Welcome to Flashback Friday: I Saw The Decade End, a milestone-anniversary salute to the New York Mets of 1969, 1979, 1989 and 1999. Each week, we immerse ourselves in or at least touch upon something that transpired within the Metsian realm 40, 30, 20 or 10 years ago. Amazin' or not, for the final time, here it comes.

This is literally the Flashback to end all 2009 Flashbacks, which is appropriate since its subject is the tribute to end all tributes to the Mets season to end the last millennium.

Prepare to meet the Amazin' Medley, my musical homage to the 1999 Mets.

What you are about to read is a transcription and explanation of all 156 segments of a montage I produced almost ten years ago. I sat on the floor in front of my stereo with cassettes, LPs, 45s and CDs laid out around me and I created a twenty-minute remembrance of what I'd just recently lived through. It exists as a tape, not the most Internet-friendly format here on the cusp of this century's second decade.

Nevertheless, I take it out now and then, maybe twice a year, pop it into a cassette player (I still have several) and listen to it. It shoots me right back to that December day when I decided to follow through on my impulse and hit PLAY, RECORD and PAUSE a whole lot. It shoots me back a little further, to the 1999 postseason, then to the 1999 regular season and to seasons before that. It may be the purest expression I have of how my mind works where the Mets are concerned, particularly those Mets. I didn't write a word of anything on that tape. It's all songs and play-by-play. But it all makes sense to me as if it's coming from me.

Over the years, I've dubbed a dozen, maybe fifteen copies for friends whom I thought would enjoy it. Some said they did. Some said they'd let me know. Some people are weirded out by stuff like this. I understand. But obviously I don't care. I love the Amazin' Medley. In revisiting it here, I love it all over again. I hope you like it. I hope you kind of get it.

But mostly, I love the Amazin' Medley and the team that inspired it.

Some of these audio choices require little explanation, but I'll at least drop in a token thought for each of them. Links are provided where possible to the music to give you an idea regarding anything with which you're not yet familiar. Some of these songs I like a great deal on their own. Some of them I don't care about stripped of their Met context. I did gather each of them up to make sure this project would be exactly what I wanted it to be in 1999. These days I just make playlists and the whole thing goes a lot quicker. Back then, doing a tape like this was the ultimate labor of love. But so was what the 1999 Mets did for me, so we're even.

Without further adieu...meet the Medley.

1. Final notes of "Meet The Mets" (organ instrumental)
FROM "Meet The Mets" by Jane Jarvis, 1996 recording, given away at Shea on Meet The Mets CD Day, 9/15/96
BECAUSE Not that I needed to fall in love with this song all over again, but I did. The fall of '96 was a very bittersweet time to be a Mets fan. You had the usual melancholy of a losing season winding down. You had the distracting uplift of the team records tied or set by Lance Johnson, Todd Hundley and Bernard Gilkey. And you had that whole other thing elsewhere in the city. Hearing "Meet The Mets" over and over again on CD was just what I needed.

2. "It was a very good year."
FROM "It Was A Very Good Year" by Frank Sinatra
BECAUSE 1999 was a very good year.

3. "Many years since I was here."
FROM "New York Groove" by Ace Frehley
BECAUSE First playoff appearance in more than a decade. I had this song in my mind as the soundtrack for the 1996 run to glory that never occurred. I could see Jason Isringhausen and Bill Pulsipher starring in a video that would be shown before every game on DiamondVision. I swear I could.

4."The summer here is over in a million different ways."
FROM "It's Never Too Late To Be Alone" by Del Amitri
BECAUSE The pervading sadness that the playoffs and all that preceded them were over in a million different ways.

5. "Give me one more summer."
FROM "One More Summer" by the Rainmakers
BECAUSE The pervading determination to relive those playoffs and all that preceded them.

6. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon. We're gonna get it started."
FROM "C'mon C'mon (We're Gonna Get It Started)" by Sloan
BECAUSE Rebooting and reliving 1999. When I discovered this song via the defunct MuchMusic channel in 1998, I wished the Mets would take the field to this.

7. "Are you ready?"
FROM "Are You Ready For Love?" by Elton John and the Spinners
BECAUSE The Mets' '99 enigmatic marketing theme was Are You Ready?

8. "Baby, I'm ready to go."
FROM "Ready To Go" by Republica
BECAUSE After the painfully short Wild Card bit of '98, I sure as hell was ready to go in '99. Orel Hershiser warmed up to this jock jam staple as a Met though I doubt he specifically requested it.

9. "Keep the ball rollin', keep the ball rollin'."
FROM "Keep The Ball Rollin'" by Jay & The Techniques
BECAUSE Twofold meaning here: a desire to keep this positive vibe going and a reference to the most famous play in Mets history, one that involved a ground ball rolling 'til it rolled through a first baseman's legs. I secured this 45 during the summer of '99 for reasons unrelated to baseball. Every Memorial Day, WABC would air "Rewound," a salute to their awesome MusicRadio heritage. I'd come out of it with a yen for three or four songs I hadn't heard before or in ages. This one wasn't on CD — and what was an MP3, exactly?

10. "Heaven let you light shine down."
FROM "Shine" by Collective Soul
BECAUSE The runup to 1999 begins with the theme songs I attached to the years directly preceding it. I had a song for the 1994 Mets, and this was it. Perfect confluence. The Mets were playing not bad, which was a big step up from previous seasons. And this was a big hit on the radio while they were improving.

11. "These are better days."
FROM "Better Days" by Bruce Springsteen
BECAUSE This was 1995's theme, second half, when the Mets finished on a 34-18 tear, leaving me bursting with optimism for '96.

12. "It's going to take some time this time."
FROM "It's Going To Take Some Time" by the Carpenters.
BECAUSE The cold slap of reality in 1996 showed me it wasn't going to be easy to follow up the perceived steps up from '94 and '95.

13. "Hope of deliverance from the darkness that surrounds us."
FROM "Hope Of Deliverance" by Paul McCartney
BECAUSE This described the mood that came over me as the 1997 season revealed itself as the delightful surprise of the decade. We were being delivered from the disappointments of the preceding six losing campaigns. Temporally, this song also reminds me of the early spring of 1993 when there was a horrible nor'easter that foreshadowed a horrible blizzard of baseball to come.

14. "Coming out of the dark."
FROM "Coming Out Of The Dark" by Gloria Estefan
BECAUSE Continuing the 1997 deliverance theme.

15. "I want something else to get me through this semi-charmed kind of life, baby."
FROM "Semi-Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind
BECAUSE As revelatory as 1997 was, I noticed that as the Mets rose, I became more and more wrapped up in all their ups and all their downs. I hadn't felt that way in a long time and, as exhilarating as it was, it was also wearing on me. 1997 really ignited a whole new level of passion for the Mets that I continue to maintain to this day. It's often a wonderful thing. Sometimes it's only a semi-wonderful thing.

16. "It's been one week since you looked at me."
FROM "One Week" by Barenaked Ladies
BECAUSE The one week in question is the final week of the 1998 season, the week when the Mets went 0-5 and lost the one-game Wild Card lead they held on the penultimate Sunday of the season. The song was a hit that fall. Seemed too close to be a coincidence. That last week of '98 weighed heavily on me vis-à-vis making it to the playoffs in '99.

17. "Everything falls apart."
FROM "Everything Falls Apart" by Dog's Eye View
BECAUSE Everything fell apart during the aforementioned week.

18. "Someday, you will ache like I ache."
FROM "Doll Parts" by Hole
BECAUSE Future collapses have perhaps obscured it, but boy did that one week hurt.

19. "Through all the gloom, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light. And glory!"
FROM "Is Anybody There?" by William Daniels as John Adams in the motion picture version of 1776
BECAUSE For some people, the Beach Boys represent a summer soundtrack. For me, it's this movie's soundtrack. It has been a staple for Stephanie and me every Fourth of July since 1991. John Adams saw victory over the horizon despite the odds stacked so dauntingly against him. And that's how I had to make myself feel after 1998 and again as 1999's regular season careened to its exciting conclusion.

20. "Turn this thing around. I will not go quietly."
FROM "I Will Not Go Quietly" by Don Henley
BECAUSE This first became a Mets song for me in 1997 as that season progressed, though the first time I heard it was the first time I was dragged (yes, dragged) to a strip club, in 1989. It was a beverage convention in Las Vegas and kind of a rite of passage. It was a cringey experience, but least I got this song out of it.

21. "Take this losing hand and make it win."
FROM "Leaving Las Vegas" by Sheryl Crow
BECAUSE Same principle as above (same city, too!). Heard it one morning on my Walkman in '97 and its match for what I was thinking floored me. I walked around thinking about the Mets a lot in 1997.

22. "It's not over 'til it's over."
FROM "It's Not Over ('Til It's Over)" by Starship
Revived from the 1987 divisional run when this was a hit. Points to Starship for co-opting from Yogi when he was managing the Mets. Points deducted for this and most of their songs rather sucking. And for the Mets being over a few games too soon in 1987.

23. "Maybe I'm amazed."
FROM: "Maybe I'm Amazed" by Paul McCartney
BECAUSE Thought I should have a song with some variation of Amazin' in here. Was surprised I didn't own it when I was doing the medley. Ran out to the CD Warehouse in Rockville Centre to purchase a used copy. I was quite devoted to my medleys.

24. "Here they come again. Catch us if you can."
FROM "Catch Us If You Can" by the Dave Clark Five
BECAUSE Another 1997-born Mets connection. In very early July of that seminal year, the Mets had begun to look like pretenders. Then they re-energized and took three in a row from the Wild Card-leading Marlins before the All-Star Break. Here, I thought, we come again. And maybe we'll be the ones being chased before this semi-charmed kind of year is over.

25. "Said that we can do it, you know I wanna do it again.
FROM "Every Morning" by Sugar Ray
BECAUSE A call for another playoff year in 2000. And a call to replay the thrills of 1999.

26. "No retreat, baby, no surrender."
FROM "No Surrender" by Bruce Springsteen
BECAUSE This was the theme of the official highlight video for the patron saint of near-miss Met seasons, 1985. No surrender in '85 and we got '86. No surrender in '99 either, baby.

27. "You make me believe."
FROM "You Make Me Believe" by Simply Red

28. "And I just can't help believing."
FROM "I Just Can't Help Believing" by B.J. Thomas

29. "Now I'm a believer."
FROM "I'm A Believer" by the Monkees

30. "I believe..."
FROM "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion

31. "Still I look to find a reason to believe."
FROM "Reason To Believe by Don Williams

The previous five tracks are BECAUSE You Gotta Believe.

32. "If you believe within your soul, just hold on tight and don't let go."
FROM "Make It Happen" by Mariah Carey
BECAUSE It's not enough just to Believe.

33. "Don't let go. Don't let go."
FROM "Don't Let Go" by Isaac Hayes
BECAUSE When you've lost seven in a row in September, it's tough to hang on.

34. "I'm alive. Yeah, yeah."
FROM "Power To The Meek" by Eurythmics
BECAUSE We were alive after the mess we were in.

35. "Winter's gonna turn to spring."
FROM "It Only Takes A Minute" by Tavares
BECAUSE Spring equals baseball. Baseball equals hope. Hope equals 1999 Mets.

36. "There're just so many summers, babe, and just so many springs."
FROM "The Last Worthless Evening" by Don Henley
BECAUSE We only get one baseball season per year. Let us not blow it.

37. "No, they can't take that away from me."
FROM "They Can't Take That Away From Me" by Lisa Stansfield
BECAUSE Win or lose, my baseball season is my baseball season. Most every season in the '90s gave me a reason to want to give that up, but my love for this game was too strong.

38. "Show a little faith, there's magic in the night."
FROM "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen
BECAUSE The "because" is pretty obvious, but a word on the version used, the acoustic one from the Live box released in the fall of 1986. I was visiting a friend shortly after the World Series and we were in my rented convertible playing the first cassette from the boxed set, and it was only then that the lyric struck me as perfect for what the Mets did on October 25. It also didn't hurt that we were on Nebraska Avenue. I knew a guy in high school who used "the town full of losers" line as his obnoxious yearbook quote, so I never really liked this song until that moment. Post-Buckner, I claimed it for the Mets.

39. "I see fireworks! I see the pageant and pomp and parade!"
FROM "Is Anybody There?"
BECAUSE John Adams saw great things that awaited beyond Independence. I saw those awesome fireworks they set off at Shea during the NLDS and imagined a whole Continental Congress worth of ticker tape.

40. "A miracle in the rain."
FROM "Riders To The Stars" by Barry Manilow
BECAUSE You tell me what the Grand Slam Single was.

41. "I guess the Lord must be in New York City."
FROM "I Guess The Lord Must Be In New York City" by Harry Nilsson
BECAUSE You tell me Who was in the Upper Deck that night.

42. "Can't you feel the town exploding?"
FROM "With A Little Luck by Paul McCartney & Wings
BECAUSE In the spring of 1986 when the Rangers reached the Stanley Cup semifinals, WAPP (The Apple 103.5 FM) put together a montage not unlike this one to cheer on the local team. This very snippet was used, and I couldn't wait for October, anticipating the even greater montage the station would compile on the Mets' behalf. 'APP switched formats to dance in August, so there went that modest dream.

43. "So baby, you better believe I'm back — back in the New York groove."
FROM "New York Groove"
BECAUSE The town exploded because of the Mets.

44. "Heaven — it was heaven. I have never known a bliss. Witnessed anything like this."
FROM "The Way To Your Heart" by Soulsister
BECAUSE This was a minor hit in the summer of '89 that I spent about four years trying to track down until something called the Internet made it available on CD in the summer of '99. First thing I ever found via this crazy series of tubes. Anyway, I never witnessed anything like the next sound you'll hear.

45. "Ventura is waiting. McGlinchy staring in has his sign. The two-one pitch. AND A DRIVE IN THE AIR TO DEEP RIGHT FIELD! THAT BALL HEADED TOWARD THE WALL... THAT BALL IS... OUTTA HERE! OUTTA HERE! A GAME-WINNING GRAND SLAM HOME RUN OFF THE BAT OF ROBIN VENTURA! VENTURA WITH A GRAND SLAM! THEY'RE MOBBING HIM BEFORE HE CAN GET TO SECOND BASE! THE METS HAVE WON THE BALLGAME!"
—Gary Cohen

46. "The New York Mets are on the air!"
FROM Let's Go Mets, an LP of audio highlights from the 1964 season. The announcer welcoming you to Mets baseball is Ralph Kiner.
BECAUSE Believe it or not, everything up to "Ventura is waiting" was prelude. The real tribute starts now.

47. "We got the teamwork to make the dream work. Let's go...let's go Mets!"
FROM "Let's Go Mets!" by New York's Dream Team
BECAUSE Some concepts, such as teamwork and dreams working are eternal, whether it's 1986 or 1999.

