Curtain opens on the interior of a rustic cabin. There are deer heads and trophy fish on the walls, large hoagies on TV trays, and a gaggle of men of all ages and races arranged around a big-screen TV, eating and drinking beer and laughing loudly.

There's a knock at the door. An older man in a faded Cubs hat gets up and opens it, revealing a young, puzzled-looking man standing on the front porch.

YOUNG MAN

Am I in the right place?

OLDER MAN

Hey, everybody, look! It's Antonio Perez! You got the invite! C'mon in, kid!

ANTONIO PEREZ

Yeah. Man, that was some creepy Edgar Allen Poe shit. I mean, the vellum and it was sealed with blue and orange…I dunno, I almost didn't come. And what's with the '30' stamped into the wax?

OLDER MAN

Tony, have a beer. We'll explain. I'm Jimmy. Been coming here since they opened the place in the winter of '71. Me and Ernie and Vic over there, we been here just about forever.

ERNIE

Nice job, kid. Lemme tell ya, we thought Pedro was about to shut this place down. Gettin' kind of nervous in here, you wanna know the truth. But then Quallsie here stood up on the couch, must've been about the seventh, and started shouting, “What's wrong with you guys? Don't you know how this works? It's always the guy you never heard of! This Perez kid, he's a guarantee! A goshdarn guarantee! Just like me!” And ol' J.Q., he was right.

ANTONIO PEREZ (stunned)

Aren't you…aren't you Ernie Banks?

ERNIE BANKS

Nice to meet you. Beat Gary Gentry in the 8th at Wrigley, May 1970.

ANTONIO PEREZ

I never heard of Gary Gentry.

JIMMY QUALLS

That's because of Ernie. Me, I faced Seaver. I was gonna be the 26th out, July 1969. Clean single in the 9th. Oh, was he disappointed. Hell, I made his wife cry.

ANTONIO PEREZ

That's when Seaver pitched for the Mets, right?

JIMMY QUALLS

That's right. He was gonna throw a perfect game, but I took care of that. Just like you took care of Pedro today. Just like everybody in this room took care of a Met no-hitter in the late innings. Ah, Tom Terrific. Vic Davalillo over there, got him in the seventh back in '71. Leron Lee's in the can, but he got Seaver in the ninth, Independence Day '72.

FELIX JOSE

David Cone was mine. 8th inning double.

ANTONIO PEREZ

Hey, isn't that Wade Boggs?

WADE BOGGS

Hey kid. Two-out double against Rick Reed in the seventh, June 1998.

ANTONIO PEREZ

What were you then, a Devil Ray? Man, I had to be a Devil Ray last year. That shouldn't even count.

WADE BOGGS

It counts, kid. You could look it up.

EDGAR RENTERIA

You know the hilarious thing? I got Reed 11 days later. One out in the seventh. Oh man, did he ever look pissed!

ERNIE BANKS (cackling)

Let's play two!

ANTONIO PEREZ

Wait a minute — I know that dude. I've played against him.

THAT DUDE

Kit Pellow, how the hell are you? Kept Met fans from ever taking a liking to Tom Glavine.

ANTONIO PEREZ

Hey. Sorry, man, I didn't know your name.

KIT PELLOW

That's all right, dude — they know my name in New York!

Much laughter all around.

JIMMY QUALLS

You may not do anything else in your career, kid, but they'll always know your name in New York. Just like they know mine, and Leron's, and Kit's, and those of all these other guys back here you ain't met yet. Now go out to the cooler in back and get us some more beers, huh?

Perez looks reluctant.

KIT PELLOW

It's the rules. You're the new guy.

CHRIS BURKE

Don't sweat, man. I only had to do it for like two months.

ANTONIO PEREZ

Oh yeah? Whose no-hitter did you spoil?

CHRIS BURKE

Pedro's! High-five, man!

Raucous laughter.

ERNIE BANKS (cackling again)

Let's play two! Beautiful day for a ballgame!

