I hold no brief for Art Howe. Art Howe was the worst thing to happen to the Mets' manager's office since Jeff Torborg ordered new carpeting. Art Howe dimmed a room. Art Howe looked lost and did nothing in his actions to dispel that impression.

But I've always admired Art Howe for one thing:

He didn't intentionally Barry Bonds when he didn't have to.

Perhaps the greatest game of Howe's Mets tenure (you can eliminate about 318 from consideration right away) took place in APacSBellBCT&T Park on August 21, 2004. If you remember it, you'll remember it primarily for Todd Zeile lifting a fly ball into the rightfield sun and Dustin Mohr not seeing it. It led to the Mets' tenth and eleventh runs and, at last, a twelve-inning 11-9 win over the Giants.

But you should remember it tonight for what Barry Bonds did in that game.

6 Plate Appearances

4 At-Bats

3 Runs

1 Triple

2 Doubles

1 Single

2 Bases On Balls

1 Run Batted In

NO INTENTIONAL WALKS! Of course Bonds took the measure of the opposing pitchers, but Art Howe did not give in. He let Tom Glavine, Ricky Bottalico, Mike DeJean and Braden Looper give him their best shot. They both failed miserably (he was on base six times in six chances) and succeeded brilliantly (he did not dial long distance even once at a park named for three phone companies in seven years). It was exhilarating to watch Bonds be Bonds and Bonds be stopped to within an inch of the Mets' life.

Art Howe could have found a spot to issue him a free pass. Goodness knows Willie Randolph did Monday night. Twice.

And how did that work out?

The Mets won on August 21, 2004. The Mets lost on April 24, 2006, mostly at the hand of the man who followed Bonds in the Giants' order.

This round goes to Art Howe. It may be the only one he gets, but he deserves plaudits if by nothing else but very recent comparison.

I hope Barry Bonds hits six more home runs after the Mets leave San Francisco and none before then. I hope he hits 715. I hope he compiles more than George Herman Ruth. Then I hope he slinks off to wherever a Barry Bonds slinks off.

No need to pile on. He's a large, large worm. We all get that. But let him beat the Babe. Let's pound the architect of the House That Ruth Built one slot lower on the all-time chart. It's not like anybody's going to let us forget Babe Ruth. Just the fact that there's cachet to somebody “chasing” the man with the second-most career home runs is evidence of that. Not taking away a damn thing from the Damnbino. Saved baseball, et al.

But let's not kid ourselves. Skank's a Skank, 'specially Skank One. Let me know when we start making exceptions.

Let Bonds pass Ruth. Let's inject Sosa and Palmeiro and get them back on the path to 715. If we can get McGwire rolling again, I say let's do it.

Barry Bonds? Great player. Absolutely great player. Enormous ass, literally and figuratively. Deserves no empathy. Belongs in the Hall, right there with Pete Rose and Joe Jackson. Just as nobody's ever forgotten Ruth, nobody will forget the crack in their plaques. We don't need bloody asterisks or — and this is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard — the erasure of his stats. Like his homers didn't happen? Do we lower the pitchers' ERAs while we're at it? Do the Pirates and Giants still win their various division titles if we delete Bonds' contributions? No, he can have his figures. The black mark we all want to slap him with will linger long after the ink on his numbers dry.

Baseball has a long memory, at least for stuff like this.

I'm more concerned with another outfielder, one of ours. Carlos Beltran, do like the Eagles suggested and take it easy. Don't feel the pressure. You've got a very valuable hamstring, don't mess with it. Don't listen to anybody but your trainers and your body and your instinct. If we have to miss you for a few more games to have you for the long haul, we'll deal with it. Endy Chavez can put down a bunt or two in your absence.

There's great stuff on hammies from a man who saw his share of 'em, '86 Mets assistant trainer Bob Sikes:

I must take my old friend, Steve Phillips, to task after he said on ESPN's Baseball Tonight that Beltran's reluctance to play was motivated by not wanting to play hurt again this year and feel the heat from Mets fans. He should know enough to know he cannot possibly know the whole story. He's not there and not part of the staff who's advising all parties concerned. An MRI can't serve as the end all here.

