What's too good to be true, Jace?

Why, I'm glad you asked. Take your pick:

1. Thinking that after playing impressively at home, we'd go to two of the National League's more offense-friendly parks and do something other than play little ball, and not very good little ball at that. Even John McGraw and Ring Lardner liked the occasional double. Kris Benson didn't pitch wonderfully tonight, but he could have been lights-out and it wouldn't have mattered with only one team able to lift a ball over that left-field fence. (Ask Pedro about that.)

2. Thinking we could ever beat a rookie pitcher. Let alone one sporting the singularly ridiculous name of “Wandy.” This is becoming a year-in, year-out thing, like it's infected the laundry that Charlie Samuels hangs in the locker for each new resident. The mystery isn't how we got stomped by Wandy Rodriguez, but how we ever beat Sean Henn. There's no rational explanation for this.

3. Thinking that when a reasonable trade rumor comes along it won't get queered. If we could actually get Manny Ramirez and Danys Baez in a three-team deal for Mike Cameron, Yusmeiro Petit and Lastings Milledge, I'd pull the trigger before you could say, “Ball four from Ishii.” Milledge may be a monster, but he's a monster who's just cracked Double-A, and most of those turn out to be a lot less big and scary than they're hyped to be. (Particularly when they're ours: Meet Mr. Escobar, to name just one in a long, depressing lineage.) Manny's a monster right now, quirks and all. And Baez is a lot better closer than Braden Looper. And this is a trade that would still make sense on Opening Day 2006, which looks like it's going to start coming into focus about a week from now. And it would leave Omar still with starting pitching to swap once Trachsel returns. So of course now there's a snag. Back to throwing up at the idea of Soriano's defense and Arlington/Not Arlington splits, I suppose.

4. Thinking I was a fool for throwing in the towel. I'm not throwing it, because we're still within striking distance of that wild card, provided we actually start playing decent baseball again. But I'm not holding on that tightly, either.

My night last night:

* Watch Pedro admiringly. Grouse that Taveras' bunt should have been an error on Wright. Realize Dave O'Brien is right to note it would have been an extraordinary play, and should indeed be a hit. Grumble.

* Keep watching Pedro admiringly. Grouse that Everett's home run would have been a flyout at Shea. Realize Keith Hernandez is right to note it would have been gone there, too. Grumble some more.

* Watch Pedro ruefully after he gives up a hit — to the pitcher! — that I can't grumble about. Remember that this is the Mets, that we're nearly 7,000 games without a no-hitter, and I should just stop thinking about them. Grumble about that.

* Fall asleep. Last memory is of Bruntlett (whoever he is) on second and Pedro looking determined. Not too concerned about situation, but perhaps that's just the curtain of sleep getting hauled down.

* Wake up at the sound of alarm in a human voice, tired eyes focus on a baseball bouncing in the gap. Huh? Wha? Did Bruntlett score? No, it's a double for Ausmus, and the ballgame is over. Buh…wha..it was 2-1 Mets just a second ago. Whahappen?

Whatever happened, it's over now.

One of the happiest nights of my recent Mets life materialized in the wee hours of January 9, 2005 when word filtered up from Texas that Carlos Beltran would not re-sign with the Astros. It took a little sorting and a lot of clicking, but at exactly 1 AM I was able to send to my little group of fellow travelers an e-mail entitled, “Batting third, the Mets centerfielder, No. 15…” In it, I had cut and pasted a Houston Chronicle article that came topped with a delicious hed and subhed:

He's gone: Astros fail to reach deal with Beltran

All-Star center fielder to sign with Mets

The only thing I added to my note was, “If the Houston Chronicle is correct, let La Fiesta Del Beltran begin.”

I sent six more e-mails in the next 40 minutes. This one summed it up best:

Not knowing the contract, the length, the future at large (though I do recall similar giddiness on December nights in the distant past at the thought that we outbid the world for Bobby Bonilla — the first time, of course), it's the most wonderful feeling in the world to know we got a guy that EVERYBODY in the baseball world assigned to the Skanks. As recently as this morning, I was reading columns that said forget the Mets, he's going back to Houston and if he doesn't, just you wait for George.

