So they told us a little about our new network, and, well, it's weird. At least according to the New York Times. SportsNet New York, the kind of name you need a room full of marketing drones, lawyers and miscellaneous suits to come up with, provided you prime the pump with tens of thousands of dollars worth of Cosi and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of salary time. (But what do I know? I was hoping they'd call it the No Network.)

In typical Metsian fashion, we seem borderline embarrassed that our own network will include so much us. Lots of talk of lame other sports and sports-news shows. Dude, whatever. It's not too late — in exchange for the promise of a Cosi sandwich (I dig the basil-and-mozzarella one myself) and, say, $30, here's some advice for SNNY about what to show:

* Um, current Met games. Show 'em again in the daytime or at night.

* Minor-league games. Give me a chance to see who'd be on the roster if we could live without the contributions of Ice Williams and Danny Graves.

* Cyclones games. I mean, duh.

* Spring-training games. All of 'em. Hell, I'll watch intersquad games. Send Guy Conti up the tower at St. Lucie with a camcorder and I'll watch that.

* Old Met games. Lots of 'em. In fact, here's what you do: Show old Met games in their entirety from November through February. Don't condense 'em (it's the winter — what the hell else do I have to do?) and, most importantly, don't tell us what game it is. They don't even all have to be wins — 15% to 20% losses would be just fine. What we need is a guarantee that we'll see a thriller and most of the time we'll win it.

* Postseasons. Just rotate the ones we've been in each year. Though I reserve the right to skip Game 7 of the '88 NLCS.

* Old season-in-review tapes. Like you wouldn't watch “Expressway to the Big Leagues” and marvel at how exciting the Mets will be with hurlers like Rob Gardner and Dick Selma. I'm not sure I could ever sit through “Think Big” again, on the other hand. Oh, who am I kidding. I could too. Ditto for that Rey Ordonez highlight tape during which Rey lost interest and starting wandering off the field.

* Winter-league games. I know it's mid-January when I find myself watching another inning of Mexican League ball because McKay Christensen will bat if Obregon sends seven guys to the plate.

* If all else fails, any old “This Week in Baseball,” “When It Was a Game,” etc. would work. If it's old enough that I don't instinctively bristle at the sight of a Yankee (we're up to Don Mattingly but not yet to Charlie Hayes), it's old enough to show.

Mets. Television. It ain't that complicated.

P.S. Tonight I looked at the Rockies' starting lineup and realized the only guy I was sure I'd heard of was Clint Barmes, and he'd never faced us. Glavine could totally no-hit the Colorado Springs Sky Sox, I thought to myself. Even told Emily as much. I wasn't that far off.

It's Tom Glavine's chaining day. He's in. He's part of the family.

You don't have to love everybody in your family like he's your nephew David or your brother Mike. But you have to accept those who are your relations. At long last, three years in, I totally and fully recognize that Cousin Tom is a Met. I don't need to see any more DNA evidence, not after Thursday night's 11-strikeout, 2-hit gem that, along with some memorable slugging, clinched us .500 and a 10-game improvement over last year.

Welcome aboard, cuz. Looks like you've already made yourself at home.

The Manchurian Brave has been reassigned. In his stead, we have a future Hall of Famer on our hands with him and at long last I have no compunction about admitting it. Tom Glavine has 275 wins and in this past half-season, I see what puts him a cut above his contemporaries. He has adjusted to the shifting strike zone the way another Tom changed from power to finesse late in his career and it's been a joy and an education to behold. I actually can't wait to watch Tom Glavine pitch for the Mets in 2006.

Geez, I'm gushing like Betty Childs in Revenge of the Nerds. Maybe I am in love with a Brave.

I mean a Met. Definitely a Met.

You know when you go out west how they say, don't miss the Grand Canyon, it's one of the few things in life that when you see it, it doesn't disappoint?

—Toby Ziegler, The West Wing

This is it, huh? This is the last series in which we'll see Mike Piazza actively participating in a Mets uniform. He might come back for a 2000 reunion or as a guest instructor or, knowing the Mets, as a backup third baseman in five years, but otherwise, this is it.

This is Mike Piazza's last homestand, four games against the otherwise irrelevant Colorado Rockies. Willie has said that as long as Mike says he's up to it, it's Mike's decision on whether to play in each game. I would assume we'll see Mike strap on his gear four more times or risk mass testiness that would sting more than any sliver of wood from a shattered ball, I mean bat (so hard to tell those two items apart). Mike may not want this much attention for doing something as anticlimactic as leaving, but he knows he's getting it. Better to crouch down and enjoy it.