48. "Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles."
FROM "Miracle Of Miracles" by Leonard Frey, who played Motel in the film version of Fiddler On The Roof.
BECAUSE I saw Fiddler on Broadway in 1971, but it always puts me in mind of 1969.

49."It's a miracle (miracle), a true blue spectacle, a miracle come true."
FROM "It's A Miracle" by Barry Manilow
BECAUSE Hitting you over the head with a big Met theme, of course. This song also pulls me back to 1975, the Sunday I attended my first baseball card show at the then Statler Hilton across from Penn Station. We went out to dinner afterwards and my dad asked to see which cards I got. I handed him a bunch of old Mets, one of which — Ron Locke, 1965 — he dropped in some salad dressing. Not much miraculous there, I admit.

50. "You have to believe we are magic, nothing can stand in our way.
FROM "Magic" by Olivia Newton-John
BECAUSE In the summer of 1980, The Magic [Was] Back. And as it was tightening its grip on my imagination, Olivia Newton-John gave the season a soundtrack.

51. "It's a kind of magic, magic, magic, magic."
FROM "A Kind Of Magic" by Queen
BECAUSE I somehow managed to never hear this song 'til like 1995. But once I did, I knew what it was about, about, about, about.

52. "Oh, ho, ho, it's magic, you know, never believe it's not so. It's magic."
FROM "Magic by Pilot
BECAUSE I think we have a pretty solid theme going here. Big favorite when it came out in 1975. Amazin' revival for it, in my head, in 1980.

53. "We've got magic to do just for you. We've got miracles plays to play."
FROM "Magic To Do" by Ben Vereen
BECAUSE In the fall of 1973, a commercial for Pippin showed up an awful lot on local TV. Off Broadway, over in Queens, an even bigger production was generating great reviews. It couldn't have been a coincidence that the Mets were making magic at the same time.

54. "Mantei's one-oh, and a high fly ball deep to center field, back goes Finley, goin' back, warning track, AT THE WALL...JUMPING..."
—Gary Cohen

55. "We've got parts to perform, hearts to warm. Kings and things to take by storm..."
FROM "Magic To Do"
BECAUSE The song came roaring back to me 25 years later, down the stretch in 1998. Didn't work, but it bubbled up yet again in June of '99. We had been making something of a move on first place just before Stephanie and I were heading to Boston to visit Fenway. Of more import to me was the Mets were traveling to Atlanta that very same weekend. "Kings and things to take by storm," eh? The Mets won the first game of that series. A sweep would tie them for first. It didn't work yet again, but the Mets were always finding magic to do.

56. "AND...IT'S OUTTA HERE! IT'S OUTTA HERE! PRATT HIT IT OVER THE FENCE! FINLEY JUMPED AND HE MISSED IT! THE METS WIN THE BALLGAME! THE METS WIN THE BALLGAME! ON A HOME RUN OVER THE CENTER FIELD FENCE, BY TODD PRATT! THE METS HAVE WON THE SERIES, THREE GAMES TO ONE!"
—Gary Cohen

57. "As we go along our way."
FROM "Magic To Do"
BECAUSE Miracle plays to play, you say?

58. "True believers livin' on the borderline."
FROM "Hot Rod Hearts" by Robbie Dupree

59. "Do you believe in life after love? I can feel something inside me say I really don't think you're strong enough, no."
FROM "Believe" by Cher

60. "I must confess, I still believe (still believe)."
FROM "...Baby One More Time" by Britney Spears

61. "Don't stop believin', don't stop believin', don't stop believin'."
FROM "Don't Stop Believin'" by Olivia Newton-John

62. "Good god, I'm a believer."
FROM "Are You Jimmy Ray?" by Jimmy Ray

63. "I believe in miracles."
FROM "I Believe In You And Me" by Whitney Houston

The previous six tracks are also BECAUSE You Gotta Believe.

64. "When the night is falling, you cannot find the light (light). You feel your dreams are dying, hold tight."
FROM "You Get What You Give" by New Radicals
BECAUSE Well, sure, the not giving up and all that, but on a more personal level, as the 1999 season was revealing itself as something special, I opted one Sunday to drive to Shea instead of taking the train. That's never an easy decision for me, prone to panic attacks when behind the wheel, particularly on a highway. I tried it with trepidation. This song came on a tape I was listening to as I merged on to the Southern State. I accelerated against all doubt.

65. "Talkin' baseball — baseball and the Mets."
FROM "Talkin' Baseball (Baseball And The Mets)" by Terry Cashman
BECAUSE Dreams dying...holding tight...you know what you're talkin' when you're talkin' like that. And you know who's talkin' it. Terry Cashman recorded a Mets version of his original "Talkin' Baseball (Willie, Mickey & The Duke)" in 1982 and would re-record to keep up with roster additions as events merited. [Cashman would do one for 2000 and another for 2006, the latter of whose historical cataloguing included the line "Ventura hit that one-run grand slam."]

66. "Clontz is ready to go. Pitching off the stretch. Deals to Piazza...Low and outside — IT GETS AWAY! ONTO THE SCREEN! MORA SCORES! THE METS WIN IT! THE METS WIN IT! MORA IS MOBBED BY HIS TEAMMATES AS HE CROSSES HOME PLATE, THE METS WIN IN GAME NUMBER ONE-HUNDRED AND SIXTY-TWO, AND THE METS WILL PLAY AGAIN IN NINETEEN NINETY-NINE!"
—Gary Cohen

67. Opening notes to the single version of "1999" (instrumental)
FROM "1999" by Prince
BECAUSE The Mets would play again in 1999.

68."Here's the pitch...swung, lined hard, CAUGHT! The game is over! The Mets win it! They're on their way to Arizona! The Mets have won the Wild Card in the National League."
—Bob Murphy

69. "Wild boys! Wild boys! Wild boys! Wild boys!"
FROM "Wild Boys" by Duran Duran
BECAUSE Shea PA took to playing this in September '98 and October '99 as the Mets sought the Wild Card. Once it was captured in Cincinnati, somebody in New York had to play it.

70. "1999! Don't ya wanna go? 1999!"
FROM "1999" by Prince
BECAUSE Don't I wanna go? When it came to the moment when the Mets crossed the threshold from playoff hopefuls to playoff participants, I never wanted to leave.

71. "We've come a long, long way together, through the hard times and the good."
FROM "Praise You" by Fatboy Slim
BECAUSE At that moment of Wild Card clinching, I thought of everybody with whom I'd come through the hard times of Mets rooting. And now we had us some good.

72. "And your heart beats like a subway train. Ooh, it makes you wanna die."
FROM "Maria" by Blondie
BECAUSE Debbie Harry knew exactly what my insides felt like, going to and coming from Shea.

73. "We haven't had that spirit here since 1969."
FROM "Hotel California" by the Eagles
BECAUSE We begin our own historical cataloguing.

74. "Was the summer of '69."
FROM "Summer of '69" by Bryan Adams
BECAUSE We don't pass up the incredibly obvious.

75. "Seventy-three men sailed up from the San Francisco Bay."
FROM "Ride Captain Ride" by Blues Image
BECAUSE Nor do we pass up the contextually obscure. Not a lot of songs mentioned 1973, but this one came close — and hinted at the vicinity of that year's World Series!

76. "And after 1986, what else could be new?"
FROM "Modern Woman" by Billy Joel
BECAUSE A song that mentioned 1986, released in 1986, by my favorite singer/songwriter...yet I really couldn't stand it when it was a hit. I now understand it was just waiting for its medley closeup.

77. "Hey — 98..."
FROM "98.6 by Keith.
BECAUSE I swear, this is the last time I dredge up the year that directly preceded 1999.

78. "Such a sad, sad season (sad, sad season), when a good love dies."
FROM "I've Got To Use My Imagination" by Gladys Knight & The Pips
BECAUSE Except for restating how scarred that particular collapse left me, which is why I so desperately desired an antidote to cure the lingering aftereffects from that sad, sad season.

79. "99, I've been waiting so long."
FROM "99" by Toto
BECAUSE Toto serenaded '99 in 1980. Prescient fellows. Me, I waited eleven years for the Mets to return to the playoffs. Long enough.

80. "Finally, it's happened to me, right in front of my face, my feelings can't describe it."
FROM "Finally" by CeCe Peniston
BECAUSE The wait was finally over. And once the hubbub died down on October 4, this is the song I opted to slide into the CD player.

81. "Maybe for the only time in my life, something in the air (something in the air) turning me around and guiding me right."
FROM "Prime Time" by the Alan Parsons Project
BECAUSE I'd say this whole period was pretty unprecedented in my life, even as Metted up as I had been for thirty years to that point.

82. "High above all time and space, and I remember summer days."
FROM "Summer Days" by the Partridge Family
BECAUSE Backing up a bit, to that summer that preceded that fall...

83. "Since that summer, since that summer."
FROM "Summer Girls" by LFO
BECAUSE...when I sat high above all time, space and Shea Stadium and witnessed what was, to that point, the greatest thing I'd ever witnessed there.

84. "Now Rivera brings the hands together...runners take a lead at all three bases. One-two to Franco...LINE DRIVE base hit into right field! Henderson scores! Here comes Alfonzo...here comes O'Neill's throw to the plate...Alfonzo slides...he's safe, the Mets win it! THE METS WIN IT! MATT FRANCO WITH A LINE DRIVE SINGLE TO RIGHT AND HE'S BEING MOBBED BY HIS TEAMMATES! Matt Franco, a two-run single off Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the ninth inning, and the Mets win it, nine to eight!"
—Gary Cohen

85. "So, what ya think? You like the Yankees or the Mets this year?"
FROM "Right And Wrong" by Joe Jackson
BECAUSE On July 10, 1999, as much as any day, the answer was easy.

86. "Hurray! I'm for the other team!"
FROM "Interjections!" by Essra Mohawk, from SchoolHouse Rock
BECAUSE Only for argument's sake and the tenor of the times were the Mets the "other" team. They were the only team in my book...on July 10 and on any day.

87. "Polaroid camera, stereo sets, season box, to see the Mets!"
FROM "This Is The Life" by Billy Daniels and Sammy Davis, Jr. from Golden Boy
BECAUSE It was circa 1975 that on a Sunday night i was watching Sammy and Company, the talk show hosted by Sammy Davis, Jr. Even for its genre, it was pretty unctuous (parodied to perfection years later on SCTV as the Sammy Maudlin Show). Yet I carried with me one minute memory from those late Sunday nights with Sammy: He performed a number from a Broadway show in which he starred in the '60s, Golden Boy, and the song mentioned the Mets in a very positive connotation — a component of the good life, as it were. One afternoon in September 1999, the lyric about a season box to see the Mets clicked on in my mental jukebox. For the hell of it, I headed to a nearby Barnes & Noble and...found it! Golden Boy's soundtrack from 1964 was inexplicably readily available 35 years after the fact.

88. "These are a few of my favorite things."
FROM "My Favorite Things" by Al Jarreau and Kathleen Battle
BECAUSE Just echoing Sammy here. I don't know about the Polaroid, but imagine a season box to see the Mets...

89. "Mister Mojo Risin'. Mister Mojo Risin'. Mister Mojo Risin'. Mister Mojo Risin'."
FROM "L.A. Woman" by the Doors.
BECAUSE You didn't think I was going to let this pitch go by much longer, did you?

90. "Hot fun in the summertime. Hot fun in the summertime. Hot fun in the summertime. Hot fun in the summertime."
FROM "Hot Fun In The Summertime" by Sly & The Family Stone
BECAUSE This is a great song, and the '99 Mets were hot fun in their summertime and all, but to tell you the truth, I just needed a breather after invoking Mr. Mojo's rise.

91. "Talkin' 'bout sweet seasons on my mind."
FROM "Sweet Seasons" by Carole King
BECAUSE This, too, is appropriate enough to that sweet season, if a little on the nose. I'm still thinking about "L.A. Woman" and I'm still blown away by how the Mojo Risin' thing caught on, how Robin Ventura invented it in the clubhouse and the rest of us were brought in. Metsdom's greatest borrowed hit, Metsdom's biggest inside joke, so to speak.

92. "Seasons of love. Seasons of love."
FROM "Seasons Of Love by Stevie Wonder & the Cast of Rent
BECAUSE I'd been looking to hook the Mets up with this song (particularly this version from the soundtrack) since I first heard it in September of '96. 1996 was not a big season of love for the Mets, save for Lance Johnson, I suppose. As long as we were on the season theme, it worked for 1999. A lot to love, you know.

93. "Join us, leave your field to flower. Join us, leave your cheese to sour. Join us, come and waste an hour or two...doodle-ee-do."
FROM "Magic To Do"
BECAUSE From one Broadway favorite back to another. The opening lyrics invite you to stay for the show, but they're perfect for a ballgame. And they provide us the perfect entrée to check out the lineup, more or less, for your 1999 New York Mets.

94. Instrumental portion from "Searching" by Change Featuring Luther Vandross
BECAUSE It's Rickey Henderson's at-bat music.

95. Instrumental portion from "Happy Days" by Pratt & McClain, representing Edgardo Alfonzo
BECAUSE Fonzie! OK, I cheated here. Fonzie's at-bat music in 1999 was "Ran Kan Kan" by Tito Puente, but I didn't know the name nor was there a Google or an iTunes around to help me figure it out. But aaaayyyy, when Fonzie was a Met, they were all happy days.

96. Instrumental portion from "Beast Of Burden" by the Rolling stones.
BECAUSE It's John Olerud's at-bat music.

97. Instrumental portion from "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience
BECAUSE It's so Mike Piazza's at-bat music.

98. Instrumental portion from "Runnin' Down A Dream" by Tom Petty
BECAUSE It's Robin Ventura's at-bat music.

99. Instrumental portion from "Bennie And The Jets" by Elton John
BECAUSE It's Benny Agbayani's at-bat music, though the theme from Hawaii Five-O was known to sneak in from time to time.

100. "Quicker than a ray of light, quicker than a ray of light, quicker than a ray of light!"
FROM "Ray Of Light" by Madonna
BECAUSE Mild cheat here. They played this for Rey Ordoñez when he got a big hit (which means they didn't have much cause to play it), but his prevailing at-bat music was, of course, "Boom Boom Boom" by the Outhere Brothers, immediately recognizable but irksomely unidentifiable, at least to me a decade ago.

101. Instrumental portion from "Sirius" by the Alan Parsons Project
BECAUSE I didn't know that tense music Shea's A/V squad cued up when the opposing battery conferenced when the Mets had runners on base in the late innings had a name. Then I got hold of the Alan Parsons CD with "Prime Time" on it and discovered that it was "Sirius," as in time to get serious and drive this pitcher from the mound.

102. Instrumental portion from "All Along The Watchtower" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience
BECAUSE It's Matt Franco's at-bat music. All that conferencing, and you have to face our best pinch-hitter!

