Because Kaz Ishii can't.

Ishii will fool you with the occasional decent outing, but when he blows up it's so spectacular he tends to take the whole bullpen with him, which is not what we need before a day game.

Time to face facts: Ishii has had 11 starts and seven of them have been out-and-out bad. Sure, before tonight he hadn't walked more than two guys in his last four starts. But that doesn't mean they were good starts — in those four starts he gave up 5 ER, 5 ER, 3 ER (in 5.2 innings) and 3 ER (in 6.2 innings).

It's obvious Aaron Heilman could top that. More to the point, it's hard to think of a pitcher who couldn't. Jae Seo? I have ample faith he could beat 2-7 with a 5.68 ERA. Jason Scobie? Bob Keppel? Manny Aybar? Matt Ginter? Anybody got the phone number of James Baldwin's agent? Ishii's only purpose seems to be making The Manchurian Brave look good.

Oh well. Once again we put our trust in Pedro. Once again we try for .500. I tip my hat to the people who were still there when it was 6-1, raining hard and yet still piss-hot. I would have been tempted to skedaddle even if Ishii had been pitching a no-hitter.

P.S. Yes, Gary, we get it — you don't want to be traded. Enjoy your time covering all of right field and three-quarters of center, champ.

Whoa.

Gary Sheffield for Mike Cameron is the hot rumor, advanced here by Joel Sherman of the Post and here by Bob Klapisch in the Bergen Record.

The two accounts differ on other players: Klapisch says Cairo would be going back to the Bronx and that the Mets would want financial relief; Sherman just notes additional players. The money: Sheffield is due $13 million this year and next, much of it deferred, while Cammy makes $6 million this year and next with a $7 million option in 2007.

If it's Cameron and Cairo for Sheffield and some money back, I say do it. Sheffield's a Yankee and can be a jerk, but man, he's a monster — slide him in there between Beltran and Floyd and that is one scary order. He's 36, not a great defensive outfielder, and has a history of injuries, but he also has a history of playing through those injuries, and defensively it ain't like he's Victor Diaz. Plus I imagine with Sheff in the lineup Willie would have a reason to rearrange things, such as by finally moving Wright up to the #2 hole.

Cameron's a nice player and has looked good this year, but Sheffield's such a clear upgrade at the plate that I'd take the dropoff defensively. As for Cairo, he's a valuable reserve but not much more than that — I wouldn't scuttle a deal over him. This would give us a real chance to win now, without scuttling our long-term plans. Would it help the Yankees? Absolutely. But derailing a potential pennant-winning trade over Schadenfreude seems awfully self-destructive to me.

Thoughts?

Goodness does Victor Zambrano drive you insane. Man could he be good.

Most of the time it looks like he's internalized Dr. Peterson's lessons about pitching to contact and letting the natural movement on his pitches move the ball just up or down from the sweet spot of enemy bats. But then something goes wrong or he sees his shadow or some crazy thing and then Boom! Goodbye release point, goodbye lessons, time to nibble and walk guys and stand staring on the mound until the defense is lulled into a Trachselian torpor.

Truth be told, I'm not sure how he got out of the fifth. Well, I know how he got out of the fifth, of course — he made two singularly nasty pitches to Chase Utley. What I mean is I'm not sure how he managed to right himself and find those pitches. I feared Utley more than Thome or Burrell there — Utley's an awfully good young hitter who looks like he knew what he was doing, and instead of trying to hit the ball to Nassau would wait for an I-don't-want-to-walk-him fastball or ignore a buried-in-the-dirt change. And Zambrano had clearly lost his command and fallen out of synch with Piazza, who kept with the Peterson Plan despite being shook off like a “Bull Durham” outtake. Well, however he did it, good for Victor. And good for us.

And good for Willie for not sending Zambrano back out there, recent bullpen struggles aside. When we finally broke through and opened up a can of whoop-ass on Geoff Geary, it was bullpen tryout time, and only Danny Graves failed the pop quiz. And that's OK — he's still a project. For now.

Carlos hit a triple. Cameron turned in some very wise baserunning. David Wright hit well and (mostly) fielded well too — no offense to Daubach, but Minky would have saved that low throw. Reyes again started off the game with a terrific, extended at-bat and drew a walk. Mike hit an old-style Mike home run. Even Jose Offerman briefly made me put aside my wrath at his presence on the roster.

