About once a year, my mother would hand down to me a parable that her father handed down to her. It involved two brothers who agreed to go into business together and how they began dreaming of all the success they would experience and all the fine things, like a horse-drawn carriage, they would buy with their profits. The more they talked about it, the more they disagreed with each other over who would do what and who would get what from the partnership. Their argument boiled over until all their hypothetical riches came tumbling down on top of them before cent one was earned. The parable ended with one brother screaming at the other, “Jakey, get out of the buggy!”

The moral of the story is Mike Jacobs kicks ass, but so did Mike Vail and Gregg Jefferies and Benny Agbayani and Jason Phillips even…and in case you were wondering where I get my aversion to presumptuousness vis-à-vis winning, now you know.

OK, that necessary dollop of downer delivered, let's have a party. Better yet, let's move to Arizona, all of us. Our team is already at home there. I haven't seen the Mets smile this much in the dugout since they had the teamwork to make the dream work. Gotta be that dry heat. Cleared up their sinuses and whatnot.

Seriously, we'll just trade locales with the Diamondbacks. How does Faith and Fear in Flagstaff grab you?

Here's the difference between now and earlier in the season. In May, the Mets had a pitcher throw seven innings of one-hit ball and they demoted him immediately thereafter. In August, the Mets had a rookie hit a three-run homer in his first at-bat and resisted the urge to do the same. Fool them once, shame on them, fool them twice and sooner or later they'll get a clue. For a team whose three greatest players arrived by fluky circumstances (Seaver: drawn out of a hat; Hernandez: trapped via a White Rat snit; Piazza: Rupert Murdoch's budget bravado ran amok), it's only fitting that Mike Jacobs should have gotten here accidentally and been allowed to stay only most reluctantly.

In August, the Mets also recalled that one-hit pitcher, the fella who pitched Wednesday night. Met management sure is stupid-lucky sometimes.

On a night when there wasn't much to get upset by, I'm going to stand up for the base choice made by Victor Diaz. Yeah, yeah, I know, the code and not rubbing it in and letting sleeping Snakes lie. I don't buy it. I watched this team hold Dog Night for the better part of the last five years and I'm not talking terriers. Guys didn't run to first. Guys didn't move up. Guys didn't pay attention, not even in the World Bleeping Series. Look at what was going on tonight as the score was building to absurd and lovely proportions:

• Beltran ran hard on a grounder when he “didn't have to”

• Floyd ran hard on a grounder when he “didn't have to”

• Reyes ran hard on a squib when he “didn't have to”

It is so gosh darn refreshing to see players wearing Mets uniforms uniformly hustle. The ineptitude of the Diamondbacks had a great deal to do with the jumping ugly of the past two games but it takes two to blow out. The Mets are rolling (after waiting out an April-to-August roll delay) and that's a result of playing the game the right way. Playing the game the right way means that if you're a young player and you're on second with less than two out, it is your obligation to make a habit of tagging up when a fly ball is hit to deep center. It is Victor Diaz's obligation to hustle every moment he is on the field unless his manager or a designated lieutenant informs him it is not in the team's best interest to do so (for example, not flashing the steal sign when up 17 runs). If Victor Diaz is not yet so schooled or jaded in the so-called unwritten rules of the game, I applaud him. Hone that instinct, don't curb it. He'll figure out game situations eventually.

The Diamondbacks don't like it? They shouldn't let so many Mets get on base. But really, for our sake, they should continue to do just that. I don't particularly care if they like it or not. They deserve what they get for firing Wally Backman. Shoot, this is a team that lost 18-4 after Tony Clark called a clubhouse meeting that lasted 90 minutes. As motivational speakers go, Tony Clark is no Tony Robbins.

And oh yeah — BOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

Wham! Biff! Sock! Pow!

Wright. Reyes. Jacobs. Castro. Matsui. (Matsui? Yes, Matsui.) Seo.

As Willie Randolph indicated with his finger to his lips at the end, nobody wake up this team. Nobody rouse David Wright to express their admiration of his march into the elite precincts of the National League. Nobody stop to discuss how much they're enjoying Jose Reyes's wild abandon, sudden power and continuing education in pitch selection. Nobody have a heart-to-heart with Ramon Castro about if he'll soon have more RBIs than hits. Nobody — this means you, Ed Coleman — suggest to young Mike Jacobs that he's Roy Hobbs. Nobody ask Jae Seo how he learned to channel Bob Gibson. Nobody tell Kaz Matsui that hey, we've missed you. And nobody wake anybody else up to marvel that we're clubbing with practically no contributions from Beltran or Floyd. Everybody just keep on rolling. Don't think, Meat, just throw. And hit. And field. And cheer, or boo, or sleep, or whatever it is you're doing at home.

