Remember that kitten who came out in the same litter as us? He's finally made it to the World Series.

Congratulations to Expansion Class of '62 alumni the Houston Astros. You've graduated to the championship course after 44 seasons, a mere 36 after we first did it, a scant 19 Octobers since we got in your way.

Nice going, I guess.

It's a relief to be championed at last even if it is by a neophyte champion. I thought going in it would be the Cardinals. In fact, my picks all year were the Cardinals and Angels. I can say that now because they both lost. Since I never mentioned it to anybody, it would sound more than a little self-serving to “admit” it had they each made it. But they didn't, so I'm a stand-up guy.

Didn't see this coming back in March, didja? That's why I don't bother with full-blown predictions. How the hell does anybody know anything? Nobody, even those who make their livings being experts, can't call a champion from seven months away. Back in April, when the White Sox were sizzling, I heard one of the big deal ESPN baseball analysts, don't remember who, on Michael Kay's radio show. At that moment, the Sox were 4-1/2 games ahead of the Twins, which I found pretty impressive. But the analyst and Kay had already decided that the Twins were going to win that division, so they chose to focus on how despite the White Sox' overwhelming start, they “hadn't done themselves any favors,” because the favored Twins had remained so close.

As for the Astros, much was made throughout the LDS and LCS on TV regarding the Houston Chronicle “burying” their hometown team when it was 15-30. What a silly newspaper! No, not really. 15-30 is a record that has a lot of resonance for a Met fan who clearly remembers 1977. That was the Mets' mark when M. Donald Grant fired Joe Frazier and replaced him with Joe Torre. At the time, the Mets were as bad as I'd ever seen them and would grow progressively more depressing. They finished 64-98. That's what 15-30 teams do. But not these Astros.

Shoot, we saw them an abnormal number of times for a non-division opponent and we couldn't have tabbed them as N.L. champions in April. In that opening series at home, they couldn't hit Willy Taveras' weight. By the time we got to Houston, they were rising. It was the early-June bonus series, however, when we couldn't have imagined we were losing to our league's eventual champions. They were still short on offense but whatever hits they cobbled together were timely and whatever pitching they threw was deadly. Even the Pedro non-no-hitter was no laugher thanks to Roy Oswalt (imagine being a shameless headhunter yet only the second-most loathsome righthanded starter in your own rotation; Cliff remembers and so do I, big boy).

At the season's outset, the conventional wisdom had the Marlins making the playoffs, either as division winner or Wild Card. Every time I turned on ESPN or any other outlet, even into September, I was told more often than not that the Marlins are really the best team left. The Astros have pitching but what are they going to do for bats?

Houston's in the World Series. Florida's playing Minnesota in the Oh They'll Come Around Eventually Bowl.

I don't mean for this to be another media-bashing session. People gauge situations badly all the time, often with consequences far greater than those attached to not picking playoff teams correctly. There's just something particularly grating about people paid to be experts who don't simply say “there's a chance I'm going to be wrong here, but let me tell you what I'm thinking.” In this world, it seems being aggressively clueless doesn't hurt your advancement as long as your aggressive about it. Thoughtful reflection leaves you covered in dust.

Anyway, the Astros are in the World Series and the Cardinals aren't. Though on some level I'd like the league the Mets play in to contain the world champion, I don't like either team. I don't like any National League team that isn't us. It's hard to drop that enmity to get behind one of our own. That said, there are reasons to feel genuinely sad about the Cardinals and reasonably good about the Astros.

While the holier-than-thou aspect that hovers about St. Louis baseball is a turnoff, it is a special franchise. There were moments during this series that I thought I was looking at Turner Field instead of Busch Stadium. That's because the red shirts the fans wore blended with the red seats, so from a distance I could make out only a handful of what looked like people. But they were there en masse. They show up in great numbers and they come from miles around. They've been doing it forever and they are to be commended for it. If they want to give Larry Walker a standing ovation just for getting out of Colorado, that's their business.

The team itself is quietly becoming a less embarrassing version of the Braves when it comes to this time of year. This is six post-seasons in the past ten years — five of the last six — that have involved the Cardinals and none of them have produced a world championship. Quietly, St. Louis has seeped onto the Those Who Have Waited Longest lists.

Next year it will be 24 years that the Cardinals have gone without a title. They are wedged among the Pirates, Phillies, Orioles and Tigers on a voyage of the demi-damned (and, no, we're not far behind). Those teams have been generally putrid since they won their last rings. The Cardinals haven't. Based on what they've pulled off in the past couple of regular seasons, they deserve better. Well, they deserve whatever they earn, but the 2004 Cardinals were the best National League team I'd seen since us in '86, and the '05 version persevered despite losing Scott Rolen. Although I love an underdog as much as the next Mets fan, I actually root, when I have no skin in the game, for the team that's played brilliantly and has worked hard to get so close to the pinnacle. That describes the Pujols Cardinals who have looked so good in this decade and I'm actually sorry to see them come away empty once again.

I never particularly cared for Busch Stadium, but I'll never tell the fans of another team what to think of their own place, therefore I'm glad they got back inside it one last time. Everybody deserves closure. In '96, the Braves (at the very last moment when one could wish them well) looked ready to close out Fulton County Stadium in style. They returned for Game 3 of the World Series up 2-0 to…I can't remember who, and they appeared poised to steamroll their competition. They were going to be the first team to end a ballpark's life with a World Championship. But then they lost four in a row to somebody whose identity escapes me and Fulton County was eviscerated without a definitive farewell. (Maybe that's why they act so cranky when we visit.)

I availed myself of XM Wednesday night, switching back and forth between the Cardinals' and Astros' stone-homer radiocasts — very different tones, as you could imagine — and from the St. Louis end of things, Mike Shannon more or less ignored the final score and focused on how this was it for ol' Busch. The Cardinals were aware enough of the circumstances to show a video tribute long after the Astros had danced off the field and the fans were sentient and sentimental enough to stick around and, in Metlike fashion, keep a Let's Go Cardinals! chant going until it hurt to listen.

