Why do I love 7:10 starts? Because my team can play an 11-inning grinder and it's not the middle of the night.

Great game — I kept expecting Harvey Haddix to walk out of a

cornfield, or Bambi Castillo to emerge from the dugout and win it.

(Remember that? The 80-degree day in March?) Was that really our team?

Ishii only walked three, Wright struck out three times, and the bullpen

was great. Oh wait, Jose Reyes swung at ball four — that was

our team. (And thank God he did.) I think my favorite part was the

crowd getting behind Looper: All is forgiven, Braden, at least until

tomorrow. (Hey, it's New York. That's as forgiving as it gets around

here.)

This was one of those games you keep expecting to take on the template

of “significant early-season game,” which means some time-honored

ending that you gnaw your fingernails trying to predict. First I

assumed Vizcaino would be the death of us, because he a) was

pinch-hitting for the Antichrist and b) is Jose Vizcaino. (My new

theory: Jose has held a grudge since Steve Avery nailed him in the knee

and Bobby Jones didn't retaliate. Which means if Bobby Jones isn't such

a wuss, we win the 2000 World Series. It's all so clear. Damn Bobby

Jones.)

That didn't happen, so I had to look for another template. Piazza

beating Chad Qualls seemed unlikely — anyone named Qualls has us over

a barrel, after all. Then I was sure Luke Scott would beat us, probably

with a two-run single between Matsui and Diaz, because those

who-the-hell-are-you guys are always the ones who kill you. As for John

Franco collapsing, it seemed a bit too easy and was.

I'll freely admit I didn't think to diagram Reyes refusing to be walked

and punching a little nubber up the middle, Manny Acta waving Diaz

around third, and poor Chris Burke's throw home barely clearing the

mound. No classic ending, just a head-shaking mess. Good by me.

Confession time: I couldn't get hyped up about the Antichrist beyond

reflexive bristling. You know what? It's starting to be a long time ago.

When I was a kid, I liked chocolate ice cream. Because I liked chocolate ice cream, I was, as a matter of principle, against vanilla ice cream. Oh, vanilla ice cream was good, but giving it any credit would somehow take away from chocolate's status. As time went by, I found myself increasingly preferring vanilla over chocolate but if you asked me which I liked better, I would've said chocolate. It wasn't until my late thirties that I came to grips with the notion that if I liked vanilla more than chocolate, I should readily admit it.

I like vanilla ice cream more than chocolate ice cream.

It's that sense of loyalty to a flavor or an affiliation or a cause that is at the core of why it has taken me this long to tumble out of the Mezzanine closet and reveal myself as a Shea-basher. In my mind, I was already there. But to admit it out loud was to take a whole other escalator to a whole other level of admission. As someone who has spent his entire life idealizing Shea, mythologizing Shea, dreaming of Shea and going to Shea, how could I turn around and declare for the whole blogging world to read that I don't think kindly of Shea anymore?

Like this: I don't think kindly of Shea anymore.

I guess I already said that yesterday. But I'm sticking to it.

That said twice, I'll be at Shea Stadium at least a dozen more times this season because, as with chocolate ice cream, it's better than nothing. Actually, like chocolate ice cream, it's better than lots of things. It's better than Yankee Stadium no matter what surrounds either one of them. It's better than Madison Square Garden or Lincoln Center or any theater I can think of because they don't play baseball games in those places. It's better than every retro jewel in Baltimore, Pittsburgh or San Francisco because I'm not in Baltimore, Pittsburgh or San Francisco. It's better than any building or arena or stadium that doesn't have Mets games as their main attraction.

Which gets back to the problem. They've got us and they know it. We are each other's enablers. They know we're always gonna fall for the Mets angle. They've especially got Mets fans of a certain vintage who “grew up” in Shea Stadium and don't wanna let go. They've got us by the sentimental short hairs and they show no compunction about pulling hard. They've got the one thing we can't get anywhere else in the world.

They've got the Mets.

Damn them, damn them, damn them.

What they don't have for us is trust. As I continue to deconstruct the matter, that's what gets me about the Shea dystopia.

