Re: To Met Hell with them, Part Two. You're still not bringing me down.

EVERETT: That grand slam you mentioned? It's at the core of my No. 19 Greatest Baseball Experience ever. Can't vouch for his child-rearing skills, but man, that two-out grand slam which knotted the game at 6 in the bottom of the ninth when the Mets were hanging onto Wild Card hopes by their thumbnails was one of the best moments of my life. Nineteenth-best, actually.

MURRAY: Drove in 193 runs over two seasons (making him the 83rd Greatest Met of the First Forty Years) without really emitting a hint of interest in his surroundings. His care-quotient shot through the roof when his contract was about to expire. Then it was like, oh, you want to interview me? What time is convenient for you? A perfect if quiet complement to Bonilla.

MACHADO: Man, I loved this guy for a month. I was sure he would be our closer someday. Why does he stick in my mind? Because the first pitch he ever threw was high and tight to Tom Pagnozzi. Who knew he'd get even more dangerous?

SAMUEL: Confession — I wasn't aghast at this trade when it happened. Yes, it was wrong that Lenny Dykstra was no longer a Met, but Samuel had been a demon his first four seasons in the league. But the Mets, in their clever, time-tested fashion, scooped him up five minutes past his last effective week in the Majors. I don’t dislike him for that. No, I dislike him because at the end of that 1989 season, Davey Johnson, groping for news he could use in 1990, penciled him in at second for one game. One stinking game. Juan, who hadn't played his original position all year, refused to go in. Thought it wasn't fair to move him from the outfield back to the infield. Was afraid he'd embarrass himself. Well screw you, too, I thought.

KENT: This guy pisses me off way more in retrospect than he did in real time. When the '95 Mets clubhouse was itself a cheery day care center, all young and giddy with late-season success, I kept reading derisive snorts from the beat writers that morose Kent didn't fit in. (Long after he was gone, Fran Healy made a vague reference to Jeff “not wanting to play any of their reindeer games,” but he never explained what he meant; it was the only time I wished Fran had said a little more.) It had taken him all year to get it going at the plate and now that he was finally hitting, his personality didn't match the daily braintrust's expectations. The criticism struck me as piling on. As his post-Met career revealed, it was right on, though he kept hitting and his teams generally did well with him contributing, no matter what a snot he is universally acknowledged to be. I still can't get over the his being halted at customs en route to Montreal for carrying a handgun. Oh yeah, I forgot I had it with me, was his alibi. Who forgets they're carrying a weapon onto a plane? And, better question, why does a baseball player require a firearm for a road trip? Man, he must've been really unpopular in the clubhouse.

Cam-a-lam-a-ding-gone.

Only a shock in that it happened in November and yielded a single X-Man, the Mike Cameron Era's end coincides with that of the Braden Looper Epoch and, unless somebody plum forgets to detach themselves from him, the Kaz Matsui Millennium.

And, just like that, there goes the 2004 rebuilding project, crumbled to bits not two calendar years after it was undertaken.

On one hand, who cares? That was one of the worst off-seasons in Mets history, I've just decided, in that we signed those three guys and brought in as our rightfielder the two-headed momser Sharim Spencia, lowballing Vladimir Whatshisname in the process. Granted, we shot straight from 66 to 71 wins in the year that followed, but what annoys me now is that a front office that collected five very ordinary players pretended it was operating according to a plan.

Quick, anybody remember the plan?

The Mets have a ton of holes to fill, and they'll attempt to do so via the free agent and non-tender market, while staying far, far away of any commitment deemed “long” (Fred Wilpon said that would be four years; five years is “very long”).

The Mets aim to tailor their team to the spacious reaches of Shea Stadium, where power hitters are more of a complement than the rule — expect to see a young, exciting team created around speed, defense and pitching (think 1986). Sure, that's what every team wants to create, but the Mets really, really intend to do it this time.

Or so they say.

—NJ.com's Always Amazin', October 29, 2003

That coherent organizational philosophy — based on the sudden realization that Shea is 396 in the alleys — is what brought us Cameron and Matsui (for the speed and the defense) along with Looper (the pitching) plus Spencer and Garcia (no long commitments). It was gussied up by the marketing department as Catch The Energy.

It was unplugged by the end of 2004. The Mets never do anything that takes. Instead, every winter sees them overreact to perceptions that they don't do enough even though it's been a long time since they haven't done plenty. Sure, they often don't do it well, but they always keep busy. When was the last off-season, for example, that the Mets didn't sign themselves a fairly glittery free agent?

It was the winter of 1997-98, coming off their surprising dalliance with contention and even there, there's an asterisk to be applied because they were able to avail themselves of the Huizenga fire sale and pick up Leiter and Cook on the cheap (unless you consider giving up young A.J. Burnett as shortsighted). When they didn't immediately improve on their pace of '97 in the early part of '98, they went out and traded three kids for Mike Piazza to compensate for Todd Hundley's lengthy absence (Spehr, Castillo, Wilkins, Tatum not adding up to a hair in Mike's mustache) and, more significantly, to shut up everybody who said the Mets never made big moves.

Since then, the Mets have executed splashy transactions, or at least costly ones, every winter, either via free agency or trading for contracts somebody else could no longer afford.

1999: Ventura, Henderson, Bonilla

2000: Hampton, Bell, Zeile

2001: Appier, Trachsel

2002: Alomar, Vaughn, Cedeño, Burnitz, Weathers

2003: Glavine, Floyd, Stanton

2004: Cameron, Matsui, Looper

2005: Martinez, Beltran

We could sit here and deconstruct which moves necessitated other moves and how the Mets seemed to dig themselves deeper and deeper personnel holes down the line, but the point is the Mets do act. They're afraid to not do something whether it makes long-term sense or not. Ownership's rabbit ears are stuck on the criticism that they don't take the big dare the way the other New York team does.

Was Let's Get Athletic a valid stance? We'll never know. The Mets Dropped The Energy the minute they tired of Jim Duquette playing smallball and brought back Omar Minaya. I don't know what Minaya's plan is, and that's fine. I have an inherent trust that he will do something right this offseason, but that doesn't mean it will add up to worth a damn because eventually he'll do something wrong and the Mets will fall all over themselves to correct it and, inevitably, make it worse.

The Mets' nominal starting lineup in 2005 included two shortstops and two centerfielders. Now after essentially throwing away almost $30 mil the last two years on the guys who became the ill-fitting second baseman and the reluctant (nearly tragically so) rightfielder, they're scrambling again. Xavier Nady? He may be the answer, but probably only to some alphabetically themed trivia question. Think about that $14.5 mil annually tossed at Cameron and Matsui. Think that couldn't have been spent more wisely? Think that plus whatever they were offering Vlad could've outbid the Angels? Think they knew that Carlos Beltran (no long commitments?) might very well be available after 2004 so maybe they could've kept their wallet in their pants before splurging on Cameron, a guy whose presence here always seemed a bit of a mystery?

Mike C. did some nice things as a Met. We saw him hit a walkoff homer against the Tigers the night Mike P. drove home in the Ambiguously Gay Chevy. He hit 30 dingers in 2004 which still reads like a typo. His catch last June in the game when the sprinklers turned on and Cameron stuck his glove out and came up with an out, was stupendous. And that abysmal business in San Diego, of all places, in August elevated him to richly deserved baseball sainthood in our eyes. For all the talk that he wanted out and couldn't deal with right, he gave us his all wherever they stuck him.