What a winter. First Pedro then Carlos. Pedro was a controversial signing, you'll recall. Some watched him wilt against his “daddies” a couple of times and thought that was a sign of decline to come. But almost everybody wanted Carlos. I know I wanted Carlos. When we kicked off this exercise in Faith and Fear on February 16, the first thing I wanted to talk about was No. 15, the Mets centerfielder, batting third:

Carlos Beltran, of course, is the reason we're feeling — what's it called? — oh yes, optimistic. I stayed up all night waiting for Dr. Minaya to deliver our bouncing Beltran in mid-January. It was the best night the Mets ever had in the dead of winter. A contract of seven years? Hell, give him seventy. Doesn't matter. Why? Because we wanted him and we got him. We got the best player out there. We didn't sign Tom Hausman and Elliott Maddox, but a real free agent. We're all much happier, better looking and five inches taller as a result.

I also felt compelled to point out that someday the fans would tire of Carlos because seven years is a long time and we turn on everybody eventually, but mostly I was sure he was our savior.

My goodness that was a long time ago. Six months? Seems like six years. Seems like Beltran has skipped over the heroics and has arrived at his Fin de Siecle at the same time as Piazza has reached his.

But it has only been six months. I'd like to think the Mets signed Beltran for seven years not because Scott Boras played them like a country fiddle but because they expect him to produce for the better part of a decade. Within such a time frame, it is reasonable to expect a talented player to endure a span of four so-so months, half of those hamstrung by an injury. What was totally unexpected was that relatively brief stretch of mediocrity would lead off the contract's first year.

When Carlos Beltran returned to Minute Maid Park Thursday night, the sell-out crowd booed the way people with a phlegm buildup clear their throats — continuously. It was apparently a big deal to the Astros fans. Didn't even occur to me it would be, but they have their own issues. They were big on laying into Mike Hampton when he pitched for us. Metsopotamians can't say much about giving the bum's rush to a player who meant a ton to a franchise's playoff push but then left for bigger money. Hell, we did it to Hampton. The Houston fans still came off as yahoos. It's a yahoo town, so par for the course.

What struck me was not the ingratitude expressed toward Beltran for lifting their team on his back and carrying it within an inch of their first World Series. It's that they found him worth spewing so much venom over for nine solid innings. Yeah, he mouthed the words athletes mouth when they're negotiating, hinting that he could stand to spend the next seven years in Houston. But who takes that sort of tripe seriously? I know it's a different media market, but didn't living in the same state as the Texas Rangers when Alex Rodriguez committed to life in Arlington teach them anything?

I'm under no illusion that it was Carlos Beltran's childhood dream to be a New York Met, not even a New Met. If the Yankees or Cubs had ponied up or if the Astros had relented on a no-trade, he would've found a way to have always wanted to be one of them. We paid, he signed. That's how guys become yours these days. Grow up Houston.

Carlos Beltran's been a nice player for us. Covers a lot of ground. Sometimes plays too deep. Dives like an idiot into first on occasion (he's not alone). Hasn't hit nearly enough. He'll be here for 6-1/3 more seasons. Something tells me he's going to be fine. I'll go so as far to bet he'll be worth booing in yahoo outposts like Houston eventually. At the present time, he's not.

The actual savior we signed last winter was also on the field Thursday night. That, of course, was the alleged problem child Pedro Martinez. He was magic, just as he's been every time out in 2005. The Mets wasted his eight sparkling innings, his muscling up to escape a late jam and his desire to compete. How much does he want to be The Man? So much so that he was ready to go out there and hit for himself in the top of the ninth after throwing 117 pitches on an allegedly troublesome toe. In the wake of perhaps the most irritating loss since that potentially fatal case of the chokes in Pittsburgh, you can still stand back and marvel at what Pedro Martinez has done for the Mets.

July may not be a very good time to trade for a savior, but January is hardly the month to identify which player will be your salvation.

I, as a Faith and Fear in Flushing blogger in good standing, hereby pledge to:

1) not suffer two-game losing streaks in greater proportions than I enjoy four-game winning streaks as joy should be twice as good as sorrow is bad, not the other way around.

2) not blame time zones for our problems no matter the havoc it wreaks on my biorhythms because doing so will only encourage my team to take the same tack.