Are there other things that have turned me into a Shea-shooer? Sure, but they're not fatal. Does it bother me…

* That it's old and leaky? Yes, but so am I.
* That it's got a staff that as a rule would sooner kick you square in the nuts than sincerely wish you a good game? That's not OK, but this is New York. Courtesy would be appreciated but we don't have to get Disneyfied about it.
* That its curdling infrastructure works to raise the vile-behavior quotient up another notch? Really, I can't prove that even though I do sense it. In the prettiest Flushing Field of Dreams of imagination, you're gonna have at least a few drunken idiots as long as you sell too much beer, and they're not gonna stop selling beer. (And however many drunken idiots there are, they're always gonna be sitting in my section.)
* That they've never done Thing One about easing congestion out of the parking lot or toward the subway entrances? This pisses me off greatly and it's inexcusable, but it's only an issue when there's a big crowd and when there's a big crowd, it means we're doing well and if we're doing well, I'm a little more easily bought off. It's still absolutely disgusting that they pretend access issues don't exist.
* That a two-bit city like (almost everywhere in the National League) has a new ballpark and we don't? I do covet my neighbors' brighter, wider, nicer homes, but it's not about new versus old. The White Sox never should have torn down Comiskey Park. I wish Tiger Stadium was still open for business. Wrigley Field and Fenway Park speak for themselves. Needless to say, Shea isn't Comiskey Park, Tiger Stadium, Wrigley Field or Fenway Park. It never had to be. It could have aged gracefully. It hasn't. But that alone is not the problem.

The problem is the distrust factor. You walk in to that place and you're immediately suspect. No, I take it back. You're immediately suspect just walking toward that place. I understand security and the need for it, but as with everything else, they make you feel like a criminal just for carrying a bag.

I open mine, I unzip my jacket, I do whatever they want me to do before they tell me to do it. I'm not who they have to worry about, but they act as if they do. Me and everybody else. There's something about the way they go through this necessary step that makes me feel like I'm about to join a lineup. My favorite was the guard at Gate E who once took out the book I was carrying, a political one, and opened it. Then he glared at me. What was he hoping to find? Subversive literature? Proof of non-citizenship? The stolen sign for the hit-and-run?

For all that is charged for a bottled beverage, alcohol or otherwise, they should trust you enough to let you carry it back to your seat with its cap on. As I mentioned, I've been to lots of ballparks. Nowhere else do they take the cap away from you. I've asked about this. I've been told two stories. One is, oh, we need the caps to track how many bottles we've sold. I think they have cash registers for that. The other is we don't want people throwing full bottles on the field. Ah, distrust. They think I and most of us just spent four bucks for twenty ounces of water so we can take dead aim at Bobby Abreu from 300 feet and hit him on the fly. Come on. Even the drunkards in my row on Opening Day weren't going to waste pricey Bud (save for what they spilled on Laurie) trying to take out an Astro.

While they don't trust us to act like adults, they do trust us to think like children. A few years back, I was at a game with a friend from work. She noticed these very nice-looking Hot Wings buckets with the Mets logo on them. Neither of us wanted an $18 order of Hot Wings, but it didn't seem unreasonable to try to track down a bucket. We went into the deli/bar where they were sold and asked if we could get an empty bucket. We'll even pay for it, I said (because I automatically assume you can't get something for nothing, let alone virtually nothing for nothing). We were told that if we wanted the empty bucket, it would cost the same $18 as if it came with Hot Wings. We passed on the bucket.

No anecdote or symptom of Shea's and the Mets' distrust and disdain for its paying customers, however, resonates like what happened to Stephanie and me last August. It illustrates my single biggest complaint about how the organization views its fans and runs its venue. It shows how little they respect they have for us.

It was a Sunday afternoon. Some good friends of ours were treating us to the game because it was their son's first-ever appearance at Shea (Brian Buchanan's, too). Having arrived early, I took Stephanie to the Fifth Avenueish boutique the Mets had opened in April. She hadn't seen it yet and I had only been in there once. For other ballparks, a store like this is standard fare. At Shea Stadium, it was an event. The previous time I attempted to get inside, there was a line and a barrier like it was Studio Freaking 54.

We entered the ballpark through Gate C and were able to walk right into the store. We did some t-shirt shopping and such. Brought our items to the front counter. Handed a credit card to the cashier who rang us up and ran it through. Our purchase was completed.

I point this out to note that we were indeed paying customers, not just at the game (OK, you bought us the tickets, but they were paid for) but at their high-end tchotchke shop. We weren't vagrants or loiterers.