I'm certain barring an injury (and Mike is a magnet for all kinds of scrapes), that we'll see him when we go on Sunday even if it is a day game after a night game. That's the idea, to say goodbye to Mike. I regularly attend the final home game every year — “Sorry about the disruption folks. But I always do the last dance of the season” —Johnny Castle, Dirty Dancing — but this was one I'd mentally circled since the schedule came out. Maybe since 1998 when Mike first got here. I remember telling you back around then that the two games I would not miss would be whenever they said goodbye to Bob Murphy and whenever they turned off the lights at Shea. One came to pass, one is off in the distance. But the last game Mike Piazza ever plays for the Mets?

I can't say I saw it coming.

I never do. In Keith Hernandez's riveting diary of 1985, If At First (written with Mike Bryan), he mentioned offhandedly that he wouldn't mind finishing his career in San Diego if he doesn't stay with the Mets. I nearly fainted. Keith not finish as a Met? That could never happen.

But it did. Keith Hernandez became a Cleveland Indian. Gary Carter became a San Francisco Giant. Darryl Strawberry became a Los Angeles Dodger. Wally Backman went to the Twins. Ron Darling went to the Expos. Lenny Dykstra and Roger McDowell were Phillies. Buddy Harrelson and Tug McGraw were, too. Cleon Jones wound up in White Sox. Jon Matlack was a Texas Ranger. Steve Henderson was a Cub. Randy Myers was a Red. Mookie Wilson was a Blue Jay.

Dwight Gooden pitched for a team in the American League whose name escapes me.

All kinds of Mets who were always going to be Mets didn't wind up as Mets forever after. A few who never should've been bounced bounced back with relatively unhappy returns. Kingman, Mazzilli…Tom Bleeping Terrific were all sent packing. They boomeranged to Shea but they didn't finish up here (Tom tried, but it didn't take). Rusty Staub was the bright, orange exception to the rule and that was 20 years ago.

From the era of most recent success, the one that spanned 1997 through 2001, the stalwarts all left. Most of them were invited out. There was a time not so long ago that if I told you that John Franco and John Olerud and Robin Ventura and Edgardo Alfonzo and Al Leiter and Rick Reed and Turk Wendell and Rey Ordoñez and Benny Agbayani and Jay Payton and Todd Pratt (even Todd Hundley and Todd Zeile) would not stay Mets forever, it would've seemed unlikely to unimaginable. We've been living in a very fluid age of movement among baseball players, but there was a significant stretch when the Mets were winning and the Mets who were doing the winning were as much fixtures at Shea as the apple and the hat and the furry, feral cat.

Every one of those players is gone — mostly long gone and relatively forgotten. We get on with things as fans. Sure we remember and we bolster our recollections by bookmarking Retrosheet and Ultimate Mets, but that's not our primary business. The matter at hand for us is to keep winning, keep moving forward, keep acquiring newer and better players and, as necessary, keep shedding their older and deteriorating predecessors.

Amid all that, Mike Piazza remained. Even as he dipped from star attraction and cleanup hitter to burdensome salary and lonesome relic, he stayed. Mike Piazza didn't stop being a Met. Not in spirit and not in fact.

Mike Piazza is the only Met who knows what it's like to have been a 1998 Met and watched a Wild Card berth crumple up and blow away.

Mike Piazza's the only Met who could tell you how Bobby Valentine behaved when the 1999 season was falling down around him not once but twice.

Mike Piazza's the only Met who's been to a Subway Series game…a real Subway Series game.

In a sense, Mike Piazza is our griot. He is the Metropolitan-American version of the learned storyteller of certain West African tribes. Griots are said to pass on the history of their people orally and when one dies, it is as if a library has burned to the ground.

When Mike Piazza leaves, an epoch of Mets baseball goes out the door with him. When Mike Piazza leaves, there is nobody here who was a National League Champion Met. There's already barely anybody else here (Trachsel, Seo) who even played for Valentine. Piazza was right in the middle of his batting order. The manager and the megastar, more than anybody else, defined that period of Mets baseball for us. Bobby was crazy. Mike was crazy good. It was a different time, before Omar, before Willie, before Howe. It was, if you want to know the truth, a better time. It was the time of Valentine pushing buttons, pulling strings and leading our team to the playoffs twice. It was the time of Piazza going deep, hanging in and leading our team to the playoffs twice.