.500 again! Let's play two! Even if it is Ishii. (Heck, it worked last time.)

It's never mentioned as meriting inclusion amid the subterranean pantheon of terrible Mets trades. It may not be down there with Otis for Foy or Ryan for Fregosi let alone Scott for Heep or Brogna for Borland & Jordan or Isringhausen for Taylor or Bay for Steve Reed or Cone for Kent & Thompson or Kent & Vizcaino for Baerga or Trammell for Wall or…well, you get the idea. But four years after the fact, can you think of a more singularly useless transaction than the Mets sending Todd Pratt to the Phillies for Gary Bennett?

A trade can be judged any number of ways. Most immediately, did it make sense at the moment it was executed for Team A? For Team B? Did you give up something to get something and did they do the same? Did it fill a need for what was then now or what would eventually become later? Can it be justified even if it went sour on you? Is there any value in a trade that isn't the rare and sublime steal for you and bust for the other guy? They can't all be Hearn for Cone, Allen for Hernandez, even Person for Olerud.

It's easy (and either fun or frustrating depending on your mood) for a fan to find fault with his team's trades that blow up upon later inspection. But it's only fair to take the long view on any of them to try and understand to the best of our ability why they were made.

• Was there anything about the little-known throw-in who went on to win the 2004 N.L. Rookie of the Year award that should've set off alarms? It's been said Jason Bay was unremarkable in the minors; I say it was the front office's job to know better and not give him up for a marginal middle reliever named Steve Reed who didn't hang around long to be recognized readily by his last name.

• Was it possible to look at the pitcher you were giving up after he struggled for you and realize he was fixable and that he would ultimately be too high a price to pay for a good pinch-hitter because he would go on to nearly stifle your dream of a pennant? I say Mike Scott was miserable here and until he learned to master sandpaper in Houston that Danny Heep was fair value. I wasn't thinking that the afternoon of October 15, 1986, however.

• Was there too little patience demonstrated in the face of an onrushing trade deadline and playoff push considerations? Jason Isringhausen's promising debut was four years in the rear view when he was sent to Oakland for Billy Taylor. Izzy had been through four or five lives by then, none of them well-pitched since the first one. The Mets were riding the bullpen hard. Taylor was an experienced hand. It makes no sense now but it made more than a shred of sense then. Doesn't make it any better now.

• Was the big-name player you were getting in return for a couple of to-date middling middle infielders no longer living up to his reputation? Carlos Baerga seemed worth the risk even though the Mets wound up essentially giving away one of the best-hitting second basemen of all time. But do you think Kent would've developed that way in New York? (If you do, that makes Al Harazin look like a genius for poaching Kent from Toronto for Cone…nah, it would take more than that.)

• Was there a numbers game at play? The Mets had a trio of young outfielders that had helped them win a pennant when Steve Phillips (only a matter of time before his name came up) deemed Bubba Trammell expendable. Enough outfielders and never enough pitching. Thus Wall. It begs another question: How bleeping stupid was Steve Phillips anyway? That's a topic that could take a month. The barebones outline of a rationale doesn't necessarily hold up to the light of day when you look at everybody involved. The young Mets outfield of 2000 (Agbayani, Payton, Perez) disappointed tremendously in 2001 (leading to the “need” to send the real Reed to Minnesota for Matt Lawton [shiver]) while Bubba Trammell had the year of his life for San Diego. As for Donne Wall, pick up the white phone — we just found your i (if not your curve).

• Does one trade look particularly bad by itself but not so bad in the overall scheme of things because of another deal you made around the same time? This schematic impels us to pair a “good” and a “bad” trade and view them as Brogna and Person for Olerud, Borland and Jordan, thus canceling each other out. Kind of. Not really. No. Rico Brogna for Toby Borland and Ricardo Jordan? [shiver again]

Why exactly did we trade Todd Pratt to the Phillies for Gary Bennett? I have no justification for this one even if I vaguely recall some of the talking points.

1) It was a salary dump. Todd Pratt was making $600,000 in 2001 and was signed to make $650,000 in 2002. Hefty numbers for a backup catcher? I don't know. Sounds like it, but he was, all things considered, the best backup catcher the Mets ever had. This was no mean scrubeenie slot. Mike Piazza was on the cusp of predictably breaking down a little more rapidly every year. Todd Pratt wasn't simply caddying. He was playing. He was more than day games after night games.