103. Instrumental portion from "Born To Run" by Bruce Springsteen
BECAUSE I realize we're batting out of order here (and have no centerfielder), but this is the music to which New Jersey's own Al Leiter warmed up. I'm not certain as to whether he batted to it. It's not like it particularly mattered now, did it?

104. Instrumental portion from "Johnny B. Goode" by Chuck Berry
BECAUSE It's John Franco's longtime trot-in music. Franco lost his closer role to injury and Armando Benitez, but I didn't know what Armando came into in '99 and I wasn't about to ask him.

105. Instrumental portion from "Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of...)" by Lou Bega
BECAUSE The role that "Lazy Mary" would eventually take on was, for a very brief period in September 1999 — maybe only for the Sunday I remember it playing, against the Rockies — the province of this contemporary semi-novelty hit. It was the seventh-inning stretch, it was after "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" and it was all Lou Bega. Very bouncy. Darryl Hamilton had hit a grand slam in the fifth. Everything felt bouncy. Not a little bit of worry to be had in Metland...right?

106."Now it's time for a breakdown."
FROM "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)" by En Vogue
BECAUSE We're having so much fun watching our Mets. But now there's a break in the action — and, yes, a breakdown in the 1999 Mets. A rather incurable breakdown.

107. "My beer is Rheingold the dry beer. Think of Rheingold whenever you buy beer."
FROM The Rheingold jingle of yore
BECAUSE Our story is about to take a dramatic turn. So naturally there's a commercial. And who better to serve as sponsor than the Mets' original beer benefactor, and the brand that was making a modestly successful comeback in the marketplace in the late '90s?

108. "Nothing new, Atlanta. Into the spotlight, one more time, just in time to play."
FROM "Camellia" by Hall & Oates
BECAUSE Couple things here. First, this is the track whose deployment in all this, quite frankly, impressed me the most. I didn't know this song from a hole in the head for most of its existence, yet somehow managed to stumble onto it while listening to a greatest hits CD after the playoffs were over. "ATLANTA? ONE MORE TIME TO PLAY?" Wow, I thought, Hall & Oates wrong a song anticipating Game Six. Stepping back from my appreciation of my medley luck, this is the moment more than any other on this tape that makes me choke up every time I hear it. I'm right back to eight o'clock, Tuesday night, October 19. I had such high hopes for that game. Win Game Six. Force Game Seven. It was all going to happen. C'mon Mets, into the spotlight. Play one more time and one more time after that...

109. "But it's a rainy night in Georgia. Baby, it's a rainy night in Georgia."
FROM "Rainy Night In Georgia" by Brook Benton
BECAUSE Sigh.

110. "Ohmigod, they killed Kenny. Ohmigod, they killed Kenny. Ohmigod, they killed Kenny. Ohmigod, they killed Kenny. Dude, Kenny is dead. Son of a bitch!"
FROM "Mentally Dull (Think Tank Remix)" by Vitro Featuring the Cast of South Park
BECAUSE Kenny Rogers threw four balls. Son of a bitch!

111. "I feel it's raining all over the world."
FROM "Rainy Night In Georgia"
BECAUSE It was dark, it was late, it was solemn. It was raining all over the world wherever a Mets fan stood without the sense to come in out of it.

112. "Come on babe, let's kiss this thing. Come on babe, let's kiss this thing goodbye."
FROM "Kiss This Thing Goodbye" by Del Amitri
BECAUSE Acceptance, denial, whatever the stages of grief are. It's worth noting that this song came up on my Walkman on the LIRR ride home after Game Three of the NLCS when we went down 3-0 and I was resigned to kissing this thing goodbye. But then Game Four and Game Five and I was anything but puckered up.

113. "Why can't you just get it through your head? It's over, it's over now."
FROM "It's Over" by Boz Scaggs
BECAUSE Anger? Acceptance? I wasn't buying it. How could it be over?

114. "Someday, yeah, we'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun. Someday, when the world is much brighter."
FROM "O-o-h Child" by the Five Stairsteps
BECAUSE This is where I say the hell with grief and start looking ahead.

115. "Some say better things will come our way."
FROM "Someday" by Sugar Ray
BECAUSE Looking ahead with the kind of optimism that someone who watched the 1999 Mets go down fighting deserves as his worldview.

116. "Won't be long 'til summer comes, now that the boys are here again."
FROM "The Boys Are Back In Town" by Thin Lizzy
BECAUSE It's the dead of winter, but leave me alone with that nonsense. It's time to...

117. "Meet the Mets, meet the Mets, step right up and greet the Mets."
FROM "Meet The Mets" by the Glen Osser Orchestra and Chorus
BECAUSE If the boys are back in town, even psychologically, somebody's got to go pick them up at the station, right?

118. "Get Metsmerized! Get Metsmerized!"
FROM That George Foster record that's so godawful that it's...no, it's godawful. Even I think it's godawful, and I have dubious musical taste to say the least.
BECAUSE Nevertheless, it doesn't take much to stoke us.

119. "Don't stop believin'! Hold on to that feelin'!"
FROM "Don't Stop Believin'" by Journey

120. "If only you believed like I believe, we'd get by. If you only believed in miracles, so would I."
FROM "Miracles" by Jefferson Starship.

121. "I believe in miracles since you came along."
FROM "You Sexy Thing" by Hot Chocolate

122. "There can be miracles when you believe."
FROM "When You Believe" by Mariah Carey & Whitney Houston

The previous four tracks are BECAUSE elimination from the National League Championship Series is no reason to let down.

123. "Gotta have faith (faith!) and get it fast. Faith and hope (hope!) if you let it last. Give us strength (strength!) to reach the stars. Put a song in our heart."
FROM "Peace In Our Time" by Eddie Money
BECAUSE Giving up when, say, down four runs in the ninth against an ace pitcher never did anybody any good.

124. "The pitch to Olerud...line drive...BASE HIT INTO LEFT FIELD! In comes Lopez! Here comes Cedeño! Here's comes Gant's throw from left field...the slide...SAFE, THE METS WIN IT! THE METS WIN IT! Cedeño slides home under the tag of Mike Lieberthal, a two-run GAME-WINNING single for John Olerud, the Mets score FIVE RUNS off Curt Schilling in the bottom of the ninth inning, and the Mets win it in a REMARKABLE finish!"
—Gary Cohen

125. "'Cause I gotta have faith. I gotta have faith. 'Cause I gotta have faith, a-faith, a-faith. I gotta have faith, a-faith, a-faith."
FROM "Faith" by George Michael
BECAUSE I developed faith across days like the Schilling game.

126. "All I need is a miracle. All I need is you. All I need is a miracle. All I need is you."
FROM "All I Need Is A Miracle" by Mike & The Mechanics
BECAUSE It helps to have your faith validated every now and then.

127. "I'm talkin' baseball — baseball and the Mets."
FROM "Talkin' Baseball (Baseball And The Mets)"
BECAUSE Believe, Faith and Miracle constitute the foundation of our shared lexicon.

128. "What a beautiful noise comin' up from the park."
FROM "Beautiful Noise" by Neil Diamond

129. "It's the New York City rhythm runnin' through my life. (City rhythm!)
FROM "New York City Rhythm" by Barry Manilow

130. It's a sign of the times, and a year ago, I never could have seen it.
FROM "A Sign Of The Times" by Petula Clark

131. I'll make a brand new start of it in old New York.
FROM "Theme From New York, New York" by Liza Minnelli

The previous four tracks are BECAUSE each was featured in the Mets' 25th anniversary video, An Amazin' Era and each remained relevant in the Mets 38th season. I particularly like the allusion Pet Clark makes to never having seen 1999 coming in 1998. And in case you're wondering, the Mets were the first team to regularly play "New York, New York" in their stadium, in 1980 — Liza's version, which, happily, is the best version.

132. "But in Queens I wear the crown. And the boys never let me down. Someday we're gonna tear up this town."
FROM "Under The Clock" by Janey Street
BECAUSE Damn if some songs weren't born for this kind of thing...

133. "The two-one pitch...HIGH FLY ball hit deep to left field...way, way back, it's going...yah, there it goes! Mike Piazza, a three-run homer! Oh my goodness! Where did that land? It hit the picnic tent, beyond the left field bullpen, about halfway up the picnic tent roof!"
—Bob Murphy and Gary Cohen

134. "Believe in the magic of a young girl's soul. Believe in the magic of a-rock 'n' roll. Believe in the magic that can set you free...ohh!"
FROM "Do You Believe In Magic?" by the Lovin' Spoonful
BECAUSE I also believed in Mike. He was tearing up this town.

135. Instrumental portion from "Rock 'N' Roll (Part 2)" by Gary Glitter, albeit punctuated by the occasional "Hey!"
BECAUSE Mike, not having let us down, is rounding the bases.

136. "You made me believe in magic. Your love's put a magic into my life."
FROM "You Make Me Believe In Magic" by the Bay City Rollers
BECAUSE Mike, the Mets, all of them. They all made me Believe in Magic in 1999.

137. "We can be heroes just for one day."
FROM "Heroes" by David Bowie
BECAUSE The Mets played it after a Saturday afternoon win in June against the Red Sox. I guess it didn't catch on. But still, for one day...for 97 regular-season days and five more in the postseason, they could be a lot.

138. "Singin' we will, we will rock you. We will, we will rock you."
FROM "We Will Rock You" by Queen
BECAUSE We perfected this in 1986. We popularized it. It's ours. We will always rock you, whoever you are.

139. "And the Mets have won a ballgame!"
FROM Lindsey Nelson, in another wonderful nugget from the 1964 Let's Go Mets album.
BECAUSE Whether you've won 108 ballgames, 53 ballgames or a slew of unbelievable ballgames, there's always something to get excited about.

140. "Got to keep on risin'! Mister Mojo Risin'! Mister Mojo Risin'! Mojo Risin'! Gotta Mojo Risin'!"
FROM "L.A. Woman"
BECAUSE Why on earth would you want to stop risin'?

141." Suddenly serene. The air is fresh and clean. Another rainy day in New York City."
FROM "Another Rainy Day In New York City" by Chicago
BECAUSE Rain? New York? This can only mean one thing...ENCORE!

142. "A DRIVE IN THE AIR TO DEEP RIGHT FIELD! THAT BALL HEADED TOWARD THE WALL... THAT BALL IS... OUTTA HERE! OUTTA HERE! A GAME-WINNING GRAND SLAM HOME RUN OFF THE BAT OF ROBIN VENTURA!"
—Gary Cohen

143. "And I'd play all day if I could."
FROM "All Day by Lisa Loeb
BECAUSE Fifteen innings. And they could have gone on another fifteen if it meant getting drive in the air to deep right field.

144. "The sun is shinin', c'mon get happy, the Lord is waitin' to take your hand. Shout hallelujah, c'mon get happy, we're goin' to the promised land."
FROM "Get Happy" by Jane Horrocks on the Little Voice soundtrack
BECAUSE Watched this movie in early September. It was all right, but this song made me get the soundtrack. And Robin Ventura made me think of this song. And this song makes me think of Robin Ventura in the bottom of the fifteenth.

145. "Another rainy day in New York City."
FROM "Another Rainy Day In New York City"
BECAUSE I'd reckon there was only one rainy day in New York City like October 17, 1999.

146. "You and me gonna touch the sky."
FROM "Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of...)"

147. "If I could reach higher, just for one moment touch the sky, from that one moment in my life."
FROM "Reach" by Gloria Estefan

The previous two tracks are BECAUSE that's what it felt like when Ventura hit that ball of McGlinchy. I felt I and we touched the sky. Maybe that's why we couldn't go any further than the eleventh inning in Atlanta. Maybe we couldn't get any higher. Then again, the Mets played "Reach" on the final day of 1997 while saluting their incredible non-championship season and I didn't know when I'd feel quite that high again. The answer was in just a little over two years.

148. "I gotta keep on risin'! Ridin'! Ridin! Gone ridin', ridin'! Gone ridin', ridin'! Gotta ridin', ridin'!"
FROM "L.A. Woman"
BECAUSE The Mojo rose pretty high, didn't it?

149. "All the fans are true to the orange and blue, so hurry up and come on down. 'Cause we got ourselves a ballclub, the Mets, of New York town."
FROM "Meet The Mets"
BECAUSE Every word is fact.

150. "We're gonna make it, this time we're gonna take it home."
FROM "Let's Go Mets!"
BECAUSE We're true to the orange and blue, thus we and our ballclub deserve the happiest ending I know of. Contrary to what happened at Turner Field, this time we're gonna make it.

151. "Mookie Wilson still hoping to win it for New York. Three and two the count. And the pitch by Stanley. And a ground ball...trickling...it is a FAIR BALL! GETS BY BUCKNER! ROUNDING THIRD KNIGHT! THE METS WILL WIN THE BALLGAME! THE METS WIN! THEY WIN! Unbelievable, the Red Sox in stunned disbelief!"
—Bob Murphy and Gary Thorne

152. "We've got magic to do just for you. We've got miracle plays to play. We've got parts to perform, hearts to warm. Kings and things to take by storm as we go along..."
FROM "Magic To Do"
BECAUSE Some stunned disbelief is better than others' stunned disbelief.

153. "Let's go Mets go! Let's go Mets go! Let's go Mets go! Let's go Mets go! Let's go Mets go! Mets! Mets! Mets!"
FROM "Let's Go Mets!"
BECAUSE Here's to New York's dream team. Here's to getting as close as possible to every season's dream, whatever that may be.

154. "East Side, West Side, everybody's comin' down...to meet the M-E-T-S Mets of New York town...of New York town!"
FROM "Meet The Mets"
BECAUSE Because I thought this would be the perfect way to end this.

155. "LET'S GO METS!"
FROM "Let's Go Mets!
BECAUSE Then I thought this would be even better.

156. It's soooo amazing!
FROM "Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel" from the South Park holiday collection, Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics
BECAUSE Just because.


What follows is the condensed version.

(Instrumental)

It was a very good year. Many years since I was here. The summer here is over in a million different ways. Give me one more summer.

C'mon, c'mon, c'mon. We're gonna get it started. Are you ready? Baby I'm ready to go. Keep the ball rollin', keep the ball rollin'.

Heaven let your light shine down. These are better days. It's going to take some time this time. Hope of deliverance from the darkness that surrounds us. Coming out of the dark.

I want something else to get me through this semi-charmed kind of life, baby.

It's been one week since you looked at me. Everything falls apart. Someday, you will ache like I ache.

Through all the gloom, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light. And glory!

Turn this thing around. I will not go quietly. Take this losing hand and make it win. It's not over 'til it's over. Maybe I'm amazed. Here they come again. Catch us if you can. Said that we can do it, you know I wanna do it again. No retreat, baby, no surrender.

You make me believe. And I just can't help believing. Now I'm a believer. I believe... Still I look to find a reason to believe.

If you believe within your soul, just hold on tight and don't let go. Don't let go. Don't let go. I'm alive. Yeah, yeah.