On the flipside, I imagine the Diamondbacks' part of the blogosphere ain't exactly a happy place right now. If any D-Backs bloggers stuck around for the whole thing, in fact, my hat's off. (And hey, we know the feeling.) That second inning was the worst frame of defensive baseball I can remember in years: It included a wild pitch, the right fielder stumbling and turning a fly ball into a double, the center fielder breaking the wrong way and allowing a bloop single, and then — as if that weren't enough for a week of muttering — Jackson and Clayton somehow allowing two runs to score on an inning-ending double play. Two runs! I've never seen that. It never occurred to me that I might see that.

Nor did I ever imagine going to a seventh inning with three different guys in the lineup missing one hit for the cycle. Baseball being baseball, of course, Reyes didn't get his double and neither Wright nor Jacobs got their triple. 18-4 demolitions being 18-4 demolitions, Wright and Jacobs hit home runs instead. I guess it would have been silly to stop at third and refuse to go any farther.

The only fly in the ointment was whatever the hell it was Victor Diaz thought he was doing tagging up from second in a 17-0 game. An inexcusable move, and I held my breath at the thought of all the self-destructive macho dominoes that could have started falling there, and I suppose still might. Here's hoping Willie gives Victor a thorough dressing-down, and/or sends Pedro, Ice or one of the vets to discuss not showing up the opposition, letting sleeping dogs lie, and all the other cliches Victor should know by now. I'm kind of a fan of brawls, but here's hoping Pedro doesn't feel the need to defend Met honor (even though poor Kaz hardly deserved being the plunkee, on the best night he's had in an age). The possible consequences range from suspensions to brawl-related injuries, and we can't afford either. Victor was in the wrong; it shouldn't have been Kaz that got hit, but for the sake of the team and what we're trying to accomplish, best to walk away.

Besides, when you score 18 runs on 20 hits, your honor's pretty unassailable.

P.S. Kudos to MSG for some very nice TV work tonight, from Pedro showing Zambrano the circle change (Victor! Listen to this man!) to spying on Willie's attempts to stay stone-faced to the footage of Mike Lowell catching Luis Terrero with the hidden-ball trick to the late shot of the D-Backs president sitting by himself looking rumpled and mournful. Excellent work all around.

First off, very important…

BOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

YOUR SEASON-HIGH FIVE-GAMES-OVER MILESTONE SHOULD HAVE COME SOONER!

Actually, I totally mean the last one, but the important thing remains helping the Mets feel at home when they're on the road. Therefore we must continue to heap unreasonable amounts of irrational abuse on them. I've now begun two away games by booing the first pitch (to my favorite player, no less, a bit of shared sacrifice to reinforce that we're all in this together), and the Mets have won them both. Seeing as how this is the first two-game winning streak the Mets have put together west of the Mississippi all season (7-14 out yonder), I do insist that making our boys feel as if they are at Shea — where they are cheerlessly chastised despite posting an outstanding winning percentage — is what's doing the trick.

Couldn't be that they were good enough to do this all along and just needed a little boost from the likes of Jacobs and Castro and a refreshed Victor Diaz.

Nah, that would be too easy, giving them the credit.

Maybe the BOB has more Shealike qualities than one could infer from watching it on TV or even visiting it. Well, Shea is next to an airport and Bank One Ballpark has been likened to an airplane hangar, but that's all I can come up with. I was lucky enough to visit the BOB in its second season, 1999, back when Joel Lugo was basking in the Valley of the Sun and gracious enough to host several of his East Coast buddies for a Mets-Diamondbacks NLDS preview. What I remember about the facility was that it was very chilly (or “brisk” as noted Mets fan Dr. Fred Bunz aptly put it). Phoenix itself was like a thousand degrees, a fact that baked one and all the second they tore the roof off the sucker after the game. But inside, they kept it Colorado-cool. Howie and Gary reported Tuesday night that they've installed new grass in there since the Showalter days and have maintained a warmer temperature to assure its long-term health.

Warm enough for the Mets, apparently: two out, no longer alone in last and, finally, five games over .500 for the first time since gas was a dollar a gallon, The Captain & Tennille were on the charts and James K. Polk was in the White House.

Or so it seems.

