Funny how quickly The Worst Loss Ever recedes when replaced by a perfectly good win, a two-out-of-three series triumph and the end to several irritating losing streaks. Though I didn't necessarily believe it when I groped for something constructive to say the day before yesterday, we got 'em tomorrow after all.

No longer am I unvictoried on the year (1-3 never felt so luxurious). No longer am I mired in a two-season slump (the last two of '05, the first three of '06). No longer do I have to reach back to the Matt Franco game for my last intracity win (five straight defeats, including one at the Bronx House of Detention, until Sunday). Far, far, FAR more importantly, the Mets are 1-0 since TWLE.

The Yankees, meanwhile, have never won anything meaningful while I wear my 1986 adjustable mesh California Angels cap. They lost twenty years ago this week on the day I bought it at (genuflection alert!) The Stadium. They lost the 2002 American League Division Series. They lost the 2005 American League Division Series. Despite wanting to show my colors in the cauldron, I eschewed Met cappery Sunday night because I really needed to shake things up and change lotsa luck; Flashbackers with nothing better to remember will recall I broke an endless eight-game losing streak eleven years ago by wearing a Cardinals cap to a game against the Rockies. Hence, the Halo and hence, the hell with losing. The Yankees lost Sunday night even though I put the Big A away after a couple of innings and one mighty gust that nearly sent it from the upper deck to the Grand Central. Like Tom Glavine, it did its job.

Saturday is still TWLE, but unlike the Jordans of September 2001 and the World Series of October 2000, this came in May and May is a forgiving month. So in that spirit…

• I forgive Billy Wagner because we need him, but I still think he should only pitch every other time he pitches. Meaning? Send him out into the parking lot for an innocent game of catch between saves. That takes care of the on-off quotient. (The security guard commotion that broke out between the eighth and the ninth kind of robbed us of our Sandman Entrance moment. Just as well. Windy as it was, all we would have gotten was a Sandstorm.)

• I forgive Willie Randolph because we need him, too. He's the only manager we've got.

• I forgive an offense that was relentlessly inept for seven of eight innings, but for one inning, the fourth, POW! And BAM!

• I forgive whoever botched the coronation of Alex Rodriguez, 21st Century Met. He turned out to be our secret weapon. My co-blogger boldly declared he wanted the defending American League Most Valuable Player up in the eighth and though I cringed at the dare, A-Rod DP'd. Good call, virtual roomie. A-Rod surely put the Suck in Yankees Suck.

• I forgive those who came to Shea Stadium in enemy garb for making such a misguided choice with their lives. I gave them many evil eyes on the way in but when it was over, I mostly pitied them. Still don't much care for them, but they didn't seem terribly threatening having slunk out of Our House with only one extraordinarily aberrational eked-out non-loss to show for a weekend of bad manners and disturbed natures. In the platinum cheap seats, the mood was indeed one of good-natured dislike rather than holy war hatred; bonus points to the Mets fan who intermittently waved a sign referring to their Mr. Damon as JOHNNYCAKES. Hey, it's just a game…just a game WE WON AND YOU LOST. Nothing personal, crosstown rivalistas. Now crawl back in your holes and stay out of Queens (and Long Island, for that matter).

• I forgive a wind that wouldn't benefit the home team more than maybe once and seemed to tip in favor of the visitors over and over again. Shouldn't the wind know better by now? C'mon wind, you're supposed to be ours. Infield popups going for doubles? C'mon! Don't treat us like we're Pat Leahy lining up for a chip shot.

• I forgive myself for deciding that on one of the coldest late spring nights in Flushing memory — surely the windiest — I didn't need to wear a sweatshirt under my Mets jacket and a parka over my Mets jacket. Like the Mets, I survived. Some nights, that's all you need to do.

Honestly, I dread the Subway Series, and I don't particularly like to go — I've got anger-management issues as it is, so being confronted with braying Yankee fans in the flesh, instead of at the safe remove accorded by TV, isn't the best idea for me. Winning? It's marvelous, sure, but it comes with a certain sick sense of relief — and losing to Satan's minions, then having to ride the subway home with their adherents, probably takes a month off my life each time it happens. I don't know how our Brooklyn Dodger forebears did it for all those years in the 50s. I really don't.

But you never leave a co-blogger to face the forces of darkness alone, and this was my '06 Shea debut. And besides, to quote the Replacements, “might even win this time…you never know.”