Save for what we can piece together on our own, that's all gone after Sunday. It's like a set of Mets media guides will have burned to the ground.

Bobby Valentine fired? Sure, managers are hired to be just that, and with Bobby being Bobby, it was inevitable. But Mike, not under contract? Potentially wearing a uniform that doesn't have our name on the front? PIAZZA 31 receiving the same inelegant Clubhouse Shop 50% OFF treatment as so many overstocked WIGGINTON 9s and SHINJO 5s before it?

I wouldn't have believed it when Mike first arrived from Los Angeles via Miami. I wouldn't have believed it when he spanked Billy Wagner and punished John Smoltz and drove Roger Clemens batty. I wouldn't have bought it for a moment when he was the monster who emerged from his post-season cage in 2000. And how could have anyone believed it that first night baseball returned to Shea in September 2001?

He was what they said he'd be when we exchanged Preston Wilson, Ed Yarnall and Geoff Goetz for him. He didn't disappoint. No, he was as good as it Goetz.

But time marched on, the fucker. Mike became less and less of a slugger. It was said he was never much of a catcher but boy did he throw himself into it. When Vanilla Ice was big, there were all these articles about how, sure, we've seen lots of white boys come along and rip off the black man's music, going all the way back to Elvis, but this guy is different. But he wasn't. Nobody's ever all that different in those kinds of “we've seen this before” scenarios. I thought of Vanilla Ice vis-à-vis Mike Piazza in that when Mike was at the height of his powers, the inevitable “all catchers break down and stop hitting” comparisons came up but were shot down. Sure, it happened to others. It may have happened to Johnny Bench. But not Mike Piazza.

Why not? He's human. He's all too human. He bruises outside and in. What foul balls and backswings and valiant dives into the first row didn't take out of him, the dismantling of the team he was a part of had to. We're not the only ones who felt isolated from the Mets as their 1999 and 2000 mainstays were asked to leave. The Times magazine did a pretty jarring story on Mike feeling all alone in his own clubhouse in 2002. It's 2005. I don't get the sense that he's made a lot of new pals.

What's Mike have this year? 18 home runs, 61 RBIs. Not too terribly shabby for a 37-year-old who's absorbed a barreling baserunner per week for a dozen years. Do we say to hell with closure and sign him again? There aren't many good, let alone great catchers on the open market and none appear to be clawing a path here from Binghamton or Norfolk. A little bit of Michael in our lives, a little more Castro on the side? Or vice-versa? Season No. 9? How about it? I always carry a pen. If security doesn't stop me, I can toss it down from the mezzanine.

Nah, I don't think so. We're between a rock and a home plate where this catcher is concerned. If Piazza had taken that first base stuff seriously, maybe he'd be platooning with Minky or Jake right now and have a reason to remain in 2006. But that's not happening and neither is a return engagement. If the Mets wanted him back, they would've made a move by now. Mike's time has, at last, passed.

Pity us far more than him, because Mike's time was a very, very good time to be a Mets fan.

So Braden Looper finally fessed up about what a lot of people connected to our team suspected: He's been battling a shoulder injury. He'll have surgery. But here's the catch: He's been battling it since last September.

Wha?

Gory details here: Looper thought the pain would go away on its own (or maybe he didn't want to tell those butchering morons from the NYU Medical Center), found out it was the AC joint in late winter, and then decided not to have surgery, since the six-week recovery time could have sidelined him into April. Then he just dealt with it, becoming more and more ineffective.

Well, Jesus Christ. I mean, what the fuck? Dude, tell your agent — apparently this a pretty common injury for pitchers, meaning somebody might have figured out what was wrong earlier. Tell a doctor, provided he or she doesn't work for the NYU Medical Center. And if you do go into the season with an injury that then won't go away, tell the goddamn manager. It's important to remember none of us saw Roberto Hernandez as much more than Mike Matthews or Felix Heredia in spring training, so the cry of “Roberto could have started the season as closer!” is 20/20 hindsight. But still — what if Looper had gotten the shoulder cleaned up in May or June? Could that have made a difference in September?

Shutting your mouth and playing hurt seems so macho, but it can kill a team. Particularly if it means a groundball pitcher has trouble getting the ball down in the zone. Looper — universally praised as a stand-up guy who takes his media licks — has taken pains to say he's not using the injury as an alibi for his poor season. He shouldn't worry: I'm much more pissed at him now than I was when I just thought he was having a crap year.

