I too had hoped for a return by John Olerud, to rid us of the bitter taste of his exile/departure for Seattle and his brief, appalling tenure in the raiment of the Beast. It's amazing how many big moments I remember being bound up with him. I was in L.A. during the Curt Schilling game, and kept watching the scoreboard, which is updated with reassuring regularity. (On the other hand, a fight between the Dodgers and Cardinals broke out, and they played “Bad Boys” — a far cry from Shea's fusty prudery during such things.) I couldn't believe it when the score changed to our favor, then immediately switched to “F.” Bonus points for the fact that the FAN made the finale of that one the climax of the pregame psyche-up for part of the year, and for the shot of a giddy Roger Cedeno drumming his heels on home plate.

Oh, that triple play. It used to be part of my capsule biography as a fan that I'd never seen one. No-hitter? Sure. (Nolan Ryan on the Game of the Week. Think it was '81. He was a tall drink of rainbow sherbet on the mound.) Cycles? Quite a few, including the one you mention, where Felipe Alou* left a young Vlad the Impaler in right despite the fact that his leg had fallen off a couple of innings earlier. But no triple play — the closest was that crazy play with Deion Sanders in the Braves/Jays World Series, which should have been one but was such a You Kids Ain't Goin' to the Tastee Freez screw-up that it might not have felt like it counted anyway. Emily and I were at Shea with our friend Megan, and I was rattling on about the thousands and thousands of games I'd seen on TV and the hundred-odd I'd seen live and no triple play, whereupon Olerud and the Mets turned one. I stared at the field in disbelief. Megan gave a small “Oh!” of surprise and then started to laugh.

But my favorite Olerud moment is one you'll remember too: Sept. 29, 1999. (After all, you were there.) To revel in past horrors, we'd lost seven straight — three to the Braves in Atlanta, three to the Phils, and now one more to the Braves at home. Maddux was on the mound, bidding for his 20th win, ready to rip our hearts out in his infuriatingly calm way. You and I and Emily (and 42,000 others) were too stunned and scared to even cheer acceptably — we kept emitting spastic sounds of defiance, then looking down at our laps and muttering. Brian Jordan (of course) made it 2-1 Braves in the third. Then, the fourth: Hamilton single. Cedeno single. Ordonez single. Leiter single. Henderson single. Alfonzo single. 4-2 us, but nothing had been hit hard, and as Olerud came to the plate we were still tense and muttering and flailing hands generally together and begging. WHAM! Grand slam, one of those that's so obviously gone that you're up and looking for strangers to embrace before the ball even clears the fence. We were still in trouble, but we believed again. Thank you, Oly.

As previously mentioned, Rusty Staub was my favorite player as a little boy, which came from hearing my mother cheer for him and thinking it was hella cool that a grown-up could have a name like Rusty. The lone wrong note of 1986 is that Rusty had hung 'em up — if only he'd had one more year and a place in the pile.

Eleven years before that, though, all I wanted from the world was a Rusty Staub glove. Unfortunately, nobody made a Rusty Staub glove, which may have been the usual conspiracy to ignore the Mets but was probably Rusty not being interested in an endorsement deal. (There were no Staub baseball cards in '72, '73 and '74.) I didn't find this out for years, but my parents bought some generic, signature-free glove, fished a Rusty Staub card out of one of my shoeboxes, and carefully burned a flawless likeness of the signature into the leather before presenting it to me the next day. I never noticed that my glove had a brown signature with a certain depth while other kids' gloves had a black, stamped signature — as with a lot of similar stories, my mother later said she'd lived in fear of me figuring out the truth from the first minute.

Odd postscript: Last year I was standing in a crowd near the starting line of the Tunnel to Towers road race, enduring the usual chin-wagging by semi-dignitaries (Chuck Schumer, Curtis Sliwa, various clergy) and waiting to run when the MC announced “and one of the all-time most-beloved Mets, Rusty Staub!” Wow, I thought, peering around my fellow runners, that's pretty cool. After the race, on the other side of the Battery Tunnel, I saw a big, redheaded man walking up West Street by his lonesome. I hesitated for a moment, then clambered across a median and caught up with him, inanely sticking out my hand before saying anything.

Rusty shook my hand warily; I regained my faculties and said, “Hey, Rusty, I just wanted to say you were my favorite player when I was a kid.”

“Thanks,” said Rusty, quite pleasantly. “That's very nice.” He also kept walking. On top of everything else, Rusty Staub is no fool.

My favorite Jerry Grote story (like so many others that made a deep impression, it's from Joy in Mudville): In July '69 Newsday writer Joe Gergen told some Chicago rag that the Mets had as much chance of winning the pennant as man had of landing on the moon. Grote didn't seem to get the joke: When Neil Armstrong stepped off the ladder he was still fuming about Gergen and his smart mouth.

As a kid I liked the story because it wasn't immediately obvious why it was funny and I was proud of myself for getting it. Later, it seemed like mildly amusing evidence that Jerry Grote might not be suiting up for the Mensa Nine. But Grote seemed pretty damn smart in other Mets books, so I chalked it up to the fact that he hated sportswriters. Now, as I grow older and more susceptible to elegy and myth and all that, I like to think it means he was so focused on beating the Cubs, the rest of the NL, the umpires and anyone else in the Mets' way that he wasn't going to be distracted by a bunch of guys in white suits. NASA? Who's he play for? We've got the Reds on Thursday. I'm gonna get out of this slump and beat Jim Merritt like a rented mule.

Several years ago I was in the middle of some big rewrite at work when I saw on the wire that Mookie Wilson was going to be signing autographs and greeting fans at the Winter Garden. When? Right now — if I hurried, I could still catch him. So I did. Mookie was chatting with a couple of beaming business-looking guys; I waited my turn, shook his hand (he has enormous hands) and thanked him for getting me into college. He looked a bit taken aback, so I explained that in '86 I was a senior in high school, going through a rough time, drinking and doing other things way too much and generally walking the edge of getting caught and/or kicked out. The Mets were the only thing that made me happy; when they won the World Series I got my act together for a while, sent my college applications off in good order and made it through, when it could easily have gone the other way. (OK, I did get caught drinking. Let's move on.) So, I said, thanks for that.

Mookie kind of looked at me, and if memory serves he said that was a lot to put on a person, which may or may not be a gentle way of saying, “Christ, are you ever a disgusting preppie brat.” I went back to my office (I didn't get an autograph — I never saw the point of those) and my editor fixed his eye on me and asked where the hell I'd been.

“Mookie Wilson was in the Winter Garden,” I said.

“Really?” he said. He didn't blame me one bit. He'd been a Met fan too.

* Not Frank Robinson, as originally writ. I'm an idiot.