2) It cleared a space for Vance Wilson. In the long and illustrious history of the Mets overrating their own prospects, Vance Wilson would be in the Top 10 of “ohmigod, he's gonna be Gabby Hartnett someday!” Well, he was gabby. Defended Mike against those sexual orientation rumors by insisting “Mike leads a moral life” (as Mike does adore Rush Limbaugh, maybe he appreciated that). Acted all pissy last year when Ed Coleman asked him some innocuous post-game question along the lines of “do ya think your homer today proves you deserve more playing time?” “I've already proven myself,” the defensive catcher answered defensively, though where that proof exists I have yet to find. In advance of the 2001 season, the Mets reluctantly put Wilson through waivers. Gary Cohen practically cried after a spring training game that obviously the Mets were going to lose this gem for nothing, that surely the Braves, who were strapped for catching at the time, would grab him. They didn't. Nobody did. Shoulda been a tipoff.

3) Tank had worn out his welcome. To be honest, I don't remember anybody directly saying this, but I sensed he was one of Bobby's boys and this didn't go over well with the GM (who, you'll recall, was bleeping stupid). Remember a year later when Valentine was in one of his classic meltdowns and he talked about his guys who were no longer here and he mentioned “Todd” and everybody thought he meant Zeile and since the Mets were in Colorado Zeile was asked and Zeile said “not me, buddy” and Bobby clarified, “I meant Pratt”? By varying accounts, Tank could be an ornery cuss with little patience for opposing viewpoints or whatever ticked him off on a given day, as evidenced one afternoon at Fenway in 2000 (imagine him and Daubach on the same team now). It's easy for front offices to label guys they don't want around as clubhouse lawyers and clubhouse cancers. I don't know that Phillips found a way to blame Pratt's personality for the morass of mid-2001 — and it's dangerous for fans to divine what goes on behind closed doors — but I wouldn't be surprised if Tank was rolled as part of a personality cleansing.

4) Todd Pratt wasn't that good. Sure, the home run, we all know about that and celebrate it periodically. (And if you like the Mets winning in a walkoff, check out Mark Simon's site — what an awesome concept!) But he was batting .162 when he was traded. I'm still analyzing the trade of a guy batting .162?

So what's happened since then? Let's see…

1) The Mets' payroll is in triple-digits. Todd Pratt is making $750,000. Carlos Beltran could spend that much on Mountain Dew and wouldn't miss it.

2) Vance Wilson is batting .106 for the Tigers.

3) Todd Pratt has yet to wear out his welcome in Philly. He's been with them since late July 2001. We'll probably see him start Thursday afternoon at Shea. How bad an egg could he be?

4) Todd Pratt is batting .233 for the Phillies. Not great but twice as good as Vance Wilson. More to the point, he's been serviceable and then some as a backup to Lieberthal these last five seasons. He knows and accepts his role. He certainly did where Mike (Piazza, as if I had to clarify that) was concerned. He wasn't going to kvetch and/or moan about playing time. So few role players are actually content to fill their roles. When you have a guy like that, one who was happy to be anywhere after managing a Domino's, it's careless to let him go.

Plus, c'mon, it's Tank. Tank! No disrespect to Ramon Castro, who's absolutely adequate once in a while and could be the lost, third Agilar brother from the original Bad News Bears, but Tank! This isn't just about the Mantei/Finley dagger in the playoffs. He was a presence. A force. We could feel him. His first home run as a Met came against a future Met (Leiter) and his last home run as a Met was against a former Met (Person). Those were in his respective first and last at-bats here. I don't know what it means, but I find that captivating. Also, Tank loved being a Met. Loved Shea. Uttered the most pro-Shea quote I ever read from a ballplayer:

“Anybody can say whatever about Shea — I love it. When it's full and the fans are behind us, it's the best.”

When they need an epitaph for the joint, you could do no better than that one.

Gary Bennett? One at-bat as a Met. A hit. Then sent down. Then traded. For Ender Chavez, currently a former Brooklyn Cyclone. Never to be seen at Shea at least as a Met. Ender's brother Endy was another Met farmhand. He was let go. Went to the Expos. Punished us there. He's with the Phillies now. As with Tank, I expect bad things to happen when he plays at Shea this week. Bennett's now a competent backup catcher to Brian Schneider on the first-place Washington Nationals. They lead the last-place Mets by seven games.