ANTONIO PEREZ

So all you guys get to hang out here because you broke up a no-hit bid for a Met pitcher? That's incredible. But how come nobody's chased you out of here yet? I mean, the Mets had Seaver, Cone, Gooden, Saberhagen, all these great pitchers over the years. Who cares about what we did, with all the no-hitters they must have thrown?

The men double over with laughter, hoagie parts and spittle flying. Some of them are laughing so hard they're having trouble breathing.

JIMMY QUALLS

Oh, kid, you're priceless. You really are. That's the thing — they never have! Never! That's the whole point! They get close, and then some no name — some Jimmy Qualls or Chris Burke or Kit Pellow or Vic Davalillo or Antonio Perez or Wade Boggs —

WADE BOGGS

Hey! Knock that shit off, Qualls. Some of us are in Cooperstown, y'know?

JIMMY QUALLS

Get off your friggin' high police horse, Chicken Man, I was just kidding. Anyway, kid, anytime some Met pitcher gets within spitting distance, some nobody comes along and restores order. There's never been a Met no-hitter. Never. Not in…how many games is it now, guys?

The men look at the floor and the ceiling, clearly uncomfortable. Much muttering and shrugging.

JIMMY QUALLS

Well, we're not quite sure, but let's just say it's a lot, kid. There's never been a Met no-hitter. And there never will be. Not until our spiritual leader gets over being pissed at the New York Mets and lifts his curse.

There's a knock at the door.

JIMMY QUALLS

Here he is now.

The door opens and a rangy older man walks in.

RANGY OLDER MAN

Hey, how y'all doin'?

ANTONIO PEREZ

Wow, isn't that…

RANGY OLDER MAN

Nolan Ryan, pleased to meet you. You get any grub yet? Plenty of cold beer out back. Just dropped by to welcome you aboard.

ANTONIO PEREZ

So this is all your doing?

NOLAN RYAN

Son, you get traded for Jim Fregosi and see if you ain't madder than an armadillo that done walked across a mile of asphalt into a purse factory. First them sumbitches made me soak my fingers in pickle brine, then they trade me for a washed-up shortstop with a bad foot. And they throw in three other guys to make the deal even or something. Would you forgive that?

ANTONIO PEREZ

I guess not.

NOLAN RYAN

You guess not. Anyhow, thanks for your work. I'd like to stay and set a bit, fellas, but I've got to go scout the Nats. This Seo fella's gone down to Tidewater and found all these pitches all of a sudden, and he's making me nervous. So I'd best find us a nobody. Whaddya think? Brian Schneider? Jamey Carroll?

KIT PELLOW

I dunno, Express, I've heard of those guys.

ANTONIO PEREZ

Can I see that roster? Hmm…who the hell is Brandon Watson?

NOLAN RYAN

Gentlemen, we have a winner!

Much laughter as curtain closes.

I've known two people who told me they had an older relative tell them, “Hate is for Hitler.” In other words, don't throw that particular four-letter word around so much. Show some perspective. Keep your feelings from getting ugly. That's very sound, very wise advice.

Unless of course you're a Mets fan.

One of our coolest blolleagues is Metsradamus, a seer of all things who saw this would be a good week to take off. But Metsradamus did not leave us hanging. In fact, he left us hating. Go check out his ballot for the 2005 Hall of Hate. Mind you, this is only the latest bunch of bastards on his/our dance card. The comments section explains who's already in.

I hope it's not too late to write in Antonio Perez.

Well, that was a bracing slap in the face, wasn't it?

Antonio Perez. Swear to god I pegged him early in the afternoon as the eventual culprit. How? Just pick the guy I've never heard of and assume he'll ruin things for the future Hall of Famer.

Now that he's a fully accredited graduate of Jimmy Qualls Senior High, there's the matter of the game. Who hit the home run that followed the triple? I actually don't remember anymore and it was only a few minutes ago. Jayson Werth, Gary just said. OK, Jayson Werth. Familiar name. Doesn't make it any better.

Then there's the matter of not scoring behind Pedro Martinez. Brad Penny? The “Bad Penny” from “suck on this for Shinjo” night? The guy who never beats us, allegedly? He chooses today? I hate the Dodgers, I swear I do.

