Now that Super Joe is officially gone, I feel bad. I

know it was the best thing: For all his intensity and hard work, for

all the joy and hustle he brought to playing baseball, it's been years

since he did enough between the white lines to justify a roster

spot. In the Times today

he describes himself as a little New Yorker even though he's from

Philly, and that's sweet, but it doesn't translate to numbers, even though right now I wish

it did.

I have no doubt Joshua will come home from college one day and we'll

discuss how Super Joe has taken the managerial reins in Philly or

Detroit or even here, and we'll note that gosh, he's been in uniform Joshua's

entire life, and I'll say nice things about him and how he owned the

Unit and all the rest. But in 2005, come that day game after a night

game, or the sixth-inning pinch-hitting appearance, I'll take Woodward

or Cairo. Baseball's pitiless that way. We must be pitiless too.

From the Grasping at Straws Department: Matt Ginter had 10 no-decisions last year for a terrible

baseball team. Unlike Aaron Heilman, he isn't afraid of his own stuff.

Unlike Jae Seo, he's coachable. He demonstrates bowhunting in the

clubhouse (nothing could go wrong there, nope) and plays a mean banjo.

I will not throw in the towel just yet, rude fortune cookies be damned.

As the Human Fight noted, it's not like Trachsel's Bob Gibson. And,

hey, if Ginter does flame out, at least the losses will go by a helluva

lot quicker.

On to the 70s. Between Saberhagen, Bobby Bo, Cedeno and Jefferies,

that's a whole lot of problems big (playing cards during Armageddon,

lacking a cerebellum) and small (throwing bleach, not liking Roger

McDowell). This part of the All-Time Clubhouse seems reserved for

Players With Issues.

I was in the stands at the Vet for Bret Saberhagen's

last start in '94. He was masterful, throttling the Phils on a night

when the attention of players and fans alike were focused on The

Strike. I'd paid up for scalped field-level seats, thinking hopefully

that I'd feel like a fool for wasting my money once labor peace was

reached. The next night the Mets lost in 15. They didn't play again in

'94.

I drove up to the Vet several times while I lived in D.C., even

dropping all my plans and getting in the car so I could see Bobby

Jones' debut in August 1993. I wound up sitting in the upper deck with

my back practically against that gigantic Diamondvision they had. It

made these large, vaguely frightening noises all game and you could

feel the amount of heat on your neck change (from, say, oppressive to

unbearable) when things were happening onscreen. Jones pitched OK even

as various Mets wandered around behind him colliding and flailing at

balls, somehow getting the win thanks to a two-homer night from Tim

Bogar. Bogie's second home run was an inside-the-parker: He broke his

hand sliding into the plate and was never the same player again. In

fact, after that he was Joe McEwing.

Gregg Jefferies was my favorite

player in college, something I defiantly proclaimed to the world and

that prompted the Human Fight to declare scornfully that “you only like

Jefferies because he's the Met most like you.” In 1989 I was quite

proud of that, since plenty of reasonable people regarded Jefferies as

a brash, talented prodigy. By the time we left college Jefferies had

curdled into a one-dimensional sociopath; soon after that he became a

resident of Kansas City. Not wanting to be any of those things, I

thought about him as little as possible by then.

Terry Leach makes me feel

guilty. He wrote a book, and I even read about five pages of it at

Chronicle one afternoon, but I didn't buy it. I sometimes feel like

this puts my fandom in question, since I have a

not-quite-Greglike-but-still-impressive collection of Met tomes. (I

refuse to read the Golenbock abortion and that irritating 70s book that

was all in lowercase, but that's about it.) I also worry that Terry

could use the money, unless he made some really wise investments back

in the day. I'm a bad fan.

Whatever happened to Kelvin Chapman, anyway? It's not easy to vanish

from the face of the earth a season removed from hitting .289 in nearly

200 at-bats, but he managed it. Did he become a monk? Get kidnapped by

aliens? Tire of jokes about temperature and Keats? I've always wondered.

By the way, Topps is revving up the PR machine for its 2005 Fan Favorites set

— a neat set featuring old Topps card designs with never-before-seen

photographs of players of that era. The 140-card set contains 19 Mets,

which is startling even before you register that one of them is Barry

Lyons. Barry Lyons?

There was a time when the news of Steve Trachsel's unavailability to take his starts would have been greeted around here with hip-hoorays and ballyhoos. But then his torpor morphed into competence and his absence equals bad news. Being down one dependable starting pitcher is a pretty big matzoh ball hanging out there.

Pending a trade (Cameron and somebody for Oswalt who's presumably going to be making too much money for Drayton McLane soon? Diaz steps into right and wins ROTY? Just thinking out loud…), we'll get stuck with whoever doesn't pitch too badly over the next couple of weeks and then we'll be spun into believing, “Y'know what? Matt Ginter is just as good as Steve Trachsel.”

If it sounds familiar, that was the Ricky Gutierrez/Jose Reyes dynamic of a year ago when our second baseman (aarrgghh) crumbled in pain. Trust us, we were told, you'll hardly notice the difference between the two. Gutierrez followed in the footsteps of the dreaded Rey Sanchez in terms of a low-rent replacement who can quietly and mindlessly pick up ground balls so well that you won't even miss the mouthy guy who used to be here, even if Rey Ordoñez was a three-time Gold Glove winner.

Matt Lawton wasn't exactly in that category. He was more a desperation mid-season move who didn't play too badly but was part of a bad trade nonetheless. (Rick Reed was in the midst of an All-Star season and loved being a Met; Lawton was, like so many American Leaguers we deal for, in the middle of a slump and didn't want to come here.) I wouldn't expect the world at large to recall Matt Lawton as a Met. But I found it jarring when John Discepolo, the empty suit who does sports on Channel 5, showed highlights of the Pirates playing the Yankees Wednesday and referred to the very same Lawton as a “former Twin”.

Huh? You're in New York, pal. If somebody was a Met, he's an ex-Met. Shoot, Lawton was an All-Star last season with the Indians. He hasn't been a Twin since 2001. Stuff like that bugs me no end.

As we wind into the 80th through 71st Greatest Mets Of The First Forty Years, we have primarily guys who will be remembered, when they are remembered, as Mets. Except for the first guy.