The biggest problem, though, was the forces of cold. You want October baseball? This was November baseball — when it got quiet you could hear the flags around the perimeter of the upper deck snapping in a 35-mph wind. For entertainment between innings, we watched the foul pole rocking back and forth. (Its sole connection to anything stable seems to be a guywire hanging in a rather limp smile between it and the rest of the stadium, by the way. I'm sure there's no possible issue there.)

And we watched the crowd, a decidedly odd beast tonight. Our section was the lair of a long-haired Yankee fan who kept doing something up there above our heads that would incite the rest of our section, which would turn and chant “Asshole!” at him until they got tired, after which the Yankee fan would start doing something else. Shea's crack security guards kept showing up, only to be left peering up the aisle quizzically, vaguely disappointed to find nothing particularly wrong — antisocial behavior and bad language galore, but no fights and the crowd seemed to be handling things themselves. Until the ninth, the goon squad's one reward for its vigil was busting a guy who let go of a hot dog wrapper too close to the edge of the upper deck — not a particularly sensational crime on a night when pieces of plastic and paper were whipping by at approximately Mach 3 every 20 seconds. Then, in the ninth, the long-haired Yankee fan started doing the Tomahawk chop, and for some reason (possibly the sale of 45,000 beers in the section) this relatively minor offense was what set the crowd off. Some sort of last straw was added to the pile, the Yankee fan got hauled out, then a Met fan got hauled out, then somebody got the bright idea of hucking a bottle (one of those ridiculous light metal ones now in vogue) at the departing Yankee fan. Not smart when there's one guy being frog-marched out by eight goons — unless you're Bob Gibson (and sober), you're going to hit a security guy. Predictably, a moment later there were security guys cascading through the section screaming at people and frothing at the mouth as we all dove for cover.

This will seem like a laugh line after the above, but it was the best Subway Series crowd I've ever seen. Seriously: Our section had its share of morons (most of them, alas, in orange and blue), but they were all cheerful morons, and the catcalling and trash talking was high-spirited, lacking the angry, looking-for-trouble edge I've seen before. (High point: Every failing of A-Rod's was met with booming chants of “MVP! MVP! MVP!”) One Met fan came unhinged in the men's room and started howling at some random Yankee cultist, but everyone from both sides just shook their heads and laughed. Even the Mini Malice at the Palace that finally engulfed our section was more fan goofiness that finally went too far than it was actual rancor.

Which isn't to say this was a night for anyone who wanted to pay close attention to the actual game, or who believes in temperance, or who had kids in tow, but I've seen far worse crowds. (And lest we go overboard on thinking of the children, the eight-year-old a couple of seats down attending his first game — yes, really — was openly and unapologetically thrilled by the bad language and brief violence.)

Oh yeah, the game. The recap won't show that after Derek Jeter's single eluded Wright and Reyes and gave the Yankees a 2-0 lead, I hurriedly removed my hoodie, then my road blacks, and put them on in reverse order, with my colors out. Lo Duca immediately got on, Beltran followed, Delgado hit a three-run shot and Wright hit a drive that was so Piazza-off-Mendoza ridiculous that it might have decapitated a feral dog out chop-shop way. I will now wear some variant of this ensemble at all times, and accept everyone's gratitude for this timely bit of luck-changing. Sure, the eighth inning got scary, but luckily A-Rod came to the plate, and since the Yankees weren't up 10 or down 10, he was all but guaranteed to come up small. (A pull at the lucky now-outside-the-sweats colors sealed the deal, natch.) And then Billy Wagner emerged to the glee of Yankee fans and the defiant, frightened encouragement of the rest of us, and it all turned out OK.

Then out of the stadium and onto the subway and a chance to rediscover one of my favorite parts of the aftermath of a game: The 7 was packed, the 2/3 platform at 42nd fairly full, and then as the 2 headed downtown each stop subtracted a few folks in blue and orange, until finally I reached Clark Street and wound up with the couple of Met fans who happened to have been on my train and live near me — an accidental momentary family, in this case, of a younger guy also in road blacks and an older woman whose tote bag bore our colors.

“Long game,” she said. “But a good game.”

“Yeah — great game!” said the kid.

“Could be warmer next time,” I said.

They looked at me.

“But it was worth it,” I said as we went our separate ways into a grueling but triumphant night.

Hours after yesterday was in the books, Chuck called to commiserate. Though we've certainly had these “my god, wasn't that awful?” conversations before, he asked a new question: “Do you sleep after games like that?”

Good question. I didn't know because I don't think I ever saw a game quite like that.

