You watch enough baseball and you get a strong feeling regarding what is going to happen next. You're almost smug about it. You're a longtime fan. You can see it coming.

Not Game Three of the 2005 World Series which went fourteen innings, nearly a quarter of a day and put the Chicago White Sox within one win of their first championship since just before the Soviet Union formed. I watched it all (save for nodding off somewhere between the fourth and the fifth, meaning I missed the blown-call home run by Jason Lane and the leadoff blast by Joe Crede, but the nap turned out to be fortuitous in the loooong run) and I didn't see anything coming.

I didn't see Roy Oswalt falling apart.

I didn't see the White Sox leaving the bases loaded when they got to Oswalt.

I didn't see the Sox not paying for leaving the bases loaded.

I didn't see the Astros getting only one hit over the final ten innings and that hit being the one that tied the game in the eighth.

I didn't see Orlando Hernandez (whom I couldn't root for because of his past associations) wriggling out of trouble.

I didn't see Fox not showing a clip of Timo running himself into an out in 2000 when he came up but maybe nobody besides us cares that much about it.

I didn't see Orlando Palmiero, a pest of the first order, not doing something.

I didn't see Jose Vizcaino, his credentials well understood in these parts, not doing something.

I didn't see Craig Biggio not writing a fitting ending. I've never much cared for him but I find myself appreciating his eighteen years of hustle and his moment in the spotlight.

I didn't see Bobby Jenks escaping unscathed. I was sure he was Looperized.

I didn't see Barbara Bush get up to leave but she lasted until at least 12:30 local time. I think one of her non-politician sons accompanied her but for a second I thought the guy sitting with her was Brownie of “heckuva job” fame.

I didn't see Brad Ausmus starting a very heads-up 2-6-3 double play on Scott Podsednik in the thirteenth.

I didn't see Piazza stroking a two-out, season-saving, three-run job in the ninth off Wagner only to have Ausmus tie it off Cook in the bottom of the inning all before Hundley drove one over the Astrodome wall versus Bergman and an overworked Wendell hung on for dear life to win it in eleven. (Whoops…right city, wrong insane classic.)

I didn't see the White Sox pitchers walking every other batter and not giving up a run.

I didn't see the Astros popping up in every other at-bat.

I didn't see Morgan Ensberg turning a sensational fourteenth-inning double play on Paul Konerko's hot grounder after Jermaine Dye led off with a hard single.

I didn't see October 25, 2005 turning into October 26, 2005 turning into October 25, 1986 turning into October 26, 1986.

I didn't see Ezequiel Astacio giving up a two-out home run to Geoff Blum.

I didn't see Astros radio announcer Milo Hamilton calling that home run, as damaging as it was to his team, with all the passion usually reserved for remembering that the dry cleaning is ready; what a homer — and I'm not talking about Blum's line drive.

I didn't see hair like Blum's when he took his helmet off in the White Sox dugout. I hadn't seen anything like it since Williams, the kid with too many impure thoughts, in 1985's Heaven Help Us.

I didn't see Geoff Blum, who I vaguely assumed was still on the Expos, becoming the second man to hit a home run in his first World Series plate appearance in extra innings. The only other man to accomplish that mouthful was Dusty Rhodes of my beloved 1954 Giants.

I didn't see Morgan Ensberg not fielding a squib and then allowing a bunt to go fair setting up an insurance run.

I didn't see the Astros getting the winning run to bat.

I didn't see Mark Buehrle, a starter who hadn't pitched relief in five years and just threw seven innings on Sunday, coming out of the pen and getting Adam Everett for the final out with no sweat.

I didn't see Brandon Backe, the Game Four starter, going to the 'Stros bullpen in the fourteenth before that final out in one of those just-in-case maneuvers that would've sent this game through the roof if it had come to that whether the roof was open or not.

I didn't see the roof making a difference one way or another when all was said and done.

I didn't see the Astros fans hanging around as long as they did; mea culpa for questioning their credentials.

I didn't see that they're going to have rechristen that place as Five Hour Forty One Minute Maid Park.

I didn't see that I'd feel really badly for Phil Garner when he threw his stool after Astacio threw his gopher. I wasn't rooting for his team but I felt bad for him. It reminded me of my father's reaction to a shot of Michael Dukakis late in the 1988 campaign when in an effort to come across as a regular guy, his staff convinced him bowl a couple of frames for the cameras. “I'm not voting for him,” Dad said, “but he shouldn't have to do that.”