Somebody find me some good in Pratt for Bennett. I dare ya.

By the way, where the hell's our Merc Cup for winning the Subway Series last year and not losing it this year? The Merc Cup, you ask? More at Gotham Baseball.

Yes and no, I saw it coming. Yes because one is conditioned to expect the worst particularly where these contests are concerned. No because a three-run lead is a three-run lead in the seventh and a two-game winning streak over the team you're playing should be a more immediate indicator of your fortunes than all the ghosts of 1997 and 2000 and any Subway Series you care to name.

Shoulda seen it coming, though, at least where Braden Looper is concerned. At the risk of launching a classic bash-'em-while-they're-bleeding rant more suitable to the Monday after a placekicker blows two extra points, Braden Looper's not the closer for a serious team. I say that with full knowledge that he was at least half the closer on a world champion two short years ago, but Braden Looper does not inspire confidence. A fan has a right to believe his team's closer can get three outs without giving up a run. Let alone two. I really didn't believe that Sunday night.

Ease the wheel back one half-inning. It was 4-3 and Mariano Rivera came in and kept it 4-3. Mariano Rivera (his recent October imperfections acknowledged) is not to be compared against lightly. But that's a closer. In the case of the top of the ninth, that's a holder. That's big. The Mets could've lengthened their lead and given Looper a little more breathing room, but didn't. In a moment that mattered, Rivera did his job.

In a moment that mattered more, Looper did not. Walking Martinez was inexcusable but traceable. Friday night he gave up that homer (which at the time didn't seem like a bad idea). Gave in and gave up that homer. Now Looper was facing the same batter and was overcareful. Of course he walked him. Of course Rodriguez doubled. Of course Wright wasn't guarding the line. Wright is a standard-issue third baseman right now. He will make the spectacular play and follow it up with a goof and then follow it up by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The position is one of reactions and Wright has not yet learned to anticipate. His placement may also have something to do with where the bench put him, but the bench was so busy making poor pitching decisions that how could it be expected to know where to place Wright?

Everything else was gravy for the Yankees. Didn't matter who was coming up. Walk Matsui and face Giambi? Sure. If it had been Russ Johnson or that called-up leftfielder or the late Elston Howard, it didn't matter. Looper walked Martinez. That was that.

He didn't bury us, though. The lead shovel in this funeral brigade was Carlos Beltran. Sorry, CB, but transfer your All-Star votes to Cliff, go home over the break and watch some video of yourself. WHY ARE YOU SWINGING AT EVERY FIRST PITCH YOU SEE? Yeesh, the man has worse at-bats than Jose Reyes. I understand the lack of stolen bases vis-à-vis the quad and you play a little too deep sometimes (though it worked just fine this weekend) and the homering almost exclusively for Pedro is bizarre and I'm thrilled that you're here. But WHY ARE YOU SWINGING AT EVERY FIRST PITCH YOU SEE? Why isn't Rick Down or Willie or somebody taking this guy aside and saying, “Carlos, calm down out there. We're facing one pitcher after another whom we've put on the ropes and you're killing our rallies before they can be extended by SWINGING AT EVERY FIRST PITCH YOU SEE — WHY?”

It can't be for want of job security. You've got it, CB. You're here. You're beautiful. You can lead this team to a brighter future. You said and did all the right things in spring training and you refused to sit when it might have done you some good and you tracked down a lot of balls in center that your opposite number and idol couldn't in these last three games. Even if your price was inflated by your ungodly October, you're worth it. You could be a bargain if you would just stop SWINGING AT EVERY FIRST PITCH YOU SEE!

Strangely enough, despite the irritation that's been reawakened by picking the nits apart, this wasn't so bad. We did win the series. We took two of three at Yankee Stadium. My head's still held high even though I continue to be regrettably sufferable. Hopefully we're done for a good long while being bit players in the Yankee psychodrama. Let the rest of the American League clang the Collapse-O-Meter from now on. We've got our own concerns.

Before I consider those, I'd like to come out once and for all in favor of Interleague play. These six games every year are larger than life. Doesn't matter what the score is or how each participant is accounting for itself. It's always compelling (no wonder each team seems hot and bothered by it). Time stands still two weekends per season and while the price can be high, the reward, such as this past Friday and Saturday, can be that much greater. Throw in the Angels and A's and Mariners if you have to. Throw in the Rockies-Royals games — I'm not going to care who they're playing anyway — and it's still worth it.

