I had business north of the city Thursday afternoon. By the time it wrapped up, the Mets and Padres were already in the fourth, the inning when Beltran walked, stole second and, thanks to Robert Fick forgetting to lower his shades on a foul pop into the Petco sun, got driven in by Cliff Floyd. It made for good listening as I wound my way to the Metro-North station and then, once on a 4:51, back to Grand Central.

We were in the tunnel for the final leg of the train trip when I heard David Ross send a liner sinking into shallow right-center. Howie said of Beltran and Cameron “they dive” and “they collide” — verse as play-by-play — and that the ball wasn't caught. I could tell by his the tone of his voice that it was a lot worse than that but by then we were so deep into the tunnel that I lost WFAN. Obviously whatever the aftermath of the interaction was, it wasn't good.

Usually I would shuttle from Grand Central to Times Square and then go one stop to Penn, but given that I was left hanging by lack of reception, I opted to trot outside and determine just what had happened to our guys. Maybe I'd get an update and then head back down to the subway. The first thing I heard when I tuned back in was, “Our prayers go out to Mike Cameron.”

With that, I decided to walk through the humidity. Five blocks west, eight blocks south — not a big deal but it felt vital. It felt like I needed to be there with my team, with my centerfielder, with my rightfielder. They weren't going to magically heal just because my ears were directed their way, yet I had to be with them somehow.

After 9/11, I remember berating myself for the manner in which I took Mets' injuries so seriously and didn't worry nearly as much about the health of the people I'm related to by blood. I had the feeling after that week that I would never take baseball so life-and-death again. You know how that went and I think we'd both agree that to some extent that it's better to live a little for what we love. Still, I don't know what to make of my reaction today. Our announcers described it in such chilling terms, as the worst collision they ever saw, and that would have to include Mookie-Lenny, Blocker-Heep, Theodore-Hahn. Those were bad. This was worse?

As I walked to Penn Station, I couldn't decide if the game mattered anymore. Not in the ur-sense that I pondered in September 2001 but this game in particular. How could I even think of something as Philistine as a win when two human beings were hurt, potentially very hurt? On the other hand, they got hurt trying to attain victory. That's what they do. And I was worried about them, all humanitarian impulses aside, because they were trying to attain victory. That's what I do.

Joe Randa did what Joe Randa does and put his team ahead of my team. Damn, I guess. Padres 2 Mets 1. This wasn't healing our fallen fielders either, so why not win? Yeah, why not? When the Mets came to bat in the top of the eighth and Reyes led off with a four-pitch walk, I sensed something might happen, something just.

What do I mean just? It wasn't a beanball or a brawl that took out two-thirds of our outfield. It was just a watermain of happenstance tapped into by the hustle & flow of the game, and when it broke, it was freakishly bad luck that gushed forth. Two millionaires racing hellbent for one ball…funny, if both of them had pulled up and the ball fell in, chances are we'd be poking the offending parties with a stick, branding them nonchalant so-and-so's who don't respect the sport that made them wealthy. But if they'd done that, Ross would've been held to a single and Beltran and Cameron would be in the lineup in Los Angeles. Discretion, the better part of valor and a pair of healthy flycatchers are all the rewards of 20/20 hindsight.

Reyes stole second. Offerman struck out. Then Floyd stepped up. Would he also Step Up? Of course. He's Floyd. The Man. The Last Outfielder Standing. Cliff Floyd, who spoke truth to power almost a year ago when he said, quite correctly, that there was no light at the end of the tunnel; Cliff Floyd, who this year has been lighting candles and preventing darkness. Surely Cliff would do something just.

Instead he gets hit by that pitcher with the weird transfer between his glove and his hand…Otsuka, that's him. I've had it in for him since last year (I have it in for all pitchers I've never heard of who baffle us; I have it in for a lot of pitchers). And who's the home plate ump? Our old pal Eric Cooper, he of the antennae so sensitive he could pick up an AM broadcast in Grand Central Station. Hence, the whole thing has descended from morality play to farce. I keep walking but there's not a damn thing I can do for them. Cliff drags himself to first and gives way to David Wright who, until the seventh, had been in on the most memorable defensive episode of this series. Surely, David will wreak revenge on…the Padres? The fates? I didn't know who to blame.

Wright rapped into a 6-4-3 double play. Nobody came through. The Mets were done for the eighth, the game and, though it can't be told for certain, their longshot playoff chances suddenly sounded more shot than long. I didn't get a final until I was on the 6:10 out of Penn. Word was Beltran didn't remember what happened though he was deemed generally OK. Cameron was less so but the damage wasn't as horrible as it looked like it might be.

A pretty decent substitute for victory, no?

