In 1992, Jimmy Breslin was grumpy. He was covering the Iowa caucuses and wandered into a candidate's headquarters. The volunteer at the front desk didn't know who he was. He harumphed that if Mario Cuomo were running for president, everybody in the room would know him.

And if things had gone about one game per month better, you'd be reading an intense, impassioned, incisive, insightful dissection of the National League Division Series right here, right now. But our candidate isn't on the ballot, so, like Breslin, we're just strangers from Queens covering a contest in which we don't really have a horse.

Therefore, it is with fleeting interest and shallow depth that Faith and Fear in Flushing presents its first annual visceral and uninformed playoff preview. I'll skip the National League because, quite frankly, I don't much care for any of the combatants, and concentrate on the circuit where our attention is forced to be focused.

Welcome, fellow NL'ers to the league where almost nobody wanted to integrate, where baseball hasn't been played as it's meant to be played since 1972 and where boatloads of Orioles and Blue Jays throw themselves at the feet of the most vile franchise in the history of professional sports after calling up and asking, “how many would you like against us in September and by what means would you like us to lose them to you?” Fortunately, there are three American League teams we can look to in the somewhat reasonable hope that one of them will rescue us from a fate worse than snow — a blizzard of goddamn ticker tape.

LOS ANGELES ANGELS OF ANAHEIM

Should We Care? We have to. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are our de facto favorite team of all time starting Tuesday night and continuing for three to five games.

Have I Had A Spiritual Relationship With This Team, The Los Angeles Angels? Yes. As mentioned here from time to time, the Angels are my nominal favorite American League team, attributable to two events. The first game I ever saw at Yankee Stadium (after my dad took my tiny hand in his enormous mitt and secured us box seats behind home plate through his friends in the music business and Gus Mauch gave my tiny body a rubdown after which Mickey Mantle autographed my prepubescent coccyx…oh wait, that's Billy Crystal's life story) featured the Angels bashing the Yankees in 1986. And in October 2002, the Angels sent the Yankees home quicker than any post-season opponent since the 1980 Kansas City Royals. No matter how stupid their name, the Los Anaheims of Angel won my lifelong affection with that series.

Have I Been Where The Angels Play? Yes. I visited what was then Anaheim Stadium in 1996, before it was shrunken and faux-beautified. It reminded me of Shea but without the spit. I considered both qualities a plus. I took a picture of Stephanie with the Angels' bearlike mascot, genEric.

Have I Worn An Angels Cap? Yes. In 1986, I bought an adjustable mesh model at (genuflection alert!) The Stadium and wore it at (genuflection alert!) The Stadium without consequence. Yankee fans were pretty well beat down that year. I brought it out of mothballs in 2002. That's just an expression. There are no moths in this house.

Metigating Factors? The Angels beat us two of three in June but the one we beat them was quite possibly the best game the Mets played in 2005, a.k.a. The Marlon Anderson Game. Vladimir Guerrero, not Shane Spencer and Karim Garcia, was supposed to be our rightfielder in 2004, but that's all right for now because he's where he can do us some good. The ex-Mets on the '02 world champions, Alex Ochoa and Kevin Appier, are long gone. I don't think we have any reformed Mets in Anaheim at the moment. I'm a little annoyed that Chone Figgins edged Jose Reyes for the Major League stolen base crown but Chone Figgins is one of my favorite players in the American League to the extent that I keep such a list. It's pretty much him and Papi. That's the list. They stuck us with Fregosi, but 2002 wiped away that sin. Who did we trade to get him anyway?

Can They Do What We Need Them To Do? Knowledgeless afternoon radio host, national spokesperson for the unabashedly ignorant and vocal Yankee propagandist Mike Francesa fears the Angels most of all. This is the same media powerhouse who a week ago was pretty much guaranteeing the White Sox couldn't beat the Indians because the Indians needed those games and the White Sox would have nothing to play for. The White Sox swept the Indians. Despite that, the Angels can beat the Yankees. It is what our world has come down to. That and addressing Get Well & Get Lost cards to Braden Looper.