Should I ever run for office or do anything in which I have enemies who need to take me down, they have their killer video. Just show the top of the ninth from yesterday and I will become unhinged. Not even that much of it is necessary. Just flash that bit where whatshisname is running in from the bullpen to whatever that song I never want to hear or hear about again is. Like a slab of kryptonite to Superman, a wooden cross to a vampire, an automobile baby-restraint device to Britney Spears, watching Billy Wagner enter Saturday's game against the Yankees will render me stupid.

I'm notorious in our house for making myself watch and rewatch “highlights” of Mets losses that killed me once, perhaps on the premise that they will make me stronger. The worst loss I ever experienced through the television, the second Brian Jordan game, I did that. I watched him hit that grand slam again and again, as many times as they would show it. Then I insisted I was going to listen to the details of the worst loss I ever experienced through the television on Mets Extra until Stephanie practically slapped (in her understated, completely non-slappy way) the radio out of my hand and dragged me outside for a walk to take my mind off it. That was five years ago. My mind remains on it.

But this I really can't look at. I watched Baseball Tonight last night for the Bonds stuff and the details of the Cubs-White Sox brawl and then they got to our game. And it hurt to look.

It hurt to see the high-angle shot of the Sandman trot.

It hurt to notice the Fox diamond icon that had the slots for first, second and third colored in.

It hurt to see Melky Cabrera get ball four in the 43rd pitch of that at-bat. I actually saw a batter in the Tigers-Reds game last night work a 3-2 count and foul off a slew of pitches and then strike out; how come that never happens to whomever we're facing?

It hurt to see Kelly Stinnett, who looks like he's been managing one of Tom Seaver's vineyards (or at least been joining him for brunch, lunch and dinner) take four consecutive balls.

It stung like the dickens to see Bernie Williams nailed with the first pitch thrown in the general direction of Corona. It's great to see Yankees get hit, but not now!

I looked away until they were done talking about it. Eventually, I slept. As I told Chuck, I slept after the 2000 World Series ended, so why wouldn't I sleep after this? Sleep provides an escape. I did wake up. The sun did rise. The TV did come on again. Stephanie and I had the Channel 2 early Sunday morning news on a little while ago. They went to sports. Change the channel, I said. Change it now. She changed it.

We were famously subject to a blown save in Pittsburgh last July. A lead that couldn't possibly have been touched was touched and tossed aside. It was, on merit, the worst loss of last year, yet I don't think I was one one-hundredth as upset then as I was yesterday. Even the horrible, Rod Kanehl-defying loss in Philadelphia less than two weeks ago — when Heilman threw the ball away and I literally let out the kind of howl that poor horse in the Preakness must have — was child's play by comparison. That was awful, but it seems so far away that it may as well have been Neil Allen surrendering a grand slam to Bo Diaz.

This was worse. Maybe not Brian Jordan worse because that had nails and coffin written all over it. Maybe not Game Five, 2000 WS, because that was that. Yet those snippets I can watch if they mysteriously reappear. I flinch, but I ultimately stand my ground. It's morbid curiosity, perhaps, wondering if maybe this time Franco will rescue Benitez (he doesn't) or Piazza will hit it just a little further (he doesn't).

This I can't look at.

Why was this worse? The obvious answer is who it was against. But I've seen bad losses to the Skanks before. All losses to the Skanks are, by definition, bad losses. Four of them came at the worst time imaginable and I survived. This was worse. I've sat through six of them in person and I survived. This was worse. I've seen the clip of Mike taking one to the coconut from that psychopath Clemens I don't know how many times and no matter how often I see our glassy-eyed hero lying still on the dirt and no matter how many chills it sends me and no matter how it conjures up every wretched thing about that day-night nightmare, this was worse.

This shouldn't have happened. This was preventable. This was within our grasp of becoming great, which I guess speaks to the problem with it. It's one thing to sit in a drizzle all night only to see Armando Fucking Benitez walk home the tying run in the ninth and Satoru Komiyama serve up a two-run dinger to Robin Ventura in the tenth. It was 2002, what'dya expect? This is 2006, I expect better. I expect different. I'm still laboring under the burden of the 10-2 start. That's why the aforementioned Philadelphia loss and everything that went wrong on the last road trip stung so much. This was supposed to be, by my early reckoning, the long-awaited sequel to 1986. Now it's just another year of Mets baseball when what can go right might go right but can just as easily go wrong.

This should have gone right. Winning Friday night was right, to say nothing of Wright. Yesterday shaping up as an uncommonly relaxing afternoon of pre-sweep planning was right. It is wrong that we are groaning this morning and wondering WTF? with our very high-priced closer and realizing that we let a game against our blood rivals get away when our blood rivals came at Billy Wagner with Melky Cabrera, Kelly Stinnett and a Medicare Part D Bernie Williams.

