After an evening in the presence of what had been my nominal favorite American League team, I can confidently state that I hate the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim as much as any garden-variety National League or Interleague opponent. Go back to where you came from if you can figure out where that is. And take all your highly skilled offensive players with you.

I'm not too crazy about Kaz Ishii right now either. What's with this guy? For five innings, he's Sandy Kazfax. He's Dr. Kaz. He's Jerry Kaazman. He kan do no wrong.

Then he spends a few minutes on the basepaths and goes loopy on the mound. True, this Southern California outfit can really fluff up your ERA, but still. He was matching the hell out of Bartolo Colon who, in the parlance of the scouts, is as bad-body a ballplayer as I've ever seen. But he makes it work. I'd look up at the scoreboard and see BALLS: 9 STRIKES: 187 or something like that. I remember Colon from the Expos. He was bad news on us then. He was worse news on us Friday night.

Befitting our .500 nature, the Mets won the first half of this game but lost the second half. Too bad this isn't boxing. We'd probably win a few contests based on rounds, at least until we were TKO'd by the likes of Darrin Erstad, Steve Finley and Orlando Cabrera. And Vlad.

Vlad! The Greatest Player Who Ever Lived as I like to call him. When he stepped in for the first time last night, he elicited a response: some cheers acknowledging his greatestness, some boos over his decision not to take the worst offer on the table and sign with the Mets last year. Funny. I saw Vlad at Shea maybe a dozen times as an Expo when he was just as great and he barely caused a ripple. Wasn't anybody paying attention then?

As is usually the case with Interleague games, there were opponently clad fans dotting the stands. I'm gonna assume because New York is big and has people from everywhere that every Orange County (excuse me, Los Angeles County) expatriate Angels fan in New York showed up last night. It felt the same way last season when displaced Cuyahogans came to Shea to see the Tribe. It must be a thrill for these displaced souls to get to see their team in a New York ballpark where idiots aren't threatening their very existence or insulting their intelligence.

Yes, Shea is paradise for many. Just not the Mets suddenly.

Well, this is the least worried I'll have been about being in last place in June in my baseball life. That's something.

Nice of Manny Aybar to demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt which of our bad relief pitchers should turn into a shameful memory once the i's and t's get dotted and crossed on Danny Graves' contract. Though while we're at it, I vote for turning Mike DeJean into Steve Colyer. Or into anybody who isn't Mike DeJean. (Am I violating my own warning about Not Player X Syndrome? Maybe. I dunno, I have trouble believing your average Triple-A schmoe can't do what DeJean does.)

Last night I fell asleep while Glavine was tearing through the Astros like a combine, then woke up just in time to see Ausmus break his oh-for-forever streak and doom us. Tonight it just seemed like I'd been asleep: One moment Ishii was hellacious, the next moment he was helpless.

I suppose, as you've noted before, this is what .500 teams do. It's like a bad shower: Would you like blasts of hot and cold to alternate, or would you rather stand under lukewarm water for the duration?

How Vlad hit that ball is beyond me. Let alone how he hit it into right-center.

That's all I got, partner. I'm going off to sulk.

Here comes the problem with Interleague play. We're going against a team I like.

Don't get me wrong. I still want to beat the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim three straight. That is not in doubt. There is no conflict of interest here. When we last played them, out there in 2003, they weren't eight months removed from the glow of the victory that enthralled me so. And I wanted to beat them then. But I never stopped appreciating what they had not long before accomplished.

Remember 2002? Not our part of it. That was a disaster. I'm talking about October 2002 when the Angels knocked off the defending American League champions in four games in the American League Division Series and then went on to do even better things.

This isn't just random Yankee-bashing following an aggravating Thursday night loss to the Astros. This was huge in its day. It wasn't just about beating the Yankees, although that alone would be cause for a national prayer of thanksgiving. Since 1995, the Yankees had held the post-season hostage. As long as they were in it, I could never really enjoy it. Instead of picking out a positive horse to root on, I cheered for the pinstriped colt to break its leg and be destroyed (cruel language, but look where they had my head). Even when the Mets were involved, just knowing the Yankees were doing their dirty deeds detracted from the delight.