As we were leaving, a guard stopped us to look through our shopping bag and match the items to the receipt. This was a little offensive, but that's retail, I rationalized. This was Shea Stadium, not Tourneau Corner, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do. Either way, it only took a moment.

Now we're standing outside the store, having exited onto the Field Level. That's good, I'm thinking, because I want to take Stephanie to the International Food Court which has been relocated down the left-field line. We can buy our exotica and then take it up to our seats in Loge.

We are stopped at another barrier and asked for our tickets. I show them. I am told these are for Loge, you take the escalator up one level.

Yes, I say, I know. But we just want to go to the food court.

You have to go up to Loge first and then walk all the way down toward left field and come down that ramp to get to the food court.

What?

You have to go up to Loge first and then walk all the way down toward left field and come down that ramp to get to the food court.

But the food court is right over there, I point out. We just want to go buy our food and then we'll go to our seats.

You have to go up to Loge first and then walk all the way down toward left field and come down that ramp to get to the food court.

I blurt out some righteous indignation along the lines of let me get this straight: We have tickets for this game. We have just shopped in your store. We have spent good money in there. What we want to do next is spend more good money right over there, mere yards away. We are adults who have come here on our weekend to enjoy ourselves at what is supposed to be a leisure activity. And you don't trust us to walk over there, buy our food and go to our seats without trying to pull a fast one and sit down here instead of up there despite the fact that I can read my ticket and for what it's worth my wife and I prefer the Loge to the Field Level which you guard like it's a state secret?

You have to go up to Loge first and then walk all the way down toward left field and come down that ramp to get to the food court.

I was also told that this is policy.

Ohhhh…it's policy! I'm sorry, I didn't understand. Policy. That explains everything.

I was also told that if I wanted to register a complaint, I could go find a Fan Relations desk.

Even better! We're here on a Sunday. We came for a good time. And now because we want to go spend more of our hard-earned money on some of your less unpalatable foodstuffs but think it's completely insulting to be chased upstairs just so we can head right back downstairs practically to where we are standing as we speak because you don't trust us to then bring our food to the seats specified on our tickets, we're supposed to engage your grudging-if-we're-lucky bureaucracy to have Policy reiterated to us like we're hotheaded threats to The Way Things Are?

You have to go up to Loge first and then walk all the way down toward left field and come down that ramp to get to the food court.

I didn't have enough self-respect to cause more of a scene and I'm not enough of a consumer-rights nut to have followed through with indignant letters. But once I went upstairs, I never went back down to their food court.

I sure showed them.

Exactly one week later, Stephanie and I visited Citizens Bank Park for the first time. They, too, had a store on what would be their equivalent of the Field Level. Much bigger than Shea's. The selection veered to Phillies-themed items, but one would expect that. We bought another bunch of t-shirts and pens we probably didn't need, took it to the cashier and paid for it. After it was bagged, we walked to the exit.

I looked for the guard who was gonna shake us down. There was none.

I looked for the next guard who was gonna check our tickets to tell us to immediately find an escalator. There was none.

I looked for some authority figure to tell us we were doing something wrong. There was none.

At Citizens Bank and at Minute Maid and at Great American and at every beautiful new ballpark I've been to (hell, even at — Gil forgive me — wretched Yankee Bleeping Stadium), they don't crotchblock you from buying stuff. They may not invite you into their private suites, but they don't put all the worthwhile merchandise on one level and then restrict access to that level. They don't cut off their distrustful noses to spite their Policy-hewing faces. They want you wandering around. They figure you'll spend your money where you wander. And even if you don't, they employ pretty basic business sense and figure you'll have a good enough time so that you'll buy a ticket to come back again and again whereas you might not ever come back if you don't have a good enough time.

Maybe it's the ushers' union that holds a death grip on Policy. Maybe if a fan was trusted to roam the Field Level concourse and one of them dared to use that access to casually wander into an empty orange seat, an usher would have to be nudged awake to angrily check that person's ticket. Maybe the Field Level and the concept of the box seat as province of the swells is so embedded in the New York baseball consciousness from the 1920s that it's beyond the realm to imagine that somebody wouldn't want to “sneak down” into one. Maybe they think the only people who attend Mets games are seven years old.

Maybe Shea Stadium is just a decrepit rathole run by an organization that holds its customers in complete contempt because it knows it can.

Play ball, indeed.