I hate the Braves with more hate cells than most people use in an entire lifetime, but losing to the Braves is like losing to the Rockies compared to losing to the Yankees. If the Braves don't completely regroup (they will, but let's say they don't) and the Phillies are our main competition for the National League East, what will we do? We'll hate the Phillies. Not that the Braves haven't earned an eternity of enmity, but a great deal of that is functional. With the Yankees, it's different. Coming back on them from 0-4 to win 7-6 in the ninth is sweeter than beating anybody by any score in any situation. It only goes to figure that blowing a 4-0 advantage on them as we did yesterday would hurt way worse than any five Jeff Francoeurs, any ten Marcus Gileses, any oversized gaggle of Chippers, Andruws and Brians…and believe me those fuckers sting pretty fucking badly themselves.

What's that? The Yankees don't play in our division or league, therefore what's the big deal? Get a pulse. It's too late for niceties. They're here on our turf and they're here on our schedule and they're not leaving either entity any time soon. Whatever residual griping is to be done about the existence of Interleague play can end. It's a part of our lives. (Don't tell me about how insipid the Devil Ray-Pirate matches are; what games involving the Devil Rays and Pirates aren't going to be insipid?) The Mets play the Yankees because they do and as long as they do, they will always loom as the largest games of the year. If they invented Interleague play in 1971 when I was arguing Cleon Jones versus Roy White at the bus stop, they would have been the biggest games of 1971. It defies defiance. We're the New York Mets. They're the New York Yankees. Of course it's going to matter more than life itself. Of course victory will shine at its brightest and defeat will cast its darkest shadow.

That said, there was something about yesterday that was worse than that. This transcended the opponent. Put those clowns in Nationals uniforms and it would have been extraordinarily brutal. It was that kind of breakdown. Making it an intracity affair just worsened it that much more. And throw in the stratospheric 2006 expectations that grow less realistic by the day and the inanity of the move that precipitated all this (why, why, WHY take out Sanchez?) and just the hellaciously awful lack of command by a closer who has run hot and cold and, I almost forgot, the fact that we couldn't do anything in extra innings and, most of all, how fucking great it would have been to have shoved a matter-of-fact win in our back pocket after what happened Friday night…well, it's no wonder I can't bear to watch what happened Saturday afternoon.

On the other hand, it is tomorrow. Let's get 'em.

See ya there tonight.

Was it that there was no need for this, not with Duaner Sanchez doing just fine and it not being a save situation? All afternoon I'd been thinking how weird it was to watch a Subway Series game and feel totally relaxed. I should have known.

Was it that I'd already let my mind skip ahead to Sunday night and how sweet it would be to arrive at Shea for my 2006 debut with my co-blogger awaiting me and little bands of overexcited Met fans shouting “SWEEP! SWEEP! SWEEP!”, knowing that the worst-case scenario was we took two out of three and fell short reaching for the cherry atop the sundae?

Was it wondering afterwards, “What's wrong with Billy Wagner?” If that had been his first appearance since Milwaukee, we'd be talking bravely about rust while wondering about the finger injury and what it may mean. But he was ridiculously dominant last night — just undressing the meat of the Yankee order. I don't know much about finger injuries, but if that's what's wrong, how could he be untouchable one night and unbearable the next day? This is the reason Heilman is such a dilemma: Julio could become the 7th-inning guy (he pitched OK today) with Heilman going to the rotation, but what if Wagner needs to go on the DL? One assumes Sanchez becomes the closer, and in that situation are you really going to trust Julio as your 8th-inning guy? If that happens you need Heilman in the pen, and if you made him a starter two weeks ago, how on earth do you reverse course?

Was it having to think of John Franco and Armando Benitez and Braden Looper, and wondering if they've got the Shea Stadium mound so screwed up that nobody can close from it? With a power pitcher like Wagner, you have to accept that every now and again a 97-MPH fastball gets hit just right and achieves escape velocity. But this was the death of a thousand cuts that we saw so often from Franco and Benitez and Looper — bad location, mental struggles, hits falling in and ground balls that couldn't quite be double plays.

Was it the fact that afterwards Joshua (lying on my chest) asked me, “What's wrong, Daddy?” and I replied “I'm unhappy that our team lost,” and he said, “Don't be unhappy, Daddy. They'll win the team next time they play”? It's a cruel game that can so unman a 37-year-old that he needs comfort from a three-year-old.