Winter's gonna turn to spring. There're just so many summers, babe, and just so many springs. No, they can't take that away from me.

Show a little faith, there's magic in the night. I see fireworks! I see the pageant and pomp and parade! A miracle in the rain. I guess the Lord must be in New York City. Can't you feel the town exploding? So baby, you better believe I'm back — back in the New York groove.

Heaven — it was heaven. I have never known a bliss. Witnessed anything like this.

Ventura is waiting. McGlinchy staring in has his sign. The two-one pitch. AND A DRIVE IN THE AIR TO DEEP RIGHT FIELD! THAT BALL HEADED TOWARD THE WALL... THAT BALL IS... OUTTA HERE! OUTTA HERE! A GAME-WINNING GRAND SLAM HOME RUN OFF THE BAT OF ROBIN VENTURA! VENTURA WITH A GRAND SLAM! THEY'RE MOBBING HIM BEFORE HE CAN GET TO SECOND BASE! THE METS HAVE WON THE BALLGAME!

The New York Mets are on the air!

We got the teamwork to make the dream work. Let's go...let's go Mets!

Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles. It's a miracle (miracle), a true blue spectacle, a miracle come true.

You have to believe we are magic, nothing can stand in our way. It's a kind of magic, magic, magic, magic. Oh, ho, ho, it's magic, you know, never believe it's not so. It's magic.

We've got magic to do just for you. We've got miracles plays to play.

Mantei's one-oh, and a high fly ball deep to center field, back goes Finley, goin' back, warning track, AT THE WALL...JUMPING...

We've got parts to perform, hearts to warm. Kings and things to take by storm...

AND...IT'S OUTTA HERE! IT'S OUTTA HERE! PRATT HIT IT OVER THE FENCE! FINLEY JUMPED AND HE MISSED IT! THE METS WIN THE BALLGAME! THE METS WIN THE BALLGAME! ON A HOME RUN OVER THE CENTER FIELD FENCE, BY TODD PRATT! THE METS HAVE WON THE SERIES, THREE GAMES TO ONE!

As we go along our way.

True believers livin' on the borderline. Do you believe in life after love? I can feel something inside me say I really don't think you're strong enough, no. I must confess, I still believe (still believe). Don't stop believin', don't stop believin', don't stop believin'. Good god, I'm a believer. I believe in miracles.

When the night is falling, you cannot find the light (light). You feel your dreams are dying, hold tight. Talkin' baseball — baseball and the Mets.

Clontz is ready to go. Pitching off the stretch. Deals to Piazza...Low and outside — IT GETS AWAY! ONTO THE SCREEN! MORA SCORES! THE METS WIN IT! THE METS WIN IT! MORA IS MOBBED BY HIS TEAMMATES AS HE CROSSES HOME PLATE, THE METS WIN IN GAME NUMBER ONE-HUNDRED AND SIXTY-TWO, AND THE METS WILL PLAY AGAIN IN NINETEEN NINETY-NINE!

(Instrumental)

Here's the pitch...swung, lined hard, CAUGHT! The game is over! The Mets win it! They're on their way to Arizona! The Mets have won the Wild Card in the National League.

Wild boys! Wild boys! Wild boys! Wild boys!

1999! Don't ya wanna go? 1999!

We've come a long, long way together, through the hard times and the good. And your heart beats like a subway train. Ooh, it makes you wanna die.

We haven't had that spirit here since 1969. Was the summer of '69. Seventy-three men sailed up from the San Francisco bay. And after 1986, what else could be new?

Hey — 98... Such a sad, sad season (sad, sad season), when a good love dies. 99, I've been waiting so long.

Finally, it's happened to me, right in front of my face, my feelings can't describe it. Maybe for the only time in my life, something in the air (something in the air) turning me around and guiding me right.

High above all time and space, and I remember summer days. Since that summer, since that summer.

Now Rivera brings the hands together...runners take a lead at all three bases. One-two to Franco...LINE DRIVE base hit into right field! Henderson scores! Here comes Alfonzo...here comes O'Neill's throw to the plate...Alfonzo slides...he's safe, the Mets win it! THE METS WIN IT! MATT FRANCO WITH A LINE DRIVE SINGLE TO RIGHT AND HE'S BEING MOBBED BY HIS TEAMMATES! Matt Franco, a two-run single off Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the ninth inning, and the Mets win it, nine to eight!

So, what ya think? You like the Yankees or the Mets this year? Hurray! I'm for the other team!

Polaroid camera, stereo sets, season box, to see the Mets! These are a few of my favorite things.

Mister Mojo Risin'. Mister Mojo Risin'. Mister Mojo Risin'. Mister Mojo Risin'.

Hot fun in the summertime. Hot fun in the summertime. Hot fun in the summertime. Hot fun in the summertime. Talkin' 'bout sweet seasons on my mind. Seasons of love. Seasons of love.

Join us, leave your field to flower. Join us, leave your cheese to sour. Join us, come and waste an hour or two...doodle-ee-do.

(Instrumental)

Quicker than a ray of light, quicker than a ray of light, quicker than a ray of light!

(Instrumental)

Now it's time for a breakdown. My beer is Rheingold the dry beer. Think of Rheingold whenever you buy beer.

Nothing new, Atlanta. Into the spotlight, one more time, just in time to play. But it's a rainy night in Georgia. Baby, it's a rainy night in Georgia. Ohmigod, they killed Kenny. Ohmigod, they killed Kenny. Ohmigod, they killed Kenny. Ohmigod, they killed Kenny. Dude, Kenny is dead. Son of a bitch!

I feel it's raining all over the world.

Come on babe, let's kiss this thing. Come on babe, let's kiss this thing goodbye. Why can't you just get it through your head? It's over, it's over now.

Someday, yeah, we'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun. Someday, when the world is much brighter. Some say better things will come our way. Won't be long 'til summer comes, now that the boys are here again.

Meet the Mets, meet the Mets, step right up and greet the Mets. Get Metsmerized! Get Metsmerized!

Don't stop believin'! Hold on to that feelin'!

If only you believed like I believe, we'd get by. If you only believed in miracles, so would I. I believe in miracles since you came along. There can be miracles when you believe.

Gotta have faith (faith!) and get it fast. Faith and hope (hope!) if you let it last. Give us strength (strength!) to reach the stars. Put a song in our heart.

The pitch to Olerud...line drive...BASE HIT INTO LEFT FIELD! In comes Lopez! Here comes Cedeño! Here's comes Gant's throw from left field...the slide...SAFE, THE METS WIN IT! THE METS WIN IT! Cedeño slides home under the tag of Mike Lieberthal, a two-run GAME-WINNING single for John Olerud, the Mets score FIVE RUNS off Curt Schilling in the bottom of the ninth inning, and the Mets win it in a REMARKABLE finish!

'Cause I gotta have faith. I gotta have faith. 'Cause I gotta have faith, a-faith, a-faith. I gotta have faith, a-faith, a-faith.

All I need is a miracle. All I need is you. All I need is a miracle. All I need is you. I'm talkin' baseball — baseball and the Mets.

What a beautiful noise comin' up from the park. It's the New York City rhythm runnin' through my life. (City rhythm!). It's a sign of the times, and a year ago, I never could have seen it. I'll make a brand new start of it in old New York.

But in Queens I wear the crown. And the boys never let me down. Someday we're gonna tear up this town.

The two-one pitch...HIGH FLY ball hit deep to left field...way, way back, it's going...yah, there it goes! Mike Piazza, a three-run homer! Oh my goodness! Where did that land? It hit the picnic tent, beyond the left field bullpen, about halfway up the picnic tent roof!

Believe in the magic of a young girl's soul. Believe in the magic of a-rock 'n' roll. Believe in the magic that can set you free...ohh!

(Instrumental)

You made me believe in magic. Your love's put a magic into my life. We can be heroes just for one day. Singin' we will, we will rock you. We will, we will rock you.

And the Mets have won a ballgame!

Got to keep on risin'! Mister Mojo Risin'! Mister Mojo Risin'! Mojo Risin'! Gotta Mojo Risin'!

Suddenly serene. The air is fresh and clean. Another rainy day in New York City.

A DRIVE IN THE AIR TO DEEP RIGHT FIELD! THAT BALL HEADED TOWARD THE WALL... THAT BALL IS... OUTTA HERE! OUTTA HERE! A GAME-WINNING GRAND SLAM HOME RUN OFF THE BAT OF ROBIN VENTURA!

And I'd play all day if I could. The sun's shining, c'mon get happy, the Lord's waiting to take your hand. Shout hallelujah, c'mon get happy, we're goin' to the promised land. Another rainy day in New York City.

You and me gonna touch the sky. If I could reach higher, just for one moment touch the sky, from that one moment in my life. I gotta keep on risin'! Ridin'! Ridin! Gone ridin', ridin'! Gone ridin', ridin'! Gotta ridin', ridin'!

All the fans are true to the orange and blue, so hurry up and come on down. 'Cause we got ourselves a ballclub, the Mets, of New York town.

We're gonna make it, this time we're gonna take it home.

Mookie Wilson still hoping to win it for New York. Three and two the count. And the pitch by Stanley. And a ground ball...trickling...it is a FAIR BALL! GETS BY BUCKNER! ROUNDING THIRD KNIGHT! THE METS WILL WIN THE BALLGAME! THE METS WIN! THEY WIN! Unbelievable, the Red Sox in stunned disbelief!

We've got magic to do just for you. We've got miracle plays to play. We've got parts to perform, hearts to warm. Kings and things to take by storm as we go along...

Let's go Mets go! Let's go Mets go! Let's go Mets go! Let's go Mets go! Let's go Mets go! Mets! Mets! Mets!

East Side, West Side, everybody's comin' down...to meet the M-E-T-S Mets of New York town...of New York town!

LET'S GO METS!

It's soooo amazing!

As the fires of the season from Hell cool to a smoldering pain, I’ve caught myself thinking about what the most agonizing part was. And I think I've figured it out.

It was the anticipation of disaster.

As the season wore wearily on, we were a beaten people by the middle innings. Then by the bottom of the first. Then by the Star-Spangled Banner. Then by late afternoon. It wasn’t a question of whether something disastrous would happen, but what form, exactly, the disastrous something would take. Bases-loaded walk? Flurry of GIDPs? Appalling error? Walkoff grand slam? Game-ending unassisted triple play?

By the end you might be surprised by how we lost, but not by the fact that we had. Maybe this was just a function of being a horrible team (and maybe wins like this always fit the formula) but the win that was arguably the best of the year -- this 10-9 victory over the Phillies -- was doubly astonishing because the Mets somehow hadn’t hit a Phillie with the bases loaded or had someone erased on an ill-advised steal of third or done some other stupid thing that would eat at you come 3 a.m. (I’d call Santos taking Papelbon deep the other great win of the season, but that happened before we had to accept the year was a total loss.)

So that part was the worst. The second-worst thing? It was the sorry part.

By late summer when I’d run into other baseball fans on the street or at parties, the conversation would take its inevitable turn and I’d grit my teeth, waiting.

Hey, sorry about the Mets. Tough year, hate to see that. How are you holding up?

The sentiment was genuine, the impulse was laudable. It’s what decent fans say, knowing full well that their team has a plague year in its future. Heck, I’ve offered back pats to friends whose teams are channeling November around the All-Star Break.

But man oh man, had I forgotten how much it sucks.

It sucks more than grudging respect: I didn’t think it would happen, but that’s a pretty good team. You guys have a chance.

It sucks a lot more than finger-wagging warnings against complacency: I dunno, you’ll probably win the division, but are those the starters you want in a short series?

It sucks a lot more than reflexive woofery: You guys are having a good year, but we’re going to totally smoke you in the playoffs.

It sucks way more than the attempted jinx disguised as surrender: It’s your year! We have no chance!

And yeah, it sucks more than outright, unvarnished hostility: Sorry man … but I HATE THE METS!

2007 and 2008 were different -- there was pity, but not the endless drip-drip-drip of condolences. The ’07 and ’08 attaboys felt lousy too, but they didn’t eat at you day after day. You didn’t wind up bracing for them.

Before the 2007 season, I wrote a Mets season preview for Deadspin that was equal parts loving look back at 2006 and paranoia about the fact that Omar Minaya hadn’t done much to improve that team. (I daresay that part looks prescient now.) To which one Deadspin commenter had this to say: “I hope at least one of these season previews will be somewhere along the lines of ‘My team is fucking great and we will rape our way to the World Series.’ Enough of this wishy-washy bullshit!”

I ignored that because, well, we’re the Mets. With the brief exception of the Bad Guys Won era, that’s not our style. (And even back then our CBA -- Converted Braggadocio Average -- was a lousy .200.) Ours is a legacy of miracles and humiliation, which doesn’t lend itself to strutting.

But after half a season of pity, I find myself coming back to that long-ago comment. I don’t want enemy baseball fans to feel sorry for us. I want to hear some grudging respect, some attempted jinxes, some outright hatred. Some Paul Lo Duca discussion of ending the other guy’s season. Some Wally Backman talk of opponents being buried and having no worries unless there are another 20 fucking car wrecks. (Good timing!) We’re nowhere near rampaging our way to much of anything, but next time we look like we might be, I’m not going to worry about baseball gods I might offend. Because honestly, what the hell have they done for us recently?

One of my favorite sages famously remarked that baseball has to be played with fear and arrogance. We’re missing half of the set, and I’m tired of it.

Enough of this wishy-washy bullshit, indeed.

Too bad the story is apocryphal. Too bad lefty Giant reliever Don Liddle — after retiring lefty Vic Wertz in Game One of the 1954 World Series with two on and none out — didn't actually declare to his teammates upon being pulled in favor of righty Marv Grissom, "I got my man." It's too bad because Liddle got his man on account of Wertz having the bad luck to blast Liddle's pitch to deep center field in the Polo Grounds...where the incomparable Willie Mays raced to catch it.

It's too bad because "I got my man," given the context, is one of the great lines in baseball history.

Yes, Don Liddle, brought on in relief of Sal Maglie specifically to face Wertz, got his man — albeit with a little help from his friend Willie. No, Don Liddle didn't stroll into the dugout and casually take credit for his perfect third of an inning. "Not in front of Leo the Lip" he didn't, Liddle's son Craig told George Vecsey on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of The Catch in 2004. "My dad heard people tell this story on television. You would never say something like that while the game was still on."

But Don could be wry after the game, once Dusty Rhodes' tenth-inning pinch-homer sent the New Yorkers to victory. In the clubhouse, Liddle could shake manager Durocher's hand and take deadpan credit for putting down Wertz.

"My dad told Leo, 'I got my guy,'" Craig Liddle recalled to Vecsey. "But this was after the game, not during it."

Nevertheless, the legend usually outstrips the truth. Thus, "I got my man" still gets around. Getting one's man, however one does it, is worthy of remembering and retelling. It's worthy of our respect, whether it's a matter of taking care of a dangerous hitter in the eighth inning of a World Series game or somewhat less intense circumstances.

