I'm glad that the regularly televised baseball I ordered up for your birthday finally arrived (just in case my reminiscences about myself weren't enough for you). For you and all the FSNY/MSG-deprived out there, ya got your money's worth Monday night. Those of us in safe-til-'06 Cablevision territory got antsy and kept changing channels, missing many of the best bits and pieces. It was a schlep, but we made it through the rain with a win. We'll pry our eyelids open for one of those anytime.

The odyssey of Jeromy Burnitz has been an unfortunate one. He never should've been traded following 1994. That was all Dallas Green who could come down with the strangest case of assburrs over the most random players. Burnitz wasn't random when he was young. He was a No. 1 draft pick with power and an arm who didn't deserve to be given up on. All those years that we screwed around without a regular rightfielder (which has been basically ever since Burnitz was traded following 1994) might have been prevented.

Might have. Like Kent, the trade of Jeromy didn't look all that insane immediately after the fact given that his production wasn't all that with Cleveland. Plus we did get three interesting pitchers in Byrd, DiPoto and Mlicki. Interesting became depressing after a fashion and Burnitz became a genuine slugger.

I was hot for him to come back in 2002 and we remember how that worked out. Despite his decent stretch of play in '03, enough to pump up his exchange rate (Hello Victor!), his return to Shea was a sad one. Watching him in Wrigley, I decided Jeromy Burnitz's best years in blue and orange were the ones I imagined. And now I feel nothing for him except resentment over his nice catch.

Cub.

It's good to be three above .500 for the second time this season. It will be better to be four above .500, then five, then at a level where .500 is a given. Once we get to four above, just like that we'll be at our highest watermark since 2002. If/when we get to eight above, we will be in our best place since 2000; in '02, we peaked at 18-11. That's pretty damning of the last four seasons. Even as Art Howe's Mets battled for first last July, they never rose above 43-40. In 2001, amid that crazy, inspiring and ultimately doomed August-September rush, 79-74 was the best that could be achieved.

So let's get it up, right to the top. Let's get it way above .500 anyway. One game at a time of course.

Nah, let's play a dozen or so at a time. When will I learn that an all-sports radio station isn't generally a good thing? Today's afternoon show on the Mets' flagship featured a contrived controversy from Nimrod and Know-Nothing over whether Willie would be holding out Pedro from the Yankee series, more than a week away, because he feared an old-fashioned pinstripe smackdown would ruin everything he's accomplished thus far. It was insisted that Pedro was brought in for moments like these.

Ed Coleman, who unfortunately is too even-tempered to tell the hosts to shut the fuck up for once in your lives you overrated, self-important morons, countered that while nothing was official yet, it seemed unlikely that Randolph would want his ace to miss the Braves' and Marlins' series that follow. Those are, Eddie needed to explain as if to a small child, divisional matchups that, pound for pound, are really more important than the Yankee games.

Of course none of that made sense to Blowhard and the Blitherer who are only interested in the Mets when it suits their needs to trash them. Guaranteed that if the Mets were actively setting up their rotation to expressly get Martinez into the Yankee series, the spin from Dickhead and the Douchebag would be: C'MON! GROW UP! YOU CAN'T COMPETE WITH THE YANKEES ANYWAY! STOP BEING OBSESSED WITH THEM! YOU CAN'T USE UP PEDRO IN A GLORIFIED EXHIBITION GAME WHEN YOU'VE GOT CRUCIAL DIVISION SHOWDOWNS COMING UP!

It's too bad that in fact Willie has since decided to give Pedro a bit of extra rest and that he will indeed start the Friday night game at Shea against the crosstown rivals. It's not bad that Martinez will face them. It's bad that Schmuck and Shit For Brains will take credit for it.

I swear I've seen tonight's game 100 times before: Early-season trip to Wrigley, horrid underwater conditions, a gale that you know will abruptly vanish at some undetermined point, pissed-off Cub fans out to crucify one of their own, umpires behaving strangely, testiness all around, cruddy field conditions that will play a role, at least one starter turning in a good performance that will become a footnote, random good plays from not-so-good players, sucky relievers lurking in both bullpens like land mines, and the only thing you know for sure is that you'll be very tired when it's finally over.