It's not like they're moving to San Francisco or Los Angeles. They're just heading across the street. The Cardinals will be back sooner than later. Good for them.

The Astros deserve to be where they are. I can say that this year. Couldn't bring myself to that conclusion last year. As I alluded to in my final Flashback Friday segment, I used to edit a magazine that was part of a company that was owned by the same man who owns the Houston Astros. My parting from it in early 2004 was not my idea, so whatever simpatico I felt for my former colleagues in the baseball division was pretty well frayed by October. The executive who ran my department told me after our maximum leader signed Roger Clemens that it would be super to see the Rocket lead the 'Stros to the Series at Yankee Stadium. From the moment I was let go, I could think of nothing I wanted to see less. Like all Mets fans, I was thrilled when Boston beat the Yankees. Unlike most Mets fans, I was just as elated when St. Louis stopped Houston. My nerves were that raw from my and my staff's budget-related dismissal (trust me, the resources they devoted to the magazine were less than what they spend on sunflower seeds before the fifth-inning of a B-game in Kissimmee).

It's a year later and I don't feel quite the same way. Sure, when the Astros owner was handed the N.L. championship trophy, I didn't exactly toast his good fortune, but I can only hold a personal/corporate grudge for so long; time has marched on for me. Baseball grudges are a whole other matter, and our two 1962-model ballclubs, the erstwhile Colt .45s and the Metropolitans, have never been rivals of the first order. We've had our moments of ire, some that worked out (I don't have to mention which one in particular), some not so much, but we haven't played within the same primary jurisdiction since 1968. There is no 1985 or 1987 lurking in the subconscious as there is when the Redbirds do their semi-annual flyovers. The Astros are just some team from another division most of the time.

I don't think you can be a baseball fan and not find some joy on behalf of Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio. I don't think you can be a baseball fan and not find some joy on behalf of the fans (except for the yahoos who wore BELTRAN $UCK$ t-shirts) who have dug in for 10, 20, 30, 40 years waiting for this. I don't think you can be a human being and not remember the way Houston pitched in for the Katrina evacuees. Surely some of those do-gooders own Astros caps.

Finally, they're a good story. Forty-four years. 15-30 to the World Series. No-name kids, grizzled vets and, if you like pitching, serious arms. Of course they still have Clemens, but ya know what? I no longer have it in me to actively despise him with every fiber of my being. I mean, sure, I will always hate him with every fiber of my being for 2000, but I'm wondering if being a Skank made him a far worse person than he would've been otherwise. Really, did we hate Roger Clemens before he became a Yankee For Life? He wasn't a sympathetic character when we faced him in '86 but after that, who really cared? Rob and I made a point of going to Shea to see him face the Mets as a Blue Jay in '97. He was heartily mocked as he was lit up but nobody's fangs were showing. A year later when he was dusting Skanks left and right, it was all right by me.

Roger Clemens is a drama queen, threatening to retire every other week, but in this post-season he has not lunged for the spotlight. In the commotion that followed Chris Burke's 18th-inning home run, ESPN's on-field reporter made a move to interview Clemens. He answered one question, literally grabbed Burke and said this is the man you want. After the pennant was clinched, he went out of his way to steer reporters to Oswalt and Pettitte. He's still not far removed from the criminal we all despised for going after Mike, and his look-at-me tendencies aren't hidden all that far beneath the surface, but we are in the presence of an all-time great here. Being sentenced to watch him ply his craft another couple of times before it snows is hardly baseball punishment.

I suppose there are Mets fans — and fans of 27 other teams — that tune out once their seasons are over. Not me. I love the post-season, especially when there are no games left in the Bronx. I like getting wrapped up in somebody else's storylines while my own are on hiatus (unless Felix Heredia's shady doings are your cup of 'roids). Four to seven baseball games will be contested by two teams that almost never stop by this time of year. That's worth dwelling on for another week and change.

Go White Sox. Go Astros. Go play ball. We're happy to have you.

Sometimes I think we all know too much or at least retain too much for our own good. Maybe it's the Internet and what it can tell us, maybe it's all the videotape that has presumably converted to a digital format. Maybe we don't replace enough old data in our heads with new data. But I've noticed a trend among fans and media alike, one that explodes this time of year.

When something big happens in baseball, something really big, everybody blurts out something else it reminds them of. Josh Paul hadn't gotten to the dugout in Game Two of the ALCS before the name Don Denkinger had passed a million lips. Albert Pujols wasn't around the bases the other night and everybody and his uncle from Framingham were Dave Henderson experts.

Baseball's beauty lies in the ability to match events of now to events of then, and that's cool. But when did the average spectator turn into his own private Elias? It used to be (and I have no statistical evidence) that a guy could watch a game, see something, absorb it and, hours or weeks later, think, “hey, you know what that reminds me of?” Nowadays, by cracky, graphics are filling the screen telling us the last eight times this exact scenario unfolded, talkies are jamming their frequencies insisting that, no, this isn't as good as that but that wasn't as good as this and each viewer (myself included) is shouting, “nah, you're all wrong—it's like that other time.”

The bats and the ball aren't even cold by the time accomplishments are shoved into historical context. What's the point?

ESPN Classic has a halfway-decent show called Classic Now in which they take a sporting event in the news and compare it one in the archives (like us, they have a lot of air to fill). They had on Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle to discuss where Pujols' LCS-saver ranks for all-time. Oh, it's up there with Mazeroski, he said.

It is? Did the Cardinals just win the World Series? Because that's what Bill Mazeroski's bottom-of-the-ninth home run did. Pujols' did not. Did it occur to anybody that the Cardinals might not win one of the next two games? Granted, the circumstances for Albert's were dramatic and the Astros are no doubt wondering what they have to do to get a break for the ages, but a ninth-inning home run that puts the visitors ahead with one before the home team comes to bat in the fifth of seven possible games is not the same as what Bill Mazeroski's was.