Greg, welcome to the other side. We were beginning to wonder if we’d ever see you in these parts, but we’re glad you’re here.

The description of Shea I offer curious baseball fans who’ve never been there is that it’s like a DMV with a ballgame somewhere inside it. A couple of years ago I had my pregame ritual down to a dismal science: Get upstairs somehow, dodge the credit-card hawkers, wait for one of the three squat, murderous-looking women who do nothing but man the DiGiorno pizza line (three?) to shift her gaze from outer space to us saps in line, trouble her to also get me an amazingly expensive soda, wait half an hour for her to shuffle back from this taxing mission, loudly identify which kind of bill I’m giving her because I’ve seen too many disputes over this after the fact, scamper for my seat before the victuals cool back into inedibility, and hope that my seat is a) not occupied by a drunk or a violent mental defective; and b) isn’t being dripped on by some combination of water, rust, beer, jet fuel, pigeon urine, and blood that’s been making its way through the cracks in the upper deck since 1964.

Once I achieved vague acceptance of this ritual, they had to go mess it up, replacing the dispiriting but edible DiGiorno’s mini-pizza with a lank, oddly colored slice of something. As for the bathrooms, I just pray that I won’t have to wade. And the staff? I once tried to get in to the bleachers on a Wednesday night, clutching the now-empty bottle of Pepsi I’d bought. The Human Fight and I were five people too late, prompting the lumpy cop manning the gate to say farewell to the rest of us: “That’s it, getouttaheah.”

Par for the course at Shea: If I ever heard an “enjoy the game” or even an “I’m sorry this entire level is out of condiments, sir — we’re rushing to get some more” I think I’d die of shock.

Plus they can’t do anything right at Shea. The stats are wrong, the pop-culture quizzes insipid, the cameramen inevitably take their crowd stills as some yahoo sticks a Yankee cap in front of the subject’s face, and “Around the Majors” delights in showing you groundouts from the first two innings of a Milwaukee-Colorado matinee even when you’re in a pennant race. And not only did they lose the leaf on the apple but it was missing for several years until someone found it in a storeroom.

And the surroundings? Yankee Stadium is a locus of Satanism and full of louts, but it is near actual stores, bars and other places inhabited by humans. (OK, by bipeds.) Shea has a highway, a Soviet park or two, and an area of the city that does not have paved roads.

The Vet contained a jail and was surrounded by a parking lot (bad) and then Philadelphia (worse). And it was better than Shea, at least until you got to the field.

The only thing that used to save Shea was that field, and the fact that it’s grass. (As in, “at least it’s grass.”) But now every NL stadium has grass — and few of them have a rusting, creaking concrete donut surrounding that grass and apparently doomed to be there forever.

This is not the way things have to be. It’s not even the way things have to be in Wilponland — Keyspan Park is bare-bones concrete, but it has nice touches, staffers who don’t always act like orange-vested prisoners on county work detail, and good food. Not good as in “I can choke this down if I think happy thoughts” but good as in, “Should I get three more dogs or just two?”

And the worst part is we’re stuck together, we and Shea. The city can only absorb one new park in a generation, and it’s not going to be ours. Ironically, this is the only reason I’m against the West Side Stadium: If it gets built, we get nothing. Even if it doesn’t, we probably get nothing. You know the Yankees will get their park, because they’re the Yankees. Us? We’ll be sitting there getting dripped on until the last member of the Pepsi Party Patrol fires the last Brian McRae T-shirt into the facade of the section above us, bringing it down on our heads.

So I hope it was fun. It sure sounded fun.

What a difference a double shot of some payroll love makes. Thanks to Pedro and Carlos, I wasn't nervous as today's game unfolded over the radio. Not as Pettitte kept throwing zeroes. Not when we somehow turned a pickoff into a stolen base despite the presence of Mientkiewicz. (Who's as good as advertised. Keep glovin' it, Minky.) Not after Aybar let everything go to hell. Not when Jose Vizcaino continued his lifelong quest to kill us at every turn. (How old is the Viz, anyway? He'll be beating us in 2018, won't he?) Not when Willie was giving away outs by opting for the bunt. (It turned out OK, so I'll spare you the stats.) Not when Victor Diaz was doing silly things on the basepaths and in the outfield. Not when Jose hit a comebacker to Russ Springer and I knew he had Diaz dead to rights at the plate. Not even when the stadium, um, broke. Beautiful sunny day, let's get out the bats and balls.