On Wright batting eighth: Yeah, it’s insidious and insulting and makes one suspicious that Randolph and Down were sent here as spies from the north — and don’t they know that David Wright, after 69 big-league games, established himself as The Future/The Blossoming Present? For Cameron? That’s a Howe motive if it’s true (still think Cammy’s not gonna last the year). Down’s quote about how Wright’s lucky he’s not on the bench should get him transferred back to Columbus or whatever rock he crawled out from under. Randolph (he’s been downgraded from first-name status for the duration of this crisis) said something somewhere to the effect that he’s not a lineup-juggler. Gosh, Skip, on what do you base that? I mean, where among your many stops as a manager have you established this iron grip on 1-through-8, day-in, day out? Listen, if it works, then hallelujah, we’re packing thunder every place ya look. When it doesn’t, watch how quickly Mr. Non-Juggler “tweaks” the order. To be fair to Randolph, he’s new at this and this group of eight players as a starting eight is an unknown quantity. (Bobby V, you’ll recall, was crazy enough to lead off with the likes of Brian Downing and Benny Agbayani.) I’m willing to cut Randolph just a bit of slack on this one because, quite frankly, the first batting order of the year is one of the most overrated things in the sport. The dynamic of these things changes faster than the price of parking at Shea. Finally, who knows? Why, the SPSP — Statistic Proving Somebody’s Point — is the last word on the subject! Fine, we’re screwed before even one guy has batted. My apologies to the figure filberts, if I may use a crochety pejorative. (This does not change my general support for getting worked up over every little thing that hasn’t gone wrong yet but might; what else is Spring Training for?)

On Galarraga retiring: After battering us as an Expo, a Cardinal, a Rockie, a Brave (if not a Pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king), I was looking forward to Andres blasting at least one into the visitors’ bullpen, preferably on Home Opening Day. He’d tip his cap, take a bow and skedaddle. The man is 87. He’s also hellishly hard not to root for when he’s not wearing a tomahawk across his chest. May a fine man find great health and a long life. Too bad about not getting to 400, but Al Kaline, forever “stuck” on 399, isn’t bad company. Neither is Ted Lepcio. I’ll always think of Andres Galarraga the way Murph described him: The Big and Gracious Cat.

At least somebody somewhere gave him a long look this spring. I can think of first basemen of more recent accomplishment who have gone wanting for as much as an invite. I can think of one anyway…

20. John Olerud: Catch the breeze and the winter chills in colors on the snowy linen land. On December 20, 1996, the Mets traded Robert Person to the Toronto Blue Jays for John Olerud, allegedly on the downside of his career, supposedly too fragile of psyche for New York. Look out on a summer’s day with eyes that know the darkness in my soul. In three seasons that didn’t last nearly long enough, Oly batted .315, including the eternally untoppable .354 of 1998. While almost every other Met froze down that pitiful stretch, John sizzled. Fourteen plate appearances, fourteen straight trips to first or beyond. Spent virtually all of the late ’90s on base. Caught everything everybody threw him or hit toward him. Started a triple play against the Giants in ’98 — got two assists and a putout. Entered the final week of 1997 with 88 RBIs and finished with 102. Hit for the cycle against Montreal earlier that September, a cycle that, like every other cycle, required a triple. It was the only triple he hit that entire season because John Olerud ran with two packs of freshly chewed Bazooka stuck to the bottom of each spike. Weathered faces lined in pain are soothed beneath the artist’s loving hand. His one Mets post-season went like this: .349; first homer by a lefty off of Randy Johnson in two years; deep fly that Tony Womack couldn’t catch; homer off Smoltz, then, when no hope was left in sight on that starry, starry night, the perfectly placed bouncer between Ozzie Guillen and Bret Boone to win Game Four; homer off Greg Maddux to start Game Five, providing the entirety of the Mets’ offense for fourteen innings. Colors changing hue, morning fields of amber grain. In a game that is all but forgotten because both the protagonists and the antagonist went on to do so many more interesting things, John Olerud lifted the 1999 Mets to perhaps the most thrilling May victory in franchise history, driving home the tying and winning runs off a stubborn, faltering, previously infallible Curt Schilling in the ninth at Shea. It was a sign of good things to come.

Swirling clouds in violet haze reflect in Vincent’s eyes of China blue. Unlike, say, Kevin McReynolds, Olerud’s quietude actually enhanced his personality. His muteness along with his omnipresent hard hat were shown off as signatures in those hilarious Nike Subway Series stickball commercials. The other players swore by him. Flaming fl’ors that brightly blaze. Cataloguing all the good baseball John Olerud committed in three short seasons should have been enough to earn him at least five more as a Met. They would not listen, they’re not  list’ning still, perhaps they never will. Instead, Steve Phillips turned his back on him. John didn’t go on the open market, though. He and his wife headed home for Seattle, where his parents and in-laws could regularly babysit the Oleruds’ infant son. I could’ve told you, Oly. This team was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

19. Rusty Staub: While M. Donald Grant is rightly pilloried for a trade he made in June 1977, he should’ve gotten the effigy treatment in December 1975 when he sent Rusty Staub and Bill Laxton to Detroit for Mickey Lolich and Billy Baldwin. Rusty had just gotten done being the Mets’ best player for four years, not nearly inoculation enough against his tendency to speak his mind and his impending status as a 10-and-5 man. Before Rusty could veto a trade, Grant vetoed Rusty. Never mind effigy — where was the rope it was needed? Rusty was a New York Met waiting to happen all those years in Houston and Montreal. Rusty was a sophisticate. He could barbecue the classiest ribs. He was opening a restaurant. He was a bon vivant. How many of those have we had? And how many guys were worth Ken Singleton, Tim Foli and Mike Jorgensen all at once, all while they were young? Who led the Mets into first in ’72 where they stayed until he took one off the hand from George Stone? Who was determined to outhit the Reds all by his redheaded self (three homers in the first four games) until he literally hit a wall saving Game Four in the eleventh inning? Who suffered a bum shoulder but batted .423 in the World Series anyway? Who was the first 100-RBI man the Mets ever had? It was Rusty’s second Met tour of duty, when he refined the pinch-hitting role as few others had (eight straight at one point to tie a Major League record) and became an icon for what would have to be termed his Rustyness: homering to join Cobb in the 40/19 club; switching back and forth between right and left in the eighteen-inning marathon against the Pirates to avoid having him try to make

any catch; catching Rick Rhoden’s looper down the RF line despite Davey’s best-laid plans; driving Keith and other Manhattan Mets to the park in the Rusty’s van; finishing up in a Mets uniform, too rare a phenomenon among the Greatest Mets. It was being Rusty circa 1981-85 that won him his own Day (remember the orange fright wigs?) and the sinecure behind the mike, but it was the Rusty of 1972 through 1975 who really earned it.

18. Jesse Orosco: In 1983, Jesse Orosco was probably the most awesome relief pitcher the Mets ever had. In eleven consecutive appearances between July 31 and August 21, he won six games and saved five. The first two wins came in both ends of a doubleheader. The first one was earned with four shutout innings of relief. In fact, this stretch encompassed 21-1/3 innings and Orosco didn’t give up a single earned run. Those wins weren’t vultured, those saves weren’t Eckersleyed — as an All-Star in his first year as closer, the lefty pitched more than one inning in seven of the eleven aforementioned appearances. Jesse Orosco could throw fastballs and sliders then. By the end of 1983, Orosco was 13-7 with 17 saves and an ERA of 1.47 over 87 innings, finishing third in the Cy Young balloting. If George Bamberger and Frank Howard deserve credit for anything as managers, it was the establishment of Jesse as a top-notch late-inning man. Jesse Orosco’s Mets legacy would be pretty strong based solely on 1983 and 1984. when he saved 31. It’s important to know that Jesse Orosco did something besides throw his glove in the air twice. Not that those weren’t extremely wonderful deals unto themselves.