The worst 13 minutes of the season — worrying if Mike Cameron could move under his own power, worrying not just about a suddenly little thing like the rest of his season, but about his career and his life. It's astonishing to realize that Cameron has a broken nose, multiple fractures of both cheekbones and a slight concussion and that somehow counts as good news.

[Take those 13 minutes out and you'd have a taut but frustrating loss: Castro dropping a perfect throw at home for the first run, Glavine giving up a two-out hit for the second (on a ball Beltran might well have caught), Offerman and Wright not able to bring Reyes home after a leadoff walk and steal. Take those 13 minutes out and we'd be worrying about Floyd's knee and Roberto's hand. (How'd he get to 40 without learning not to stick his pitching hand up on a comebacker?) Take those 13 minutes out and we'd grouse that given the numbers, Piazza should have been facing Trevor Hoffman instead of Castro.]

But you can't take those 13 minutes out.

As fans we constantly run the risk of falling in love with people who wind up wearing our chosen laundry — players who may be taken away by trades or leave via free agency, or who may stay but lose their roles to other players who better fit what the team needs. Go too far down that road and you wind up rooting for the person first and the team second, when the very definition of team dictates that it has to be the other way around. But days like this are different. It's not that we're not allowed to worry about team things — if the players can go back out there after seeing Cammy carted off the field and attend to the player business of working counts and making pitches and all that, there's no shame in our attending to the fan business of worrying (in a decidedly small-'w' way) about what Florida and Washington and Philadelphia and Houston will do. But the fan business comes, if it comes at all, after getting the latest report on Cameron. (And Carlos Beltran too, of course.) Tonight it's the person to worry about first, and the team a distant second. Or third. Or tenth. Or not at all.

I heard the collision walking out of my office (Howie Rose never missed a beat even as the alarm leaked into his voice) and got home just in time to hear Randa step to the plate — not long in the workaday world, a frighteningly long time on a baseball field under the circumstances. I finally saw the replay after the game and felt my eyes involuntarily shut and my face twist into my shoulder.

Joshua saw it too, and saw my reaction, and stopped, staring at the TV. I had to tell him what happened, then explain it again. That they both dove for the ball. That they didn't see each other. That it was an accident. That Carlos seemed OK but had cuts and bumps and had to stop playing. That Mike was going to the hospital where a lot of doctors could see if he'd been badly hurt, and if he had been they could help him. Then I had to explain it a third, fourth, fifth, sixth time. After the sixth time Joshua said, sensing I was getting weary of this, “I'm just worried about the Mets who got hurt.”

“So am I,” I said. “It'll be OK.”

“Daddy,” he added after a moment, sounding oddly determined. “I don't want you to do something where you could get badly hurt.”

I started to tell him that I wasn't ever going to intentionally do anything where I could get badly hurt, but that accidents happen sometimes. Then I stopped. It wasn't the time for that.

“I won't,” I said.

Could it be? It looks like it…it is! It's a victory in a previously impossible precise circumstance: The Mets won the second game of a way-out-west road series for the first time all year.

Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles and all that. The Mets put an end, at least for one supersatisfying night, to the 2005 tradition of losing the first two games (at least) of a set in The Great Beyond. Is it possible they packed their own Supply of Western Mettle? As noted Southern California resident Jed Clampett might say, weeell doggie!

Wright nearly cycles. Benson nearly no-hits (can you break up a one-hitter?). Padres nearly whitewashed. We weren't even impaled by human pitchfork Joe Randa. What's not to like? I'm sure somebody will find something, but I'm hopping blissful right now.

Most of the National League East won, too, darn it all to heck, but if you like out-of-town scores, check out the other league. Red Sox won. A's won. Indians won. White Sox won. The White Sox were playing the Yankees who fell like a drunken idiot fan into a net hundreds of feet below. Too good a night to be bothered by our competitive logjam when we can instead revel in Boston commanding the A.L. East by 5-1/2 and some combination of the Athletics and Angels leading Cleveland in the Wild Card stakes by 3-1/2.

Am I missing somebody in that playoff picture? Never mind. We've got our own mission to accomplish.

Sorry about your 7,000th Game fiasco. To cheer you up, here are some other grand junctures*, most of them courtesy of the indispensable Ultimate Mets Database.

No. 1,000: Cubs 4 Mets 3, 5/12/68

No. 2,000: Cubs 9 Mets 6, 5/22/74

No. 3,000: Mets 3 Phillies 2, 6/27/80

No. 4,000: Mets 6 Cubs 5, 9/25/86

No. 5,000: Mets 6 Rockies 1, 4/7/93

No. 6,000: Mets 7 Expos 4, 7/22/99

No. 7,011: Mets 9 Padres 1, 8/10/05

Screw math. We make our own milestones around here.