But Mike Cameron was a Met because the plan of the week demanded he be hired. The plan of the subsequent week demanded he be traded.

Now what? There's 40 miles of bad road up ahead if you're a Mets fan. Deleting Cameron and Ishii and Heredia (Question No. 22 lives!) Graves and Mientkiewicz and Piazza is the easy part. If you don't believe Xavier Nady is a foundation element to the 2006 Mets, and I don't, we're looking at at least four everyday positions that remain definitively unfilled to say nothing of the hypothetical position of closer. That's all right in November, but what's gonna happen?

Catcher scares me the most because this is something the Mets haven't had to worry about for more than a couple of minutes in the past 15 years. Hundley grew into a temporarily fearsome slugger and moments after he shriveled, Piazza replaced him without missing a beat. Now what? Something inadequate, I hunch.

The frightening part is what a comedown from the Piazza of our dreams Bengie Molina (my guess) or Ramon Hernandez (my god, another player tantalizing us based on one good season) or the Japanese guy (my bad — his name is Kenji Jojima) will be. Don't know anything more than I've read about Jojima, but I've watched more than a bit of Molina. He's not an automatic out and he sure can play his position if he's not hurt (which he's been recently, of course), but man is he slow. So? All catchers are slow, right? Ramon Castro is slow, but he's not as torpid as Bengie Molina and, besides, we're still rubbing our eyes over how clutch Ramon was. Point is we're used to Piazza compensating for he inadequacies with his mighty axe. Mike wasn't much with the defense, but who really noticed? He was Mike. None of these fellows is Mike. (Nor is Mike at the present time, just to be clear.)

As you've no doubt figured out, not having Mike, not having even the 2005 Mike, is going to destabilize everything because for the first time since the early '90s, we can't necessarily count on the catching position to produce meaningful power. Hundley and Piazza were the exception, not the rule, at their position. As long as they were driving in runs, we could slide by with dead-ball corner outfielders and infielders. We could get by with the Timos and the Phillipses and their ilk. We had RBIs from an unlikely source so we could overlook how few were emanating from where they were “supposed” originate. Free ride's over, fellas. First base and right field are now officially offense issues.

Then there's the closer. Sign Billy Wagner? Well, it wouldn't be folly, I suppose, but we'll overpay and he'll deteriorate. He'll blow a save or two in April and he'll hate himself and we'll be blogging our asses off over how Mets fans are not helping him by booing him so vociferously so soon. It's a worst-case scenario, but you can't say it doesn't have touches of precedent to it.

Too bad we can't get a Bobby Jenks to close for us. You know, some guy with an arm and a bushel of ability that needs to be harnessed by a smart pitching coach. Oh wait, we can. Anybody can. That was the beauty of the White Sox closer. He threw hard and somebody figured how to make that work. Whatever Chicago was spending on, it wasn't on a name reliever. They didn't need to.

Nor do the Mets. Did I not just see Aaron Heilman improve over the course of the year coming out of the pen? Did I not see Juan Padilla get just about everybody out? Did I not see Roberto Hernandez stubbornly refuse to grow old? Out of those three guys you couldn't reliably weave a couple of innings when needed?

When needed. This is a matter beyond the scope of the Mets, and it's not by any means new, but this closer mentality is the biggest crock since Le Peep discontinued its Bottomless Pit of Onion Soup promotion.

Roberto Hernandez might not act his age, but I will and say dagnabit, in my day, you pitched to win the game. Meaning? Meaning you sent Pedro Martinez and Tom Glavine and every other starter out there to go as far as he could. When a reliever was needed, you brought in your best reliever and let him go as far as he could. If he were up to the task, he'd finish the game. It worked a lot. It worked when the man who got the call was Tug McGraw or Jesse Orosco or Roger McDowell. It worked from the seventh inning to the ninth as necessary.

Nowadays? It's a frigging bureaucracy. It's the Department of Ninth Innings. Nobody's eyes are on the prize anymore. Teams like the Astros, with routinely brilliant closers, short-circuit themselves with their philosophy of “Get it to Lidge.” The minute Lidge doesn't get it done (versus Pujols, versus Podsednik), they are so screwed. There is no court of last resort when your big-time closer fails. Eight innings of great work down the drain. The philosophy that's worked so well for so few (Eckersley, Hoffman, Gagne, Rivera) has sabotaged everybody else, including us. Then there's the White Sox with their mixing and matching and coming up with a scrap heap special. Which ones are the White Sox? The ones with the rings, baby.

But they have a great pitching coach in Don Cooper. We apparently don't have anybody special in that role. Oh wait, we do, or so we were told in that magical winter of '03-'04. We're also being told that Heilman, after finally maturing, is being shopped because he doesn't abide by Rick Peterson's rules of order. What in the name of Rube Walker is going on around here?

I thought the same thing when I saw the MVP balloting. Congrats to our boys David, Cliff and Jose for attracting support, however scant, in the 44th consecutive installment balloting that didn't yield a Met on top. But where oh where was Pedro Martinez? C'mon BBWAA members, what's up wit' dat? Who on the Mets was more valuable in every sense of the word than Pedro Martinez? Who redefined the franchise with every start he'd take, every strike he'd make? Who stopped losing streaks time and again? Who, if not for a boy named Loop, would've at least scraped 20 wins? Who set the stage for the Mets contending as long as they did, who carried the staff through dry spells and who shook off the late-season sag and right the Mets back to respectability?

Where MVP-deciding is concerned, once you stray outside the Albert/Andruw stratosphere, who was more valuable to his team's season than Pedro Martinez? Bad job, writers. Pedro was The Man and The Man deserved a vote.

Speaking of The Men, happy 41st birthday to Dwight Eugene Gooden, born November 16, 1964, and happy 61st birthday to George Thomas Seaver, born November 17, 1944, each unmatched as The Man in his respective time (time that didn't last nearly long enough for one of them, but that's another sad story). It's always tickled me that they entered this world almost exactly twenty years apart. There's gotta be a kid born 11/15/84 a couple years away, no?

Oh Hell, I almost forgot to have a good look around your First Circle. Before I go do whatever else it is I do when I'm not doing this…

STRAWBERRY: There is a gigantic blind spot blocking my ability to notice his severe drawbacks as a human being. It's 252 home runs wide.

ORDOÑEZ: He was Stephanie's favorite Met back when it meant something for her to have a favorite Met. That my wife cared more for him than he cared for his own wife is immaterial. Greatest Infield Ever, bud. Fonzie, Robin, Oly and Rey. I know him by the company he kept. With the glove of a lifetime, he could be as truculent as he wanted to be. And after absorbing years of abuse over his dumb bat (like we hadn't already figured out he couldn't hit), if all he could spit out in his second language was “stupid” to characterize the fans' reaction to him, then so be it. Stupidity was running rampant in these parts by the end of 2002.

HENDERSON: There's a reason dairy products come with an expiration date. As delicious as fresh milk or cottage cheese can be, keep it around too long, you know it's gonna go sour.

McREYNOLDS: One good season. Then one very good season. Then three years of dispiriting deterioration, none of which he helped with his hello, I must be going demeanor. The 48th Greatest Met of the First Forty Years struck me as a lump and a load. Burn, baby, burn.