80. Bret Saberhagen: The harbinger of Junior Circuiteers to come, a star who was just beginning to inch off the wrong side of the cliff five minutes before we got him, Bret Saberhagen still unfurled one breathtaking season for us in the four years he was here. In 1994, before the strike, Sabes was at his Royal best, going 14-4 and walking only 13 batters across 177-1/3 innings. Bret finished third in the Cy Young voting behind Greg Maddux and Ken Hill. It's probably the most-obscure tremendous season any Mets pitcher has ever filed, fitting in that it took place in the most obscure season the Mets have ever played. 1994 represented a tremendous bounceback from the disaster of '93, improving from 59-103 to 55-58, which works out on a pro-rated basis to 79-83. Given the strike, that relative, quiet success, like the rest of Saberhagen's Mets career, is moot.

79. Ron Hodges: Ron Hodges needed one inning to validate his place in the Mets pantheon. That inning was the thirteenth on the night of September 20, 1973. The details are familiar enough to be told in shorthand: Tie game, two out, Zisk on first, Augustine up, Augustine swings, ball off the top of the wall, ball into Jones' glove, relay to Harrelson, relay to Hodges, Hodges tags Zisk, three out, Hodges then drives in the winning run, Mets go on to win the division. If he had won the game against the Pirates for us, the Haggadah suggests that would have been enough. But instead of leaving on a high note, Ron Hodges, only a rookie in 1973, decided to stick around. And stick around some more. Ron Hodges stuck around, save for a single refresher in Tidewater, clear through to 1984, by which time Davey had replaced Yogi, Doc had succeeded Tom and Jesse, not Tug, was saving games. In between, the Mets played a lot of bad baseball, and Ron Hodges had watched a ton of it from the bench. Whatever percent of life is showing up, Ron Hodges grabbed every last decimal point of it.

78. Bobby Bonilla: Two-time All-Star. Hit 34 home runs in '93. His tenth-inning shot beat the Cardinals on Opening Night 1992, his second dinger of the game. Took Rob Dibble deep in the bottom of the ninth at Shea that August on Turn Back The Clock Night, causing the Nasty Boy to tear off his retro Reds vest and fling it to the ground as he stalked away in defeat. Appeared as himself on an episode of Living Single and was referred to as “Bobby Billionaire”. When he was traded to the Orioles, he ran out to the bullpen during the game to shake hands with his now ex-teammates. That was classy. Um…what else? An All-Star twice…uh…34 homers one year…er…that shot off Dibble…

77. Roger Cedeño: Stealing 66 bases in an era when that level was rarely reached by anyone in the game is noteworthy. Doing so for a traditionally lead-footed franchise makes it all the more remarkable. For shattering Mookie Wilson's 17-year-old team stolen base mark, for batting .313, for making a sensational catch during a scintillating duel between Orel Hershiser and Kevin Brown in September and for his all-around contributions to a playoff team, Roger Cedeño should be remembered for what he accomplished as a Met in 1999. He won't be.

76. Frank Thomas: What a shadow this man cast over the Mets' record book. He hit 34 home runs in 1962 and nobody challenged him for the next dozen seasons. Nobody came remotely close; Tommie Agee was next with 26 in '69. Frank Thomas was a Colossus among power-starved Lilliputians. How weird were the Polo Grounds' dimensions anyway? The first Mets, for all their 120 losses, hit 139 home runs, a plateau that stood as the organization's pinnacle until 1986. It took the best team in franchise history to wipe away a mark set by the worst team in baseball history. Alas, for the Big Donkey, it was all over eleven years before that when Dave Kingman swatted 36 homers in 1975. Overall, Thomas' total has been equaled or surpassed by Met sluggers 14 times. But nobody else got to 34 sooner.

75. Gregg Jefferies: Who was the only player to receive Rookie of the Year votes in two separate seasons? Gregg Jefferies was the perpetual freshman of baseball, the child prodigy who never grew up, at least not on our watch. His promotion to the '88 Mets represented one of the most electric moments in team history. After 13 games, he was hitting .429 with 5 HR, 10 RBI and 13 runs scored while the Mets pulled away from the Pirates once and for all. Based almost entirely on those two weeks, he finished sixth in the ROTY voting. With eligibility remaining, he finished third in the same balloting a year later, but it was a much harder struggle to get that far. He couldn't play second or third, wouldn't be coached and tended to sulk when he didn't hit, which was surprisingly often. Jefferies' veteran teammates, not enjoying their finest hour, resented the hell out of Gregg's golden-child status. The 1989 home season ended with Roger McDowell, by then a Phillie, taking off after him, and the older Mets not looking terribly interested in defending their boy's honor. The kid blossomed later as the Cardinals' first baseman under (sigh) Joe Torre.

74. Terry Leach: With the institution of the five-man rotation throughout baseball, one of the more delightful terms, swingman, has gone away. The best swingman the Mets ever had was Terry Leach, particularly in 1987. He could pitch anytime and he usually did. Penciled in as a long reliever, Terry Leach kept the Mets afloat as a starter when injuries and/or rehab took down every glam pitcher the Mets had at one point or another. In a six-start stretch between June 1 and July 7, Leach pitched to the tune of a 1.67 ERA. He went uncomplainingly back to the bullpen once everybody got healthy and wound up compiling an 11-1 record for the year. Too bad for any number of reasons we couldn't repeat in '87, but particularly for Terry Leach. On Opening Day, after the Mets handed out rings to their remaining '86ers, Terry, who'd made only a cameo the year before, wandered over to the table where the rings had been displayed. He said later he was hoping there might be an extra one.

73. Tim Teufel: By not being Kelvin Chapman, Tim Teufel achieved his purpose. Chapman was the righty half of the second-base platoon in 1985, and when his usefulness expired, the Mets got desperate. Nominally a switcher, Wally Backman just couldn't hit from the right side. With Ron Gardenhire and Larry Bowa not providing short-term solutions, it was as much the inability to effectively pinch-hit for and replace Backman versus lefties that cost the '85 team the division. Teufel, brought over from the Twins in exchange for future genius Billy Beane, filled a specific need and filled it competently. He had one big moment in '86, winning an extra-inning game with a grand slam against Philly, and one huge blunder, the grounder that rolled under his glove in the World Series to cost the Mets the first game. Teufel gracefully fielded every question about it afterwards and by the time the Series was over, nobody much brought up that particular error or that particular ground ball.