You know what? It's a five-way tie — all of the above has been churning around in my guts, and will do so for days to come. If this isn't the worst loss of the year, I don't want to know what the worst loss of the year will feel like. Sorry, kid, but I'm beyond comfort right now.

Ah, fuck it. We'll get 'em tomorrow.

While I and probably you settle down, why don't we all enjoy a Mets Classic?

Aaron Heilman, it's been said, should go back to starting. His three innings of game-changing relief, however, suggest he should fill all roles on the staff. Now starting…Aaron Heilman. Now warming up…Aaron Heilman. Now entering the game…Aaron Heilman. Now lifting an entire team and all the momentum it could ask for upon his back…Aaron Heilman. Those three perfect, perfect, PERFECT innings would have looked awfully good at the beginning of the night, too, but do ultimately successful Met-Yankee games ever operate that neatly?

On a night when Met ghosts were all over the TV — Rico Brogna in the SNY studio; Mookie Wilson on the WB pregame; Al Leiter fulfilling his sinecure; Ron Darling pretending to talk like he has something valuable to say; Tom Seaver's fleeting rear end barely evading the Channel 11 booth door on the way out; the zombie-like form of Jeremi Gonzalez morbidly hosting the right arm of Jeremy Griffiths, the only pitcher worse to start a Subway Series game for us and they both have the same initials — you know whose spirit Heilman evoked? None other than that of El Sid.

Yes, El Sid Fernandez, the starter who was never quite equal to the sum of his stuff but whose parts all added up in Game Seven of the World Series twenty years ago. Sid rescued Darling in that game much like Heilman rescued Oliver who rescued Gonazlez who swallowed the fly, I don't know why.

Game Seven…you know what I remember about Game Seven? I mean in particular? While I'm trying to watch and will the determination of the world championship, the phone rings. It's Larry, a dear friend whose connection to baseball couldn't be more tangential. Actually, I was pretty much his connection to baseball in those days.

He called me at the dawn of the bottom of the seventh on the night of the October 27, 1986 and freely admitted I was his anthropology experiment. Wouldn't it be fun, he thought, to hear Greg react to the Mets winning the World Series. I couldn't have been more annoyed if the Red Sox had reacquired John Tudor. It was tied! I had no time for this! But Tudor was still a Cardinal and Calvin Schiraldi was pitching yet again for Boston and Ray Knight (his name comes up a lot here lately) lined a fastball over the rightfield fence and I let out a shriek that woke the squirrels in the neighbors' eaves.

“THAT's what I hoped I'd hear,” Larry said. I hung up seconds later.

Hey, what's with the bonus post-Friday Flashback? What are you trying to tell us, boy? Did you get a phone call around the seventh inning Friday night?

Nods vigorously.

Was it, by chance, Larry calling in what seemed like the first time in twenty years?

Nods vigorously, barks at TV.

It's a bit of an exaggeration to say I haven't heard from Larry since 1986, but we don't talk that often. He continues to be one of that strange breed of people who doesn't know his team's daily and nightly whereabouts because he doesn't have a team. He just happened to be flipping around the dial and noticed the Mets were playing the Yankees and thought it would be a good time to call and check in with his old buddy the baseball fan.

That's both touching and odd. But I thought back to Ray Knight. Larry called me at a bad time in 1986 and it turned into a historically good time. So what was the harm of chatting through Heilman's perfection and Wagner's release from the closer protection program? So what if we talked about mostly non-baseball topics during the latter and crucial stages of a Mets-Yankees game? It's not like it was the World Series. Maybe it was like the World Series, but there's a fine difference.

At least once, Larry — who assured me he was rooting for the Mets, presumably on my account or out of common human decency or both — reacted to a batted ball, Lo Duca's double, that I hadn't seen yet. I deduced he was watching on Channel 9, not Channel 11. Larry didn't know the difference, that one was Good and one used to be. That's only worth noting because with two on and two out and Wright up in the bottom of the ninth, Larry made an encouraging noise while I was still watching a pitch. And Larry was describing a ball that was traveling toward the outfield while David was still swinging. And while something exciting, very exciting, was happening for Larry, I was…

a) still tracking the flight of Wright's ball on Channel 11, yet

b) implicitly understanding that it had already landed safely on Channel 9 but pretending that there was no way of knowing.

When I saw it with my own eyes, I let out some screams and threw some unbreakable objects and jumped around a lot and probably spooked both cats. There, Larry said — THAT's what I hoped I'd hear.