BOSTON RED SOX

Should We Care? It's hard not to. The Red Sox are, after all, one half of the greatest rivalry ever. Ya got that? It's the greatest rivalry EVER. It's better than the Giants and the Dodgers even if the Giants and Dodgers have been going at it relatively evenly for more than a century. It's better than the French and the English, who fought a mere Hundred Years' War with a North American rematch in the 1750s. It's better than Pringles, which are stackable, and those bagged chips that are always broken and greasy, according to the Pringles commercials. The Red Sox and Yankees have been going at it tooth and nail, mano-a-mano, eyeball to eyeball as perfectly matched opponents since 2003. Now that's a rivalry.

Have I Had A Spiritual Relationship With This Team, The Boston Red Sox? Yes. In the summer of 1978, with the Mets on administrative leave, I picked up the cause of the Boston Red Sox in my little nook of Long Island. I became known to people I was just meeting for the first time as That Red Sox Fan. I was very cocky, very confident. Obviously, I read the bandwagon wrong. Absconded with to a Catskills resort on October 2, 1978 for a Rosh Hashanah weekend special, I walked by a group of Yankee fans watching the one-game playoff on a TV in the lobby while I was wearing my Red Sox cap. One of them pointed me out and I gave them the finger. So there's a little something there that goes beyond mere enemy-of-my-enemy stuff. 1986 kind of obliterated that, but I bled with them in 2003 and reveled in them in 2004. It smacked of frontrunning, but it was sincere frontrunning (besides, what's October for but to frontrun?).

Have I Been Where The Red Sox Play? Twice. The first game I ever saw that wasn't at Shea was at Fenway in 1985. It was me and Joel and Joel's friend Rich, White Sox at Red Sox. Tom Seaver pitched for the White Sox, which put me in a bind, finally getting to see a team I had always liked versus a pitcher I had always loved. I reluctantly went with the visitors. Back then, there were tolls every five miles on the Connecticut Turnpike. So tired had I become of tossing quarters into the machines that at one stop, I faked the toss and sped off. No authority chased me, but Rich wondered why I bothered with the fake. Fourteen years later, Stephanie and I saw the same two teams. Pedro pitched for the home side. The Red Sox scored 17 runs on his behalf. A townie woman behind me kept cursing out Lou Merloni anyway. What's not to love?

Have I Worn A Red Sox Cap? That was part and parcel of my 1978 identity. I was overjoyed that you could actually find a Red Sox cap in New York for purchase. It was at Herman's in Roosevelt Field. It was five bucks. I think it cost me a letter grade in social studies. The cap found its way to the top of our living room television last October. I refused to wear it, though. I wore it in 1978 and you see how well that went.

Metigating Factors? Olerud right now. Any team with John Olerud is to be respected and quite possibly revered, unless it's the Yankees (though Oly was thoughtful enough to come up with an oweee at a most opportune moment). Last year erased the offense I took that Red Sox fans rooted against the Mets in 1986. We got the Mookie ground ball back and Ken Burns could take a hike. When I visited a friend in Boston in the spring of '87, I ducked into a bar where some guys were watching the Mets and the Expos in the game of the week. “Who's winning?” I asked. “Who cares?” I was told. “It's only the Mets.” Ahhhh…to be ruefully dismissed with a purpose. Mo Vaughn was a Red Sock before he was an Angel before he was a Met. I hold all three teams responsible. Manny Ramirez won't be traded to us this week. One of our intermittent but valued commenters is a Red Sox fan. There is common ground to be had.

Can They Do What We Need Them To Do? Of course they can. But there's the possibility they won't. Either way, Red Sox-Yankees III is a perilous and numbing possibility. Too many demented Bill Gallo cartoons (“Boston? Derek's BEAN there and WON that!”) can come of it. I wish them the best if push comes to evil, and I wish them well in any event.

CHICAGO WHITE SOX

Should We Care? Only in theory. The last World Series they won came at the expense of the New York Giants, so it's been a while. Their cult keeps quiet, which is to their credit. A White Sox championship would serve to make the Cubs look even more ridiculous. Do we not like that? This is a team stocked with players who mostly haven't bothered to make their identities known to me. They knocked out the slightly less anonymous Cleveland Indians after being written off from first place, so something tells me they're not dead yet.