I didn't see the game lasting until 2:20 AM here, meaning it was ending close to the time George McGovern's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention started in 1972. Ever since then, the political parties have taken great care to do what the NFL does with the Super Bowl: make sure their big moments take place in prime time or as close to it as possible. This baseball game, which will go a long way toward determining the champion of the world, ended in prime time if you live in the Aleutians or points west. I'd like to think that as what was occurring was occurring that every sleepy-eyed baseball fan/bathroom-goer who gave up around 11:30 turned on the TV around 1:30 to get the final score and found out it was still going on and stayed up 'til the end in order to enjoy a little of the historic climax. I hope the game's ratings trajectory followed the 18-inning NLDS affair played in the very same House of Whew!s when the longer the game got, the more the audience increased. But that was a weekend day game. This game started at 8:39 PM in the east. I don't know how you fix that short of blowing off prime time which baseball would never do willingly but managed to do accidentally. And I'm not sure whether this was one of the greatest games ever played or just one of the longest, but I do know every bit of it was worth watching.

I didn't see it coming, but boy am I glad I saw it.

Just read that the commissioner is insisting that the Astros leave the roof open for their World Series home games unless it's raining.

Huzzah!

Sure, baseball should be played outdoors or as close to it as possible, though Minute Maid Park, no matter how far back you peel the ceiling, never feels like it's outside. The reason I'm behind this edict is the reasoning the Astros gave for shutting themselves off from nature earlier in the post-season.

It's noisier this way.

Well, yeah, it probably is. But so what? It's a yahoo tactic, the same kind of progressive thinking that had the mayor of Houston urging his constituents not to wear socks this past weekend (imagine the mayor of New Orleans running for re-election on that platform). Close the roof so our yelling will echo into the visitors' ears? It's down there with Red Auerbach shutting off the hot water in the visitors' locker room in Boston Garden. No, actually, it's worse because “heh-heh, we'll make lotsa noise and spook 'em” isn't baseball. What do the Astros think? That Jon Garland will be called for a delay of game? That A.J. Pierzynski's cadences will be off? Heck, why not just bring out some purty cheerleaders to rile up the crowd?

Cripes, Texans, this is baseball and baseball's world championship. It's not the Baseball Bowl. Make all the noise you want but get over yourselves and your horrendous football mentality.“It holds the noise.” Y'mean like it held Albert Pujols' home run that suddenly shut all of you up?

This brings to mind Moneyball and Chad Bradford suffering a silent meltdown amid a frenzied, sold-out Oakland Coliseum, a house ostensibly cheering in his favor. Billy Beane offered some solid advice that Ozzie and the Sox might want to consider:

When play resumes, fifty-five thousand people rise up and bang and shout, perhaps thinking this will help Chad to settle down.

“Why should noise have any more effect on the hitter than the pitcher? says Billy, a bit testily. “If you're playing away, you just pretend they are cheering for you.”

Or in the case of the Minute Maid throng, the Spring Westfield High School Mustangs.

For a little expansion brethren solidarity among the Mets, the Astros and all the others who have come along since 1961, slide headfirst into Gotham Baseball.

Sure, it's dropped from crisp to cold all at once and it's raining enough to make Channel 11 air an impromptu Fresh Prince of Bel-Air marathon, but cheer up.

It's October 25!

Buckner Day! Mookie Day! A Ground Ball…Trickling Day! Call it what you will, it was the night in 1986 (after midnight on 10/26 if you're a stickler for the trickler) when the Mets staved off elimination in the World Series by winning the sixth game in ten innings.

Perhaps you've heard about it.

For nineteen consecutive years, I've been lobbying Albany to declare October 25 a state holiday on the order of Patriots Day or Stonewall Jackson's birthday in other parts of the country, but I've gotten nowhere. Instead, let's observe it our own Michael Sergio-style and parachute into the town square for a reading not from a Metscentric source but from a charming, underknown book called A Player for a Moment: Notes from Fenway Park by John Hough, Jr. Hough writes as a lifelong Red Sox fan who also happened to be the ghost author of Gary Carter's autobiography. He was watching Game Six with Red Sox friends who weren't collaborating with a New York Met on a professional venture.

In the bottom of the inning Wally Backman hit an easy fly ball to Rice. Keith Hernandez drove one to center, an easy catch for Hendu. The announcers began talking about how long it had been, 1918, since the Sox had won the Series. They announced that Bruce Hurst had been judged Most Valuable Player of the Series.

“Are you crazy?” Kib said.

“He's a nice guy,” I said. “Let him get a single.