If caution is good enough for Bob, it's good enough for me. (And I'm always for taking Steve Phillips to task.)

Speaking of trainers, how about the most famous massage therapist in baseball, Kelly Calabrese? Keith Hernandez's bug-eyed comments on the presence of a — gasp! — female in the Padre dugout Saturday night were fairly Neanderthal, somewhat amusing and, ultimately, plain misinformed. She's working, and there's no reason to diminish her professional status. If it's OK with Bruce Bochy and whoever hired her, then big deal.

But I'll cut Mex slack, and not just because he's Mex. He's a ballplayer from what has become a long time ago and his was an honest reaction to an unorthodox sight. If we value Keith for his truthfulness, we can't fume too much when his idea of the truth doesn't jibe with ours. I just happened to tune into Mike & Mike on ESPN Radio Monday morning and they tut-tutted him big-time. The Mike who used to play football said there's nothing unusual about a woman taping up players at Notre Dame. He knows, he was there for spring practice over the weekend.

Good for Mike Golic. I'm guessing Keith Hernandez, who has since apologized, wasn't chilling in the Padres' clubhouse Saturday afternoon while Calabrese rubbed one too many knots out of Josh Barfield's villainous shoulders. You can argue that Keith should have been doing his homework, but homework's for mere mortals. Keith Hernandez's job is to detect what pitch is coming, compare Nick Johnson to George Hendrick and be the guy who was the ideal No. 3 hitter 20 years ago. Coach Sikes has the take of experience on this, too:

I feel that I know Hernandez well, and feel his comments were based on the fact he indeed has respect for women. A baseball dugout is a harsh place with rough language and men say things and do things that in my opinion can never change. I believe Hernandez is indeed a gentleman and doesn't feel women should be exposed to this. I agree and feel that here is a place where baseball cannot be feminized.

I don't particularly buy Bob's argument that Kelly Calabrese making a living is another symptom of creeping…here it comes…political correctness; and I don't think rough language is much of a barrier to service for our men and women in Iraq. But I respect Bob's perspective as one who worked in Major League dugouts (and worked with male and female student trainers in an academic setting), so I recommend you check out what he has to say. His blog remains, like Keith's announcing style, unique and a treat for all serious Mets fans.

WW, of course, being scorecard shorthand for “wasn't watching.”

Last night went down as a rare WW on multiple fronts. I did catch an inning or two during dinner at 2 Toms, the justifiably legendary old-school Italian place in Gowanus, seeing enough on their old black-and-white set to grasp that we were tenuously ahead and the Padres were wearing those camouflage disasters. But then they changed the set over to basketball. I protested, but fairly quietly, despite the fact that at that point I was already drunker than a monkey: 2 Toms is a bastion of Yankee loyalty, and my being a Met fan had already earned me an only-half-kidding growl of “You're on thin ice.” If you've ever been to 2 Toms, you know that you don't mess around there, and I've already used up about eight of my nine lives where it's concerned: During the 2001 World Series Emily and I ate there with friends and in rapid succession our friend Pete (who has an amusing, maddening attraction to what you're not supposed to do) asked for the dinner options to be repeated (a no-no), then asked for something off the menu (a bigger no-no). And then we got caught cheering for the Diamondbacks.

Anyway, the rest of the night turned into a fairly taxing misadventure: There was the ill-advised bar after dinner, the subway may as well have been a tesseract given my tattered ability to navigate it, and I don't even want to talk about some of the other things that went awry. End result: For the first time in a very long time, I woke up this morning with no idea if we'd won or lost. Happily, my blog brother provided. Sounds like a great game, I thought, before staggering back to bed. (And when Keith noted that he was familiar with the wrong side of 4:30 and these days the recovery time is 72 hours, I nodded and moaned.)

The second WW, for today's game, could stand for “wasn't watchable.”