If I'm permitted a moderately shameful confession, there was a bit of glee at seeing Floyd spoil Johnny Franco's homecoming. Because how many times did I have to suffer just such a game-killer? Defensive indifference, little bouncer, Franco doesn't quite glove it, it slithers through the infield, two runs score. I mean, everything was familiar except the uniform. But if I should be ashamed, from the sound of things so should at least 20,000 other Met fans. We'll remember that we love each other, Franco and Met Nation, but right now we need some time apart.

Last week I finally remembered to do some TiVo hunting and recorded the grand-slam-single game from ESPN Classic. (Or, more properly, the three-hour abridgement.) Emily and I started watching some of it a couple of days back, which in hindsight wasn't a good idea: This is the time of year one's always having trouble warming up to the new incarnation of the team, getting used to the new TV and radio ads, and subconsciously wondering if one can really handle another long campaign with all its attendant agonies, all of which made it far from the best time to relive the glory days of a vanished roster. Emily and I pointed out Edgardo Alfonzo to Joshua, watched Olerud's early home run off Maddux, and then settled into a quiet sadness. Where have you gone, Todd Pratt? A household turns its lonely eyes to you….

But life intervened and so I didn't resume playback until tonight. And with two wins under our belts, the sadness was just a faint note, and I started noticing things I hadn't noticed before. Eewww, Bonilla and Cedeno. Eewww, Glavine and Gerald Williams and Galarraga — thank God they're not on our team. We went to the sixth game of the NLCS with Chuck McElroy on our roster? Can't someone explain the intentional-walk rule to Gary Thorne?

I'm signing off to await the Shawon Dunston at-bat: If they abridge that one, I'm getting in a cab to Bristol with murder in my eye. As for 2005, whaddya mean there's no game tomorrow? Beautiful sunny day….

During one of the many, many godforsaken Jets seasons in which I’ve entangled myself while waiting for baseball to return, I recall they lost four of their first six games after spending prodigiously to produce a more favorable ratio. One of their Hessians insisted they were much better than their record indicated, that they were, in fact, the best 2-4 team in football.

In that spirit, I never dreamed I’d feel this good about a 1-5 start. With Sunday’s win, it was like the first week didn’t happen. The five losses are bookkeeping. The one win is enormous. We’re three out with 156 to play. We can handle that.

Instead of burying my head on the LIRR and trudging into Shea this afternoon with little to anticipate save for the booing of Clemens (who should only now be finishing a three-to-five at Attica for assault) during the pregame ceremonies, now it is truly Opening Day, the home version.

Because yesterday was the day we became who we are in earnest.

Boy, isn’t that Martinez something? No kidding. We haven’t had a guy like this since Doc in his post-prime, maybe Cone. Certainly not Al or any of the others who struggled mightily to give us seven valiant innings from time to time. It’s only two starts, but this is the Pedro Martinez I remember from Montreal. He is electric. All hail Randolph for not removing him after seven or eight, something Howe would’ve done, something my beloved Bobby V would’ve done. The beauty part was that at the end of the day, he’d thrown all of 101 pitches. We’re not draining him dry as far as I can tell.

Wow, I’d forgotten how much I hated the Braves. Wow, I hate them. I’d forgotten all kinds of little details relating to the pox they’ve been on our well-being for so long. I’d forgotten that Chipper/Larry named his son Shea and that it was as backhanded a compliment as he could pay us. I’d forgotten Furcal was a convicted drunk driver who only got his anklet off to play in and lose playoff games last October. I’d forgotten that Brian Jordan, who always seems to crash through the line against us, used to be a professional football player. I’d forgotten that Brian Jordan had ever left Atlanta.

But I hadn’t forgotten Smoltz. What a phenomenon. When the Marlins lit him up in their Opener, I figured it was bad news for us. What a thrill it was to come back on him more than on any other Braves pitcher who’s still wearing a Braves uniform. Given the man’s stated views on animal attraction, I was particularly pleased to see him come to know Carlos Beltran’s bat in the Biblical sense.