Have I Had A Spiritual Relationship With This Team, The Chicago White Sox? A little. I've always liked the way they're not the Cubs. They did have the good taste to pluck Seaver from us in '84 (less mad at them than the Blue Jays for signing Dennis Lamp from the White Sox, thus allowing Chicago to pick from the short-lived compensation pool, the one Cashen flung Seaver into so carelessly). Every time they're in the playoffs, they're new blood and I almost always root for new blood. But they never circulate for very long, so I've never gotten to know them well.

Have I Been Where The White Sox Play? Yes. On my first business trip to Chicago, I had it in mind to get to Wrigley Field, but the timing didn't work for me and they were a sizzling hot ticket. As it happened, the Sox were at home that same week, so I skipped the NutraSweet party at which I was supposed to be gladhanding and hopped into a cab at my hotel. “Comiskey Park,” I said. The driver asked me if I was a sportswriter. I get the feeling very few guests went out of their way to find the South Side of Chicago. But boy am I glad I did. Plenty of good seats available. I loved Comiskey Park, the original Comiskey Park, then in its second-to-last year of existence. The place just reeked of baseball with the green and the arches and the history (and the fuh-GLAY-vin). It became my favorite ballpark ever. The driver had warned me that cabs didn't idle outside Comiskey, so I left the game early to ensure I could call a taxi and not be stranded there alone. Had to wait a couple of innings for one to arrive. I don't think it was mine, but I commandeered it. Comiskey was immortalized in the wonderful Baseball Palace of the World by Douglas Bukowski, a serious fan's diary of the joint's final season. The author promised to never step inside the next place to call itself Comiskey, a temptation I gave into twice in 1994 and 1999. It was depressing the first time given what had stood across the street for 80 years. The second time wasn't so bad. I nabbed my only foul ball ever, off the bat of Carlos Lee, for whom I carried a torch until this season when he started kicking the crap out of the Mets.

Have I Worn a White Sox Cap? One of the things that I loved about Comiskey was its intimacy, the way the upper deck wasn’t cantilevered all the way back to the 'burbs. The thing I (and actual White Sox fans) hated about the second Comiskey when it opened was the way the upper deck reached for the clouds. Stephanie and I not only had very high, very steep seats on a sold-out Sunday afternoon, but it was hot-hot-hot, and Stephanie forgot to pack any headwear. So I was compelled to spend 15 bucks on a white White Sox cap with black pinstripes. She wore it that day, I wore it once in a while thereafter. I used to be into wearing caps from other teams just for the hell of it. I have a hard time doing that now with a clear conscience.

Metigating Factors? Timo Perez and Carl Everett are on this team, right? Good luck, Ozzie.

Can They Do What We Need Them To Do? Should it come down to White Sox-Yankees, well, that would be kind of disappointing because I'd hate to think the Angels can't do what we need them to do. But these Sox played those Skanks pretty well this year. I'm always wary of writing off teams the likes of Mike Francesa write off. On the other hand, I don't trust teams that rely on ex-Yankees like Orlando Hernandez and Jose Contreras. It's the same reason I don't put a lot of stock into David Wells with the Red Sox. Jim Leyritz made like he was the king of San Diego in 1998 and it didn't help the cause greater than ourselves one bit.

TEXAS RANGERS

What The Fuck Are They Doing Here? Though not a playoff team and not even a recent Yankee opponent, Joe Torre and Alex Rodriguez had the gall to blame Buck Showalter for pulling several of his regulars from the Rangers' last game against the Angels. By not beating the Angels, the Rangers, to Yankee logic, were responsible for taking away the Yankees' home-field advantage on Sunday. Holy fucking shit. This organization knows no shame. The Yankees, I mean. The Rangers told Kenny Rogers to get lost. They're OK by me.