Is there anyone among us who still thinks Victor Zambrano is salvageable? Here are the counts Victor ran leading up to pitches put in play, against a team whose hitters didn't exactly show themselves to be selective this series: 2-1, 0-2 (a home run), 3-1, 2-1, 3-1, 3-1, 0-2, 0-1, 0-0, 0-0, 0-1, 3-1, 3-2, 3-1, 3-1, 1-0, 0-0, 1-1, 3-2, 1-0, 3-2, 0-1. End result: 81 pitches, 44 for strikes, and a tired pen. A typically awful Victor outing, and don't tell me it's just that his location was horrible. He kept mucking around with predominantly change-ups and sliders when it was obvious he had no command of them, got into bad counts, then had to throw fastballs — which, predictably, got hammered.

It's yet more evidence supporting an unhappy but inescapable conclusion: Victor Zambrano doesn't know how to pitch.

The arm is a gift from the gods, but the brain doesn't know what to do with it. Witness last week, when he followed Willie's curt scouting report that “he made bad pitches” by lamely arguing that the pitches were good but the location wasn't. Huh? Wha? That was reminiscent of Warren Spahn's famous quote that “for the first 60 feet that was a helluva pitch,” but Spahnie was kidding. Victor approaches hitters backwards, is scared of his own superb stuff, is easily rattled, and shows no ability to bear down when he has to.

And he's going to be 31 this summer — at this point, he ain't gonna learn. The fans loathe him, and I no longer feel sorry for him when they let him have both barrels. Yes, Victor's trying his best, and my philosophy is that you shouldn't boo anybody who's trying their best, saving the leather lungs for malingerers, the immoral or amoral, spectacularly negligent mental mistakes (which shouldn't have carryover) or repeated moments of incompetence in the same game that doom the team. (This also shouldn't have carryover.) But I do think there's something else that's boo-worthy: repeated evidence that a player isn't mentally prepared to perform at the necessary level. Armando Benitez is the obvious example, with his eggshell ego and his endless off-field disasters that he let follow him onto the mound. But Zambrano has reached that point too: He's taken the L in his own head before he ever throws a pitch.

And it's not survivable. Beyond the fans, the writers smell blood: When the beat guys start criticizing your clubhouse demeanor, you've entered a death spiral that's almost impossible to pull out of. Tom Glavine managed it last year, but Victor Zambrano ain't Tom Glavine.

Forget Scott Kazmir. This has nothing to do with Scott Kazmir. This is about 2006, and the dead spot in our starting rotation, and what's to be done about it before it costs us too many games. As for Rick Peterson's infamous prediction that he could fix Victor in about 10 minutes? I think there must have been an exponent missing.

Pedro Martinez and Mike Piazza will each be voted into in the Hall of Fame as soon as they're eligible. They have been great for a very long time. They may not have inhabited greatness in tandem when given the chance as early Dodgers and recent Mets, but they are two of the defining players of their generation.

If this sounds like deathgrip of the obvious, well, yeah, but sometimes the players are the thing and Saturday night, one couldn't help but be moved by the sight of legends doing what made them legendary.

Pedro has the world's greatest April record, the greatest record for any month in the history of baseball. Learning that during Saturday's Snighcast gives me a bit of pause for what he'll be in September, but that's a ways off. For now, it's been a revelation, for the second consecutive April, to watch him ply. Keith Hernandez said Pedro earned his paycheck the way he took care of the Padres. I don't know that anybody earns anything over $10 million annually without curing a disease or creating an alternative energy source, but in the terms of what he is paid to do, yeah, he's a bargain.

Martinez and Glavine both have been giving master classes in pitching all April. It's awe-inspiring. Have we ever had this before? Of course we had Tom Seaver when he and the world were young (we just passed the 36th anniversary of T. Terrific's 19-K/10-straight vs. SD) and Doc when Doc was never going to stop being Doc. But that's not what I'm talking about. Pedro and Glavine — sorry, there's only room for only one “Tom” in this paragraph — are bringing a long lifetime of experience at the top of their profession to the mound every fifth day, and they are doing it while still performing at that elevated status.

This isn't Warren Spahn trying to keep it going. These are two aces pitching like Cy Young emeriti, one who some began to doubt in Boston, the other who looked pasturebound after Atlanta. They've combined for eight starts this season and in all eight they have, in the Murphspeak, worn the hitters on their watch chain. It's not Seaver '71 or Gooden '85 or Pedro '99. It's something practically every bit as satisfying. It's not a matter of blowing away the opposition. It's outfoxing them at almost every turn. It's being smarter than the average batter and putting that hard-won wisdom to good use.

