasano had short hair and no 70s porn-king 'stache.

…Steve Trachsel was worse.

…Paul Lo Duca couldn't field a one-hop throw to the plate.

…David Bell was tolling for thee, me and everyone else in orange and blue.

…Julio Franco was running bases like a rookie.

(Heck, it feels like Julio Franco was a rookie when this thing began.)

…Jose Reyes was a slugger.

…the Braves were taking batting practice somewhere out west.

…Ryan Madson had given up imagining the next time he'd get to throw 100 pitches in a night.

…Billy Wagner hadn't faced his old team.

…Carlos Beltran let himself come off a bag.

…Jose Reyes wasn't quite slugger enough.

…I could see straight.

…Darren Oliver thought he might get to start Thursday.

…it was still Tuesday.

…Lo Duca and Fasano could feel their legs.

…the Braves were still playing somewhere out west.

…the Phils were three games back.

…Madson still had Pitch #522 in his hand.

Hey! Alay! Welcome to the Show! You're going nine!

The schedulemakers did us a favor by giving us an off day Monday. I don't mean us the Mets, I mean us the Mets fans. I was too drained for a game against anybody last night, let alone a large one against the second-place Phillies. That must mean we're doing something right as a team (if something incredibly misguided with our lives).

I'm going to reiterate a point I made and felt from the weekend one more time: I don't get how you can't get caught up in the Subway Series. The rightly esteemed Metsblog Matt offered a thoughtful take-it-or-leave-it take on the fevered pitch yesterday:

The thing with the Subway Circus is that it is so insane, it is so manic, that it makes for an abnormal environment.

Matt goes on to examine the potentially harmful effects of that abnormality, particularly on the fans. Instead of obsessing on Billy Wagner blowing one to the Yankees, he says, we should move our minds to the Phillies.

(If the above link doesn't take you there, paste

http://www.metsblog.com/blog/_archives/2006/5/22/1976463.html

into another browser window; it's worth reading.)

Thoughtful as Matt was, his portrayal of what we just witnessed and the impact it had on the course of the season left me shaking my head. I don't understand, regardless of the perfectly legitimate intellectual rigor you apply…

• Division games are what count

• Interleague is a novelty that has worn out its welcome

• Getting caught up in any three games over 162 isn't helpful for the greater good

• Mets fans are too easily distracted by pointless comparisons to the Yankees

…how you can come away from a weekend like the one that just passed and not get caught all the way up in it.

When the managers and the players on both sides offer their own “just another game” default responses before the first meeting, I know they have their reasons. They're the ones who can't get too high or too low. But then they go out and play each other like their life depends on the outcome. They should do so all the time, but not all times are like this.

The Mets rejoiced in the ending of Friday in a way that they did not when they walkoff-won against the Pirates. The world ended Saturday the way it did not when they blew one to the Phillies. And I stood and attempted to will Wagner back to good mental health Sunday night in a way I hadn't for anybody since I tried to do the same for Looper in one of these Subway situations last season (alas, I wasn't always successful).

This is great, great, GREAT stuff. You can't have it every day. You wouldn't want it every day. You need 7-2 nights short on suspense and low-scoring affairs that are more sleepy than duelish and error-filled slopfests and 9:00 starts against the Rockies. That's baseball, too. But we need jolts of toe-curling emotion in our season and there's no better conveyance for it than the Subway Series. It's a gimmick, it's a stunt, it's a sop…but it works.

It worked even though I came into this thinking very little about the Yankees. When we're not doing well and they're positioned as the story, I can't help but notice how they're doing, thus I can't help but actively root against them. This year, because we've shoved them over to only half the New York stage, I haven't been assaulted by their progress, so except for some topline stuff on injuries and alibis, I haven't really kept up on them. I like it that way.

But I wouldn't care if they were 0-40 coming into one of these. I'd want them to be 0-43 when it was over and not just for the simple math that would translate to us being 43-0 (dream big dreams). I hate them. I've always hated them. There's nothing to like about them. If you put them in front of us — assign the task of defeating them to us, not a bunch of random Royals, Rangers or Red Sox — then it's as crucial as crack that we seize that opportunity six times out of every year.

Six is a good number to my thinking. Three on the site of miracle and wonder, three where it's dark and gloomy. That's equitable (though six at Shea and none wherever they play would be preferable). I heard a talk show host who doesn't like this setup suggest, “Why don'tcha just have them play each other 162 games then?” but that's just faulty logic. Then again, that was Michael Kay, so whaddaya expect?

As long as we're bashing afternoon drive time morons, it's zero hour minus 46 or so for the insult of insults, the Mets-Phillies broadcast that has been delivered on a blue and orange platter to Blowhard and the Retard. I was annoyed at this on principle at first. Now I'm annoyed at it in practice. Business will take me away from my beloved Gary Cohen on Thursday afternoon, thus at some point I will actually be relying on Mike Francesa and Chris Russo to tell me what is going on in a regulation Mets game, pitch by pitch, play by play. Maybe I'll just listen for the woodpeckers (beats listening to those peckers).

If you need one more reason to hate this, think of the slap it is at loyal, talented, Metsblooded Howie Rose. Maybe Howie's good-humored about this. Maybe he'll enjoy his day off. But I doubt it. Back in 1990, when Howie was a backup PBP'er and Murph wasn't going to make a road trip (a rarity then), whoever was running the FAN decided it would be a fine idea to pair Gary Cohen with the son of Jack Buck in St. Louis and the grandson of Harry Caray in Chicago. Howie disguised his disgust only moderately. When a caller told him he deserved the gig, he replied, “my father owned a hardware store.”

Howie actually used to drive me just a little crazy by his evenhandedness toward the Yankees when he was call-taker. He admitted he came from a generation (maybe the recessive part of it) that was able to root for the Mets and not hate the Yankees. That was long before Interleague play was more than a World's Fair exhibit, so I suppose it wasn't completely off the wall.

I think the calm, rational, can't-we-all-just-get-along? Howie Rose got caught all the way up in the Subway Series Friday night. When The David's ball fell between Damon and the wall, Howie accented the moment in an absolutely Amazin' Matteau! Matteau! manner: Put THAT in your books! The Mets beat Rivera in the ninth! Why not? It was a four-alarm classic, it deserved a four-alarm siren.

Like the two contests that followed, it sure as hell wasn't just another game.