The 2009 Mets ran out of intensity pretty early in their dismal campaign, but one Met lived up to the pressure with which he was presented over and over — and over and over — again. It is for being out there as much as he was and getting his man repeatedly that we proudly announce the Faith and Fear Most Valuable Met of 2009 is Pedro Feliciano.

Yes, Pedro Feliciano. Yes, the lefty specialist. Yes, one of the most anonymous figures of any significance in Mets history even if he has been in our midst longer than some of our most indelible figures ever were.

Yes, it was that kind of year.

But this award is based on something more than wryness. It is in appreciation for a player who, when all around him were crumbling, stood tall...or as tall as the 5' 10" Feliciano could. He stood tall and he stayed in there. Few Mets could make that claim in 2009. Most every Met, it seems, disappeared for discernible stretches of time last year. Injuries eliminated many of them. Others vanished in plain sight, victims of their recurring shortcomings. Few Mets could have measured up to Woody Allen's barometer for success in life, that most of it is just a matter of showing up.

Not Pedro, however. Pedro kept showing up. Pedro kept getting the call and, more often than not, Pedro kept getting the key out. Maybe it was only one out, but Pedro got his man.

One man in particular, who literally towers over Pedro Feliciano, was made to look small in his presence. That alone was awfully impressive in an otherwise depressing campaign.

Ryan Howard has six inches and 70 pounds on Pedro Feliciano if you believe official listings. Goodness knows you wouldn't trade Pedro Feliciano for Ryan Howard. But would you trade Pedro Feliciano knowing Ryan Howard is looming somewhere on your schedule over and over — and over and over — again? When the Mets dismantled most of their disaster-laden bullpen after 2008, they left one mainstay in place. No more Heilman. No more Schoeneweis. No more Smith or Sanchez or Ayala. But yes, more Pedro Feliciano. Always more Pedro Feliciano.

Why? Beyond why not? On the surface, a surface strewn with shattered late-inning hopes from '08, you might not have noticed if Pedro Feliciano had been among the missing entering '09. You wouldn't miss anybody from that bullpen. Pedro didn't stand out in a crowd. If anything, he was the kid in gym class who survived those thuggish dodgeball games by loitering in the back behind the more aggressive kids. Still, he had a couple of things going for him:

1) a functioning left arm;

2) an uncanny knack for using it to retire Ryan Howard of the division rival Phillies.

Have you heard of Ryan Howard? Big fellow. Hits lots of home runs, drives in lots of runners. Plays every day. A constant threat. But not to Pedro Feliciano, a gentleman who know a bit about constancy himself. In 2008, Howard came up to the bat against the Mets seven times only to see his personal Kryptonite staring him down from sixty feet, six inches away. It was Kryptonite in a blowout: Ryan Howard went 0-for-7 against Pedro Feliciano.

So, sure, that could be useful. Out went Heilman, Schoeneweis and the rest of the relief debris of 2008. But we'll keep Feliciano. We'll keep him and we'll send him out there in record-breaking fashion per usual. We used him 86 times in '08? We'll use him 88 times in '09. We'll see more of the southpaw specialist than we'll see of Carlos Beltran. We'll see more of Feliciano than we will of Carlos Delgado and Jose Reyes combined. We'll see only seven position players on the Mets more than we'll see Feliciano. And unlike most of them, we'll generally like what we see out of Pedro.

Especially when it comes to Ryan Howard.

Ryan Howard took his cuts against Pedro Feliciano a dozen times in 2009. Ryan Howard departed those encounters almost uniformly extremely disappointed. Twelve plate appearances, two bases-empty walks, no hits. None. There were four groundouts (one that resulted in a double play) and six strikeouts, all swinging. The last of them, on September 12 with the bases loaded in the eighth inning at Citizens Bank Park, proved crucial in securing perhaps the most satisfying Mets win of the year, the 10-9 comeback over the Phillies — a.k.a. Damn Thing III.

Across two seasons, Pedro Feliciano has pitched to Ryan Howard 19 times. Ryan Howard is 0-for-17 against him, producing 18 outs. Ryan Howard is a lefty threat. Pedro Feliciano is a lefty nullifier. The nullifier has won every time.

This is not to be underestimated as a positive factor in any season, particularly one as bereft of them as 2009. Feliciano's role in a given game was to come on and get the big lefty hitter on the other team. There was no bigger lefty hitter on the Mets' docket last year than Ryan Howard. Feliciano always got his man.

Perfect? On the 2009 Mets? Within the parameters of Feliciano v. Howard, you betcha. Otherwise, nothing and nobody was perfect, not even our MVM. Pedro mowed down Howard, but others got to him now and then. He had been marvelously successful against that other lefty scourge of the N.L. East, Chase Utley, in '08 (1-for-6), but was far less so in '09 (4-for-8). He balked in the winning run in Citi Field's first game. Only once was he stretched out beyond six batters. Twenty-three appearances were one batter and one batter only.

But that was his job and he did it well as a rule. How many Mets could say they did even that much last year?

2009 was the kind of season when you didn't want to watch much more than one at-bat in a typical Mets game, yet don't dismiss the value of an assignment the likes of which Pedro Feliciano tackles. Years have turned on the guy who came in to get the big lefty and were, instead, gotten by the big lefty. Mets fans with any kind of long-term memory would do well to recall the concept of the lefty specialist as it's played out over the past quarter of a century or so. Carlos Diaz acquitted himself nicely for a season (1983) and was then packaged with Bob Bailor to acquire Sid Fernandez. Dennis Cook was solid for a couple of seasons (1999-2000) when not blowing his top. And Mark Guthrie was regularly effective during his limited tenure (2002). Otherwise, it was a parade of paws whose talent had essentially gone south or rarely materialized:

Tom Gorman; Joe Sambito; Randy Niemann; Gene Walter; Bob McClure; Jeff Musselman; Dan Schatzeder; Doug Simons; Rich Sauveur; Paul Gibson; Lee Guetterman; Jeff Kaiser; Eric Gunderson; Don Florence; Bob MacDonald; Ricardo Jordan; Yorkis Perez; Tom Martin; Jaime Cerda; Graeme Lloyd; Mike Stanton; Dae-Sung Koo; Royce Ring.

The lefty specialist was the bane of the Mets fan's existence from the mid-'80s to the mid-'00s. Then came Pedro Feliciano, first for a while from '02 to '04 and then for good in '06, and suddenly we weren't cringing with every lefty Verizon Call to the Bullpen.

Sixty-four appearances in 2006. Seventy-eight appearances in 2007. Eighty-six appearances in 2008. Eighty-eight appearances in 2009. In each of the last two seasons Feliciano set a club record while leading the league in this department. Overuse seemed to be getting to him by September 2008. Come September 2009, he was thriving on it. Pedro gave up exactly one hit over his final twelve appearances, walking only four. For the season, he registered a WHIP of 1.163, the lowest of his career.

And consider his mindset. He, like us, had to watch the Mets from the beginning of the game to whenever he entered. Pedro didn't enter any game before the sixth inning; eighty-four times he came in in the seventh or later. The game had already taken on its shape by the time he was deployed, and being that it was 2009, it couldn't have been a very good shape. It was enough to make fans bury their heads in their Blue Smoke by the middle innings most nights. But Pedro went out there and got 'em. He got his lefties. He got a lot of his righties. He got his men.

Pedro Feliciano has done it quietly, for what that's worth. Except for one run-in in 2006 with Willie Randolph, Pedro hasn't annoyed or embarrassed anybody in the organization, at least publicly. He's the lefty who does the right thing. The Mets needed somebody to trot outside Citi Field before a late September game to pose for pictures with a sponsor, and in came Pedro. The Gary, Keith & Ron crowd huddled in the Bullpen Plaza needed a reason to stay cheerful during an extended rain delay the final Saturday of the season, and there stayed Pedro. No other Met made himself available to the fans, but Pedro sidled up to the chain link fence and signed anything and everything the fans tossed him for fifteen or twenty minutes. There were no coaches, no PR caretakers, nobody but Pedro getting the job done.

It may surprise you to learn Pedro Feliciano is the last surviving Met to have played under Bobby Valentine. He survived Art Howe, too. He was away for a year in Japan, but returned to help Randolph win a division title. He gave his arm over to Jerry Manuel and Manuel has not been shy about taking it out at every opportunity. Of Mets who have never pitched for another major league club, none has pitched in more games than Pedro Feliciano. He leads Jeff Innis by 79 Met-only appearances. Naturally, that mark of distinction could go away if he goes away, but where's he going, exactly? Feliciano's been here almost continuously since 2002. He hasn't sat around, either. Only John Franco, Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman and Jesse Orosco have pitched in more games as a Met than Pedro Feliciano. If he pitches in ten games in 2010, he'll trail only Franco and Seaver; if he pitches in at least 35 games next year, he'll edge ahead of Tom Terrific.

Pedro Feliciano, Met icon? By the numbers he's getting there. For a franchise that doesn't maintain its most identifiable players indefinitely, Feliciano has carved a niche. He came up when Pedro Astacio was here and he has outlasted Pedro Martinez. His seven seasons in a Mets uniform are more than those posted by Gary Carter, Tommie Agee, Ron Swoboda, Lenny Dykstra, Robin Ventura...you get the idea. "Perpetual Pedro" the announcers started calling him in 2009. "Everyday Pedro" came up, too, which was just as fitting. Not only did he pitch seemingly every day, but every day in every way, unlike just about every other Met, he kept getting better and better.

FAITH AND FEAR'S PREVIOUS MOST VALUABLE METS
2005: Pedro Martinez
2006: Carlos Beltran
2007: David Wright
2008: Johan Santana

Still to come: The Nikon Camera Player of the Year for 2009.

Part of being a modern baseball fan is learning to be rational. Instead of instinctively praising grit and hustle and a dirty uniform, you look at the numbers behind the cloud of dust. Instead of automatically saluting or bemoaning a move on the field or in the dugout or in the front office, you try to understand it as part of an overall strategy and as a business decision.

I’ve tried this, with varying degrees of success.

But then you come to news that makes you want to throw all that out the window. News, for instance, that Wally Backman’s back in the Mets organization as the new manager of the Brooklyn Cyclones.

At the beginning of this decade, Backman was a much-heralded minor-league skipper for the Chicago White Sox -- in fact, he was rumored as a replacement for Jerry Manuel when Manuel was fired in late 2003. (Cue the chatter!) That didn’t happen – instead, Backman moved to the Diamondbacks’ organization, worked his way up again, and was named the big club’s manager in November 2004. He held the job for four days of TV time, never collecting a dime from Arizona because no contract had been signed. Then, as quickly as he’d arrived, he was out.

The issue was his past, which Arizona claimed not have looked into. It turned out that Backman had a DUI in 2000, then pleaded guilty to a harassment charge stemming from a fight at his house with his wife and a friend of hers – a fight in which police reports said alcohol played a prominent role, and in which Backman was left was a broken forearm. That was three years beforehand, but the Diamondbacks still changed their minds. And since that day, there’d been no place for Wally Backman as a manager in professional ball. He took a job managing with the South Georgia Peanuts, a gig that was more reality TV than baseball reality, then another independent-league gig with the Joliet JackHammers, a team that sounds like a rival band from the Blues Brothers.

This sounds horribly unfair – particularly to those of us who remember Backman as pint-sized trouble in 1986, a little pest sprawling in the dirt somewhere after a drag bunt turned tumbling single or a trip home around, above or through some hapless enemy catcher.

But look deeper, and the certainty recedes. This 2005 Karl Taro Greenfeld profile of Backman delves into what happened the night the police were called, and it’s unsettling. Hearing Backman’s version of the story, you want to believe him. You want to believe that he didn’t realize he was on probation for his DUI, that his admission of alcoholism was nothing more than a legal strategy, that the gash on his wife’s friend face inflicted with a baseball bat was actually a pinprick that barely drew blood. You want to believe his wife that the incident has been overblown, and that her friend is telling the truth when she says it was her fault.

You want to believe it all, because it’s Wally Backman. But you can’t help thinking that if it weren’t an ’86 Met, you’d look at all the dots the Backmans say don’t connect and conclude that of course they do, as they do in so many other grindingly depressing stories.

It feels disloyal to think this. But loyalty isn’t always our friend. It can blind us to the simplest explanation.

I’ve never met Wally Backman. (OK, he did step on my foot in 1985 or 1986, in full uniform and cleats, as he and I were hurriedly departing Al Lang Field by adjacent exits. I was surprised to note he was about my size. Anyway, it doesn’t count.) Having never met him, I’m reluctant to put him on a virtual couch and analyze his psyche.

But it does seem safe to say that many a hell-for-leather athlete has had trouble adapting to a post-athletic life in which there’s nothing much to win and insufficient outlets for a ferocious drive to compete. We envy ballplayers their youth and superhuman abilities and gargantuan salaries, but we sometimes forget there is a part of that bargain that we’d rather avoid.

The arc of our lives is constructed around finding what we’re good at and what our mission in life is, with those of us who are lucky finding an answer before we’re too old to enjoy fulfilling that purpose. Ballplayers are different. They are selected for their purpose absurdly early and often cocooned off from normal lives and normal expectations after that. The lucky ones become rich and famous and never lack for attention – until their superhuman skills fade, the bright lights are shut off, and the crowd surges elsewhere. They are old ballplayers but still young men – young men suddenly left to lead lives without competition, attention or structure. The lucky ones will somehow find a second mission in life. But many won’t be so lucky. They’ll just get lost, living for what’s left of the money they once made and the attention they once commanded. The sadness of Wally Backman's story so far, if we are to believe his account of unfortunate events, is that he escaped that trap and then was flung back into it.

But there is something else we should consider. The Mets – so often comically gun-shy about the mere possibility of bad PR – ran a thorough background check on Backman and pronounced him fit to manage. There have been, as far as anybody knows, no worrisome incidents since 2001 – a long eight years past by now. That has to count for something too, right? We can't in good conscience ignore the murky doings of what happened in 2000 and 2001, but we also can't in fairness ignore the quiet since then.

The Mets’ introduction of Backman as the Cyclones’ skipper was a bit schizoid: Omar Minaya and Jeff Wilpon were nowhere in evidence, with Dave Howard making the ritual pronouncements, which in this case included a clause in Backman’s contract allowing for his dismissal for any off-field troubles. (That wasn’t the saddest thing for me, though – rather, it was Backman explaining that he finally called Jeff Wilpon because “I didn’t really know who else to call.”)

But that wasn't unexpected. What matters – for now – is that Wally Backman has his chance again. He can work his way back up the ladder, developing players in his image, and dream again of modeling a big-league jersey that says BACKMAN 6, and will be his to keep this time.

I’m excited to see him out at Keyspan Park and cheer for him, and hope one day to speculate about his strategic tendencies and how he’d fit at Citi Field. It’s a redemptive story, and a nice one. But along with that, fairly or not, comes a shadow – and the fervent hope that this story doesn’t become more complicated again.