72. Steve Henderson: It's one of those World War II movie scenarios, but thankfully we're not at war. The time is the mid-1980s. Everybody wants to pass as a Mets fan. But like in those pictures, the only way to determine who's on the up and up and who's an interloper is to ask a baseball question. And the only question that can prove one's legitimacy and thus allow one to gain entry to field-level seats is this one: Who is Steve Henderson and what did he do? The only applicable answer is: “On Saturday night, June 14, 1980, Steve Henderson stepped up in the bottom of the ninth with two out and two on and the Mets trailing six to four. They had been down six-one entering the ninth after falling behind six-nothing in the fifth. With Allen Ripley pitching, Steve Henderson — also known as Hendu — hit a three-run homer, winning the game, seven to six. It was Hendu's first home run of the year. He was mobbed at the plate by all his teammates, including the newly acquired Claudell Washington, who was so new his name wasn't yet sewn on the back of his jersey. This was no ordinary walk-off home run. It came in the midst of the Magic Is Back run in which the Mets were pulling out miracle wins regularly and creeping ever closer to .500 and maybe even a pennant race. On this night, we believed more than ever that, indeed, the Magic was Back and the Mets would no longer be laughingstocks. It was the unquestioned high point of an otherwise dismal era of Mets baseball and made me proud to be a Mets fan in a way that would carry me forward for several years until the Mets would actually be good again. Even though nobody who played for the Mets on June 14, 1980 was on the team when it took off in 1986, I will always remember it lovingly.” Any other answer and you're a fraud.

71. Roger Craig: Hardly anybody gets the opportunity anymore to test the “you've gotta be a pretty good pitcher to lose 20 games” theory. In 1962, Mets' ace Roger Craig lost 24 games. In 1963, Roger Craig lost 22 games. His ERAs were, respectively, 4.18 and 3.49. He went to St. Louis in 1964 and won the fourth game of the World Series by throwing 4-2/3 innings of scoreless relief at Yankee Stadium. Conclusion: Roger Craig was a pretty good pitcher.

 

Before moving on to ten more Greatest Mets, you’ve spurred me to take one more long look at a few of my first twenty.

* Stephanie referred to Kevin Elster as The Cute One. He was the first Met she publicly took notice of that way and, to date, the only one.

* Maybe if I’d been in a meeting and missed Carl Everett‘s grand slam of 9/13/97, I wouldn’t have felt compelled to vault him onto The List. But I was watching from our living room, hopeless and in despair, explaining to the aforementioned missus that down 0-6, we’re screwed, we’re screwed, we’re screwed, and this wonderful season, it’s over, it’s over, it’s over. Entering the ninth, Stephanie, who hadn’t been in the room most of the afternoon and was a fan mostly by osmosis, said unto me the three words any man would want to hear at that moment: “You Gotta Believe”. That dramatic win was powered by my wife’s faith as much as Carl Everett’s bat.

* Myth: The early Mets were stocked with ex-New York Giants and ex-Brooklyn Dodgers. Fact: While nine ex-Brooks, à la Duke Snider, eventually became Mets, no ex-Jint was a Met until 1966 when Eddie Bressoud joined the cast and set a Met shortstop record for homers with 10 (tied by The Cute One in 1989). The only other NYG to be an NYM was that fella Mays. It is my duty as an occasionally dues-paying member of the New York Giants Historical Society to note former Giant catcher Wes Westrum managed the Mets and Joan Payson owned a piece of New York’s first and foremost baseball dynasty. She was, famously, the only dissenting vote when its board voted to move to San Francisco. And Casey, of course, was ex-everything.

* I’ve had no use for women’s soccer ever since Brandi Chastain nudged Matt Franco off at least one front page, maybe more. I had no use for women’s soccer before that either, but her timing was as rude as your Wednesday fortune cookie.

* I saved just about everything that was printed down the stretch in 1999, at least the stuff I wanted to remember. That includes the Lisa Olson column on Shawon Dunston‘s valedictory, run in the Daily News that October 21. I’d gladly type in the whole thing right now, but I don’t want to violate any copyright laws, so I’ll just excerpt a gut-searing passage:

“‘I am so proud to be a Met,’ said Dunston, voice cracking. Darryl Hamilton looked up, and felt the tears on his cheeks. Someone else sobbed. Al Leiter wiped the water from his eyes. The passion play that was the Mets season had just completed its last, heart-wrenching act, the Mojo dissipating with a 10-9, 11th-inning loss to the Braves Tuesday night.

 

 

“Dunston pointed over at Mike Piazza, his limbs held together by sticky glue, and told him how thrilled he was to have the catcher as a teammate. Piazza’s stony face rarely cracks, and now it took every ounce of energy in his aching bones not to melt into a quivering mess.

 

 

“Dunston motioned to Armando Benitez, staring at the wall. Only the Mets knew how much the stoic closer has been hurting these past few weeks, not because Benitez tells them, but because he can barely walk to the shower. Dunston looked at John Franco, who had just taken his sixth cortisone shot of the season so his shoulder would hold up one more time.

 

 

“‘You guys made me believe again,’ continued Dunston. ‘You made baseball fun for me. I will never, ever forget what this team did.’

 

 

“Grown men aren’t supposed to cry, but Dunston’s words put a quick end to whatever cool machismo the players were clutching. The clubhouse doors opened and it was like a giant flash had gone off, resulting in eyes that were red and oh-so-stunned.

 

 

Dunston, the first pick in 1982, out of Thomas Jefferson High in Brooklyn, is one of those players who observes everything but tells nothing, which made this moment all the more precious. ‘Fans look at Mike and all they see is $100 million,’ Dunston explained. ‘He’s set for life. He doesn’t have to go through that beating. But he acted like he’s making $100,000. All he wanted to do was play.

 

 

“‘Kenny (Rogers), he’s so hurt, but how would we know it? He said, I don’t care about my arm. I’ll throw whenever. I didn’t hear about money, guys talking about how (they could be) fishing, golfing. Even during the seven-game losing streak. All I saw was a team that would do anything to win.’

 

 

“He saw a team that raged, raged against the dying of the light, and when the flash finally went off, when Rogers, working like a heart surgeon afraid to make the wrong move, walked in the winning run, Darryl Hamilton curled up like a turtle in center field. Straight ahead was Ordonez at short, hands to his side as if he were expecting another play. Hamilton is not ashamed to admit he was crying. He thought of all the trepidation he felt when he was traded to New York, how he expected to hate it, and how wrong he was.

 

 

“‘What a great three months I’ve had,’ said Hamilton. ‘It was really neat to hear Shawon speak from the heart like that. It’ll give us something that’ll carry us through the winter and give us the determination to pop the champagne next year.’

 

 

“What a great three months, what a great series, what a great game. When Piazza, limping like Kirk Gibson, hit that home run in the seventh to make it 7-7, Dunston jumped up and screamed, ‘We’re going to the World Series! We’re going to play the Yankees!’