*These are corrected after we realized neither one of us should be trusted around numbers. We apologize to the concepts of mathematics and fact-checking for our misuse of both.

6,934 games, which includes eight ties, through July 26; 11 games since then for 6,945; 54 postseason games (in which we're 37-27) for 6,999.

All good, except for one thing: What's 37 + 27?

If you said “54,” you too can write follow-up posts explaining why people should have taken your warning seriously that everything you wrote's probably wrong, since you did math. Goddamn it.

If you said “64,” then you not only can do simple addition (which must be nice), but already grasped that last night was not Game No. 7,000, but Game No. 7,010. So as my nocturnal, arithmetically competent co-blogger pointed out, we lost Game No. 7,000 to the Astros, 3-2, on July 28th. But if you throw out the ties, we won the 7,000th game played to a decision, 2-0 vs. the Cubs on Saturday. Unless the mere proximity of Jace Math has rotted those calculations too, which is perfectly possible.

My only comfort is that yesterday my performance as statistician would've fit right in with the rest of the orange and blue. Metlagged again. This is getting old.

I can't stress how much I'm not kidding about how the Mets should not be allowed to cross west of the Mississippi River ever, ever again.

With Tuesday night's loss to the Padres in San Diego, their 2005 record in games played in that half of the country — The Dirty Thirty I've been dwelling on intermittently since late May — fell to 3-11. Their 2005 record in the first games of series played in that half of the country fell to 0-5.

That means the Mets are 54-44 when they don't make these treacherous trips, 57-50 if they could strike a bargain to have every series start with the second game.

When the Mets have entered a city that isn't New York for the first time this year, regardless of proximity to New York, they have gone 2-11. That means they're 55-44 when they're not getting adjusted to an apparently unfamiliar place. Such away games have finally gotten to Pedro the way they've gotten to the lot of them.

So I have a question:

WHAT THE FUDGE IS WRONG WITH THEM? Don't they fly charter flights? Don't they stay in nice hotels? Are the bases 92 feet apart in San Diego and Houston and Denver and almost every place else when the Mets are batting? Are they 88 feet apart when the other team is up? Is there some obscure “home team starts with a 3-0 lead” rule that I'm missing?

This is absurd. This is inexcusable. This is killing us. This is why we're not going to be playing in any town beyond October 2.

Nice tumbling, bare-handed, back-to-the-plate catch by Diamond Dave. Nice catch like Warren Buffett is comfortable. Very nice catch. So very nice that San Diego fans stood and cheered. They could afford to. They were home against the Mets.

There are things besides Mets games to be avoided on the West Coast. One is Larry Krueger. A take of sorts on his brain-dead contretemps at Gotham Baseball.

Six on the Coast, six back at home, then back out west for seven in Arizona and San Francisco. Buckle up!

I'm out of the business of making predictions about what this maddeningly crazy team will do next, beyond the rather obvious remark that these two trips should have a lot to say about which way the season goes. (The really frightening road trip on the calendar is 9/2-9/11, when we hit Florida and Atlanta before four in St. Louis, but first things first.)

Time to confound some numbers. We're 21-31 on the road this year, which is fairly dismal, and 2-7 in Pacific and Mountain Time, which is fairly dismaler. All-time in Pacific and Mountain? 345-472, for a .422 percentage, compared with our lofty-by-comparison .475 all-time mark. These West Coast trips, as Keith Hernandez taught me in the '86 highlight video, are never easy: We started off our existence going 3-15 on the West Coast in '62 (worst mark: 1-8 in '81), didn't win a series on the West Coast until 1965 (when we somehow beat the Giants), didn't sweep a series on the West Coast until 1968 (the first year we played .500 out that way), and didn't post a winning West Coast record until '69, when we went 11-7. (We also topped .500 in Pacific/Mountain in '72, '75, '85, '86 [13-5, best mark ever], '87, '88, '99 and '02.) Postseason (included above), we're 4-7 in Pacific and Mountain, though we might be 5-6 or even 5-5 if Yogi Berra had been thinking clearly. (Is 32 years long enough to let something go? Hell no!)

A last interesting bit of numerical trivia: Based on Ultimate Mets Database plus my calculations, tonight is the 7,000th game that counts in the history of the New York Mets. 6,934 games, which includes eight ties, through July 26; 11 games since then for 6,945; 54 postseason games (in which we're 37-27) for 6,999.

Sheesh. You'd think somebody would throw a no-hitter once every 7,000 games.

* This blog entry comes with a healthy portion of Jace Math (TM), meaning everything in it is probably wrong.

** I so wasn't kidding: Embarrassed correction here.

What you saw, I only heard.