What is it like? How about it's a totally awesome shot that deserves to be savored on its own merit and it was a blast whose context could use a little time to divine? In the meantime, we've got another game to enjoy.

This isn't just the post-season. It happens a lot. Remember August 30, the Ramon Castro game? All of Metsopotamia tripped over itself to rank our catcher's three-run shot, how it must be the biggest since [fill-in-the-blank], how it has to rank among great Met moments, how we will remember it twenty years from now. Based on what happened in the ensuing games against Philly, Florida and Atlanta, we'd be lucky to remember it twenty minutes from now…except we've created a public record, almost a shrine, to it.

This is weird. This is the opposite of what usually gets on my nerves, namely the memory hole down which all amazing, magical, miraculous baseball feats fall save for Kirk Gibson's overhyped homer (it was Game One, for crissake) and whatever it is the Mick did when Billy Crystal invited Bob Costas and Mike Francesa over for Ovaltine and graham crackers in 1961. Lots of great stuff that's huge in its time disappears from the conversation a year or two down the road.

Tremendous LDS and LCS moments evaporate because it's easier to reference Carlton Fisk. Lists get made and little of what tingled our spine show up. I seem to recall two walkoff home runs by Jeff Kent and Jim Edmonds electrified last year's NLCS. Why did those fall down the memory hole in favor of Mazeroski and Dave Henderson?

Depending on what happens in the next night or two, I'd wager an unpleasant five-dollar slice of Shea pizza that the next time somebody does something akin to what Albert Pujols did in Game Five, what Albert Pujols did in Game Five will be largely overlooked in the instantaneous “where does it rank/what does it remind you of?” chat that follows.

Well, we're waiting. As are our fellow loyal subjects in Miami and Washington and Denver and Cincinnati and everywhere National League baseball is taken seriously.

We need to be led, to have someone to fall in line behind, to take our cue from a force a greater than ourselves.

We are waiting to be championed. Five games played for the championship of our league and we have yet to be.

Championed, that is.

Our counterparts in the fiefdom of the American League are championed. Yankee fans and Red Sox fans and Angel fans have queued in an orderly procession with Blue Jay fans and Royal fans and Tiger fans and Mariner fans and all the rest. They know who is championing them. They sit securely under the fierce and protective banner of the Chicago White Sox.

We are left to wonder: Who will champion us?

Will we be championed by the Houston Astros? It sure looked like it, didn't it? I was ready to accept their leadership and guidance, but then Brad Lidge threw it away. I don't know that we can afford to be led and guided by him or Phil Garner. I don't get the sense he knows what he's doing.

Will we be championed by the St. Louis Cardinals? It sure didn't look like it, did it? They didn't do such a hot job of leading us last year. But Albert Pujols' wisdom is a treasure to be valued. Still, I don't know that we can afford to be led and guided by Tony LaRussa. I get the sense that he doesn't know that he doesn't know what he's doing.

It is just as well that the issue of who will champion Met fans and Dodger fans and Pirate fans and the rest of us National League subjects is still up for grabs. This is too important a matter to be settled in five games.

May the best team champion us well.

October matters. Find out why at Gotham Baseball.

The American League Champion White Sox and the National League East Co-Thirdsmen New York Mets don't have a ton in common except for the annoyance we and their fans must feel with the overhyped other team in our respective towns. I'd always suspected we could bond over that and felt my suspicion confirmed on my first trip into O'Hare sixteen years ago. Not that I'd judge much about a city by its airport, but I couldn't help notice that the gift shops displayed Bulls stuff and Bears stuff and Blackhawks stuff but mostly — it was summer — Cubs stuff. Cubs stuff was everywhere. They were in first place at the moment, so I guess they were hot.

White Sox stuff? Not for sale. I didn't see a single cap, a single t-shirt, a single tchotchke of any kind whatever flying the logo of a team ignored in its own city's major aerotransportation hub. Even though this was 1989 and the Mets were enjoying the autumn years of their market predominance (it's true kids, our merchandise once plastered LaGuardia), I felt for the White Sox. How could a two-town team look past half its allotment? Plus, since I already had it in for the Cubs, I figured there was an unspoken alliance among us and the Sox.

As mentioned when the post-season started, I found my way to the real Comiskey Park on that trip and it became my all-time favorite yard, more than Camden, more than Tiger, more than PNC, more than Fenway, more than Wrigley (and, oh yeah, more than Shea). Many have been the summer night when my mind has wandered back to that neglected jewel in the neglected part of town and thought how perfect it was for baseball and how I would like one more chance to wallow in its greenness and let its eighty years of Soxdom wash over me. I wish the World Series were starting in that Comiskey this Saturday night.

I'm not going to claim some deep-seated affinity for the White Sox beyond that other than to say it's nice to see a team, any team, that hasn't won anything in forever finally get to the doorstep of eternal happiness (there's an obvious exception, but it's obvious). Despite my misgivings regarding both their potential opponents, I feel that way about the Astros and I feel that way about the Cardinals. Two years ago I even suspended my lifelong animus for the Cubs to allow their fans a glimpse at the Promised Land. As it happened, I was visiting Chicago again in the middle of the 2003 NLCS between the Cubs and the Marlins. The locals were up three games to one when I landed and you could feel the pent-up celebratory juices just begging and straining to pop.

The papers were full of stories about the Cubs' impending first World Series since 1945, the first in the state of Illinois since 1959. Much was made of what it would mean to a recuperating Ron Santo to have a role of some sort in the radio broadcast, how we were going to show the rest of the country that Chicagoans know how to celebrate safely, how 1969 was finally going to be put to rest (I swear there was a mention of '69 in every special supplement I got ahold of and there were a lot of special supplements). The PBS station, WTTW, devoted its evening news show to Cubbies, Cubbies and more Cubbies. One co-anchor kidded the other about how he had tickets for the clinching game and might have to miss work.