(Before we proceed into the second circle of Met Hell, a word about a special brand of offseason Hell for baseball fans: evaluating a trade without getting to see the principals play ball. My 30-second take on Mike Cameron for Xavier Nady is that it's impossible to size up offseason trades and signings one by one. You have to wait until you're breaking camp in March, because all those offseason moves fit into the kind of plan you can't assemble during the regular season, when each day brings a win or a loss and a changed situation while you're scrambling for more pieces. Nady, if he stays, strikes me as a good complement to Mike Jacobs in a first-base platoon, which would eliminate one problem from this winter's lengthy list and free up some money to address the others. I'm also not sure what the trade's detractors thought we could get for Mike Cameron, a prince of a guy but a flawed hitter playing out of position and trying to recover from a devastating injury. For much more than 30 seconds' worth, check out Metsblog.com and MetsGeek.com. I think I reloaded those two sites approximately 15,000 times this afternoon.)

Those of you still left, well, let's move on to the exercise at hand. Dante's second circle of Hell was reserved for those overcome by lust, and while things are different in Met Hell, bad reputations are a factor here as well. For this is the domain of those less-than-beloved Mets beset chiefly by image problems. Their very souls seemed steeped in rancor and churlishness, and they marched to the fingers-in-the-ears beat of their own sneering drummer. So what are they doing out here on the margins? Well, for all their bad reputations, they never did anything too awful while they wore our uniform. We might have heard, thought or suspected they were jerks, and so regarded them with a certain wariness, but most of their jerkiness came before or after the Days of Orange and Blue.

Carl Everett — Doesn't believe in dinosaurs. Or, apparently, the authority of managers — he wound up as a Met after the Marlins suspended him for insubordination. Doesn't believe in the need to stay in the batter's box, the point of contention in the scary tantrum he threw on July 15, 2000 in Fenway Park while the Mets looked on in amazement. (Or perhaps Mike Piazza asked an innocent question about whether the most-famous sauropod should be properly called Apatosaurus or Brontosaurus.) Still, what did Everett do while wearing Mets colors? He got himself banned from winter ball after going Artest on a fan in Venezuela, but let's not pretend we care about that. Dallas Green didn't trust him, but it was Dallas' philosophy to never trust anybody under 30. What we're left with is the strange 1997 incident in which workers at the Met day-care center (a concept I found amazing to begin with) found bruises on his kids, which led to family court. My impression (which could be wrong) from the day-care mess was that Everett and his wife were believers in a level of corporeal punishment that's no longer generally accepted, but not abusive parents. It didn't matter: Carl was shipped to Houston for John Hudek, about whom I now remember absolutely nothing. I do remember a fair amount about Everett, particularly some amazing home runs, none more amazing than his '97 grand slam off Ugie Urbina in the bottom of the ninth for a 6-6 tie in a game we'd eventually win. Do I remember that Everett was also kind of psycho? Sure. But not for us.

Eddie Murray — A shy and strange man, deeply suspicious of fame and people, with those people employed by the media drawing the deepest suspicion of all. But an amazingly smart player and by all accounts a terrific teammate. I wish he hadn't left town as the same odd cipher he was when he arrived. But beyond that, who gives a shit that he was mean to Tim McCarver?

Julio Machado — It's among the more bland transactions in baseball history: On April 1, 1992 the Milwaukee Brewers placed Machado on the restricted list. Why? Well, he'd been accused of shooting a woman following a traffic accident in Venezuela. Now, it stands to reason that if someone who was once a Met goes to prison for murder, they get some place in Met Hell. Still, to be terribly shallow about it, it was practically in another hemisphere, and, well, he was a Brewer at the time. Extenuating circumstances? Not in the real world, God knows. But in Met Hell, it earns him a somewhat-awkward exile out here.

Juan Samuel — It's painful to even remember. This was the period where having two centerfielders (Mookie and Lenny) was somehow a problem, so the solution was to get rid of both and import a second baseman to play the position, an experiment that was such a flaming disaster that the Mets insisted on repeating it with the likes of Keith Miller and Howard Johnson, until finally we were all so shell-shocked that we wanted to cheer when some hapless Met broke back on a drive to center without falling down. That original player in the wrong position, of course, was Samuel, who floundered through half a miserable season before getting shipped off for the malingering Mike Marshall and the wretched Alejandro Pena, two more players to make the ulcers reignite. What's easy to forget is that while everybody hated the Dykstra and McDowell for Samuel trade from the get-go, most everybody also thought Samuel — a year removed from a 100-RBI campaign — was a pretty amazing player. He wasn't; in fact, in Carlos Baergaesque fashion he hung around for years afterwards and was never more than so-so again. But while I'll always remember him with a dull fury, I'm not sure how much of the whole disaster was his fault.

Jeff Kent — Another guy whose Met career was bookended by groan-inducing trades: Kent came to New York as an unknown in the exile of David Cone, then netted us Baerga in return. He certainly showed that he was wound too tight while in New York, with the most-famous incident coming at the beginning of his Met career, when he refused to go through the usual rookie hazing of being forced to wear a ridiculous outfit and seemed ready to fight the whole clubhouse over it. Kent's always seemed socially maladroit, and I never particularly liked him, but being out of step with the careening disaster that was the Mets of the early 1990s could be seen as a badge of honor. Hell, I was seething a lot of the time, and I didn't have to see the carnage from mere feet away the way Kent did. Certainly I remember he always played hard — too hard, if anything. And wouldn't you like to have found a place in our batting order for the 256 homers and 1,000+ RBIs he's racked up since leaving town? Me too.

Next stop: The third circle of Met Hell, home of two representative unfortunates who destroyed all prior goodwill with poor departures.

Welcome to Met Hell, which you'll find owes a certain something to depictions of the real thing. Now, here's the good news: Compared to that real thing, the Hell that holds a lot more than baseball players, Met Hell isn't really that bad a place. Oh sure, as we descend you'll find some malcontents and miscreants, and there are some truly bad characters we'll encounter late in our tour. But not so many of them, thank goodness. Compared with some other clubs, we've gotten off pretty easy.

The first circle of Met Hell is Limbo. Dante defined it as the place for virtuous pagans and the unbaptized — they weren't really punished, but they didn't get to hobnob with God, either. So it is with Met Limbo — it's reserved for Mets we bear no particular grudge and may even have a certain fondness for, particularly since they were part of some very good campaigns. But there's a creepiness at the core of these guys that makes us reluctant to truly embrace them, whatever grand deeds they might have been a part of.

Rey Ordonez — OK, he redefined shortstop in our eyes, and his debut was incredible. We were both there, Opening Day in the rain, and the throw he made to nail Royce Clayton at the plate (I can hear Gary Cohen yelping “FROM HIS KNEES!” as I type) produced a sound I'd never heard in a stadium before: the sound of 18,000+ people turning to the 18,000+ next to them and murmuring, “Did he really just do that?” An amazed burble, stadium-sized. Ah, but that wasn't all of Rey. It became clear all too soon that the O Rey wore on the back of his shirt was for “obnoxious.” He sulked. He pouted. He pretended he couldn't speak English until the very end of his Met career, in which he used his sudden command of the language to seal his fate by announcing we were all stupid. (Um, no. Hypercritical, yes. Vindictive, sure. Bitter, absolutely. But not stupid.) He couldn't even remain interested in the entirety of his own highlight video — if the Mets didn't edit out the scene of a bored Rey-O starting to wander away from Cookie Rojas, just imagine what they left on the cutting-room floor. The Mets could never turn his escape from Cuba into a stirring tale because there was the small matter that he left a wife behind who hardly ever got discussed because Rey found himself a new wife with unseemly haste. And the hitting? Ugh. Rey Ordonez may have been the stupidest hitter who ever lived. He bunted at the wrong time. He had not even the vaguest command of the strike zone. His determination to hit home runs made him a black hole in the lineup for weeks at a time. He was utterly and completely uncoachable, utterly and completely self-centered, and thoroughly unlikeable. Oh, but that stadium-sized murmur….