17. Howard Johnson: As his best seasons came amid major disappointments for the team as a whole, one can debate whether Howard Johnson was a true impact player. The power-speed combo that made him a 30-30 man in ’87, ’89 and ’91 was all the more stunning because he preceded each of those years (which were all better for the Mets than the seasons that followed them) with relatively wan performances. Taken another way, Howard Johnson carried the Mets on his back in three years when nobody else was playing up to their full potential. HoJo exceeded everything that was expected of him on three separate occasions. For shock value, his 1987 was the most spectacularly surprising single season by any Met: 36 HRs, 32 SBs as an infielder and switch-hitter, both firsts, one RBI shy of a hundred. He could already turn on a fastball (especially Todd Worrell’s) like nobody’s business but now he was catching up to the slower stuff. Bettered his numbers two years later when he led the league in runs scored (104) and stole 41. And two years after that, he wore the NL homer and RBI crowns, with 38 and 117, respectively. He never completely nailed down the third base job — Davey’s mouth watered at the vision of all that offense at short and Buddy shoved him into the outfield toward the end — but he wound up playing more games than any Met at that mythical minefield and burial ground. His name figures prominently among all-time Met leaders: third in homers and ribbies, second in steals and total bases, all the more noteworthy considering he was never

the marquee player around here. More than a decade removed from his last Met at-bat, Howard Johnson’s success remains at least a little bit of surprise.

16. Tommie Agee: Who needed Bobby Bonds? Heck, who needed Wilie Mays in 1969 and 1970 when Tommie Agee was setting the world on fire from center field at Shea Stadium? Though his numbers for the two seasons (50 homers combined, 31 steals in ’70) were good the way Mets’ numbers were good, his real-time performance was world-class. Shaking off his miserable, headachy 1968, Tommie Agee became, in 1969, the leadoff guy and centerfielder the Mets had always craved. In August, he hit a homer off Juan Marichal in the fourteenth (yes, the fourteenth) to beat the Giants, 1-0. In September, he avenged Bill Hands’ first-inning headhunting with a two-run dinger in the third and a beautiful slide home under Randy Hundley’s tag in the sixth to accelerate the Cubs’ decline, 3-2. In October…well, after batting .357 in the NLCS, Tommie Agee owned an entire World Series game, the third one: Two deservedly legendary catches (the snow-cone and the dive) warded off five Orioles runs, and a leadoff Agee shot gave the Mets the immediate upper hand. Without Agee, it’s Orioles 5 Mets 4. A horrifying thought. With Agee, it was Mets 5 Orioles 0. Much better. Tommie rode ’69 into a Gold Glove season (only Met OF to win one) in ’70, by which time he was probably the most popular baseball player among elementary-school children in the Metropolitan Area. Sometimes, kids know best.

15: Cleon Jones: Between October 17, 1960 (National League awards expansion franchise to New York) and June 3, 1980 (Darryl Strawberry selected as first pick in amateur draft), the best all-around, everyday player signed and developed by the Mets was Cleon Jones. It is not clear anybody was ever second. Cleon was the Mets’ offense or certainly a significant chunk of it for a decade or so. He was huge (six HRs in the final ten games) in September ’73 and placed in the Top Ten in the league in ’68 and ’71. Cleon Jones’ entire Mets career wasn’t 1969. But if it were, nobody would’ve complained. His .340 was the team standard for nearly thirty years, placing him third in the National League. Nobody’d ever heard of it, but his OPS was a staggering (for then) .904. And despite the image of Gil escorting him to the dugout for not hustling, he led NL left fielders with a .991 fielding percentage. Of course as it is with all Great Mets, it was symbolism as much as accomplishment that defined Jones. Cleon’s shoes were polished generously before Game Five, which let the manager prove beyond the shadow of a smudge that he had been hit by a Dave McNally pitch, sending him to first base and positioning him to score the first Met run. Plus he caught Dave Johnson’s fly ball for the final out in the ninth, the lovely last image of that most Amazin’ season. What is generally overlooked is Cleon Jones started the rally that won the damn thing in the eighth, doubling to lead it off and scoring the winning run. See, there was a lot of pixie dust sprinkled over Shea in 1969, but Cleon Jones could actually play ball anytime.

14: Jerry Grote: Crank. Sourpuss. Ornery cuss. Beyond his station as the best defensive catcher of his time, beyond his nurturing of a fistful of some of the era’s greatest pitchers, beyond a bat that showed steady, solid improvement between the mid-’60s (when he was stolen for Tom Parsons) and the mid-’70s, there was what Jerry Grote was said to be like: not pleasant. Maybe the beat guys minded, but for the fans, he remained, in his way, endearing. He caught, he threw, he prevailed. We knew less about our heroes then and maybe that wasn’t so bad. Of course his longstanding bristle would explain why it was Sharon and not Jerry Grote who fronted those commercials for Gulden’s Spicy Brown Mustard. It must’ve been all he could do to look happy biting into a bologna sandwich after 22 takes.

13: Jerry Koosman: Nineteen wins as a rookie, seventeen as a sophomore and — after arm problems interrupted what could have been a borderline Hall of Fame career — 21 wins in 1976 underscored the likable Jerry Koosman’s undisputed place as the best lefthanded starter in team history. No responsible Mets fan would argue the designation. But his regular-season numbers, even his most impressive (his total of 140 wins is third among all Mets pitchers), weren’t what made him great. It was the post-season. Push came to shove? Kooz came to pitch. Jerry Koosman started six games in the 1969 and 1973 tournaments. The Mets won all six. He was 4-0, which was swell for him, but the 6-0 was awesome for everybody. Kooz is recalled accurately as the quintessential good guy, but he was bad news for the other team when it really, really counted.

12: John Franco: For the entire decade of the 1990s, John Franco registered 268 saves. All but perhaps five felt worthless. He’d pass milestone after milestone and the Mets would hold ceremonies in his honor, but it all came off as very hollow given the state of the team most of the time. By the end of 1999, once he was no longer closer, the main goal of the Mets’ playoff push seemed to be Get Johnny In. He’d been pitching since 1984 and missed the post-season every one of his first fifteen years. He was killer effective for the Reds in the ’80s, but they didn’t win anything until he left…for the Mets. That was when the Mets crumbled, despite all those Franco saves. On October 3, 1999, when Melvin Mora duckwalked across home plate with the run that guaranteed no worse than a one-game playoff for the National League Wild Card, just about every set of eyes turned toward John Franco as he led the charge from the dugout. For maybe a half-minute, the collective consciousness of Shea Stadium thought, “John Franco is finally going to get his chance.” DiamondVision found him and the crowd erupted for someone who had been, at best, a Rorschach Test for most Mets fans.

David Wright is going to hit eighth, and after some false starts, I've found a reason to be mad about it.

At first I figured stats would make an effective weapon, so I went out and did some furious Googling for the latest sabermetrical thinking on optimal batting orders. It's an interesting subject, though frustrating if you're in a revolutionary mood. As best I can determine, the definitive recent take on this is by James Click of Baseball Prospectus. That article is behind the subscription wall, but it's excerpted and discussed here, on Baseball Musings.

The gist of it (and I'm undoubtedly missing the subtleties) is that players should bat in descending order of on-base average. But this look at the problem, by Roger Moore, finds that the advantages of the optimal lineup are pretty small — 0.4 game per season. The conventional batting order isn't dumb at all, Moore says: It's “close enough to optimal that it took far more games than have been played in the history of MLB to show that the descending OBA order was statistically significantly better.”