Yessir, there was everything but a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner fluttering across Michigan Avenue.

That young Josh Beckett stifled the Cubs in Miami during Game 5 was seen as little more than a reign delay. It was fine. It was more than fine. This way the Cubs could do it at Wrigley. That's the way it should be, right? It so happens I have a friend who works for the company that owns the Cubs and he got his hands on tickets for Games 6 and, if necessary, 7. I told him don't worry about 7. You've got Mark Prior going against Carl Pavano. Don't worry, dude, it's gonna be fine. It's gonna be more than fine.

I flew home unaware that I had the capacity to lay the whammy on a team I had decided to like for only a few days. You can piece together from recollection what happened next. Moises Alou and Bartman and the meltdown in the eighth and the next night and the Marlins storming back on Kerry Wood and the Cubs, the team I'd hated longer than I'd hated the Yankees, collapsing in concert with the instant I wished them well.

It all worked out fine in terms of the Marlins doing the honorable thing and smacking the Skanks around, but I always felt kind of bad that my one gesture of goodwill toward our ancient enemy backfired. Not that I take credit or blame, but it was odd.

In any case, I'm glad at least one half of Chicago is getting a little something for its pennant-starved self even while disappointed that the Angels, my nominal favorite American Leaguers and our two-time Slayer of The Beast, went so quietly. I wouldn't have minded a little more baseball and I thought they deserved a better turn than the umps and their own aches gave them. On the other hand, Kelvim Escobar's eighth-inning non-tag of A.J. Pierzynski had a certain Metness to it and our parallel-universe rightfielder, Vladimir Guerrero, had a worse five games than Carlos Beltran did at any time in 2005. When the Mets played the Angels in June, Rob Emproto asked me which of the two free agent catches of the last two classes I would've rather had, all things being equal. I thought about it a minute and copped to Vlad. That was probably a mixture of Duquette regret and recall regarding what a stud he was when he was in Montreal. Well, there ain't no Montreal no more yet Vlad played like he was stuck at customs.

Most relevantly, the Angels got theirs in '02 and I was happy for them then. Our not winning in '87 or '88 (or '89 or '90 or…) wasn't made better by our winning in '86 while we were in the process of not winning, but perspectivewise, it's healthy to take turns. The Angels had theirs. The White Sox are getting theirs at last.

Besides, we got something out of them that reached fruition six years ago tonight, which is why I'm just a touch giddy on their behalf this morning.

According to Ultimate Mets, there are 67 players who have been Mets and White Sox. The first one who comes to mind is the first Met who comes to mind anytime, Tom Seaver. He had a big moment in horizontal stripes, of course, win No. 300 as a White (or gray) Sock in Yankee Stadium and showed the American League a bit of what they missed all those years before. But I don't think of Seaver as a White Sock.

Our first world championship (a mere 36 years and a day ago) was made possible by a grant from the Chicago White Sox in the form of Tommie Agee and Al Weis. They did great things for us in the 1969 World Series to say nothing of what they did to get us there. But I don't think of Agee and Weis as White Sox.

Most of our shared rosterizing has been of the accidental tourist nature. We shamelessly released Cleon Jones, they picked him up. They cleverly rid themselves of Shingo Takatsu, we picked him up. We realized, hey, we're a million games ahead of everybody and could probably continue to be so without moldy George Foster, they decided they wanted him. They didn't need Rodney McCray, we invited him over for coffee. Most of the White Met Sox were of the hello, I must be going nature.

There are a few exceptions, guys who could be claimed as Soxy Sox and Metsy Mets. One in particular is who I'm thinking of. And he shone through like a true franchise player for our side on this date at the end of the last century.

Robin Ventura, you are the South Side/Flushing Man of the Millennia. It is you who ended an endless arid spell around the hot corner for the White Sox and then manned our third like no one before you. You hit there, you hit here. You were a class act there and you were the epitome of what a good teammate is supposed to be here.

You went after Nolan Ryan there. You buried Kevin McGlinchy here. And that, if you haven't figured it out, is why we remember you fondly on October 17, 2005.

It's six years ago suddenly — October 17, 1999 — since Robin Ventura chased away the rain and left little ol' loquacious me speechless. Well, Robin and Shawon and Oly and Tank and Melvin and a whole bullpen full of their friends. It was, yes, a team effort.

Happy anniversary, Grand Slam Single. When you slipped the surly bonds of Shea to touch the face of God, you were worth four runs. You only got credit for one, but we'll always know your genuine value. Honestly, you had us at hello. With the bases loaded, the score tied and only one out, all you had to be was a sacrifice fly to accomplish your mission, which we could tell you did right off the bat. But we're willing to forget that, too.

I'm concerned that too much about the GSS and its game and the game after and the weeks preceding it have receded from institutional memory. What they say about nobody remembering who lost in the playoffs, only who won the ring, rings disturbingly accurate a half-dozen years after what was, for my money, the absolute payoff to being a Mets fan.

Yeah, we didn't win the pennant, and by extension, didn't win the Series, but as one who has lived and continually relived September and October 1999 late at night when I can't sleep (or choose not to sleep so I can relive September and October 1999), that seems almost incidental.

Pause for context:

Mets trail Atlanta by 1 game with 12 to play. Three at Turner Field. We lost them all, excruciating-style. We lose three more, equally terribly, in Philadelphia. Braves sweep Expos. Just like that, division gone. And while we're stuck in the mud, the Reds are rampaging over the Cardinals and by the next day, we trail the Wild Card race by a half-game after having that all but sewn up. Braves show up at Shea and embarrass us mightily in the first of three. We've lost seven in a row and Bobby V has already been fired seven times in the papers.

