Glavine's been mostly terrible for us. Pedro's been mostly wonderful for us. Benson's been hurt. Ishii's been hurt. Zambrano's a mystery. Trachsel has a disc.

And none of them came up through the system.

Weren't we renowned for our pitching at one point? At several points? Weren't we Seaver, Koosman, Ryan, McAndrew, McGraw, Gentry, Matlack, Swan and later on Gooden, Darling, Fernandez, Aguilera, Cone, Orosco, McDowell, Myers?

Ancient, ancient history, but also what put us over the top and into post-season the first four times we were there. Playing in a pitcher's park, pitching is what allowed us to compete at a high level. That and defense. It sure wasn't hitting.

What all those pitchers had in common was they were produced by the Mets for the Mets, either originally signed by us, pulled out of a hat by us or traded for as pups by us. Those guys were our signature piece. We could even afford to squander Nolan Ryan and not feel it in the rotation for years to come.

We haven't come up with anybody like them in more than a decade. The last starting pitcher we manufactured to our long-term benefit was Bobby Jones and as a talent he wasn't quite in their class.

Which brings me to Jason Jacome.

Surely, you remember Jason Jacome. Jason Jacome was the Heath Bell of 1994. Everybody who thought they knew anything knew we had to get Jason Jacome up here from Norfolk right now. Jason Jacome was piling up wins in the International League. Jason Jacome (pronounced hock-a-mee) got a mention in every other Mets Farm Report on Mets Extra. That was the first year I discovered there were other Mets fans talking about the Mets in a virtual manner on AOL, and the guy who they were all talking about was Jason Jacome. It brought me back to when I was 12 and started reading minor league stats in The Sporting News and couldn't wait for a retread named Bill Laxton to come up from Tidewater and start racking up saves the way he was down there.

We got our wish in a roundabout way. Doc tested positive for coke again and was suspended. He was replaced with Jason Jacome. And Jason Jacome did not disappoint. He pitched well in his first start in San Diego and then threw a shutout against the Dodgers in Los Angeles. The downtrodden Mets now had two young, mostly unheralded stars in the making: Jacome the lefty pitcher and Brogna the lefty bat. Word was they were buddies. Perfect. And with Jacome and Jones backing up Saberhagen (having a stellar year), 1994 would be good for as long as it lasted.

Jacome finished with a 4-3 mark in eight starts and a 2.67 ERA before the strike hit. The important thing was we could pencil him in for 1995 and beyond. He and Jones and Isringhausen and Pulsipher, who were burning up the minors, and the kid we drafted No. 1 in the nation, Paul Wilson. In the interim we had Saberhagen and traded for Harnisch. They could take some starts until all our young pitchers were ready. In the meantime, we had Jones and Jacome, who didn't throw hard but got people out and got here first. They were Generation J.

1995 started late because of the strike. Dallas Green gave the ball to Jones instead of Saberhagen on Opening Night with some murky explanation that he was going on the basis of who was ready, not who had the reputation. That was in Colorado, the first-ever game in Coors Field, ten years ago this week. Nobody pitched well in Coors Field that night (or almost ever) and the Mets lost on Dante Bichette's walk-off, look-at-me 14th inning homer, the most irritating loss in an Opener prior to 2005. Jacome pitched the second game. The Mets lost that one, too, but his line wasn't so bad for Coors: five innings, two earned runs, left with a lead. The bullpen coughed it up and the Mets went home 0-2.

And that was essentially it for Jason Jacome as a Met. He started four more times. All of them were dreadful. He was 0-4 with a 10.29 ERA in five starts before being sent down on May 22 and traded to Kansas City on July 21 for reliever Derek Wallace (another toast of the Tides who didn't pan out at a higher level).