By the way: This sucked too. Why didn't Willie bat for Trachsel in the 4th, when it was 5-2 and we had a runner on? Why didn't he bat for Ishii — a guy who's not going to be on the team next year, and about whom nothing more needs to be discovered — in the 6th, when it was 7-3? Instead of trying to chip away, he conceded both innings to avoid taxing a rather full bullpen. Why manage like it's July when you're in Game #158? Inexplicable.

Update, from Adam Rubin in the Daily News: “Looper had trouble with the AC joint late last season, but the organization's former medical staff did not advocate surgery.” Incredible. The only thing left for NYU Medical Center is to reveal that they performed brain surgery on Roberto Alomar and just might have accidentally nicked the parts of his cerebellum that govern desire and leadership.

So that's that. A win, but no miracle.

The game? Well, the moment the Astros won it felt like it'd been played a month ago, but while I nearly woke Emily and Joshua with a gleeful yell when Bobby Abreu struck out, it did feel like a microcosm of the season. The pitching, defense and hitting all yo-yo'ed between frustratingly inept and thrillingly clutch, with the Mets looking as baffled about which personality would show up next as we all were at home. (And seeing the one-two punch of Victor Zambrano and Kaz Ishii left me muttering about long-ago decisions about the starting rotation, though Kaz did just fine. Victor, on the other hand, was Victor.)

I was surprised how sad I was when word came from St. Louis, finding myself staring at the radio for a long, long moment before perspective arrived. A few years ago, I arrived at what I hope would last me as the definition of a successful season: I want my team to play games that matter in the final week of the season. Well, we did that this year. Mathematically meaningful games, at least.

More importantly, this 9-2 run against the Braves, Marlins, Nationals and Phillies has at least washed away some of the bad taste from the 2-8 road trip that killed us (and the Nats' sweep at Shea that followed it). We do run the risk of getting too excited: Beyond the fact that it's garbage time, the Braves were on cruise control, the Nats sent out the JV, the Marlins are disintegrating in a truly ugly way, and the Phillies are playing tight, which I'm sure is somehow still Larry Bowa's fault.

But we've gotten some good things to file away for the future, too: Heilman closing games with swing-and-miss stuff and Jacobs having solid at-bats again are the biggest ones in my book. Besides, wins are wins. We could finish in third place (and even dream of second). We should finish over .500 — though it would be just like this schizoid team to tank against the Rockies. We certainly didn't quit in September the way previous editions of this team did.

And we're now down to the know-it-by-heart part of the schedule during which wins and losses become secondary to the fact that games are games. There are only five left. Whether those games are exhilirating or deadly dull, crisp or sloppy, they're infinitely better than anything that'll be on TV until next spring. Cherish 'em.

Oh won't you staaay-aaay-aaayve off elimination just a little bit longer?

As the National Repository of Every Little Detail of the Otherwise Forgotten and Criminally Undervalued 1997 Season, of course I recall that the Mets were smacked awake from their first sweet Wild Card dream in a span of five games, all losses, in mid-September. After clinching their first winning record since 1990 in the opener of a twinighter at the Vet (a moment of silence…to WRETCH), the Mets appeared ready to roll. Instead they went out in the nightcap and rolled over.

Your beverage of choice on Sunday if you can name the Phillie starter who allowed us one hit in seven innings to kick off Demise Week. You have five seconds…

Four…

Three…

Two…

One…

We need an answer.

Did you say Joe Grahe? Ooh, that's incorrect. The answer we were looking for was Darrin Winston. Darrin Winston.

It was the only start of Darrin Winston's big league career. He would go on to pitch four seasons for the Somerset Patriots of the Atlantic League.

Darrin Winston. Sorry.

Anyway, the next night we were almost no-hit by Schilling and then we lost back-to-back games in Turner Field (funny, we'd always played well in Atlanta; this sweep was just an aberration, I'm sure) and went to Miami for the scraps of a weekend showdown with the Marlins. We were 7-1/2 behind them with nine to play, but had four games against them. A sweep would put us 3-1/2 back and with them reeling and us surging…

We lost the first game to Al Leiter on Friday night. That was it. 8-1/2 back with eight to play. The only chance we had left — besides wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles — was mathematical. The Marlins had nine left. If we took the remaining three and then the last five against the nowheresville Pirates and comfortably clinched Braves, and the Fish lost whatever they had left to whoever they had left, well, then my head would explode. I wrote us off. We had zero chance. In fact, Florida could just get the whole thing over with by beating us one of the next three.