Speaking of grass, occasionally it's browner on the other side of the fence no matter how arid you believe it to be in your yard. Channeling Chauncey Gardner? No, Gotham Baseball.

…with a first step.

You seek wisdom in silly bumper-sticker things like that when you're beginning something big and hugely important that's gonna take a while and has to be done right each step of the way, even though you're desperate to know how it all turns out and want to hurry along. Like, say, a seven-game road trip to Arizona and then to California, the time zone where so many Met dreams have died.

I sensed as early as this afternoon that the scorecard for this one would have a few WWs on it, and indeed had no sooner put the kid to bed than I faceplanted onto my own pillow, pretty sure I was going to miss some or all of the game but helpless to prevent it. Woke up through sheer will to find it was sometime after 10:30 and dragged myself upstairs to turn on the set. It's an odd feeling flipping on the TV knowing it'll be the third or fourth — there's always that moment in which you're desperately processing information. Is that a “2” for us? Is that a “0” for them? So 2 is more than zero, so we're ahead! Yes! I did a worse job than usual, seeing how I was only vaguely awake — it took me two or three innings to grasp that Mike Jacobs was playing first (guess Jose Offerman needed an extra coat of shellac to hide his continuing decomposition), that Kaz was in the starting lineup, that that was DiFelice and finally not Castro and all the other things one would normally have taken care of by the time first pitch rolled around. I heard Heath Bell was up and never did figure out who was down.

Still, I was awake enough to grasp that Tom Glavine threw a terrific game and that Braden Looper redeemed himself, though I almost assaulted the television when Looper walked Tony Clark when it wouldn't have particularly mattered if Clark had hit one to Saturn. I think the best part of that ninth was how the double play unfolded: Wright didn't retreat on the ball, Matsui moved quickly and fearlessly on the pivot, and Jacobs made a nice stretch and held the bag. Not so long ago Wright might well have backed up and risked losing the double play or maybe the chance to get even one out, and/or Offerman/Woodward/Cairo/Anderson would have dropped the ball or let it skip past. Progress!

At the risk of jinxing the whole thing, I think we've collectively come around on Glavine. At least I have. His superb numbers since the break help, of course — good stats are always the best personality trait — but it's also that he finally yielded to the reality that the old Glavine formula wasn't working and became receptive to finding a new way. That option now looks like a lock, and to my surprise I find myself wondering if I'm not kinda sorta glad to have him. At the very least I'm willing to retire the TMB nickname in favor of something else.

So. Meet Tom Glavine, a.k.a. TEM — The Eventual Met.

I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell…

The Mets have run the Howard Beale clip from Network on DiamondVision for, I think, the last eight seasons. I don't have a handle on the success rate in terms of rallies and runs that stem from its still-clever-if-tired segue into the LET'S GO METS! chant, but it seems to get the fans going.

Peter Finch's contextless rant from almost 30 years ago is as good a limb as any on which to hang the Mets' marvelous home record. Even with Sunday's flopfest, they're 40-25 at Shea. That's a 100-win season if we could bribe Bud Selig to let us play all our games at home (and you know we probably could if we really tried). If it's not Network, maybe it's the landing pattern into LaGuardia or the mysterious wind swirls or the orange onslaught the opposition experiences from the unfilled field level seats. Whatever it is, we have a definite home-field advantage.

And we are helpless on the road. I won't re-enumerate the examples of our terrible tourism except to say that the Mets are 23-35 away from Shea. That's a 64-win season if our enemies could bribe Bud Selig to make us play all our games on the road (and you know they probably could if they really tried). Obviously there's something missing from road games that is present at home games that is causing the Mets' performance to drop so dramatically when on a business trip.

I don't think it's Howard Beale. I don't think it's the airplanes. I don't think it's the breeze or the colors or even the absence of friendly, feral cats.

It's the fans. It's what Mets fans bring to Shea. It's what the most full-throated Mets fans do at Shea that apparently spurs the Mets on to greater heights.

The love…the support…the educated and instinctive rushing to the aid of the home team…

Nah, that's not it.

It's the booing. It has to be.

What is more constant at Shea Stadium than the chorus of Mets fans telling the Mets all they are doing wrong? I don't know what it says about our boys, but obviously they respond to abuse. 40-25 can't be an aberration.

With the Mets in Arizona all week, it will take some doing. With San Francisco the next stop, it will take a little more. But I know we have it in us. So let's do this together, all of us.

Inhale deeply.

Concentrate.

Get your lungs and your mind in a place where they can work in tandem and do the most good.