I've never been clear on how somebody who looked so solid went downhill so fast. I don't remember an injury per se being the culprit while he was here. What then? Success go to his head? To his waistline? Dallas' trademark patient ways get to him? Jacome's stints with the Royals and the Indians didn't yield much more than his 1995 with the Mets did. His career mark was 10-18, his lifetime ERA was 5.34. He last pitched in the Majors in 1998.

He was 27.

We're now approaching the tenth anniversary of the heyday of Generation K, which is to say the heady months of 1995 when we imagined the great things that we would never actually get from the combined forces of Izzy, Pulse and Paul. And since then, we haven't come close to getting even a Bobby Jones out of our system. It's been almost all Glavines and Leiters and Reeds and Hamptons and Rusches and Trachsels and Martinezes and Appiers and Chens and D'Amicos and Hershisers and Yoshiis and Bensons and Nomos and Clarks and Astacios and Bohanons and Esteses and Rogerses and so on. It's been almost all somebody else's retreads, castoffs or high-priced talent subbing for the missing young Mets' starting pitchers we simply haven't been able to send to the mound. Some have been sublime. More have been subpar. All have been, in one way or another, emergency starters brought on by a catastrophic inability to develop the kind of pitching that once made Flushing famous.

The jury enters its third year of deliberations regarding the eventual utility of Jae Seo and Aaron Heilman, though they say if a verdict hasn't been delivered by now, it's hard to believe a consistently favorable one will result. I don't doubt somebody's putting up good numbers in Norfolk and better ones in Binghamton. I can't bear to look. I can't get excited about Heath Bell or Royce Ring until they do something in the bigs and do it for a while. And I still can't soap up a rueful lather over Scott Kazmir, as bad as Zambrano looks, and he looks pretty damn bad.

Jason Jacome looked so good so young so soon. What the hell happened?

After listening to today's indignities I still can't rekindle my loathing for those guys wearing Braves uniforms — beating us was their job, after all. But I am pretty annoyed with Tom Glavine.

The Braves said it themselves, after the game. Andruw Jones talked about how they know what Glavine will do every time they face him. John Smoltz discussed how stubborn Glavine is about sticking to his paint-the-corners strategy. You could look it up. And that's what's so infuriating: The Braves had basically stopped worrying about the inside of the plate, standing practically on it in order to wail away at suddenly reachable changeups meant to be fished for by batters standing slightly back from the plate where they belong. And Glavine kept throwing slop off the plate and watching it get hit all over creation. Again and again and again.

So what's a veteran pitcher to do? Keep missing that inside pitch and hope the home-plate ump will drift into a reverie, think it's several years ago in Atlanta, and therefore magically widen the strike zone? Keep throwing those changeups and hope that the Braves will suddenly undergo mass amnesia, or the Earth will brush by a space-time singularity that repeals the laws of physics? Can anyone else think of something a veteran pitcher whose foes are practically standing on the freaking plate could do? What's that? Mr. Gibson, I see your hand is up. I can hear you, Mr. Drysdale, please wait until you're called upon. Yes, Mr. Maglie, I see you smiling.

Sit someone down. Move them off the plate. I'm not advocating a Clemens head shot after a home run — just suggesting that Glavine might have thought about reclaiming his own turf. I know I couldn't see the game, Dolans be praised, but I certainly didn't hear so much as a gasp from the Shea crowd to indicate some Brave at least had to pull his arms back. Am I insane? Is owning the plate so out of fashion? Did Don Fehr and Gene Orza forbid it? And while we're on the subject, is Rick Peterson forbidden from visiting the mound? Is there something in Glavine's contract guaranteeing he doesn't have to talk to anyone wearing the same uniform?

We were talking earlier (or typing, or blogging, or whatever) about why we've never warmed up to Glavine. I felt like the real reasons eluded me then; today I think I found at least one of them: It's that Glavine seems so bloodless about everything, including winning and losing. You almost get the sense he isn't really in the game; it's more like he's standing on the mound with events happening around him, and all those other events are almost incidental. He repeats the very small set of things that once worked for Tom Glavine, and he appears singularly uninterested in doing different things because of anything so trivial as the outcome. Maybe that's OK in Atlanta, with its sleepy media and thousands of unsold playoff seats, but it's not OK here. Losing may be a sin in New York, but it's not a mortal sin — that's reserved for not seeming to care.

