I can't believe we lost to the friggin' Mets today. If we can't beat the Mets, what's the point?

It's hard enough being Phillies fans the way we are (a mostly embarrassing and shameful history; no championship in a quarter-century; psycho skipper replaced by laconic loser; we're in Philadelphia, for crissake), but this is insult to injury. What is it about playing the Mets that brings out the worst in our Phillies? We're 3-6 against New York this year and almost every game we've lost I was sure we were going to win.

Like I said what's the point? What's the point of having an alleged Metkiller like Pat Burrell if Pat doesn't in fact kill those damn Mets? Where's Armando Benitez when we need him? What's the point of riding the back of the best rightfielder in the National League — one who has owned Braden Looper forever — if Abreu can't touch him? What's the point of having alleged studs like Thome and gnats like Rollins and an arm like Wagner if we can't beat the Mets?

Cripes, Tank can't do it all by himself.

Is this our life? Getting beat by guys we had no use for like Marlon Anderson and Roberto Hernandez? Losing to the Mets behind ex-Mets like Cory Lidle? (I'm beginning to think Lidle is still on their payroll like some sort of, I don't know, Manchurian Met). Are we destined to, no offense to our second baseman, always Chase and never lead? It's bad enough we're behind a team from Washington, but we can't even beat the last-place, friggin' Mets.

How on earth are they in last? I don't know what they're like the rest of the time, but man are they lethal when they play us. Piazza's always having a happy homecoming. Floyd hits bombs. Mientkiewicz is an All-Star. Reyes runs wild. Pitchers I've never heard of like Royce Ring and Heath Bell don't look so bad. Even that kid Wright, who makes all those dopey plays, can't stop them. That's what the Mets are against our team – unstoppable. Except for one lucky inning Wednesday night, we would've been swept.

The worst part? The way their fans show up here. More of 'em were here this week than were at Shea Stadium the last time the Phils were in New York. What's the point of having a great new ballpark if it's gonna be filled by Mets fans? Do you have any idea how long the cheesesteak lines were with all of them here on Thursday afternoon? If we can't enjoy our cheesesteaks and lose in peace, I have to ask once more…

What's the point?

Shove 'em on the SEPTA. Steer 'em to the Turnpike. Throw 'em in the Schuylkill. I don't care what ya do with 'em. Get the Mets out of Philly. They're murder on us.

OK, so that would have made a lousy song title. And it won't necessarily make for a hugely enjoyable season of winning baseball. But it's what we've got. And, perhaps inspired by your cry to “Stand pat!”, I found tonight that it's enough for me.

I had to inspired by something, because it sure wasn't tonight's game. What on earth was David Wright doing with that one-hopper he sorta fielded? Did he really think he'd caught the ball? Did he think the umpire had just suffered a bout of hysterical blindness? If only there'd been a dispirited runner from second chugging toward him, he could have set a record for most easy put-outs ignored. Jeepers. It's interesting how often you still see something new in a baseball game, but I'd rather not have seen that.

As for that seventh inning, well, I'm disappointed but I'm not down. Whatever Dr. Peterson did with Royce Ring, my hat's off, even if it took more than 10 minutes.* Ring made Abreu look foolish, and almost got Thome on an exquisitely nasty 3-2 pitch. (Almost — the ump made the right call.) As for Aaron Heilman, he was by turns overamped, unlucky and bad. Hey, it happens. His pitches still have zip and movement, and I'm still encouraged. Besides, I'll take Ring and Heilman and even our flyer on Danny Graves over no-future retreads like Mike DeJean any day. The kids are learning on the job — as is the still-esteemed Mr. Wright — and it's going to be rough at times, for them and for us. But I see potential. I see promise. And I'm curious — eager, even — to see how it all turns out, whether we get to the good part of the story later this year or in 2006 or whenever.

(You'll notice I'm not including Mister Koo on that list. Time to write Mister Koo out of this particular tale.)