But they didn't. We beat them Saturday. And Sunday. And Monday. They didn't wrap up anything against us. We suddenly were surging and they were undeniably reeling. I couldn't take back my writeoff, but geez, ya think?

I called Chuck and before I could say hello, he had one word:

“Don't.”

“I'm not.”

“Don't. Don't even think it.”

“I told you I'm not.”

“Yes you are.”

Maybe I was, just a touch. I mean why not? What's it hurt to imagine us winning every game and the team(s) in front of us losing every game?

Not that I'm doing that, mind you. It ended in 1997 the next night and it can end any second here and now. Until then, I'm less raging against the dying of the light than digging on Roll Redux. We've won eight of ten, practically exactly bracketing our nosedive with the same hot stretch that brought us to the cusp of September with such high hopes. Doesn't cost anything to dream.

Truthfully, even as we're left alive and twitching by one of the more unlikely victories of the year (I thought it would be called after five; by the sixth, Gary was doing borderline-respectful Don Adams shtick), my dreams are still: get to 81 wins; get to 82 wins; remain out of last place; climb into third place and, if at all possible, spiritually clinch the N.L. West. We're two up on the Padres (either they or the Giants seem a lock to break the '73 Mets out of Worst Ever purgatory). I'm still scoreboard watching, but the out-of-town game I was most concerned with Monday night was the Dodgers and Pirates. By beating Pittsburgh, L.A. earned its 70th win.

So? So, that means their TragiMagic Number for clinching fourth place in the Anemic Conference is two. So? So, that means the TMN to sap the Rockies of the slightest ounce of motivation for their four games here this weekend is also two. Clint Hurdle, last seen pacing the Coors Field dugout with a notebook, has apparently done a heckuva job because the Rockies looked like surefire 100-game losers in the middle of the season. They've already avoided that, and if there's anything lamer than being a spoiler like us trying to avoid the cellar, it's being the Rockies trying to avoid the cellar. I'm hoping the Dodgers will take care of business (the business of fourth place) and leave the Rockies all morose and homesick (and Clint Barmes with a taste for freshly killed venison that only an early October hunting trip can sate) when they come up here from Atlanta to finish out their suddenly even-more-meaningless season. I ain't asking the Braves for any favors, so go L.A. Beat your scheduled opponent tonight.

Obscured by the Mets' comeback in this morning's honorary West Coast affair (it ended at 12:48 AM local time), was a rather remarkable string of pitchers used by Willie Randolph:

Jae Seo

Danny Graves

Kaz Ishii

Shingo Takatsu

No, it's not that the Mets used three of the most godforsaken relievers anywhere and lived to tell about it. For what has to be the first time in Major League history, a team sent to the mound four consecutive Asian-born pitchers: one from South Korea, one from Vietnam and two from Japan. Ten years ago, this would have been unimaginable. Ten years from now, it may very well be unremarkable. Though the only ethnicity that interests me is Metropolitan-American, I have to admit I found this, at the very least, intriguing.

Yet it's not nearly as satisfying as what happened in the bottom of the ninth when Roberto Hernandez was permitted to pitch a second inning. Could it be that Willie bothered to know that Rollins, Lofton and Burrell each carried significant career ohfers versus Bert? Or did he just figure Heilman needs a blow, I'll go with my other closer?

The monumental thing is there was no Looper in sight. He has become as invisible as Heath Bell. Bartolome Fortunato. Mike Draper. I know it's not a brand spankin' new development, but dang it was good to not see Loop again.

I suppose I hate the Phillies but I don't really put a lot of passion into it when they're not in our face. It's fine with me, if we are somehow (ahem) eliminated, that they win the Wild Card. But it was fine with me if the Pirates came back on the Phillies in '76 and '83 except that Pittsburgh would have had to have knocked us off to do so, and a Mets win always comes first. The Pirates didn't come back and I didn't lose any sleep over it.

If Houston holds on (and I don't despise that prospect nearly as much as I did a year ago), it will be a pretty good story, even though it will make Carlos Beltran look pretty bad. If the Phillies make it, they'll have waited a long time for it. If we make it…

Don't.

It wasn't so long ago.