Rickey Henderson — There's an asterisk on this one, because we knew perfectly well what we were getting. But we sure got it. Rickey's 1999 was fairly amazing — he hit .315 and stole 37 bases at the tender age of 40 and (even more amazingly) managed to make Roger Cedeno a productive baseball player. But it all turned sour in the playoffs, and you could pinpoint the moment: Game 4 of the Arizona series, when Bobby Valentine pulled him for defense. Rickey's replacement (Melvin Mora) immediately proved Bobby right by gunning down Jay Bell at home, but Rickey whined nonetheless. Then he played cards with Bobby Bonilla while the rest of the team was fighting to the death against the Braves. In spring training the next year he started bitching about a raise, complained about the trip to Japan, then dogged his way through the next five weeks. Finally, the end: He jogged to first on an apparent home run against the Marlins, wound up with a single when it didn't go out, was booed mercilessly and properly by the fans and criticized by Valentine. His response? He threatened a New York Post reporter and said he'd do the same thing next time. There was no next time. “After considering everything that happened last night and this morning, something had to be done,” said Steve Phillips, adding that “no matter how talent you have, if you continue to create problems and situations, you wear out your welcome. We got to the point where we had to compromise our ideals and what we expect from our players too often.” Just for making me agree with Steve Phillips, he's on the list.

Kevin McReynolds — An absolute killer of a season in 1988, when he and Darryl complemented each other so perfectly that they stole each other's MVP votes and delivered the prize to Kirk Fucking Gibson. Tremendous power, wily baserunner, terrific arm from the outfield. But he played baseball with the kind of passion normally shown by DMV clerks. His wife didn't help: Her infamous call to WFAN defending K-Mac's laser-quick departures from Shea because, as she explained, her man wanted to beat the traffic is probably in some manual for team wives on what not to do. Of course K-Mac didn't always wait for the end of the game — in late 1989 he and Darryl got caught in the Wrigley Field clubhouse changing into their street clothes, which would have been fine except the game wasn't over and they had to hustle back during a desperate ninth-inning rally. Kevin McReynolds never did anything truly wrong, and he didn't owe fans any more than what he gave them on the field, which for a while was beyond reproach. But he's living proof that for baseball to be any fun, those of us watching must at least be able to imagine that the guy down on the field doing things we could only dream of doing gives a shit that he's doing them.

Darryl Strawberry — What? Darryl? Our Ted Williams? The Straw That Stirs the Drink? Why is he on this list? C'mon Jace, he's not a bad guy, just a weak guy. A tragic figure. Well, OK, sure. But c'mon now. Didn't you get sick of Darryl Strawberry? Of his constant illnesses, including sick days that coincided with the recording of “Chocolate Strawberry,” possibly the worst hip-hop song in history? Of the domestic violence? Of the fight on team-photo day? (Though the resulting photo is a classic, with Darryl and Keith Hernandez in a fury and Davey Johnson looking like he's just aged about a decade.) Of his stint in Smithers, which just happened to be timed to delay more potential domestic-violence charges? Of his equally phony stint as a Jesus freak? Of the endless sulking and whining and talking shit? Of the ridiculous book he, um, wrote? Didn't you get sick of it all more times than you care to remember? In Game 7 of the '86 series, Darryl hit a home run in the 8th to make it 7-5 Mets, and afterwards you can see Ray Knight intercept him before the dugout, telling him something urgent. He's telling him to be a man and shake Davey Johnson's hand. Moments after helping secure the Mets' second World Series title, Darryl Strawberry needed to be told to be a man. OK, fine, I agree. Darryl isn't a bad guy. Hell, he's a tragic figure. Would you still think so if he'd hit 15 homers a year?

Next stop: The circle of Met Hell reserved for those of unseemly reputation, and a weighing of their sins or lack thereof while clad in blue and orange.

At any given moment, the Mets roster is 12-20% occupied by guys I can't stand and guys I don't want. I don't know if I hate them though.

As much fun as some make it, I don't want to hate on the Mets. They're the Mets. I live through them. To hate a Met is to hate a little bit of myself. Not that I'm incapable of that.

We know too much about our Mets. We see them and hear about them and read about them not just as bright and shiny baseball players but as occasionally ugly human beings. I don't remember hating any Mets when I was a kid but I don't remember knowing all that much about them except that they were good guys. At worst I wished one or two into the cornfield. Or at least into Wrigley Field. A trade or a release was occasionally in order, but nothing violent.

Pawn Dave Marshall off on some unsuspecting sucker. Dave Marshall…I didn't hate him but he was the first Met I didn't want around. I refuse to look up his stats to discover if my distaste was based on anything more than a random determination that Dave Marshall should never play. Maybe Dave Marshall got all his hits before I came back from the fridge, but I don't recall him getting any while I was a witness.

So I'm avoiding his numbers and I'm sure as hell not going to click on Ultimate Mets' Fan Memories section. It's one of the greatest things on the Web yet it also kills me because I'll look up some player I recall as a .208 lifetime hitter who made six errors in every eight chances and find out that some contemporary of mine remembers this player as someone who visited him or his brother in the hospital and restored unto him the power of movement and perhaps positive thinking. And then the guy signed autographs for every kid in the neighborhood and rescued a dozen cats on his way back to Shea where that very night he went 4-for-5 off Phil Niekro.

That's lovely. But I don't wanna know. I don't wanna know that Sergio Ferrer, who was a mascot of futility to me and Joel Lugo, has gone on to bishophood somewhere. I don't wanna know that Phil Mankowski, the worst third baseman in Mets history (and that's some pretty bad third-basin') fights fires and slays ignorance. I don't wanna know that my existence-bane Brent Gaff jump-started some poor family's Chrysler Newport in the parking lot after a 9-1 loss and then took the entire Village of Coram out for pancakes, thus salvaging Coram Night for one and all.

It's bad enough knowing that a lot of the players I loved sucked as people. Knowing the players I disliked as players are standup gents is about as disappointing. I already feel silly enough in general.

You know who I didn't like? Ray Knight. Well, I liked Ray Knight just fine, but I couldn't stand that he was playing in 1985. I wanted him disappeared, certainly benched. Ray Knight was the first Met I booed, but I didn't boo the man. I booed the decision to play the man. I booed the results of his attempts to play. But I did not have it in for Ray Knight.

And a year later, when other teams had to fight with Ray Knight to party, I developed severe amnesia. Me, I loved Ray Knight as he was winning the 1986 World Series MVP and homering in Game 7 and scoring the Mookie run in Game 6 and such.

It just doesn't pay to hate Mets no matter how many Mets force the issue. Alas, very few take the boo by the horns like Ray Knight did and turn a Metropolis in their favor.

Wear a Mets uniform and I am contractually bound to like you. I ask but a few more adherences from you to ensure my loyalty.

Don't say stupid things to the press and I will like you.

Don't stare into space while in the field and I will like you.

Don't shirk your responsibility for playing badly and I will like you.

Don't break the law and I will like you…or break the law but strike guys out when you get off for good behavior and I will like you.

