No reason to freak out. We go into September 1.5 games out with a chance to make it .5 before the day's done. Back in spring training, if you'd given me a choice between that scenario and whatever was behind Door #2, I'd have taken 1.5 games out and never wondered about what else we might have had.

But still, damn.

Strange game — at the beginning, as we were marching out to a 2-0 lead and looking for all the world like more was coming, this felt like one of those nights when baseball's a sweet dream, when your players can do anything asked of them and look like they know it, too. And it wasn't just the scoreboard that made me think it — it was the crowd roaring and the cool, calm looks on the faces of Beltran and Floyd and Wright and Co.

But things slowly started to turn. Maybe it was the hideous heat, or the slow realization that Pedro didn't have it and was mixing and matching grumpily out there in search of something that worked, or that Brett Myers (who desperately needs a grooming intervention — he looks like a fricking cartoon character with his bald head, Magic Marker-black eyebrows and red chin beard) was mixing and matching and finding somethings that worked, or that the Phillies were approaching their at-bats with demonic concentration and not letting a single mistake pass them by. By the time Kenny Lofton made like it was 1990 out there, for all intents and purposes breaking us, I wasn't even that surprised.

I was surprised, however, to see Pedro back in the seventh. I didn't figure out until later that he was well under a normal pitch count, but then this was no normal night. What made me sure he wasn't coming back was the way he was clearly gathering everything he had left and airing it out in the sixth, bringing the velocity up as far as he could (to 88 — something is wrong, by the way, intensity of wrongness unknown for now) like an exhausted horse that can smell the stable and so breaks into a trot anyway. And when's the last time Pedro J. Martinez forgot how many outs there were? When he came out in the seventh the needle was clearly on 'E,' no matter what the pitch count said.

Oh well. Get 'em tomorrow. Please. Because I hear we got a road trip coming or something.

Is that an earthquake?

No, it's Ramon!

Fans of Romy & Michele's High School Reunion, which include my six-pack partner and myself, will recognize the above line and may have very well applied it to the eighth inning Tuesday night. Laurie and I have been tossing it back and forth all season every time our backup catcher gets a big hit.

We've used it a lot.

Was it only in July that we were all kvelling from our catcher's dramatic home runs and the curtain calls he was generating? Different month, different backstop, same response. Who was the last catcher not named Mike Piazza to receive a curtain call at Shea? The immediate answer would be Todd Pratt, but did Todd Pratt actually get a curtain call for his Finley-veiled series winner? It's not like he actually went into the dugout and returned to the top step at the audience's behest. (Just realized he was in the house tonight. Think he thought of that?)

Maybe Jason Phillips was lured out in 2003 but he was probably playing first (say, does Mike still have to break the record for most curtain calls by a catcher?). Vance Wilson? Hearty applause once or twice at best. If it wasn't Pratt, you may have to trek all the way back to Todd Hundley when he was hitting it hard for the previous unMiked catcher curtain call.

So much for getting lost in the moment. The important thing is that a Met rated a curtain call. They all did.

Ramon Castro's blast off Ugueth Urbina (the second-greatest home run Uggie's ever allowed; this explains the greatest) will surely stand the test of time as a touchstone in Mets history. It was a game-, season- and life-altering event.

Unless we lose the next two. So let's not do that.

Hang with 'em.

I kept saying that.

I said it in the 1st, when David Wright came up as the tying run and got under a Robinson Tejeda pitch. Hang with 'em, David.

I said it in the 5th, when Cliff Floyd came up as the tying run and hammered a first-pitch Tejeda fastball to center. Just under it. Right instinct, didn't work out. Hang with 'em, Clifford.

I said it again in the 7th, when Marlon Anderson came up as the tying run and absolutely smashed a Ryan Madson pitch — one of those high-trajectory jobs that looks like a nine-foot guy hit it when it leaves the bat. Did you? Did you? No, you didn't. Into Abreu's glove at the fence. Rats. Hang with 'em, Marlon.