This is one of those memory hole situations. When NY@NY comes around next year, regardless of the standing of the Mets or the Yankees, the naysayers will re-emerge to announce that this has been played, this has been done, “nobody cares”. Then there will be an incandescent three-game series that will change people's minds for five minutes. When the second chapter comes along a week or a month later, it will be “six games is too many” time all over again. And then you'll get a weekend like the one we just had, storyline layered on storyline, moment clicking into moment, the sum total piled up into something that makes baseball worth watching that much more. If you did away with IL, it's possible you could get just as good a game between the Mets and another National League opponent in its stead, but geez, live a little. I hate the way Sunday night came out, but I had to step outside myself for a moment in the middle of the ninth and think “wow, can ya believe the way this feels?” It felt that way, one way or another, at some point of every Subway Series since the dawn of Interleague. Not a bad way to feel.

Now for the rest of the story…

The Braves swept the Orioles. The Marlins swept the Devil Rays. The Nationals took two of three from the Blue Jays. Against four of the teams we're chasing we picked up no ground. The Phillies were swept after we beat them two out of three and we're a game-and-a-half behind them. If there's a reason to really rue losing to the Yankees, this is it. We could've kept pace and/or picked up significant ground by winning last night and couldn't. Is it so much to ask a .500ish team to be a slightly better .500ish team? To be a .507 team? To turn a 1-5 trip into a 6-6 journey of redemption?

Seventeen of the next twenty games are against our esteemed division rivals. Looper, don't walk the first guy. Beltran, don't swing at the first pitch. Wright, guard the line in the ninth. Randolph and braintrust, be prescient and make all the right moves before we mere fans see them coming. And all the rest of you, don't hurt yourselves stretching in the on-deck circle just as you're getting hot.

The season's been more fun than the record would indicate. Fix that, fellas. And I don't mean make it less fun.

…that team sure did suck last night. They just plain sucked! I've seen teams suck before, but they were the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked!

— Homer Simpson

Truth be told, you could see this one coming. Heilman came out looking frightened, immediately balked, gave up a run-scoring single to Jeter, got a gift when Sheffield was called out (he wasn't), and then gave up a run-scoring single to A-Rod anyway. It's fair to say he sucked. Then Ring did OK, though it took another nice play by Marlon Anderson, whom I was just maligning not so long ago. More or less a welcome respite from suckage. Roberto Hernandez? Well, he was more lucky than good — Floyd was positioned well and made a nice running grab on what looked like a fatal dunker by Bernie, and Sierra scorched one that Beltran caught up with. Basically, Roberto sucked and got away with it. And the whole time I'm writhing around on the couch and looking in the bullpen and thinking, “Jesus, don't bring in Bell, he's got gopheritis recently — get it to Looper.” And then I'm thinking, “Get it to Looper?”

Well, we got it to Looper.

Back under .500. No sweep. Phillies coming in Tuesday. Still some work to be done out in that bullpen.

Dammit, I wanted this one.

All my life I’ve been searching for somethin’
Somethin’ never comes, never leads to nothin’
Nothin’ satisfies, but I’m gettin’ close
Closer to the prize at the end of the rope

So that’s what it feels like to win a series at Yankee Stadium.

Took us long enough.

Here’s the rational way to look at this: We’re hitting and doing all that Willieball stuff that tends to come and go with the wind. We hit enough to make Saturday’s game Glavineproof. We took advantage of the opponent’s miscues, something we weren’t doing in Oakland or Seattle. We also caught the ball pretty darn well. It’s two wins and four of the last five and it’s nice to get to .500 and it would be even nicer to get out of last. Winning the third game of this series would be excellent if for no other reason that it’s important to beat a team, any team, when we have them down. It’s important, too, to keep winning ballgames as the Phillies, the Marlins and the Nationals lurk at the next three exits. As gratifying as a sweep of this weekend’s series would be (particularly given the obstacle presented by the opposition’s starting pitcher Sunday night), there’s the continuation of a regular season to worry about.

That’s pretty rational. But I’m only tangentially interested in being rational. Tonight, I’m about exuberance. I’m about vengeance and justice and a memory that’s sometimes too long for my own good.