Just like 1986.

Not at all annoyed but terribly anxious to savor (rhymes with Xavier if you're not too picky) all that a Mets 7 Yankees 6 wrapup has to offer, I got off the phone and watched as much video as I could muster. That's where the ghost I had most hoped to see tonight, the ghost of Matt Franco, came to life. It was, for once, a chance to call up that hoariest of plays-on-musical-words, because the Mets did indeed gather around David Wright at first base and toss an impromptu walkoff party like it was 1999. It was the same kind of mob that surrounded M. Franco back then, the same camera angle that captured the happy teammates rushed over from the dugout, every single one of them.

That included this week's most despised Met ever, Jose Lima. He jumped up and down as if he'd been here longer than Trachsel. Whatever his shortcomings on the mound — and they are lengthy and genuine — I couldn't help but think, man, he must really be as great a teammate as they say. It wasn't twenty minutes later that I heard that his next assignment involves designation. It was the correct move. The only way it could come more correct is if it could be retroactive to two weeks ago. Still, I was an eensy bit sad that a guy who obviously loved being a ballplayer very likely wasn't going to be one on this level any Lima time soon.

Then, for no good reason, I realized Heilman is an anagram for Lima Hen. Aaron surely pecked away at a starting slot Friday night. Surely? Perhaps. Perhaps he's so good at pitching three innings that that makes him too good to pitch seven innings; I love the new math. Perhaps Pelfrey, whatever his state of readiness, will be on hand in a few days. Gary said Omar said something like “we could do anything,” which can be read as positive in terms of J-Gone being as long gone as L-Time, which ended in a New York minute (or three starts, whichever came last).

Hovering rotation storm clouds aside, it was a Friday night to flash back to other Mets-Yankees games, the wonderful ones. Franco versus the very same Rivera in another ninth. Spencer off Sturtze. The confusing ending when Baerga scored and McRae managed to not quite get himself doubled off first. All the Piazza we don't get around here no more and the David who was a Dave who started it all and the fallout from last year's Big Unit implosion — Koo! Koo! — and you can remember the rest if you think hard. The Subway Series has been around long enough to become an institution. We've won 20 games from the Yankees and 18, I swear, have felt something like this and all of them have been, in a word, special. Mets wins over the Yankees can't not be. Claim they're not and you're either lying or dead inside.

I woke up this morning, did my sleepy scan of newspaper Web sites, and thought, “Oh yeah, Subway Series begins tonight.” I skipped quickly over the pointless tales of the tape, glanced at the every-year-it's-the-same feature in which the new guys don't get it and the veterans bemoan what a pain in the ass the hype is, snickered at the news that the women of New York thought the Mets were hunkier, and even tried for a little arrogance: Some second-place team is coming to town, big whoop.

All this studied nonchalance was complete nonsense, of course. By 6:30 I was a disaster. Joshua kept yelling “Let's go Yankees!” to make a joke, as he likes to put it, only after the third time he did it I told him, “If you say that again you're going to your room.” (Let's review: The poor kid is three-and-a-half.) Emily looked shocked, then amused, then just shook her head.

“I'm serious,” I growled.

“I know,” she said.

(A bit tense? Me? Whatever do you mean?)

And then, as Jeremi Gonzalez was throwing BP and I saw the first Jeter Smirk, that little prelude to him sniggering like Muttley as we went down in flames again, the last pathetic shreds of my I'm-above-this pose fell away and I was eight years old again, watching Setauket's Yankee fans circle me and my ten-speed on their dirt bikes, laughing at my Mets cap while I sputtered that Mike Phillips was hitting .266 (or something equally inane) and fantasized that this year we'd win the World Series and beat them and it would show them, it would show all of them, even though I knew there was no way that was happening and life would always be awful and humiliating like this, because they were the Yankees and we were the Mets, and the best I could hope for was that the Royals or the Dodgers might stop them weeks after our guys had stopped playing and gone off to whereever it was baseball players went off to when you could no longer find them on Channel 9.

The Yankees. Jesus Christ do I hate them.

More great moments in fatherhood followed — tomorrow I'm sure Joshua will be inquiring why I told the man on TV that he sucks, and when we finally crawled out of the wreckage of the top of the first (helped by a terrible call on A-Rod that went our way, since Mazzilli wasn't there to coach a replacement ump), I muttered that we'd have to see how the Unit came out in his half of the first. Which is one of those stupid baseball things you say after the visitors put up a crooked number (or one that looks kind of like a busted H), even though it's never true.

Tonight it was true.