Make sense. Play hard. Succeed sometimes. Stand up. I will love you.

Amazing how many guys can't get with the program. No wonder we're descending into this subject and right on into the Met Circles of Hell. I'm afraid to find out how many of our heroes are hanging out there waiting for us.

The designated hitter rule is rather hellish in its own right, but I don't see holding the rule against a guy who rules at DH. A case is made for why pitchers should bat and why David Ortiz is most valuable at Gotham Baseball.

The old baseball joke about rooting for laundry means that donning the orange and blue (in its various migrating shades, to say nothing of white and black) absolves players of their former misdeeds against us. Hit Piazza in the wrist at Fenway and get in a war of words with him? We love Pedro now. Dismantle our hopes year after year after year with that aloof look on his face while 29,000 or so do the chop in Atlanta? We love Tom Glavine now. Or rather we like him. Or rather we've grown to accept him.

By the same token, take off that uni and you're the enemy. Pleasant memories didn't make any of us transfer our loyalties when Steve Bieser was dancing down the line against David Cone. Lee Mazzilli's tenure as poster boy didn't temper our distemper any when he started freelance-umpiring from the first-base line. When Charlie O'Brien was punching John Cangelosi in the back of the head, it was obvious he was the devil. I still mourn Edgardo Alfonzo's departure and root for him to do well, but not when he's in the box against us.

And yet there are those guys who are laundry-proof, those souls who can't be redeemed by sticking a Met hat on their heads. Some we can't get used to seeing in our uniform and never grow to trust. Others we start off liking well enough before their baser qualities become apparent. Some are arriving mercenaries we've already formed an opinion of. Others are homegrown children we quickly want to disavow.

So who are our least-favorite Mets? We'll get to that in a bit, but first some attempts at ground rules.

Not just anybody is eligible, regardless of how many boos rained down on them at Shea or whether or not we find ourselves wandering around years later still fuming over some play they didn't make or some pitch they did. However infuriating it is to watch, simple incompetence (Paul Gibson, Mike Maddux, Roger Cedeno, Rich Rodriguez, Danny Graves) won't get you on the list. Being frustrating (Jay Payton, Kaz Matsui, Victor Zambrano) won't get you there either. If you were good elsewhere but terrible for us, that's not black mark enough: Mel Rojas and Carlos Baerga aren't on the list. Family members we're quarreling with at the moment but will eventually welcome back to the fold are exempt — relax, John Franco and Al Leiter. Being a bad seed somewhere else won't get you enshrined if you didn't do anything particularly objectionable for us: Garry Templeton and Mike A. Marshall are in the clear.

No, it takes more than incompetence or not living up to your potential or saying the occasional stupid thing or becoming a Yankee or just being a lunkhead. There's got to be something worse, something that still makes the blood boil, something that made Met fans dread the smirking approach of the Yankee fans in their offices or on their blocks during that player's tenure. Mental or physical incompetence that stemmed from not being prepared. Being a quitter, a lousy teammate, spectacularly obnoxious to fans or the media, a bad citizen, a traitor.

In other words, it's not nearly enough to be a bad baseball player or an OK baseball player who had a horrible minute or month or year — there are plenty of such players, and the vast majority of them were trying as hard as they could. To make the list of our Least Favorite Mets, you have to have done worse than that. You have to have made us suspect you're actually a bad person.

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.

It is the Mets Final Exam. It asks you on Halloween to see through the secret identities of 44 Mets who played their final game for the Mets in one of the 44 different seasons the Mets have played, one player per each Mets season. It chooses Election Day to unmask them and show you who they really are. Infer what you will about the timing.

This heartbreaking quiz had its share of pain for the administrator who admittedly slipped, slid and stumbled on five separate questions, twice tripping up on detail, twice not properly clarifying his clues and once out-and-out giving you the wrong question (which has since been simultaneously replaced and reborn as a bonus query). I thank the readers who pointed out my foibles and continued to take the test despite my chipped credibility.

I wanted this to be hard, but after a couple of days I had a hunch that it was too hard, so in the great tradition of Cablevision's public access channels at Regents time, I offered Extra Help. I have to admit I had gone from “oh boy, they'll never get this one” to “oh no, they'll never get this one” and I began to feel kind of bad about that. There's a dark side to me, an ugly sliver of my disposition that wants you to know I know something you don't know. But my ultimate joy is in sharing that piece of data so we both end up knowing it and can talk about it 'til we're blue and orange in the face. (I like learning stuff, too, so feel free to stump me and show me up.) I would never keep baseball secrets from my fellow Mets fans. Not for more than a week and change anyway.

Time's up, fellas. Drop your masks and reveal yourselves.

WHO I AM

1. Given my gang-member background, I was thought to be a dangerous dude to have around two other young African-American players, so I was traded after I helped the Mets win a World Series. Though I got no hits in the final game, I made its existence possible with a big hit in the tenth inning of the previous game, Game Six. According to legend, I got that hit while wearing nothing underneath my uniform pants (I allegedly gave up on the season and was back in the clubhouse making plane reservations home). I'd later win an MVP award for another team while the teammates I had to be separated from — Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden — found other influences. My name is Kevin Mitchell and my final game as a Met came on October 27, 1986.

2. I came to the Mets in a loud deal that involved multiple players and a guy who would win a big award, the National League MVP of 1989. And I left the Mets in a loud deal involving multiple players and a guy who won a big award, the American League Cy Young of 1985 and 1989. But eventually I came back in a manner befitting my personality: practically mum. A players' strike curtailed my last season and I doubt anybody noticed that I didn't return when play resumed. My name is Kevin McReynolds and my final game as a Met came on August 11, 1994.

3. My best years as a Met came early in the club's existence. I came back for another go-round that ended just as things were getting good. By the end of that particular season, I was second to Tom Seaver on the all-time Met victory list with 43 wins. My name is Al Jackson and my final game as a Met came on May 22, 1969.

4. I was at my best in the mid-'70s, winning a Cy Young Award in 1976 and finishing second in the voting to Tom Seaver in 1975. The Mets waited several years after my peak to acquire me. My name is Randy Jones and my final game as a Met came on September 7, 1982.

5. Though Hall of Famers like Johnny Bench and Carlton Fisk had the privilege of catching Tom Seaver, it was I who caught him more than anybody. If you were filling in your scorecard when The Franchise started, he was 1 and I, more than any other receiver, was 2. My name is Jerry Grote and my final game as a Met came on August 23, 1977.

6. My first start in the Major Leagues was the same night the Mets honored their Hall of Fame broadcaster, Bob Murphy, on the occasion of his final game. My brother Tom was thrilled to find me at first because he was pitching. It was like we were kids again! And though I was the starting first-sacker, the guy who finished the night at that position — though I'd hardly call him my caddy — was none other than Mike Piazza. My career ended three days later, but it was a memorable ride. My name is Mike Glavine and my final game as a Met came on September 28, 2003.

7. I pitched for the Tigers before they won the World Series. Detroit was the first of nine Major League stops for me. The Mets were my last, a good seven years after I won the National League Cy Young Award and set a record for most appearances (106) in one season. My name is Mike Marshall and my final game as a Met came on October 2, 1981.