Ramon Castro, our beloved Round Mound of Pound, had taken Ugie Urbina deep to win an Aug. 30 thriller and pull us within half a game of the wild card. The next night, Pedro Martinez was on the mound against Brett Myers, he of the ludicrous shaved head, Friendly's waitress black eyebrows and red King Tut beard. Pedro was up 2-0 thanks to another dinger from the RMoP. The clock was ticking down to a Sept. 1 morning that would find us an if-the-season-ended-today playoff team. I'm sure Fran said it was electric at Shea. If so, he was right.

And then it all turned to shit. Pedro crumbled, our bats went to sleep, Brett Myers throttled us over seven, and Chase Utley — the guy you forgot to be scared of in a scary lineup — went deep not once but twice. The next thing we knew we were getting pinata'ed by the Marlins and the Braves and the Cards and…well, we know the rest. We couldn't know it then, but Aug. 31 was the beginning of the descent, and it was the Phillies who put a boot to our hinders and reacquainted us with gravity.

Which makes tonight not all the sweeter, because there's not a lot sweet about tricking the Grim Reaper into giving you one more day among the ranks of the Mathematically Alive, but does let us curl a lip in a nasty smirk. Because Citizens Bank Park was electric — not used to hearing Philadelphians cheer, I assumed they kept showing minor Eagles highlights on the scoreboard, or perhaps the fans were enjoying the thought that all that rain would make lots of other Philadelphians miserable. (It's that kind of town.) Jimmy Rollins was unconscious, Jae Seo was awful, our defense was birdbrained, and Brett Myers was back on the mound. It was the perfect night for us to finally flatline — a rainy mess with the team looking leadfooted and unmotivated. Meanwhile, if the Phillies won — which seemed just a matter of time — they'd wake up tomorrow tied for the wild-card lead with the Astros.

And then it all turned to shit. For them. Chase Utley, our late tormentor, made a horrific, hide-your-face double error. Ugie crumbled again. Willie Randolph sent every WFAN obsessive to the phone, six digits dialed and fingers poised over the last one, by putting the winning run on base to pitch to Pat Burrell. Didn't he know Pat the Bat has 4,192 hits (755 of them home runs) against us alone?

And Pat the Bat grounded out.

Take that, Philadelphia. Take that, Pat the Bat and Kenny Lofton and Michael Fucker. You know why? You know why I'm positively wallowing in the small, ugly joy of playing spoiler? Because we know exactly how you feel. And you're the ones who made us feel that way.

You tell me to come back with fourth place, I come back with fourth place.

Not saying that you didn't warn me, but man is RFK a dump. It looks like a domed stadium with the dome missing. It looks like the Vet on downers. There's the seasick undulation of the upper-deck seats, the strange coloring/intensity/angle/something of the lights and that monolithic expanse of green wall behind the outfield fence. Then throw in the general shabbiness: Half the seats in the upper deck have their paint flaking, the outfield grass looks like nobody's watered it in an age, and the corridors have all the charm of a Russian sub.

I spent four happy years living in the D.C. area, and I'm thrilled that there's a team there again — it's ludicrous that the nation's capital didn't have a team for more than three decades. I'm even more thrilled that the tragedy-decayed-into-farce that was the Expos (BRAAAAP! Youppi! Puerto Rico! No September call-ups!) finally ended. But things can't stop here. The Nationals have a home; now they desperately need a decent home. And an owner.

As for the visit, it was a tale of two ballgames, both enjoyable, both of which came out right. On Saturday night my pal Cooper and I arrived late, approached the stadium across the oddly deserted, oddly hilly space surrounding it (if not for the sight of the Metro tracks I might have thought I was way out in the burbs somewhere), then somehow managed to enter RFK through a back entrance that deposited us somewhere behind that expanse of green wall. It was a good three minutes before we saw anyone other than stadium workers. We arrived in baseball civilization for the top of the second to find out it was 5-0; a disgruntled Nats patron allowed that a Met had hit a grand slam but didn't remember which Met had done the honors. RFK's scoreboards repeatedly reminded me of each Met's birthdate and weight, but didn't see fit to recap previous at-bats, leaving me to peer at the season RBI totals and finally guess that David Wright had been the slugger, something I couldn't confirm until reading the next day's Post. (On Sunday the scoreboard did include what players had done in previous at-bats, apparently to make me doubt my sanity.) Anyway, Cooper and I passed a convivial couple of hours in field-level seats, drinking beer, laughing about the fact that we'd apparently missed the game's entire display of offense, and trying to estimate what percentage of the crowd were Met fans. (25% to 30%, I'd say, accounting for ungarbed rooters like me.)