Besides, what the hey, maybe we tired Billy Wagner out in the ninth. Right back at 'em tomorrow, bright and early. Even if it is Ishii.

* And maybe we oughta retire that joke. Watching Zambrano pitch is excruciating, like watching the family dog play in traffic, but y'know what? He's gotten pretty good at dodging cars.

Turns out Gerald Williams is good in the clubhouse. Doug Mientkiewicz said so on Mets Extra, pointing out how Geriatric Gerald was exercising all kinds of great influence on Jose, which obviously paid off in Philadelphia Tuesday night. Well, I thought, maybe that's worth something, if not an entire roster spot.

Ed Coleman, who likes to agree with whoever's talking into his microphone, concurred with Minky. “Right,” said Ed. “Last year, Gerald was riding Floyd and Cameron all the time.”

And that worked to what end exactly? Remember that play in this very same park last September when Cliff pulled a Benny and tossed away a live ball because he thought there were three outs? (There weren't.) Come to think of it, where was Gerald Williams last night at the Cit when Cliff had no idea where the ball was or little feel for how many outs there were in the first? Why wasn't Gerald influencing Cliff before the game? Surely someone who's that good in the clubhouse can be a positive influence on two Mets simultaneously.

Why am I picking on Gerald Williams? I'm sure he's a swell guy. I mean that I'm really sure. Peter Gammons had it several years ago that Gerald was “a man who didn't own a car until [2000] — nor even looked into buying a house, which he now [has] — because he used his money to help his 13 brothers and sisters and 26 nieces and nephews who, like Gerald, grew up poor in Louisiana and didn't have his gifts or determination to make the kind of money that baseball players do.” Hard to get down on a guy like that.

So make him a coach. Twenty-four years ago, Joe Torre brought in Bob Gibson as his “attitude coach”. It wasn't to much avail as the only Met pitcher with any attitude in 1981 was Dyar Miller (he slugged Joe Pignatano in a hotel bar), but let's give Gerald a clipboard and a whistle, and let Gerald give Cliff and Cammy and Jose and the whole bunch of 'em a truckload of attitude.

But find somebody else to hit and throw and catch and such.

I'll let you in on a little secret: I haven't given up on this team. Not just because they won a game they needed to win, but because they can't be as bad as they've played of late. The 2-9 stretch of recent bad baseball is inexcusable, but do you really think those are the Mets we'll see for the rest of 2005? We can play with numbers all we want, but I have some that I believe are relevant.

Eliminate (though they count) the first five games of the season. And hold in abeyance the last couple of weeks. Whaddaya got? Ya got a team with a 31-22 span in its portfolio. That's just about one-third of a season completed at a clip of roughly 95 wins when extrapolated across the entire slate.

The Mets were playing at that pace as recently as two weeks ago. That's a sample you can trust to a certain extent. That's evidence that the 2005 Mets are pretty good. That's cause for just a little patience.

The West Coast swing (Dirty Thirty to Date: 1-5, 24 to go) was dreadful as was the latter half of the homestand that preceded it. But what caused that shortfall? Injuries and a slump. Slumps don't last forever. Injuries are part of the game; if you can't overcome them, you're screwed anyway. But let's assume that injuries heal within a reasonable timeframe.

Where does that leave us? It leaves us with six legitimate reasons that the 2005 Mets won't descend into Howeville:

• Beltran

• Wright

• Reyes

• Cameron

• Floyd

• Mientkiewicz

Carlos is better than he's shown. We know that. We know he popped up more than Orville Redenbacher's corn in Oakland and Seattle. But we're seeing a little better Beltran the last couple of games. Do you really think the Beltran who's been hobbled is the Beltran we're stuck with for the next three months let alone six-plus years? Do you think Wright, save for some inevitable bumps in the road, isn't unstoppable? That Reyes, under somebody's (Williams', Willie's, Wise's) tutelage won't keep evolving? That Cameron once healthy won't be a player? That Floyd isn't sound as long as we keep him out of Philadelphia? That Minky's gonna be any more godawful than he's already been? There's such a thing as bottoming out, you know.