I'm just glad it didn't end with Sammy Sosa hitting one into the weird batter's-eye shrubs off John Franco. In fact, I was heartily glad not to see Sammy Sosa or John Franco at all, for opposite but nonetheless related reasons.

I think Heilman 2.0 can be moved out of beta and declared saleable — that change-up is awfully good, and the fastball has enough sink and slither on it that he can miss and not automatically get killed, the way Heilman 1.0 constantly was. (Still, it didn't escape me that after all that hoo-ha about Don Drysdale, the secret to Heilman 2.0 seems to have been undoing all the damage done by Met minor-league instructors.) I think Mike Piazza is not done yet after all. (Ain't it great being wrong?) I doubt they keep stats on this, but Doug Mientkiewicz has a chance to save four figures' worth of total bases with those soft hands of his. Heath Bell is properly fearless. Dae-Sung Koo, on the other hand, has forfeited his right to be called “Mister Koo” until he demonstrates he can get people out when it really matters. In fact, I'm not going to acknowledge his first name at all until he improves. He's Koo from here out. I think the Cubs' groundskeepers need to read the DiamondDry manual again. (But last year Jose Reyes would have been carted off the field, so that's something.)

On the Cub side of the ledger, Jeromy Burnitz is still every inch the wacky player whose misadventures and very occasional triumphs diverted us in those two tours of duty. He's like Bam Bam in a baseball uniform: None of the parts ever seem to be in sync, and you're always vaguely afraid he'll brain himself with a bat or get so tangled up that his limbs fly off in opposite directions. Those two singles he hit were ridiculous — triumphs of muscle and dumb luck over pitch selection. And that catch off Floyd? Six inches higher and it's in the basket. Six inches lower and it hits Burnitz in the throat, sending his head pinwheeling into the stands or injuring him in some other preposterous Burnitzian fashion. As it was, he got to run off the field with the ball like the world's happiest golden retriever.

I always liked Burnitz — anybody ever seen him and Rocky Swoboda in the same room? — and for a while there I was sure he was going to beat us, because that's the kind of Wrigley Field night it was. I felt bad that his return to the Mets was such an unmitigated disaster, that he would have done a lot better if he'd cared a lot less, and that he'd only just started to win the fans back when he shipped off to L.A. Still do. But all that said, I like him a lot more playing somewhere else.

By the way, now that the Great Cable War of '05 is over, does Keith Hernandez have the best job in sports or what? Dissect a few finer points of the game (he was clear and interesting as always), cop to boozing it in Chicago and playing hungover as hell, skedaddle long before “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Nice work if you can get it.

The Cablevision/Time Warner war is over. At least until next year, when it's coming to your neck of the used-to-be-woods. (Sorry pal. Get a dish. Now.)

Barely believing the news, I flipped over to 26 and found Fran Healy. I've never, ever been so glad to see Fran Healy in my life, first spring-training telecasts included.

Of course we're now in a rain delay, but Mama always said you can't have everything. (Actually my mama always narrowed her eyes in fury, found the poor son of a bitch who could deliver the portion of everything one wasn't getting and most of the time got it, but I've heard of mamas who reportedly always said that.)

Anyway, if there were baseball on this channel, I'd be watching it.

Well, partner, happy birthday several hours after the fact. I think I've remembered it once in the last decade, which is odd since May 8 is one of my favorite anniversary dates.

May 8, 1970: Knicks win championship. At that moment, I was at least as big a Knicks fan as Mets fan. At least. It was a helluva way to be introduced to professional sports, my two favorite teams winning remarkable championships inside of seven months. They were so remarkable that each has gone on to win exactly one more championship in the ensuing 35+ years. My interest in each team set off on divergent paths. The Mets remained The Mets for me forever, while the Knicks eventually became what teams become for normal people. I followed them when they were good, I followed them less when they were less good, and I never quite recovered the fervor I had for them when I was a child. Since right about the time you and I found each other (the Knicks were en route to the NBA finals against Houston), my interest in them and basketball has declined precipitously; no coincidence, I'm thinking. You were a good influence on my priorities, clearing my head of extraneous nonsense, a.k.a. anything that wasn't baseball. Nevertheless, I still remember fondly that Friday night in first grade when Marv Albert told the listening audience — can you believe the NBA blacked out the seventh-game telecast in New York because it was a home game? — that Willis Reed had limped his way onto the court. We knew, in my kitchen, that everything was going to be all right. I do recall fretting prior to that moment that after such a great year it would be wrong for the Lakers to beat the Knicks. My mother told me that if it happens, then the Lakers deserve to win. Believe it or not, it made sense to me. That wisdom has helped me deal with all kinds of non-Mets championship losses over the years, especially the Game Seven that the Knicks lost in '94. As Sunday was also Mother's Day, it's nice to suddenly pluck that out of the air.