Mark D. Pankin goes into a bit more detail on what's wanted from each position in the order; the math was tough sledding for me, but I liked his discussion of the biggest managerial blunder: putting a guy who can steal bases but has a low OBA in the leadoff spot. Unfortunately for us, that description fits a certain Mets shortstop perfectly: One might call this error the Reyes Fallacy. And, in fact, MetsGeek's Michael Oliver suggests we'd do better with Reyes hitting 7th. (He has Wright hitting 2nd.)

Still, the Reyes Fallacy doesn't necessarily dictate Wright's place in the order. TRF aside, the difference between a conventional-wisdom order and an optimized one is small. And Randolph's lineup begins with three switch hitters (Reyes, Matsui, Beltran) before alternating right- and left-handed hitters (Piazza, Floyd, Cameron, Mientiewicz, Wright) the rest of the way, which is certainly nicely balanced and should be tough on enemy relief corps.

So I was still trying to be outraged, but lacking a good reason. My next move was to think, “Well, this is going to cost Wright plate appearances, and any fool can see you'd rather have more PAs from Wright than from Cameron or Mientiewicz.” And it will cost him PAs — but the cost is somewhere between 20 and 35 PAs, which isn't enough to get worked up about. (I'm basing that on thinking Wright should hit 6th — batting him 2nd would give him an extra 60 PAs or so, which is a different story.)

Returning to Newsday's account, I re-read what Rick Down had to say about the move. And finally I found my reason to be ticked.

Here are Down's comments:

“The fact that he's in the lineup, hitting eighth is still better than being on the bench.”

Wha? It's also better than being sent to Norfolk, released, or shot, which would also be stupid things to do with David Wright.

“…if it's not him, who is it?”

How about the right-handed hitter who had a lower OBA last year and, unlike Wright, has never shown the ability to draw walks? How about Mike Cameron?

“It's a nice luxury to have to be able to say that our No. 8 hitter has the abilities that David Wright has.”

It's also a nice circular argument to make. You could put Ted Williams in the 8th slot and have a heckuva No. 8 hitter, but that wouldn't make it a good idea.

“Experience-wise, too. It will be his first full season…”

Ah. Here's the outrage.

I mean, is this a baseball team or a frat initiation? Wright is straight outta Boys' Life — it's not like he's a bad seed who needs to be put in his place. If this is about Mike Cameron's psyche, as the Daily News suggested, I don't want to hear it — Mike Cameron is a fabulously well-paid adult, and Wright shouldn't be punished for being a team guy. And Randolph and Down's Yankee teams won because they worked counts, wore out pitchers and played solid situational baseball — not because Jeter and Rivera were fetching Gatorade for veterans. If they aren't clear on this point, I've overestimated them.

David Wright has never shown that he's anything less than Gallant in blue and orange. So why is he getting Goofus'd? 

Greatest Mets Twenty through Eleven, coming very soon, were ten good reasons to root for the Mets. But since you went deep Monday, I thought I’d reach back for the first ten reasons I became who I became.

1) Peanuts was the most popular thing going. Circa 1968, my sister, eleven then, had a bunch of Peanuts books which I, five then, began reading. Charlie Brown was always playing baseball. Peanuts was a normal thing to like, ergo baseball must have been a normal thing to like.

2) As a child, I sensed I was on the outside looking in. If baseball was as normal and popular as it seemed to be as portrayed through the pen and ink of Charles Schultz, then I wanted to get it on it.

3) Susan — it became Suzan in the Seventies — also had a respectable collection of 1967 and 1968 baseball cards. I inherited them pretty quickly given that she had absolutely no interest in baseball. I asked her many years later, hey, what were you doing with all those cards? She was, for one of the few times in her life, going along with the crowd. The other girls bought them because they were, for their purposes, pictures of boys. I distinctly recall one of the cards was a 1967 Joe Torre. Hardly a Shermanesque (Bobby) pin-up, but Susan briefly burned for the Atlanta catcher. All of her ’68s were low numbers, meaning she must’ve given up on conforming before sixth grade was out, or simply opted to devote her spare change to Archie Comics.

(Aside: The ’67 Torre was lost in 1974 in the one and only “if you don’t clean up your room, I’m throwing out your baseball cards” threat my mother ever made good on. Not all my cards went, but there were arbitrary victims, including that Torre. When I let on that I was still carrying a grudge about it as an adult, she swore to me that she allowed them to linger in the basement for a week or two, assuming I’d have the good sense to sneak them back upstairs. I never did that because I assumed I’d just get in bigger trouble. When I went to my first card show in a generation in December 1999, I asked a dealer to see a ’67 Torre. It was maybe four bucks. But now that Joe Torre was Joe Torre, I felt I had to explain to the man that this had nothing to do with his current job or exalted status. Of course the dealer couldn’t have cared less, but I couldn’t bring myself to contribute to Torre’s beatification, so I passed.)

4) Susan had a few Mets cards to which I gravitated more than I did any of her others, including Bob Clemente and Carl Yastrzemski. I demonstrated my fealty to Ed Kranepool by drawing a mustache and beard on him while he knelt in the on-deck circle. This was New York and what little I did know about sports included that you root for the team from where you’re from. (There were a couple of ’67 Yankees in there — Ruben Amaro, Tom Tresh — but they could’ve been from Pittsburgh for all I cared.)

5) My first memories of the Mets as a baseball team and not just a word comes from somewhere in the summer of ’69 when the talk of the Sands Beach Club and Day Camp in Lido centered on the moon landing and the Mets. My father would bring home the Post, then a responsible afternoon paper. The back page featured a running cartoon depicting the adventures of a mean ol’ bear and a lovable duckling duking it out for something called First Place. Every night I would check to see if the duckling was giving it to the bear. As summer progressed, it would be the Cubs’ bear ducking the Mets.

6) In September, I started following the standings in Newsday very closely. As a six-year-old, I was considered the family math prodigy, so the W, L, Pct. and GB columns mesmerized me. New York’s Pct. and Chicago’s GB both grew bigger at the same time. Having just begun first grade with a pencil box that featured a map of the United States, however, I was confused on the matter of Washington being in the American League East since Seattle was in Washington and Washington was way out west, which is where Seattle was in the American League. By 1972, the respective placements of the Senators and the Pilots would be moot.

7) The first specific game I can recall was September 24, 1969, the Mets playing the Cardinals with a chance to win the Eastern Division. It was Susan’s friend Iris who relayed word over the phone that Donn Clendenon had just hit his second homer of the night to put us up 6-0. Neither television was available to me; Susan watched Chad Everett and Medical Center Wednesday nights on the portable Sony while my parents just had to see Kraft Music Hall in their bedroom. It was Iris and the radio for me. While I grasped the significance of this victory for the Miracle Mets as the papers insisted on calling them for some reason, I was mystified as to why, after a summer of chasing and passing the Cubs, we had to beat the Cardinals to win the division. Later, after learning that St. Louis had won the pennant in 1968, I puzzled it out: First you had to outlast the team in front of you, then you had to defeat the team that had won the year before. In 1970, I made up a song about it, which even if you buy me more beers than I’ve drunk in the eleven years we’ve known each other, there’s no chance in hell you’ll ever hear.