We really could've used this game. Houston goes to the trouble of losing to Pittsburgh again. It would've been so sweet, even if it was just a win, never mind a (go ahead, say it) no-hitter. What a nice, nice way of ending the trip and helping to forget if not heal the wounds inflicted on Mike Cameron and Carlos Beltran.

I did what I could. I sat in my home office where I started the game. I busied myself with whatever I could find to do. I kept the radio on and only peeked at the TV after each out. I had no problem with Gary and Eddie reporting history but I felt a tectonic plate of fate shift when Gary mentioned Howie was off for the weekend and “think he's not sitting on the edge of his seat?” Oh Gary, how could you? Howie's the one who uncovered the King Korn Kurse years ago on Mets Extra, something about the 50,000 trading stamps the supermarket sponsor promised in 1962 to any Mets pitcher who threw a no-no and how that served to keep all Mets pitchers from joining the ranks of the hitless, apparently for all of eternity. Obviously Howie is a karrier of the kurse.

One run. We had nine hits but one run when Antonio Perez, whoever he is (oh yeah, he's the guy who broke up what was going to be the first no-hitter in Mets history), stepped up in the eighth. We've really got to give Pedro some cushion for these outings.

I was going to take a shower earlier. But I remembered that 30 years ago Randy Tate lost a no-hitter to Jim Lyttle and the Expos as I was getting into the tub. So I decided to sweat it out. I guess I can go hit the showers now.

I guess we all can.

Double damn.

Damn.

I'll admit it: Didn't see a single pitch of Jae Seo's latest glorious outing. (Gerald Williams?! Really?!) We were claimed by the social ramble, which Satchel long ago warned ain't restful. And as I retype this multiple times with only one eye able to open (please excuse any and all typos), I assure you it ain't.

Besides the fact that it's always exceedingly strange to come up cold and see the simple recitation of a ballgame, stripped of all the anxiety and parallel universes and what-ifs, this reminds me of one of the oldest fan hypotheticals: If your team could win the World Series, but you weren't allowed to watch a single game of the season, would you take it?

If you say no, isn't that awfully self-centered? Presumably the team will live on after you've sloughed off this mortal coil, so are you saying you don't care if they go 0-for-the-rest-of-eternity? Are you really so important? Don't you wish them well whether your butt's on the couch or not?

But if you say yes, isn't that horribly bloodless? Aren't you just in love with numbers? What, exactly, celebrates you from the average Yankee fan?

One game doesn't make this argument — one game is like missing one of those small chapters in a 19th-century novel. Eliza visited the vicar, decided his advice was worthless, and returned home to find her youngest sister had become smitten with an officer. You'll probably find out all that again in the next chapter anyway, just as the prelude to Pedro's telecast will include Jae Seo persevering, Castro and Williams coming through and the Mets understandably shying from collisions.

But that said, the larger thought experiment stands, as you and I have argued before. As I recall (I trust your memory will be better), when confronted with this hypothetical you looked in rapid succession amused and wary and concerned, and then asked: “Could I watch the season-highlights video?” To which I replied no — you could never glean any more context than offered on random SportsCenter clips and from the written word. No highlight videos, no ESPN Classic, no cast of characters, no ebb and flow of the season.

My vote is no — it's not worth it. I've got to watch — not every game, witness tonight, but enough of them so the season can become a story, full of heroes and villains and plot twists and a conclusion in the first days of October or (God willing) weeks later. We fans may not be good enough to play or close enough to the clubhouse to understand the psychological work of keeping a team on the beam, but we're part of this family nonetheless, and without us it's a hollow affair. We're the ones cheering when things go right and booing when things go wrong and even (in the case of Shea) booing when we've decided someone's in for a licking, justified or un-. Fans can lift you up and bring you down, be smart and infuriatingly obtuse, but without us it's 50 rich guys playing in an empty park, and no title means anything.