May 8, 1971: My dad bought me a replica Mets batting helmet at Nathan's in Oceanside. The availability of such a treasured item at a local outlet had obsessed me. Other than a crappy cap that fell apart in day camp a year earlier, it was probably my first legitimate piece of Metsiana (not counting cards). It was billed as the very same one you could buy at Shea Stadium, something I had to take on faith since I was still two years from my first Mets game. My parents were basketball fans, not baseball fans. I loved that helmet. I would've worn it that summer in Pee-Wee League had it been regulation. Some years later, when tomfoolery finally did it in, I committed to buying a new one on my next trip to Shea, which came August 10, 1977. I gave the fellow at the concession stand on the third-base side of field level a twenty and he gave me back change for a ten. You have to understand that I was giddy to be at this particular game because it was the first one I ever went to without adult supervision (midweek afternoon against the Cardinals, ticket paid for with proceeds from my Newsday route which I outsourced for the day), so I wasn't necessarily keeping good track of my money. I wasn't but a few steps away when the vendor called me over and gave me back the rest of my change. I've still got the replacement helmet. Not only that, but the vendor who was honest enough not to take advantage of a starry-eyed 14-year-old (starry-eyed for the 1977 Mets, yet) is now my brother-in-law. In one of the top five Small World events of my life, my sister brought home her new boyfriend from NYU the following winter. He had been talked up to me as a Shea Stadium employee, me to him as a big Mets fan. And damned if we didn't recognize each other in an instant. Mark claims that he must've liked me because most of the time he kept the change.

May 8, 1972: I'm in the East School library with Jon Hymes, one of the first Yankee fans I ever knew. He was arrogant, argumentative and generally didn't know what he was talking about. Jon Hymes was the first of many to come. Anyway, like your average third-graders, we were indulging our Jones for politics and history by poring over the World Book Encyclopedia entry for Presidents. As we scanned the list of all of them, Washington to Nixon, I noticed that here on 5/8/1972, it was the birthday of Harry Truman, born on 5/8/1884. Well, I said, we should write him a letter to wish him a happy 88th birthday. We got competitive and each wrote our own letters, making a federal case over whose idea it was first. (It was mine, I swear.) One month later, I came home from school to find an envelope from Independence, Mo. It didn't have a stamp on it. The man on whose behalf it was sent didn't need to use a stamp because that man had lifetime franking privileges. Inside was a stiff card thanking me for being “kind and generous” enough to “remember me on my birthday,” the one that would turn out to be the man's last. It was signed, mechanically, Harry Truman*. Like the batting helmet, I still have it around here somewhere. Something else I have from that May 8 is the complete list of presidents engraved upon my memory. I picked it up from the World Book that afternoon and it's stuck with me, forwards and backwards 1 through 37 and on to 43 since. Next rain delay, I'll entertain you with it. (Or not.) Oh, one other thing happened that week: The Mets got Willie Mays. Harry Truman and Willie Mays…it's like I didn't even have to live through 1951 to experience it.

As for May 8, 2005, I didn't see the annoying game against the annoying Brewers. We did see Glengarry Glen Ross, which was an absolutely electric production with talent (Alan Alda, Liev Schreiber, Jeffrey Tambor) that apparently exceeded Willie's starting lineup. Caught enough of the radiocast before curtain, during intermission and waiting for the train home to have been just disgusted enough to decide that it wasn't the 1970 Lakers or the 1994 Rockets providing the opposition. Hence, the other team didn't deserve to win. How Milwaukee gets a gift call like the one for Spivey on your and Harry Truman's birthday is surely not in the spirit of the date.