Ready? All right, then.

I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell…

HEY METS! YOU SUCK!

BOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! YOU SUCK, METS!

There. Now that we've made the Mets feel at home while they're on the road, good things are sure to follow.

I already spilt more pixels than one might expect on a sacrifice fly hit by a Single-A player four years ago, but if I waxed rhapsodic about Mike Jacobs' 6/25/01 game winner, it's because that season was such a giddy ride.

The summer of 2001 was when lots of New Yorkers used to nothing but Shea and Yankee Stadium found out about the minor leagues. They got an intimate park full of touches that are standard operating procedure for the low minors but not the kind of thing you'd see in the Big Leagues — dizzy-bat races, kids running hell-for-leather around the bases as if the mascot might actually dare to catch them, scads of errors cheerfully called hits. The big leagues are a daily soap opera that will tie you by turns into knots of expectation, anxiety, wild confidence, despair, joy and anger, but even the most committed fan can't approach the New York-Penn League that way — not with players washing in and out with the organizational tide, and certainly not with the on-field product so raw. What you can do, if you've got it in you, is just relax into baseball, into the green grass and the sound of the bat and not knowing any of the players' names until 3/4 of the way through the season and the just-drafted kids actually turning to look when girls call to them and yelling like a fool when the ball goes up, because (as we've told many a pal brought to Keyspan by way of initiation) anything can happen in the New York-Penn League. It's just baseball, and just baseball is pretty neat: Pick a side, cheer like heck for 'em, and if they don't win, go to Nathan's and maybe hit the Wonder Wheel with the dark of the ocean on one side and the brilliance of the city on the other. What'd you do last night? Went to Coney Island, saw the Cyclones. It was great! Did they win? Um…yeah. Or wait, no. You know, I'm not sure. But it was a great night.

So sorry to rattle on about Single-A doings, but when I heard Jacobs had got the call, it brought all that back. Sure, Danny Garcia had been an original Cyclone, but truth be told I couldn't really remember him. I remembered Jacobs — how could you not remember the guy who won the first home game in extra innings? Back then some visiting dignitary (I'm pretty sure it was Steve Phillips, though I'm clinging determinedly to a smidgen of a doubt) noted that if things went right, we might see one or two of those players in the bigs someday. I found that depressing even though I knew it was just realism. But then four years later it's someday, and one of those players turns out to be the guy who sent 'em home happy on that first night. Seeing him hanging on the dugout railing made me happy in a way far beyond the happiness of having a new member of the family to go record for posterity, get a card of and all the other geeky things I do. It made me happy because it transferred a little bit of Keyspan from when it was new and surprising and perfect to Shea, where I follow things far more avidly but also far more critically. There are bad nights a-plenty at Shea — which isn't a shot at the Mets, just an acknowledgment that that's the nature of the big-league beast — but few bad nights at Keyspan. (As long as the fricking mascot isn't being mean to my kid.)

We headed out for Keyspan this afternoon with friends who'd come up from Philadelphia; David Wright struck out just as we passed Nathan's and I began my usual freakout about parking. I fumed for a while amidst the kiddie rides — Has Cliff ever looked worse during an at-bat? Is Ramon Castro going to play until he expires? What was wrong with Benson? What the heck happened to Victor's ability to play the outfield? — but then the game started and guys from Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge rode tricycles on the field and passing Aberdeen Ironbirds actually slapped hands with the little kids along the left-field line and Joshua and Ellis and Tyson gobbled down hot dogs and chicken and fries and ice cream and there was Mookie in the third-base box and I looked around and thought, “Man, I love this place.”

And so Benson and Floyd and Victor and all of today's disappointment retreated — still there, but at a decent remove — and what was left was Mike Jacobs, who went from trying to catch his breath in the batter's box to mashing one into our bullpen (Hey, cool! He'll get the ball!) before you could say “Tricia's from Ditmas Park, and IT'S HER BIRTHDAY!” After the inning I grabbed the TiVo remote and bi-doop-bi-doop-bi-dooped my way back so I could watch Jacobs levitate around the bases again, then one more time because I'd enjoyed it so much the second time. So that was nine runs that I saw, meaning we won, what, 10-7? Why all the long faces?

Oh, and with Joshua clapping and chanting “Let's go Cyclomes!” (close enough), Brooklyn came back from a 3-0 deficit with a four-run 7th, promptly gave up three more runs, then came back with a five-run 8th for a 9-6 win. Home runs from Jonel Pacheco and Caleb Stewart, doubles from Drew Butera and Mo Chavez. (By the way, Brooklyn's two games out of the wild card.) I looked up those four Cyclones names; all that really mattered was they were the guys in red and white.