It's Pedro striking out eleven and going seven when doing both were ideal. I'm not sure he couldn't have gone eleven and struck out seven, conserving some pop here, working a corner there, teasing a Padre there if that indeed was what was called for. Once the Mets got him a couple of runs, did you doubt Pedro would tease, taunt and tame San Diego? They could don all the camouflage they wanted, but they couldn't hit, they couldn't run and they sure as hell couldn't hide.

If Pedro Martinez was the main attraction (and the indefatigable Carlos Delgado was the featured performer and our 6-7 hitters Nady and Castro headed a strong supporting cast), then you have to give it up for the walk-on made by someone whose name used to stick high atop the marquee and above the title. They're not Mike Piazza & The Mets anymore, but Piazza's cameo as fearsome enemy slugger did not make for an altogether unpleasant sight.

We won 8-1, so I can be generous. Mike got to 399 with a blast off Pedro. Pedro could afford it, so in hindsight, applause, applause. Sadly, I had turned the channel to a Barry Bonds' at-bat in Colorado and missed Mike's mash live (I thought we were still in commercial), but replays showed vintage Piazza, high, deep and almost straight away to center. As 2-1 became 4-1 and 6-1 and 8-1, I could feel good that he collected his first homer since Opening Day, even if it was against us, even if it was in Padre fatigues.

I figured out why Mike Piazza as a Padre taking his swings against the Mets hasn't really moved me. Because he's not a Padre in more than name. He's said all the right things. He talks about the Padres as if he really cares what happens to them, but you can tell he doesn't. He's as likely to throw a game as he to throw out a baserunner, but you know what I mean. This is a soft landing for The Greatest Hitting Catcher in the History of Baseball. This is a place to pad his power totals a little and get some sun and call it a night. He's not pulling that dreadful Johnny Damon “we/us” shtick. He hasn't suddenly contracted “always wanted to be a…” fever. He's a Padre because they pay him to be one. He's back to full-time Met legend as soon as he is no longer contractually obligated to be something else.

Of all the quotes mined from Mike this week, the one I liked the most regarded his amazement that a three-game losing streak in San Diego doesn't set off panic in Petco Park. It's just three baseball games. As Met after Met ran him into the ground, I couldn't help but wonder how many calls to WFAN such a stolen base surfeit would generate if he were still our catcher. I doubt anybody out west will much dwell on the details of Saturday night come Sunday morning. Whether he misses us or we're missing him, I think it's for the best that he is where he is and we are where we are in 2006. At this late date, Mike Piazza deserves a little benign neglect.

So he'll wear 33. He'll hit a few more out. Barring injury or early retirement, he'll come to Shea the second week of August to doff his helmet and cause a Mike-sized buzz, and two months later, I'm guessing, quietly depart from active participation in the game he dominated for a decade — and still can when his muscle memory cooperates.

The Padres had three hits. Mike had two. When he got the first one, the homer, it shouldn't have been surprising. The stats say he owns Pedro Martinez, which is a pretty impressive piece of real estate to claim. The second one was a solid single in the ninth that I was sort of, kind of, just a little hoping would have some lift and distance to it, because with a seven-run lead, would it have killed us to have seen Mike hit No. 400 in a Mets game?

No, but it would not have been optimal. Jorge Julio, perhaps imbued by a stream of shots poured down his throat while laid out flat on a bartop the way a crumpled Popeye revived from the cans of spinach Olive Oyl forcefed him (or don't you read the gossip pages?), has been suddenly, shockingly lights-out the last few times he's pitched. He was dynamite in the eighth. It would do us no good in the long-term to see him blow up in the ninth, not after the first two Padres got on via strikeout-wild pitch and error. Piazza's ensuing single scored nobody and Julio proceeded to emerge unscathed and the Mets had a win and maybe, just maybe, a bulletproof bullpen in the making.