“Hang with 'em” is one of my favorite baseball phrases, a vow that you are patient, that you understand a split-second or a fraction of an inch can mean the difference between sucess and failure, that you applaud the correct approach even if it doesn't pay off, that you are willing to wait for redemption. (It's also, of course, just one of those things you say.) The problem is games where you say it a lot generally wind up as frustrating losses. “Hang with 'em” is great, but you only get so many chances.

That goes double or even triple when Billy Wagner's out there in the bullpen. Thanks to Ramon Castro, our pudgy-cheeked Juggernaut of Clutch, we never saw him in action. And hey, Looper was just fine. I was sweating that the home-plate ump would put Chase Utley on with a bruised sleeve, forcing Looper to pitch to Abreu, who so totally owns Looper that his name is probably tattooed on Braden's ass, and I suppose in some other parallel universe that happened. Whatever — I'm glad I don't live in that one. (And in some other parallel universe we have a lefty in the pen to pitch to these Phillie lefty bats, but no harm no foul. At least for tonight.)

Random observances:

* Carlos Beltran on base all four times, getting there with a full complement of dinger, solid single, infield hit and walk, swinging the bat without any apparent pressure from those big heavy dollar signs that seem to have weighed him down this year. And making a fantastic throw to the J. of C. Only one night, but an awfully nice sight.

* Victor Diaz is a rollercoaster ride all by his lonesome. A typically bad reaction on a fly ball, a loafing trip around the bases he almost paid for — but he wound up loafing around for a triple, added another hit and had an absolutely terrific, wise at-bat against Ugie Urbina for a crucial walk. Go figure.

* Why is Chris Woodward a defensive replacement for Mike Jacobs? I know Jacobs is a converted catcher, but he sure looks like he's got nice hands over there — witness that nice play he made on a hot shot. Woody, for all his usefulness, is a utility guy. And he's short.

* Mike Jacobs has officially returned to Earth. Oh well, it was a nice trip.

* Welcome back, Mike Cameron. You do realize that now you have to bring out the lineup card every night, right?

There's one silly story going around that's getting loads of attention and one fascinating story that should be obvious but has gone generally unreported.

The silly story regards Steve Trachsel and his place in the rotation. Oh yawn. Please, Steve, you couldn't be any more boring if you tried. And goodness knows you've tried.

You pitched a two-hitter over eight innings? Great. We loved it. We'd love to see you do it again. And you know what? We'll get the chance to see you try.

Why, oh why must so many fans and reporters have the attention span of a tick (apologies to ticks) and get distracted by this stuff? Why is every possible move that Willie Randolph might and often make doesn't so relentlessly skewered before it's shown to work, not work or never take place? Are we really that incapable of entertaining ourselves on off-days?

Let's think back to the big story of spring training, that David Wright is going to bat eighth. That's what Willie said. That was the law. And immediately Willie Randolph was an idiot.

How many times has David Wright batted eighth? Go grab yourself a doughnut and find the answer. The only thing Randolph did, really, was not anoint David Wright the second coming of Rod Carew. He let him get comfortable. He took the pressure off. He said this is a kid and we're not going to lean on him…yet. Now it's late August, we're in a pennant race and we're leaning on David Wright. David Wright was just named National League Player of the Week. I'm sure he's been anointed Human of the Millennium in some quarters.

Is it possible that Willie knew what he was doing?

Hey, remember fretting over Roberto Hernandez's inclusion in the Mets' bullpen? How about going apoplectic over the idea that the Mets would even consider Roberto Hernandez for the bullpen? It's an affront to progressive thinking! The Mets are operating in the 13th century! Why isn't Heath Bell closing?