PREDICTION

Yankees Suck. They shouldn't be here but they are. Yankees Suck. They will be tough. Yankees Suck. None of these four teams is overwhelming. Yankees Suck. I sure as hell hope the Angels beat them in the first round. Yankees Suck. If they don't, I sure as hell hope the Red Sox or the White Sox beat them in the ALCS. Yankees Suck. If that doesn't happen, there's a TBD National League team that will become my new favorite team of all time. Yankees Suck.

An easily overlooked October institution celebrates its tenth anniversary starting this afternoon. Toast the LDS at Gotham Baseball.

My birthday is December 31. I tell you that because I have a real problem with year-in-review features. Everybody from the World Almanac to Newsweek to Entertainment Tonight produces those looks back at “the year” in advance of the actual year ending. It's understandable, I suppose, given deadlines and the holidays and a belief that nobody will want to wait until the second week of January for what is by definition old news.

The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in the last week of 1979, but no review of 1979 that was published in 1979 had that information. The tsunami that blasted Indonesia in the last week of 2004 came after the 2004-in-review packages were put to bed. I was born on the last day of 1962, and though I hope I wasn't such a disaster, I know I didn't rate a mention in any where-were-you-in-'62?s.

It's within that vein of personal discontent that I refuse to overlook the generally overlooked final sixth of the baseball season. Tomorrow come the Long Season Awards, encompassing the scope of all 162 games the Mets played this year. Today, we do what we do every time a sixth of the season is completed.

We overreact to what we've just seen, which in this case is a 13-13 (.500) fraction of 2005.

This is how we covered this sort of thing previously:

First Sixth: 12-13 (.480)

Second Sixth: 16-13 (.551)

Third Sixth: 12-15 (.444)

Fourth Sixth: 14-13 (.519)

Fifth Sixth: 16-12 (.571)

And this is how we cover it now:

Five For The Road

1. Tom Glavine: The multiple Cy Young winner who decided to pitch all the way to the end.

2. Aaron Heilman: The ninth inning is right this way.

3. Juan Padilla: You go before Aaron.

4. Jose Reyes: This guy is injury-proof.

5. David Wright: Funny, he didn't look tired.

Five Who Should Pack It In

1. Braden Looper: Never mind the blown saves. Think about his bouts with logic.

2. Jose Offerman: Running from first to second is the best route to get to second.

3. Danny Graves: What is the color of futility? Faded Red.

4. Shingo Takatsu: Funk never sounded so tinny.

5. Kaz Matsui: Mark FRAGILE.

Where Did It All Go Wrong?

1. Ryan Langerhans

2. Sleepful in St. Louis

3. Benson Hedges (should I do something about my shoulder or should I listen to Loop?)

4. Let's pitch to Vinny Castilla instead of Keith Osik!

5. Starting at wide receiver, Victor Diaz (he sure wasn't playing right)

Where Did It All Get Better?

1. Pedro! Pedro! There'd be a third Pedro! but he's saving himself

2. Cairo Comes Alive

3. Jakey Gets Back in the Buggy

4. Roberto Hernandez gets better if older

5. Beltran Bests Baerga, Bell

Our Impact On The Way Things Are: N.L.

1. The Phillies are staying home this week

2. The Braves could set their rotation

3. The Cardinals can feel confident

4. The Marlins are in shambles

5. Frank Robinson is even crankier

Our Impact On The Way Things Are: A.L.

1. Angels 2-1 over us allows them to tie Yankees, thus gaining home field

2. Yankees 3-3 against us keeps them from topping Angels, thus losing home field

3. Red Sox stretch run reinforced by John Olerud instead of Doug Mientkiewicz

4. Timo Perez didn't get thrown out on a near home run in White Sox' clincher as far as I know

5. Indians failed to pawn off a used-up second baseman on us and missed the playoffs

If You Blinked, You Missed Them

1. Anderson Hernandez's one hit

2. Mike DiFelice's second hit

3. Howard Johnson coaching first base

4. SNY's first commercial

5. Trachsel, Zambrano and Seo lowering their market values

What's Different From One Year Ago?