Went to Coney Island. Saw the Cyclones. Had Nathan's. Rode the Wonder Wheel. It was a great night.

As we mourners steel ourselves for the final viewing of the greatest dramatic arc in the history of television (9 o'clock on HBO), the temptation to bury the 2005 Mets, or at least take out a pre-need on their behalf, hovers yet again in our souls. Sunday afternoon's loss to the Nationals, while a smidge less lethal in its execution than Saturday night's win, was in fact a loss. If five seasons of watching Six Feet Under has taught me anything, it's that the best way to deal with loss is to confront it immediately without repressing the facts or your feelings.

In the interest, then, of healthy grieving:

• Benson had nothing except good graces to sit in the dugout and watch three relievers labor effectively to clean up after him, barn door wide open.

• Almost every attempt at a rally — save for the transcendent moment when Shea Stadium became Jacobs' field — fizzled embarrassingly.

• In the seventh, Cliff had probably the worst at-bat of the season, his or anybody's, against Joey Eischen when he lunged toward, flailed at and avoided contact with three decidedly outside pitches.

• Florida, Philadelphia and Houston each won…natch.

• All the ground we made up less than 24 hours ago has been shoveled right back on us in last place.

• Distant roads are callin'. Seven games in Arizona and San Francisco aren't seven games in Atlanta and St. Louis, but the Mets have treated every road trip as if the home team is a division champ. No time left for that.

• Seven games in Atlanta and St. Louis are, by the way, just around the corner.

• Cameron is done. Piazza is out. Castro is exhausted. There is no first baseman per se. Floyd is trying to do too much. Beltran, no matter how valiant his return, has to be considered a question mark. Diaz is a terrific designated hitter who looks worse in right than he did when the season started. Trachsel has no slot and little patience, though you can't blame him for either situation. The pen is the pen is the pen. That's a story as old as Robert Moses.

To distill Jewish Heritage Day to its essence, oy.

This, like all those other instances when we were tempted, is no time to bury the Mets. But will it ever be time to declare they are truly alive and well and likely to go out on top the way my favorite show has?

Everyone's waiting.

Apparently holding a post-game concert wasn't enough of a way to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Night. The Mets collectively played as if they were descended from the would-be 15th-century conquistador El Choko (he had almost all of Europe under his control when he decided his most splendid warrior should abandon the battle after throwing 78 pitches), while the Nationals were doing their best impression of El Kabong.

It was as if somebody hijacked the Ameriquest runs bell: Ka-BONGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!

As for it being Dog Night, I had a feeling it would be a horrendous idea to permit those smelly, pathetic mutts into the ballpark.

But enough about our relievers.

Nobody except the Mets Walkoffs guy loves a walkoff win more than me, but this was ridiculous. If baseball had a commissioner who wasn't Bud Selig, I'd suggest he investigate how it's possible that a team capable of blowing an 8-0 seventh-inning lead to the lowest-scoring team in the National League also managed to gain ground in a Wild Card race that's tighter than the apple in Braden Looper's throat.

Look at us!

We're a contender!

We're two games out!

We've matched our high point for the year at four games above .500!

Something stinks here, but technically, we don't. In reality, we've got relievers who are incapable of protecting eight-run leads with nine outs to go, closers who can't close out two-run leads with one out to go, catchers with fractures who are sitting on the active roster, healthy starters who are left in limbo and a lineup that took a disco nap from the fourth through the ninth. By then, our laugher was long ago and it was far away.

Fortunately, we also have Chris Woodward. There aren't enough words to describe how grateful we should be for him. There aren't enough words because when Brian Schneider doubled in the tying run, I hurled the first thing handy in the general direction of the television and it happened to be a dictionary — ironic in that my vocabulary had just been reduced to a single f-word.

We won. I'm totally disgusted.

I guess it was also Paradox Night.

Friday night's promotional handout was smart, compact and may even work the next time wet rain falls for real, but I prefer we let Jae Seo be our umbrella. He protects us against all kind of bad elements: Wilkerson, Vidro, Schneider…such unappealing sorts you should never encounter in a dark alley or a well-lit ballpark.

He also keeps Kaz Ishii far, far away.

It's a one-game winning streak for the Mets as well as for me — 1-0 in the Stars & Stripes cap that I nearly left on the train home but, like the Mets and their need for a run, remembered to grab at almost the last minute.