Joshua went to bed (with a final “Why'd you say 'gahdamit' daddy?” — oops) and I tried to get out my aggressions and frustrations on the treadmill as we crept back and then they pulled ahead. And again. How many times could this happen? I wondered. Because I hadn't missed that the Yankees looked old and battered, like it was August instead of May — Bernie Williams is running like Barry Bonds, the Unit looks creaky and confused, and that's not even counting Sheffield and Matsui on the shelf. And then Posada somehow hurt himself, yeesh. Which didn't work in our favor, because even though Kelly Stinnett now looks like the guy who hangs out by the trash barrel in “Repo Man” (ever think of a plate of shrimp, Kelly?), he was on a mission to kill us. I'd lost track of Scott Erickson and couldn't believe he was out there — I figure Torre didn't bring him in for fear that Omar would swoop down as he jogged in and try to make him our fifth starter. And then, thanks to Kaz Matsui, a tie and then a long stalemate. Heilman was marvelous, but I'll confess that when Jeter strode to the plate I was terrified. That's no knock on Aaron, just a reflection of how much I fear and loathe and grudgingly respect Jeter, who always seems to find an even-higher level against us.

Then I was sure we were doomed when Billy Wagner entered and I heard “Enter Sandman.” Ugh. Not a save situation. Such bad karma. Nope — Wagner looked the best he has all year, despite the fact that I couldn't remember the last time he'd pitched. By now I was sitting on the downstairs steps, hemmed in by the railing and the child-safety mesh (see, I'm not always a terrible father) and peering at the tiny downstairs TV over the limb of the treadmill — a terrible place to watch a baseball game, but nothing bad had happened while I was perched there, so there was no way I was budging an inch, not if we were going to survive however many innings Rivera was going to throw against us.

And then Lo Duca ripped a double when Rivera tried a second inside fastball and Beltran struck out on a great cutter for the second out and they walked Delgado and I was thinking about St. Louis and Izzy and the fact that David Wright was still 23, not yet the magical 33 at which one obtains Ray Knightesque wisdom, and I got up off the stairs to exhort Wright to good things and then remembered that nothing had gone wrong while my butt was parked on the step and sat back down.

And Wright golfed one and I was up off the step, knowing that Johnny Damon had been playing shallow because he has no arm, but also knowing the ball wasn't out and had a lot of hang time and Damon was closing ground, but of course he has a bad foot…and at some point while these calculations were chasing themselves around in my skull the ball plummeted past Damon's glove and I was leaping in the air over and over again, yelling silly things, because we had won. Down 4-0 before coming to the plate against a team with Derek Jeter on it and we had won.

A confession: Since about the second week he's been in the big leagues, I've been thinking in idle moments about getting to see a walkoff for David Wright — not a run-of-the-mill walkoff (if there can be such a thing) like a medium-range fly ball with the bases loaded and nobody out, but a thriller walkoff. You know, a home run that left him floating around the bases with the team waiting at home plate or…well, how about a drive off the best closer in the business that beats the team I hate with a white-hot intensity to end a game where it sure looked like they weren't just going to beat us but were going to humiliate us?

It was every bit as nice as I'd imagined.

Lima Time, and the pitching is lousy

Bats are thumping, when his pitches are high

Brian's hurt, and Maine's finger is crooked

So yes, little Met fan,

It's time to cry….

Not to cast aspersions or overgeneralize, but you seem to watch a significant number of Mets games in bars. To me, a significant number would be one. I don't do much of anything in bars these days, let alone watch Mets games. Part of it is my relatively advanced age, part of it my lifestyle, part of it, perhaps, a matter of culture. Jackie Mason said:

A Gentile is always drinking. Have a drink? Have another drink? A Jew never drinks but they're always eating. That's why most Gentiles are 7-foot-2 and forty pounds and most Jews are 4-foot-9 and 300 pounds. They never stop eating! At lunch they talk about dinner, after dinner they talk about where to get coffee, and after that, where to get cake. It's 4 in the morning and a Jew says let's have sex! We already had sex? OK, let's have cake then.

When our pal Lone Star Met was in town in April, he suggested we go to a Mets bar after we left Shea. I tried not to laugh, for I knew of no Mets bars, except the sainted former Bobby V's at the Ramada on the other side of the Grand Central, which I think is still in our camp under whatever name it operates, and whichever ones are mentioned in this 2005 Daily News article (handily linked on our sidebar under Frequency for your drinking and watching pleasure). For the record, Lone Star Dan and I went into the city to Rosie O'Grady's on 46th where a pleasant Irish waitress asked us, both sporting Mets caps, if the Rangers won their big game over at the Garden.