Athletes have been known be implored to attend Bar Mitzvahs. Sometimes it's because a particular athlete is Jewish; there's a great bit in a movie called Keeping Up With The Steins about an extraordinarily competitive L.A. family trying to get then-Dodger Shawn Green to show up at their son's affair. Sometimes it's because the fan issuing the invite thinks an athlete is Jewish — as was the commonly misconceived case when David Cone came to the Mets with a name that sounded pretty darn close to David Cohen. Usually it's just a matter of a kid liking a particular athlete so much, regardless of background, that he would want him on hand for one of the biggest days in his young life.

Usually nothing comes of these entreaties. Maybe in the old days when a few bucks were involved and players weren't making much dough. In The Complete Game, Ron Darling mentioned accepting any and all invitations during his first offseason as a Met because he really needed the standard appearance fee. But it's hard to imagine Johan Santana (which is a Venezuelan translation of Stein, I'm pretty sure) making the scene in this day and age.

I don't know how many authors of baseball books get invited to Bar Mitzvahs just because they're authors of baseball books. And I don't know how many Bar Mitzvahs are held in big league ballparks. Yet I definitely know of one thirteen-year-old kind enough to send me a note like the one Ryder Chasin sent me in October, one that

a) told me his passion for the Mets and my book about my passion for the Mets combined to make me "the iconic person" in his life

and

b) invited me to his Bar Mitzvah celebration which happened to be taking place in the middle of November at Citi Field.

I replied yes, I'd love to attend...though I added that maybe you should schedule an appointment with your guidance counselor to discuss your concept of role models.

The big event was yesterday. The sensation of Citi Field in November is a story unto itself that I'll save for later on, but I can tell you the party, held in the heretofore off-limits Acela Club, made for a warm and tasteful afternoon on a raw autumn Saturday. Ryder was every bit as gracious in person as he was via mail and, based on a few brief conversations with them, I could see how much of it he gets from his parents Rob and Holly. Just wonderful people all around. Stephanie and I were tickled to be included and treated as nicely as we were by folks we'd never met before.

Ryder was the star of the day — his image was all over DiamondVision — and I happily cede all big-headedness to the special appearance made by Mr. Met (who works a room like nobody's business), but I have to admit it was kind of fun being the de facto celebrity guest. Time and again I was asked by strangers, "So, you wrote that book Ryder likes?" It beat the usual Citi Field greeting of "sir, you can't stand there, you have to move."

We kept being thanked for coming. And I kept saying thanks for inviting us. It wasn't because of the setting, though I was quite happy to be in the Mets' building. It wasn't because of the sumptuous buffet, though I surely partook. It wasn't even for the passing sense of semi-celebrity, as gratifying as that may have been to my ego.

I wasn't expecting a Ryder Chasin to materialize a year ago this weekend when I was furiously trying to finish writing Faith and Fear in Flushing. I wasn't at any awesome buffet in the middle of last November. You know what I was doing? Early on a Saturday morning, consumed entirely by how to transition from one chapter into the next...and how to get it to the finish line...and how to do all that by Monday morning, I wandered into our local Pathmark in search of something that would pass for breakfast. First thing I encountered was a fully cooked, discounted from the night before barbecue chicken. I grabbed it, paid for it, brought it home, tore into it, ate most of it on the spot and — both energized and logy — marched upstairs to type for the better part of the next two days.

One breakfast chicken later, a manuscript. One year later, a day like yesterday, a day when a person who read what I wrote indicated what I wrote and what was published meant something substantial to him or to her.

I like days like that.

On the road from the breakfast chicken to the sumptuous buffet, I've had quite a few days like that, actually. Mets fans have been telling me since March that Faith and Fear is the book that tells their story as much as it tells mine. That's generally how the reaction is parceled out: I love your book — now let me tell you what happened to me that was just like what happened to you. That was the idea behind the book, really. I wanted to present the Mets fan's view of the world because I knew there was one. In the book, it was ostensibly mine. But I knew somehow it was just as much ours.

I love that we're in this thing together. That's been the guiding principle of this blog and it's what helped — even more than early morning poultry — fuel the book. I love that it's not crazy to want your Bar Mitzvah at Citi Field or to make as much of your Bar Mitzvah celebration about your Mets fandom as the Talmud will allow. Substitute any event for "Bar Mitzvah" and you get the idea. It goes beyond any single game or a lousy season like the one we just had. It's what we do. We're Mets fans; we root for the Mets; we, as Ryder put it in his letter to me, "eat, sleep, breathe, drink and daydream about the Mets". I love that doing so so often brings us together in whatever forum we find ourselves. Sometimes it's online. Sometimes it's at the park. But eventually we're there for each other.

This weekend the papers have been full of old Mets friends who are trying to make their respective ways back to our hearts and minds. Edgardo Alfonzo is in the Post wanting to come back, or at least retire as one of us. In Newsday, Wally Backman is part of the way back, about to land in Brooklyn. And in the News, Doc Gooden is, per usual, just trying to stay on the road back.

It's always good to have old Mets friends of that ilk back on the radar. It's just as good, though, to make new Mets friends, the kind of people with whom you eat, sleep, breathe, drink and daydream Fonzie and Wally and Doc and those who continue to succeed them. That's what I've been doing here for nearly five years. That's what I was doing in the Acela Club on Saturday.

That's why I kept saying thanks for inviting us.

I didn't mean for this to lead up to a plug, but what the hell? Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets remains available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you.

Jason and I are Sunday night guests of The Happy Recap Radio Show, whose rebroadcast you can catch at your convenience here. We join in at the 18:40 mark, but treat yourself to the whole program.

Rarely has anything I've anticipated surpassed my expectations the way SNY's Mets Yearbook did Thursday night. The 1971 highlight film immediately became the second-best thing ever aired on the channel, behind only the 2006 division clincher.

The film was titled The Winning Way, which in itself is beautiful given that the 83-79 Mets were as mediocre as all get-out in 1971. But the first installment in this series of vintage propaganda pieces is a victory in SNY programming. It's like they took a can opener to my subconscious and emptied the contents into the TV. By the time it was over I was looking forward more to 1972 than I am to 2010 (and that's despite being enticed by the Mets' acquisition of that wonderful American League infielder Jim Fregosi).

We see Ralph Kiner coaching Ken Singleton in the Florida Instructional League. We see a candid and relaxed Bud Harrelson star in what looks like a hostage tape. We see toddlers bobbling on Family Day and Gil Hodges doubling on Old Timers Day. We see fans proving Lindsey Nelson's assertion that Shea is Where It's At. We see Ed Kranepool mobile. We see a ton, so for goodness sake don't miss this thing when it reairs, or when the next edition (1984) debuts this coming Thursday night at 7:30.

One thing missing from the panoply of '71 highlights, however, was a spate of Met home runs. The Mets came up short of a spate that year. They did most years, actually. Only if you listen closely do you glean how power-deprived the Mets were as they pursued their Winning Way. The team lead was a three-pronged affair among Kranepool, Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee, with 14 apiece. Singleton, in far fewer plate appearances than his more established teammates, had 13. The only other Met in double-digits was Donn Clendenon with 11, but he's not mentioned (Clendenon was released shortly after the season ended and highlight films generally turned those guys into nonentities as fast as those crazy Mets fans could create banners). The Mets of the early '70s seemed comfortable emphasizing pitching, defense and a vague sense of "excitement" on the basepaths. At one point in the narration, Bob Murphy tells us Don Hahn is not known for hitting home runs and manages to make it sound like a compliment.

As I watched the 1971 Mets get known for not hitting home runs, the undercurrent of underproduction made sense to me — and not just because I got used to Mets not going deep in 2009. The Mets never hit home runs when I was a kid. And by never, I mean I never expected them. Thus, each of the 98 home runs they belted 38 years ago each seemed quite exotic. I grew up thinking only the Pirates and Reds were permitted to collect four bags with one swing.

Somewhere along the way, the Mets got in on home runs. They have, in their 48 seasons, socked more than 6,000 of those once-rare specimens over the wall in regular-season competition. Ever since Anderson Hernandez made it a nice round number in September, Mets Walkoffs has been celebrating the cream of the crop, or the leading 1%, counting down the Top 60 regular-season home runs in Mets history. It's more like Top 60 Home Run Episodes, since Mark of MW takes some liberties and makes some groupings. But it's his list and he's pretty thorough, so we'll allow it. He just posted his Top 10, which you can check out here.

His No. 10 and No. 9 choices, incidentally, are probably my No. 1 and No. 2 regular-season favorites ever, though sometimes they're my No. 2 and No. 1 depending on my mood and perspective, with his No. 11 and No. 25 also holding great personal resonance for me. Then again, I've yet to meet a Met home run I didn't like.

Today the New York Post has a brief item about Mets fans who were expecting a 10% cut in ticket prices, but are seeing reductions that are basically a rounding error. Bart Hubbach and Jeremy Olshan quote the ever-reliable Dave Howard, who defends the apparent discrepancy as follows: "It's very consistent with what we said in the beginning. Obviously, the 'average' means there is some higher and some lower, but the average is 10 percent. We haven't heard outrage about this."

To help Dave Howard out, I thought I'd share an email that came to us two days ago from a reader named Av. It's worth quoting at length:

"I am fuming right now and needed to get this off my chest. As we are all aware, last month, Jeff Wilpon held a press conference to discuss the state of the Mets in which he vowed that ticket prices would be cut across the board by an average of 10%. Last year, I shared Mets' season tickets with a friend for the second straight year. For a pair of seats in Promenade Infield Reserve (what we used to call Upper Deck, behind the plate), we paid $2,025 each. After the disappointing season, we were not sure what we were going to do about renewing for next year, but were comforted to hear that ticket prices would at least be lowered, making it slightly more likely that we would be interested.

"You can imagine my surprise when I opened the ticket invoice and saw that the price of our tickets had been lowered to $1,965 each, a whopping 3% decrease of $60 each for the year. Over the course of the season, that comes out to 75 cents per game! I understand that when they said prices would be lowered by 10% "on average" that it didn't necessarily mean that every single ticket would go down by exactly 10%. I'm not dumb. But that's how the Mets are treating me. They tell us that they're gonna lower tickets by 10% and they lower mine by 3%. I'm sure that they will point to incredibly expensive seats, which they are lowering from something like $500 a ticket to $400 a ticket (so that no normal person can afford them either before or after the price cut, making no difference in the lives of anyone other than corporations) and say that their 20% decrease and my 3% decrease somehow evens out to 10% on average. But trying to convince me with that argument presumes that I'm dumb. And I'm not.

"I am so sick and tired of the Wilpons and the way they run this organization. Every single thing they do -- whether it's the way they pursue free agents, the way they cut prices, the way they build a new ballpark, or the way they more generally do right by their fans -- they do halfway. They act in a way that gives the appearance that they're actually going to do something, yet rarely do anything of real substance. This "price cut" is only the latest in an endless series of symbolic gestures by Mets ownership to the Mets fanbase. They talk like they're big market but act small.

"I am a truly good, devoted Mets fan. I own season tickets, usually make it to about 20-30 games a year, and watch the rest on TV. I own jerseys, hats, posters, and t-shirts. I can stay up all night talking about the '99 Mets or what Darryl Strawberry meant to me as a 9 year old child. I am the fan they want. I am the fan they need to keep. But with every little blip like this, they are coming closer and closer to losing that fan. I'm not brazen enough to claim that I'm gonna jump ship and root for some other team or abandon baseball altogether. I know that's an empty threat. But they're making me care less about this team. They're withering away the fan who has spent the last 26 years of his life allowing a baseball team to define his existence and happiness on a day to day basis. They are coming closer and closer to losing that fan and they don't seem to care. If this trend continues, that fan will be gone and I am 100% certain that this makes me a lot sadder than it does them."

Hey Dave, did you hear that?

On second thought, Dave, you're right. Av doesn't sound outraged. He sounds resigned, and like a fan who's been conditioned to expect platitudes and empty gestures from the organization behind the team he loves. And really, that's so much worse than outraged.

In other words, Dave Howard, he sounds a lot like all the rest of us.

Welcome to a special Tuesday edition of Flashback Friday: I Saw The Decade End, a milestone-anniversary salute to the New York Mets of 1969, 1979, 1989 and 1999. Each week, we immerse ourselves in or at least touch upon something that transpired within the Metsian realm 40, 30, 20 or 10 years ago. Amazin' or not, here it comes.

For life's a mystery
I shall remember
For thirty days
Thirty days
—The Rainmakers

It was in 2004, I think, that I was doing a little research on the 1999 Mets. I was trying to find something in Newsday's archives and was led to a page that promised helpful information. Indeed, it had a list titled something along the lines of "1999 Baseball Highlights". It mentioned who won the World Series, who got their 3,000th hit, who threw a no-hitter, who set a record here or there, who did particularly well...stuff like that.

There was nothing — nothing — to indicate that the Mets had gone to the playoffs that year on one of the wildest rides imaginable or that they ramped up that ride exponentially right to the moment it was over. No more than five years had passed, yet their collective achievements had disappeared down the memory hole. Somebody at Newsday compiled a list of big deals in baseball from 1999 managing to leave out one of the most extraordinary campaigns in the history of one of the teams it covered every day.

If you're wondering why I have spent so much time and generated so many words in service to memorializing 1999 here, it's because I disdain the memory hole, the one down which events that mesmerized us for weeks on end can fall without making a sound if nobody lays out a tarp to catch them; the one down which episodes that don't fit easily under mundane headings like "world championships" tend to fall. Like you, I lived the smashing crescendo of those 1999 Mets and I know it was, no pun intended, amazing. The final month of that season was the most gripping baseball drama I've ever encountered. I knew it when it happened and I've never stopped knowing it. Before this blog existed, I compiled a purely subjective and personal list of what I considered the hundred Greatest Baseball Experiences of my first 35 years as a fan, covering 1969 through 2003. The thirty days that spanned September 21 to October 20, 1999 ranked as No. 1. For context, the adventures of Mookie Wilson and Bill Buckner ranked as No. 2.

And it wasn't even a particularly close call.

Nothing touches those thirty days in 1999. Nothing. I've now lived through 41 seasons as a Mets fan. I've been fortunate enough to have absorbed a cornucopia of incredible experiences since creating that list in 2004. And still nothing touches those thirty days from the end of 1999. Together they constitute the singular episode of my baseball life: the joy, the sadness, the angst, the investment of emotion, the uncertainty of what might happen next and the utmost concern over its outcome...the desire that it just keep going.

Of course it didn't keep going. Kenny Rogers walking Andruw Jones saw to that. The ride of my baseball life was over just before 12:30, the morning of October 20, 1999: 23 games, 13 losses, 10 wins, hundreds of waking hours, thousands of beads of sweat. I don't know how to count it. It was too enormous to herd onto a spreadsheet.