 

 

He was a little kid again, in love with the game. He believed the same way John Franco did when Leiter trudged into the dugout after getting shelled in the first inning and, with the Mets in a 5-0 hole, put his arm around Leiter and said, ‘We’re going to win this thing.'”

 

I got a fortune cookie today, ate it and the fortune said this: HEY

STUPID — IF YOU THOUGHT TRACHSEL WAS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE

PLAYOFFS AND NOTHING, YOU WEREN'T MAKING THE PLAYOFFS ANYWAY.

How rude!

In less-weighty news, Angel Pagan, Ambiorix Concepcion, Mike Jacobs, Matt Lindstrom, Blake McGinley and Juan Padilla took that famous 300-yard walk. Wayne Lydon got relocated last week and escaped my notice. And Danny Garcia

got released, ensuring he'll beat us at least once whereever he lands.

I assume his being a redass, if I may go Harazin on you for a moment,

finally became a liability in Met eyes.

With the present suddenly murky, off to the past for solace in the form of Players 81-90. I always loved Jay Payton

even when he did little to earn that — I itched to put his baseball

card in the Holy Books for years (and many surgeries), celebrated his

every success when he finally did arrive, and managed to remain blind

to his faults after he stayed a while. (See also: Pulsipher, Bill.) To

me, the oddest thing about Payton is how he played his best

under huge pressure in the 2000 postseason — he rarely looked as good

on a lazy June night against, say, Cincy. Oh, and that catch in San

Francisco. He was as surprised and delighted as any Met fan watching on

TV, and he should've been.

I have trouble believing Timo Perez and Melvin Mora

weren't actually the same person — scrappy fill-in arrives late in

season, does next to nothing in regular season, then comes alive in

postseason. Sure, Timo was crowned King of Merengue, while Melvin

battled Taiwanese gamblers, became the father of quintuplets and

actually became a good baseball player, but … well, never mind, that

is quite a difference. In retrospect Mora was there for the first real,

undeniable hint that Roger Cedeno couldn't actually play baseball:

Remember how he basically had to threaten Cedeno into that key

double-steal against John Rocker and the Braves? As for Timo, well, run

dummy. Since the cameras are off, you know Derek Jeter is snickering

like Muttley about that one even now.

(Excuse me while I destroy something. I mean, goddamnit.)

Shawon Dunston forever earned a

place on any list of Mets not just for that wonderful weeklong at-bat,

but for his farewell address in the Mets clubhouse after our death

rattle against Atlanta. (Winning run: Gerald Williams, which is reason

enough to get rid of him.)

I can't find Lisa Olson's account of Dunston's speech from the Daily

News, which is a lovely piece of writing, but I remember for weeks

afterward I would read it and quietly weep to myself. (Bonilla and

Rickey won't remember that speech because they were playing cards.)

As for Matt Franco, I remember

not only his marvelous, life-affirming hit (and so what if it was

Strike Four), which came on the same day as Brandi Chastain and the

sports bra of triumph, but also his dinger to beat Pedro when his

nombre was Expo. Remember how Pedro sat in the dugout in disbelief

until they literally turned off the lights on him? Now that he's a Met

that's a beautiful example of his passion for the game, but at the time

it was just grounds for a good haw-haw. As for Matty's Atlanta tenure, let us never discuss it.

Kevin Elster was cool, but he

should have a pretty massive asterisk on that now-gone fielding record.

The man had the range of a stone pillar, albeit a pheromone-sodden

stone pillar women would rub themselves against while growling in their

throats. I'm probably just jealous. He also has one of the odder careers ever, leaping out of the baseball grave in '96 with the Rangers and then again in '00 with the Dodgers. Hey, can he pitch?

The short burst of excitement seems to hold the edge on long-term commitment today as we slide headfirst into the next ten of our Met immortals (or imMetrals). But before we do, there is the matter of Tom Seaver, who may or may not show up somewhere along the way here, coming out against the New Mets hype in Newsday Wednesday, warning one and all that:

“They’re definitely improved. Let’s see. I think they shot themselves in the foot doing that once already.”

He was referring to getting everybody’s hopes up in 2002, a most un-Terrific season. I appreciate Tom’s perspective and honesty. It gives lie to the idea unfairly espoused six years ago when he replaced Tim McCarver that he was being brought in to be a Wilpon shill, or a Shillpon. Then again, I wonder how much of his unimpressedness stems from his wondering why they didn’t turn to The Franchise to turn the franchise around.

There was a time Tom Seaver would stand on the mound, turn around and find the man who starts today’s segment of The One Hundred Greatest Mets of the First Forty Years.

90. Ken Boswell: On a team that didn’t score many runs, the early ’70s Mets were famously about pitching and defense. Their second baseman, Ken Boswell, set a record for going 85 straight games without an error in 1970. One would think his glove was his stock-in-trade, though contemporary accounts indicate defense was not his strong suit. In Joy in Mudville, George Vecsey characterized him as “heavy-handed,” at least in 1969. Ken did hit two homers in the inaugural National League Championship Series, so he could have been termed heavy-hitting at times.

89. Jay Payton: His prospects were once sky-high. Then like all Mets prospects of his generation, he got hurt. And Jay Payton wasn’t even a pitcher. But for the one year that he got it together, 2000, he was an integral part of a pennant-winning club. Gave the club its best center field defense since Pat Howell (speaking of short-timers). Got the key hit in Game 2 of the NLDS to rescue Benitez  and the whole team, post-J.T. Snow, singling in the unlikely Darryl Hamilton in the top of 10th. As Mets centerfielders who were going to be the real deal, Jay Payton was no Don Bosch.

88. Timo Perez: Imagine Mike Vail. Now imagine Mike Vail coming on like gangbusters the way he did in 1975 except now imagine that happening when it really, really counted. The reality would be Timo Perez and his immense role in securing two playoff series for the 2000 Mets. For two weeks, the former Timoniel was staggering. The Mets might not have beaten the Giants without him (or with Derek Bell keeping his balance on the Pac Bell sod). The Mets would not have beaten the Cardinals without him. Less than two months into his big-league career, Timo set a record for most runs scored in an NLCS (in just five games) and should have been awarded its MVP. Timo put us in the 2000 World Series. It’s a shame he took us out of it so quickly.