This is when it gets good. Facing Greg Maddux and certain death, we drib him and drab him and then Olerud slams him. Mets win, Mets stay alive. Next night, a classic heartbreak game. Millwood vs. Yoshii. Braves lead 3-2 in the bottom of the eighth when Fonzie strikes with two out. Tie game. It goes to eleven when Shawon Dunston, just dropping by for the stretch run, drops a Brian Jordan fly that becomes a triple. We lose 4-3. The Reds and Astros are tied in the NL Central, each two games ahead of us. We all have three left; one of us gets left out. It will take a miracle to, depending how you look at it, make the playoffs or not go down as monumental choke artists for the second straight September.

A miracle you say? In Milwaukee, Marquis Grissom makes a diving catch in center and robs the Reds. In Flushing, John Franco strands three Pirates late on a really close pitch. Robin singles in the winner in eleven. We're one back. The next afternoon, the hapless Brewers find hap and pound the Reds again. The Astros no longer matter — we have our in. All we have to do is win tonight and we control our own destiny. Rick Reed strikes out 12 Bucs. We are tied for the Wild Card, we've got control. In this season of Mr. Mojo Risin', we got our mojo back. And on Sunday afternoon, the Mets do the most wonderful thing they've ever done for me, for you, for us.

They come through. They come through when it was obvious that they wouldn't, that they'd fritter away this last, best chance to see the heart of October. They come through because some kid who's shuttled between Norfolk and the bench comes up with one out in the ninth and the game tied and singles — Melvin Mora singles and goes to third when Fonzie singles. Olerud is walked, Mike steps up, Brad Clontz delivers…a wild pitch. It's a wild pitch! Mora scores! We're in…not the playoffs, because the Reds are in a seven-hour rain delay in old County Stadium. We won't know until much, much later whether we are in the playoffs or, more likely, a playoff for the playoffs in Cincinnati. But that's almost a detail. I woke up this morning, October 3, 1999, facing a do-or-die for my team and all I could do is root and fret and sweat and it's paid off. This whole year, this whole three-year climb under Bobby V, this whole lifetime devoted to twinning my fate with this silly franchise has been worth it.

We came through.

What happened thereafter is hardly gravy. We did play the Reds the next night and Al Leiter did throw a two-hitter and we were in the actual playoffs. We did go to Arizona and John Olerud did homer off Randy Johnson, lefty off lefty. Fonzie did hit a grand slam (four-run variety) off some dupe named Bobby Chouinard. And after a loss, we came home and cruised Game 3 over the Diamondbacks and then Todd Pratt did his not inconsiderable thing in Game 4 and we won a playoff series and were going to face our archnemesis the Braves for the pennant.

Which we did, which didn't go nearly as well. At first. Game 1 we lost. Game 2 same thing. And Game 3 was brutal. We lost 1-0 and we were never in it. It was a one-nothing blowout.

Just don't get swept, I whispered Saturday night, without much conviction. Ah, maybe it would be best to get this over with. But Olerud had other ideas. He broke a tie in the eighth and the Mets won 3-2. The Mets are still alive. Nobody's come back from down three games to none in baseball history, but a few have come back from three games to one. And now, I told myself, we're down three games to one.

All of which brings us to today six years ago and the endless, endless, endless afternoon turned into evening turned into night that the Mets and Braves played in the chill rain of Queens. The first fourteen innings were foreplay: necessary, stimulating, excruciatingly pleasant (or pleasantly excruciating, depending how you take it), but five hours of prelude. Olerud — funny how his name keeps coming up — homers off Maddux for two in the first, but that guy settles down. Masato Yoshii, a figure of much stress for two years and some redemption in the last two months (he will be traded for an extra Bobby Jones and be completely erased from memory) allows the Braves to tie and doesn't make it out of the fourth.

And that's where it stands forever. Every pitcher the Mets have or have ever had trots in from the bullpen between the fourth and the thirteenth. First Orel Hershiser, who cleans up Masato's mess. Then Turk for one batter in the seventh, a strikeout of Chipper/Larry. Then, in Bobby V gamesmanship that worked, a Cook cameo to force Ryan Klesko out of the game. Then Pat Mahomes. Remember Pat Mahomes? Pat Mahomes was an unsung hero all through 1999, back when we could use words like “hero” to describe ballplayers playing ball and not feel shallow about it. It took four pitchers — Hershiser, Wendell, Cook, Mahomes — but the Braves didn't score in the seventh.

Oh by the way, we didn't score either. There was lots of not scoring. As the middle relievers gave way to the closers, nobody scored. Franco gave an inning and a third. Benitez a shutout inning. On the other side, Rocker, fast becoming notorious, shut his door. In the eleventh, we had Kenny Rogers out there. Kenny Rogers was perfect at Shea since coming over in August. And Kenny Rogers was perfect as he had to be that night, with two scoreless innings. Kenny Rogers won huge games down the stretch in 1999. (I'm just saying.)

Octavio Dotel, rookie righty, alternately glorious and atrocious since his callup, came in in the thirteenth inning. Octavio Dotel, a child, a starter, asked to hold the fort in what is making a bid for greatest game in Mets history, Son of Astrodome at the very least. Bobby V has used everybody else within reason. The only pitchers left are last night's starter, Rick (seven very sharp, very economical innings) and Al from Friday night and, with Divine Providence, this Tuesday night. It's all on Dotel.

Keith Lockhart, one of an assembly line of Braves gnats, singles with two outs. Chipper/Larry, bane of our collective existence that fall, doubles to right. Lockhart is about to score the go-ahead run and bury, once for all, our dream of National League pre-eminence.

Except Melvin Mora, the guy from nowhere, is in right and throws Lockhart out by ten feet. Mora across this post-season has thrown out runners from left and center and now right. In Game 4, he instigated a double-steal that set up the winning runs. And now he's saved the season again. I predict good things for this fella.