3) not underrate an opponent, even in my head let alone on our blog, given that an opponent can stop being offensively tepid at just the wrong moment.

4) not overreact to any trade rumor floated between now and 4 PM Sunday — and take a deep breath after learning whatever actually happens or doesn't happen in that realm.

5) prepare reasonably acceptable alibis for breaking any and all of these pledges when emotion gets the best of me for I am not only human, I am a Mets fan.

Overheard on the red-eye from Colorado to Texas:

Are you there God? It's me, Victor. Thank you for the runs. Please don't let them trade me to Texas.

Wednesday with Extra Innings was a 15-game treat. Thanks to ESPN's national cablecast rights and the vagaries of the schedule, every pitch in the bigs was available. Dipped in and out of MLB all day and night. Was particularly taken with the ghosts who haunted my screen.

• There were Jay Payton and Marco Scutaro, not good enough to be Mets, plenty good enough to be streaking A's.

• There was Joe McEwing striking out in a critical situation for the Royals who won anyway.

• There was John Olerud being the first Red Sock to slap post-save hands with Curt Schilling, still jarring to see considering their roles on opposing sides of a wonderful walkoff six years ago.

• There was Al Leiter hanging on and Hideo Nomo fluttering across the Bottom Line as the next candidate to join him at the Last Ditch Pitching Café.

• There was David Weathers closing out the Dodgers after Jason Phillips failed to throw out Ryan Freel stealing five different times, a new Red record.

• And in the game of the night, the briefest of Met apparitions — Gary Matthews, Jr. and James Baldwin (!) — led Texas in the outlasting of Baltimore, 11-8, in eleven innings. Melvin Mora struck out on three ugly swings to defuse a rally that could have won in it for the home-O's in the ninth, but the ghosts who really scared up my attention were Javy Lopez and Sammy Sosa. Lopez was a villain of the first order in Atlanta. Now he's an A.L. East helper. I cheered his game-tying tater. As for Sosa, a periodic Mets-haunter during his Chicago epoch, he tried to score the winning run in the tenth on a single to center but was nailed rather easily at the plate by Matthews' bullet to Rod Barajas. Sosa came at the Rangers' catcher's chest protector spike-high. You hear that expression but you rarely see it. It was a little gruesome. Sammy looked more shaken than Barajas as in “what have I done?” Benches emptied and Barajas left the game. It felt like justice when Matthews hit the three-run blast to ultimately win it and Baldwin (!) came on to save it. What this may mean, if anything, to Texas in terms of its plans for Alfonso Soriano is unclear. But quite a game — and quite an invention, this digital cable.

Awesome article in SI by former Blue Jay spring training invitee Tom Verducci on the the power of Pedro. What a pitcher. What a signing. Sleep tight in Houston city. Now we've got a different Pedro watchin' over us.

9-3 wasn't nearly enough. Not when it's the Rockies playing in our own personal dungeon. Thinking that my memory was just possibly faulty in grumbling that we had a 3-54 record all-time at Coors Field, I hopped on over to Retrosheet to figure out our real record. Which, by my calculations (meet my version of sabermetrics, a.k.a. “addition”) is now 23-27, with '93 and '94 being played at Mile High. (Where my ace math skills suggest we were 4-8.) My calculations unfortunately including the error-inducing variable of myself, I flipped over to the Mets' press notes for tonight's game to double-check. The notes announced blandly that the Rockies lead the all-time series in Colorado by (drumroll) 93-31.

Something tells me that's not right either — but emotionally it feels about right, doesn't it?

Why do I hate this park so much? Part of it is that it makes a mockery of the game, where fastballs can't be gripped properly, breaking stuff doesn't break, and balls have to be stored under conditions that remind you of one of those expensive, pointless experiments conducted on the space shuttle. Part of it is the stupid Mountain Time starts, which are late enough to annoy and confound and make you feel guilty for going to bed, but not late enough so you either psych yourself up for a week of baseball games that end at 1:30 a.m. or decide screw it, your fan credentials won't be stripped for missing one. Part of it is the all-too-obvious gap between how a visiting team needs to approach Arena Baseball and how we seem to approach it: getting less selective at the plate and positioning our outfielders too deep. (As Victor Zambrano became the 10,000th pitcher to discover in his one, um, rocky inning, it's not homers and doubles that imperil you here so much as the deadly tick-tock of singles landing in no-man's land.) And then there's the weirdness that always seems to accompany a trip to Colorado: It figures this would be the park where Danny Graves (“has not allowed a run in four of his last six appearances,” the press notes offered with that Ac-centuate the Positive air of an aunt cajoling you into a doomed blind date) doesn't give up a run.