I’m about winning SWEEPING a series at Yankee Stadium — winning two of two and very much wanting to win three of three. This is where rational self usually gets serious and begins to take into account the never-too-high/never-too-low rhythms of the long season and how, hey, two of three would be really helpful and here come Philadelphia, Florida and Washington.

Here’s from the AP account of Saturday’s game:

“I feel embarrassed. We take a lot of pride in what we do and it’s just not working out,” said catcher Jorge Posada, adding that he’s not sleeping well lately. “We are doing a lot of things that look bad out there,” he said. “I’ve never seen it like this.”

Jorge Posada can’t sleep? Is it any wonder I’ve sent my rational self to bed? My exuberant self, on the other hand, is staying up all night and sending out for pizza. Exuberant self is getting out his list. You know the list — it’s the one on which he’s been taking names in the event that there would be an opportunity to kick ass.

The opportunity is presenting itself at last.

The list started in earnest on June 18, 1997. It’s filled with co-workers from a couple of jobs ago. What a year to be a Mets fan that was. Gads, I loved it. There is no better year than the one in which the only expectations for your club are bad ones and those expectations never get met. That was 1997. It commenced badly, per usual. But then it turned. It turned, it turned out, for good. The team that started 3-9 and 8-14 got hot. It blew by .500. By the beginning of June, the Mets were 31-23 (en route to a most pleasant 88-74). This was a contending baseball team. I knew it. You knew it. But did anybody outside the still sparsely filled innards of Shea Stadium know it?

The Mlicki game on June 16, the one we all rightly bow down to, surprised so many people when it happened. Partly because the Mets won. Partly because there was such a sizable and vocal contingent of Mets fans on hand to witness it. Who knew anybody in New York actually rooted for a team that wasn’t the world champion Yankees? That was livin’. Here it was, Us and Them for the very first time and it was Us 1 Them 0. If the world ended immediately thereafter, the record would show that the Mets had always beaten the Yankees and that the Yankees had never beaten the Mets.

On the morning of June 17, I strode into my company’s kitchenette and found two Yankees fans. Not bad sorts away from baseball, but definitely arrogant as had rapidly become the fashion among their ilk since the previous October. Man, oh man was I looking forward to this. Dave Mlicki, barely our third starter, had just shut out their precious titleholders. So much to say. But I knew better. It was one game. Two remained. Give me two wins and I’ll walk these halls with my head held high. Give me, somehow, a sweep, and I will be insufferable to all of you, it’s a guarantee.

But for now, it was one game. I simply entered the room and cheerily greeted them with a “Hi guys!”

Their response: “Shut up.” It was as if they’d practiced it.

That alone was worth the price of admission. I wasn’t for Interleague play (I’m still not crazy about it), but if I could get a “shut up” just for saying good morning because of Dave Mlicki, then Interleague was a pretty good scheme.

I left it there. One game. Don’t go overboard. We need to win at least one more to make this an actual bragging rights situation. Besides, I was a little offended at the universal reaction to the Mlicki game. After we won it, the Mets and the Yankees had the exact same record (sound familiar?). There was no reason to act as if we didn’t belong on the same field. In fact, I’ve never quite forgiven Dave Mlicki himself for running out to the mound afterwards and scooping up a thimbleful of dirt. Damn, Dave, don’t lend credence to this House of the Holy nonsense. Just go out and pitch some more shutouts (yeah, right, he would do that).

To digress slightly, Ronald Reagan’s greatest film role, it is generally agreed, was Drake McHugh in “Kings Row,” his most famous line therein, “Where’s the rest of me?” I remember, even if I’d rather not, that after the Republicans took Congress in 1994, the Wall Street Journal ran a celebratory editorial citing that line and suggesting that as wonderful as the Reagan Revolution was, it was not complete without a conservative Congress to pass more of his kind of legislation. Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America class of ’94, the Journal decided, was truly “the rest of him”.

Game Two of the first Subway Series was the kind of disaster to which we would become accustomed. Wells won easily. Armando Reynoso, who had been shockingly effective for the first two months of the season, took a line-drive off the left knee from Luis Fucking Sojo and it all but ended his season. We lost.

This left Game Three. Of all the regular-season Subway Series games that have run right off the tracks since then, this one, on June 18, 1997, is the one that hurts the most. That was the only midweek afternoon game the Mets and Yankees ever played. That was, you’ll recall, the Steve Bieser game. David Cone had a perfecto going for a while. It was broken up but he had a lead. The Beez got to third and then, as all schoolchildren know by now, coaxed a balk out of the great Coney. It tied up the game.

