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.

Yecch. What a mess. Not many observations about the game itself: It was one of those you're glad to see end. I was relieved that apparently wasn't Willie ordering up Kaz's singularly stupid sacrifice bunt with nobody out and runners on first and second in the second — guess sabermetrics hasn't hit Japan yet, either. And I don't think I've ever seen that many hit batsmen in a game that was basically tension-free: It was like everybody knew nobody had too firm a handle on this whole pitching thing.

I went to the game with a bunch of friends, several of whom had never seen Shea before, or had blocked out long-ago memories of it. It was interesting to see their reactions. A woman who's basically seen nothing but Fenway was impressed by the relative newness of things and the lack of bad seats. (We were in a upper-deck box behind home.) She did look somewhat alarmed when the upper deck began flexing during the brief spell of Met-fan happiness following Piazza's double, and asked worriedly if this was the stadium that things had fallen off of, or if that was Yankee Stadium. I assured her that things fell off Shea all the time, adding gravely that it used to have two more decks. The look of horror as she felt the upper deck continuing to sway was worth my ticket.

Still, two things made me wonder if we hadn't found our way to some alternate Shea. First a friend of mine figured out, about ten minutes after the fact, that the beer vendor had given her change from a $10 instead of the $20 she'd given him. Forget it, I told her, you have no shot. She returned a minute later with her extra $10. Wha? Then, leaving the game, we were intercepted by the orange netting at the street exit. My pals sputtered in disbelief; I just nodded sagely and offered a theatrical sigh. Whereupon one of my friends asked the cop holding one end of the net (he was about 14, by the way) if we could get through. “We don't want to cross the street, we want to go left,” she said — exactly the kind of perfectly reasonable thing you and I and many other folks have said innumerable times at Shea over the years, only to be reminded that the rules of Planet Earth don't necessarily apply in Flushing.

“You're going left? Why, that'll be fine,” the 14-year-old cop said with a broad smile, sweeping the net aside like a proud maitre d'. And so off the merry band of visitors went to the 7, with me stumbling along behind in amazement.

Postscript: After Cliff Floyd was brushed back by Livan Hernandez and got up to rifle a single up the middle, the scoreboard operators triumphantly fired up the celebratory cartoon for Mike Cameron. Given the afternoon's other surprises, that was kind of reassuring.

I disagree about Piazza and his performance Saturday. When we look back at this season, this game will be remembered more for an unhappier reason:

It was the day I had a ticket to the game that would've allowed me to start a year 4-0 for the first time, and I didn't go. Whenever my next appearance comes, when it comes with a loss, I'll have no one to blame but myself. Well, myself and my head, which decided to come down with what is actually known as a suicide headache, a dandy little diversion that fells me from time to time. I've got a sweet prescription med for it that works eventually (like Seo) but knocks me out immediately (like Ohka). Somehow, the LIRR, the 7, and another three hours of stiff winds, cold mists and Ameriquest runs-scored bells (even if the bells toll for we) didn't seem like the right holistic alternative.

On the bright side — besides a win being a win from wherever it is observed — I've got a crisp, new $30 LOGE bookmark. Or, if I'm reading the back of it correctly, I could trade the unused ticket in for a buy one-get one free six-inch sub at Subway. It's a lotta meat! (Frighteningly, Willie's commercials are growing on me.)

Sorry to get in the way of a blowout win and the serious subtext of Mike's aging swing, but there is Me in Mets.

As for the Piazza Connection or lack thereof, this is news? He's been steaming downhill for the past three seasons. Nevertheless, if Guzman doesn't make a nice play in the first, we are instead sated with Mike's line-drive RBI single, don't notice him the rest of the way and find something else to bitch about in a 10-5 triumph:

* Damn Seo only pitched six innings of one-run ball after we thought he'd pitch one inning of six-run ball. GINTER! GINTER! GINTER!

* Four of Diaz's plate appearances didn't result in bases on balls. THERE ARE STATISTICS THAT PROVE SINGLES AND DOUBLES KILL RALLIES!

* Heavenly Heath's not pitching in meaningful spots. NO BASERUNNERS IN NORFOLK, DID YOU KNOW THAT?

* Reyes got zero walks — and don't tell me it's because he didn't play. STOP MAKING EXCUSES FOR HIM!