8. In many ways, my career parallels that of all-time Mets great Jerry Koosman. But my big years were 1968, when I went 3-0 in the World Series despite laboring in the shadow of Denny McLain, and 1971, when I lost the American League Cy Young Award to Vida Blue. I'm yet another pitcher who the Mets picked up when he was past his prime, though I mostly pitched in hard luck, going 8-13 but with a decent (for then) 3.22 ERA. The Mets got me in exchange for Rusty Staub, who'd become best remembered as a pinch-hitter deluxe. When Rusty came back to the Mets (I was long retired by then), he wore two batting gloves but rarely a fielder's mitt. My name is Mickey Lolich and my final game as a Met came on September 20, 1976.

9. I wasn't a Met for very long. I was only with New York — essentially rented from the Angels at the end of my contract — because Ron Darling had gotten hurt against St. Louis and we were short a starter. In my brief Met tenure, I went 2-0 with a 5.84 ERA. My name is John Candelaria and my final game as a Met came on September 28, 1987.

10. Yes, I gave up a double to Frank Robinson that scored Pete Rose and Vada Pinson in the middle of very important pennant race game for their team, the Reds. (Can you believe Robinson is managing all these years later?) I'm better known for surrendering a home run to Roger Maris at Yankee Stadium in 1961. It was his 61st. My name is Tracy Stallard and my final game as a Met came on September 27, 1964.

BONUS: I used to be the answer to Question No. 10 before Greg realized that what he thought was my final game as a Met was really just the final game of my first tour of duty with the Mets. Too bad, because in that game, I beat the Houston Colt 45s and — get this — Don Larsen, 3-0. That's beautiful because my nickname was The Yankee Killer (derived from my success as a Tiger) and I defeated the man who threw a perfect game for the Yanks in the 1956 World Series. If Interleague play had been around when I played, I'll bet Mets fans would've adored me. As it was, I was traded to the Braves about a week after I beat Larsen. My name is Frank Lary and what Greg thought was my final game as a Met came on July 31, 1964. The Mets got me back in 1965 and traded me in mid-season to the White Sox where I finished up. I can't be the answer for 1964 and I'm not the answer for 1965, so never mind.

11. In 1965, which was Casey Stengel's last year of managing the Mets, he said something really nice about Ed Kranepool, that he was 20, but in ten years he had a chance to be a star. Casey couldn't just leave it that. Referring to me, the skipper added that I was 20 and in ten years I'd have a chance to be 30. Thanks for the vote of confidence, Case (and by the way, I was 19 when you said that). Still, I hung around the Mets for a few more years before catching on with the expansion Pilots. In 1975, I got to where Casey always said I would. I turned 30. My name is Greg Goossen and my final game as a Met came on July 16, 1968.

12. I may have finished as the Mets' second baseman, but I played a good year-and-a-half at third. The promotion of David Wright rendered my services unnecessary. My name is Ty Wigginton, and my final game as a Met came on July 29, 2004.

13. If Mets fans remember me, they'll remember me for two things. One, the Mets almost never scored for me, particularly in 1968 when we were shut out in five of my first seven starts. And two, I hailed from one of the most unusually named hometowns in America: Lost Nation, Iowa. My name is Jim McAndrew and my final game as a Met came on September 15, 1973.

14. To be fair, the Mets didn't just get some kid in exchange for me — they got The Kid. It's the only reason you'd trade a player who came up and hit .407 as a September callup, don'tcha think? Alas, I went with Hubie Brooks, Mike Fitzgerald and Floyd Youmans to Montreal for Gary Carter. My name is Herm Winningham and my final game as a Met came on September 30, 1984.

15. I'm known for a lot of things in baseball, my playing career as a Met not being one of things I'm most not remembered for. I was retired as a player for a full year before joining the Mets. My on-field comeback was short on length (all of four games), something else that's little-remembered by those with a long memory. Perhaps I'm most famous for declaring that there are various degrees of finality befitting a situation that looks hopeless but still appears to have some hope when you look at it. So when I say “it was over,” I mean it. Because, you see, it was me who told the world that it ain't over 'til it's over. My name is Yogi Berra and my final game as a Met came on May 9, 1965.

16. When I broke my left wrist sliding toward second against the Cubs, it ended my Met career, one that had been promising (got three hits my first night and the Mets got themselves a division title) and intermittently productive. I played both first and third as a Met, finding a home, I thought, at first, until the front office brought in future Hall of Famer Eddie Murray. Then I found myself back at third. Anyway, I was more a hitter (.328 one year) than a fielder. Then I was no longer a Met. I enjoyed nine more seasons with six other teams before hanging 'em up in 2001. My name is Dave Magadan and my final game as a Met came on August 8, 1992.

17. My whole Met career was weird, but right away I helped the team get to the playoffs, hitting .315 in the process, so I was allowed my idiosyncrasies for a while. It was my second year when things really went sour. On a Friday night against the Marlins, I hit a ball to deep left. I thought it was gone, so I went into a trot. Instead, it bounced off the base of the wall and I was held to a very long single. The manager and the GM had seen enough. I only got into the next afternoon's game because the Mets were running out of players (they used a pitcher to pinch-hit that day). When my plaque goes up in Cooperstown, this incident will not be engraved. My name is Rickey Henderson, and my final game as a Met came on May 13, 2000.

18. If you've read Jane Leavy's biography of Sandy Koufax (and if you haven't, you should — it's probably the best baseball biography of recent years), you'll know she weaves the story of Koufax's life around the narrative of Sandy's best outing, his perfect game of September 9, 1965. I was the opposing pitcher on that occasion and I threw my greatest game: a complete game one-hitter. The only run I gave up was unearned. I wasn't perfect. He was. I was a Cub then. Two years later, I'd end my career as a Met. My name is Bob Hendley and my final game as a Met came on September 3, 1967.

19. Not unlike Johnny Cash, I've been everywhere, man. I've been with San Diego, Cleveland, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Tampa Bay, Seattle, Boston, Arizona, Long Island and a team in Japan. Some of those organizations dumped me before I could play a game that counted for them. My most recent stop was with Washington where as a National I had evolved into a reliable pinch-hitter and occasional cleanup hitter of all things. And of course I was once a Met. For them, I had a bad last day. Shoot, we all had a bad last week, losing five in a row and blowing our grip on the National League Wild Card. My name is Carlos Baerga and my final game as a Met came on September 27, 1998.

20. The Chicago White Sox led the Los Angeles Angels three games to one when the Halos handed me the ball for Game Five of the 2005 American League Championship Series. I won Game One for them, but Game Five didn't go as well and we lost the pennant. Still, I had come a long way since my generally undistinguished Met tenure. My name is Paul Byrd and my final game as a Met came on September 29, 1996.

21. The Mets were teetering on the edge of contention extinction when they traded a starting outfielder to get me for an unlikely Wild Card push. It didn't work out. Later on, I'd go to their nemesis, the Braves, and I would work out great for them. So what else is new? My name is John Thomson and my final game as a Met came on September 27, 2002.

22. Technically, I'm not an ex-Met yet, but considering that a) they took on the final year of my contract only to get rid of one they wanted even less, b) I was diagnosed with a serious injury that curtailed my season to three appearances and c) I've been suspended for steroid use, I don't expect to be back. My name is Felix Heredia and my final game as a Met all but certainly came on April 18, 2005.

23. The guy I was traded for had 8 inches and 151 Met home runs on me, so, no, I didn't measure up. Yet in the scheme of things, Mets fans will almost certainly manage to remember me more fondly (or at least more strongly) than they do Dave Kingman. My name is Bobby Valentine and my final game as a Met came on September 29, 1978.