We know the rest. It's an instructive tale, I believe, because it shows that in no way, shape or form can you dictate your terms in a baseball game. It's hard to enough line up all your good-luck ducks in a karmic row, and goodness knows that doesn't always give you the result you want. But try plying the gods with notes (“let us win our first World Series in 68 years but only after the guy I know and like doesn't make the last out”) and you will come away looking at 69 years and counting. (No offense, Red Sox fans; you had a pretty good October 27 last year.)

I'd like as much baseball as I can get my eyes and ears on in 2005. There may be as many as five games remaining or as few as two. I suppose I should pull for five. But I find that I have developed a rooting interest in this World Series. I want the White Sox to win. I suspected I was anti-Houston, but I wasn't sure I'd be quite as pro-Chicago as I've become. They are my team of the moment. That allegiance has a short shelf life, but I have planted myself firmly in their camp for the duration.

I wouldn't mind this Series extending well into the weekend but as a White Sox fan of the Salon Day Pass variety, I want them to win however and whenever they have to. I will not root for the Astros to “make it interesting”. Baseball's interesting enough no matter how much or how little there is left in any given October.

On Monday night, while the MySox rested, ESPN Classic took time out from its heavy rotation re-airings of 1993 poker tournaments and the like to count down the twenty greatest World Series ever. It pretended nothing before 1946 (pre-TV) existed so it was kind of bogus, but guess what was No. 1.

1991 Twins-Braves? No, that was fourth (though it's the best I've ever seen).

1975 Reds-Red Sox? No, that was third (though it's the second-best I've ever seen).

2001 Diamondbacks-Yankees? No, that was second (though it's the third-best I've ever seen).

Chosen as the greatest World Series ever played was the 1986 affair between the New York Mets and the Boston Red Sox. It was the fourth-best I've ever seen, but I gotta tell ya, I lodge absolutely no objection to '86 getting its due. It's overdue.

If you want to drown in delightful minutia regarding the events of 19 years ago tonight, I'd suggest a leisurely scroll down Mets Walkoffs where Mark Simon has been dissecting the ultimate Mets walkoff to within an inch of its wonderful life. And if you agree that the World Series should be a non-sectarian religious experience for every baseball fan whether his team is playing in it or not, spend a couple of posts with Dave Murray, the Mets Guy in Michigan. He traveled to Chicago over the weekend to take in the scene so we wouldn't have to. Dave also regales us with the night eight years ago when he parachuted — in the non-Michael Sergio sense — into another World Series. I found his version of the Marlins and Indians at least as compelling as the one I watched from afar in 1997. That, to borrow from a phrase that was all the rage in 1986, is blogging like it oughta be.

It always happens this way: The season ends, and for a little bit (it might be a few hours, maybe a few days, just maybe two weeks) you don't mind. The pain of a year that didn't quite measure up is no more. No need to mutter about Braden Looper, or what's wrong with Carlos Beltran, or to try to convince yourself there's some scenario where the Phillies, Astros and Marlins all fall over themselves and you win out and they'll still be talking about it when we're in our final days. It's over. Put it in the books. Wait till next year.

And hey, you discover, there's this big world out there. You can sit down to dinner at 6:30 and not start fidgeting every time the waiter's a bit slow. It's amazing the number of useful errands you can get done starting at 1:30 on Saturday or Sunday. People always talking about how there's not enough time in life, sheesh. There's hours upon hours in the day. There's so many hours you're not quite sure what to do with all of them. What possible excuse does anyone who's not a full-time baseball fan have for not having their shit together?

Sure, there are these games called the playoffs. You might even have a mild rooting interest, a bandwagon team, a team you hate with such singleminded purity that you can't sleep until you know they're home for the winter too. (Just sayin'.) Maybe you watch, maybe you don't, most likely you watch but you're doing other things while you're watching. It's diverting, this playoff stuff. It doesn't really matter, but it's nice to keep an ear or an eye on.

And then, just when you think you've figured out the rhythms of this odd second season, you realize: Winter, that crafty old wolf, is at the door. How many games left are there? That few? Really? You mean this will all be over when Monday comes around again? It could all be over…Wednesday?

No, that can't be. That's way too soon. Wait, baseball, wait! I'll watch! I'll watch without talking on the phone with my parents or balancing the checkbook or slogging through the National Geographics I feel too guilty to recycle unread. Wait, baseball! I didn't mean all those things about how this sure takes forever and I'm sure glad I've got an emotional stake in this game or I'd be going out of my mind. That was crazy talk, summer talk, the babbling of an ingrate who's very, very sorry. I'll watch guys stroll back and forth between the batter's box and the on-deck circle all night. I'll watch White Sox and Astros warm up! I won't make fun of Scooter! I'll listen to Guillen and Garner between innings! I won't complain about the Nascar swoosh that has to signal we're moving between live action and a replay every single time. I'll wait to see the next star of a Fox sitcom freezing his ass off.