Today was a day for what would normally be called errands and chores, except these were no ordinary errands and chores. These were errands and chores the way a pitching assignment is a pitching assignment when you're, say, brought in to pitch to Derrek Lee with the game on the line. Lots of painting — painting cabinetry that's already been painted, painting in pain-inducing positions so that one doesn't get paint over all the other freshly painted things drying too slowly in a too-small room, cleaning up with paint thinner and trying not to pass out, removing stray paint from…well, from most everything in sight because I kind of suck at painting, or more properly I'm pretty good at painting but suck at paying attention to painting all the time, kind of like the way Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran are darn fine baseball players but need to focus on taking ball four and not pulling everything. Respectively.

And it was a day for plugging up the burrows in the yard recently and probably still being used by rats who are supposed to have eaten bait and be bleeding out internally, a fate they don't really deserve except, like Marlins and Phillies and Nationals and Astros, they want to live where we want to live but we want to live there all alone, so sorry fellas. (The Jason-Emily homestead, much like Shea, is showing its age.) Not that you asked, but filling rat burrows is a loathsome task best left to structural engineers, and not liberal-arts majors who know how to use Google and are tackling this task with steel wool and DAP and cement patch and hardware cloth and loose dirt, applied in somewhat random order, kind of like the way the Mets construct a bullpen. (Steel wool? Feh. Send this down to Virginia. Let's see if these Koo-and-Graves brand aromatic wood shavings stop their chewing!) Sticking your fingers into the darkness of subterranean rat burrows to shove in agglomerations of rodent-inconveniencing stuff is a close-your-eyes-and-bite-your-lip-horrible task I'd rather not ever do again, kind of like a West Coast swing. (Say, what's on the calendar next w– oh, shit. Didn't we just go there?) Oh, and throw in a bunch of hoofing back and forth to the hardware store on the other side of the neighborhood, replacing the wrong tool with the right tool, getting more paint, and generally being infuriatingly inefficient while not finding anyone else to blame for it. Kind of like yo-yoing endlessly around .500.

Well, that was my dreamworld, with the paint- and rat-fearing mind seeking escape in idle thought about the Mets. Because everywhere I went, there were Gary and Howie riding shotgun. Goofing on Koo's interpreter, as you noted. Offering hosannas to Cliff Floyd for introducing “courtesy run” to the lexicon. Reminding us that Greg Maddux's first start was against a 1986 post-clinch team of JV Mets, with the varsity sleeping off a deservedly long night. Noting that Lee Mazzilli, John Gibbons and Terry Francona, AL East managers present and very recent, played in that game. Keeping you thinking and laughing and nodding as they always do. (I caught a very little of FOX, including being patronized by a talking cartoon baseball, which made playing blindman's bluff with the biting end of Norway rats seem briefly less terrible.)

Sometimes I wonder if I'd love baseball on the radio as much if I hadn't been spoiled for so many years by Murph, and Gary, and now by Gary and Howie. Probably not — but then again, to me baseball and radio were made for each other. It's a long season and each game is pretty long too — too long for even an uber-fan to stop his or her life for every game, too long to pay laser-like attention to every inning. But you don't need to: Once you've got the game down to where you can translate the word picture painted for you, you can go about your business with the game whispering in your ear. And, really, isn't that what it does anyway, whether or not there's a game unfolding over the airwaves? Every day of every year, whether you're wondering about the rest of the schedule or if Pedro could win 20 or how the hell Benitez could have walked friggin' Paul O'Neill or if Fonzie will ever come back or how they let Vince Coleman hit Doc with a golf club or when you'll next see a game as amazing as the 10-run inning or if Lastings Milledge is the real thing or what Mike Phillips is doing right now or when we'll see blueprints of the new park or how many up Houston is, the game is whispering in your ear. Whether you're running errands or at work or looking numbly out the window at the snow, there's the game.

I hear we've even got one tomorrow. Night game. Zambrano vs. Zambrano, ain't that funny? Looper'll be rested, that's good. Minky should be back in there — another good day and he might have to shave his head. Think Reyes can extend his streak? Think we can sweep? And hey, have you looked at the wild-card standings tonight?

Can't wait to hear how it unfolds.

Ever have one of those days that feels perfectly normal while it's in progress but is totally bleeping surreal once you take a step back from it?

I went to the game today. I have the ticket stub to prove it. The Mets won 2-0. It's in my Log, so I'm duck positive it happened. But everything about it, which proceeded in seemingly ordinary fashion, may have actually taken place in the corners of my subconscious.

Consider:

• I only get a few hours of sleep and relentlessly hit my snooze button until 11:47 so I come close to missing my 12:15 train. (I'm usually up and at 'em when a game is on the line but today I rush like Reyes to get ready).