24. You know why my last Mets' pitching appearance was so darn representative of all my Mets pitching appearances? Because it was my only Mets pitching appearance. I was extremely versatile my one year as a Met, playing second, short and third…and even pitching once when we were hopelessly behind. Unlike the other Met position players to trudge to the mound (Bill Pecota, Matt Franco, Derek Bell and Todd Zeile), I delivered the goods. Three up, three down, baby. My name is Desi Relaford and my final game as a Met came on October 7, 2001.

25. I wasn't Tug McGraw but I was traded for Tug McGraw. We were the lefty relievers who swapped sides in the six-player deal that also brought the Mets John Stearns and Del Unser. Considering that the Mets gave up their one of their most legendary characters and greatest pitchers to get me, you'd figure they'd give me more than one batter to prove myself, but that was it. I gave up a game-winning hit to Richie Hebner and next thing I knew, I was traded to Cincinnati for Tom Hall. Ya gotta believe my Met appearances weren't plentiful. My name is Mac Scarce and my final game as a Met came on April 11, 1975.

26. Yeah, I was quite the winner, playing for seven division champions in nine years before being traded to a Mets team that had no shot with or without me. Playing in New York reminded me of my offseason job, which was digging graves. With my attitude and generally crummy play, I suppose I dug my own grave with the Mets. Whatever. I just wanted out. My name is Richie Hebner and my final game as a Met came on September 30, 1979.

27. I know what you're thinking: Bud Harrelson. No doubt about it, Bud Harrelson wore No. 3 with more distinction than any Met ever has. But I didn't say I wore that number, I just said it was what I was synonymous with. I suppose Jim Hickman, Dave Kingman, Gary Carter, Darryl Strawberry and Edgardo Alfonzo might claim that, too, but they probably did other things as a Met besides hit three home runs in one game. Honestly, that's all I can remember doing for the team. My name is Claudell Washington and my final game as a Met came on October 3, 1980.

28. My dossier sounds a bit like Harrelson's, except Buddy went 0-for-2 in his last game. Sounds a bit like Rey Ordoñez, too, but Rey never made the All-Stars or got to the Series (and he was more annoying than feisty). My biggest years were with the Phillies, but I ended my playing days as a spare part for a Mets team that just missed the playoffs. I recently took a job with the Yankees, so there's even less reason to remember me as a Met. My name is Larry Bowa and my final game as a Met came on October 6, 1985.

29. Greg was so anxious to confuse you that he initially made me sound a lot like Kenny Rogers. Kenny, however, wasn't traded after giving up a very important run in a very important game against the Braves; he left as a free agent. And unlike Rogers, who was tagged with a loss in the sixth game of the 1999 NLCS, I was credited with the win in the fifth game, the one know better for Robin Ventura's grand slam single. What's sort of forgotten is I allowed the Braves to take the lead in the top of the fifteenth inning. At least I didn't give up anything else in my three innings of work, putting the Mets in a decent position to stage their miracle resurrection (is there any other kind?). Some people think I should've pitched again for the Mets, in the eleventh inning of Game Six instead of Kenny. Some people are saying that I might pitch for the Mets in 2006, but until that happens, that Game Five was my Met farewell. My name is Octavio Dotel and my final game as a Met came on October 17, 1999.

30. I was voted the most popular player on the worst team in history. Yea for me! Seriously, I was awarded a nice boat for my troubles. Of course I lived in Nebraska nowhere near water. Typical. No wonder I retired as soon as my one and only Met season was over. My name is Richie Ashburn and my final game as a Met came on September 30, 1962.

31. In all the excitement over Mookie Wilson's ground ball trickling through Bill Buckner's legs and scoring Ray Knight, it's easy to forget that there was a winning pitcher in Game Six of the 1986 World Series. That was me, despite giving up the two runs that made the bottom of the tenth such a desperate situation. I was usually a starter back then but was pitching in relief that night. I'd eventually become one of the best relievers in baseball, but was still getting the hang of that role at the end of my Met tenure. Things got better for me in Minnesota. My name is Rick Aguilera and my final game as a Met came on July 30, 1989.

32. Bringing up Joe Torre was meant to throw you off track. Because he's been such an icon of sanctimonious hegemony over the past decade, it's easy to forget he had a very long playing career. While it's true that Torre hit two homers and drove in three runs for the Braves on my last day with the Mets, I wanted words like “derailed” and “express” (and “off track” just now) to guide you. In addition to pointing you toward my nickname, I want you to know now that I didn't want you to know what I was thinking when I was playing, because, really, that's what I was most famous for: not saying anything worth a darn. None other than Ralph Kiner still likes to tell the story of how I came on his show and told him nothing. He asked me where I got my unusual nickname and I told him I didn't know. He asked my wife's name and “what's she like?” I told him, “her name's Mrs. Coleman, bub, and she likes me.” If you know your early Mets, you've figured me out because, for once, I've told you too much. My name is Choo Choo Coleman and my final game as a Met came on April 23, 1966.

33. Joe Torre had gone from the Braves to the Cardinals and was in the process of winning an MVP the night the Mets last used me to pitch. Nearly eight months later they used me for something bigger. When I asked you, “hey, what can I say?” I was hoping you'd put together “say” and “hey”. Then you'd understand that I was traded for the greatest player in the history of the National League. Imagine that: me (and a bundle of cash) for Willie Mays. I still can't believe it. My name is Charlie Williams and my final game as a Met came on September 27, 1971.

34. Those who absorb such things will remember me for dating the lead singer of a pop group whose hits included “Turn To You,” “We Got The Beat” and “Vacation”. Yes, I went out with Belinda Carlisle of the Go-Go's when they were hitting it big. Hitting it big…not something I did as a Met. No wonder Mets fans eventually went head over heels for Dave Magadan instead of me. My name is Mike Marshall and my final game as a Met came on July 12, 1990.

35. Granted, they named a candy bar after Reggie Jackson (1978) long before I made my Major League debut (1991), but I had a candy bar named after me (1917) long before I was born (1968). More saliently, I threw my only complete game of the season the day before I was traded in a six-player deal. My name is Mark Clark and final game as a Met came on August 7, 1997.

36. I collected six hits…as a batter…in my career. Those four hits I mentioned? Those were hits I gave up as a pitcher. Sorry if I misled you. If you were another pitcher, I would've been nicer to you. Those six hits came in 206 at-bats. That left me with a career batting average of .029. Yes, .029. That's the worst Major League batting average by any player with more than 100 plate appearances. Some time ago, I told the Scripps Howard News Service that such offensive lameness at least made me a better bunter. Wearing my trademark specs, I could at least see the sunny side of things. Incidentally, I never came to the plate as a Met but did go 2-2 in 12 relief appearances. My name is Ron Herbel and my final game as a Met came on September 30, 1970.

37. You probably know me for a number of things in Mets history. I rescued the team in one very famous game. Took a dive, but in an extremely fortuitous way. Mobile? I could run and I was from there. I also carry the distinction, if you want to call it that, of being the only Met to lead the team in base hits for a season with a total under 100. To be fair, we all missed a lot of time due to injuries that year, but even the severely strike-shortened seasons of '81 and '94 saw a Met get a hundred hits. Accumulating the least-most safeties is no way to stay safe from a trade, apparently, because the next thing I knew, despite all I did for this organization, I was sent to Houston for somebody named Rich Chiles. Fame isn't just fleeting. It's mobile. My name is Tommie Agee and my final game as a Met came on October 4, 1972.