I had been consumed by the Mets' wobbly march toward the playoffs and their determined if flawed quest to remain alive inside them. Once you're consumed, you don't necessarily re-emerge easily from that which swallowed you up. The ride was over just before 12:30 that morning, October 20, but I wasn't about to get off of it willingly.

I doubt I could have even had I wanted.

October 20, 1999, Around 12:30 AM
Three logos appear on my television screen, courtesy of the National Broadcasting Company: that of the Braves, who have just defeated us after the most searing set of games and weeks imaginable; that of the Yankees, whose fans have made the past several years miserable for us; and that of the 1999 World Series, in which, until moments ago, we dreamed of participating.

UCH!

That's what I said. I didn't have to think about it. It was a guttural reaction. After all we put into 1999, we wind up with this: the Braves and the Yankees in the World Series.

Processing that the postseason was going on but the Mets weren't curled me into as much of a ball as my six-foot frame would allow. Without meaning to, I instinctively went fetal. I was on the floor, I was writhing wordlessly and, for a moment or two, I was crying.

What am I doing here? I thought. I'm 36 years old, yet baseball is doing this to me as if it's more than a game, as if it's my life, not just some pleasant diversion from it. I'm allowing it to do this to me. I'm allowing the Mets to do this to me. Why?

One really gets down to fundamentals when in the fetal position.

I rose from my teary heap relatively quickly, and I stopped asking myself unanswerable questions. At that point, I was some thirty years deep into my Mets fandom. I had spent thirty days on the trail of these particular Mets. This was the thirtieth day, the day it ended. Their last game started on Day 29: My Life Held Hostage. I could go now. I was free.

Or was I? Not really. I wouldn't be free of the 1999 Mets so fast. It would take a while. Their hold on me was too tight. We were tied to each other, even if they didn't know me from a hole in the head or, in my case, a heap on the floor.

The Braves...the Yankees...the World Series...seriously, UCH!

I wearily picked up the phone and left a voice mail with my editor: I won't be coming in today, I'm sick, see you Thursday.

October 20, 1999, Noonish
I get up and watch the Channel 2 News. The Mets are the lead story. Their season is over, but what a try, says the afternoon anchor. There's a report from Shea. The players have flown back from Atlanta and the buses are depositing them by the main offices. There are about five fans there to greet them. I guess we don't do that meet the plane jazz anymore.

October 20, 1999, Late Afternoon Into Evening
Stephanie (who also called in sick — she stayed up clear through the eleventh inning last night and refuses to function without proper sleep) notes we could use something from the supermarket. I volunteer. I haven't been out all day. I need to crawl out from under my rock. I also need to get the papers.

I stop in to our local deli. It's where I'd stop in to get the papers on a Saturday afternoon on my way to the train station if there was a day game. Then it was to bone up on quotes and stats and calibrate my hopes. Now, essentially, it was to read the obits.

The deli, like so much else, was connected in my mind to the 1999 Mets. The 1999 Mets were my most intense baseball romance — were. We were over. Going into that deli for those papers was a bad idea. My love was gone and the deli reminded me of all the fun we had together. It makes me quite sad. As would everything for a while.

I had my own shopping list for the supermarket: two items. One was a magazine I had seen recently but for which I hesitated to shell out $6.95. It was one of those quickie jobs with an unwieldy title: The 1999 Amazin' Mets Magical Season, a Gold Collectors Series Baseball Magazine (as if that was some sort of seal of approval). The cover lines:

OLERUD, PIAZZA, LEITER GETTIN' IT DONE!
1999 NEW YORK METS A YEAR TO REMEMBER
In case they weren't gettin' it done by the time a prospective purchaser considered the $6.95 investment, a banner across the top of the cover made it clear that WIN OR LOSE — WE LOVE THE METS.

So of course I splurged. It was surprisingly current, or as current as one would want it to be, right up to the home run that beat the Diamondbacks ("Take Pratt, Arizona"). Quite a bit inside on how the Mets had been "Amazin' Again" in '99 and how the front office made "All the Right Moves". A few more articles like that plus a generous dollop of team history. It certainly deserved its Gold Collectors designation.

My other shopping list item: multiple boxes of Amazin' Mets Frosted Flakes Cereal. Our playoffs might be over, but with Amazin' Mets Frosted Flakes Cereal, I figured I could maintain the illusion that we were still in the midst of crunch time.

October 20, 1999, First Night Without Mets Baseball
Oh god, these newspapers. If the Amazin' Mets Frosted Flakes Cereal doesn't kill me, these will. Except for Long Island's own Newsday, they're all earlyish editions. Each has a few pages on the actual game the night before, but the rest of it was sent to press in advance of the final score to meet print deadlines. Thus, there's both the bad news and lots of conditional "if necessary" stuff, including information on Mets World Series tickets being put on sale Thursday. The Post has a picture of Jerry Seinfeld visiting with Al Leiter and Orel Hershiser on the field before Game Six — why was Leiter chatting up Seinfeld with the biggest game of his life ahead? And why was Seinfeld, allegedly our most famous fan, bothering Al? Is Al wondering "what's the deal with these Brave hitters?" before giving up those five runs?

The front pages, however, can't equivocate.

The Post, with Piazza staring into space:

WAIT 'TIL
NEXT YEAR
Fans still believe as
Braves end Mets
Amazin' season

The News, with Leiter rubbing his face:

IT'S OVER
Mets' miracle playoff
run ends in heartbreak

Newsday, with Alfonzo hugging Hamilton:

Heartbreak
Winning Run Walks Home as Mets Fall, 10-9,
In 11 Innings; Yanks vs. Braves, Game 1 Saturday

The Times, with Andruw Jones sliding home in the first:

Subway Series Dies Hard:
Mets Lose It All on a Walk
Braves Win in 11th, 10-9, Yankees Are Up Next

UCH!

October 21, 1999
Back at work. I'm told nobody was surprised I called in sick the day before. Nobody expected me in. Absolved of any charges that my priorities were less than straight, I spread out the day after the day after's papers at my desk and commence to ignore my work some more.

With no more deadline pressure, the ladies and gentlemen of the Met press are more definitive in their appraisals, many of which read as sympathy cards. In the Times, George Vecsey pays homage to "the dysfunctional Mets, a collection of disparate types who became something akin to a team [that] thrilled the entire baseball diaspora with their highs, their lows, their ups, their downs, as Lerner and Loewe put it." In Newsday, Shaun Powell suggests baseball skip the Yankees altogether and "just let the Braves and Mets keep playing. Let them keep stretching games into extra innings, keep turning Melvin Mora and Eddie Perez into MVPs, keep the battle between the Bobbys, and keep the pitchers throwing until they drag their aching arms off the mound.

"Let them keep us trapped inside a trance, the way we stayed during the most riveting two games of the season."

In the News, Lisa Olson immortalizes Shawon Dunston's farewell address to his teammates:

"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.

"Grown men," Olson continues, "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."

Best wishes will continue to pour in. From the Washington Post, via my new e-mail buddy Dan, comes Tom Boswell attempting to place this NLCS in historical context:

[T]his four-hour-plus combination of blood feud and chess match was more a testament to the sport itself than to the determination of a champion. Some research, at a future date, when the blood is not pounding in everyone's ears, will no doubt be required to decide whether this playoff series between the Mets and Braves was the all-time best of its breed. The scores were 4-2, 4-3, 1-0, 3-2, 4-3 (in 15) and 10-9 (in 11). Every one a spellbinder. But, whatever the result of that analysis, one thing's for sure: This dog can hunt with any.

It's almost impossible, Boswell decides, to choose one particular contest as "the best game ever to conclude a postseason series. Such categories are a kind of eternal 10-way tie. Everyone gets to pick their favorite. Let me sleep on it. This might be mine."

I find an ad in a couple of the papers:

To the greatest baseball fans in the world.

You make the Magic!

A special thanks to the more than
3,000,000 fans who came out to
Shea Stadium to cheer us on and
thanks to everyone who believed
in the Mets all season long.
It's signed with a script Mets logo and the honorific 1999 N.L. WILD CARD WINNER.

October 22, 1999
Word spreads that as the Mets fought their way into extra innings the other night, Rickey Henderson — in a snit over being pulled for Melvin Mora — and Bobby Bonilla — used as a pinch-hitter already and embroiled in a permanent snit — huddled in the visitors' clubhouse in Turner Field deeply concerned over the game in progress. Except their game was cards. It didn't go over big with the Mets who went down fighting or the Mets who stayed on the bench to urge them forward.

"Guys who saw it wanted to take a bat to their heads after the game," it's reported. "There were players crying and screaming in the dugout. Then they walk in the clubhouse and see that?"

I should be more offended by this than I am. I'm not. I walked out on Game Six when it was 5-0 to pick up Chinese food and didn't bring a radio. We all indulge our snits in our own way.

Meanwhile, I dwell on my chart of streakiness I've been keeping all season and distill it so I can better digest it. This is how the Mets won the Wild Card instead of the division and lost the pennant instead of winning a trip to the World Series. But mostly it's about how the Mets made the playoffs instead of missing them altogether and how they got to Game Six of the NLCS instead of exiting after Game Four.

LWWLWWWWW 7-2
LLWLWLWWLLL 4-7
WWWWWW 6-0
LLLWLLLWWWLLL 4-9
WWWLWLWW 6-2
LLLLLLLL 0-8
WWWWLWWLWWWWLWWWWW 15-3
LLWWLWLLLWWWLL 6-7
WWLWWLWWLWWWWWWLWWLWWWWW 19-5
LLL 0-3
WWWLWWWLWWWLWLWW 12-4
LLWLWL 2-4
WWWLWWLWWWLWLWW 11-4
LLLLLLL 0-7
WLWWWWWLWW 8-2
LLL 0-3
WWL 2-1

October 23-27, 1999
The World Series occurs. I follow perhaps a half-hour of it live.

• As Stephanie and I roll a shopping cart through Pathmark during Game One, I hear on a stockboy's radio the Braves are leading. Oh, that's nice, I say. By the time we check out, so have the Braves.

• I put on Game Two to watch the introduction of the absurdly constructed All-Century team — no Seaver, thus all absurdity. Jim Gray acts like a snot toward Pete Rose, who both deserves it and deserves better. Then I turn the whole thing off.

• The night of Game Three, I approve of a rare Tuesday night visit to Blockbuster. The late, lamented Jammin' 105 has unwanted updates from "the Stadium," which bring bad news in the car between Spinners and Four Tops records.

• I look in on the ninth inning of Game Four so as not to be a total sorehead about it.

The Yankees sweep the Braves. This is terrible. Had the Braves beaten the Yankees, it would have been tolerable. Tolerable vs. Terrible. I'll take tolerable every time.

And don't for a second think I don't despise these Braves. They had just ended the most wonderful run of my baseball life. They had won the best baseball game I ever saw at the expense of my baseball team. They are the big bang of revolting: Jones, Rocker, Cox, Mazzone, Gl@v!ne. I hate the Braves in 1999 and 1998 as much as if not more than any Met division rival in my life, before or after.

But I wanted them to not lose that World Series. Their losing only meant one thing.

That the Yankees would win. And that is an intolerable outcome anytime.

October 29, 1999, Early Afternoon
Jace, who works downtown, sends me an e-mail:

Man, what a morning. Do you know how difficult it is to inject a vanload of monkeys with the Ebola virus and then get close enough to the damn Yankee parade to release them? I'm wiped out between the broken syringes, the cages banging together and talking to the damn cops. And then a bunch of the fuckers just climbed lampposts instead of biting people. But I'm willing to do my part.

October 29, 1999, Later That Same Afternoon
Stephanie, who works downtown, calls me. Because of renovations to her building, she can wander into the offices across the hall. She got a great view of the parade and took some really good pictures.

It's the only time I have ever scowled at her over the phone.

November 2, 1999
A nor'easter is blowing through Long Island. It's knocked the power out, so I'm walking home in total darkness, in the rain, in the wind. Crossing the street has become a death sport because nobody's regulating traffic. The lights are still out when I walk in the door. But a package that came in the day's mail has me fumbling for the flashlight. It's large and it's from the Mets.

Inside are two miniature baseball bats. These are the bats we were supposed to be handed on the last scheduled day of the regular season, October 3, exactly thirty days earlier. It was Fan Appreciation Day. Most of our appreciation stemmed from the Mets still being alive for a playoff spot despite having recently compiled seven consecutive L's. But this was the Mets appreciating us.

Their appreciation was trumped by their disorganization. Instead of handing out the bats on the way in as goodies had always been distributed, they saved them for later. Everybody was in such a good mood after Melvin Mora scored on that wild pitch, that I figured the bats would be forgotten by most as they approached the exits. I'd almost forgotten about them.

But you can't sneak a freebie by a Mets fan. Thus, every exit was a mob scene. Never mind Mora, we want our bats! Overwhelmed Met employees were positively besieged. It was clear Stephanie and I weren't going to elbow our way to lumber. The best I could do was pick up a pair of rainchecks from the ground. Mail these in, it said, and ye shall receive thine premium.

I was a little annoyed but didn't want to let it bother me, not with the Mets having just edged a half-game ahead of the Reds pending what happened that night in rainy Milwaukee. I was too happy to be too annoyed. Nevertheless, as we pulled out of the Marina parking lot and saw some dick hauling an armful of wood — nine bats was my estimate — I wanted what was coming to me.

It's a month later, and they've arrived. Two bats with Mets logos are in the package along with a letter (dated October 12) from James Plummer, Director of Promotions.

Dear New York Mets Fan,

Thank you for coming out to Shea Stadium to see the Mets play. I am sorry you were unable to get the Fan Appreciation Day mini-bat on game day.

Citing concerns over fan safety if our game went poorly, the NYPD directed us not to hand out the mini-bats as fans entered the stadium. We questioned the decision to give bats away after the game, and warned the police of the difficulties involved in organizing a giveaway at the exit gates when 45,000+ fans are trying to exit the stadium within a short period of time.

However, the police safety concerns about thrown bats or the potential for fan violence were valid, and the NYPD had the authority to make this decision. As such, we did the best we could to distribute the bats post game.

I apologize for the situation at the exit gates after the game. When the crowds began pushing, grabbing hands full of bats and shoving the promotional staff out of the way, the police insisted that we halt all distribution of mini-bats and that the remaining mini-bats be locked away.

We are enclosing with this letter the Fan Appreciation Day mini-bats that you unfortunately did not receive on game day.

Please contact this office should you have any questions.

I had only one: Didn't you guys just take out an ad telling us we're "the greatest baseball fans in the world"?

November 8, 1999
The Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association is holding an awards dinner at the New York Sheraton, one of those events Charlie Brown would pay a pretty penny for just so he could see his hero Joe Shlabotnik. Me, I pay nothing. I'm here as a favor to one of the sponsors who found himself with a table that needed filling.

Yes, that's a favor I can do.