That's six positions where the Mets are too strong to go down for the count like they did last year. Avoid that ignominy, and it's a good season right there. Ignore the comparisons between this juncture in 2004 versus now. We had a better record a year ago? Great. Want to take last year? Want Wigginton at third, Hidalgo in right, McEwing at all? You can have 'em. The real tipping point will come in the middle of the next Washington series, specifically after 83 games. After 83 games in 2004, the Mets were 43-40. That was the high-water mark. If we're scuffling after 85, 95 games this year, well, we're not much better. But I think we are.

Where are we not better? Mike is in inexorable decline. Can't do anything about that. Mike makes a ton of money. Even half a season of Mike costs $8 mil. Nobody's gonna wanna touch him at that price or trade a prospect of note for him. If he doesn't get it together like a No. 5 hitter should, nobody will be interested. And if he does, if he shows a sustained flash of vintage Mike, why would we want to get rid of him? Personally, as long as he doesn't bat .102 and field .201, I'm content to ride it out with him for the rest of his contract. He's Mike. That's gotta count for something in this life.

Second base is a mess. Somebody's bound to come off the DL sooner or later. No easy answer at the moment. But no team is perfect.

Lotta talk the last coupla days about whether the Mets should be buyers or sellers. Here's a third way: Stand pat. Have just a little more patience. This is a decent to maybe better team that's been put together for 2005. If you can patch a hole, wonderful. But why the perennial need to move this guy for that guy? (Unless it's to drop DeJean, an event to which I add my BRAVO!) I swear I don't understand baseball fans, ours or others, sometimes. We wait all winter for this game we love to rise from the ashes. We navigate through spring to get to Opening Day. And then when the season is in full bloom, most of us are angling to do trades and worry about signings with next year in mind. Next year can wait. The 2005 Mets ain't so bad and ain't so dead.

There's a lot that needs to go well the rest of the way. Limit stupidity to acceptable levels. Take nothing for granted. Like Floyd in the first inning Tuesday night. Or Mike on Saturday night. Egads, Piazza lollygagging his way to home plate as Wright was being tagged out at third has to be the inverse of Marlon Anderson's trip around the sun. What do you call it — an inside-the-park nap? It was a bizarre play built on a bizarre carom, but where is it written that it's unbecoming for a player to keep running until he touches home plate?

And for gosh sakes, set your watches back or ahead or laterally three hours when the next distant road trip comes along. No kidding. Those games were practically season-killers and they cannot be repeated every time we leave the Eastern time zone.

Proof of our current undeadness at the present time lies in the best part of the paper: The National League standings. Put aside the first-place clubs and examine the best of the rest. Four teams have 33 losses. Two more, including us, have 36. Two others have 37. And it's June. That's eight teams within four games of one another for the final playoff spot with three months and change to go.

That's a scramble. Only St. Louis is a gimme for October. Only Cincy and Colorado are prohibitively done. Thus, we're not out of it by any means. We've got some starting pitching and a bullpen that is morphing into something mildly trustworthy. Nobody will give Omar any credit for this because GMs are to be scorned (immediately) for their team's drawbacks and not praised for their assets, but whatever became of Mike Matthews, Felix Heredia, Manny Aybar and Mike DeJean? They have been quietly molded into Royce Ring, Heath Bell, Aaron Heilman and Danny Graves — four depressing journeymen are gone. In their place stand three vital, improving, young arms and one project worthy of a flyer.

Is there, despite the presence of Gerald Williams on the 25-man roster, hope? Enough of it to get by on. And real fans need only hope and a pocket schedule. Everything else is presumptuousness.

(Note to unsated readers: Six, seven days a week of me here not nearly enough? Really? Then check out Gotham Baseball every Tuesday for even more.)