That's an important detail, but a detail for another day. When you've seen Pedro Martinez continue to be Pedro Martinez for seven innings and Mike Piazza guest star as Mike Piazza for one mighty swing, it seems almost blasphemous to mention that anyone else played baseball Saturday night.

…that if I weren't so tired, and hadn't imagined like three innings ago that the Care Bears were skipping around the room laughing at me, and hadn't been yelling “SAVE US!” at each new Met batter in a voice more than a bit tinged with hysteria, and hadn't been hiding under the covers during random Padre at-bats, and hadn't been wondering if I could just wake up in the morning in the time for innings 43 and up, that I'd be more disappointed that we lost that one. In fact, in the morning I know I'll be more disappointed. For now, it means I can sleep.

That last shot of Woody Williams awkwardly high-fiving the fan through the screen (a fan who'd just got a full beer from somewhere) did make me smile, however. They must love him in San Diego.

Go get 'em tomorrow. But you know what? Let's play one.

What a strange game.

Every West Coast game is strange, from our perspective over here on the other side of the continent. Right about the time body and mind are getting ready to shut down for the night, there's three hours of baseball to be dissected and fretted over. Now throw in Steve Trachsel, who can make you feel like it's past your bedtime at 2pm on a sunny Sunday. And top it off with the fact that I conked out at 8:30, set my alarm for 10:05, and wandered upstairs, groggy and confused, in the middle of Reyes' leadoff at-bat.

What day is it? What year is it? Who are we playing?

Oh yeah, it's Thursday, 2006 and we're playing the Padres. In fact, there's Mike Piazza in San Diegan togs. Is there a stranger franchise of respectable antiquity than the Padres? Blame East Coast bias, but they're one of those teams I always forget about, playing in the shadow of the Dodgers in a uniform and colors they change every year. We see them seven times a year and the rest of the time they're some vague presence time zones away. So while I felt a happy flash of recognition the first time Piazza swung his front foot out of the box to gather his thoughts (batting stances are like smells for how they can snap your memory instantly into focus), it felt less like a proper reunion than it should have. It's not like he's a Phillie or a Yankee (ugh) or an Oriole or a Red Sock or something else we could keep proper track of. Instead, here's a glimpse of him in the wee hours, in the anonymous uniform of the West Kamchatka TBDs, wearing 33, in a park that never seems properly lit. And then somehow he turned into Doug Mirabelli halfway through. Strange things happen out here on the West Coast.

Kaz's inside-the-parker was fun (what inside-the-parker isn't?), though I couldn't help notice that Piazza helped by managing to get himself out of position. It behooves all of us — doubters, booers, and mere giver-uppers — to hope that Kaz can relax in the eighth slot and be the player every scouting report swore he'd be. Or even be half that player. With Anderson Hernandez suddenly and shockingly injured (and apparently injured rather seriously), this is Kaz's chance. One would say his last chance, if not for the fact that our braintrust seems to regard Jeff Keppinger with the disdain usually reserved for hubcap thieves and teens buying loosies from the deli. (Someday I'd like an explanation for that.) Let's call it this Kaz's latest chance, and hope he takes it. An inside-the-park home run and hanging in there on the pivot when it really, really mattered is a nice start.

As for the offensive explosion, like seeing Big Mike again it somehow didn't feel the way it should have. Part of it was Jake Peavy mowing us down in the middle innings, when this game sure looked like one of those dead-assed coast-to-coast losses you chalk up to jet lag and the cruelty of the schedule makers. Another part of it was how sudden it was — so sudden I wouldn't be surprised to see the team lapse back into offensive drowsiness today. It came and went in a flash, like one of those rainstorms that soaks people but comes so quickly it runs off before it does the plants much good. (Not that I'll be giving the W back.)

Maybe it's just the brownout against our eldest rivals, but this team's health continues to worry me. Beltran left again; MRI today. (Eeeek.) There's the thing with Floyd's ribs, Delgado icing his elbow and shaking his wrist, A Hern's bulging disk…enough of a list that it gets a restless mind looking for problems everywhere else. Will Reyes take a misstep? How's Pedro's toe? Isn't Matsui due to trip over a bat and shatter his pelvis? And David Wright may be healthy, but he looks like he could use a mental-health day: You can see him fretting before throws to first and he seems anxious at the plate.