1. We were playing with zeal, not just playing Zeile

2. There's no lingering sentiment for former closers

3. Cliff Floyd is running, not sitting

4. We're not looking for a new manager

5. A dozen wins

31 Personal Impressions Stemming From Mike Piazza's Final Game

1. I dithered over whether to wear my PIAZZA 31 shirt because two of the last times I wore it, the Northeast was enveloped by a blackout and I was laid off

2. I wore it for the first time since April 12, 2004 anyway and it felt very comfortable

3. As I pulled it on, the lyrics playing on the bathroom radio were “it was long ago and it was far away and it was so much better than it is today”

4. When Mike Piazza was in his prime, it was indeed so much better than it is today

5. Still, if this was really it, better that it came with the Mets on an upswing as opposed to 2002, 2003 or 2004

6. As I walked to Gate C, I wondered whatever happened to that kid who was on TV all the time in 1999, the kid who had the Piazza facial hair drawn on; is he still a Mets fan?

7. When the lineups were posted and I saw 31 C was batting cleanup, I broke out into a big grin

8. I'd hoped his original music, “Voodoo Child” by Jimi Hendrix, would accompany his first at-bat, and it did

9. The announced attendance of 47,000 was probably a little high versus reality, but I was thrilled that there weren't a ton of empty seats, that Mets fans really did get it

10. Cal Ripken had his midgame jog around the perimeter of Camden Yards when he broke Lou Gehrig's record, but I don't remember an in-game ceremony honoring a player who wasn't doing anything except finishing out his contract

11. Mike seemed so stunned that at the scale of reception he received that it looked like he was trying to calm the crowd the way Springsteen might tell his audience to sit down after it stood for the first three songs

12. I wondered how long the umps would let it go on; they let it go on a pretty long time

13. I didn't see the logic in not giving the man one final at-bat

14. I had turned my cap around during his 7th inning ceremony to honor his catching, but turned it back to its front when he left; I feel no need to honor Mike DiFelice

15. I loved the heads-up fan who taped hand-drawn retired-number discs to the facing of the upper deck in far left field and included 37, 14, 41, 42 (in red, yet) and 31

16. The usual post-game, year-end video tribute to the season just past, including images of the beloved Pedro Martinez, lost its audience as soon as Mike stepped out of the dugout to do an interview

17. I'm disgusted that mere early-season football games took precedence over the departure of a New York sports icon on the local news

18. I'm disgusted that New York Giants football in week four got dibs on the flagship station of the New York Mets on such a historic day for the franchise

19. I loved what I could hear of the awesome montage of Piazza radio calls on Mets Extra when I arrived at Woodside, but it was extra staticky because it was on WBBR

20. The tenor of the Sunday papers' farewell stories didn't quite ring true given their overdoing the “he made the Mets matter” angle — the Mets always mattered to Mets fans whether the media got it or not

21. Mike Piazza undeniably made the Mets better, but in his first season with the team, they had the exact same record as they did the year before

22. The post-9/11 homer got the most play in how Piazza was remembered, but I've always been ambivalent about it because I never bought that anybody who lost somebody could be lifted by an eighth-inning home run, no matter how swell it was on all counts

23. I decided my favorite Piazza homer will always be the one off Terry Mulholland on June 30, 2000; it was such an unlikely inning yet he was such the obvious candidate to do what he did

24. I decided my second-favorite Piazza homer is the one off Smoltz in the NLCS. I like to call it his Cobra shot, as in Smoltz was the disease and Mike was the cure.

25. I decided my third-favorite Piazza homer is a tie between the Billy Wagner shot in 1998 (when I felt compelled to declare Mike “the greatest man who has ever lived”) and the moonshot off of Ramiro Mendoza in the Matt Franco game, which unleashed the fury of furies in me toward any and all Yankee fans in my section that afternoon — if somebody had wanted to fight, I swear I would've fought; Mike had my back

26. I've never stopped being amazed that Mike loves to catch, that he didn't look at first base as a Get Out of Pain Free card

27. My favorite Piazza non-homer moment was when he dove over the rail at Dodger Stadium to catch a foul ball in 2000 and he came up with the ball even after his helmeted head hit concrete

28. I chanted ONE MORE YEAR! with the rest of the vocal majority, but I just don't see it; if there were to be one more year, why was there such a fuss on the last day of the season?