Arizona? Arizona, you ask? Didn't the Diamondbacks slay the beast a year earlier? Yes, sure, absolutely. And I loved them for what they did, you can book it. But as wonderful as their seventh-game, ninth-inning comeback was in the 2001 World Series, what the hell took them so long? Drama is drama, but the Yankees got an entire October and a piece of November to hang around and be…Yankees. They had the middle three games of that World Series to weave their wicked spell and fashion comebacks that gave them all kinds of miracle cred. Miracle? That's OUR word.

But by taking care of business early in the '02 post-season, the Angels put an end to all that talk before it could begin. Beautiful.

The greatest gift we got that year was October. They gave me the October I knew when I was 8 and thrilled to the Pirates beating the Orioles; the October when I was 12 and cherished the Red Sox for showing so much heart; the stray October when at the ripe, old age of 27, I was on board for the Reds' underdog victorious run. My teams of convenient passion didn't always win, but they always gave me something to root for, not rail against. I missed that so much.

Call it the Big Halo Taxi school of thought: Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you got 'til it returns?

It wasn't the first time I rooted for the Angels and meant it. There was 1986. Memorial Day. Not unlike 2005, the Mets weren't scheduled. So I gave into morbid curiosity. I went to Yankee Stadium. Yankees vs. Angels.

It was a great game, which I watched from underneath an adjustable, mesh California Angels cap, purchased right there at The Stadium. Points for apparel selection, I'll give them that. But the rest of it was a meh. This was what all the fuss was about? This was so big and so daunting? No it wasn't. I looked from right to left and thought this isn't imposing — it's just a baseball stadium. Not even a very good one. I approve of baseball, but this isn't the place to have it. Actually, even though it was a holiday and there was a decent crowd and the weather was gorgeous, it was kind of depressing. They kept playing a grainy tribute to Thurman Munson on the scoreboard. It was tragic that he died, but he died seven years earlier. Generally speaking, the crowd seemed cowed by years of Steinbrenner's bullying. Nobody said a damn thing about my Angels cap.

As for the game, Wally Joyner hit a two-run job off Dave Righetti in the top of the ninth to beat the Yankees 8-7. The ballpark was mediocre but the result was great. It proved that when I really gave them my focus, the Angels won at Yankee Stadium.

I never enjoyed myself at Yankee Stadium again (been back four times, came away annoyed four times) but I still have that Angels cap. It came out of mothballs for October 2002. It was worn in salute to the team that used to be California but was now Anaheim (and are whatever they say are today). As the Angels clubbed the Yankees into submission, I came to know each individual seraph on a post-season basis. I liked them.

Darin Erstad was intense. Scott Spiezio played in a band. Alex Ochoa, our five-tool failure? Their defensive replacement. Brad Fullmer was a reformed Expo. Adam Kennedy, a Cardinal for about 10 minutes, was scrappy, though not as scrappy as David Eckstein who appeared to be the love child of Lenny Dykstra and Freddie Patek. Garret Anderson looked every inch the MVP candidate they said he was. Tim Salmon was Rookie of the Year in that league the same year as Piazza was in ours but seemed older. Their starters left something to be desired, but their bullpen was gutsy and this kid K-Rod, Frankie Rodriguez, well he wouldn't have looked bad in a Mets uniform. But he was serving his country in a more important capacity.

Game Four of that ALDS was a celebration in our house. We were saying hello to Hozzie, the kitten we'd just adopted as a successor to the late, lamented Casey. Hozzie had been confined to the bathroom for about ten days while he acclimated himself to his surroundings. That Saturday was his coming-out party, the first time we would let him and Bernie interact. They hit it off famously, but not as hard as the Angels hit it off David Wells. We were saying hello to Hozzie and goodbye to the Yankees that afternoon.