Dotel gets through the fourteenth. The Mets don't score. In the fifteenth, you can only ask so much out of one rookie, no matter how talented, only so much out of one ballclub, no matter how big its heart. We've got heart, they've got Lockhart and he triples home Walt Weiss. Braves lead 3-2 going to the bottom of the fifteenth. It's raining and it may as well be snowing. Though to this point I've been worrying about one game, this game, the score reminds me that if we don't tie, the series and the season are over.

But a game like this isn't over until the visitors collect 45 outs.

Shawon Dunston wasn't going to help that countdown. Shawon Dunston didn't want to be here. Shawon Dunston, the dictionary picture of a journeyman, was comfortable at last in St. Louis. They all love being in St. Louis, these ballplayers, and Dunston was no exception. He had just bought a house there. As seems to happen to every baseball player who dabbles in real estate, he got traded. To us. He was supposed to be happy. He was from Brooklyn, grew up a Mets fan. They assigned him No. 12 and he immediately recognized it as Ken Boswell's digits. Yet he never copped to being thrilled to be here.

But now it was all on Shawon Dunston's head. He led off the fifteenth. And he, like this game, wouldn't stop. He just kept leading it off. He worked the count. He got to three balls and two strikes and decided walking was not the better part of valor. So he kept swinging and kept fouling them off. He did everything but jump out of the way of a pitch at his legs that would allow Kevin Mitchell to score from third. Except for that, it was the greatest at-bat in Mets history. Mookie forgive me, it probably was the greatest at-bat in Mets history.

On the twelfth pitch of the greatest at-bat in Mets history, Shawon Dunston singled off Kevin McGlinchy. The tying run was on first, with nobody out. The rain continued to fall. The snow disappeared. Winter would have to wait.

With Moneyball more than three years from publication, Shawon Dunston immediately stole second. In the time it might have taken to point out what a dangerous play this was, he accomplished it. The rest was textbook execution. Matt Franco, who set as obscure a record as one could that season, for pinch-hit walks, walked as a pinch-hitter for Dotel. How has Bobby V gone through every pitcher yet still have his ace pinch-hitter available? And while you're wondering that, will you look in the Mets' bullpen? The righty warming up is Rick Reed, the lefty is Al Leiter. The two starters from the last two nights and maybe the next two nights. There is no tomorrow if there's going to be a tomorrow, as the Ol' Perfesser probably said from his perch that night.

Fonzie, the best all-around, everyday player the franchise ever produced to date, Fonzie, who posted 27 homers and 108 RBIs in 1999 including one and three of each, respectively, in the one-game playoff against the Reds, Fonzie who turned in a 6-for-6, 3 HR game in Houston at the end of August, put down a bunt. He moved the runners over, Dunston to third, Franco to second. That's how you get to be the best all-around, everyday player the franchise ever produced to date.

Second and third, one out. The Braves — it's still McGlinchy even though Millwood, Glavine and Smoltz are theoretically available to Bobby Cox — intentionally walk John Olerud. The bases are loaded, nobody's out, the Braves are still winning, the rain is still pouring, summer's coming back to life.

Todd Pratt up. Todd Pratt's been doing some serious caddying this month. Mike's aching elbow has limited his effectiveness, his mere utility. In the game that will now define the fortunes of the New York Mets, what 1999 was, what the future will be, Bobby V took Mike out to start the fourteenth and inserted Todd Pratt, the only other actual catcher on the team. Matt Franco is considered the emergency catcher, but he is now pinch-run for at second by Roger Cedeño, the last bench player, otherwise out with a bad back. The Mets, physically and numerically, are unraveling. They have gone through everybody. Of a 25-man roster, 23 have now played. The other two are warming up. This isn't an All-Star game, it's as close to life or death as a baseball contest will allow us to get. And at this very moment, though death is ahead on the scoreboard, I wouldn't bet against life.

Todd Pratt, he of the Finley-veiled shot to center last Saturday — 411 feet, just out of the reach of the gold glove that's been snatching Met home runs from their rightful destination on late night West Coast broadcasts since 1995 — is an icon. Todd Pratt was a backup catcher until last Saturday. Now he's Tank, the guy who went all Mazeroski on Matt Mantei, ending the Division Series with one swing. Todd Pratt, it is now official, can do anything he wants.

Todd Pratt walks. Shawon Dunston trots home. Cedeño to third, Olerud to second, Pratt to first. It's Braves 3 Mets 3.

Up steps Robin Ventura. And he needs a sac fly. That's all. A sac fly will do very nicely. A base hit or a walk or an error or a wild pitch or a passed ball that bounces far enough away will all do the trick, but all we really need is a fly ball hit long enough to allow speedy Cedeño to tag up and run 90 feet. If Robin Ventura, who's had an MVP season (32-120-.301, Best Infield Ever anchor, the one who came up with Mojo Risin') but a bone-chipped month of misery, can do that, he will be Tank times ten.

He will be Tanks a lot.

Here's one of the funniest things I've ever read. It's from Retrosheet.org's original play-by-play description of what happened when Robin connected off McGlinchy in the bottom of the fifteenth inning on October 17, 1999:

Ventura singled to center [Cedeño scored, Olerud to third, Pratt to second]; 2 R, 2 H, 0 E, 3 LOB. Braves 3, Mets 4.

Oh. That's all. The record did not (until a reader — I'm not saying who — contacted them and they graciously fixed it) officially acknowledge that Robin Ventura's single to center soared over and beyond the right-centerfield fence and the rain ceased and the sun came out and husbands watching on TV were so beside themselves that they surprised their wives by jumping on them right in the middle of the living room just the way Tank accosted Robin. For while I was processing what had just happened — that's more than a sac fly! that's a grand slam! — Robin Ventura's teammates, led by Todd Pratt, decided en masse that the rules didn't apply to them. Lawful Robin wanted to circle the bases. Territorial Tank said, sorry fella, game-ending homers are my department. You take a single and we'll take the win.

Todd Pratt, it is now truly official, can do anything he wants.

In retrospect, I'm surprised Cedeño remembered to run home.