Now, I'm sure Glavine cares. But caring has to include realizing that that very small set of Glavine-esque things no longer works consistently enough to be acceptable — not against the Braves, but more importantly not against the rest of the league, either. And despite Glavine's talk today of how it's only April, this is not an April 2005 problem: Glavine hasn't been acceptably consistent since 2002. He's never had to weather the transformation from power pitcher to wily veteran, but it's obvious some transformation is required. He's become an average pitcher, and it's disappointing — as a baseball fan, not just as a Met fan — to think his last three or four years will be average years. At least it's disappointing to me. I sure hope it's disappointing to Glavine.

While we're on the subject, Jose Reyes also needs to change. Specifically, he needs to change his spot in the lineup. But I'm too worked up to tackle that one right now. Anyway, something tells me there'll be other opportunities for chewing that particular problem over.

Note to Mets fans: Don't ever lose track of Eddie Perez. He will make you pay.

The prickly advisor to my high school newspaper had a go-to reaction anytime anything got under his skin:

Damn, damn, damn.

I'll avail myself of Albert Lindauer's pet phrase in the wake of something far more annoying than one of the kids leaving the cap off the rubber cement or forgetting to turn off an IBM Selectric. Damn, damn, damn, the Braves beat us again.

Granted, it was a stirring neocomeback, replete with the year's first strategic repositioning of self for maximum impact on outcome. At about 9:30, Stephanie wanted to watch The Office. I was going to go along with that living room choice, too lazy to trudge upstairs to view three predictable outs. But morbid curiosity got the better of me, so I moved to the kitchen and switched on XM Radio, which carries all home-team broadcasts (several seconds after the MSG feed which airs several seconds after the terrestrial radio feed, so if you play your knobs right, you can enjoy the same pitch three times in rapid succession). It was while I leaned over the kitchen sink that the rally got going in earnest. I forgot about The Office and postponed my planned detour to the bathroom (TMI?). Instead, I hovered at the counter popping grapes into my mouth, which is what I had plucked from the fridge somewhere between the TV and the XM. If it was grapes that got us going, I wasn't about to stop.

Grape. Valent doubles. Grape. Reyes doubles. Grape. Piazza singles. Grape. Beltran singles.

Grape, just grape!

Bobby Cox, however, turns the whole thing to sour grapes by doing something almost no other manager would have the “guts” to do in this day and age. He plucks his seedless closer from the mound and replaces him with somebody nobody's ever heard of (apologies to anybody who was previously familiar with the collected works of John Foster). As the change was made and the grapes glided down the gullet, I sized up the situation. Absolute unknown reliever thrown into the pit of darkness versus perhaps the hottest hitter in the game. John Foster against Cliff Floyd. Surely, Floyd has the advantage.

Wait a sec. John Foster's wearing a tomahawk across his chest. And Cliff Floyd is a Met.

I went from grape to gulp. And we went from comeback to all gone.

Damn, damn, damn.

Yes, there were uplifting elements to all of this, but boy am I tired of lunging for moral victories against the Atlanta Braves. They are devils and we are dust. It has been ever thus.

There have been gratifying, dramatic exceptions since they've come to matter to us circa 1997 (count me as another who liked them just fine when they were a Western outpost of scrappy Lemkes, Pendletons and Breams), but hardly enough of them and never at the right time. Tuesday night was, with the exception of Kolb not having the gumption of Looper, a mirror image of Monday night. So we escaped with a close win and they slithered out of a jam, too. We're even, right?