So however you quantify all this bad karma, good for Victor's run support and a bunch of nifty strikeout pitches, good for Eric Byrnes somehow not spearing Wright's liner, good for Marlon Anderson and good for Ramon Castro too, good for Willie for giving a shell-shocked Mike Cameron a much-needed day off. And good riddance to Coors Field. Which is good.

And while we're ac-centuating the positives in this glass-half-empty glass-half-full glass-half… who-the-hell-knows semi-pennant race, we might have missed the opportunity to make up ground in the last two days, but the division waited around for us anyway. Forget the Braves — those unis march away from us no matter what collection of Richmonds and retreads put 'em on. Talking wild card, we just leapt over the Phillies again, we're tied with the Cubs, the Nationals are three games ahead but hurtling earthward, and between us and the Nats stand the Astros. Who now await us. Coors Field can make you feel like you've lost 93 games instead of 27 or two in a row, but we've survived and we're headed for Houston. Which has more than a whiff of Arena Baseball about it too (damn that stupid train), but at least it also has air.

In fact, by all indications Pedro is already there. Which means one less game he had to spend in the cursed environs of Coors Field. That's gotta be a good thing, right?

MSG's cameras caught Clint Hurdle doing something rather intriguing and mildly amusing Tuesday night. Each time one of his players committed a miscue – giving up a walk after being ahead, making a poor throw, gawking and smirking at Cameron after every strikeout — he turned around and wrote it down in a notebook. Is that commendable, hands-on detail work or micromanaging intense enough to make Buck Showalter cringe? One wonders how he goes about communicating these mistakes to his young charges the next day.

You, kid, you've gotta get more mustard on that ball…what?…yes, I know we won no matter how many boners we pulled…yeah, we've won two in a row without really trying, but baseball doesn't actually work that way…it's true…it is…listen, you guys are the worst club in the National League…what?…technically you still are even if you did just beat New York twice…it is hard to believe they're better than you, but they are…what's that?…sure it would be nice, but no, you're not gonna get to play the Mets every night…well you're not…fine, see if I care…just see…uh-huh…and I'm telling you I get paid no matter what you do…don't give me any lip — I was on the cover of Sports Illustrated…Sports Illustrated…it's a magazine…yeah, I was a player…I played with George Brett…no, smart guy, not George Washington…George Brett…BRETT!…how young are you guys anyway? Never mind all that. Just take your work more seriously. We have another game with the Mets tonight…what?…you don't know that's a W yet…because you don't, that's why…quit saying “it's in the bag”. Ah, screw it — let's go take infield. Hey, did any of you little worms see my notebook? Huh? Say it again, I dare ya! Oh boy, when I find that notebook, you're gonna get your name written down in there. That's a guarantee mister…yeah, you go tell the union. Like I'm scared'a you. George Brett could kick all your asses…B-R-E…

Gosh, when you can imagine cocky Rockie chortling at your expense, you know you're having a bad trip. The Dirty Thirty stands at 1-7. No squares peeled. No ground gained. The Braves are in sole possession of first. I wouldn't blame our next starting pitcher if he prays the pregame away.

Are you there God? It's me, Victor. We're playing tonight. I'm so scared God. I've never played anywhere but on lousy teams. Suppose I lose again or get no-decisioned? Suppose I get no run support? Please help me God. Get me some runs. Don't let Coors Field be too horrible. Thank you.

Tuesday's player of the game was Aaron Heilman because I finally figured out what this “lowered his arm angle” business is all about. Watch him go into his set. Watch him cock his chin on his left shoulder. He looks like he's about to join in that jazzy dance number from A Charlie Brown Christmas. Come to think of it, that's not a bad metaphor for his season. Aaron Heilman's not such a bad little pitcher — all he needed was a little love…and a role.