That as we all know but I fear others have forgotten was the Grand Slam Single. Robin Ventura hit a home run that didn't count because his jubilant teammates wouldn't let him round the bases. This should be talked about in the same vein as mythical feats from another even more distant age. The Called Shot. The Homer In The Gloamin'. The Grand Slam Single. Robin Ventura's face should be on a stamp, even if he's only retired and not dead.

That was five hours and forty-six minutes, six years ago today. I mentioned a while back being left speechless by this game. I was. For the only time in my life, I think, I didn't know what to say about the Mets. Leaping atop Stephanie as if we were on our own pitcher's mound — Grote to her Koosman, Gary to her Jesse, Tank, come to think of it, to her Robin — was the only reaction I could express with any clarity. Our phone rang and it was Chuck. “I'll call ya back, I can't talk,” I said. I wasn't kidding. There were no words. Except, perhaps, they come through for me. Again.

When my head cleared, I looked less at what had just occurred and more at what might happen next. Nobody had come back from down three games to none in baseball history, and a few had come back from three games to one. But a whole bunch of teams had come back from three games to two, and that's who we were now. We weren't making history. We were playing a sixth game, Tuesday night, in Atlanta. If we won that, we'd just be another team tied at three, playing a seventh game. And if we won that, we'd be playing the Yankees in the World Series.

I hope the real and timetested fans of the team that was thoughtful enough not to re-sign Robin Ventura so he could sign with us are as happy right now as Robin Ventura made me six years ago tonight. I hope they're so happy that they can't get the words out.

I wish there were a C-SPAN for baseball — just the game with no announcers, no analysis, no interruptions. They don't have to have it all year. Just October.

In the post-season, one would think that one would want a little help. With the Mets not involved, it would figure that a Mets fan could use some assistance figuring out four teams who are not usually top-of-mind, including one (the White Sox) the Mets haven't played in three years.

But I have only one favor to ask those charged with communicating baseball to me this month.

Shut up, all of you.

Alas, nobody who's delivering the game to me is doing me any favors. What I hear is almost uniformly inane or incorrect. For that matter, the only time I needed to hear something, I heard nothing.

Here (besides a flame this high) is a sample of what's been burning my ass.

1) During Game Three of the Braves-Astros series, when Jeff Francoeur came to bat, Josh Lewin (the Fox announcer who intoned solemnly after 9/11 that the Mets, carrying the burden of hope for all of America, were really the New York Metaphors) gushed that the rookie's been “the biggest thing to blow through Atlanta since Michael Vick.” The biggest thing to blow through Atlanta… How could anybody start a line like that and not finish it with “…since Gone With The Wind“? Geez! Even “…General William Sherman” would've worked in a perverse way. “Braden Looper in September” would be a more relevant answer. But Michael Vick? A football player? It wouldn't win you a point on Match Game 05. On a network where everybody sounds as if he's been assigned on merit to the B-game, it's safe to say Fox announcers don't know nothin' 'bout broadcastin' baseball.

2) In the car between 6:30 and 7:00 pm Saturday evening, I tuned to the black hole that is ESPN Radio, WEPN 1050-AM, to stay in contact with Game Three of the Cardinals-Astros series. I heard an audio feed of ESPNews. Others may have been flustered, but not me. I was prepared. I knew that right around this time some godforsaken hockey game was scheduled to bump the NLCS to Radio Disney, WQEW 1560-AM. Except when I went there, there was some pre-adolescent girl winning a trip to Jamaica, followed by a song that wasn't Take Me Out To The Ballgame. Back to 1050: A commercial. Back to 1560: Song. 1050: Long music bed. 1560: Song. 1050: Static. 1560: Song. 1050: An entreaty to get ready for some hockey. 1560: Another song. 660 (just in case): Notre Dame football. In the largest media market in the United States, the pivotal game of a series that will determine one of the participants in the championship round of our national pastime was nowhere to be heard. Fourteen Octobers ago, I found myself in a rented automobile speeding from Dallas to Waco and looking forward to following the 1991 NLCS between the Braves and the Pirates. I couldn't find it. It was the day of the Texas-Oklahoma game and the area affiliates that would've carried the CBS Radio 'cast of the game went for football. I listened to part of the baseball playoff game on a Spanish station and part of it via a weak, distant Houston signal. At the time, I rolled my eyes over how these maroons in Texas didn't know enough to make available important post-season baseball. I sincerely apologize to Texas for that observation. New York radio is apparently no better.

3) During Saturday night's Angels-White Sox clash, as Freddy Garcia was en route to winding up Chicago's third consecutive complete game, Fox noted it would be the first time a pitching rotation had finished what it started thrice in a row since our own beloved 1973 Mets — Seaver, Matlack, Koosman — did it. That made me smile. But this didn't: When ESPNews (Cindy Brunson) and later Baseball Tonight (John Buccigross) borrowed this factoid, they referred to it taking place during the Mets' sweep of the Reds. You may be thinking “what sweep?” The Mets won that thrilling series in five games back when it was a best-of-five affair. Ah, but that would take on-air talent (including the alleged experts Jeff Brantley, Harold Reynolds and Larry Bowa) knowing what they were talking about. Apparently they or their producers — ESPN generally has excellent researchers — heard “three straight complete games” and assumed they were three wins. They were not. Tom Seaver threw a brilliant Game One. Thirteen strikeouts, no walks, six hits. Unfortunately, he allowed a solo home run to Pete Rose in the eighth and another solo home run to Johnny Bench in the ninth while Jack Billingham, Tom Hall and Pedro Borbon limited the Mets to a single run. It was a complete game loss. They've been known to happen. This botched recitation of history that didn't happen is an insult to those Mets and those Reds. And no, this is not nitpicking. When you're producing what's billed as a serious baseball show for serious baseball fans (who else on Earth is going to be watching?), you, like Doug Eddings, have an obligation to get this sort of thing right.