Our erstwhile standard-bearer still gets a decent swing or two every game, not bad considering who he is at the present time. He's Mike, but he's old. He's 36, which is like 45 in catcher years. He shouldn't be batting cleanup, yet he can still do a few things, and Minaya Be Praised that we've got a couple of other bats capable of doing a few things more.

When Frank Robinson came out to unsuccessfully and inaccurately argue that Wilkerson's ninth-inning double should've been called a home run, Gary said he should be used to losing these debates with umpires at Shea. He's been losing them since 1969. Direct historical hit! Several years ago, I was privileged enough to be invited to a Major League Alumni dinner. I walked right by both Frank and Brooks Robinson that night and while, sure, I was awed by their Hall of Fame presence, most of me thought, “Screw you, Orioles! You didn't take us seriously and you lost to us, you overconfident, overcocky, sons of bitches. It still thrills me and it still annoys you.”

In that vein of good guys winning and bad guys losing, we scored 10 runs and won Saturday. The other New York team allowed 10 runs and lost Saturday. Symmetry, symmetry…can't get enough of symmetry, symmetry…the Yankees suck. One advantage of being head-ridden was the opportunity to recline on the couch and push the delightful LAST button on the remote, the one that sent me from Channel 11 to YES. Hey, the LAST button is appropriate for that network's house underachievers since that's where they are, all by their lonesome. LAST.

What a marvelous contrast the two broadcasts presented. Seaver and O'Brien (who doesn't seem so bad when we're up by large margins) kidded each other about calling Washington Montreal, traded “I went to the White House” stories and sized up Victor's chances to go 5-for-5. Over on YES, the ministers of propaganda were presiding over a nine-inning state funeral, one that could give Brezhnev's a run for its dour money:

* “Paul, the Yankees certainly aren't getting it done the way they did when you were playing.”

* “Sooner or later, you can't say 'it's early' anymore.

* “You really can't blame these fans for booing.”

The fun continued into the post-game. On the radio, a straight-voiced Diaz told Eddie he wasn't all that impressed with Beltran's catch because “he makes the 119 and he's gotta earn it.” Howie cracked up Gary by noting the 3:24 time of game was almost long enough to dry out the Passover brisket. Back on YES, three dark-suited men wore grim expressions, shook their heads and spoke in hushed tones about what terrible thing might happen next if we, uh, you know, don't take care of business. It was like watching one of those wakes from The Sopranos.

My head still hurt, but I felt little pain.

So in the 5th, our boys had sent 10 men to the plate — and there was nobody out. I don't think I've ever seen that before.

Neither, perhaps, had the Mets: Floyd, Mientky and Wright promptly struck out, perhaps in disbelief.

Neither, perhaps, had Frank Robinson: I was really starting to worry about him.

WPIX had already made a habit of cutting to Frank's reaction after various atrocities earlier in the day. First when Tomo Ohka insisted on foiling Jae Seo's attempt to make an out via the sacrifice bunt, walking him instead. (Take that!) Then when Ohka was late covering first, granting Carlos Beltran an infield hit despite Carlos' best effort to be out by losing a step sliding into first. But in the 5th inning, the reaction shots were legion.

Absurd pop-fly double for Diaz! (One eyelid begins twitching as Frank stares out at the field.) Seo singles up the middle! (A vein in Frank's temple balloons alarmingly before returning to its normal size.) Woodward smacks the ball to center, Wilkerson misreads it — and it drops in! (Everyone on the bench begins butt-scooting sideways to get some distance from Frank.) Little ground ball to Baerga — between his legs into left field! (Frank has apparently lost the ability to blink.) Tony Blanco falls down, and that's a double for Beltran! (Frank's new road Nats hat spontaneously combusts.) Another ground ball to Baerga, he goes for the tag play — and everybody's safe! (Blood begins to drip from the bottom of Frank's clenched fists.)

It got so bad Emily and I were campaigning for someone to tell Robinson he had an urgent phone call in the clubhouse, then bundle him into a straitjacket and take him to a happier place. What made things worse was that I was downstairs running, while Emily was upstairs watching the TiVo-enabled TV, which comes with a slight delay. So every indignity happened twice. “Whoa! No way!” “Huh? No way!” “I'm worried about Frank!” “Yeah, he looks like he's going to blow.” “Whoa! No way!” “Wha? No way!” (Repeat for a long, long time.)