So Reyes, hearing Cameron's footsteps in the leadoff spot, goes three for five with two runs scored and Bieseresque havoc created. Mientkiewicz, hearing Daubach's footsteps at first base, blasts a double and a homer and scores two runs of his own. Daubach, hearing Minky's footsteps possibly returning to first base, hits a pinch-hit homer to approximately Delaware. Nothing like the prospect of a hanging to concentrate the mind, they always say.

Kudos to Ring, Roberto and Looper for timely relief, particularly Ring, who was terrific. Perhaps if he stays this terrific it'll keep Mister Koo the hell away from the mound. As for Looper, he was resilient and kept getting ground balls, shrugging off the fact that bad things kept happening and that he was facing a sea of lefties, who are hitting approximately .500 off of him. Abreu, who came up as the tying run, was a you-gotta-be-kidding-me 9 for 16 off Looper. Ulp.

Then again the whole ninth inning was one big ulp. First Lieberthal, the only righty Looper's likely to see, doesn't bother moving his elbow out of the way of an inside pitch. Not your traditional leadoff walk, but still a Really Bad Omen. Endy Chavez flies out, the first time in living memory he hasn't beaten the pulp out of us. That's good, right? Rollins hits a potential double-play ball to Reyes — that hits the lip of the infield grass and bounds over Jose's shoulder. Ugh. Now I'm gnashing my teeth and trying to figure out a way to blame it all on Gerald Williams. The despicable Kenny Lofton hits another grounder to Reyes, who's forced to take a weird route to the bag and avoid Marlon Anderson, who's trying his hardest to get in the way. Two out, but gawd, the dugout looks like a POW camp. And who can blame them? There's Abreu, ready to kill us. I can just imagine the ball lofting up and over the right-field wall, the replay of Looper turning around and looking up, then the replay of Willie trying to do his best Torre in the dugout and remain expressionless. Then Looper will strike out Thome on three pitches (because that always happens) and I'll have to endure at least two Ice Williams “at bats” before we lose, 10-8, sometime after midnight.

Only Abreu hits yet another grounder. But wait! He's hit it to Wright, who is backing up on the ball. You can practically see the sprockets and gears jamming and flying out of his ears. Ack, David, stop thinking! Wright seizes the ball like a drowning man and flings it toward first — low! In the dirt! Scooped out by Mientkiewicz! (No way Daubach, Woodward or anybody else makes that play, by the way.) Mets win! I still feel vaguely like throwing up, but Mets win!

Good one about the Mets recalling Gerald Williams. You're funny. I almost believed it, too. I particularly admire the way you somehow engineered it so the entire New York sporting media would go along with the joke. I saw this news everywhere. Whad'dya do, get inside my hard drive or something? Well, whatever. Hats off to you. I got a big kick out of it. But I know it's not true because these are The New Mets and they wouldn't dare recall Gerald Williams and set us back one season and like a thousand light years.

The Good News

1. There is no way we lose tonight.

2. Kaz Matsui placed on the DL. His bruised knee is suddenly serious. His bats, on the other hand, have been blissfully bruise-free for months. (Rimshot.)

3. Mike DeJean released. Hopefully we also set fire to his personal effects. Let us never, ever speak of him again.

The Bad News

1. Mister Koo takes DeJean's place on the roster. Minaya said we'd need left-handed relief against the Phillies, Yankees and Nationals. Well, yeah, Koo is left-handed.

2. Gerald Williams recalled. Yes, Gerald Williams. Gerald Williams, the embodiment of the complete and utter pointlessness of the 2004 Mets. Gerald Williams, living monument to the blinkered, Taliban-level conservatism of baseball front offices. Gerald Williams, who cannot possibly mean anything to the future of this baseball team. Gerald Williams.

Are they trying to torment us? I no longer claim to have the slightest use for Matsui, and I know Keppinger's hurt, but I could name 16 to 20 outfielders from the farm system I'd rather see than Gerald Williams.

I take it back. There is a way we can lose tonight. Quite an accomplishment, Omar.