That said, I'll do my best to be on-station tomorrow. A 3-3 road trip — and this whole crazy season, observed or not — remains within our grasp. What that means, I don't know. But it's part of this story, however it ends up being writ. So I'll be there. It's all I can do, but it's not nothing.

Gerald Williams? Homering? Doubling? Stealing third? Scoring an insurance run? Leading the way to victory?

C'est la vie, say the old folks. It goes to show you never can tell.

Now if Pedro Martinez can pitch like Jae Seo and Mike Piazza can hit like Ramon Castro, we could be getting somewhere.

Go back to sleep. Nothing to see here.

This is the West Coast game I remember, the one whose inevitable return I've been dreading for more than four months. It's the one that ends with Roger McDowell balking somebody home or Dave Telgheder giving way to Doug Linton giving way to utter dismay. (Brian Bohanon and Barry Manuel also work in this equation.) I knew it was coming sooner or later. Yeah, the last game in San Diego was horrible, but that was a different kind of horrible. This was standard-issue Chavez Rotten. It's part of the package. You don't want it but you have to accept it. It's an integral component of nearly every Mets season.

Think of the Dodger Do-In as a rite of passage.

Since you tuned out and turned in, let me fill you in on what you missed:

Total fucking bullshit is what you missed. Do the details really fucking matter? Just know that it started late, it went long, it wound up in a walk-off, it revolved around somebody nobody ever heard of flinging his batting helmet in jubilation like he's David Ortiz (which he may as well have been) and it probably finished, for the eighth or ninth time, our chances to advance this season.

Friday night's/Saturday morning's game sustained itself far enough for the keen-eared listener to understand just how obviously in the offing the loss was. Gary and Eddie (great guy, wonderful guy…announcing's just not his strong suit) kept going on about how endless the game was and how it was going to lap the Saturday afternoon start, ha-ha. When Eddie made that point one too many times, I could feel a Dioner Navarro home run off Braden Looper in my bones. Actually, I could sense something like that coming when the guys insisted the Mets couldn't win until Cam came out from under anesthesia. Nice thought, but don't say shit like that. It never, ever leads to any good.

As for the rest of the series, Jae Seo is scheduled to come back to Earth later today and the Mets will attempt to win a game started by Pedro Martinez for the first time in more than three weeks on Sunday. We figure to have a short bench and an interminable flight home.

Sweet fucking dreams. I hate L.A.

Apologies all around. I'm not going to make the end of this one.

I sincerely hope this link will magically become a happy recap, but what I did see would definitely count as an ughfest. An outside observer might think Victor Zambrano got jobbed by getting stuck with those runs pinned on his resume by Heilman, but it was one of those outings where the unfairness turns out to be perfectly fair. Victor started the night with his mechanics totally out of whack (I liked the shot of Pedro doing pitching coaching by semaphore), did the Bad Victor thing of pitching away from contact, thereby neutralizing Good Victor's movement on his pitches (Milton Bradley in the 5th was particularly infuriating, despite winding up OK), somehow turned in a glittering sixth, then paid the price for those extra pitches and making himself work too hard with those out-of-gas walks to start the 7th. Heilman, well, early ughs (why did the infield appear to be playing in on Robles' single?) and then some awfully good pitching a bit late. Roberto immediately finds his flesh in the way of another comebacker, then somehow gets out of it despite being so out of sync with Piazza before that pitch that he shrugged.

On the flipside, well, Bad Victor was lucky enough to draw Worse Weaver. Welcome back Victor Diaz, all hail David Wright, and curse the fact that Marlon Anderson's little liner was about an inch from being a very silly 93-foot RBI. Though we should have been docked a run for the mere appearance of Ice Williams in the starting lineup.

And were they actually playing Wagner? In L.A.? If there's a place where Wagner makes less sense than Los Angeles, I'd like to know about it. I'm surprised it even made a sound.

And now Padilla gets rescued by a great play by Jose Offerman, of all people, so we promptly celebrate by wasting a leadoff single. I give up. I can't remember the last time I woke up and had to check whether we won or lost, but tomorrow morning will be the next time.