8) Watching Game One of the playoffs against the Braves on the first Saturday in October, I had a revelation that I breathlessly reported to my parents. I can tell the game is in Atlanta, see, because when the Braves do something good, the people there cheer. They don’t do that for the Mets. I was told I had nailed it.

9) A week later, my sister and I were in the car with my father, heading to the recently opened Times Square Stores (TSS) in Oceanside. My dad put the first game of the World Series on the radio, and the first Baltimore batter, Don Buford, hit a home run off of Tom Seaver. I was instantly distressed but he told me don’t worry, the Mets can still come back. They didn’t that day but it was nice to know they could.

10) The following Thursday, my father took off from work to bring me to an eye doctor in Brooklyn. My family hadn’t lived in Brooklyn since before I was born but all our doctors were still there. I fidgeted and fussed over having eye drops poured into me. I clenched my eyes tight until I was told that if I didn’t cooperate, I wouldn’t be allowed to watch the World Series that afternoon. I opened wide and took my drops like a Met (after all, somebody did me the favor of making this appointment on this particular school day, so this was no time to pull a tantrum). I was indeed dropped off at home in time for the game. My main impression of the action was Ron Swoboda hit a home run. He didn’t. He doubled to drive in a run and later scored himself. I hadn’t yet delineated between home runs and runs — they were all home runs to me. Regardless, the Mets went on to win and become world champions. Dad, who had emerged from Penn Station just as the final out was made and reported there were celebrations everywhere, brought home the Post that night to confirm it. They ran one final duckling cartoon, except now the duckling was a glorious swan. The next morning, Scott Gerber’s mother gave us and another kid from down the block, Jeffrey Kohn, a ride to school. I asked them if they knew that the Mets had won the World Series. Yes, they did. The Mets had won the World Series. I knew it was special. I knew it wouldn’t happen every year. I knew I’d be back for more. And I never, ever left.

A week to go, good lord. At least there's some bits of news: Scott Strickland, Scott Stewart, Orber Moreno, Jae Seo and Jeff Keppinger took that long walk. Supposedly that has us down to 37 guys.

David Wright hit eighth. That seems insane to me: Beyond the fact that Wright can flat-out rake, to use the currently fashionable cliche, his minor-league numbers show he knows how to take a walk. I know he's a rookie, which would argue against putting him in the 3, 4 or 5 hole for now for fear of putting too much on him too early and bruising some veteran egos, but can we really give up that many David Wright at-bats? In my batting order he'd be hitting sixth. Of course, I have a mental block about who's a lefty and who's a righty, so my batting order is worth a bucket of warm spit.

There's a great new blog called Metsgeek.com which kicked off with, among other things, an interview with Bob Klapisch that supplies plenty of dirt without being irresponsible about it. As might be expected, it's hard on the Wilpons, the medical staff, Aaron Heilman and Jae Seo, among others. Actually he was easier on Seo than I figured he'd be: Vern Ruhle couldn't reach him either. If you refuse to listen to two pitching coaches in a row and keep carping to the papers, the problem probably isn't the pitching coaches. Here's betting a trade this week gives Mr. Seo a new address.

Sticking with the news front, Jeremy Heit, one of the Metsgeek guys, did our boys' Five Questions over at Hardball Times. Good stuff — lots of the newfangled stats I love and imperfectly understand, but not so many that old dinosaurs like me can't follow along.

Some good quotes today, too. Both, oddly, are concerned with speed:

“Velocity can win stuffed animals at the circus.”

So saith Dr. Peterson about the fact that Ishii didn't hit 90 in his first pitching session.

“I think adrenalin-wise it would have created a little more velocity rather than being on Field 14 with two crows in the stands and one umpire.”

That's from the departed Mr. Strickland, whose velocity wasn't where it should be but who also didn't get much work in spring-training games.

Of course Todd Zeile was a great quote too.

Re the boys in the 20s, your request for snarky Wayne Garrett quotes brought me back to my first year of being a fan, which was 1976. I had said the Mets were my favorite team for a couple of years before that, and Rusty Staub was my favorite player, but in truth that mostly had to do with one of my earliest memories, which was my mom jumping up and down cheering, “Yay, Rusty!” To employ a little pop psych, I think my four- or five-year-old self was so taken aback by this display that I had to know why she was doing this and who this Rusty was, and reflexively took team and Rusty to heart so my mother jumping up and down yelling would be a good thing and not a scary thing. Fandom wells from strange springs.

Anyway, in '76 I turned seven and became a real fan. My entry into Metdom was twofold: baseball cards and the tale of '69, probably absorbed through George Vecsey's Joy in Mudville. This made the baseball cards odd, though: I treasured all the remaining '69 Mets, regardless of team (what was Tug doing wearing maroon?) and adored the players left on the actual Mets, but I couldn't help noticing that nothing particularly miraculous happened on the field. Koosman and Seaver would pitch, Garrett would play third, Buddy was at short and Kranepool was on the bench, but they'd win and lose in various combinations and finish third. Hey, I was seven: Show me a miracle, and I'd think it was great — and then want to know where the next one was. 

So all those players were icons to me — I'd watch them play baseball, but mostly I treated them like guys who'd walked on the moon: They'd done something marvelous and it meant a lot to me, but watching them doing workaday things was disorienting and a bit disappointing. The first player I ever rooted for the way I root for players now was Lee Mazzilli. After all, he came up after I did.

Given my weakness for brawling, of course I loved Ray Knight. That game against the Reds should be replayed weekly on the new Mets channel: The moment where Ray's eyes go square right before he slugs Eric Davis is priceless. And his putting both hands on his head right before he vanishes into the crowd of Mets around home plate to end Game Six always makes me cry. (In a quiet manly way, of course.)

Putting aside the recent unpleasantness, the thing that always struck me about Al Leiter was how friggin' smart he was. There was some locker-room interview in which Piazza had said “centrifugal” (or maybe it was “centripetal”) and Leiter laughed and said Piazza was always using fancy words but had used this one wrong, and launched into an explanation of how centrifugal or centripetal was what he'd meant, and how it related to pitching. It was the kind of thing geeky writers like us wish jocks would say, but he really said it. (Ken Burns got Bill Lee to do this too.)

Given my weakness for boozing, of course I loved Lenny Dykstra. Crashing cars, spitting chaw, high-stakes gambling, doing 'roids when it was flaky instead of criminal, boozing it up in Paris, you name it. A couple of years ago Emily and I watched a Behind the Music about Iggy Pop. At the end, she was horrified by what a wreck Iggy Pop had made of his life. I was horrified by the realization that it was too late for me to be Iggy Pop. Lenny was my baseball Iggy.

David Cone was another player I loved for being all too human. One of the best pitchers in baseball, and still capable of letting runners wheel around the bases because he'd blown a fuse and was giving both barrels to the ump. It's the kind of thing I'd have screwed up too.

Ah, Robin Ventura. It ended poorly, what with the Yankee uniform and all, but I'll always have the memory of sitting in the top of the upper deck for the Grand Slam Single game. We were behind the DiamondVision, which blocked out most of the announcements, so there'd just be various booms, and up there it was Bob and Gary (transmitted via dozens of nearby pocket radios) providing the narration. Which was nice. Afterwards I walked down the steps and every couple of feet had to stop and just scream into the rain and the darkness.