*Proving that I've matured a bit since I was nine, I almost forgot to mention that Jon Hymes did not get a reply from the 33rd president. The fact that I didn't completely forget to mention it proves that I've matured only a bit.

Derby Day is in the rearview mirror, the apartment remains standing, it didn't rain, the guests seemed reasonably entertained, and Steinbrenner's horse lost. (Though the bipeds he owns are looking a little better, darn it all). Which isn't to say that my blog silence reflected an information blackout: The Pedro 'N' Carlos Show was on as Derby Day wound down last night, with yours truly pausing for an update whenever hosting duties and drunken errands took me by the set. Weirdly, the first two times I stopped long enough to watch an actual bit of the game, Beltran promptly hit home runs. (Later, Emily hollered at me to get my ass upstairs because Carlos was back at the plate. I was late and she was PO'ed at me because he settled for a bunt single.) My weird timing had the effect of minimizing awareness of how perilous Saturday's game actually was — heck, everything I saw seemed to be going just fine.

Today, of course, I got to watch the whole thing. And it was my 36th birthday. So what did Tom Glavine give me for a present? An ordinary performance, shot through with bad luck. Thanks, Tommy! Sad that this was actually a step up for the Manchurian Brave. As I watched bloopers fall in and bleeders trickle through, I worked myself into a mildly hungover fury (in other words, muttery pique) imagining just how Glavine would subtly distance himself from the whole thing. As indeed he did: “I don't know that I have given up that many bloopers and broken bats and whatever else in one game in my career, but that's kind of the way things go when things aren't going your way personally.” Sounds reasonable and properly philosophical, but still has a faint bad smell, a whiff of excuse-making and an instinctual attempt to suggest that Tom Glavine isn't really an actor in this whole drama, but some poor bystander caught up in the chaos when things got messy.

In other words, it's the kind of thing he always seems to say.

“He's a solid hitter, but I don't think you expect him to hit two homers and have all the RBI he has. He's not a guy you look at and equate a lot of power with.” (That was his first start — he's talking about Joe Randa. Subtext: Joe Randa got lucky. Woe is me.)

“Well, there's a couple plays that were tough plays to make. That's the way it goes. It's not like those plays today were easy plays, but they're the kind of plays, obviously, if you make them, they're spectacular plays and they go a long way towards me being more comfortable and more confident out there, and maybe the outcome of the game is different.” (That was after A.J. Burnett and the Marlins mauled us, and it's probably the ultimate Glavine quote: Sounds diplomatic, but shot through with alibis at every turn. Subtext: If Matsui wasn't such a frickin' butcher, I would have been great and we would have won. Woe is me.)

I'm sure I could find more, but I'm too tired to get more pissed about it. Anyway, it's a representative sample: bloodless, aloof, subtly uninvolved. Yep, that's our boy. Sorry we're the spots of tarnish on your Cooperstown plaque, Glav.

As for the non-Glavine portion of the game, poor Chris Woodward had a hell of a day. With his shortstop instincts firing from the wrong side of the diamond, he was like a guy trying to play while looking in a mirror. Victor Diaz looked a bit baffled at being on the opposite side of the outfield as well, and David Wright seemed slow-legged on those fatal plays to his left in the ninth.

Oh, and Spivey sure looked out to me. I'd carp about that more, but you know what? They had 17 hits. Seventeen! When the other guys score 17 hits, seeing a backup infielder on the mound isn't out of the question. And anytime you walk off the field after giving up 17 hits, you don't get to bitch that you got jobbed.

Roberto Hernandez was practically in tears after saving Saturday night's win over the Brewers. That's not a snide read on his emotions. He told Ed Coleman that he thought he was going to cry since it was his first save in three years. His reputation, you see, was built on collecting saves. He's had as many as 43 in one year and entered 2005 with 320.

I wanted to be happy for him. But I wound up thinking, save it, Roberto. That goes for all of you closers, used-to-be closers and would-be closers.

The world has sure come a long way from the days of Ball Four when reliever Jim Bouton worried that there wasn't a stat that adequately reflected how well bullpen guys were doing their jobs. Of course that was back then a player needed all the ammunition he could get to negotiate a bump from $10,500 to $12,500. It was also the year the save became an officially recognized statistic.