Anything you want, baseball. Just don't go. Because I'm not ready yet. Maybe in another week I will be. Maybe two. Definitely in two. OK, I'm pretty sure I'll be ready in a month. But not yet. Not yet, baseball. You hear me, baseball?

Braden Looper overthrows and pays for it. Armando Benitez can't be trusted in a big spot. Now substitute the names Bobby Jenks and Brad Lidge and it's like the Mets are closing both ends of this World Series.

The danger in watching post-season play is you tend to familiarize yourself with players in such a compressed timeframe. Bobby Jenks? Saturday night he was large and in charge. You can't beat Bobby Jenks. Bobby Jenks is huge…literally, figuratively, undoubtedly. The White Sox can't go wrong if they call (or pantomime) for Bobby Jenks.

Sunday night Bobby Jenks is Braden Looper or, if you can remember how good another strapping, young, unknown reliever was in Game One of another World Series, Calvin Schiraldi. And Brad Lidge? If he's not Armando reincarnated, let's just say he's got quite the albatross Byung-Hyun around his neck. I've been hearing for two post-seasons how Lidge is the Mariano Rivera of the National League. Now in his last two outings he has given up two of the most dramatic and most crushing home runs that any modern-day reliever has given up in consecutive outings.

This closing business is not the kind of endeavor you score with a pen. Francisco Rodriguez, who gets a lot of those “other than Mariano Rivera” accolades himself was not sharp against the White Sox. Our prospective Christmas present, Billy Wagner, is a prime reason the Astros and not the Phillies made the post-season. And the great Rivera was at the core of the worst choke in sports history a year ago.

So all closers must be non-tendered? No, it's just that none is untouchable, at least not forever. Jenks and Lidge (isn't that who opened for Jeff Foxworthy on his last tour?) will have their good nights again, maybe as soon as Tuesday, but there are no guarantees in ninth innings, particularly World Series ninth innings. There's a tendency to get carried away with closers we're first viewing up close in October. It is balanced by the urge to declare them busts and turn them into national jokes the Monday morning after a Sunday night like both had. Neither view is healthy. No matter how good the closer, he's facing batters on a team that is by definition one of the two best in baseball. Something's bound to give.

Not that this Series isn't fun enough on its own, but for those who like and miss Met angles, here are few others I've noticed:

• Craig Biggio briefly turned into Kaz Matsui handling — or not — a routine pop fly. “I waited a jillion games for this?” he presumably wondered.

• Chris Burke's slide with the hand reaching for the plate was the sort of move Robin Ventura used to execute regularly. I don't think there's anything I enjoy in baseball as much as a brilliant grab of home. I'm not rooting for the Astros, but I am digging on Chris Burke.

• Jose Fucking Vizcaino had to show his wretched form again. Never mind the instant 12th inning, Game One, 2000 ghost that leapt to mind. The replay of him standing on second all pleased and pumped was a Dorian Gray replay of what he did nine years ago against Steve Avery when Avery felt compelled to throw at him and Bobby Jones felt compelled to throw at nobody. I wish Jose Vizcaino would go away already.

• Scott Podsednik was one part Al Weis and one part Lenny Dykstra and, if you need a third part, one part Melvin Mora making with the post-season power where little to none was displayed in the regular season before. I didn't think that sucker was going out. So happy it did.

• Seeing Joe Crede do it all as a third baseman elicited my instinctive reaction of “man, I wish we had a guy like that.” Then I remembered we do have a guy like that. I instantly stopped trading for Joe Crede when I remembered David Wright.

• Roger Clemens sucks. That's not just a Met angle. That's a human angle. Keep icin' that hammy, big boy.

Speaking of Astro starting pitchers of unfortunate distinction and unpleasant association, all the Kids in the Hall fans should remember the show's lesbian league softball sketch between Sappho's Sluggers and Pandora's Jocks. In it, the pitcher for the Jocks, played by Mark McKinney, glared out from behind her glove in a manner that eerily presaged Andy Pettitte doing the same thing. Every October, we get that tight shot of Pettitte with the pouty scowl, and if Stephanie's around, I tell her, “look, it's Pandora's Jocks!” I've been making this observation for ten years and it gets a laugh every time.

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.