Wally Backman stepped on my foot as we were both leaving Al Lang Field when I was 16 or 17. I was amazed that he was my size. He was in full uniform, so he spiked me, and it hurt. He didn't say sorry or anything — just hopped on the bus. That was OK, though. He was Wally Backman. He could step on my foot anytime he liked.

By the way, Mientkiewicz has cats. But not cats like you have cats. This is a strange story. 

Hope you had a happy Elster Sunday and that your boy got to every egg within his limited range.

Cripes, the real thing is a week away and panic is simmering in this

corner of Metsopotamia. Pedro's lower back. DeJean's right calf.

Cameron's nodding, if that, familiarity with his new position.

Zambrano's refusal to make the Kazmir trade palatable. Diaz's apparent

ticket to Norfolk. Reyes' excellent health (which has to be a set-up).

Our utter lack of a bullpen beyond Braden. How did April 4 get so close

with so much unknown?

These are the desperate hours. It occurs to me that the seventh, the

eighth, maybe the sixth innings — one-third of our lives — will be

trusted to people we barely know. Who is Dae-Sung Koo anyway? He's

looked fairly abysmal and

he doesn't know why he's here. Earlier in spring training, it was

reported that the Yankees had been interested in signing him. When

asked why he chose the Mets, he replied, “I'm not sure why my agent did

that.” Assuming nothing was lost in translation, we've got a

responsibility-ducker who can't pitch. It's Viola all over again.

Why do I keep hearing Chilly Willy, a.k.a. Manny Aybar, has no chance

to make the team? Sunday afternoon I wrapped myself in a blanket and

listened to him pitch two shutout innings. Ditto for your pal Heath

Bell who should have bladed his way onto the staff by now. He's no

lock. Nobody's a lock, except for Felix Horrendous and DeJean, whose

calf-baked career wasn't much before his injuries, save for like three

appearances last summer.

Is this what we're setting up with? Brrrrr…

Save Victor Diaz! Somebody's gotta bat right-handed off the bench and

hit one out. I'm of two minds on Galarraga, despite his recent pretend

power surge: 1) He's old and 2) He's decrepit. Not as a human being,

just as a ballplayer. I look in the mirror; I recognize old and

decrepit when I see it.

Why no bandwagon for Luis Garcia who looked/sounded good Sunday? A year

ago Karim Garcia was the starting right fielder and Danny Garcia was

our secret weapon. It was muchas Garcias. Now? Sic transit Garcia.

Glints of sun: John Pachot seemed particularly studly behind the plate

Friday night — move over, Hietpas. And the closer of future past,

Royce Ring, actually appeared on TV, pitching well if wearing No. 91

without a name. I guess the future will have to wait.

As you can see, I'm coping a lot better with the past lately than I am

with this particular present. C'mon man, make some snarky comment about

how Wayne Garrett wasn't a Great Met because he didn't charge Lynn

McGlothen one night in 1976. That I can wrap my head around. The New

Mets? They still elude me.

What on earth do you have against Bruce Chen of all lapsed Mets? He's like three teams from being Todd Zeile.

I first read about Rotisserie Baseball in Inside Sports circa 1981. It sounded delightful for the first couple of pages until it was explained that you could have guys on “your” team who might face Mets who weren't. That's the moment I decided Roto/Fantasy wasn't for me. (I know there are all-AL leagues, but that would require validating the existence of the junior circuit.)

Let's Go D'Etres, everybody except Kazmir. I can't stand the idea that he's going to be lighting up the American League while Zambrano goes on the DL after throwing 16 consecutive balls in his first start, which will give every know-nothing writer and analyst yet another touchstone with which to bash us. That's what they live for, you know.

For today only, I will offer up my own ten-man fantasy team, the Soaring Twenties. We're not gonna overpower anybody, but we will dirty our uniforms, flap our gums and set your feet on fire. We're also gonna play a lot of third.

30. Ray Knight: The morning after the Mets won the 1986 World Series, New York radio was wall to wall with Mets talk. On WABC, sports guy Steve Malzberg got a big laugh by suggesting that if you ask Ray Knight what time it is, he'll tell you how to make a watch. The night before, after Knight hit the seventh-inning home run that put the Mets ahead once and for all and accepted the MVP, it was a three-sheets Keith Hernandez who wouldn't shut up, telling an interviewer, “people call me the leader of this team. Ray Knight's the leader of this team.” Malzberg and Mex were both right. Ray talked a lot which helped set the tone for a Mets team that knew it was good and wasn't shy about letting you in on it. Ray backed up his talk, as Eric Davis and Tom Niedenfuer could tell you. His whole season was about fight, starting with his spunky comeback from the .218 disaster of '85, running through his shockingly successful April (six home runs), his honor-defending fisticuffs of summer and that glorious moment he jumped full-force on home plate with the winning run of World Series Game Six. Said his excitement got the best of him and he twisted his back by jumping for joy. Of course he did — even Ray Knight's body language spoke volumes.

29. Wayne Garrett: The Mets went to and won a World Series with Wayne Garrett playing most of their games at third base. He drove in the decisive runs in the final game of the '69 NLCS. Then the team he helped as a rookie couldn't wait to demote him. Joe Foy came. Bob Aspromonte came. Jim Fregosi came. Three years in a row, the Mets got themselves a third base messiah. Wayne Garrett hung around while all three imploded. By 1973, there was nobody but Wayne to play third. And he did, at the highest level of his career. During the stretch of all stretches, September '73, Wayne Garrett was at least the second-best reason to Believe in the Mets. From September 4 through the October 1 clinching, Wayne hit safely in 19 of 23 games, including the last nine in a row. He batted. 333, hit six homers, drove in seventeen runs and scored twenty. In the World Series, he hit two more homers. Wayne Garrett not only brought the Mets within one game of ultimate victory, he secured himself another year as third baseman. Natch, the Mets went out after that and got themselves an old Joe Torre to take it away from him. Garrett continued to persevere, though, winning back his job before '75 was done, eventually putting in 709 games at the position, about a million more than any Met third baseman before him. He was finally ousted from the hot corner by Roy Staiger. Yes, that Roy Staiger.

28. Al Leiter: Al Leiter was the face of the Mets. He was their arched brows, their wide eyes, their open mouth, their aching cheek bones. He was the expressive one. Al Leiter did not hide his emotions on the mound. While there, he invented new ones. He could pitch some, too, particularly when it counted — with one notable exception. Between 1998 and 2001, he had what could be considered 38 “money starts”: September, October plus all games against the Braves and the Yankees. In those pressure situations, Al's ERA was 3.07. Subtract the inexcusable 0 IP, 5 ER in Game Six of the '99 NLCS, and it drops to 2.89. Al was never more facial and never more wonderful than in the ninth inning of the final game of the 2000 World Series, when his pitch count reached 142. It may have been a few pitches too many, the last one accounting for a universal grimace, but oh that face.