Ack! Enough! We won. That's the important thing. The rest of it? It's just San Diego in the middle of the night.

As a service to our readers who adhere to more traditional work schedules, this blog provides a series of snappy in-the-know water cooler comebacks to prove that you are fan enough to handle the West Coast start times even if you really aren't.

Faith and Fear in Flushing: We stay up and watch the Mets win so you don't have to.

LAME OUT-OF-IT CO-WORKER: Kaz Matsui sucks.

SMART IN-THE-KNOW YOU: Not when he was hitting that inside-the-park home run in his first at-bat, his third year in a row with a homer in just that situation.

LOOICW: Kaz Matsui can't play second.

SITKY: Kaz hung tough on a great double play after the Padres loaded the bases with nobody out. They didn't score.

LOOICW: Julio Franco hasn't done anything except yell at Carlos Beltran.

SITKY: Julio Franco became the oldest man EVER to hit a home run in a Major League game.

LOOICW: I don't know why they keep Endy Chavez on the club.

SITKY: Endy put down the most beautiful drag bunt to bring home Reyes from third.

LOOICW: Delgado's slumping.

SITKY: Delgado hit a BOMB.

LOOICW: Floyd's in a funk. He'll probably be out indefinitely.

SITKY: Cliff was back in the lineup and drove in the final run.

LOOICW: Jose Valentin will never get a base hit.

SITKY: Jose Valentin got a base hit.

LOOICW: Jorge Julio is worthless.

SITKY: Jorge Julio pitched another 1-2-3 inning. He looked pretty sharp doing it. The whole bullpen came through.

LOOICW: The Mets lost two in a row to the Braves and have to go on a ten-game road trip. They're so screwed.

SITKY: The Mets increased their lead to 3-1/2 over idle Atlanta. Good pitching, timely hitting. They played like the first-place team they are no matter where they are.

LOOICW: Mets suck.

SITKY: Mets rule. You suck.

Gary Cohen is a sharp guy. When the Mets visited Phoenix in 2000, Todd Pratt came to bat in front of Diamondbacks fans for the first time since October 9, 1999. Reaction was muted, to say the least. How, Gary asked Ed Coleman, can these fans not be booing the man who put them out of the playoffs ten months ago?

Yesterday, he inverted the question as Pratt caught the day game after the night game for the Braves. Tank, he noted, got less than a hero's welcome Monday when he stepped in to pinch-hit in the ninth. How, he asked Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez, can these fans boo the man who is rightly remembered for knocking that home run over the wall?

I love the romantic notion that Todd Pratt should be above reproach, but Pratt's a Brave now and, more importantly, someone who attempted to stand in the way of a key victory (he struck out to end Pedro's 200th). He's been slipping in and out of town since the summer of 2001, usually getting a start or an at-bat in one 8-2 Mets-Phillies game after another. He'd always received a hand because there was no harm in having him up.

It was different the day after Turk Wendell was traded to the Phillies from the Mets in the middle of a series between the two. He came into a tight spot at Shea against his old team with the outcome of that particular game hanging in the palm of his right hand. His old fans, the people who thrilled to every slam of Turk's rosin bag, understood this and he generated an ambivalent response; it's one thing to applaud an “enemy” hitter in the top of the second, it's another to celebrate the other guys' pitcher in the ninth if the score is tied. When Robin Ventura ended his and the Phillies' day with a walkoff wallop, I remember the cheering felt much more intense than if he had hit it off the likes of Rheal Cormier.

Turk hadn't done anything wrong in July of '01 except get traded and go to work. Tank didn't do anything wrong this week except continue his career by associating with a most unsavory cast of characters. Yet we as Mets fans can't have that when we're trying to make magic. Who are these players who dare spoil the trick? Traitors! Even if we calm down and realize they're just professionals pursuing their craft, we can't look at them and any longer see guys who are paid to help us win ballgames and, if we may dream, championships.

Which brings us to the cleanup batter for the other team tonight.