Pissy Next-Day Addendum: Ice got the call, says Omar, because Valent wasn't doing too well and because Ice is a defensive replacement, can be used to pinch-run and has “experience in the clubhouse.”

Oh, c'mon. I'm a believer in clubhouse chemistry — I think Pedro has been a major upgrade over Cliquemaster Al off the field as well as on it — but this is ridiculous. Lenny Harris was a great clubhouse guy. So was Mo Vaughn. It didn't help much — winning on the field would do a lot more to make a happy clubhouse than the warm feeling everyone might get from the sight of Gerald Williams. (And if the idea is to tutor Victor Diaz, I'm all for it — sounds like a fine project for summer nights in Norfolk.)

Can Gerald Williams (.223 AVG, pathetic .273 OBP, one steal at AAA) possibly be the best on-the-field answer? What about Ron Calloway (.359 OBP, 12 steals), who might possibly have a future as a fourth outfielder, as opposed to the Iceman. What about Prentice Redman? Angel Pagan? What about nearly anybody else? What on earth were they thinking?

I know the intonations in Gary Cohen's voice better than I know my own father's. Then again, despite my affection for the man whose DNA I share, I don't hang on Dad's every word for three hours at a clip most every night for six months.

Given that it was Father's Day in the United States on Sunday, our family got together for one of its infrequent lovefests. Us, Dad and his longtime ladyfriend and my sister and her husband met at an Italian joint of universal convenience. Time: 6 PM. Inning: The sixth, as it turned out. The top of it. The Mets' rally was in progress as we parked, an event unknowable no more than 20, 25 minutes earlier when we left home.

In our party of six, I was the biggest Mets fan. Stephanie was the second-biggest Mets fan. There was no third-place finisher. This is what makes my family an enigma wrapped in obliviousness where I'm concerned. Nobody else likes baseball. I do. It doesn't matter 158, 159 times a year, but here it did. There was a decision to be made.

Do I bring my tiny radio to dinner?

Usually, the answer is simple. Yes. Of course. What are you, insane? There's a game in progress. It would be rude for me not to listen.

But this is my family. There's one member, I won't say who, who makes a face when I pull out my earbuds to catch a score. It can be for the briefest moment, but I wind up on the receiving end of what in Yiddish is called the punim. It refers to a certain kind of face that one makes to reflect a certain kind of mood. I will leave it to your deductive powers to ascertain what kind of mood is involved and the effect the face has on one's ability to endure an evening of it.

Being caught up in the Mets, even a lousy Mets team in an increasingly lousy Mets season (also known as being caught up in the Mets), I don't generally care. Well, I do but I don't, not really. Make all the punim you want, I've got a game to follow. Except last year's Father's Day was an utter and total disaster. It had nothing to do with the Mets who had polished off a sweep of Detroit well in advance of the family affair, but the horror show still lurked in my mind. I spent much of Sunday afternoon cursing out Tom Glavine, but when I wasn't doing that, I was imagining what would go wrong this year for Father's Day and what it would take to set things off.

So I made a decision: Leave the tiny radio home. Live without knowing for an hour-and-a-half what's happening. Get through this family obligation in one piece and then turn on the car radio and get the score. The way the Mets have been playing, I should've viewed it as a reprieve.

Except that at the exact moment we were parking, Woodward was getting hit with the bases loaded and Wright was scoring on a wild pitch and suddenly it went from 6-1 to 6-3 with two on and one out and Victor Diaz (so damn due) up. Earlier, when Heilman had come on to relieve The Manchurian Brave, I was thinking one of my rare positive thoughts, that this would be the Foxwoods Resort & Casino Turning Point of the Game because Aaron would shut the door on the Mariners and the Mets would begin to chip away.

I didn't exactly buy it, but now it showed signs of happening. Aaron was untouchable. The offense was simmering, if you could call an HBP and a WP a simmering offense. I left the tiny radio home and now had to get out of the car. I would be completely uninformed, unless…the restaurant! Restaurants have bars and bars have TVs and TVs over bars show important sporting events on weekends.