Look what the save has wrought. Relief pitchers trip over each other for the opportunity to close out games. It's great to see competitors show the fire to be firemen. Of course you should want the ball with the game on the line. But it's not as simple as “I wanna help the team.”

No, it's about money. At a time when $12,500 is earned for a few pitches (or a few warmup tosses), every reliever wants in on the saves because the saves are where the big payday is. Closers make more than set-up men. Set-up men make more than middle relievers. Middle relievers make more than long men. If you're going to be a long man, you may as well be a starter — where the real money is.

And if it's not money, it's pride. Marsellus Wallace told Butch Coolidge in Pulp Fiction, “Pride only hurts. It never helps.” That may be an exaggeration (Marsellus wanted Butch to throw his next fight, after all), but pride of saves has rattled many a capable reliever's mind and skewed the corps' priorities well out of whack.

Roberto Hernandez Saturday night is only the latest example. There was Roberto Hernandez Friday night, when he stomped off the mound angry to be taken out for Koo in a lefty-lefty situation in the ninth. I might have left Roberto in, but his ire didn't really stem from “dang, I left the team down,” but rather “there goes my save opportunity.”

So what? Who cares? Saves are — and this isn't an original thought — one of the least definitive stats in the game. Look at Braden Looper's save against Philly this past Wednesday. He entered the ninth with a 3-0 lead and departed with a 3-2 win. That's saving something? That's a demerit in any other inning.

It's easy to blame Tony LaRussa and his patented Eckersleyism for skewing the equation. That was the manifestation of role-definition for relievers. He set it up in Oakland so Dennis Eckersley would enter at the start of the ninth, not before. You weren't going to see Gene Nelson or Rick Honeycutt. You were going to see Eck, period. As long as it worked for the A's, you couldn't argue with it. But it didn't work for everybody and it doesn't work now.

John Franco, a forerunner of Hernandez in the arithmetic of accumulation, was even more stricken with saves fever. One of the reasons it took me almost ten years to warm to John Franco was the way he expressed annoyance in his first September as a Met when Buddy Harrelson called on him to help the Mets out of a jam before the ninth. He acted startled and offended that as one of the premier closers in the game he would be asked to pitch in anything that wasn't the ninth inning. “You'll have to ask Buddy what he's thinking,” is the huffy quote I remember.

We weren't but four years removed from Orosco and McDowell trading save opportunities to the betterment of the 1986 Mets. And it didn't seem light years since Yogi Berra would bring Tug McGraw into a game in the seventh to start finishing it. But I guess it had been a long time. It was all about the saves by 1990. (Roberto Hernandez came up to the Majors in 1991, his whole career playing out in The Saves Above All Era.)

Franco made a huge deal about it anytime it appeared somebody else might get to close. His “pride” had been hurt when Armando Benitez was given the closer's role in 1999. And Armando went from being a wonderful eighth-inning pitcher to a complicated ninth-inning one. It was just an inning's difference but, like pride, it only hurt.

When Benitez was traded in the middle of 2003, it was wondered who's gonna save games now? Aside from the obvious answer of nobody (your team has to win games for there to be a save), it turned out not to matter. Franco, Stanton and Weathers each got a few and the republic continued otherwise undisturbed. The following winter, the Mets signed Looper and he became the designated statman. He did well in 2004, a little shakier of late.

It's too late to turn back now. Closers get ninth innings. It's news when they see the eighth. It's a story when somebody else sees the ninth. It's a horror show when the whole thing doesn't work. Feelings are wounded and glances are exchanged and words get heavy. It's all a bit much. The ninth inning is crucial. But so are the eighth and the seventh.

Good day. And it is a good day. We are here to join Heather Ann Roettinger and Matthew Wren Enis in holy metrimony.

I mean matrimony. Holy matrimony.

It is a particular joy to wed this couple because they are kind people. They have scheduled their nuptials for this, a Saturday afternoon, no doubt fully aware that the Mets don't play until 7:05 tonight.

Let's Go Mets! Let's Go Mets!

I mean Matt.

And Heather, of course.

The two of you wed at a very fortuitous time. The final Mets game to take place before your betrothal to each other was Friday night. As your marriage will most definitely be, it was a success.