87. Shawon Dunston: Do you think anything of the Butterfly Effect? If you do, think about Shawon Dunston’s third at-bat in the fifth game of the 1999 National League Championship Series versus the Braves. It’s the bottom of the fifteenth inning. Atlanta has just taken a 4-3 lead and needs three outs to secure the pennant. Shawon Dunston stands at the plate representing the first out. On any one of twelve pitches, he could have registered that out. Instead, Shawon Dunston takes or fouls off everything Kevin McGlinchy dishes out. He won’t walk — he literally never walks in 51 games in a Mets uniform — but he won’t cooperate with McGlinchy. On the twelfth pitch, he singles to center. Shawon Dunston keeps hope alive. If Shawon Dunston never becomes a Met, he’s not up in that situation, he’s not on first, he doesn’t steal second, he doesn’t get sacrificed to third by Alfonzo, he doesn’t score on a bases-loaded walk to Pratt, he doesn’t watch in stunned disbelief as Ventura singles over the fence for the winning run. Neither do we. We have no Grand Slam Single. We lose in five. We have no Game Six. We have nothing to hold against Al Leiter because he never pitches that awful no thirds of a first inning in which he gives up five runs. We have no stirring comeback from 0-5 to 8-7. We have no recollection of Mike Piazza’s Cobra shot (“you’re the disease, and I’m the cure”) off cocky John Smoltz. We have no heartbreaking cough-up of an 8-7 lead. We have no life-affirming ninth run with Benny Agbayani rumbling across the plate to beat a throw from the supposedly flawless Andruw Jones. We have no second heartbreaking cough-up of a lead, this one 9-8. We may very well have Kenny Rogers as a lefty starter on the 2000 Mets because we have no wild streak in the bottom of eleventh of Game Six haunting him, in which case we have no Mike Hampton, but maybe we do have Ken Griffey because we redouble our efforts to get him after he turns us down since we still have Cedeño and Dotel as chits along with Benitez, who, it’s possible, never sticks around to face Paul O’Neill in the 2000 World Series, which we might not make if we still have Kenny Rogers but not Mike Hampton. If you don’t think anything of the Butterfly Effect, then never mind.

86. Dave Mlicki: That Dave Mlicki could go out on any given night and throw a complete game, 9-hit, 8-K shutout shouldn’t have been news. He had the talent if not the ability to harness it more often than he did. That he did align all his stars in one place on the evening of June 16, 1997 when the opponent was the New York Yankees and the venue was Yankee Stadium and the occasion was the first-ever regular season encounter between the New York Mets and the New York Yankees is to his everlasting credit.

85. Matt Franco: “He’ll never have to pay for a drink in this town ever again” is one of those sayings that I wouldn’t think has much modern-day resonance. It’s hard to imagine ballplayers really frequent bars with the common folk who adore them. On the afternoon of July 10, 1999, Matt Franco pinch-hit a 3-2 pitch off the impenetrable Mariano Rivera. With that single, Rickey Henderson and Edgardo Alfonzo crossed home plate, turning an 8-7 loss to the Yankees into a 9-8 win over the Yankees. From an eternally grateful witness whose total being turned to jelly in Section 46, Row T of the Shea upper deck, comes this hoarse-throated promise: Every vodka gimlet Matt Franco ever craves, his money’s no good here, pal.

84. Melvin Mora: Melvin Mora rode the Norfolk shuttle for the better part of 1999. There was virtually nothing he did in the 64 games he appeared in prior to October 3 to indicate what he was about to produce. Then, at the best possible time, leading off the bottom of the ninth in a must-have tie game against the Pirates, he singled. Moments later he scored the winning run on Brad Clontz’s wild pitch to extend the Mets’ season to a 163rd game. In the playoffs against Arizona and Atlanta, he did everything. He played each outfield position and threw a runner out from left, center and right. He was in the middle of rallies. He hit his first Major League home run in a championship series. Melvin Mora proved himself under the stormiest of circumstances and earned a place on the Opening Day roster for 2000 after which he continued to produce. The only thing he couldn’t do was play shortstop every day, which was too bad, since it was this one drawback that got him traded for someone who allegedly could.

83. Eddie Murray: As unhappy as he appeared and as bad as the team was, future Hall of Famer Eddie Murray drove in 193 runs in 1992 and 1993. The players swore by him as their sage and counsel. Did he lead by example? If his advice to them was “act like a sullen jerk if you like, but be sure to pick up the man from third with less than two out,” it’s apparent that his voice trailed off in dispensing the second half of his cherished wisdom.

82. J.C. Martin: If a Brave or a Yankee or, back then, an Oriole bunted and ran inside the baseline, leaving his wrist free to obstruct the pitcher’s throw to first and that throw glanced off that wrist and away from the first baseman allowing a runner to score from second and win a World Series game, we’d scream bloody murder. But since the wrist belonged to J.C. Martin and the errant toss was made by Pete Richert and the Mets won Game Four and it was 1969, we’re cool with that.

81. Kevin Elster: No shortstop in the history of Major League Baseball had played more games in a row, 88, without committing an error than Kevin Elster did in 1988-89. His record would later be broken and even while it stood, Elster’s achievement would be viewed by some with an asterisk since a number of those games were late-inning appearances for defense. But they were appearances and there were no errors. Elster also hit nine homers as a rookie shortstop on the last division champion in Mets history. By comparison, Bud Harrelson hit none in ’69 or ’73 and Rafael Santana hit one in ’86.

To avoid competing lists, I'll yield the field to you, keeping my 100

greatest Mets in my back pocket for a rainy day, which is all our team

seems to get these days. Funny how I never thought much of Steve

Trachsel (beyond “Why isn't that man throwing the baseball yet?”) until

back troubles turned him into Matt Ginter. Ulp!

Anyway, while the Greatest 100 unfold, I'm going to play the easy role

of G(r)eek Chorus, making appreciative comments about (and taking occasional pot

shots at) the players on your list.

My pot shots will not begin with Marvelous Marv,

however: Parking him at #100 is genius. In our old Bethesda, Md., group

house, the line “We was gonna give you a piece of cake, but we wuz

afraid you would drop it” got adopted as an all-purpose putdown, with

various nouns subbed for “piece of cake.” That's fame of a sort, ain't

it? Among the innumerable legends you didn't mention, my favorite is

how Marv had to pay taxes on his cabin cruiser because he won it for

hitting a sign, which was considered a test of skill, while Richie

Ashburn's cabin cruiser was tax-free because he got it for being named

the team MVP, which wasn't a test of skill because it was voted on by

others. Or something. Ashburn tied his boat up in a river and it sank.

Marv gets extra points because he'd been a Yankee. It was nice of the

Fates to provide us with an almost-mystically clear example of the

difference between the two teams so early: Marv's ineptitude was a

source of embarrassment and disgust for Yankee fans but made him

beloved by Met fans. Baseball is an imperfect affair; if you can't

laugh at it, well…you're a Yankee fan.