Ishii, on the other hand, inspires as much confidence as an Umbrella Night umbrella in a downpour. Has anybody in a Mets uniform since Wes Westrum looked less willing to find out what happens to him next? Ohmigod, wasn't that awful? looks the same in any language.

The Mets are 2-for-35 with the bases loaded and two out. That's a stat they don't bother to track for teams that meet such mundane challenges. Surely sabermetric scenarios are invented for the sole purpose of having the Mets fail in them. Yet you never hear about the good things they accomplish. Not once has it been mentioned that they have a winning record when they put their pants on one leg at a time (51-49, according to Elias).

Oh well. Maybe a trade will make everything right. On the other hand, there's a case to be made at Gotham Baseball for standing extremely pat.

Christ I hate this friggin' park.

I'm too pissed off to check, but I'm pretty sure our record here is something like 3-54. Every other team comes here to get well, and we come here to die. The bats go ice-cold and we look like we're sleepwalking while whoever's wearing a Rockie uniform that night — good year, bad year, worst-team-in-the-NL year, it doesn't much matter — runs rings around us. This is where Dante Bichette pumped his fist and Doug Henry managed to lose both ends of a double-header and Jerry DiPoto was at his most DiPotoesque and Jay Payton's hamstring snapped like a frayed rubber band and Victor Zambrano admitted his elbow hurt and Joe McEwing broke his leg and terrible thing after terrible thing happened. I hate everything about this place, from the 9:05 starts to the near-total absence of oxygen to the mountain of stands to the purple accents on everything to the fake forest-and-stream crap beyond the fences to the weird, overly rich lighting that saturates everything. And, of course, the losing. Lord, do I hate the losing.

Three runs? In Colorado? Against a collection of Colorado Springs Sky Sox? With no Todd Helton? On a night when the Nationals, Phillies and Marlins all lost? I could cry.

I had things to attend to and had already suffered excessively from last night's delayed debacle, so I decreed that this was a radio game, with me only offering up one sense to be offended. But in the seventh I couldn't resist: I left my subterranean lair to trot over the TV when Cameron came to the plate with the bases loaded. He struck out. Looking. In Colorado.

Muttering, I returned to the lair. In the ninth…well, you can guess. Once more at the TV. Jose on second, Cameron at the plate again. I was trying to think if either of us had used “Sweet Redemption” as an article title yet. I could still hear the radio in the other room, a half-second ahead of the TV, so I wound up camped out on the stairs with one hand jamming my ear shut, trying to think good thoughts and keep myself from straining to catch the intonations in Howie and Gary's voices.

Strike three, looking? Again? You've got to be kidding me.

No mas. Uncle. Call off the dogs. Just get us the hell out of this house of horrors. Beautiful day tomorrow, let's play none.

I figure it's gonna take 32 more victories to win this thing. Every time we win, we peel a square.

—Lou Brown, manager, Cleveland Indians, Major League

This one was a specialty from the Mets playbook. We're reasonably hot. We leave town. We alight in some city where the local team is dreadful. We're facing some two-bit emergency starter. We're sending out somebody who's been going pretty to very well lately. We know that our divisional competition has already lost. We can move past them and reach a high point for the season. All we have to do is win.

But we don't. It is such an obvious setup, yet we fall for it over and over and over again. The rain was the first tipoff. We wanted it to stop because we couldn't wait to take advantage of Coors Field and its famously whispering upper deck. No doubt the extended delay was the heavens' way of warning us that last place or not, the Rockies are exactly the kind of team that trips us up when we're looking past them. Like the Astros at Shea in June. Like the A's in Oakland a week after that. Like the Pirates in Pittsburgh before the break. (Only the Bucs did not use us for a springboard for immediate and lasting success.)