Well, not every veteran reliever is going to contribute. DeJean didn't. Aybar didn't. Matthews didn't. But Hernandez did. He wasn't them. Nobody's not worth a look. It doesn't have to wreck an organizational philosophy to conjure a few things up on the fly. What's that bit about foolish consistency, hobgoblins and little minds? I don't understand why Roberto was dismissed out of hand before he ever threw a pitch or why Heath was hailed so quickly (and may he someday validate it). Why is the favorite player of so many Mets fans the one they've never or hardly seen?

Lineup…bullpen…rotation now. The Mets are out of their minds for not dumping Zambrano for Trachsel. That's because Victor Zambrano has had a couple of bad games mixed in with mostly good ones (and had the gall to be traded for the greatest pitcher almost no Mets fan ever saw) across the balance of an entire season and Steve Trachsel — when did he become the peepul's cherce? — had one very good start after back surgery.

Blame Jae Seo for blowing the precious order that we apparently all crave. He was supposed to be a stopgap. He wasn't supposed to make himself indispensable (I'll be the first to admit surprise/shock at his staying power). If he's not going anywhere, and we know the three high-priced vets who have been healthy most of the year aren't, what are you gonna do?

You're gonna do what you can do. You're not gonna give up on Zambrano just because his existence waves a red flag at so many fans. There's a reason they keep stats like how each pitcher does in each ballpark against each team. If you have evidence that Victor Zambrano is superstudly against the Marlins at Your Name Here Stadium then why wouldn't you use him? Granted, he's a better candidate for middle or long relief than Trachsel, but sayeth Herm Edwards, you play to win the game and, to put it in a baseball context, you start so you don't have to use long or middle relief. (Don't make me quote football guys again.) Plus we're hours removed from roster expansion. Some guy we never saw will be recalled and be the best pitcher ever if we need him to be.

So I'm advocating a shunting of Steve Trachsel now and forever, right? No, and neither is Willie. Think a sane manager (Don Zimmer doesn't count and he never did) would really avoid using a reliable veteran with an outstanding outing in his back pocket? I don't think so. I think we're gonna see Steve Trachsel as soon as next week as long as the Mets don't do anything self-destructive like trade him.

The Mets have a surfeit of starting pitching. And how often does that kind of thing hold up? What contending team trades starting pitching during the last two days of August? Stuff happens. It rains. Somebody stubs a toe or hyperextends a joint. The last guy you'd suspect gets shelled and needs to take a seat. Steve Trachsel has a right to feel wronged but has he been so immersed in his rehab and his wine to not notice that almost nothing is forever where Willie Randolph is concerned?

Let's pick a year at random…1987. OK, I lied, it wasn't at random. That was the year the Mets were a sure thing to repeat because they had so much pitching. The five horsemen of '86 would all return, right? And in addition to Gooden, Ojeda, Darling, Fernandez and Aguilera, we stole David Cone from the Royals.

None of those guys made it through the season unscathed. It was a year to mix and match Terry Leach and Don Schulze and John Mitchell and Tom Edens and, come September, John Candelaria. There is no such thing as too much pitching then or now. (Need additional proof? What are Shawn Chacon, Aaron Small and our ol' buddy Al doing these days?)

We overreact. We panic. We're fans. We're goaded into it by all manner of media (this one included), but let's pick our spots. There'll be so much more to go nuts over between now and October 2 that we won't remember what will have passed, in near-future retrospection, as fleeting lunacy.

So that's the silly story. The fascinating one is the Mets are playing the Phillies toward the end of the year in a game crucial to each team's fortunes. You knew that? Did you know it's the first time in the shared history of the two teams that this has happened?

Seriously, it is. Think about it. When the Mets have been good, who have they battled? The Cubs…the Pirates…the Cardinals…the Marlins once…the Braves too often…do you remember a pennant showdown involving the neighbors? Me neither. That's because it's never taken place. The Mets and the Phillies have never taken their closeness literally and have thus skillfully avoided concurrent success. Maybe they thought it would cause a lethal backup on the Turnpike.