Ya mean like the U.S. Open? Nobody seemed to be watching the golf and I was tempted to ask for a quick channel change during a commercial or something but I decided that such a request would violate the spirit of the punim. No Mets information readily available, I gave myself over to small talk. As was, our sextet had to wait a good fifteen minutes for a table. There was time to pull an “oh, I left something in the car” to find out if Diaz had indeed blasted the triple I anticipated on his behalf and then how he scored the tying run on a daring steal of home.

But I didn't. In fact, I put it out of my mind as best as I could. Given the Mets-Mariners dynamic of Friday and Saturday, that wasn't as difficult as I'd forecast.

We got our table. Everybody was cordial to everybody else. Several subjects were discussed. Baseball was barely one of them. (My god, am I related to these people? I was born in Brooklyn. Maybe I was switched with the Hodges baby.) Food came. Food went. Tolerable time was had by all. Hugs and kisses and, essentially, see you in December. For this family at this stage of its development, that's about as heartwarming as it gets.

All right then, it's a couple of minutes before 7:40. There's likely a 20:20 update on the way. Just give me the score. Tell me what happened and I'll be satisfied, win or lose.

But the string of commercials I heard when I turned on the radio didn't sound FANnish. It sounded Metsish. Hey, Mets Extra must still be on. And it was! Gary came on to introduce the highlights. Hey, maybe he's only getting to them now because the Mets blew by the Mariners and the bottom of the ninth had to be played (Looper saving Heilman's win). Yeah, that's probably it.

But in Cohen's voice, I could tell it wasn't good. Damn familiarity. He recapped the parts I knew about right up to the sixth when the Mets scored their third run.

Diaz didn't do squat, but Reyes, Gary said, somehow managed to get on base and make it 6-4. Oh?

Then he told me that Beltran had his best at-bat in ages and poked a single through the infield and made it 6-5. Oh?

Now, he told me, Floyd was coming up. Maybe I don't know Gary's voice that well after all. Maybe he's going to surprise me and tell me that Cliff brought home the tying run. The go-ahead runs, too, with his second homer of the day.

But Floyd popped out to end the inning.

At least Heilman had kept us in the game and must've continued to do so, right? Except, according to Gary, DeJean came on to pitch the bottom of the sixth.

WHAT? DeJean? Mike DeTorch? What on earth? I know Aaron hasn't stretched it out in recent weeks, but this is A.L. rules, Willie. What on earth are you thinking? I mean what on earth were you thinking? This game, mind you, had already taken place.

Gary's tone betrayed nothing, but he was giving a few too many details about the Mariners' sixth. Hmmm, why is he going on with such exposition about a three-and-two count to Adrian Beltre with two out and the bases loaded? Is it to heighten the tension regarding DeJean's heroic performance in this tightrope of a spot? Did our beleaguered, roleless middle reliever do a job and strike this guy out?

No, of course not. I knew that. I knew Gary's even bringing it up meant Beltre did something good for Beltre — like stand still and get walked. By DeJean. Now I was all “NO!” and “C'MON!” and “NO!” some more. I continued to absorb the recap as if it were actual in-progress action. Worse yet, I couldn't change the outcome no matter how hard I retrorooted. Not that I can change the outcome in real time either.

Mariners 11 Mets 5. Before Gary Cohen had said three words, I knew the score if not the totals.

Tell me about our new park. Please tell me something. Please tell me anything.

10. Mets' dugout certain to be roomier without unnecessary bat rack taking up space.

9. Home Run Apple replaced by the Single Raisin.

8. During games, DiamondVision will air complete DVD collection of The Sopranos, including bonus features, to satisfy fans' otherwise unfulfilled desire for lots of hitting.

7. With New York getting the 2012 Olympics, Torpid Baseball announced as an Olympic event. Early favorite for the gold plays right next door.