What a wonderful way for a kitten to make his official debut.

By the time the Angels qualified for the World Series, there was no doubt they were my team for the duration. Sure their ALCS opponents, the Twins, had one of my favorite all-time Mets in Rick Reed and yeah, the Giants had been the New York Giants, but neither of those factors had any pull. It was all about the team that brought down the Yankees, brought out the ThunderStix and brought back October. I wasn't rooting against anybody this time. I was rooting for Anaheim.

As if I needed further confirmation I'd made the right call, I found it during the introductions to Game One of the World Series in Anaheim. When it came time to call out the home team, the P.A. blasted the opening notes to Norman Greenbaum's Spirit In The Sky. I suppose it was a play on Angels or a tribute to Gene Autry, but it choked me up.

Why? Because that was my song for Casey all summer long. He had died at the end of June and I came to think of him immediately as my spirit in the sky. Yes, cat people are capable of some squirrely thinking, but there it is. Now it was a must that the Angels ascend to heaven.

I wasn't the only one who thought so. I watched them split the first two games of the Series from a hotel room in Atlanta. When I returned home, I found Stephanie had redecorated our apartment.

With rally monkeys.

Not the officially licensed ones by any means, but five stuffed monkeys from Pathmark. Four to cheer the Angels forward with. One for Hozzie to make his own.

It wasn't front-runnerdom. It was October. It was exciting. It was a matter of loving the one you're with for a few blessed weeks. It's the autumn fling we fall back on when we don't have our own involved. It didn't compare to living and dying with the Mets but it sure beat the hell out of rooting against the Yankees.

The Angels eventually did their thing. In one of the less-remembered incredible comebacks ever, they fell behind the Giants three games to two and then spotted San Francisco a 5-0 lead in the seventh inning of Game Six. Game Six? Did somebody say Game Six? Funny things happen in Game Sixes, you know. Like Dusty Baker removing Russ Ortiz but not before tossing him the ball to say “cherish this talisman from the clinching game you've all but won.” Key words: all but. The Angels roared back. Won Game Six. Won Game Seven.

The Anaheim Angels were world champions for the first time ever. There were many to be happy for but nobody deserved it more, I decided, than the Orange County version of me whom I never met but know existed. He was a very frustrated 39-year-old who had gone without for his entire rooting life. But he hung in there with his team. Their failures only made him more determined to achieve his final goal. And now it was upon him. The Angels had won for that guy. Over here on the East Coast, I channeled his joy.

It was a great October, one that still resonates quite a bit in this teensy-weensy corner of Metsopotamia. But that's pretty much all the Angels are to me: that October and maybe that one Memorial Day when I bought the cap. Roger Angell — no relation — once wrote that “it's always useful to have two teams to care about.” I don't need two teams (or five stuffed monkeys for that matter). I have the Mets. Watching them this year is like watching at least two teams.

Through the pretzel logic of Interleague play, the Angels are the enemies this weekend. That's all they can be for now. But them and me, we'll always have then.

MetsGeek has a very nice examination of Kaz Matsui's Mets career by Damien Heath. Very nice as in “thorough, well-argued and persuasive,” or even very nice as in “wicked intimidating with all those acronyms and sabermetric thingamabobs.” Not very nice if you were hoping that newfangled stats might reveal TBKM isn't as bad as conventional stats show, or as he looks on the tube most every night.

There aren't stats to measure the fact that TBKM seems like a good guy who's trying hard, might be hurt and could use some love from the home stands — there are only the statistical measures trying to summarize how he's doing between those ol' white lines. I'm a wannabe new-stats guy trapped in the body of an old-stats dinosaur, so I only wish I understood half this stuff. But I am bright enough to grasp the essential, inescapable and unwelcome conclusion: Kaz is, well, bad.

To quote Chris Rock: “They say life is short. No it's not. Life is long.” The season is long, too. Getting worked up over 21 LOBs over two nights of a 162-game season probably isn't worth the toll it takes on one's blood pressure.