The last time I entered a bar to watch a Mets game was in the middle of one of the most fun nights I ever had with other Mets fans, the Friday before Labor Day in 2004. I hooked up with two friends, the very funny comedy writer Frank and the very musical teacher Gary (the one respectfully known as Jane for his Jarvisesque organ wizardry). The occasion was an early dinner on the Upper East Side and a chance to tear the front office to shreds. Afterwards, we went for gelato. About the time we were finishing, the Mets conversation had morphed into a Mets competition.

Seems Frank and Gary, who have known each other since junior high, had a summerlong contest going online and over the phone. One would offer up a letter of the alphabet and they'd then take turns naming Mets whose last name began with that letter. After a prescribed time limit, they would check on Ultimate Mets for what they missed. Maybe 40% of the alphabet remained with summer about to end. So they decided to continue the competition live. “Wanna play?” they asked.

Did I?

For the next — and I'm not exaggerating — five hours, from the gelato place around East 78th all the way on foot to Penn Station at 34th and Seventh, from whence Gary and I would commute back to our respective Long Island haunts, we kept this up. This included a detour to the Metropolitan Museum of Art where I was determined to catch the Childe Hassam exhibit before it closed. Know what I remember most about that? Not the flags, not the impressionism, but that we were in the W's and I suddenly remembered “MATT WATSON!”

It was like that all night. We sat on the steps outside the museum (The Met!) and muddled through the H's. Somehow, Bob Hendley was easy. Todd Hundley was tough. And Keith Hernandez, only the No. 2 Greatest Met of the First Forty Years, occurred to us like thirtieth. Likewise, when we did A's, we forgot Edgardo Alfonzo for what seemed like an eternity and when I, still in active mourning over the departure of my third-favorite player of all time (I had brought it up yet again over dinner), wasn't the one to come up with him, I kicked myself in the A's for about ten blocks. See, Frank and Gary had been doing this for fun. I scrunched my face up and thought really hard and exacerbated an already simmering headache desperately trying to pluck Jerry Buchek out of the air after somebody else already grabbed Bruce Boisclair.

Except for the headache, that's my idea of fun.

Anyway, this outlasted the gelato. This outlasted the museum. We wandered down Fifth Avenue, past the K's (I was proud of myself for blurting out Ray Knight before Dave Kingman even occurred to me), through the U's (or U — Unser and out) and into a crowd of never-ending J's (you can go a long way on Joneses). We decided it would be even more fun to take this into a sports bar somewhere and watch the Mets play the Phillies. Actually, it probably wouldn't be all that much fun since the Mets were slip-sliding from sight at this late point in the Howe Debacle, but it was the Mets.

Not as easy as it sounds. There were few places on Fifth Avenue that were even open on a Friday night. And the few that were were too classy to have TVs. And any with a television on didn't seem to be carrying the Mets' ongoing battle with respectability (respectability grabbing an early lead on a Bobby Abreu double). We wound our way to Sixth, then Seventh and finally plopped ourselves inside a noisy, touristy restaurant north of Times Square. It had lots of big screens. Lots of sporting events. Exhibition football games. College sports shows from the Midwest. Yankees and Orioles (the night Kevin Brown punched a wall, tee-hee; schmuck). But there, in the heart of Manhattan, the rarest commodity of them all…a Mets game.

I'd like to tell you the game went 16 innings and the Mets used Wilson Delgado to pitch and Danny Garcia hit a grand slam and they won 19-18 and it was free drinks all around because my headache dissipated when Pat Burrell bounced into that triple play, but no, the Mets lost by a typically wide margin. The big play was Cliff Floyd losing track of outs and tossing a ball into the stands Agbayani-style except it wasn't cute because we weren't good. It also wasn't something we divined until we heard about it later. The place was noisy and we weren't paying that much attention.

Our game, however, picked up renewed steam. We ended the night at Penn focused on the ever-popular G. That's G as in Gary, G as in Greg, G as in, I smugly added, Eric Gunderson, Kenny Greer and Mauro Gozzo (I once wrote a poem involving all three in one line so they were easy for me to spit out). Having established to my satisfaction that I was the geekiest of our group, we shook hands and parted ways.

Once my train emerged from its tunnel, I turned on my phone and found a message from Gary:

“Hey, either of you morons ever heard of TOM GLAVINE?”

Oh yeah. G as in Glavine. Mike Glavine, too, come to think of it.

Gosh.