No, we're not even. We're not even close. We owe the Braves big-time after a decade of N.L. East humiliation. We owe them for short-circuiting our first Wild Card bid in September '97 when the Turner Field curse first materialized. We owe them for that Angel Hernandez game, the one with Michael Tucker's “lousy, illegal slide”. We owe them for Cox tossing one starter after another at us in relief on the last weekend of '98, barring our entry into the playoffs just because he could. We owe them for that wretched three-game sweep in September '99 that led to the seven-game losing streak that led to despair that led to redemption that led, ultimately, back to Turner Field for Game 6, the greatest game I ever saw but like so many other contests against that team and in that building, a loss.

I don't have the energy to recount all that's gone wrong at the hands of the Braves in this century, but suffice it to say there's been lots. Our occasional uprisings against them (the 10-run inning, the post-9/11 theatrics, Pedro the First) are always trumped by their doing something more definitive to us. And of course they have a lifetime reservation for the playoffs. The fact that they lose them with stunning precision is lukewarm comfort at best. They draw only 35,000 in October? How many usually come to see us that same month?

Naturally the killer in this game was Smoltz. Of course it was. He was a utility bill: due, if not lights out. I can't believe how long this guy has been around and has been good and has been better than that against us.

Remember the weekend the Mets retired Tom Seaver's number? They did it on a Sunday. That Saturday, Smoltz won his first game. Against us. Think about it. John Smoltz has been beating the Mets since No. 41 was technically up for grabs. Smoltz went eight. Bruce Sutter finished up. Bruce Sutter! The guy who redefined closing in the late '70s and who's been getting ignored on Hall of Fame ballots since the year Bob Murphy was inducted. The Braves' centerfielder that day was Jerry Royster. Jerry Royster! I once opened a pack of Topps and got a Jerry Royster traded card. What am I saying? Of course it was Topps. There were no other baseball card companies. I was in seventh grade. I haven't been in seventh grade for an awful, long time.

But Smoltz, a link to the days of cardboard monopolies and firemen who regularly earned three-inning saves and 37 & 14 standing unaccompanied on the left-field wall and Jerry Freaking Royster, has been beating the Mets since forever. And he did it again Tuesday night.

Both casts have undergone steady to monumental change since us and them became Us and Them. We don't have Baerga and Huskey and Bobby J. Jones to kick around anymore and they aren't harboring some awful Keith Lockhart or Eddie Perez* type deep within their 40-man. But there's always some Brave lurking to do us in. He may not be with the team yet. He may be minding his business in Kansas City or San Diego. He's very likely icing a sore arm right now in Triple-A. But rest assured that at some unspecified date and time, just when it is most inconvenient and absolutely dispiriting for us, that unidentified player or pitcher will don a tomahawk jersey and just like John Smoltz and John Foster, chop us dead in our tracks.

The only thing that makes the Mets-Braves rivalry palatable is that it is a rivalry. I saw it suggested in print that it isn't because one side's won every marble worth winning. But it is. The Braves, as traditionally laconic as they are, get up for us as if they aren't through sticking it to Bobby V. Their fans are more ornery to us than they are to any school of Marlins or flank of Phillies. Why, Mike Piazza is booed at the Ted almost as much as he is at Shea. If that's not a sign of rivalry, I don't know what is.

Maybe it's the NEW YORK across our chests. Maybe it's because they form the one quorum that cares about Tom Glavine's whereabouts. Maybe it's the lack of any real competition that would otherwise distract them. But Chipper didn't name his daughter Shea because he heard about the new hi-def DiamondVision. Leo Mazzone doesn't rock extra hard because our visitors' dugout is that much more uncomfortable (though I'm guessing it is). Rafael Furcal hasn't stayed sober just so he could take hits away from Jimmy Rollins. We know we hate them. It's almost a compliment to know they bother to hate us.