Fun's fun, but I suspect when we look back at this season, this game will be remembered more for an unhappy reason: It may stand as a milestone in the decline of Mike Piazza. It wasn't just that Mike went 0 for 4 and left 9 on-base. It was the 4th inning, when the Nats had Gary Majewski walk Beltran with two out and a runner on third to pitch to Piazza. I don't know how it played in the park, but at home it was a stunner: They just intentionally walked a guy to pitch to Mike Piazza.

Mike's hitting .200. I hope I'm wrong, but he doesn't look like he's in a slump. He looks old. Baseball, like life, is a pitiless affair, and so we knew this day was coming — after all, it happened to Rusty and Gary and Mex and Robin, and one day it'll happen to Beltran and Wright, and to future Met phenoms who can't even shave yet. But it's still shocking to see “someday” turn into “this day.” Mike Piazza? Why, he just arrived yesterday. They showed video of him and Jay Horwitz in the airport. Standing ovation after standing ovation. Helped beat the Brewers with a double that was hit so hard it left a burn mark halfway up the gap. Leiter got the win.

It was just yesterday, I tell you. How can Mike Piazza be old?

I hope our 7 inexplicably stalling at Bliss Street in Queens is some kind of sign that we'll have more nights like this one. Well, maybe not so much with (switch to Prof. Frink voice) the cold and the blowing and the mist and the brrrr, but with the beating the Nationals and the Floyd bomb and the Piazza productive groundout and the Glavine. It was only last year, I just found out, that the MTA restored the name Bliss to the 46th Street stop. So maybe that's a sign that we can look forward to more of that sort of thing — the bliss — as the season progresses.

Weather kept down the crowd. ThunderStix didn't make much of a ruckus, save for the lone souse in our row, and I think that was him knocking his head against his bottle of Bud. Shea being Shea, I assume they handed out one stick per customer. “Ya like noise? Bring yer own!” You'll recall ThunderStix were all the rage at the 2002 World Series. It is now 2005. Next week, the trend-conscious Mets will lure kids by giving away Pogo Sticks (though they won't stop at this floor).

Didja catch the Clydesdales and the Anheuser eagle in the parking lot? All that animal action must've scared King Felix and the feral cats from making their nightly rounds. Usually they're out to tailgate by 6:30.

I'm surprised Glavine gets as much support as he does in these parts. We sat a couple of rows behind a fellow in a GLAVINE 47 shirt. I wanted to ask, what, were they out of ROACH 57? It's not so much that I consider him a Brave as that I know he's still Glavine. I've been told both that he's a decent guy and that he's a total jerk. I have a hard time believing one of those. As long as he's paid to don our duds, I wish him success and safe cab rides. The second he takes them off, I don't really care what happens to him.

At the moment, I feel the same way about Al Leiter. Pity. He was our front man for so long that it feels petty to dump on him. He really did care about being a Met, about getting 100 Met wins, about being mentioned in the same Met breath with Jerry Koosman. (I'm certain that if he ever stumbled upon our One Hundred Greatest Mets ranking of him, he'd give me an earful; “28? 28? Behind Kingman? C'mon, I'm greater than Kingman!”). Yet there's something about Al departing that set off the sense of relief you'd see in an '80s teen movie, specifically the scene in which the popular kids who ran the school finally got theirs from the supposed nerds. Old-Timers Day 2010, Al won't get booed. Next Marlins start at Shea, he shouldn't count on it.

I wasn't thinking about Glavine's record or Leiter's record when I bid you adieu at 11:05, emerged into the din of Penn Station at 11:06 and decided, à la Timo, to not run full-out to catch the 11:07. I was thinking of my own record. For the third time ever, I'm 3-0 to start a season. It's happened twice before, in 1998 and 2000. After my fourth game those years, I was 3-1. In what they call a quick turnaround, I'm due back at Shea early Saturday afternoon to try to scale Mount Fourandoh for the first time ever. They say it might rain. They say it might Seo. I kinda hope it rains.

I'd like to soak up a little more of tonight's bliss before going back into battle. By pinging from Shea to Penn to Long Island, I got an additional treat. As both home teams were indeed home, there was a convergence of fans waiting for the LIRR. Mets fans. Yankees fans. We looked happy. They didn't. Shortly before the 11:36 was called, a couple of fellow travelers walked by wearing gear in the same family as mine. “METS!” they said. “METS!” I answered. We slapped palms. We knocked fists. We went public with our bliss. A Yankees fan standing nearby had nothing to say and nobody to knock. We won. They lost.

It was worth the extended commute.