In a matter of minutes, I'll turn on SNY and see Mike Piazza in a Mets game for the first time since August 21, 1997 wearing something other than a Mets uniform. It's not an unprecedented happenstance but we're out of practice at witnessing it, so it'll be weird.

But I have the feeling it won't be that weird. I'm surprised at how little I've thought of Mike Piazza lately. If the Padres weren't on the schedule, he would have faded even further from contemporary consciousness. When he does occur to me, he shows up as a hero, all right, but a hero from the last century, maybe the very beginning of this one. He's as relevant to where my Mets head is right now as Duffy Dyer — good guy, he helped, what's next?

He would have to charge the mound to make me dislike him and I know he never would and I never could. I'll be happy to get a look at him. I wish him well. But Mike will be out there trying to beat us. He's one of the Thems now. I've got my mind set on Us.

If the remnants of a tree are shaped into nine Louisville Sluggers and flail in the forest and make no sound, can those who flailed so miserably really be in first place?

“Our Team, Our Time” is beautiful music compared to what the Mets mixmasters have scratched out over the past 18 innings. When two of your MCs are not in full effect, y'all, whaddaya expect?

Something better than reviving the seasons of Kyle Davies and Tim Hudson? Guess not.

It was another day of the less said, the better (though I did let out my first “godmotherfuckingdamnit!” of the young season when the last out was made less than two hours after the first pitch was thrown). Not exactly the bon voyage one desires in the departure lounge for a West Coast trip, but not a killer. We won one scintillating game, got our ass kicked the next night and were on the short end of what was either an awesome pitchers' duel or an argument to bring back greenies. We should win all series at Shea, but taking only one of three to the Braves at home isn't alarming given the nice little cushion we built for ourselves. And taking two of three in Atlanta (assuming we don't deteriorate in California) will make what's just happened very distant very quickly.

One of the guys in my e-mail group (the more extreme elements of which spent the early hours of Wednesday gleefully TP'ing Zambrano's house) said we didn't get much out of our “vaunted offense”. I would argue there ain't much vaunt there when your Nos. 3 and 6 hitters are nursing their hammy and ribby-cagey, respectively. Valentin? Chavez? Suddenly, much in the way we're playing down to the level of our beloved new theme song, we also seem to have gone out of our way to even things up with the debilitated Braves. It's like some kind of desperate after-school pickup game.

“No fair! Chipper's home sick! And Edgar has a piano lesson! And Marcus got detention! We don't wanna play!”

“Deal. You're up first.”

No more making fun of Anderson Hernandez's infinitesimal batting average or salivating over his goldening glove. He's out. Kaz is back. Maybe he'll hit a home run in San Diego on the very first pitch he sees.

First place is still first place, but I'm closing in on Earth once more. My brain no longer semi-seriously expects 130 wins, so maybe I can both relax and get back on more normal edge versus where I was Monday night. I still want more than to scramble for a Wild Card, but for some strange reason, fate generally doesn't ask my opinion. With Beltran and Floyd aching, I'm reminded again of those '72 Mets. They were so good so early and so injured so often thereafter. Let's hope this isn't that. Let's also hope we're not the '96 Orioles. I remembered the other day that my Baltimore correspondent, Dr. Fred Bunz, was amused at how when those O's got off to an 11-2 start, local radio was referring to them as “the Bulls of baseball.” The Bulls won the NBA championship that year. The Orioles didn't do the same in their sport.

Meanwhile, I'm off to another shaky start at Shea, 0-2, having attended Tuesday night (I was the one you didn’t hear booing), 0-4 going back to late 2005, 1-6 since the night Pedro gave up all those home runs to the Phillies and we commenced along on our slippery slope out of the playoff chase. Strangely, I continue to leave these games in a good mood. Saturday was just nice. Tuesday I was happy to make the in-person acquaintance of one of our 'sphere's outstanding out-of-town blolleagues. And you know that old saying…

When two Mets bloggers meet at Shea Stadium for the first time, an Agee gets his wings.

Rooting for the New York Mets is easy to do, at least from a technical standpoint. Rooting for the New York Giants is a different story since they're kind of out of business for almost 50 years. Find out how it's done at Gotham Baseball.