I can't abide the idea that Lenny Harris

is on any list of ours.  Nothing against Lenny, who by all

accounts is a prince among men, but he embodies the Neanderthal

conservatism of baseball front offices: In any sane world, such a

profoundly limited player would have lost his job to rookies seasons

ago. But Lenny keeps rolling on and on — he must be in camp somewhere

— adding to his pointless pinch-hitting record. And considering he's a

stone-handed, slow singles hitter, he's not even one-dimensional —

he's half-dimensional. Lest we think Steve Phillips never did anything

for us, the sturm und drang over his secretarial sojourns did keep Lenny from cluttering up a roster spot. Until we reacquired him. Grrr.

Similarly, I must withhold my endorsement of Duke Snider.

While I understand and appreciate the nod to our blue and orange

history, Joan Payson's insistence on stockpiling decrepit Giants and

Dodgers hamstrung this franchise into the 1970s, with Willie Mays the

ultimate vanity pick. But at least Willie played in a World Series and

had some memorable plays. Duke did nothing but be old and sulky, and he

gets docked additional points for going out as a Giant — Jackie

Robinson opted to put his feet up on a desk at Chock Full o' Nuts

rather than do that. Gil Hodges would fall into this category too, were

it not for leading us to The Promised Land as a skipper.

I'll always associate Carl Everett's

Met career with my beloved Motorola SportsTrax, a lovely gift from my

in-laws that kept me connected during innumerable unavoidable weekend

and night events during which a radio would have been frowned upon. I

was still breaking in the SportsTrax when I was forced to spend the

bulk of a nice spring Saturday at a management retreat at a downtown

hotel. During a break I was showing off the device and turned the sound

on in hopes of getting a beep or two that I might be able to translate.

The second I did this the thing went apeshit, whistling and beeping so

euphorically that we all backed away from it as if it were a hand grenade.

“I think that's the grand-slam noise!” I said happily after looking at the score. It was. And it was Carl Everett.

The other SportsTrax Everett Event was the game against the Expos

you've mentioned. I was attending a ludicrously swanky wedding in

Newport, R.I., that I knew would turn into a grisly boozefest, so I

left the SportsTrax in the motel room along with everything else I

didn't want to lose. (What the hell, it was 6-0.) When I returned at 5

a.m., half-blind with drink, covered with grass stains and missing

significant tux components (it was a good wedding), I looked at the

final score in disbelief and concluded the SportsTrax was

malfunctioning. Nope. Carl Everett had malfunctioned the Expos.

I'd type more about Clobberin' Carl, but an Allosaurus

just wandered into the apartment looking for carrion, so I think I

better hide in a closet or something. Carl may not believe in them, but

I'm taking no chances.

100. Marv Throneberry: Though he passed on in 1994, I imagine Marv Throneberry still doesn't know why we asked him to be on this list. He's not here for the 16 homers he hit in '62 nor for the 17 errors he made playing first. Well, more for the latter than the former, but c'mon — try to imagine us without him at the heart of our primordial ooze. Second maybe to Casey in forging the identity of this team and buying us some time to become if not respectable, then remotely professional. The fans made him and he made them fans. Without Marvelous Marv and the legend that trails him like so many bags missed en route to a triple (or so many pieces of cake we'd give him but wuz afraid he'd drop), face it: We're the Colt .45s sans mosquitoes. For being Marv Throneberry, he is permanently ensconced at No. 100 for all time.

99. Lenny Harris: We've never had a Met win a 300th game or collect a 3,000th hit. But we did have Lenny Harris breaking Manny Mota's all-time career pinch-hit mark on the final Saturday night of the 2001 season. Maybe it represented a release of tension and disappointment following the short-circuited drive to the NL East title that September. Maybe it was because he really was that thing they call a clubhouse leader. But when he singled off of Carl Pavano and reached first, his teammates — led by Piazza, of all people — rushed out of the dugout to pound him and love him for a good two minutes. Sure it wasn't Ripken passing Gehrig or Rose passing Cobb or Aaron passing Ruth (we get the point), but when Lenny trumped Manny and the scoreboard flashed 151 like it was 2,131, 4,192 or 715, it didn't seem ridiculous.

98. Rico Brogna: A delightful surprise is as surprising as it is delightful. So it was in the summer of 1994 when a little-known minor leaguer obtained in a little-noticed minor league deal came up and shocked the world, or that thin slice of it that was paying attention to the Mets. Rico Brogna came from as close to nowhere as anybody ever has to establish himself as the real deal for Mets fans. For a franchise reeling from the second-strike-and-yer-out drug-test relapse of Doc Gooden, Rico was the breath of fresh air that blew the Mets toward .500 over the final seven weeks of that truncated season. He hit and fielded and behaved like a veteran. Another good season followed before injuries cut his tenure short. While the team improved without him and he was succeeded by somebody (John Olerud) who produced better numbers, Rico never quite stopped being a Met. He consistently received warm ovations after coming back as a Phillie and even a Brave.

97. Duke Snider: Mr. Met has two daddies. One was a Jint from Upper Manhattan, the other a Bum from Brooklyn. Duke Snider was the Dodger uncle who lent a patina of 1950s them-was-the-days luster to the new kids in town when he returned home in 1963. It's said that it was strange (for him and for the fans) seeing him call the Polo Grounds home, yet the Ebbets Field slugger and future Hall of Famer hit his 400th homer there and represented the Mets in the '63 All-Star Game before departing and finishing his career as, of all things, a San Francisco Giant in 1964.

96. Carl Everett: For four months, Carl Everett pulled off a neat trick. As a fourth outfielder, one never permanently handed a starting job, he was the best outfielder on the 1997 Mets and a large reason for that team's renaissance. He was never quite the same after the murky events of early August that took place in the Shea family room (which led to the authorities holding his and wife's children for, allegedly, their own good). It was obvious his days were numbered from there on in. But that September, in an otherwise quiet denouement to his Mets career, Carl Everett blasted maybe the most incredible grand slam in team history. Barely hanging on in their noble if doomed quest for their first Wild Card, the Mets trailed the Expos 6-0 entering the ninth (Dustin Hermanson carried a no-hitter deep into the game). They had trimmed it to 6-2 and had the bases loaded with two out when Everett stood in to face the generally unassailable Uggie Urbina. He hit a foul home run. And then, a pitch or two later, he hit a fair home run. Just like that, it was 6-6. The Mets won in eleven and staved off Wild Card execution a bit longer. It was the signature swing of an underappreciated season.