Is it irresponsible to compare Sunday to a weekday afternoon game at Shea three Aprils ago? We had taken two of three in Atlanta and then the first two at home. We were in first place, the Braves were in last. Maddux started but was forced to leave after one. We were about to have a very big inning against a thrust-into-relief Millwood. With two out and multiple runners on (including one at third), Jeff D’Amico singled to right. Or so it seemed. B.J. Surhoff, who nursed a grudge against us for not signing him instead of Ventura, charged the ball and threw D’Amico out at first. You see that play, what — every couple of years? It wasn’t like D’Amico was dogging it either. He was slow and Surhoff was quick. It was the Braves-Mets rivalry played out on the head of a pin. Natch, the Braves won 2-1 that day. Natch, Smoltz threw two perfect innings for the save. Natch, the Braves won their umpteenth consecutive division title. Natch, the Mets didn’t.

Is it irresponsible to believe Sunday was that game in reverse? That maybe Beltran and Floyd and Wright and Martinez just transformed 2005 and shifted the longest of long-term paradigms? Probably, but it did cross my mind, and I’m usually very careful about what I allow in there. While we rode high on Opening Day, I reported to a Cubs fan acquaintance that based on the small sample at hand, Pedro and Carlos were clearly worth the money (irony implied). The next day he chastised me for gloating ahead of the final score, especially since he was the Cubs fan who invited me to the now-immortal Victor Diaz game last September. I wasn’t gloating, I swear I wasn’t. But maybe I should’ve kept my typing fingers in my pockets until last Monday’s victory was secure.

I’m sure not gloating now over a 1-5 start, but boy it’s nice to see Omar’s mutual funds pay dividends in such a meaningful fashion, especially when we’re desperate for a win, especially against the bunch who are still our archrivals (and by the way the “Turner Field faithful” act, we’re still theirs). Yeah, Bobby Bo hit two homers in his first game, but you know that’s not what I’m talking about with Pedro and Carlos. It’s not just a two-hit shutout or a game-turning, season-saving/season-turning home run. It’s about the poise and the clutch and the certainty that we’re not buried as long as they’re on our side. It’s the difference between having great players and running Gerald Williams and Jae Seo out there over and over and over. That’s what Minaya paid for. Why shouldn’t we have nice things?

The hot dogs are going to cost six bucks either way.

Among the myriad reasons beyond just plain common sense that winning a game was a good thing, is now the Mets’ vibe will be a positive one, at least until results otherwise dictate, but certainly as I work my way to Shea shortly. During the long, cold offseason, Stephanie bought me a beautiful orange, satin jacket with a blue NY on the front and a rendering of Mr. Met on the back. I’ve been wearing it as much as temperatures have allowed. I wore it Saturday morning when I entered the convenience store up the block to buy the papers. I’ve been living in my current neighborhood less than a year and haven’t really formed any strong bonds with local merchants, but the guy who runs that store recognizes me a little by now. He certainly recognized my jacket. “Oh, I hope they finally win tonight!” he told me as he made change. I made some self-deprecating remark reflecting the 0-4 start, and it was all very friendly-like, but I’ve had enough of these types of transactions to last me a lifetime. There’s always some guy in a store, some stranger on the street, somebody living down the hall who manages to find me when the Mets are losing in historic proportions, but they’re inevitably absent the minute things brighten up.

Sunday, after Pedro conquered the heretofore unconquerable and I spent requisite time soaking it in, we went out to run various errands, one of which involved buying a new cordless phone at PC Richard & Son, a proud sponsor of New York Mets Baseball. I was wearing my circa-2000 windbreaker when I heard some guy blowing hard about the Yankees. Here I am in black, blue and orange and oy, I’m thinking, what now? I started formulating snappy comebacks, some of which you probably used a quarter-century ago (yeah, well, Craig Swan won his ERA title for a last-place team, which is WAY more impressive than what Guidry did) in anticipation being forced onto the defensive. But wait a second…they lost. We won. And in fact, though nobody’s seen fit to congratulate me on my choice of jacket, the Yankees fan is whining about how Baltimore took two out of three and now Boston awaits “and they’re gonna shove their rings right in our faces. Probably sweep all three, too.”

That’s right! You guys suck! You’re 3-3. You have your own problems. Us? We’re the best 1-5 team in baseball.

The Germans have handy words for lots of complex emotional states, most notably Schadenfreude,

defined for 40-odd years now as “the feeling of pleasure when the

Yankees don't win the World Series.” Do our crafty German friends have

a word for “the giddy high that one doesn't want to hear is in fact not

a high, but merely a return to relatively normal altitude”? If they

don't, perhaps they should. My suggestion is Neuenmetzenabgebenendlichkeit. Rolls off the tongue, don't it? And I thought my seven years of half-assed schoolboy German would never amount to anything.