This is the 44th season of Mets baseball and, by extension, Phillies baseball with the Mets as an opponent. The two teams have had winning records in the same season only four times: 1975, 1976, 1986 and 2001. Only in '01 were the two even remotely embroiled in the same September cauldron, but by the time the Mets got serious, the Phillies were off their schedule.

There's been lots to link New York and Philadelphia. Ashburn…Tug…Lenny…Rico…Burrellnitez…Bunning's perfecto…the Mets winning the Damn Thing at the Vet…Tom's homecoming against Lefty at Shea…that 26-7 embarrassment in '85 (they were us and we were the Diamondbacks)…the sweep that delayed our division-clinch in '86…a far more painful broom job that almost denied our playoff spot in '99.

There have been great Mets teams and great Phillies teams but somehow they missed each other. No more. It's the Big Apple versus screw them I'm not going to refer to them by some cute nickname.

It's time to hate the Phillies in a whole new light.

The Mets-Phillies rivalry, or the lack thereof to this point, is so compelling a story that it is explored more in-depth at Gotham Baseball.

The San Francisco Giants can go wait by the curb with the Brewers and the Royals (not our direct concern, but all of humanity was let down by those bargain-basement bumblers Saturday) and the rest of Sunday's baseball detritus. They lose two of three to the Phillies but beat us two of three? Some nerve. And whatever generous ground I was willing to give Armando Benitez from a historical perspective…it's all over now, baby blue.

On the other hand, the Diamondbacks disbursed their competence in a pleasing fashion, losing four straight to us then wisely winning over the weekend. Their sense of fair play allowed us to stay a game-and-a-half from the WC, ensuring that come September 1 we'll actually be playing a meaningful game. I haven't felt this good about Arizona prevailing at the BOB on a Sunday night since November 4, 2001 (as if that date's glory isn't self-explanatory).

You can stop looking for television's worst advertising campaign, particularly as it regards unfunny, unmoving, unavoidable spots that run in nauseatingly frequent rotation during baseball games. Lee Iacocca and Chrysler: If you can find a worse commercial, air it.

Word, regarding those hideous “Brooklyn” uniforms worn by Los Angeles on Sunday. I don't think I ever saw a picture of the Brooklyn Dodgers wearing white uniforms with their borough/city in script. That's a road thing, but I guess it's appropriate in that the whole idea of L.A. celebrating 1955 is wrong. Double word, regarding the Milwaukee Braves nonsense the other night as well. Do the Brewers have to fail at everything except beating us?

As long as we're meandering on ancillary issues, how about the 2006 Mets wear 1986-style uniforms a few times next year? Surely there will be a 20th anniversary celebration at Shea. Racing stripes all around!

Or maybe orange jumpsuits. Good Ol' No. 16 appears to have interminably delayed his induction into the Mets HOF given his designation for assignment by the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Department. Plastering 05054577 on the outfield wall — the formerly great one's most recent booking number — might serve as a cautionary tale or something for somebody.

Then again, I can't imagine a current or future Mets relentlessly fucking up his life the way Dwight Gooden has. A former Shea Stadium tour guide (“To your left is where Anthony Young sucked with regularity so dependable that he was one loss away from getting an endorsement deal from Ex-Lax. And if you look to your right, you'll see one of the many spots from which Bobby Bonilla stole money.”) brings a truly unique perspective to one of the several previous times Doc broke our hearts. I thought I was done feeling for him in 1994, but it's impossible for any Mets fan who absorbed 1985 as thoroughly as so many of us did to ever quite get Gooden out from under our skin. Twenty years ago, all I wanted to tell him was “DOC! WE LOVE YOU!” Now if I could send him a message, it would be, “Get better, Stupid.”

What do you do when your offense has vanished again and you wind up dropping two of three to the Giants? You look for help from your friends, of course.

So let's call the roll.

God bless you, you St. Louis Cardinals. You're fine players and good people.