When the National League was split into three divisions, we were robbed of a substantial slice of our heritage. Who were our truest foes from the original East? Why, the Cubs, the Cardinals and the Pirates (geographically, the least eastern teams in the subcircuit). Those are the guys we battled hammer and tong, tooth and nail, Durocher and Herzog and Leyland for our greatest moments and biggest disappointments in the first quarter-century of divisional play. In 1994, they all went to the Central.

That left us with the Phillies, against whom we've never played a mutual must-game; the Expos, who have ceased to exist; and the Marlins, who have, by all indications, only existed for two World Series. The Braves, whether we like it or not — and we don't — are it. Their enmity is the only sustained, practical feud we have in the league. Even when we fell into a hole, they seemed to take an extra scintilla of joy in shoveling an additional dollop of dirt on us. I live for the moment we can return the favor for real.

*In addition, apparently, to the actual Eddie Perez, whose lingering presence on the current Braves escaped me until he turned up in Wednesday's starting lineup. I suppose Rafael Belliard will eventually come off the bench and supply the game-winning triple.

Well, darn. Hottest hitter on the club up, tie game just a worm-killer/little dunker/smash single/double/triple/home run/wild pitch/passed ball/balk away, and all for naught. As Joshua likes to say sagely, “That happens sometimes.” Wonder what tomorrow will bring — no closer is safe, that's for sure. Dan Kolb's meltdown was one of the more startling gag jobs I've seen in since…oh hell, since Looper on Opening Day. If Marcus Giles gets eaten up by that mean hop on Victor Diaz's shot to second, Kolb could easily have departed the loser with a big zero under IP. But he got two outs out of it, somehow, and we had too far to go, despite some pretty stirring heroism.

I see (OK, hear) lots of faults — most glaringly, Jose Reyes makes Ryan Thompson look like an OBA machine and Kaz Matsui seems to be hypnotized by any ground ball that arrives at more than a 1-degree angle — but you know what? I'm coming to really like this team of ours. You never know if they're going to do something brilliant, brave, boneheaded or bizarre, and everytime you assume any of the four is impossible, it happens. Or almost does.

So we clawed our way back to the summit, slipped on a patch of ice and fell off again, this time for keeps. So what. I can't believe it's 13 hours until we get another game. Get those guys back on the field and give us some more ball!

I was gonna tell a baseball-card story about Royce Ring and Rich Sauveur, but it'll wait.

Hey, maybe I'm not so crazy after all. My hunch, stated Monday, that Captain Carlos was taking care of Mike so Mike could take care of opposing pitchers finds some resonance via Marty Noble who sensed something not altogether “subtle” at work Sunday.

Beltran told MLB.com's Noble that he believes in Piazza: “I wasn't thinking about what he did [Saturday] and Friday. I was thinking about what a great hitter he's been in his career. What a great hitter he still is.''

Noted Noble, “Beltran's demonstration of confidence — not too subtle to the trained eye — was rewarded when Piazza lined a double into the left-center-field gap.”

“I don't say I knew what was coming,” Beltran elaborated. “But I know Mike can hit and get big hits.”

On the other hand, all anybody knew about Mike Matthews was he got hit hard Sunday. Just like that, it's adios Matthews and hello, hello (¡hola!) Royce Ring, a lefty-lefty roster swap at that vertiginous place called the Mets bullpen. I didn't form any particular attachment to Matthews, who leaves behind a 1-0 record, but I'm curious as to why he's gone so quickly. He's had a couple of bad outings, as his 10.80 ERA attests, but he's also had a couple of good outings. Now we go with two unproven lefties, Ring and Koo, which coincidentally were the sound effects heard between verses of “Muskrat Love,” a song to which no reliever enters the fray. As ever, we can lay all our pitching issues, like a large, succulent rat, at the feet of King Felix. If Randolph hadn't kept Heredia around (for an unwieldy total of three lefties), there would have been room for Matt Ginter. If we had Matt Ginter, we wouldn't have had to have called on Aaron Heilman.