But over the last two nights, the Mets have scored four runs…and left 21 runners on base. That ain't right. That ain't pennant-contending baseball, either.

The Astros have some good pitchers who bothered to make the trip to New York, so let's give a little credit to Roy Oswalt (though not for being the punk of plunk; Cliff'll find ya, big shot) and Brandon Backe, but what happened Wednesday night with the frequent lapses of scoring shouldn't have happened. Not if we're serious about winning.

Nobody in this division seems all that serious, which is to our benefit. The longness of the season will shake out somebody and turn them into a prince among frogs, presumably. Who that will be remains a mystery. First-place Nationals? Improbable? Wasn't it a few weeks ago that the nattering nabobs were dismissing Charlie Manuel as a Phillie Phlop? Wasn't it right about then that the Braves and the Marlins were obviously about to pull away from the rest of us clowns? Yet we're all still in it and nobody continues to know anything.

But I do know that you gotta win games that are winnable, no matter how the odds conspire against you. A team of destiny finds a way to beat the offensively tepid Astros in its own ballpark. A team of destiny stitches together a few runs for Victor Zambrano who (I may just faint) deserved a better fate. A team of destiny looks back a few months from now and points to the night in June when Piazza took one off the wrist and the bench was reduced to two players but we managed to pull it out anyway. A team of destiny marvels at how it limped its way through a half-dozen nagging aches and pains to a victory that healed all wounds for the time being.

And a team that's seriously ready to seriously contend takes two of three from the Astros before the third game starts.

The season is long. Patience is another matter altogether.

Sometimes it just ain't happening. It's not so much that you're playing badly, but you're certainly not playing well. You're just playing, the other guy's getting the breaks, and you're going to lose. This one was practically a sand-in-the-gears roll call:

* Jason Lane's nice catch off Marlon Anderson denies us two more runs in the first.

* Another stupid bunt in the second. Zambrano's a converted shortstop and a good enough hitter to swing away there. Giving up an out just to move Matsui to second wasn't worth it. Of course Reyes then promptly strikes out.

* Floyd gets a bad read on Biggio's long but catchable fly, which goes just over his glove to tie the game.

* Beltran, Floyd and Castro all strike out after Cameron's at second with nobody out.

* The Astros take the lead after Wright makes a nice play but can't quite get Ensberg at first — on a ball Ensberg hit one-handed after the ump refused to let him call time. (For Pete's sake….)

* Dan Wheeler, a bad pitcher for us last year, manages to walk Matsui but then looks like an awfully good pitcher against Woodward, getting him on an evil breaking ball. With Lidge waiting in the bullpen, that was the ballgame.

Nothing in that list is truly awful in a lie-awake-at-3-am-fuming sort of way — it's plays not quite made, plays and pitches made by them, that sort of thing. But it's a loss nonetheless, on a night when the Nationals, Phillies and Marlins all won.

Speaking of roll calls, the morons in the bleachers who called out the names of the Met starters the way the Yankee Bleacher Creatures do better be on a plane to Gitmo as I type. I have to (grudgingly) admit the Yankee roll call is fairly cool, but that doesn't mean I want to hear it in my park. Particularly not emanating from that sad construction we call bleachers. There's nothing wrong with hiring a Yankee coach or signing a Yankee second baseman — the coach grew up a Met fan and played for us, after all, and the second baseman was a smart addition and seems to have shed the stink of brimstone. But you can't bite the other team in town's rituals. You just can't. How is this not incredibly obvious to any right-thinking Met fan? What were those people thinking? Let us never speak of this again.

It will be a big deal when it happens. Of course it will be. I could tell that by they way my heart had lodged itself in my throat by the seventh.

But sometimes I wonder why a pitcher winning a complete game in which he happens to allow nobody to record a base hit is such a big deal.

Because it's a no-hitter, stupid. And we've never had one.

Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm as haunted by it as any of us. I'm on it after the first pitch of the game is a strike. My highway's jammed with broken pitchers on a last-chance hitless drive. I'm certain it would instantly become a thrill on the order of our two world championships if it ever happens.

But why?

Because it's a no-hitter, stupid. And we've never had one.

I understand that. I understand how we've become — on a smaller, less tragic, more trivial scale — identified with not throwing a no-hitter the way the Red Sox were identified with not winning a World Series or the Cubs are identified with not winning a pennant. I understand, too, the taunting irony of all our great pitchers not throwing no-hitters for us but throwing no-hitters somewhere else. I understand Nolan Ryan and all he symbolizes. I understand that it's a gaping void in our history and that it would ease our pain to fill it.

But why?

Because it's a no-hitter, stupid. And we've never had one.

The idea is to win games. Advancement in the standings is never awarded by what's in the second column at the end of the line score. It's all about the R, baby, the runs. Every game we've ever won has included at least one base hit by the other team. I didn't throw a single one of those wins back.

Disappointed at times? Sure. I was raised (or raised myself) on the tale of Jimmy Qualls. Shea Stadium. Every seat taken. Fans planting themselves in the aisles. But everybody's standing. Twenty-five Cubs up, twenty-five Cubs down. The whole world aligning as it should. The Mets are on their way. And Tom Seaver is about to throw not just a no-hitter, but a perfect game.

Then Jiminy Who'zits, playing only because Don Young couldn't handle two fly balls the day before (not that anyone minded that), dumps one in between Cleon and Tommie. No perfect game. No no-hitter.

Seaver was disappointed. Who wouldn't be? But at all of 24 years old, he figured it out. When he saw Nancy, her eyes red, swollen with tears, he asked, “what are you crying for? We won 4-0.”

Nancy perked up and smiled: “I guess a one-hit shutout is better than nothing.”

I read that exchange when I was eight years old in a book called — get this — The Perfect Game. Ghosted by Dick Schaap, it's the story of the most important game of Tom Terrific's young life…

Game 4 of the 1969 World Series.

That was Tom Seaver's perfect game. At least that's what he said in the book and why would Tom Seaver have lied to me when I was eight? The Astros, it was noted by the greatest broadcasters in baseball Tuesday night, have a passel of no-hitters to their credit (including that way cool gang-blank of the Yankees in 2003) but would likely trade in the whole lot of them for what the Mets have:

1969.

1973.

1986.

2000.

Given a choice, I guess I would take four pennants, two world championships and zero no-hitters over the Astro alternative. But why have to choose? Why can't we have it all just once?

I'm beginning to believe we have a real chance to inscribe 2005 above the right-field wall and that we won't ever get a no-hitter. On a scale of One to Qualls, Pedro's certainty factor was hovering between Chin-hui Tsao and Benny DiStefano. His breaking ball was so sharp. His command was so absolute. The Houstons were so overmatched. I did the Times crossword during the fifth and sixth (must find something to do so as to act as if nothing unusual is going on) and could feel his adrenaline coursing through my pen while 26 Across — stuffed headrests — became DOWNPILLOWS; 33 Across — stuffed appetizers — became MUSHROOMS; and 49 Across — stuffed polling receptacles — became BALLOTBOXES.

All the clues said 45 on the mound had great stuff.

When Chris Burke did what he did, the no-hitter became evitable and that, I suppose, was inevitable. Houston had a hit and a run. We had ten hits and two runs. Now it was the game I was worried about. Well, not that worried. We still had Pedro. They were still the Astros. But we hadn't gotten to four games over all year and the Nationals were winning and life's priorities were coming back into focus.

So when we added a run and Pedro yielded nothing else of substance and we came away with the victory, it had been a wonderful night. If my eyes were red or swollen with tears, it was just the antihistamine talking. Winning's what matters. The no-hitter can wait.

But why?

“It's kind of a culmination of thoughts. First, it's just the gratification of knowing you hit the ball well. Then, you realize that you broke up a no-hitter and it's your first homer and it's off Pedro Martinez. When I got into the dugout, I really kind of had to sit down for a second.”