38. Know why Mets fans are so suspicious of guys their front office trades for? It's because of guys like me and how my credentials get overblown. When I came over as part of a multiplayer swap, I was by no means the key component, but somebody — Joe McIlvane, I think — felt compelled to tell the press that I was “death on lefthanders”. That was incorrect. I was lefthanded and I was death to the Mets' chances of getting out of any inning I pitched in relief. In portions of the two seasons I was with New York, I allowed more than one of every three batters I faced to reach base. Does that sound like death on anybody? If McIlvane or Frank Cashen or whoever had said, “the Padres threw this guy in and we took him,” maybe I'd be remembered merely as a non-entity instead of as a symbol of raging bullpen ineptitude. My name is Gene Walter and my final game as a Met came on July 9, 1988.

39. Truth is I was a starter for only one of my six full Met seasons and it was only because the guy I was always behind was hurt. I batted .231 during my big opportunity and wound up back on the bench. Bench…as a hitter, there's somebody I'll never be mistaken for. But my thing was catching, and I did that for a long time with four different teams. My name is Duffy Dyer and my final game as a Met came on October 2, 1974.

40. Perhaps you've noticed that the Mets don't keep too many players around for more than a decade. But my Mets service spanned three decades. The trick is to 1) Come up late in one decade; 2) Hang on into a second decade; 3) Get traded and blossom elsewhere; 4) Get reacquired by the Mets on the downside of your career and the beginning of a third decade. That's more or less my story. Eventually, I lost all meaningful playing time to a big lummox at a position where I fielded really well. Because of him and his occasional home runs, I didn't get a single start my last year with the Mets. Then me and him were both deemed obsolete when the Mets got a first baseman who could field and hit. I caddied for Dave Kingman, was bumped by Keith Hernandez but can claim something neither of them can — a kinship with Babe Ruth. I was born the same day he died. My name is Mike Jorgensen and my final game as a Met came on June 14, 1983.

41. Terry Mulholland's been around forever. He gave up that home run to Piazza that capped the ten-run inning in 2000 but he was also pitching when I was playing and I was done before Mike ever made the big leagues. My career stretches back to the '70s. That's when people were predicting all-time greatness for me. I played really well (long before I became a Met, natch), but my reputation took a downturn after I took great offense at being named an All-Star reserve. I deserved to be the starting shortstop and made no bones about it. “If I ain't startin',” you might remember me saying, “I ain't departin'.” My name is Garry Templeton and my final game as a Met came on October 5, 1991.

42. I was traded for two guys, see? One of them, a minor leaguer who never made it to the bigs, got traded a few years later and helped bring back two guys. One of them became a Mets mainstay, playing a large role when they made the World Series in 2000; the other was packaged by the Mets for a player you could say the same thing about. The other guy I was traded for was a pitcher who didn't do all that much for the Mets, and he was traded for yet another guy about whom you could say the same thing. That guy went in a deal that brought over two more players. One of them was part of the Mets' 2000 National League championship edition. The other? He was traded for a guy who was traded for a guy who was also part of that 2000 club. So thanks to me, you eventually got Armando Benitez, Mike Hampton, Darryl Hamilton and Joe McEwing, 16% of a pennant-winning roster. Of course you had to launder (among others) Arnold Gooch, Roger Cedeño, Juan Acevedo, Rigo Beltran, Chuck McElroy and good ol' Jesse Orosco to get them. Did I say launder? That's funny. As a Met, I developed a peculiar attraction to bleach. My name is Bret Saberhagen and my final game as a Met came on July 29, 1995.

43. If the only times you ever saw me pitch were in the All-Star Game, you'd think of me as quite a reliever. I made two such squads and pitched out of the pen both times. Never gave up a run and even got a save. And if the only time you saw me pitch was in the World Series, you'd know me as a lights-out middleman. I turned around the deciding game of the Fall Classic one year with 2-1/3 innings of virtually spotless work. But if you're a Mets fan, you know that those were bullpen cameos and that I was a member of the Mets rotation for most of ten seasons. My name is Sid Fernandez and my final game as a Met came on October 2, 1993.

44. By making the final putout of the 2004 World Series, Doug Mientkiewicz did something a Red Sock hadn't done in more than eight decades. But it had been done. What I did, though…that was a first for the Red Sox, though it's hardly to their credit. Boston was the final team to add an African-American player to its roster. According to one account, “irate fans paraded around Fenway Park for three days protesting the Red Sox' refusal to bring [me] up from the minors.” Did you know they waited more than 12 years after Jackie Robinson made his debut with Brooklyn to give a black man a chance? That black man was indeed me. On July 21, 1959, I became the first African-American to play for the Red Sox. Unfortunately, my career was no match for that of Jackie Robinson or Jackie Jensen or Jackie Gleason even (a slight exaggeration; I hit .246 across parts of five seasons). When I finally made it to the big leagues, I was said to have “disappointed even [my] most ardent supporters by being unable to either hit Major League pitching or field Major League hitting.” I compounded those shortcomings by demonstrating an inability to travel with my Major League team. Gene Conley and I hopped off the team bus while the Red Sox were stuck in New York traffic in 1962 and went AWOL. We had a plan to board a flight to Israel, but that went awry and, to put it in a nutshell, I wasn't long for Boston. They traded me thereafter to a team that had just lost 120 games, the Mets. In Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?, Jimmy Breslin suggested that “anybody who does not stand up and root for [me], and root hard, simply has no taste for the good life.” My name is Pumpsie Green and my final game as a Met came on September 26, 1963.

The answers are flooding in. They're coming by comment, by e-mail, by posting in other venues. Many of them are correct. The help is helping. But there are a few runners being left stranded in scoring position on called third strikes.

While we await the Tuesday posting of final answers to the Mets Final Exam, I thought I'd let you know which questions nobody has proffered a guess on here or in any forum of which I'm aware (unless you want to count the guy who asked if shouting out Craig Swan 44 times would make him right once). Since these particular 19 questions have daunted so many, I thought I could drop an extra dollop of extra help.

If you haven't already, take a shot at these babies. Be a hero. Get 'em right. Get 'em wrong. But get 'em tried.

1. I would be a bigger deal to baseball at large after I left the Mets than I was when I was on the Mets.

2. My second Mets season was my best Mets season.

3. I was on the Mets before Tom Seaver was out of high school.

4. I was on the Mets after Tom Seaver was traded by the Mets but before Tom Seaver was traded to the Mets.

6. Somebody who wouldn't usually have a hand in player transactions played an enormous role in getting me on the Mets.

9. I pitched against the Mets a lot more than I pitched for them.

10. The player I gave up that last hit to is still managing.

11. What was said about me was probably the most interesting thing about my career.

13. If pitchers could really sue for non-support, then I'd have won the biggest cash settlement in Mets history.

16. My debut was a lot more memorable than my finale.

23. I literally didn't measure up to the guy I was traded for.

26. I spent only one year with the Mets; nobody was calling for an encore.

32. Joe Torre ruined my last game but he wasn't the Yankee manager, bub.

33. No matter what it sounds like, I was never an umpire.

36. You'll see I wasn't a Met for very long.

38. The Mets brought me in for a particular task and I failed miserably.

39. I spent one year as a starter for the Mets but that was dictated by the straits the team was in.

41. I had been an All-Star before becoming a Met.

42. I was an award-winner before coming to the Mets.