29. My train home was delayed because somebody stumbled and fell getting off at Lynbrook

30. Driving home from the station, I discovered a roadblock near my home because a power line fell a few hundred yards from where I live, but the police (after briefly making fun of the Mets) let me pass without incident

31. Yet a bad thing did happen to me after wearing PIAZZA 31. Mike Piazza stopped playing for us. The shirt goes back into retirement pending his next appearance at Shea.

Well, you know you're beloved when the fans stay to cheer you in an 11-3 game when the only question left to be settled is whether or not third place is yours alone. (Florida rallied and we have to share.) The tributes were nice — the ones involving hands together in the stands, I mean, as the ones on the Diamondvision were banal when they weren't embarrassing. The look on Mike Piazza's face was nicer. But the moment that got me the most, oddly, was Anderson Hernandez receiving a near standing ovation for his first big-league hit. That was the best side of Met fans on a day that also showed some less-than-best sides. Met fans read the papers, listen to the radio and generally know what's going on, enough to cheer a young player who'll go into the winter smiling because he's 1 for 18 instead of 0 for 18. But by that same token, they're informed enough to know that Carlos Beltran has been hurt multiple times, pressing all year and still working his behind off — the booing of Beltran has long since corroded into sour, pointless hazing. Kind of like the way Mike Piazza's every failing was once booed, come to think of it.

(And I still want to hear why Mike DiFelice came to the plate.)

The sunshine and farewells for Mike also couldn't let me brush away the fact that as Emily and I were leaving, we ran into a line of Met security drones intent on keeping fans away from the entrance to the Met offices and the skyboxes. “THIS WAY! HEY! YOU! THIS WAY!” they barked, mouths inches from the faces of fans understandably confused at being asked to squeeze their way through the bomb barriers into the parking lot. In Flushing that means “Thanks for coming and spending money to support the team.” You started the season finding the escalators weren't working; we ended the season being bellowed at by semi-cops. No matter how hard the Mets try, the surliness and decrepitude of Shea and those who work there elbow their way into the picture, like a garden party with something dead under the porch.

But oh well. It was a .500 day for what was basically a .500 team.

And now it's winter. I'd reach down deep and try to wax lyrical about what it means, but somebody already did it better. Take it away, Mr. Giamatti:

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings. And then, as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it, to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then, just when the days are all twilight, when you need it the most, it stops. Today, October 2nd … it stopped, and summer was gone.

If you haven't bookmarked Faith and Fear in Flushing, do so immediately. Better yet, just set us as your homepage and hit refresh a lot. We wouldn't think of leaving you high and dry for that first painful week of Mets Withdrawal. Our first annual Year-End Spectacular is running Monday, October 3 through Friday, October 7.

What's so spectacular about it? Glad you asked.

MONDAY: The Final Short-Season Awards

TUESDAY: The Long-Season Awards

WEDNESDAY: A Salute to The Two Indispensable Mets

THURSDAY: The Faith and Fear MegaMix

FRIDAY: Flashback Friday 2005

In addition, we'll have post-game thoughts following Sunday's finale, incisive post-season analysis — which isn't likely to go much deeper than YANKEES SUCK!, but you never know — and, as time permits, a good bit of post-whatnot.

The hiatus that will follow the Year-End Spectacular will be as brief as my reminiscences are endless. But it is necessary. Blogware and good health willing, we will have posted here for 190 consecutive days as of October 7. We've beaten DiMaggio but are in danger of getting obsessed with Ripken. You see what Cal's streak did to the Orioles. Everybody can use a day off.

But that day is several days away. The first Metsless week is always the toughest. As you've been here for us, we'll be there for you (clap-clap…CLAP).

Once I built a Collapse-O-Meter, made it run.

Buddy, can you spare some crow?

Congratulations to the 2005 American League Eastern Division champions, the name of whom escapes me. May this title be what you look back on fondly a week from now. And congratulations on having had a schedule backloaded with games against Baltimore just in time to save your sorry asses, to say nothing of the cherry on top of your season: the opportunity to face Braden “I'm OK, I'm not OK” Looper on June 26, quite possibly the difference between your season and those of Boston and Cleveland.