95. Joe McEwing: A utilityman should be able to do it all. That's Super Joe. When he came to the Mets in 2000, it was a gift (Tony LaRussa loved him so much in St. Louis he kept a pair of his spikes on his desk, as Fran Healy's mentioned one or two thousand times). We got a guy who could play every infield and every outfield position competently. We got a guy who could pinch-hit. We got a guy who could fill in. We got a guy who had his own dance in and around the batter's box and, for a while, his very own batting-practice pitcher named Randy Johnson. During the malaise that was the first half of the 2001 season, a local columnist commented on the Mets' lackadaisical approach to the game, excluding Joe McEwing from that assessment because Joe McEwing gets to the clubhouse at about dawn. In their first 40 years, the Mets had a few other notable utilitymen: Hot Rod Kanehl, Teddy Martinez, Bob Bailor. What separated Joe from those guys was effort that truly didn't show up in the box score. After September 11, when many Mets helped load supplies onto trucks in the Shea parking lot, who volunteered to drive the forklift? Super Joe, that's who. He really did do it all.

94. Jason Isringhausen: The New York Mets, when they won their first two championships, were built on young, internally developed starting pitching. It was thought a third flag was being stitched when word trickled north from Norfolk that not one, not two but three great young arms were on their way to Shea. The second of them was attached to a kid who had nothing left to prove in the minors in 1995, Jason Isringhausen. Izzy. And was he ready? In the second half of that season, Izzy went 9-2 with a 2.81 ERA and the Mets rose from last to a second-place tie, sparking every reasonable hope that in 1996 Izzy, Bill Pulsipher and Paul Wilson would pitch the Mets into legitimate contention. Well, we know that Generation K became a symbol of regret more than achievement, but for a few months, Izzy made it reality.

93. Rod Gaspar: Actually, Rod Gaspar doesn't belong on this list. That honor should really go to Ron Gasper, for that's who Frank Robinson called out on the eve of the 1969 World Series. The Orioles were heavy favorites and a little fed up with all the attention being showered on the Miracle Mets, already in progress. No wonder F. Robby dared New York to “bring on Ron Gaspar!” When informed by teammate Merv Rettenmund that “it's Rod, stupid,” the great man replied, “OK, then bring on Rod Stupid!” Ol' Whathisname, Gaspar, was next seen crossing home plate to win the pivotal fourth game of that Series, the one that put the Mets up 3-1 and made the Miracle all but inevitable. Rod Gaspar actually started in right on Opening Day and got two hits. Gil Hodges managed to get him into more than two out of every three games in 1969. In years like that, it's the Rod Gaspars who make the Frank Robinsons seem pretty silly for ever doubting them.

92. Joel Youngblood: One of the surlier Mets in distant memory, particularly when Joe Torre tried to make a third baseman out of him, Joel Youngblood, give or take a few plate appearances, was leading the National League in batting when the players went on strike in 1981. After settling, MLB rushed an All-Star Game into Cleveland and Joel Youngblood was named the Mets' only representative. He pinch-hit for Fernando Valenzuela, popped up and left. Too bad. If he were inserted in right, he might have had a chance to show off his arm and make everybody forget about Dave Parker. The man had the greatest outfield arm in Mets history. Ellis Valentine's was awfully good, too, which wouldn't make Blood happy since Ellis took away a good bit of his playing time, but Joel got to show his off more as a Met. It didn't work as well from third as it did from right, which is something Joe Torre would have figured out if he were, you know, any kind of manager at all.

91. Bernard Gilkey: In the new breed of trades for dollars' sake, Bernard Gilkey was a steal. The Cardinals were cheap and asked only for three go-nowhere prospects in exchange for Gilkey's salary. Bernard gave the Mets, over one year, their only real power-hitting outfielder for a generation (post-Strawberry, pre-Beltran, one hopes). His 1996 numbers were wholly unMetlike: 30 HRs, 117 RBIs, .317 BA. That all of baseball was exploding offensively escaped the front office's attention and Gilkey was rewarded for his single, hellacious, free-agent campaign with a four-year contract worth about $19 mil. Naturally, he tanked thereafter and the Mets couldn't wait to dump him by '98. Still, he did have that one helluva year.

Let's see…Trachsel's out…there's no obvious replacement…McEwing's role has been usurped…he's versatile…

I think I know who our new fifth starter is going to be.

Instead of dwelling on the suddenly unsettling immediate future, this seems as good a time as any to delve into past glories. Though when you're talking about the Mets, glory is a tenuous concept. For example, no Met has even won an MVP.

Some fans see a lack of awards like that and ask “so? ” I dream awards that never were and ask “so what else?”

Following the 2001 season, the Mets' 40th campaign, I looked up (on the indispensable Baseball Reference) who had come closest to being Most Valuable. I was surprised to learn that 35 different Mets had garnered at least one MVP vote at least once. One search led to another and before I knew it, I had made it my mission to create a list of (drumroll please)…

The One Hundred Greatest Mets Of The First Forty Years.

After 40 seasons, there had been 668 players who had worn the blue and orange and white and black and Mercury, so choosing 100 of them made for an almost perfectly neat top 15% of all Mets. At the very least, these Mets were greater than 85% of their peers. For those who are still active, feel free to use this nugget at contract time.

What makes somebody one of The One Hundred Greatest Mets Of The First Forty Years?

Well first we take all the players who spent the defining balance of their careers in a Mets uniform and, while wearing those sacred garments, towered over the game like few others — men recognized by one and all as immortal in their time and for the ages.

And then we find 99 more guys.

I started with the MVP vote-getters, the Cy Young and Rookie of the Year winners and candidates, Gold Gloves, league leaders, team record holders, All-Stars and stuff like that. That made for about 70, most of whom I kept. The other 30 or so were recognized for some combination of achievement, longevity, memorable moment, contribution to winning and ur-Mets significance.

I also gave a little weight to Hall of Famers who spent at least one full season as a Met, a policy I will drop when I (presumably having not matured or altered my priorities one iota) revise the list after the 50th year of Mets baseball. We'll call that the Alomar/Glavine But Hopefully Not Martinez Exception. The thinking on HOFers is there's something to having those guys on your all-time roster and it can be argued that their Mets careers had at least a little, tiny something to do with their HOF selection. But the list strives to consider only what Mets players did as Mets players, in case you're looking for great Mets managers whose Mets playing days could be termed negligible.