27. Dave Kingman: For the longest time, the Mets were an acoustic act. Then they bought Dave Kingman from the Giants in 1975 and all at once they were plugged into a massive power source. The sound was electric. In Kingman I, he was a revelation. Said he didn't worry about home runs but he hit them in numbers and to distances that no Met had ever reached. A franchise that never featured a slugger now cultivated one. “Dave Kingman” became synonymous with home run hitter, albeit the one-dimensional kind, as a Met. The first glimpse we had of him as our own was in a spring training game televised back to New York. Mets vs. Yanks from Fort Lauderdale. Catfish Hunter pitching. Kingman walloping one into the Everglades. Mickey Mantle swearing he never hit anything nearly as far. Don't call me Kong, Dave asked, so Sky King became his nickname. Pleasant. Did commercials for United Airlines bragging on their legroom. Never found a position to call his own and struck out a lot but broke Frank Thomas' team record for dingers in '75. Broke his own record in '76. Elected to the All-Star Team. Threatened Hack Wilson's 56 until he decided to try to catch a ball in left and tore up his thumb. The next year he wanted to be paid like a star and he was gone. Kingman II was a warier affair. Brought back in the spring of '81 for Steve Henderson, he had honed his reputation as a proto-Bonds, a Carlton without portfolio, someone who didn't really care for the media. He handed out pens inscribed with his initials, D.A.K., and handed them to reporters. Told them to write nice things with them. The Mets put up signs in the Shea parking lot warning that this was a KINGMAN FALLOUT ZONE, management not responsible for windshields broken by flying baseballs. Still could hit 'em. They soared. Among the league leaders in '81. Led the NL in '82 with 37 HRs, but batted .204. Grew surlier and surlier. After being replaced by Keith Hernandez, finished '83 on a 5-for-43 skid, no HRs after July 2. Mets ate his salary and released him. Dave Kingman left town a jerk. His work here? Majestic.

26. Roger McDowell: The flake act seemed kind of forced — more a practical joker than a poignant Tugger. Roger McDowell's personality on the mound was dead serious. Nothing wrong with the masks and the upside-down uniforms and the hotfoots (hotfeet?), but it was the sinker that was the real crowd-pleaser. As Orosco waxed and waned in '85 and '86, McDowell pitched steadily. Roger's sense of whimsy stayed undercover for the duration of NLCS Game Six. He entered in the ninth, scored tied at three. He left after thirteen, score tied at three. Roger McDowell threw five shutout innings of baseball inside the Astrodome pressure cooker, giving up just a single hit. After the pennant was won, few celebrated as heartily. It was the sensible thing to do.

25. Lenny Dykstra: Where did Lenny Dykstra come from? He says he's from Garden Grove, California, but that's likely his cover. One theory has it that Lenny was a Midget Met, the pre-PC youth program the team ran in the '60s and '70s. Lenny got separated from his group and missed the bus home. He decided he liked baseball so much that he set up camp inside the bowels of Shea Stadium, a building that doesn't lack for bowels. Secretly subsisting on Harry M. Stevens fare and teaching himself reading and math with old press guides, Lenny watched every game from the old Jets locker room. He learned his lessons well. Soon, using the traveling secretary's credit card number that he'd overheard so often, he began booking himself on road trips. Thus, Lenny was available to take over for Mookie Wilson when the incumbent centerfielder got hurt early in '85. Davey Johnson didn't ask many questions when the runtish kid wearing No. 4 appeared in his office in Riverfront Stadium, spitting tobacco and demanding, “put me in coach, I'm ready to play.” He needed a player and Lenny was there. In his second Major League at-bat, Lenny hit a home run off Mario Soto. After the game, the writers wanted to know who he was. Davey didn't know but wouldn't let on. Stalling for an answer, he nervously thumbed through the visiting manager's desk and stuck a finger on something sharp. “Nails!” he yelled. The reporters took that to be the rookie's nickname, so they wrote about Nails, that new sparkplug in center. One thing led to another and  Lenny Dykstra grew up quickly as a Met, running, stealing, cursing, tripling, homering, winning, carrying the team on his diminutive back against Houston and Boston all the way to a world championship. That's just one theory, though.

24. David Cone: John Schuerholz, certified genius for how he built the Braves, was once an idiot. As GM of the Royals, he traded David Cone for Ed Hearn. He even threw in Chris Jelic for good measure. Ed Hearn was a swell guy. David Cone won 75 games between 1988 and 1992. He went 20-3 in '88. Struck out nineteen on the last day of '91 with the threat of arrest hanging over his head. Led the league in strikeouts that year. Made up for the transgression of dissing the Dodgers in a ghosted NLCS column by shutting them down in his next start. Threw from all kinds of interesting angles. Said all kinds of interesting things. The Mets getting David Cone was a case of Grand Theft Pitcher.

23. Felix Millan: There is a sense among Mets fans that any time their team acquires a highly regarded veteran, he will disintegrate upon arrival. Felix Millan was a three-time All-Star for the Atlanta Braves before joining the Mets in 1973 and replacing Ken Boswell as starting second baseman. In his first year, he played 153 games and batted .290. Whereas all Mets second basemen made 79 double plays in '72, Felix alone turned 99 in '73. Instead of finishing third, the Mets won their division. In the playoffs against the Reds, he batted .316. Two years later, Felix, forever choking up, set what would be a longstanding club record by collecting 191 hits. He played in all 162 games, the only Met to ever play every time the Mets took the field. Bottom line: Five very solid, very impactful seasons, including one in which he made, perhaps, the difference in the before-and-after fortunes of the Mets.

22. Robin Ventura: Mike Piazza is generally credited as the player who turned the Mets around. No mean addition, Piazza joined a team that had previously won 88 games. With him on board, they won…88 games. You want somebody who transformed a team, look to Mike's buddy Robin Ventura in 1999. After signing as a free agent, the Mets installed Robin at third, shifting Edgardo Alfonzo to second, a spectacular upgrade over Carlos Baerga. The lineup no longer hinged on the likes of Brian McRae because Robin could be penciled into the 5-hole daily. The defense was better — the infield made play after play and set record after record — as Ventura earned a Gold Glove. The offense was phenomenal, with almost everybody hitting around or above .300. Robin himself, playing in all but two games, put up MVP numbers: .301, 32 HRs, 120 RBIs. Following the distressing 88-win season of 1998 (five losses at the end, no Wild Card), the '99 Mets of Robin Ventura won 97, made the playoffs then made them amazing. Ventura slipped instantly and easily into the role of team leader, taking heat off a reticent Piazza. His implementation of Mojo Risin' created, somehow, the perfect theme for a pennant run. And then there was the matter of the most unique single in the annals of baseball history, the one that sailed through the raindrops and cleared the centerfield fence in the fifteenth inning with the bases loaded. From every angle that can be measured and a few that defy quantification, Robin Ventura's 1999 was the best season any Met ever had.

21. Wally Backman: A thorough examination of the anatomy of the 1986 Mets will find Wally Backman was the team's most vital organ. Heart? Spine? Guts? Cojones? Filth-covered epidermis? Wally was all of it.

The tragedy of Bonds is he didn't need the cream or the clear. He was

no Jason Giambi — a perfectly nice doubles hitter with a good eye

before he swole himself up into a slugger — but an organic,

all-natural Hall of Famer. Pending further evidence, I don't believe

Bonds was on the juice in the early 1990s, when he was putting up

awesome years. But whatever drove him to be able to do that on the

ballfield also drove him, if his mistress's allegations are true, to

the syringe. (Or the cream, or the clear, or whatever.) The Hall of

Fame that eluded his father wasn't enough; he had to propel himself

into the stratosphere with Mays and Ruth and Aaron. You can see an echo

of this in the allegations of Bonds laundering $80,000 in autograph

money. Why on earth? What's $80,000 to Bonds? (Or to Martha Stewart,

for that matter.) Maybe it's simply that the kind of drive that makes

you a Hall of Famer (or a self-made mogul) can't be modulated or

switched on and off — being that good means you go for the kill every

time, even when it isn't in your interests.