That's about all the graciousness I have in me on this count. I've tipped my cap to these cretins so much over the past decade that I've got carpal-tunnel in my cap-tipping wrist.

I'm listening to the Yankees-Red Sox game and you can hear the roar after every pitch, and it hurts a little — though only a little — knowing our game tonight will be acoustically attended by the muttering of a sparse crowd and the lonely cries of Aramark dealers.

Last night I was pawing through my wallet for something or other and found the last page of my pocket schedule. I tossed it — I know the rest by heart, thanks. I left the full schedule on the fridge for another day for sentimental reasons. Pretty soon we'll be down to countable outs, then to pitches (here's hoping we're counting down Rockie outs and pitches, not our own) until finally we'll be on our feet, cheering for the final seconds even though a part of us will suddenly be hoping — score and situation be damned — whoever's at bat fouls off the next, oh, 73,000 pitches or so just to keep the end from coming.

Anyway, a wishlist for these final six hours, written as if I'd posted it early last night, as I intended to. We won't get all these things. We may not get any of them, except for the back-dated one. As with the standings and the reason there's wild cheering in Fenway now and won't be much at Shea tonight, that's baseball. If you're not willing to risk disappointment, best not to show up in the first place.

So here's the list:

1. A winning season. .500, while an accomplishment, would suck at this point. (Done.)

2. A big final-day crowd to bid Mike Piazza adieu. (Shame on Met fans if this doesn't happen.)

3. 400 homers for Mike. (Three more in the last two games? Possible, but unlikely.)

4. 100 RBI for Cliff Floyd. (He has 97. Doable.)

5. 67 steals for Jose Reyes. (He has 59. Ain't happening.)

6. A hit for Anderson Hernandez. (All it takes is one.)

And then — “then” as in “tomorrow” — it'll be winter.

Update: Oh yeah, duh…

1a. Finish in third place. Screw draft picks; our drafts all stink anyway. (Doable. We're there now, after all. Though — no surprise in our crazy division — we could still finish last.)

“You're a winner! Teddy knows!”

—One of the three clichés spouted by the Executive Teddy Bear my mother gave my father on his 50th birthday

82 Wins!

Eleven wins better than 2004!

First winning record since 2001!

We are over five-freaking-hundred once and for all!

And one win from clinching at least a third-place tie in the only division in baseball where nobody will have a losing record!

If there's a bigger story in New York baseball this morning, I'm not aware of it.

Oh all right, there's another team playing another series of some consequence, but I don't see the Yankees and Red Sox as more important than the Mets and the Rockies. I don't. I'm not kidding. That's not meant to be snide or ironic or snironic (or, in deference to our new network, SNYronic).

All year long, thanks in great part to my encampment in the 'sphere, I have been so focused on the Mets and so oblivious to everything else that whenever I hear a TV or radio voice start to tell me that the Yankees are playing a big game, I reflexively say, “Who gives a shit? Nobody cares!” It's almost a mantra. So Friday afternoon, when there was a live broadcast from Fenway Park to hype the game that was to take place there Friday night, I said the same thing. And I meant it.

It took me a moment to realize, oh yeah, somebody probably does care.

But not me. Not more than secondarily. My primary concern? The Mets. Always the Mets. Game 1, Game 100, Game 160. Doesn't matter.

In Game 160, our team — the only one we've got — had the cool, clear eyes of a seeker of wisdom and truth, yet there was that upturned chin and that grin of impetuous youth. Oh, I believe in them. They've succeeded in baseball in 2005.

The Mets are a winner. Everybody should know.

NOTE TO OUR LOYAL READERS, THE BEST BLOG READERS IN ALL OF BASEBALL: Faith and Fear in Flushing will see you through that first difficult week of Mets Withdrawal with our Year-End Spectacular, running Monday, October 3 through Friday, October 7. After the briefest of hiatuses (hiatii?), we will return to this space on a recurring basis throughout the offseason in attempt to make the winter go away as fast as possible.