Ted Robinson, affecting a supersavvy attitude from all his time broadcasting Barry Bonds' exploits there, was practically salivating over the Mets' chances to score ten, twelve, fourteen runs; ever get the feeling Ted Robinson misses doing Giants games? Between Robinson and the rain, I could feel what would come next.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. A first three innings like we had Monday night — nine up, nine down — are not easily overcome, even in Colorado. Whatever magic we made in the top of the fourth went poof in the bottom of the fourth. And that was essentially that. Of course DeJean had no problem with us. Of course Relaford threw out Reyes from an impossible angle. That's how one of these games works: the ex-Mets are inscrutable, while the allegedly lousy team's actual good players excel. Of course Helton got hit after hit (and watch him feel fine by tonight) and of course Fuentes baffled Beltran and Floyd. And in the final of course, of course Mike just got under a 2-0 pitch to end our last, undeserved hope.

This game reaffirmed the ol' you're gonna lose a third of your games rule and you're gonna lose a segment of those in predictable if irritating ways. The trick is to minimize the damage and not lose too many of the third that decides your fate.

The Mets have, at last, played against every National League team in 2005. I feel safe in asserting that the Senior Circuit breaks down as such:

• Crappy Teams

• Less Crappy Teams

• St. Louis

We're not trying to be world-beaters here. We're just trying to be of the least crappy teams going. We have a lot of competition, but our fiercest rivals are ourselves.

More good news: We're 1-6 in contests conducted west of the Mississippi, or what I've been fearing as the Dirty Thirty since I got a good look at the schedule. Keep in mind that the rest of this trip is two games in deceptive Denver and four in hot, hot Houston. August wraps SD-LA (6) and AZ-SF (7) around a week at home. Each of those teams rather sucks, but when has that been of any comfort to us?

That's 24 of the Dirty Thirty. The final four, it bears repeating, come at Busch, September 8-11. The Cardinals decidedly do not suck. They could very well be preparing to clinch a playoff spot by the time we show our struggling faces. How much do you suppose St. Louis would relish doing it against us? It's their last season in that stadium and what better way to mark the countdown to its destruction than to participate in ours? It would be a throwback weekend. Whitey Herzog, Tommy Herr, Cesar Cedeño and Vince F. Coleman could be called on to peel off the Bye-Bye Busch panels in the middle of every game just to remind us of what's happened to us there before. Think LaRussa, whose 2000 was ruined by us, wouldn't mind returning the favor?

At the risk of getting ahead of ourselves, we cannot afford to have these three western swings reveal themselves as Kryptonite the way they usually do — the way the Oakland-Seattle leg did, the way the first game in Colorado has. Salvation does not await in St. Louis. Thus, between tonight and September 8, we face nineteen absolutely critical tests far from Shea.

We cannot be shaken by time changes and unnatural altitudes and lengthy flights if we are serious about being less crappy than the other less crappy teams in this league. If the New Mets are, in the end, any different from their predecessors, they will strap it on and win games they would normally lose.

I never quite figured out how Lou Brown knew the Tribe would need exactly 32 more victories to make it to the finish line, but I'm gonna give his style of strategizing a shot. Here goes…

The Mets need to win at least ten of the nineteen road games they have remaining against the Rockies, the Astros, the Padres, the Dodgers, the Diamondbacks and the Giants. They will have to fly home from San Francisco on August 28 with a Dirty Thirty mark of 11-15. Call it a hunch, but if they can do that, they will have proven that they are a contender for September. If they cannot, that St. Louis series and the rest of the season will be a moot and bleak point.

Peel the first square tonight.

Well, it was fun waiting two extra hours for that.

I'd forgotten how insane this park is — shots flying to the gap like they're tennis balls, and just when you get used to that you get bled to death by loopers that drop right behind the infielders because the shell-shocked outfielders have retreated to Kansas. When we turned it on for that one inning, it sure looked like we were in for a 15-14 barn burner — hopefully one without Dante Bichette pumping his fist at 3 a.m., but I guess that was all we had in the tank. Oh, and I'm particularly bitter about not laying even a pinkie on the loathsome Mike DeJean, one player the home fans should be not just allowed but even encouraged to boo.

Here's hoping we get some Sherpas to take the boys back to their hotel rooms, they acclimate and come out looking a little more fierce tomorrow night. Though I keep reminding myself that it's Coors Field, and all our pitchers get a pass for most any misdeed committed here — even TMB or (gulp) Ishii.

Of course after these three we're headed to another pinball machine of a ballpark….