I booed Bonds when he'd come to the plate at Shea, but that was because

A) he was trying to beat us; and B) I couldn't abide the

spectacle-seeking know-nothings who were cheering for him in our

park, hoping for another event to add to the string of them adorning

their pointless, frivolous lives. More than anything else, I was booing

them. As far as I can recall,

I've never disliked Bonds. Heck, I was always conscious of seeing one

more game about which I could one day tell Joshua's children, “Sure, I

saw Barry Bonds play.”

To my amazement, I've let myself get sucked back into fantasy baseball

after 14 years on the wagon — a friend of mine invited me to play in a

league full of diehard baseball fans who sounded like entertaining

company, and I couldn't resist.

This is not exactly the fantasy baseball of the late 1980s, when as

commissioner I used to spend hours of valuable New Orleans boozing time

transcribing stats from USA Today

by hand, then slip them into the newspaper's outgoing mail. In this new

millennium, my draft preparations consisted of manipulating a Java

applet displaying Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball's ranked list of every player

in the majors, with the ability to look up stats, break down players by

position, automatically set up draft queues, launch the space shuttle,

and who knows what else. Amazing. Yes, I sound like an old man.

So my first move was to exclude hated Yankees, particularly hated

former Yankees, and Met apostates from my roster of potential draftees.

A-Rod, the top-ranked player in all of fantasy baseball, was the first

one chucked on the forbidden list, quickly followed by his little

friend Jeter. Adios, Posada

and Rivera. Back in your Montoursville bunker, Mussina. Away with you,

Bernie Williams — and by the way, you suck at guitar. The Antichrist

got tossed, of course. So did Kenny Lofton. Then it was time for former

Mets — no game today, Armando, Jeff Kent and Bruce Chen. Finally I

threw Franco and Leiter on the pile out of spite. (True confession: I

exiled Jae Seo in a fit of pique. Omar will soon do the same.)

This is, of course, a great way to lose. So be it — I will lose with honor.

Did I draft Mets, you ask? Of course I did. I took Wright fairly early,

grabbed Glavine in the middle rounds (while thinking to myself, “Gee, I

don't even like Tom Glavine”), and added Floyd and Mientkiewicz to fill

out the roster late. Other notable players on the '05 edition of the

Jaison D'Etres: Jim Thome, Luis Castillo, Miguel Cabrera, Nick Swisher,

B.J. Upton, Grady Sizemore, Rich Harden, John Lieber, Danny Haren, and

Scott Kazmir. We'll see how this goes, and I promise few if any updates

from the world of fake baseball.

Happily, I wound up with no Yankees. Though I admit I was thought

Giambi might be a bargain and was lying in wait for him in the middle

rounds. (He got away, which means I did too.)

Turk Wendell forgive me.

With XM Radio, you can listen to every home team broadcast of every game this year including a bunch from spring training. Wednesday night, with the Mets and Cards on the FAN from Jupiter, I checked XM and they were carrying the St. Louis broadcast about a minute delayed.

So first I heard Gary Cohen enthusiastically call a sweet play that David Wright made at third. While that was completed, Mike Shannon of KMOX was droning on about what a great crowd we’re gonna get here at Roger Dean Stadium tonight. Then when the Wright play happened, he gave it its props, adding, “few are paying attention to David Wright but he’s gonna be good”.

What planet is Mike Shannon living on? Oh right, St. Louis.

I bought USA Today Sports Weekly last week because at least in the New York edition they put Wright (future Greatest Met 1 through 4) on the cover. In a spread featuring the “award winners of tomorrow,” he was picked as the 2006 Silver Slugger. Great! Next to him was “Scott Kazmir: 2007 AL Cy Young Award winner”. D’oh!

Not sure how apocryphal it was, but do you remember how in the wake of that awesome 11-9, 12-inning win over the Giants last August (decided on a fly ball lost in the sun) it was reported that Barry Bonds acknowledged Diamond Dave? He landed on third after a triple (having gotten on base six times, not homering and not being intentionally walked; it was seriously Howe’s finest hour of managing) and after young David told him “you’re as good as advertised,” Bonds replied, “keep swinging it”.

If David Wright can make Barry Bonds seem human, he can do anything. Except maybe cook for himself, according to Thursday’s News.

Regarding that opposing player, as long as I’ve brought him up in a Mets context, Barry Bonds is so easy to root against. I sat deep in left field for the final game of the Mets-Giants division series in 2000, the Bobby Jones one-hitter. There was one guy (a rabid beer drinker on a very cold day) who could not stop taunting him. We were too far from the field for Barry to possibly hear us, but the guy wouldn’t shut up. I cringed out of fear of awaking the sleeping Giant but after a while it was infectious. We were all chanting horrible things about Bonds (the guy who started it was off buying beer during his last at-bat and caught loads of grief for it).

Yet to be honest, except for when he’s playing against us, I find it hard to root against Barry Bonds. On the field, he’s the best player I’ve ever seen. There’s nobody close. I love watching him hit. I love watching him take. When he could still move, I loved watching him play left field. In a human-being contest, I’d prefer Henry Aaron maintain the home-run record forever, but I was looking forward to Bonds chasing and passing him because I like watching history get made and I like great players getting the attention they deserve.

Count me among the enablers who turned a blind eye to substance-enhanced performance when it was blossoming in the late ’90s. I just figured players worked out a lot more than they used to. I wouldn’t consider myself a home-run whore, especially coming from a pitching-and-defense tradition (and intensely abhorring the front-runners who showed up at Shea in Cardinal or Cub jerseys). I never felt any particular affection for McGwire or Sosa. But I admired their accomplishments. My friend Chuck would tell you that I never notice anything physical about anybody but watching McGwire give a press conference in 1998, I heard myself say “will ya look at the guns on that guy?” He must really lift, I guessed. Bonds and Sheffield talked about their off-season workout regimen. Gosh, I figured, it must be working.

It’s difficult to pretend that whatever we’ve seen over the past decade didn’t occur. I know I watched guys hit 73 and 70 and 66 home runs in a season. I sat at a Mets game late in the ’98 campaign when the DiamondVision announced McGwire had just hit his 64th of the season. My god, I thought, 64 home runs and we’re alive to see it. He must take lots of swings in the cage below the stands or something.

If and when Bonds comes back, the baseball tastemakers in the media will tut-tut him until he hits his first home run. Seeing as how the Giants always manage to have him in San Francisco when he reaches a milestone, he’ll hit No. 715 at Phone Company Park and he’ll be cheered and it will be treated as an achievement. By the time he gets to 756, depending on whatever other revelations come to the fore, the line will be “sure, he did this or that and he’s like this or that but boy, you’ve got to admire the accomplishment”. And since it will also probably take place in San Francisco, the visuals will be Bonds-friendly, he’ll be tearful and say wonderful things about his family and for a few minutes most people will forget about the steroids, et al.

Once he retires, he’ll be remembered less than fondly and less all the time. Baseball is really good about its oral history. The 1919 Reds are still listed as world champions but everybody save for the smallest child knows the story. If Bonds hits 756+ home runs, he hit them. He swung, he connected, he trotted around the bases. Those who choose to pretend he didn’t, that’s their business. I know what I saw.