So, amid all the unhappiness about playing dead with the Angels in town, I keep remembering something: Did we just get a new stadium?

Privately financed. $180 million in infrastructure moolah from the city. Next to Shea. Would open in 2009. Gets built even if New York doesn't get the Olympics.

I seriously can't quite believe this — and the reaction has been very, very quiet. Normally that would make me think some horrible thing will derail it, but what? It's built with private money. There won't be any of that typical NYC community-board wackiness, since chop-shop owners and feral dogs are notoriously underrepresented in city affairs.

I mean, holy cow. A new stadium. For us. Us!

I hope it's the Ebbets Fieldy Shea II, immortalized over there with the other linky things on the left — though minus the retractable roof (rain's part of life) and that crazy field that cantilevers out over the parking lot, since we all know it would get stuck or something equally preposterous. True, if the Olympics do arrive (which won't happen) we'd spent 2012 playing in Yankee Stadium II, but that's a small price to pay. Heck, I'd watch a full season in some ancient battered leaky wreck of a stadium filled with busted escalators and squat, hostile vendors if it meant that we got a new park.

Oh yeah. Never mind.

A new stadium? For lil ol' us? Can it really be?

You and I haven’t gone to enough games together this year. The next time we do we have to make sure we finally see him.

Win or lose, he’s the main attraction. The big draw. The reason so many people look forward to going to Mets games lately. It may be the trendy thing to do, but I’m not ashamed to say I’m one of those people, and I’ll bet you are, too.

Then it’s settled: We have to go see the next game in which Eric Cooper umpires home plate.

Man, it’s so exciting. I understand the Mets sold an extra 10,000 tickets in the last five days once the fans understood who was going to be in the middle of everything. Coop! He’s the reason to buy a ticket.

Sunday was a Gold game, which means it cost $27 to watch Eric Cooper umpire from a mezzanine reserved seat or $34 from loge. If you could get an outer field box, it was $41. But obviously everybody who ponied up thought it was worth their hard-earned cash just to watch Eric Cooper call balls and strikes and argue with players.

The Mets must be kicking themselves. Gold? They’re probably scouring the umpire rotation charts to figure out when Coop will be behind the plate again at Shea. Then they can institute a new tier. How’s Azure sound?

Obviously, it would work. Unfortunately I couldn’t watch the game but I could hear the excitement for the five or so innings I listened. Gary and Howie described the scene vividly as always: almost 44,000 on hand, who knows how many wearing those navy polo shirts with Eric’s number 56 embroidered on the sleeve, the really savvy fans coming to the park with a chest protector under their tops and a handful of truly clever ones bringing a chip on their shoulders. Just like their hero.

Eric Cooper did not disappoint. Right from the start he made himself the story of the game. Squeezing the Mets’ pitcher (I don’t remember who that was) in the first; calling borderline balls as strikes when the Mets were up and then…the big one!

The Mets’ catcher — Piazza, I think — who Coop retired on strikes (some people would say the Angels pitcher did it, but we know who the star of the game was), didn’t like it and said something from the bench. Another umpire might have let it go, but not our Coop, no sir. He turned away from the action on the field and went after the Mets’ catcher.

Ya gotta love it! Finally, somebody gets it. It’s not about going to see the Mets or the Angels and it’s certainly not about allowing either team’s interchangeable players to play. In the first inning, Coop took over the game. He threw the Mets’ catcher out.

Wow! I mean wow! There’s a guy who understands the stakes, who understands baseball and what the fans pay to see. It’s not about the catcher or the pitcher or ignoring what a frustrated player may say in the heat of the moment. It’s all about Eric Cooper and he did not let anybody who thought so down. I could tell from the way the fans were shouting “COOOOOP!”

Too bad we didn’t get a chance to see Eric Cooper umpire today. But it’s a long season. Unlike the guy he threw out, we’ll be sure to catch one of his games.

Yeah, that’s who I wanna see.

Turns out I didn't miss the Monsta's Ball. After a singularly tasty meal at Shake Shack, our party (me, Emily, The Human Fight, HF Girlfriend Peggy) headed downtown to await Pete, who'd decided to drive in to meet us. Pete's choice was a way bar downtown, one that's virtually deserted early on weekend nights. Good for playing pool — and, as I instantly recalled, a bar with about 10 million TVs. Despite recent disappointments, I heartily endorsed this choice; thanks to the rain delay, we arrived in the bottom of the second.

Keeping track of a game in a bar is difficult, though: Unless you're antisocial and glue yourself to the set, you can't really pay pitch-to-pitch attention. Without the sound, you miss a lot and constantly wind up surprised and pondering the injustice of it all: What the hell, Piazza was on second with nobody out! Stupid Mets!

Anderson's amazing trip around the bases — my theory is Beltran's catch, being Finleyesque, used up the stadium's quota of Finleyism just in time — focused our party's attention on what was going on at Shea. (Minus poor Emily, who'd headed home to relieve the babysitter. More on that in a moment.) So we settled in for a baseball colloquy, with The Human Fight (a big Red Sox fan who gnashed his teeth each time the Cubs-Bosox score was posted) and I comparing notes after each pitch: Do you send Reyes here? Even though he hasn't had a decent read on Donnelly all inning? What's Donnelly gonna throw here — fastball or slider? 3-2 on Cameron — send Reyes now? That error ain't Minky's fault — Looper was late getting off the mound. Why was Wright playing so far in? How many goddamn catchers do the Whatever Angels of Whatever have? Etc.)

Pete (a Met fan ages ago, now not a sports fan at all) is perennially optimistic, given to the enthusiastic embrace of signs and portents, and intrigued by strange plays. He was fascinated by Anderson's inside-the-park home run and wanted to know when I'd seen one before. “Don't remember — a long time ago,” I said, still astonished. (Now I do: Tim Bogar's inside-the-parker during Bobby Jones's debut, which ended in the head-first slide that ruined Bogie's career.) In the 10th, with Beltran and Piazza having infuriated me, Pete stayed serenely sunny: The inside-the-park home run made it obvious that the Mets would come back. I pointed out that we'd already used up a massive portion of good baseball karma — the next time I see the center fielder kick a ball past the right fielder will be the second time — but no matter, Pete was confident. If anything, Cliff's just-foul bid for heroism increased his confidence — never mind that the Human Fight and I had lapsed into anticipatory disappointment and kept explaining that a guy who hits a home run just foul in a long battle with the pitcher almost always makes an out in some lame fashion.

Well, Serene Sunniness 1, Experienced Pessimists 0. They could have shown that replay for two more hours and I would've still been on my bar stool waving my hands around like a goddamn fool. A happy goddamn fool.

That was the kind of game that keeps you watching 10,000 lost causes: In June 2009 I'll remain to the bitter end of some aggravating loss because in June 2005 Cliff Floyd hit one just foul and then hit one considerably fair. Of course I'll be watching anyway, but you know what I mean.

Postscript: As today's game got started I remarked to Emily that I wasn't sure I could properly pscyhe myself up since I was still exhausted from last night's fandom. “Why, what happened?” she asked — she'd gone to bed when she got home, and the game ended too late for the Sunday paper. Painting the word picture was almost like winning it again.

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.