Sunday my pal Megan and I sat in the upper deck (much better seats than the corresponding ones at Shea), drinking beer, trying to estimate Met-fan percentages and watching a near-constant display of offense. (As well as an offensive lack of defense from Diaz and Cairo.) Given RFK's absurd dimensions (380' to the alleys!), our four-homer attack was even more impressive — and in fairness to Cairo, he hit a ball that would've been gone anywhere else. (Oh, the hunt for that 17th RBI.) I must admit I didn't do much for Northeast Corridor good-fellowship by taking it upon myself to educate some overexcited Nats fans nearby about the basics: “Look at the outfielders, people — not the ball,” I'd exhort them as they rose to cheer balls that Met outfielders were coming in on. (Granted, not an uncommon phenomenon at Shea, either.) They got some practice: The last three dingers we hit were no-doubters; I called Piazza's second as it cleared the infield, as the velocity with which it left the bat told you all you needed to know even before you saw Preston Wilson turn with his shoulders slumped.

Dare I note Mike's now at 396? What the heck, I suppose I do so dare. Mike's at 396. .500, fourth place and 400 home runs for Mike Piazza might not have seemed like great 2005 parting gifts at, say, 7:04 p.m. on August 31, but I'd sure take them now.

There's two ways to look at the Mets' winning come lately:

1) After their season- and soul-crushing 3-15 skid, they've revived themselves nicely to win six of their last eight, most recently Saturday night's triumph at the Federal Baseball Penitentiary in Washington.

2) They've lost 17 of their last 26 and no amount of wins over teams complacent or collapsed in late September should paper over their failure to succeed when all the marbles were on the table (and out of Jose Guillen's head).

I'll go with the first interpretation because there's only one week left and why go into winter mad? So, yay!, we won and yay!, we're at .500 again and yay!, fourth place is no longer a total pipe dream (for those of us reduced to dreaming small and hypothetically smoking short pipes).

I guess it's the manly thing for the players to say they don't care about a winning record and not finishing last. Maybe they mean it. Half of them won't be back (half of them never are). It's up to us to give a Pratt's ass. I'd rather that when awoken in the dead of morning…I mean night and quizzed on the Mets' year-by-year record, I'm able to lay at least an 81-81 on my inquisitor before calling the cops on whoever it is who got into my bedroom at that time of day…I mean night to administer the Mets' year-by-year record quiz. (I can also name all the presidents backwards and forwards, but you already knew that; did you know that I don't get out much?)

If there is one more victory in those blue, orange and black togs, the Mets will, at worst, clinch their best win total for a losing season. Aim high, brothers! In 1991, they won 77. Next best was 75 in 2002. (The strike-shortened years of '94 and '95 resulted in winning percentages that would've translated to 79 and 78 wins, respectively.) On the other hand, the Mets have won 82 games three times and 83 games three times. When the Mets have a winning season, they often eke it out. And when the Mets have a losing season, they sit around the house.

We've never finished at exactly .500, which shouldn't be our precise goal until/unless we're Something and 81, but you'd have to say it would be darn appropriate for this particular Metropolitan edition. The Brewers, on the other hand, are making 81-81 a crusade of Turnbow proportions. I caught the last out of their game against the Cardinals (actually, J.J. Hardy did that) and as soon as they ascended to 77-77, Fox Sports Net North flashed a graphic — more like a logo — that announced the Brewers are now FOUR GAMES FROM .500. They weren't kidding around. Seeing as how the Brewers haven't ended a year above .500 since late in the Yount Administration (seven years before he was inducted into the Hall of Fame, which was itself six years ago), I can't say that I blame them.

I was having a few Danny Graves flashbacks on your behalf to five weeks ago: you're present for a Saturday night game between the Mets and the Nationals, Livan Hernandez is lit up early, we get a lot of runs but immediately stop scoring for our erstwhile Cy Young winner and things start to slip away. But we were victorious on both occasions and this one felt cleaner despite the Mets' insistence on packing up the bats after the first inning. Looking forward to hearing your impressions of Subpar Field at Exercise Yard.

It's no myth: Gary Cohen referred to several pitches Livan threw as his “Bugs Bunny curve“. Really, you should've watched more channel 5 as a child.