And if we hadn't called on Enigmatic Aaron, we wouldn't have had two absolute gems from which to get our hopes up, so forget about Ginter. I already have, but it does seem wasteful to have tossed a serviceable starting pitcher overboard for paperwork's sake.

Monday night's game seemed well in hand when Stephanie got me interested in an article she was reading in Psychology Today about personality traits. While we tried to decide whether I was avoidant or schizotypal, I revealed to her a theory I've been working on that I've built a baseballcentric world for myself as a reaction to the unsatisfying familial bonds I grew up subconsciously rejecting. This went deep, as deep as Cliff Floyd went in the sixth. As I made breakthrough after breakthrough in expressing my lingering disappointments over my blood-relationships and how I use the Mets as a substitute for family (and not in the lame way the Jimmy Fallon character claims to in Fever Pitch), I couldn't help but notice the top of the ninth was turning into a disaster.

“Remember the Thanksgiving when…damn, he let that ball play him!…”

“And Father's Day last year, when everybody was at each other's…pick up the ball, David!…”

“The thing is, we've never been close..get it together, Looper!…”

“One parent was constantly overwhelming while the other was constantly underwhelming…goddamnit, Julio Franco is up!…”

“What it all boils down to is…yes! yes! we won!”

The game wasn't lost on us and the irony wasn't lost on me. Like I said, maybe I'm not so crazy after all.

Eeeek. But it all turned out OK.

I'm officially onboard with your psychological explanation of Carlos Beltran's strange double push bunt on Sunday. It's genius, it shows true leadership at work, and I very much want it to be true. And it's worked for two days, hasn't it? Perhaps Carlos is the Gen. Patton Mike always wanted to salute and follow. Stranger things have happened.

This was a scary one — our galling ineffectiveness early (we got effective late), the wait for Aaron Heilman to revert to the form from Heilman-Ramirez I (he didn't), Kaz Matsui continuing to bunt stupidly (but not fatally stupidly), Roberto Hernandez finally pitching poorly (but cleaning up his own mess), Braden Looper battling a tight strike zone and some bad luck (but not enough bad luck), David Wright booting a potential game-ending play (but…well, hang on), David Wright booting a second potential game-ending play (but not having the ball hit at him a third time), and realizing that it was over and we'd won the damn thing, 5-4. (But the Braves will be back tomorrow.)

Funny thing: Early on, I found it odd that the usual Met-Brave nerves weren't firing. Part of it is not being able to see the tomahawk and the familiar faces. But it's also that a lot of the familiar faces aren't around anymore. Chipper and Andruw remain, and Smoltz, and Brian Jordan returned to torment us, and Bobby Cox is still stamping around in the dugout whining and scowling, and Leo Mazzone is davening of course, but Maddux is gone and Glavine (where'd he get to, anyway?) and Eddie Perez and Javy and Rocker and Boone and Millwood and all the other guys who just killed us are no more. The only one of the new guys I've managed to truly loathe is Rafael Furcal — Julio Franco's too great a story, I wish Marcus Giles were on our team, and the rest of the guys are just too new to really register. This is a team in transition, and while I've gotten pretty good at rooting for laundry, with the exception of the Yankees it's just too taxing to stay good at hating laundry.

Heck, maybe the turnover on the Mets will have the same effect. What business do Beltran, Pedro and Minky have being terrified of the Braves? Nowadays it's just sportswriters and fans who get tight at the merest glimpse of them. I'm sure tomorrow the papers will say games like tonight's are the kind of early-season acid test the Mets used to fail and so things are looking up, but the truth is games like tonight's are the kind of early-season acid test 22 or 23 other guys wearing some bizarre concoction of blue, orange, white and black used to fail against 17 or 18 other guys wearing gray and red and navy blue.