For yes, our New Mets finally delivered,

and in storybook fashion, erasing a whole lot of sting from a bad week

just in time for what otherwise would have been a rather tortured home

opener.

Truth be told, I didn't think we were out of this one despite the fact that Smoltz was on,

particularly with that evil splitter of his. Floyd looked miserable,

but Reyes, Cairo, Mientkiewicz and Castro kept getting good cuts, and

you could see Beltran and Wright walking away from each at-bat

reviewing and concentrating, like they'd just dealt with a question on

a tough but not impossible midterm. And then there was the X factor of

the pitch count.

Besides (and this is an easy thing to claim after the fact), I knew I

wasn't going to put a foot through the set even if we did lose 1-0. It

was just too good a game, one of those you realize early that you're

lucky to see (and for the first time this year, I did see it) and will talk about for years. In fact, it reminded me of the great Pedro/Clemens matchup

from 2000: Both pitchers going all the way, 22 strikeouts between them,

Trot Nixon breaking a scoreless tie in the ninth with a home run off

the Rocket. (Emily and I watched that game in a packed Rockaway Beach

bar that regarded every pitch from about the 7th on like part of Mass,

but that's another tale.) That game shows up on ESPN Classic now;

today's may join it someday. (If so, they better show the great

gunfighters' moment where Pedro and Smoltz took amiable, respectful

swipes at each other after Pedro's comebacker.)

Pedro? We'd need a whole lot of new words in a whole lot of languages

to sum up Pedro today. Two hits — Andruw's triple, which was nearly a

shoestring grab by Floyd, and Estrada's chalk-puff double. And after

the double he gave up nothing. Nothing!

(I know you know this, but hey, this one deserves a write-up for the

history books.) Even more impressive, to me, was the killer look in his

eye after the leadoff triple. A little pop-up that Wright made a nice

play on (though Andruw should have scored — he is absolutely hopeless

from the neck up), a strikeout, a harmless flyball. Bang, bang, bang.

When's the last time we had a pitcher who was able to elevate his game

that way? (Leiter was a ferocious competitor, but all too often he

couldn't get out of his own way.)

And then that marvelous 8th inning, which reminded me of the Olerud

grand-slam game against the Braves: all the frustration and tension

flying away as if the home run had yanked it out of the dugout and our

tortured psyches, leaving us all floating blissfully free.

Are we a playoff team? I don't know any more than I did when we were

down 1-0. The difference is I'm no longer worried — about us or the 25

guys who actually have to do the work. They — and we — are gonna be

just fine now. Danke schoen, Pedro und Carlos.

Ol' Case had a pitcher named Karma at Worcester, his first managerial

posting, in 1926. Karma went through the order once but never again.

Turned out what would go around didn't come around. So much for Karma,

Stengel said.

So much for this pitching staff, too. Mr. Martinez notwithstanding,

it's enough to make one long for the days of Astacio, Estes and

D'Amico. Who knew D'Amico'd inherit the earth? At least those guys kept

up appearance for a couple of months before imploding.

Pedro (Martinez, that is) is wonderful and our best hope for redemption

Sunday afternoon, but he began a disturbing trend. I'll play Statboy

for now and break down the innings that have followed the starters'

breakdowns:

Game 1: Down 0-3 in the first, Martinez over the next 5-1/3 gives up 0 hits, 2 walks, 0 runs.

Game 2: Glavine…well, forget Glavine.

Game 3: Down 0-3 in the first, Ishii over the next 5-1/3 gives up 0 hits, 1 walk, 0 runs.

Game 4: Down 0-2 in the first, Zambrano over the next 4-1/3 gives up 3 hits, 3 walks, 0 runs.

Game 5: Down 0-4 in the second, Heilman over the next 3-2/3 gives up 0 hits, 0 walks, 0 runs.

Prior to each stretch of the four games in which the starter has

settled down, it seems the tipping point has been a visit to the mound

from or a talking-to in the dugout by Coach Peterson. He tells them

something and it seems to work for a decent interval. Then it wears

off. I guess I'm wondering:

1) What's he saying?

2) Why doesn't he say it before the game?