Tonight, as you start your lives together, Pedro Martinez takes to the hill. Will Mike Piazza be behind the plate? Or will Ramon Castro?

These are the kinds of questions all young couples must face. For while it is the kind of power Mike is suddenly providing again that we all seek, sometimes we need a personal catcher. Sometimes we need a guiding hand to get our own Pedro Martinez through seven innings or more without a wild pitch.

Be kind to each other. Be patient. Sometimes Pedro has his problems in the first inning. And realize there is no insult intended in choosing a personal catcher. There will always be the opportunity for Mike to pinch-hit if necessary.

May you be each other's personal catcher. And may you be more forthright about it than Willie Randolph has been. “Mike is feeling a little banged up.” Yeah, right.

May your love for each other soar as high as Mike's first home run last night. At its ebb, may it soar as high as Mike's second home run last night which was no mean shot. Didja see that? Holy metrimony! That was like 900 feet of homers. Take that, Brewers!

Too, may your love always come back full-force like Mike Cameron has off the Disabled List. May you adapt and adjust as Cammy has, moving to right field to accommodate the other when one of you signs Carlos Beltran. May you feel as comfortable in the two-hole as Cameron looked last night.

May you have the presence of mind to drop Kaz Matsui to the eighth slot so he might regain his batting eye.

Not all days in a marriage are the days when Pedro pitches. There will be nights when you are forced to use Victor Zambrano. As you would with each other, be patient with Victor Zambrano, but don't be afraid to send him to Norfolk. In marriage as in life, sometimes we all must go to Norfolk. Look what it did for Bobby Jones in 2000 and Steve Trachsel in 2001.

Don't be afraid to send Victor Zambrano down. You will still have Jae Seo. And each other.

Look for the good in one another. Zambrano had two hits on the eve of your marriage. Why can't more pitchers hit anyway?

When you seek relief in each other's eyes, look to the bullpen of your hearts. May it be a rich and fertile pen. As wedding bells ring for you, may Heath Bell have another good outing like last night. Willie just stayed with him a little too long is all.

When your Heath Bell runs out of gas, have faith in your Roberto Hernandez. Don't be concerned about the lefty-righty matchups life may deal you. As you would trust one another with your well-being, trust Roberto to face Geoff Jenkins.

Dae-Sung Koo? Please.

Life is a journey. We all learn along the way. Willie Randolph is still learning. Be patient with Willie. He's just getting to know his bullpen in earnest.

Lean on each other in marriage, but don't lean on Looper too often. That's a disaster just waiting to happen. Two days of Burrell, then Carlos Lee. Phew!

Every marriage presents its Carlos Lees. There will be nights when Cliff Floyd doesn't make that catch to end the game. But there will be more nights when he does.

Cliff Floyd rules. It's something we should all remember. While his twenty-game hitting streak came to an end, his excellence, like your love for one another, will endure. Or so we pray.

Let us pray.

Dear Lord, give this young couple the strength and the fortitude to persevere in an uncertain world.

Give Pedro the strength to top 90 miles per hour despite going on normal rest. Give Pedro the strength to give Looper the night off. Give Carlos Lee the night off while you're at it. He's scary.

Amen.

As you leave here as husband and wife, we wish you nothing but happiness, joy and a four-game winning streak.

Let's Go Mets! Let's Go Mets!

I mean Matt.

And Heather, of course.

Yo, Philly! We can beat you with our best player tied behind our back!

I nearly spit when I heard Willie was resting Cliff. I'm sorry, do we have a lot of guys batting .391? Slugging .701? Being Death to Flying Things? How on earth are we supposed to win a game without Cliff Floyd?

Why, with everybody else. T-E-A-M! TEAM! TEAM! TEAM!

A little carried away I might be, but this was one of those games that would have been lost under the stewardship of Art Howe. I don't have any specific moves in mind that Willie made that Art never did, but a black cloud would've settled somewhere over Shea just in time for the demolition firm of Burrell, Abreu & Rollins to inflict fatal damage to our infrastructure. This had all the ingredients for the classic Phillies 8 Mets 7 type of game that has been absolute L on us since Bo Diaz was sticking it to Neil Allen.