The Chicago Cubs are just terrific. Man, put a Zambrano on the mound and good things happen. What a wonderful way to celebrate retiring Ryne Sandberg's number.

Some might say it was gauche for the Los Angeles Dodgers to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their first World Series title, since it was won in a city that they abandoned like thieves in the night. (And that so totally kicks Los Angeles' ass.) And wearing BROOKLYN on the unis? Double gauche. But we're not about hating, particularly not when there was a Satanic presence in the stadium. Good job on the exorcism! Happy anniversary! We love the Dodgers.

Ah, you Arizona Diamondbacks. What a big-hearted crew of excellent young men you are. We're glad to see you didn't take that shellacking personally. Top-notch work from one of our favorite teams. Bravo!

Isn't it a wonderful world where you have friends like these to pick you up where you're down? Makes me wanna walk down the street patting dogs and handing out flowers and candy. Would you excuse me a moment? I — I think I've got something in my eye.

As for you, Milwaukee, well, you are so not invited to our next party. Thanks for nothing, suckos.

Jose, we love you. Rest assured of that. Now, please keep working on working counts. Um, especially when the pitcher's walked three guys in the inning and the opposing manager doesn't have a reliever warm. Please, Jose?

But OK, yesterday's gone. In the New York Post, Kevin Kernan has a nice piece about Tim Hamulack, the Norfolk reliever we summoned to Phoenix but not, apparently, to the BOB, let alone the roster.

Stories like these are a bit of an obsession with me on two levels. Hamulack didn't quite achieve almost-Met status — guys who put on the uniform, made the roster and never got to play. We've got four of those: Jerry Moses in '75, Terrell Hansen in '93, Mac Suzuki in '99 and Justin Speier in '01. (We've rattled on about this before.) Joe Hietpas would be stuck on that list if not for the fact that he got to catch the final inning of 2004, the only good move Art Howe ever made. It looked like Mike Jacobs would be an almost-Met, but we know the rest of that story.

Of those guys, Hansen is the one I've never been able to stop thinking about: He got sent back down, knocked around the minors for another decade or so, but never got the call-up. Got a number (21), a baseball card, clubhouse time, a chance to loathe Jeff Torborg, but never a line in the Baseball Encyclopedia. I'm sure it bothered him that he never got a chance to play in '93, but he was young and had to figure his day would come. It never did. Hell, compared with Terrell Hansen, Moonlight Graham looks like a lucky guy.

Hamulack's a 6' 4″ lefty who can throw 95 and has held opponents to a .175 average. He's nearly 29 and has been in the minors for 10 years, without a single day in The Show. Sounds like a guy we could use in September. Sounds like a guy to root for.

Ehh. Sometimes you get beat by a good pitcher. Believe me when I say that the following…

BOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

…is intended to help finish the road trip on a good note, not a recrimination for Saturday's 2-1 loss. You didn't expect the Mets winning streak to reach infinity, did you?

Did you?

Good news is Philly lost, so it's still 1-1/2 between us and them. Marginal news is they now have Michael Fucker (you're right, it's always misspelled). I don't know if that's an impact trade, but Ramon should wear an extra pointy chest protector just in case.

A tip of the cap to our boys for shaking off a bit of that West-of-the-Mississippi Mud before coming home. The Dirty Thirty, even after succumbing to Jason Schmidt (and Armando Bleepnitez), is now a nearly respectable 10-15. The Mets are 9-9 in this geographic situation since I suggested they approach their remaining Denver, Houston, San Diego, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Francisco dates the way Indians manager Lou Brown might have during Cleveland's miracle run to the A.L. East title in the late '80s (they made a film about it, you know). If the Amazins win this last Giant game, they'll be 11-15 Out Yonder with four games in St. Louis remaining.