• Despite worrying that I would cut it close, I find the time to get all three of my papers, including the last Newsday at the convenience store next to the train station (I'm always dreaming about stores selling out of newspapers; it's also worth noting that the Saturday edition of Newsday is a little hard to come by because they try to push an early Sunday version that I have no use for…and I got the last one).

• I'm on the 12:15 with my plan working to a tee — get off at Jamaica and board the train that immediately follows to Woodside, just as I've done several times before this season. Except it's the 11:15 that has a Woodside train trailing behind it; if I wait for the Woodside connection at Jamaica now, I'll be very late in meeting my friend who has the tickets — it's an uncharacteristic commuting mistake, the kind I deep down fear making.

• So I get off at Jamaica and search out the E to Roosevelt Ave./74th St. (something I've never done for a Mets game) where I figure I'll get the 7 to Shea.

• On that E, I'm sitting and reading that Newsday when a pregnant woman steps on and seems to have nowhere to sit. Years ago I read an article in which one expectant mother after another complained that nobody on the subway has the manners to give up a seat. Since then, I've always remained on the lookout for a with-child passenger and today, on a train I had no intention of being on, here's my opportunity. I scoot over. She smiles. My good intentions are rewarded.

• When the E gets to Roosevelt, I wind my way up to the 7 platform (often wondered about connecting this way but had never done it before; it seems to take forever).

• The 7 arrives and the first thing I notice is someone in a Chicago Bears jersey with a name I don't recognize: TERRELL. Then I see a Cubs t-shirt with RAMIREZ 16 on the back. There's even a girl wearing shades and affecting the Ditka look. I see far more Cubs fans than Mets fans. This is displaced déjà vu to last September when I arrived at Shea for what would become The Victor Diaz Game and was overwhelmed by how many Chicagoans had alighted in Flushing. It was spooky then and it is spooky now.

• As we hit Shea, it is inching toward game time. I told my friend I'd meet her around 1 and it's nearly 1:15. I had wanted to swing by the advance ticket window but realize I will have to wait (everybody from Dorothy to Toto has had the dream of being thisclose to a desired destination but not quite making it).

• I meet my friend and she's wearing a black Mets cap from the 2000 World Series and a navy t-shirt that says CHICAGO on the front and MADDUX 31 on the back. Tell me that's not weird.

• My friend reveals she's carrying a Mets shirt to change into once Greg Maddux leaves the game. Tell me that's not weird.

• She has these tickets because her brother got them through work this week. Her brother has the exact same name, first and last, as one of my oldest friends in the world, someone I rarely hear from but did this week because he invited Stephanie and me to a barbecue — which I had to decline because I'm going to a baseball game at the very same time he's lighting his coals…with tickets supplied by somebody with the same name as his.

• We go through the turnstiles and they're handing out Mets binders to kids, but not us, another dreamlike disappointment. What makes it stranger is instead of merely ignoring me, the girl who's handing them out tells me to enjoy the game. I reflexively say “thank you” and she cheerily says “you're welcome!” Now could that really happen at Shea?

• Our seats are on Field Level. Now it's totally a dream because I've been to eleven games this season and every one of them has had me in Mezzanine. Not only is it Field Level, but it's as close to home plate — aligning with the pitcher's mound on the first base side — as I've been in years. Plus, it's in the second-to-last row of boxes, so it's a view I haven't really seen of Shea. After 300-plus games, there aren't too many of those.

• We arrive just as the game is starting. There are lots of people surrounding us but nobody seems all that interested in the Mets. There are scattered applause for the Cubs, but it's nothing like last September. These people just aren't into baseball. They're talking on cell phones and yakking about their jobs and playing with their hair. There's this one woman in particular who's squawking like a barnyard bird about everything but the Mets. She sounds like this horrible person named Myra we used to work with. My friend makes me all the more aware of these people by pointing out how annoying they are but for some reason it doesn't bother me that much. Strange, I'm usually sensitive to non-Mets talk at Mets games.

• My friend in the Maddux shirt and the Mets cap won't quite root for the Mets but won't quite root against them as they build a run in the first. She seems to be on both sides of the aisle but without a foot planted firmly in either. Not too many people root the way she does.