It was a fantastic moment. A wonderful moment. A stupendous moment. But as was so often the case in those rollicking Bobby Valentine years, it wasn’t the decisive moment. The Mets and Yankees went into extra innings and Tino Martinez singled home Paul O’Neill with the winner against John Franco in the tenth. That was that. Though it almost felt like 1 win, 1 loss and 1 tie — the third game was that taut — we lost the first Subway Series.

Hence, I couldn’t go into the office on June 19 and tell every arrogant Yankees fan I worked with, SCREW YOU, YOU LOST, WE WON, WE’RE BETTER THAN YOU, WE BEAT YOU IN YOUR OWN OVERRATED BALLPARK, GET USED TO IT, SCREW YOU.

I think that’s really all any baseball fan wants out of life.

I’ve been waiting eight years to act on that impulse. I no longer work with any of those people and it would be rather unbecoming to track them — the CFO who figured the Mets were getting Piazza just to deal him to a real contender; the editor and the art director who claimed they used to be Mets fans but now, you know, like the Yankees better; the other art director who swore he was a dyed-in-the-wool Yankees fan “from da Bronx” but actually didn’t know that the same two teams play both ends of a doubleheader; the generally nice young man who clung to the Pinstripes because they were “classy” or something; the idiot publisher who referred to games at The Stadium as “real baseball” and generally ignored those anyway because nothing really counted until October; and, oh yes, the former pornographer who goaded me into betting him that my team would have a better record than his team in 1996 (I lost $21.62; the $1.62 part was my idea) — down now for the sole purpose of sticking it to them for offending my well-honed sensibilities in the decade before this one. But suffice it to say that when the “Let’s Go Mets!” chants deluged Yankee Stadium in the bottom of the ninth Saturday, signifying not just one day’s but one’s series’ superiority over — all due respect to dreaded Atlanta — our most hated rivals in their house, it was like they found the rest of me.

I was actually pretty calm, pretty relaxed as our lead got bigger and the game got better Saturday. Maybe this isn’t really payback for 1997 or similarly ancient slights that I will carry to my grave. Maybe it’s not a big deal, this Subway Series. Maybe a .500ish team playing another .500ish team in June is just what it sounds like. But when the last out was recorded, I let loose a Floydian raft of feline-frightening screams. Hozzie took the first round in stride, but the triumphant closet door-banging sent him seeking solitude under a dining room chair. Once again, my apologies to the cat.

Stephanie wanted to know when we could go grocery-shopping. Not just yet, I said. I’ve gotta come down. She understood. We settled in to revel in half-an-hour of that awesome YES perspective — was it Singleton or Kaat who wondered whether the whole team needed to go to Joe’s place on an off-day of barbecuing and bonding? — while I cooled off.

Eventually, we headed to Waldbaum’s where we filled our cart and rolled it to our favorite cashier, Sydra. Sydra is the only cashier on all of Long Island who asks if we found everything we were looking for and means it. About once or twice a season, she remarks upon baseball for my benefit.

“I see the Mets have been doing well lately.”

“Yes, yes they have. They won today.”

“Oh, they did?”

“Yes. They beat the Yankees. Beat them pretty badly.”

“Oh good! Who pitched?”

This was my penance for playing modern-day Dick Young to Tom Glavine’s barely disguised desire to be traded last night. I had to admit that TMB was on the mound and managed to acquit himself all right. This made Sydra happy because one of her sons went to school in Georgia so she remembered Glavine fondly from way back as a Brave, before they were in the East. Yes, I said through slightly clenched teeth, he was, uh, certainly quite the pitcher in his time. She was surprised to learn that he’s 39, a fact I threw in for free.

As Sydra, Stephanie and I were chatting, another baseball conversation broke out at the next lane between two other Waldbaum’s employees, a woman who’s a cashier and a man who’s, for argument’s sake, the assistant manager. The woman started talking about how great Friday night’s game had been, how she was watching it with three Yankees fans and how she gave them all kinds of grief.

The assistant manager was having none of it: “We’ll always have one thing over you, and that’s 2000.”

Butting in because this was Sydra’s and my topic in the first place, I said, “2000? That was an awfully long time ago.”