It is still my belief that we need to enter that Cardinal series having garnered more than 10 wins west of the Mighty Mississip'. Busch Stadium is only a heartbreaking Jim Edmonds walkoff drive from said body of water, but to me it's part of what has been an expansive geographical and traditional trap for virtually every Met team, this one included (this week excepted). All the cities mentioned above, along with Oakland and Seattle in '05, always seem to kill us. This year all but Phoenix have, and I take nothing for granted in St. Louis. So grabbing the getaway game Sunday afternoon will ensure no worse than an 11-19 record in the Dirty Thirty no matter what happens in Missouri, which to my way of thinking is a lot less bad than looking back at the end of the season and saying “if only we hadn't gone 10 and 20 in those 30 games…”

Of course if we lose four in St. Louis in September, we're pretty well screwed. And I haven't forgotten about the other teams and towns and so forth, all of them deadly crucial at this stage. As Bobby V used to say (and probably still does, albeit in Japanese), this is the most important game of the season because it's the one we play today.

Today marks 150 consecutive days of posting at Faith and Fear in Flushing. We like to think of ourselves as The Rembrandts of this particular art form: We'll be there for you.

Oh man, that eighth inning.

Trachsel clearly running out of gas (though I was happy to see Willie let him hit for himself and go out there), Tim Welke's Magical Strike Zone contracting, the count mounting on Mike Matheny, I'm muttering Come ON Trachsel, hit it to anybody though preferably not Diaz, then Michael Fucker (whose name is somehow always misspelled) at the plate, looking to see if he can tear open Piazza's thigh with his spikes or if his old friend Angel Hernandez is around to help him cheat, and Trachsel's fastballs are high, his offspeed stuff rolling instead of breaking, and the count mounts on Spikey McFucker and the Magical Strike Zone goes back and forth like an accordion, and I'm now muttering comeonTrachselhitittoanybodythoughpreferablynotDiaz, and now Michael Fucker has walked and here's Randy Winn, and I'm thinking that's one batter too many and I just lived through this with Jae Seo and am not sure I can do it again, and Trachsel goes 2-0 on Randy Winn and I'm sure that's fatal, now I'm reduced to hoping we get lucky somehow and yelling Come ON Trachsel hit it to ANYBODY — EVEN DIAZ and then sonofabitch, he pops it up, and it briefly looks like Reyes and Cairo and Beltran are going to stare at each other until it plops into the grass, but no, Beltran gloves it, we're safe, still 1-0.

Well, safe except for Braden Looper out there on the mound. And he was accompanied by some strange moves by Willie — why double-switch and take Jacobs' glove out of the game for Chris Woodward's? Were we playing for the tie? I mean, if where Looper hits in the order comes into play, we're already screwed — and a screwing is more likely with subpar defense at first, isn't it? And speaking of subpar defense, why was Diaz still out there in right?

So of course Looper gives up a leadoff double to Omar Vizquel and I'm screaming epithets at him, but then somehow, just as I'm seething and rehearsing a blog entry about how we can't survive with Looper as our closer, he makes a terrific play on Pedro Feliz when nobody would have blamed him for avoiding the broken bat, then gets Moises Alou, then Ray Durham grounds into the second-base hole and Cairo flings it to Woodward and holy shit we've won, though I still kind of feel like throwing up. Attaboy Looper, I guess.

Man. This game'll kill you. And that's when you win.

Prescript: Antsy before the start of things (thank goodness that's the last 10:10 game of the year), I flipped over to watch Braves-Brewers. It was some kind of Turn Back the Clock night in Milwaukee, so the Braves (whom we now trail by just four, though let's not talk about that) were wearing Braves road unis, and the Brewers were wearing…Braves home unis. I felt like I had vertigo; it took me like two innings to get it straight and even then I had to keep checking. Then Ben Sheets came out of the game late with an injury and in came…Kane Davis. Kane Davis? Really? I figured he'd be on about Year Two of the You Need a Ticket to Get in Here Buddy plan. Strange night all around.