6. Philip Humber, cracking the low 80s since surgery, makes long-awaited Mets debut. Goes two and a third.

5. Contests much shorter with home team eliminating the formality of starting the bottom of each inning with fewer than two outs.

4. Julio Franco retirement rumors, though eventually proven false, spur fleeting visions of unseating Braves.

3. Drinking fountains dispense contents of unclaimed Uncle Jack's Steak Sauce prize packages.

2. Beltran terms quad “91, 92 percent. Could be 93 percent by August. I'll just keep playing on it and eventually it'll come around. I'm sure of it.”

1. To “suck” will be slang for doing really well the way “bad” means good in certain contexts. Thus, the Mets will no longer suck all that much.

I give up. No, not forever, but until this team gets its head out of its collective butt. Which will be … well, if you know, please tell me.

When your team can't hit, on one level it's hard to evaluate anything they're doing — in a way they aren't your team at all, but a bunch of impostors as startling and unwelcome to the players they're impersonating as they are to all of us. So what's the point of discussing them?

But still, ohmygod. Beltran looks completely lost. Piazza looks like he'll never again be anything close to what he was. Reyes is popping everything up and can't seem to hit from the right side. Cameron is on the shelf. Mientkiewicz seems to have forgotten how to hit. Matsui seems to have forgotten how to play baseball. Wright is killing himself trying to hit five-run homers — and almost literally killed himself today catching a foul ball. (Nice play, but discretion, valor, etc.) No matter how healthy he finally is, Floyd can't carry eight other dudes on his broad shoulders.

Nor is there much hope from our once-vaunted bench. Diaz went to AAA and somehow forgot everything he seemed to have learned early in the year, meaning his resemblance to Manny Ramirez is now chiefly mental. None of Matsui's replacements are exactly worth of hosannas — Woodward is a utility guy, Anderson can't field, Cairo is hobbled, and Jeff Keppinger and (dare I say it) Edgardo Alfonzo managed to get hurt, depriving us even of hypotheticals. Daubach can draw a walk but can neither field nor run.

The pitching? Better than that, for all it matters, but not that great. Ishii's continuing presence in the rotation is baffling. Glavine finds a way to pitch badly enough to lose more often than not. (If we want to find a bright side, it would be that the other three guys — including the much-maligned Zambrano — have been more or less above reproach recently.) Nobody trusts Looper to close out a game that matters. Bell has guts but gives up too many gopher balls. Hernandez has looked decidedly mortal after a strong start. Graves may find himself, but he hasn't been reliable since the '04 All-Star break. Heilman is being wasted in the pen. DeJean having a roster spot is a travesty, seeing how he's a horrible pitcher and a bad teammate to boot. Meanwhile, Jae Seo is pitching somewhere with dizzy bat races and lots of ads on the outfield walls.

Are we too injured? Too old? Too young? Too old and too young? Too unlucky? Enduring a difficult transition? Just a more-sickening version of your typical .500 team? I don't know. Maybe you do. If so, please tell me. Tell me about the worm turning, about Willie's patience being rewarded, about a division still within reach, about Trachsel returning and a glut of tradeable starters, about healing and regressing to the mean in a good way. Tell me about Brian Bannister and Philip Humber and Lastings Milledge. Tell me about our new park. Please tell me something. Please tell me anything.

WARNING!

Hard drive titled NEW YORK METS is unable to access offense at this time.

Default system requirement for NEW YORK METS offense is between 4 and 6 R.

NEW YORK METS offense byte remaining is zero.

NEW YORK METS offense will not run on this operating system.

Please restart NEW YORK METS offense.

Disk titled DAUBACH insufficient for restart of NEW YORK METS offense.

NEW YORK METS offense invalid in folder titled WEST COAST SWING.

NEW YORK METS offense requires immediate attention.

NEW YORK METS offense is out of memory.

Fatal system error.

Please try again Saturday night, 10:05.