Maybe I'm just not feeling mythic. Don't get me wrong: I'm glad Willie took Heilman out with a lot to feel good about. I'm glad Cliff looks like he's swapped legs with the 2001 model. (Frantic wood knocking.) I'm glad Mike may not be quite as old as I feared two days ago. I'm glad Wright's homer wasn't erased by those two ninth-inning botches. I'm glad Braden can go home hearing “Loo” instead of something similar. And I'm glad tomorrow's Pedro-Smoltz II: The Fury in Flushing. I'll be up for it. But mostly because it's Pedro-Smoltz, not because it's Mets-Braves. Not yet? Not anymore? Guess we'll find out.

Postscript: Will someone please, please, please explain to me how Looper wound up taking the mound to “Lightning Strikes”? For the uninitiated, “Lightning Strikes” is from “Rock and a Hard Place,” the dismal 1982 Aerosmith album recorded with a couple of studio nitwits standing in for Joe Perry and Brad Whitford, an album Aerosmith now basically pretends never existed. I don't think it's been heard in public since…well, since 1982, probably. It's like finding a Dylan fan who worships “Neighborhood Bully,” a Stones fan who's got “Indian Girl” on repeat, a Springsteen fan who won't stop going on about “Mary, Queen of Arkansas.” It's like finding a Met fan who lives in his 1993 uniform top with the hideous underscore tail. It's just deeply weird.

I know it's at least mildly insane to obsess over the musical choices made by/for a middling closer, but I can't help it. This stuff bothers me.

Once in a while, particularly if it's early and you've been reasonably successful lately (and you didn't spend all day there), you have to chalk up a game like Sunday's as a mama-said.

Mama said there'd be days like this. There'd be days when a promising first-inning rally would be short-circuited by a crafty veteran pitcher — a crafty right-hander, yet — and even though you've scored three runs, you can sense they won't be enough because you had the bases loaded and nobody out and you have Victor Zambrano who was lucky to give up only three runs in his half of the inning. Everything that followed, while disappointing, didn't seem surprising.

I don't have a particular game in mind, but I know I've seen yesterday's scenario unfold at least a couple of times a year every year for the past 36 years. They say if you watch baseball enough, you'll see something you've never seen before, but I'm pretty sure I'd seen that first inning end with a strikeout and a double play and I know I've seen the inevitable tail-off between the second and the ninth that made the whole thing seem futile to start with.

But I don't think I'd ever seen what I saw as the bottom of the first played out. First and second, nobody out, and Carlos, the third-place hitter, bunts for a base hit. It goes foul. He bunts again and this time gets on.

Your designated RBI man bunting in that spot is unusual enough. I was listening on the radio and neither Gary nor Howie questioned it. Since neither Ralph Kiner nor Tim McCarver, men who believe No. 3 hitters should act like it, was doing the game, I figure it's unlikely anybody on TV made a big deal out of it. Yet I'm sure Beltran was doing something unprecedented in these parts.

No, not passing off the opportunity to drive in a run. Beltran's fast enough to beat out a bunt. The third baseman was giving it to him. Loading the bases with nobody out in the first is a fine thing. What I don't think I've seen — and I don't even know that it occurred — is the reasoning I believe Carlos employed.

Click back to Saturday, the game marked as the signal of the Piazza decline. That was when Beltran was intentionally walked so Mike could be faced. And Mike didn't produce. Click back to Sunday and what Carlos Beltran did.

I didn't hear it commented upon. I haven't read anything today. And I haven't spoken to Mr. Beltran (who for some reason hasn't sent me his cell number). But I got the very strong sense that Carlos was saying to his cleanup hitter, “Yo, Mike: you got this…you the man.” In much the same way that he took the kids to Gold's Gym in spring training, Carlos was being the leader of the New Mets by pumping up the old lion, the guy we're going to need if we're going to do anything at all in 2005. And Mike, in his own mind and my imagination, said, “dude…” and stroked that three-run double.

If that's what happened, especially if it's something that can be fingered from the vantage point of October, then yesterday was a day like few others.