— Chris Burke

Tonight's culmination of thoughts: The flirtation with the no-hitter was nice, though we've become pretty used to disappointment on that score over the decades. But that's OK. After all, we got the electric stuff, we got the base hit to help his own cause, we got his awareness of the crowd and acceptance of it and eagerness to let it take him and bear him up to an even higher level, and we got the four strikeouts to finish the thing just when we were thinking dark thoughts about Grady Little and 100 pitches and Looper's failings. Silly us for worrying. That impossibly surgical fastball on the inside edge that ate Orlando Palmeiro alive in the ninth? It was a thing of almost terrible beauty,a piece of kinetic art to be gawped at, to leave you shaking your head in mute amazement.

Yep, young Mister Burke, he makes us feel like we have to sit down for a bit too.

With no Mets game Monday night, and the season premiere of Six Feet Under filling only an hour, I needed something else to watch. I flipped and I flipped and I flipped some more. Nothing on, not really. Until…

WHOA! Look at that! That's hot!

I don't remember ordering the Spice Channel.

Of course it wasn't porn. It was YES, which is like porn for Mets fans. It's a fantastic public service for us, especially when our team, tied for second and one game out of first at the moment, isn't playing. Instead of sending us to bed frustrated, YES takes care of our needs, if you know what I mean.

I tune in and the Yankees are playing the Brewers, which already seems a little unbelievable, but these things aren't known for their plot. It's the action we tune in for.

The score is tied. The Yankees have the bases loaded with one out. (The runner on first is called A-Rod — great porn name.) Their muscular stud who in a previous movie had to beg over and over for forgiveness for getting so large is up. And he grounds into a double play, 4-6-3. Inning over.

YES!

Next scene: A Brewer named Junior steps to the plate. He's facing — and I'm not making this up — The Big Unit. I don't even wanna know what that's all about. The “announcers” are going on about how intimidating The Big Unit is. All of a sudden, Junior swings and takes The Big Unit “downtown”. The Brewers lead 4-3.

YES! YES!

Final scene: It's the ninth inning. The Yankees have a runner on second with none out. Their first batter, an ingénue rookie, strikes out. Their second batter, a “veteran” who's “been around,” grounds out to short. Their last chance resides in the supple hands of their leading man, “The Captain”. He's portrayed as the handsome hero (who casts these things?). They tell us he always looks trouble straight in the mouth and always come through.

But not this time. The Captain lines out to right. Game over. Yankees lose.

YES! YES! YES!

I'm in a total state of ecstasy now. I can't believe how great this is. I figure I've enjoyed YES as much as I can.

But wait! There's more!

There's a whole show after the game about the game the Yankees just lost. And in it, there are these men in suits who go on and on about what went wrong. They send this woman with a microphone into the locker room to ask all the Yankees (who are taking off their uniforms) how badly they're feeling. And the Yankees oblige, shaking their heads, acting distraught and growing annoyed.

I can't believe I'm getting excited again.

This show goes for like an hour. The Yankees stare at the floor, make excuses and generally seem humiliated. It's really exciting. I don't think I can take anymore.

But after all that comes the money shot. One of their announcers appears on the screen and delivers what has to be the steamiest line in the history of this channel:

“In the back of their minds, the Brewers probably didn't think they belonged on the same field as the Yankees.”

YES! YES! OH YES!

That's what I was waiting for. That's what makes the YES Network a porn channel for Mets fans.

And just when you think you've gotten all the pleasure out of it that you can, they rerun the whole thing all night.

NEW YORK YANKEE COLLAPSE-O-METER

WOMACK TO WOMACK EDITION

1965: 26-31 (Final Record: 77-85)

1982: 28-29 (Final Record: 79-83)

2005: 28-29 (Final Record: ??-???)

“I'd hate to think that at this stage of my career I was being traded even-up for Dooley Womack.”

–Tony Womack, 2005