Instead, a win. In the sun. With Cliff Floyd proving, for a day, irrelevant to Mets' success. Wow. First we tell the world we are so blessed with starting pitching that we take guys who throw seven innings of one-hit ball and ship them to Norfolk. Then we glue a 20-game hitting streak to the bench and what happens?

The heretofore missing Mets find themselves — not just Benson and Cameron, both looking like players and reminding us why we want them, but other heretofore lost souls. Piazza and Mientkiewicz came back from slumps; Wright recovered from a momentary lapse; Heilman conquered a new if temporary role; Diaz made himself at home in left for an afternoon; and Looper cleaned up somebody else's mess.

So who needs Cliff Floyd? Well, us, desperately…just not Thursday.

To be fair, Brrrrrl, who gives us chills, got jobbed on a called strike three to end the game. But good goes around. In the eighth, Jose followed a pinch-hit from Marlon Anderson (speaking of finds) with a deadly drag bunt. He beat the throw but was called out. Karma owed us one, so take a hike, Pat. It's good to see wrongdoing get righted.

Kudos, on that count, to Ted Robinson. With Anderson and Beltran on base, Mike launched a mighty blow over the left field fence. Three runs scored. Ted, whose brain must be rattled by all time he's forced to spend alongside Fran Healy, shouted “GRAND SLAM!” Within seconds, he apologized for being “giddy” and good-naturedly corrected the record in a way some pompous announcers (Thorne-choo!) never do. Maybe he was thinking that Reyes should've been on base.

Reyes should always be on base. Reyes swings. Reyes bunts. And now? (With deep apologies to Kanye West.)

Reyes Walks

Willie show him the way because his hamstring's tryin' ta break him down

Reyes Walks

The only thing that I pray is that his legs don't fail him now

Reyes Walks

And I don't think there's nothing they can do now to make him look screwy

Reyes Walks

Now can somebody somewhere please walk Matsui?

Finally, on to our most popular new feature…

NEW YORK YANKEE COLLAPSE-O-METER

WE FEEL YOUR PAIN, REALLY WE DO EDITION

Through 29 Games

1993 METS: 11-18 (Final Record: 59-103)

2005 THEM: 11-18 (Final Record: ??-???)

Remember: It's all about the rings, baby!

OK, so it was Joe Torre who said that once. Big deal. We took his coach, we can take his quote.

Besides, suddenly it's like we've switched places anyway. I'm not talking about anything so common as won-loss records; seeing how we can barely stay above .500, now's not the time to get too cocky about that. (Rest assured that should cockiness be called for, I'm willing to supply my share and then some.) Rather, it's the tone in the mighty Gotham media that's changed. Proclamations of doom, snide asides, death watches, clucking over bad luck, pitiless examinations of past mistakes? Why, I must be reading about the Yankees. Soliloquies about guys pulling together and picking each other up, different heroes each day, and masterful motivation from the manager's chair? It's a Mets story. (Can you imagine the jokes last year if 47,000 of our giveaway caps were stolen?) When the British got whipped at Yorktown, the band played “The World Turned Upside Down” at the surrender ceremony. They meant it as a slight, but it was true anyway. So, perhaps, is it today.

Even without the omnipresent question of what might be going on in the Bronx, this was a pretty good game. Call it some successful psychological maneuvering by Willie Randolph if you want, or the salutary effects of a Doug Mientkiewicz pick-me-up on the bench, but it was nice to see Mike Piazza being Ye Olde Feared Mike Piazza for a day. (And in a day game that followed a night game, no less!) Kris Benson was marvelous in his return, Mike Cameron was impressive at the plate if not in the field and Minky was terrific afield and showed signs of coming out of his offensive doldrums.

But my favorite stories of the day were written by Wright and Heilman. I love watching Wright play baseball, but it was good to see him play it a bit ticked — too much sugar in the blood isn't necessarily helpful, to paraphrase that wise sage Darryl Strawberry. David can shatter a few more bats if it makes him feel better, and even skip apologizing: Moving a few steps away from being Dale Murphy doesn't automatically make you Gregg Jefferies. It was better, of course, to see him come up in the exact same situation two innings later and rifle one to the wall for a two-run double. Yes, Virginia, this here's a game of redemption.