How marvy it was to land on the right side of a shutout at Shea. Laurie and I continued our trail of tiers, this time landing in the upper deck, a fine place to take in a game of baseball and a view of Queens, even though I can never quite shake the feeling that I've volunteered for stadium steerage. Shea only has an upper deck, I believe, because it can't economically shove enough people in the lower levels. Reminds me of a bit Bruce McCulloch did on The Kids in the Hall in which he was a minimum-wage employee. I paraphrase: “Minimum wage? You mean you're paying me the very least allowable by law?”

If the Mets could stick their budget/tardy/non-alcoholic customers on the moon, I think they would.

But I'm not complaining, not really. We had a successful duel and I had an adequate knish (conceding to the first concession that didn't require an extended wait along the limited-assortment concourse) plus a middle-innings summit with one of our esteemed blolleagues. I don't want to drop any names, but let's just say that as soon as the Mets scored, he had to walk off to his assigned seat.

Quite a horse race, this Wild Card chase. Being in the upper deck means being at eye-level with the scoreboard, and being as much of a contender as we apparently are, I couldn't take my eyes off of it. I wished for significance from every score. I wanted CIN's demolition of ARI to mean something other than a few sad ARIzonans. Maybe they'll still be despondent when we go out there. Though I was into it in principle, I couldn't get that much pleasure from SDP taking it to ATL since ATL is largely irrelevant to the standing of NYM. PIT, on the other hand, is to be congratulated on slamming PHI in the battle of PEN (yeah, I know it's PA but I'll bet the Shea scoreboard operator doesn't).

It was Irish Night. No great significance to it except one guy brought his bagpipes to the upper deck. Just him — no band or corps or whatever more than one bagpipist constitutes. Laurie called bagpipes the worst instrument ever invented. I have yet to rank them, but there's an Awesomely Bad VH-1 countdown just waiting to be produced.

As National League fans we're supposed to proclaim that there's nothing like a pitching duel — a crisp, clean, 1-0 game.

I beg to differ.

It's not that I don't appreciate a good pitching duel — I do. But like them? Not so fast. I only like the ones we win. Lose a back-and-forth 8-7 game, and at least you had seven fists pumps and, odds are, some stretches in which your team was on top and the world was at your command. A pitching duel isn't like that — it's three or four innings of fidgeting and five or six of anxiety and agony, and the only release from it comes when it's over and you've won. If you win.

Jae Seo was awesome, I'd like to announce. (Also, the sun rose today and the rain that briefly fell was wet.) He's been around so long it's even harder to grasp that this man on the mound with the deadly arsenal and the oodles of self-confidence is the same guy we've been tracking up and down through our system all these years. There was the period in which all we knew was he was a great prospect and his brother was in the minor leagues with him. (Just to ease the culture shock, it turned out.) Then his arm was hurt. Then he arrived and was, well, OK. Then he was good. Then he wasn't so good and Vern Ruhle had to go to the mound and challenge him to show some heart, not usually a sign of a bright future. Then he went from the guy who it was whispered was uncoachable to the guy who it was shouted was uncoachable — and got bounced from the slot in the starting rotation he assumed he'd earned. (Though his ill-advised line “If I have one bad start at Norfolk, will they send me to Binghamton?” was pretty funny.) Then he was back and good, then he was gone despite that, letting us see plenty of Kaz Ishii, and now he's back and he's coachable and he's getting the entire planet out and there is no earthly way he's coming out of this rotation.

Wow. Forget what they say about second acts and American lives — apparently there are nine or 10 acts in Korean baseball-player lives. Bravo, Seo. Glad we waited for you.

As for John Patterson, he only made one mistake, but it was a fairly dopey one — why anyone on God's green Earth would throw Victor Diaz a fastball right now is beyond me. Meanwhile, Victor can apparently only play the rudiments of one position at a time — he looked OK in right field earlier this year, but now anything hit vaguely that way leaves me in the fetal position. I was actually thrilled to see Gerald Williams.

Oh, and Looper of course tried to blow it — that was awfully nice of Jose Guillen to swing at a ball he couldn't possibly do anything with when Looper was having trouble throwing the ball over the plate. I'd had my fill of anxiety and agony by then, thanks very much, but a pitcher's duel wouldn't be a pitcher's duel if you weren't gasping in fear until the very last out, right?

Pedro and Livan tomorrow night. Emily and I will be there. I'm already nervous.