Cutting off eligibility at the first 40 seasons appealed to my surprisingly meticulous nature. Besides, nothing achieved by anybody in 2002, 2003 or 2004 would've changed anything anyway, inclusion or ranking. Like Cooperstown, I'll wait a decent interval before considering the impact of anybody who's joined since 2001. (I felt players who joined the Mets in the years just prior to 2001 were fair game when this list was compiled given that one could pretty well gauge a player's impact on the '99 and '00 postseason teams.)

In ranking the One Hundred, I tended to be more impressed by a brief tenure that was punctuated by a singular feat in the spotlight than I was by several seasons of loitering. I also tried to emphasize the positive — that is, assign a player his place on the list for what he accomplished and don't penalize him for his lesser performances or generally unpleasant nature. And I really tried to take a cold eye to this and not make it a list of my favorite players, though some personal preferences probably seeped in.

So much for the Price Waterhouse stuff. On with the countdown, part one coming later today.

A ballplayer would have to have committed some awful, irredeemable transgression in his past baseball life to not be accepted into at least a temporary state of grace for the period in which he has chosen to embrace the light, a.k.a., the uniform of the New York Mets. Manny Aybar can get guys out for us? All is forgiven. (Just don't linger on cold nights, OK?)

Tom Glavine continues to operate under a cloud of karmic suspicion, due to not only his mega-Braveness, but because of his continued prickliness toward former replacement players (one in particular who pitched his heart out for us) long after everybody else in baseball had put that stuff behind them. I've tried to forget all that as he stands on our mound and does his best to earn us victories, but I can't quite shake the disdain. Paramount among the thousand or so reasons I desperately wanted us to prevail in Game Six was to set up a Game Seven in which the matchup would've been Reed vs. Glavine. I know who would've won that. I just know.

He's said all the right things, he's evaded the bait every time he's asked “Tom, do you regret…?” and he's pitched not altogether horribly. But peel away his civilized mien and, I'm pretty sure Tom Glavine is still a Brave and still an ass. He's never been Glavo or Tommy or, God forbid, Tom since he's been here.

When the no-hitter got away from him while I sat in the Broadway Theatre manipulating my Walkman during the first act of a Sunday matinee of Bombay Dreams last May, I was 99% shattered and 1% relieved that Kit Pellow saved the honor of the first Mets' no-hitter for somebody, anybody else.

Generally speaking, though, who you were in a past baseball life, as long as you are now a Met, doesn't concern me. Chris Woodward was a Blue Jay. Chris Woodward started at short and got two hits at Shea against the Mets on June 9, 1999, one of the wildest nights I ever spent in the confines of what John Kruk once referred to (in giving directions to a lost cabdriver) as the big blue thing. That was when David Wells returned to New York for the first time since he was traded by the other team that plays nearby and he shut us out for eight innings. He had his own cheering section of female David Wells wannabes, which is as frightening as it sounds. Leading 3-0, however, he couldn't get out of the ninth and the Mets rallied to tie it, going on to win in 14.

Aside from staying past midnight, rising for a fourteenth-inning stretch and witnessing Rey Ordoñez collect a game-winning hit, the game was marked for eternity by the infamous Bobby Valentine mustache-and-glasses disguise. Didn't know that until I saw the highlights later. But in the heat of battle, I hated the Blue Jays and by extension must've wished only bad things on Chris Woodward. But Sunday afternoon, as he emerged as superer than Joe McEwing, I heard myself call out to him, “WOODY!”

I assume that's his nickname. He was a Blue Jay, after all.

Pedro Martinez' past lives aren't going to be held against him either. Yeah, I remember the inside pitch to Mike and certainly held it against Martinez for the balance of that weekend, but Luis Lopez taking him deep seemed like swift and suitable retribution. Hey, we owned Pedro Martinez, he says with a chuckle. Before he was an icon, he was merely an awesome Expo with an awesome whammy on us, so it was quite a milestone in the coming-out party that was the 1997 Mets when Matt Franco took him deep in the eighth to secure a 2-1 win for Bobby Jones over him in early June.

We won't hold his failure to hold a lead against us in a past life against him either.

As for the beginning of this present life, you asked about my first game. It was July 11, 1973 versus the Astros. It was a 7-1 loss. Here are 10 things you don't really need to know about it:

1. I'd been watching games on TV since 1969 but as my parents weren't big fans, nobody acted to take me to a game.

2. They relented and got us tickets for the previous September but I got sick and my pediatrician, whom I've never forgiven, said I couldn't go. The Mets beat the Phillies that day while I watched and sulked in bed.

3. The kosher Camp Avnet of Long Beach was my ticket to ride. They piled us all into buses and took us to Shea on a gloomy summer morning. I didn't want to go to day camp, but the record clearly indicates that if I hadn't, I'd never have gone to my first game.

4. Our counselor, Marvin, saw a bunch of us waiting for the bus with our gloves and told us to go put them back in our cubby holes. “You'll just lose 'em,” he said. To this day, I've never brought my glove to a game because Marvin said I'd just lose it.

5. When we got to the big blue thing (then the big speckled thing), the first thing I did was buy a yearbook. That was my assignment, having heard Lindsey, Ralph and Bob urge me three times every game to add one to my baseball library. The cover featured every 1973 Met who had ever been an All-Star. One of the All-Stars was Jim Fregosi. I looked up from the yearbook at the scoreboard where it was announced Jim Fregosi had just been sold to the Texas Rangers. I wondered if they'd put a revised edition on sale immediately. They didn't.

6. Tommie Agee hit a home run for the Astros. Jerry Koosman took the loss for the Mets. Willie Mays played first for us.

7. To beat traffic, we left before the game was over. That rubbed me the wrong way.

8. As our camp was kosher, we could only eat the box lunches that we brought along. I ate Camp Avnet salami on what turned out to be a very warm, very humid day. When I got home, I threw up. That rubbed me the wronger way.

9. More times than I would have imagined, I've been at midweek afternoon games in the heat of summer to find that among the many Metropolitan Area day camps welcomed on the big board is a contingent from good old Camp Avnet. I always applaud when I see the name.

10. On July 11, 1993, the 20th anniversary of my first game, I went with Rob Emproto to my only regular-season Sunday night affair. It was Mets vs. Dodgers, Gooden vs. Candiotti. The Mets held an early 1-0 lead and were threatening for more. The Dodgers brought in a rookie of whom I snidely remarked he's probably only on the team because of his brother. The ever-aware Rob told me “this guy's probably better than his brother.” And with that, young Pedro Martinez slammed the door shut on the Mets and Gooden, with the Dodgers winning 2-1.

The way things are suddenly going for him, no past-life heroics are going to save Doc Gooden now. I'm thinking his Mets HOF induction just got lost in the mail.