Joshua has fallen in love with the stuffed Sandy the Seagull Stephanie was kind enough to give him. (He insists on calling him “Sammy,” despite understanding that isn't his name — I'm think it's an homage to Casey Stengel.) So when he found out we were taking him to Keyspan yesterday to see the Cyclones, he was tremendously excited, chiefly because we assured him that yes, he would get to meet Sandy. (Interest in actual baseball is a bit more fitful, but it'll come.)

So we get in the park and Joshua wants to know where Sandy is. He sees him down on the field and wants to go down there that minute. No, I say, we can't meet him yet. But we'll try soon. After a brief sojourn in the bleachers, I take him into the main stadium, figuring I can intercept the mascot after one of his between-innings responsibilities. We go down behind home plate, just in time to see Sandy vanish down the tunnel. That's OK — it's a really hot day, we'll say hi when he comes out next inning. The security guy is very nice to us and lets us stay — in fact, he's happy to have us sit in the best seat in the house. The Cyclones cheerleaders are also very nice to us, chatting and admiring Joshua's PLAY BALL shirt. Sandy, they say, is having a bird bath. Time drags on, Joshua is getting fractious and wants his mom, so reluctantly I abandon our post and take him back to the bleachers. Lots of game left to play, we'll check in with the mascot later. On the way back to the bleachers we do run into Pee Wee, Sandy's pal. Pee Wee is great: He pretends to drink from Joshua's sippy cup, gives him a hug, slaps five with him. We see him again a few minutes later and Joshua is very concerned that Pee Wee is thirsty. Pee Wee instantly stops, remembers, pretends to drink again and hugs the kid, who's thrilled. (Pee Wee's kindness will soon prove important.)

But after a time in the bleachers, Joshua wants to meet his hero again — and from across the park I can see Sandy's returned from beneath the stands. This time Emily and her pal Brooke undertake the mission. They're gone like 20 minutes. When they return, Emily has spots in her cheeks and a gunfighter's glower. Uh-oh.

Turns out they'd gone back behind home plate and been nicely allowed to wait right outside the tunnel while Sandy attended to various giant-seagull duties. When Sandy turned their way, Emily got his attention, started to talk to Joshua — and the mascot tapped his big feathery wrist and strode right past them. “You should have seen Joshua's face,” Emily says, seething. Memo to the PR people of the world: You don't ever want to hear a kid's mother say that in that tone of voice.

Luckily, Joshua's young enough to be distracted: Ice cream and chatter about Pee Wee put him back in a good mood. Minutes later, he was happily thumbing through a Cyclones program pointing out pictures of Sandy and saying how much he loved him, and somehow that felt worse than the cold shoulder. I mean, I'd worried that Joshua might one day get a less-than-kind brush-off from some surly Met. I'd wondered how I'd explain it, and if I could ever root for that player again. But from a mascot? At two years old? I'm generally pretty cynical, but I never expected that.

Look, Sandy, I know you're busy. I know it must be hot as hell in there. I know maybe you see the mom with the camera and think it's gonna take too long, and maybe you're right. I know it's hard to see and you're not allowed to talk and that makes it harder. But Jeez, tousle the kid's hair, kiss him with your beak, then point at your wrist and touch your chest in apology. That would've taken, what, 10 seconds? And Joshua would have been so thrilled that I guarantee we'd be explaining why we can't go to the Cyclones every night. (We did get a picture of Joshua with Sandy when he was up in the concourse near game's end. I hovered nearby wondering what I'd do if my wife clocked a mascot. Not exactly a warm moment: In contrast to Pee Wee, the Seagull could barely be bothered to put his hands on Joshua's head. Emily was not mollified.)

During a summer internship a million years ago I dated the office receptionist. She kept getting in trouble for being rude to angry callers and thought this was unjust, complaining that “taking shit from people isn't my job.” She was pissed at me when I pointed out that, actually, that was about 90% of her job. If Sandy was rushing off to interrupt the countdown of a backpack nuke discovered underneath the stadium, then I apologize. (And good show, homes.) But failing that, I can't really imagine what duties a New York-Penn League mascot had that were more pressing than taking a moment to be nice to a little boy.