The guy tried to repeat his assertion as if saying it often enough would make it more relevant, but I just kept beating it back by emphasizing that the World Series to which he referred took place five years ago. I ostentatiously pointed to my watch and reminded him, “Wow, will you look the time? It hasn’t been 2000 for five years!”

“Yeah, well you wanna talk about a long time ago, what about 1986? 1986 was a long time ago!”

That dog wasn’t gonna hunt tonight, boy. I just kept dwelling on 2000 having been five years ago until the other cashier chimed in.

“Yeah, that was five years ago. You wanna live in the past?”

“No,” answered the assistant manager, clearly groping. “I wanna live in today.”

Did he just throw me a cookie? My god, he did! I dug in.

“Oh,” I said as I continued to bag, “if you want to talk about today, we can talk about today. Looks like the Mets beat the Yankees today…”

The assistant manager slinked off to wherever assistant managers who have to work Saturday nights slink off to. Me and Stephanie and Sydra and the other cashier had a good laugh. Moments later, I walked the Waldbaum’s parking lot with my head held high. And if we somehow beat Randy Johnson Sunday night, I will be insufferable to all of them.

It’s a guarantee.

At the risk of offending the baseball gods, I flipped over to watch the ninth inning on YES. After Michael Kay sourly deconstructed the chants of “Let's Go Mets!” filling Yankee Stadium, he invited me to stick around to find out who the player of the game was and get some thoughts on the game and the Yankees. How sweet of him, I thought. I think I will.

Wow. Gary Cohen piling on Robbie Alomar has nothing on how Singleton, Kaat, Kay, Murcer, Justice tore apart this Yankee club. Justice kept repeating that “you may see this all year,” Kay mused hopefully about the Yankees starting a fight, Kaat patiently pooh-poohed that, and then Joe Torre was asked a bunch of questions that were the baseball equivalent of flaming bags of dog shit on your doormat.

“Has Bernie become a defensive liability?” Ding-Dong! Stomp stomp stomp. Squelch squelch squelch.

“The other day you described yourself as angry. How do you feel today?” Ding-Dong! Stomp stomp stomp. Squelch squelch squelch.

“What do you have to say to Yankees fans?” Ding-Dong! Stomp stomp stomp. Squelch squelch squelch.

I'd feel sorry for them … if they weren't Yankees and therefore didn't deserve it through and through. (Hee hee hee!) They may well beat us tomorrow night: It's hard to sweep any series, Randy Johnson (hurt back and all) knows he's got to stop the team's slide, I never bet against Derek Fricking Jeter, and that team ain't this bad. On the other hand, they just said on FAN that Tony Womack may play center tomorrow. Yikes. If they're gonna beat us, Randy Johnson better be prepared to strike out a dozen: The Yankees' outfield is just rub-your-eyes horrible. Their best outfielder is Gary Sheffield, nicknamed “Magellan” for his roundabout routes to balls. With the Matsui Who Can Hit hobbled, none of their options in left are better than bad (Womack? Ruben Sierra?), and Bernie Williams is just ghastly in center. He's Juan Samuel Bad. Keith Miller Bad. Todd Hundley in Left Bad. (OK, that last one was fun to type, but not even remotely true.) How many misplays has Bernie had in two games? They better do something about center, or they're done. (How about a typical Yankee trade like, say, Robinson Cano and Chien-Ming Wang for Mike Cameron?)

BTW, the YESmen's player of the game was Tom Glavine. Wha? Did the Kay Korps see the quarter-mile worth of bombs Cliff Floyd hit today? Did they see Glavine's inability to step up with two outs? (Hey, come to think of it, Tom Glavine could really shore up that rotation. Or maybe play center.) Did they see David Wright go 2 for 4 and play another nifty game in the field? There are some games even Tom Glavine can't screw up.

Beyond that, there's not an enormous amount to say when you wallop a team 10-3. We're good. Hope we stay good tomorrow. Showdown of .500 teams. One of us is going to be underwater when it's over. I hope it ain't us.

Closing thought: When did we change ad agencies? The “Vote for Jose” ad, which says “other shortstops don't like children and animals, but Jose is a friend to everybody”? That's funny. The ads with a bored Mister Met preparing to trash the old Tug-era bullpen card jumping it off a ramp, or carving bats into little animals? Funny! Meanwhile, the last YES ad I saw was a promo for the Graig Nettles Yankeeography. To quote a great book, “Nostalgia is a product of dissatisfaction and rage.”