I'd ask why there's a statute of limitations on the effectiveness of

his amazing advice, but I'm thinking it's like blackjack. Every pitch

that hasn't blown the game beyond obvious repair is another pitch

closer to 21. Heilman, for example, said “hit me” once too often to

Larry/Chipper. Somebody had the good sense to not let Victor the

Erraticator go above 17.

And Braden's ERA has diminished from Incalculable to 36.

Funny (funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha) thing is this team doesn't look

awesomely bad. Remember 2002, the last time off-season moves were

supposed to catapult us back to the top of the East? That

team looked awesomely bad. I was watching an A's-O's game the other

night and a Baltimore infielder cut off a throw from the pitcher to

first on a bunt. The announcer swore it was unprecedented, but I'm

pretty sure some combination of Leiter and John Valentin pulled off

that same neat trick in an early-season meltdown three years ago. It

was, if I recall correctly, the game in which Ordoñez discarded his

suddenly tarnished glove in frustration. (To think we were still

tracking the Wild Card standings when August began.)

I don't sense the “uh-oh, we can't get out of our own way, I thought

Alomar was supposed to be so great” cloud that enveloped us in '02

moving in from quite the same kind of angle right now. There are, however, a lot of stormy conditions.

* Except for Matsui, the defense has been reasonably sound.

* The batting averages aren't microscopic unless runners are on base.

* As illustrated above, starters have shown the ability to pitch several competent innings, one following another, though usually after digging a hole.

* The bullpen has been undistinguished but not altogether incompetent.

* Save

for the double-switch blunder that served to haze Randolph into the

N.L. managerial fraternity, Willie hasn't noticeably screwed up.

* Everybody's pressing a bit too much, yet one good rally should take care of that.

* If it has to take place versus Smoltz, so be it.

* Stop being such Old Mets already yet.

Karma? Luck? Dunno. But we're due.

Here's a memory for the Old Perfesser that seems all too appropriate:

Once upon a time you warned of Ron Swoboda, shortly after he was seen

hopping up and down in the Met dugout trying to get a stomped-on helmet

off his spikes, “He thinks he's being unlucky, but he's gonna be

unlucky his whole life if he don't change.”

We're 0-5. Oh and five.

I mean, for fuck's sake. The realists among us didn't think we'd win 90

games, but 81-81 seemed like a gimme, with a wild card an

if-everything-goes-right hope. Tonight,  0-6 and coming back to

Shea to a blast furnace of boos seems probable. And after that, who

knows? We could go 157-5, but that's clearly impossible. But I bet if

you tweaked OTB's offerings you'd find more than a few paranoid,

battered, terrified Met fans who wouldn't put any money on us going

1-161. This is a fan base hiding under its collective

bed. Not exactly what we had in mind with the “New Mets.”

I'm trying to be rational about this. The way I see it, a baseball team

is a beast that fires on, let's say, six cylinders. (No, I'm not gonna

name the cylinders. This is just for argument's sake, and anyway I'm

drunk.) Teams firing on five or six are unbeatable; teams firing on

four win more often than not; teams firing on three are .500 squads.

You can win by firing on two or even once in a great while on one

(think of the aforementioned Rocky Swoboda beating Steve Carlton with

two homers on a night Lefty struck everybody else out), but it's damned

difficult to do. And when multiple cylinders are busted and trailing

smoke, it's hard to do much of anything.

Which brings us to our not-so-amazing Mets. None

of our cylinders is trailing smoke — in fact, all have looked like

they're in impressive shape at various points in this young season.

Sometimes we've even brought a number of 'em online at the same time.

But we've also managed to find that exact combination of missing

cylinders to ensure a loss, and we've done so day in and day out. Bad

relief, bad defense, double plays, lame offense, bad calls, mental

lapses. Never all at once, so you turn off the radio with an annoyed

snap in the third inning and try to salvage your night, but enough of

them to ensure we lose every time out.

That's bad luck. Every baseball instinct I've honed over nearly two

decades of watching this game too often tells me it's that and nothing more. Bad

luck that's been cruelly magnified by coming at the beginning of a

season, but bad luck all the same. But despite the fact that I worship

at the altar of stats, baseball remains a game played by people, and

people are subject to any number of forces, including some that exist

nowhere except in their own heads. Which leads me reluctantly to ask,

“Hey Case — you saw a game or two in your day. Where does bad luck

stop and bad karma begin?”