And Heilman, our prodigal prospect. In a way, his relief stint was more impressive than either of his two strong starts, because there was actually less pressure than in his starting assignments. He'd have gotten a mulligan if he'd pitched poorly, seeing how he was being thrown into a relief role and had to come in to clean up a rather serious mess left by Benson. In a situation where failure would have been at least somewhat forgiveable, he was lights-out instead. And there are even mutterings that Victor Zambrano may be in line for a Trachselian tour of the International League. Be still my beating heart. (And hey, what about Glavine? Would Richmond have his number too?)

Speaking of the whole game-of-redemption thing, if it was spooky seeing Wright come up in the same situation two innings apart, it was downright scary having Looper face Pat Burrell with the game on the line again. You could practically hear all the writers hitting RETURN at the top of their stories to clear space for their Pat the Bat ledes.

And then he struck out. Again. Pat Burrell! Fire up the fife and drum!

If buttercups buzz'd after the bee,

If boats were on land, churches on sea,

If ponies rode men and if grass ate the cows,

And cats should be chased into holes by the mouse,

If the mamas sold their babies

To the gypsies for half a crown;

If summer were spring and the other way round,

Then all the world would be upside down.

If Jae Seo had pitched his last two games in newfangled bandboxes instead of RFK and Shea, it wouldn't seem unfair to deport him to Norfolk. Balls rocketed off Nats' bats in D.C., most of them dying in the alleys, but enough finding express lanes down the line to put him in a hole. Wednesday night, Shea held Phillie flies just long and far enough to turn Jae into a Jaenius. Had he made one of these starts in Philadelphia's Legal Immigrants Bank Park, he'd have been detained by the INS for entering the country under false pretenses. (“This line on your green card says you're a pitcher, but the line on the scoreboard gives us reason to suspect you're lying.”)

Still, it's one of those decisions you want to argue with because he was the Weong guy in the right place when the Mets needed him. Seo sure has pitched well in spurts since 2003. He could be on the cover of Spurts Illustrated and there'd be no jinx because he also pitches horrendously in spurts. He's the perfect sixth starter in a five-man rotation.

Braden Looper hates leads. Hates 'em. I was wondering why Roberto Hernandez had to come out after a sparkling eighth. Just because? To get a saver a save? But having thought about it, I found a rationale. Benson isn't likely to go more than five Thursday afternoon. We'll need a bullpen. If we can save our best reliever for a key situation, that's not an altogether bad thing. Gosh, it's strange to admit the manager may know a thing or two more about baseball than I do.

Does Cliff Floyd have a nickname? A real one? In his wonderful The Old Ball Game, Frank Deford suggests “perhaps the greatest loss to television, to the utter visualization of sport at the expense of imagination, is the disappearance of the nickname.” Bully! Let's get our leftfielder a proper sobriquet.

God? Blasphemous…to our guy. Reasonable people can debate the existence of God. Who doesn't believe in Cliff at this point?

King Floyd? Groove me, baby…to the tune of twenty consecutive games thus far.

Uncle Floyd? Remember the faux kiddie-show host who ran a low-budget daily hootfest out of Channel 68 in Jersey? I loved Uncle Floyd, but Cliff is high-priced talent and suddenly worth it.

Floyd the Barber? Ooooohhhh…Randy…I think I extended my hitting streak off you… And Cliff's not cutting it close either.

Cliff the Mailman? Here's a little-known fact: If Cliff Floyd were a planet, he'd be the third-hottest planet in the solar system, and I have it on good authority that he may just pass Uranus before the season is over.

Don Cornelius? Indeed, Cornelius Clifford Floyd makes one pitcher after another an offer he can't refuse.

Death to Flying Things? Roll over Robert Ferguson and tell Jack Chapman the news. After Cliff's Leapin' Lizards! catch of Jason Michaels' sure-goner in the seventh, could any nickname be more utterly visual?

As a public service, we will present from time to time as schadenfreude permits the New York Yankee Collapse-O-Meter, tracking 2005 vis-à-vis two other Yankee campaigns that followed crushing post-season defeats.

NEW YORK YANKEE COLLAPSE-O-METER

Through 28 Games

1965: 12-16 (Final Record: 77-85)

1982: 12-16 (Final Record: 79-83)

2005: 11-17 (Final Record: ??-???)

Remember: The New York Yankees are baseball.