• She hands me something from her bag. It's a plastic cup that with a holographic image of the 2004 World Series trophy, and the cup says the Red Sox are World Champions. What's this doing at Shea? Wait, there's something in the cup. It's a t-shirt (oddly, the second time this week that somebody has thoughtfully given me a t-shirt at Shea). It says YANKEES CHOKED: WORST COLLAPSE IN SPORTS HISTORY! I get a big kick out of it. She tells me she got both of these items at Fenway Park. Huh? We're at Shea Stadium. How does a person just go to Fenway Park? She explains that she went with a friend from Minnesota. Minnesota? What an odd state to bring up. They went to see the Twins and the Red Sox. The Twins? But we're Mets fans. What are you talking about? For the rest of the game, she peppers her running commentary on the game and the annoying people around us with what Twins fans think and say and such. I must be imagining this. My friend is a Mets fan. I mean she's a Cubs fan. But now she's telling me about Bert Blyleven and Michael Cuddyer…and Fenway Park!. It's so weird!

• Jae Seo is pitching for the Mets. Jae Seo? I last saw him at RFK Stadium. He isn't even on the team anymore, is he? Why am I dreaming about Jae Seo? But Jae Seo is pitching brilliantly. He's outpitching Greg Maddux. For a while, he doesn't give up a hit to anyone except to Greg Maddux. (How freaky!) And then Greg Maddux steals a base on Jae Seo. (How freakier!) When Jae Seo finishes another strong inning, the DiamondVision shows a whole section of fans waving ThunderStix with Korean writing on them. (How freakiest! I remember seeing those the only other time I was here for a Jae Seo start, but where did all those ThunderStix suddenly come from?)

• Aramis Ramirez, the guy whose shirt was being worn on the 7 train, fouls off one of Jae's pitches. It's coming back toward us. It's landing in the Loge boxes above us and some guy is about to catch it in his glove, but he drops it and it falls in behind us. Who should get it but that squawking Myra woman? She immediately starts babbling about how she needs to get it autographed or it should come autographed or something. OK, this is too bizarre. It HAS to be a dream.

• I suddenly realize I'm on the Field Level, an area that always seems so forbidden when I'm in Mezzanine. I want to get something to eat, but not just anything because I know they must sell really special food on this level. So I get up to walk around and see what's available. I find the Daruma stand. It's the one that has Japanese food. I love Japanese food! It's my favorite! I remember this place from seasons past. It used to be in the right field food court. Then it was in the “international” food court in left field. Now it's just standing by itself. Hmmm… I look at the menu and the prices are all obscene, except for one. The Bento is $10. I love Bento boxes! Who'd have thought they'd have them at Shea? So I ask the lady for one. I expect it to come out from a refrigerator, but she just hands me the one that's on the counter and tries to interest me in some shumai. I decline and take my Bento, worried that it's been sitting out too long.

• I bring the Bento Box back to my seat and my friend warns me that I may have made a bad choice given my delicate constitution. She may be right, I think. I'm always choosing the wrong thing to eat at the ballpark. I always regret it. But I say, no, Japanese food has never steered me wrong before. Yeah, she says, but it's Shea. Hmmm…

• I start to eat the contents very fast. It's a very unusual Bento Box. It has a big chunk of salmon. I don't notice any chopsticks (which I can't use anyway) and I didn't think to ask for a fork, so I start to eat the salmon with my hands. I start to eat everything — some fried chickeny thing, some vegetables, some grapes (what are grapes doing in a Bento?) — with my hands. And I eat fast because although we are in the second to last row of this section and it's now 3 o'clock, the sun is suddenly beating down and I'm beginning to worry about the salmon and everything going bad in the heat. I finish quickly and my friend hands me a tiny bottle of Purell, that hand-sanitizing lotion. I pour a little on my hands but she tells me to use a lot, that she has two big bottles at home. I don't ever recall discussing Purell at a baseball game. Or using Purell.

• As I shove the mostly empty box back in the bag, I find a fork was in there the whole time. Where did that come from?

• Although the Mets are winning 2-0 and Jae Seo is beating the great Greg Maddux, all I can think about is how I may have made a terrible mistake in eating what I ate. I just want the game to be over. All at once I hate all the people my friend hates. The Myra woman. The hair twirler. The cell talkers. There's a guy a few rows ahead of us wearing a Piazza shirt and he gets up every few minutes to stretch which blocks my friend's view of Greg Maddux warming up. She points this out each time he gets up. Then she shows me the shirt she brought to replace her Maddux shirt is a Piazza shirt. And Mike isn't even playing.

• “Look,” she says. “Fred Wilpon is throwing Cracker Jack to the fans from his luxury box.” And he is. What is Fred Wilpon doing in my dream?

• I can't concentrate on any of this anymore. I have to wash my hands and get more water. Both will keep me from getting sick. I take my radio with me. Dae-Sung Koo is replacing Jae Seo. Koo? The guy who didn't pitch for two weeks is now pitching every day? HUH? Gary Cohen says something about how the Mets' Korean interpreter, a man named Lee, is sure to be a busy man after the game. Who is Gary talking about? Lee? Like Carlos Lee? Derrek Lee? Usually you clear things up, Gary. Now you're just confusing me.