Lame announcing. Careless engineering. Mindless reporting. Welcome to October baseball, fans. As Stephanie asked me after the second blithe mention of the Mets' '73 sweep, “so, are they even going to show the World Series on television this year?”

Hewwo.

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I own a mansion and a yacht.

I've cowwected many, many accowades in my fabuwous caweeuh. I was Most Vowuboo Pwayuh once, when I pwayed with the Texas Wanguhs. And I should cowwect that vewy same accowade weauh, weauh soon.

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Technicawwy, I don't pway at pwesent. My yeauh is ovuh.

We wost in Cawifawnia. Then we fwew home.

To the Bwonx. Wheuh we cweaned out owuh wockuhs.

Mistuh Steinbwennuh is vewy, vewy angwy that we wost.

I had a gweat yeauh! It was vewy, vewy vowuboo.

But in the Amewican Weague Division Sewies, I pwayed wike a dog.

Wike a Wabwadaw Wetwievuh.

But I still get paid my twenty-five MIWWION dowwuhs!

Heh heh heh heh heh heh!

I am Awex Wodwiguez.

Miwwionahhe.

I own a mansion and a yacht.

Enjoy the west of the pwayoffs!

Recall this little detail from the Mets' 5-4 loss to the Marlins on September 3?

New York's Ramon Castro batted with the potential tying run at second and two outs in the eighth. He swung at strike three and then failed to run when the ball rolled away from catcher Paul Lo Duca, who tagged him out.

As the 2005 season and the failures that guaranteed it would not continue into the now recede deep into the mists of history, you may not remember this play all that well because it took place in a game in which something else of a more indelible nature occurred. This was the Shingo Takatsu Game. You know, worst first impression…EVER! All the other Met bungling amid a veritable bunglerama of bungles has probably faded a bit in our collective memory, but the Takatsu-Cabrera showdown has etched its way into legend.

By the same token, Mark Buehrle's nine-inning gem will be remembered by White Sox fans as a footnote to the A.J. Pierzynski Game. The play that has made Doug Eddings a household name in the 51% of the country that had easy access to it has already been compared to the Mickey Owen missed third strike, the Don Denkinger blown call and Merkle's Boner. Goodness knows the sleepy Angels won't soon forget it. Me, I was reminded of Ramon Castro standing still as our Wild Card drive grew another day deader.

Similarities? You decide.

In the play Wednesday night, the White Sox catcher who was batting saw (somehow) that there was some delay in the umpire confirming strike three was an out and was smart enough to run to first. The Angels catcher who was catching was (justifiably) clueless as to what was transpiring all about him. The White Sox went on to win a very big game.

In the play of September 3, the Mets catcher who was batting just stood in place while the Marlins catcher who was catching figured out the umpire hadn't confirmed strike three and was smart enough to run after the ball and tag out the opposing catcher. The Mets went on to lose a very big game.

And oh yeah — the White Sox and Mets accomplished their respective feats after coming to telling judgments regarding the usefulness of one Shingo Takatsu.

Right about now, we should be getting a score on Game Two of the Cardinals and the Astros. They should be in the top of the second. Refresh buttons should be getting a workout. Radios should be finding stations they don't normally seek. And televisions should be tuned to Fox.

Afternoon games are an inconvenience to a large percentage of the baseball-loving population, but they're part of our matrix. We accept them. Day games are what we're conditioned to love. We trade off the ability to watch every pitch of every game when we're theoretically more available at night for the notion that baseball in daylight is how it's meant to be played and we'll catch as much of it as we can. And if we're fortunate enough to be near a TV during the late afternoon, then we feel like we've come into a little bonus.

But none of this is happening at the moment. Fox has decided to schedule two baseball games against each other tonight. They're putting Game Two of the ALCS on Fox and Game One of the NLCS on their FX cable channel. Except in markets where they're doing the opposite.

Got that?

It's not the first time they've done this but it continues to amaze that Major League Baseball would allow its showcase event to be sliced and diced so thin as to make one portion of it nearly irrelevant. Are you the old-fashioned fan who gets up for a pennant being decided? Make a choice — N.L. or A.L. You can't have both.

But according to Jeanne Zelasko, you can. She actually said, during one of those insipid Sprint Game Breaks (if I were Sprint or any large company, I wouldn't want my name attached to anything that insults my customer's intelligence) that you don't have to choose between the NLCS and ALCS on Wednesday night, we've got them both.

Well, actually, placing one game on the broadcast network and shoving the other game to an auxiliary outlet where there is no baseball the rest of the year, makes us do precisely what you say we don't have to do. We do have to choose. If I want to watch Houston at St. Louis, I have to miss Los Angeles at Chicago. And if I want to follow the series that's already started, one that I'm a bit caught up in, then I have to eschew the one that I haven't seen any of yet.

I've had the reasoning explained to me as thus: Fox wants to air as many games in prime time as possible. But in two best-of-sevens, they are guaranteeing that their prime audience (and this is baseball, not the Winter Olympics, so these are mostly actual fans watching) will miss most of one. It could be 25% of a series right there, down the tubes.

That's our choice. Watch a game and miss a game or be a remote-control fiend.

That second choice doesn't work that well. Last year's Astro-Cardinal series got buried in New York by an avalanche of Red Sox-Yankees. That's understandable, but it wasn't necessary for Fox to hand out the shovels. One lousy 4 o'clock start on one lousy Wednesday afternoon for one Game One wouldn't kill them (they've scheduled a Wednesday afternoon if-necessary for next week anyway). It would do immense good for the hardcore fan to say nothing of the youngster who might be delighted to find a game he doesn't fall asleep on.

As for Minister of Propaganda Jeanne Zelasko (she must be an American relation of the Murdochs to have this job) and her “you don't have to choose” reassurance, I would say this is 1984, but in 1984, we didn't have to choose. All the League Championship Series games between the Padres and the Cubs and the Tigers and the Royals were on in their own individual time slots.