• I wash my hands and drink my water. I feel a little less anxious, a little less restless. Koo gets an out but with Derrek Lee due up, Willie replaces him with Roberto Hernandez, appearing for the first time since pitching so poorly earlier this week. Out of nowhere, one guy in our section, a section notoriously not interested in the Mets, stands up. He's wearing a blue Mets cap and he too looks a little like Ditka. He starts screaming at Willie to not bring in Hernandez, that he stinks. And in a manner I can't imagine I would affect in real life, I start passively-aggressively yelling back ostensibly at nobody but essentially at him: “JESUS CHRIST! HOW CAN YOU GET DOWN ON ROBERTO HERNANDEZ? HE HAD A BAD WEEK? WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” I'm completely incensed. Even the Myra woman notices my shouting but that guy doesn't. Regardless, I don't get this way.

• Hernandez strikes out Derrek Lee. He preserves the lead so Seo can still get the win. I take a few steps down from my seat so I can be parallel to the guy who was yelling at Willie and I start screaming “NICE CALL WILLIE!” Truly, I don't do that sort of thing.

• Braden Looper works a 1-2-3 ninth and the game ends, but the dreamlike quality of the afternoon doesn't end with the win. I now insist to my friend that we have to go to the advance ticket window. It's been in the back of my mind all afternoon. I was going to buy tickets for one game, but now decide to do it for two — one of them is Umbrella Night, something the Mets haven't held in years. Our tickets to today's game, the one we just saw, include Diamond Club passes. We've never been to the Diamond Club, not really. Just earlier this week I wrote something about the Mets Hall of Fame and how it's near the Diamond Club but I say, no, we have to go the advance ticket window now. After games, it's become my custom to make haste to the subway so I can get to Woodside. Today that would be helpful because Stephanie will be taking a train home from the city and if I play my cards right, I can meet up with her and we can go home together. But no, the advance ticket window is more important than anything. I must go there now!

• There are two lines when we get there. One is long. One is short. The long line is filled with Cubs fans. We get on the short line. The short one moves quickly but just before I get to the window, my friend points out Fred Wilpon again. He's leaving through the executive entrances and is being escorted to his limo. Two Fred Wilpon sightings in one day — two more than I've had in my entire life up to now?

• I buy two pairs of tickets, one for Umbrella Night and one for the night before. It's tremendously discounted. Seriously, there's an LIRR discount. And now I have to go to the LIRR. I have to get on the 7 and get to Woodside and reach my wife and see if there's any way we can go home together. Yet I don't move all that fast because I don't want to deal with the clock. I didn't want to deal with the clock when I was supposed to wake up and I don't want to deal with it now even though the railroad runs on a tight schedule.

• We get to the 7 and get on a car that is to the right of where I almost always make sure to get on when I'm going to Woodside. I try to grab us two seats but can only find one. I give it to my friend. When she gets off at 74th St. (where I got on earlier for the first time ever), I'm about to sit down in that seat but see a woman who, except for not being pregnant and being older, looks like the woman I scooted over for on the way to 74th St. earlier today. So I say, “please, sit down,” and she does. She's wearing a blue Mets cap adorned with all sorts of Mets pins. I start to tell her how much I admire her collection. She tells me all about it, how she changes them constantly. I ask if she takes out the pins for the players who have been traded. She says yes, except for Tom Seaver and Darryl Strawberry. The I start telling her that I have a pin collection but it's in a frame. I'd tell her more, but I have to get off. Woodside is here.

• At Woodside, I look at my watch. My guess is Stephanie is on a train that is about to leave Penn Station. I will call her in a few minutes. But before that, I'm going to leave the station and go across the street to get some ice cream at Baskin-Robbins. I've never done that in Woodside but I reason that if there's any problem from the Bento Box (and none has revealed itself) that ice cream will soothe it. Did I mention I'm wearing my 1997 ice cream cap — the style modeled by Bernard Gilkey and John Olerud if you scroll down far enough — for the fifth game in a row that I've gone to and the Mets have won all five and now I'm buying ice cream in Woodside instead of being upstairs on the platform? That same friend who was with me today, incidentally, was with me the day I bought the cap more than eight years ago.

• I choose Rocky Road. One scoop. I get back on the escalator to the LIRR. It's a long ride. I stake out a space on the platform, finish the ice cream and call Stephanie. It rings several times before she answers. She is indeed on a 4:36 out of Penn Station. It's about 4:42. I tell her where I am and that I'm waiting for a 4:50. I also tell her that her train should probably whiz by me any minute. It does. She tells me she can see me and she waves to me. But I can't see her. Hey, I say, I know — instead of you going home now and me coming home later, get off at Jamaica and I'll meet you there. Sit in that spot where we sat a couple of Sundays ago when we took the Wolfs to the game. It will be great! She agrees to do so.

• I briefly turn my radio back on. A caller to WFAN is going on about the 1992 World Series between the Blue Jays and the Phillies (it was 1993) and how the Phillies let Wild Bill pitch so much (it was Wild Thing) and his point was that pitching coaches like this guy on the Mets, Anderson (Peterson) don't know what they're doing. I shut off the radio.

• The 4:50 comes to Woodside. I get out my ten-trip ticket. I remember that earlier, because I got off at Jamaica for the E, they never punched that trip a second time. This means if I can avoid a conductor, I can save a trip, so to speak. It becomes the most important concern in my world at this moment. But shortly before Jamaica, they call for Woodside tickets. I reluctantly give in to the system. Then, moments before we arrive, another conductor shows up and asks for the ticket again. No, I say, you already got me. (They never ask for a ticket twice between Woodside and Jamaica.)

• I get off at Jamaica. I'm making my way to where I told Stephanie to wait for me. As I approach the escalator, I see two people. They're not Korean. But they're holding those Korean ThunderStix.

• I come up the escalator. As it rises, who do I see sitting and reading a book but my beautiful wife. It's the best sight I've seen all day in the least likely place. She and I have been through Jamaica countless times in our lives together and separately but never have we decided to meet like this. It's so new. It doesn't seem real, but it is.

• And we head home and get home and here I am, only now noticing how surreal a seemingly normal day can feel sometimes.

Especially the part about Looper working a 1-2-3 ninth.

It was the ninth inning and to be honest I wasn't paying that much attention. We seemed to have it in the bag (which I understand is different from having it in the bag, but it felt OK) and the only mystery remaining was to see who would be pitching the final frame. I was delighted that the starter had preserved the bullpen even though he gave up five runs. Not a terrible night to give up five runs, so I was feeling good about things where that was concerned.

I glanced up at the screen and saw a lefty delivering the ball and as he lunged forward, I saw a 7 on his back. He induced a tapper back to the mound from Jeromy Burnitz, which was a delightful first out. I said to the screen, in appreciation, “way to go, Tommy…”

Tommy?

Did I just say what I think I said? Did I refer to the icy and eternally detestable presence known as Tom Glavine in terms both familiar and indicative of endearment? Did I just call Thomas Michael Glavine “Tommy”?

I don't believe what I just heard.

Technically, I had just called Dae-Sung Koo “Tommy” — told ya I wasn't paying close attention — but the reality of the situation is I have, after 2-2/3 grudging years, accepted Tom Glavine as a Met.

I tried to wriggle out of it. I tried to morph “Tommy” into “Tommyister Koo!” but it was no use. I've finally given up. I no longer hate Tom Glavine the Met. I still disdain Tom Glavine the Brave and everything he did on the field and off it while he was One Of Them, but I can't hold history above the present day any longer. I have neither the energy nor the luxury to keep spitting at a relatively dependable starting pitcher who plies his trade for New York's National League franchise.

This has been developing all year. In 2003, I couldn't look at him. In 2004, I couldn't argue with his making the All-Star team but I didn't exactly embrace it. When he had that cab accident I sort of felt sorry for him but only as a human being, not as a Met. And as documented here from time to time, I've been to slow through 2005 to unclench my jaw over the concept of Tom Glavine identifying himself as One Of Us.

What paved the road to acceptance was my businesslike approach to the whole thing. A couple of months ago, I decided we needed the best Tom Glavine we could get. His goals and our goals were largely mutual. What do I care if he gets 300 wins? I mean that in the sense of why should I mind if he ties Burleigh Grimes for thirtieth place all-time with his 270th victory as he did last night? W's for him are also W's for us.

Eureka!

So I stopped rooting against Tom Glavine and started rooting for him. First nominally. Then sincerely, if not terribly enthusiastically. When he'd fall apart, I could always lean on the crutch of “aaah, it's Glavine, whad'ya expect?” But you can only relish somebody's failures in your favorite laundry for so long before you realize how counterproductive it is.

Of late, there is little to complain about where Tom Glavine's pitching is concerned. Since the second half commenced, he has turned in an admirable start every time out. Friday night's was not hot stuff on paper (8 IP, 5 ER) but it was just what was required for a game when we scored nine and needed to keep Roberto from telling Willie how good he felt.

Tom Glavine did the job for the Mets. He helped get us a win, a commodity we'd lacked since Tuesday.

Way to go, guy wearing 47 in the home pinstripes.