The guests of honor are Henry Aaron, Frank Robinson, Yogi Berra and Vera Clemente, widow of Roberto Clemente. Each of them will be recognized by the MLBPAA. They're there and quite a few other baseball alumni are on hand. We who are guests check in out front and are handed baseballs for the cocktail hour. It's not so much that we are permitted to approach baseball players for autographs. We are supposed to. That's why so many ballplayers here.

And this goes down as me doing somebody a favor.

First former player I see is Brooks Robinson, like five feet from me. My first thought is, Hey, that looks like Brooks Robinson. My second thought is, Ohmigod, that's Brooks Robinson! My prevailing thought is stupid Oriole.

It's 1999, but it never quite stops being 1969. I don't want Brooks Robinson's autograph. i don't want Frank Robinson's autograph. But when I see him regaling other partygoers with his delight over his son being named People magazine's sexiest country star, I sure as shootin' want Tug McGraw's name on my baseball. I ease into his group and hand him my ball. Tug is 55. I am, for the length of the cocktail hour, no more than 12. While he's signing, I tell him that his autobiography, Screwball, formed the basis of three different book reports for me in elementary school, junior high school and high school.

Tug McGraw hands me back my baseball, stares at me and bursts into laughter.

"You're scarin' me, man!"

Keith Hernandez is the anti-Tug for the occasion. I bump into him after he's skulked into the room He looks uncomfortable. He looks like a man who'd rather be anywhere else than a place that reminds him he used to be a ballplayer. But I have a baseball with a great Met lefty's signature on it. Keith batted lefty. He's a great Met. I hand him my ball. I have to hold his glass of wine. It's an awkward transaction. I tell him he was my mother's favorite player. It's quite clear Keith has heard it before, but he's gracious enough. He gets his wine back, I get my ball.

Two Mets, two autographs (and I've never been one for autographs). One more Met lefty is immediately accessible on the premises: Rusty Staub, our host for the evening. Rusty's being pulled in several directions. One of them is mine. He doesn't pay me a lot of attention, but I get Le Grand inscription.

I have a ball signed my Tug McGraw, Keith Hernandez and Rusty Staub. I've just met all three in the space of about ten minutes. I can kind of die now.

The rest of the evening is almost as good. I recognize more players. There's ex-Met Mike Torrez, but he's a righty, so he can stay off the ball; besides, as a Met, he never had much on the ball. Yogi (batted left, threw right) is too much of a draw to get to sign — which is to say it's too crowded around him, so I don't go there. Yogi surprises me in accepting his award. I figured he gets an award every other week. He'd drop a few malapropisms on us, we'd applaud and it would be over before it was over. But no, he's quite sincere in appreciation of whatever this honor is exactly. He had been named to the All-Century Team in October and confesses to us he felt ridiculous that he had been selected but Frank Robinson and Roberto Clemente weren't. He actually broke down and cried.

Who'da thunk it?

Rusty's a great host. He comes over to our table to see how we're enjoying ourselves as if were a table full of Bar Mitzvah guests. From the podium he compliments this gathering on exhibiting such "joie de vivre," becoming, I'm guessing, the first ballplayer, retired or otherwise, to throw that phrase around. Being from New Orleans and playing in Montreal must have helped.

Tug is there to introduce Yogi but can't resist telling a story about Rusty from when they were on opposing sides. Rusty was watching Tug a little too closely from the on-deck circle, so Tug threw at him right there. The room laughed. Tug then kidded that all the money Rusty made hitting off him went to his belly, while all the money Tug made getting Rusty out went right to his liver.

The room went uncomfortably silent.

There was, on the other hand, polite applause when the association's awards to current players were announced. None of the active men showed up, but they all sent video acceptance speeches. Mike Hampton was named National League Pitcher of the Year for going 22-4. Chipper Jones was honored as N.L. Player of the Year for torturing the Mets. If one other person booed or chanted LAAAA-reeee! I was primed to join in, but nobody did.

Freddie Roman, Dean of the Friars Club (of which Rusty's a member), served as entertainment. I expected Catskills shtick, and it arrived, but not until Freddie said a few words about happy he was to be here. He grew up a Dodgers fan and switched to the Mets when they came along. It was thrilling for him to see Tug tonight, he said, especially so, because that "You Gotta Believe!" spirit really came alive again this year...and weren't those playoffs against Atlanta just so exciting?

I waited for a punchline. But there was none. No joke: those were great playoffs.

November 10, 1999
National League Gold Gloves formally announced. Robin Ventura wins one, which is appropriate. Rey Ordoñez wins one, which is automatic. Pokey Reese wins one, which is idiotic. Edgardo Alfonzo, the keystone of The Best Infield Ever, played more, made fewer errors and got to everything and then some. I'm angrier at the voters for overlooking Fonzie than I was for Rickey at playing hearts or Kenny for throwing ball four.

November 13, 1999
Driving somewhere with the wife. Not talking about anything in particular. Not thinking of anything in particular. I just blurt it out sans forethought.

"We would've won Game Seven."

Stephanie doesn't respond, which is OK. I didn't say it for her benefit. I just said it. I say it again.

"If we had forced a Game Seven, we would have won. Rick would have beaten Gl@v!ne. I just know it."

I say nothing else. But I get such a chill.

November 15, 1999
From the Dean of the Friars to the sage of all baseball writers. Every year around this time I start haunting newsstands on Mondays to check table of contents of the new New Yorker. Every fall Roger Angell wraps up the season and postseason as only Roger Angell can, as only Roger Angell has since taking up his singular baseball beat in the fortuitous year of 1962.

Today's the day Angell's analysis appears, under the headline "Home Cooking". I haven't looked forward to this rite of autumn this much since 1986's "Not So, Boston". Per custom, the ostensible focus of his article is the team that won the World Series, but Roger Angell, who's told more good stories than any baseball writer alive or otherwise, knows one when he's seen it. To the sport's premier essayist, the 1999 Mets are more than a baseball story.

He calls them an opera. And he sees all of us on stage in support of their quest.

The Mets' failure to bring about an all-New York World Series spared us a thousand TV bites and feature stories about the moms and taverns and sociological makeup and choral capabilities of the two rival fan masses, but the Mets folks outdid the Yankees this October. Away from all this since 1988, the Shea people were funny and wolfish with their curses and placards ("FAT LADY YO MAMA" someone held up), and happily devoured the prognathous Atlanta closer, John Rocker (a great baseball name, perfect for the part), and Chipper Jones, the non-quite lovable Atlanta star, who had unwisely let it be known that he had always hated his given name, Larry. "LARRY!" "LAR-RY!" "LAHH-REEE!" now fell upon him from every Shea tier and sector. By the third night at Shea, the game was in the rain, fans were hanging out placards depicting the frazzled and frantic Larry Fine of the Three Stooges. Later that night, I spotted some men and women in the stands gabbling excitedly into their cell phones. Could they be calling their babysitters at such a moment? Their brokers? No, it turned out, they were talking to other fans in other parts of the Stadium, networking bliss with friends they had come with or knew would be there: "My God, did you see that? Isn't it great? Isn't it something? I don't think I can stand this, honest I don't."

November 17, 1999
Larry Jones is named National League MVP. All agree he clinched it when he smacked four home runs in those three wins over the Mets at Turner Field in September. Robin, Mike and Fonzie finished 6-7-8 in the voting. Three Mets in the Top Ten? Seems pretty sweet. After the Pokey Reese debacle, I'll take what I can get.

December 7, 1999
Mike & The Mad Dog have a bulletin: John Olerud — who showed up at Shea in 1997, the same year the resident baseball team just happened to improve by seventeen wins — has signed with the Seattle Mariners. Three years, $20 million, a chance to play where he grew up. Steve Phillips lifted not nearly enough fingers to convince Oly home is wherever the best deal was. The Mets don't go out of their way to keep their clutch-hitting, sharp-fielding first baseman and now the Best Infield Ever has been dissolved. I have no idea who will take over for Olerud in 2000. Whoever it will be, I'm sure, will not be nearly as wonderful. How the Mets ever can be either is beyond me.

December 12, 1999
Many names were bandied about as John Olerud's replacement. None of them was Todd Zeile. Olerud is a superb first baseman. Zeile is a journeyman third baseman. But Steve Phillips, we learn in Sunday papers, has done it again, replacing state-of-the-art with run-of-the-mill. Zeile hasn't always been a third baseman. He used to be a catcher. Can he play first? We'll find out.

December 13, 1999
ESPN reports the Mets are trading Armando Benitez, Octavio Dotel and Roger Cedeño to John Olerud's new team for Ken Griffey, Jr. In the time I take to gasp, I find out we traded for Junior, but Junior isn't coming. He vetoes the deal. He says he wasn't given enough time to decide if he wanted to be a Met. So we didn't really trade for him. So we don't have Griffey and we don't have Olerud. At least we still have Benitez, Dotel and Cedeño.

They were 1999 Mets. They helped give me those thirty days in September and October. We already gave up Olerud for Zeile. I'm loathe to give up on the other, younger 1999 Mets now, even for Griffey.

Seriously.

December 14, 1999
Our former company president's former assistant now works as a temp. Her current assignment: Some sort of clerical role with a Queens-based concern. She works for the Mets! She sends us an official season's greeting from her temporary employer, identified within as the 1999 N.L. WILD CARD WINNER.

Wishing you a
Happy Holiday
and an Amazin'
New Millenium.
Our receptionist hangs it up by her desk with other holiday cards from less interesting corporations. After the new year, it's still hanging, so I grab it. Nearly a decade later, I notice the Mets misspelled "millennium".

Oh well, it's not like it's a word that comes up more than every thousand years.

December 22, 1999
Sports Illustrated arrives at home. Big story on John Rocker, Public Enemy No. 2 behind Larry Jones. Jeff Pearlman recounts his NLCS experiences.

At Shea, Rocker was a one-man psycho circus. He spit at Mets fans. He gave them the finger. During batting practice he would shag a ball in the outfield, fake a toss to a throng of waving spectators, then throw it back to the pitcher, smiling wickedly. Once he took a ball and chucked it as hard as he could at a net that separated fans from the field. "If there wasn't a net there, it would have smoked 'em right in the face," he says. "But they're so stupid, they jumped back like the ball would hit 'em."

Of course I now hate John Rocker more than any opponent in baseball. But he makes me nostalgic for October.

December 23, 1999
Listening to the FAN again (will I ever learn?). This time they beam a happier bulletin. Dotel and Cedeño are traded, but for somebody who's actually going to come in return: Mike Hampton, the Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association National League Pitcher of the Year. Hampton, 27 and lefthanded, went 22-4 for the Astros. We're getting him because he's in his walk year and Drayton McLane knows he won't be able to re-sign him. So we're renting Mike Hampton, basically — him and Derek Bell, the other veteran whose expiring contract we've been compelled to absorb if we want one of the best pitchers in the game. Anything for an ace like Hampton, goes the thinking. Hampton...Leiter...Reed...gee. I'll miss Cedeño and Dotel, but we kept Benitez, and Zeile maybe can hit a little and play first OK. We still have Piazza and Ventura and Alfonzo. We came so close last year. Maybe we can come closer next year. Maybe we can get it done.

This could be a pretty good Millennium after all.

Flashback Friday: I Saw The Decade End will conclude with its next installment, a final tribute to 1999, from 1999. You'll want to have your tape recorders ready for this one.

After the events of the past few days — the Yankees winning their 27th World Series and being feted for it; the Mets doing no such thing — perhaps you wonder, what's the point? I'd love to tell you what it is, but I have no real clue.

But I do have a correction to offer, specific to previous entries to this blog:

This was not the World Series from hell, at least not in the sense that either outcome would be equally terrible. If the Phillies had won, I can say with a great deal of certainty that their hypothetical victory, however annoying when considered on its own conceivable merits, would not have measured up to the actual victory of the Yankees.

Which isn't annoying. It's atrocious.

The Phillies won in 2008. I didn't care for it. They beat us and then made their way through the playoffs. It felt like the Cardinals winning in 2006, that it had something to do with us. In '06, however, it was a more direct process: Cardinals beat us and they were in the World Series. I hated the Cardinals for the next year or so. The other day I ran across something I wrote in 2007 in which I reflexively spewed nasty things about the Cardinals. I stand by those feelings for then, but they seem quite out of code now. At present, I don't particularly hate the Cardinals as a going concern. I'll restoke my hostility toward them April 16, per the 2010 schedule.

When April 30 rolls around, I'll hate the Phillies plenty. I'll hate them eighteen times next year. I'll hate their players, I'll hate their fans, I'll hate their Phanatic. That's a promise. But right now the Phillies mean nothing in particular to me. If they were parading around in fresh new World Champion t-shirts, they'd mean about as much.

I hate the Yankees. I always have and I always will. That wasn't going to change because the Yankees might have lost the World Series. They could have gone down in four straight and I'd hate them more than I did before for having been exposed to them four more times. I don't like them any better for having doused our division rivals in six games even if the collateral damage of the Phillies losing was fine and dandy. I surely don't like them getting to update their bios with a 27th line. I surely don't like the spate of special sections my Sunday papers have printed in their honor or how blanketed my television was by their parade on Friday or how every time I poke my head outside my house somebody's walking by in their garb or how the cemented media narrative is, as it was more than a decade ago, that all of New York just adores the Yankees.

What is New York right now? A place where Xavier Nady has a key to the city. A place where the guy who gave it to him exhibits no institutional memory. A place where the Dunkin' Donuts on Chambers St. is needlessly overrun with thirsty jugheads.

Tell me how this isn't tangibly more hellish than a Phillies victory. (Residents of New Jersey who live closer to Philadelphia than New York are excused from this exercise.)

Early in the history of Faith and Fear, there was some Yankee contretemps making headlines. It was Spring Training 2005, the beginning of Alex Rodriguez's second year in pinstripes. It probably had something to do with him. I honestly don't recall, but I do remember it was one of those Big Stories all of baseball reportage was consumed by. My initial impulse was to blog about it, but then I stopped myself. No, I thought, this is going to be a Mets blog. We exist in a universe that is Mets-oriented, a universe of our own creation. We didn't start this thing to add to the nonsense that everything about New York baseball is Yankees-this and that Yankees-that. If that was what we were going to produce, we could have just kept reading the papers.

Five seasons went by and where are we? With the Yankee cloud overshadowing everything in its midst, just as it did heading out of 1996, just as it did heading into 2005.

I thought we were past all that. We are not. We are essentially back where we started.

The late '90s/Millennial Yankees were an anvil that kept befalling us, even when it appeared we were enjoying a marvelous postseason stroll. Bop! they went on us. Mets have a nice season in 1997? Nobody noticed because the Yankees were back in the playoffs. Mets take it down to the wire in 1998? Nobody noticed (except for the gruesome ending) because the Yankees were winning 114 regular-season games. Mets do semi-miraculous things in 1999 and 2000? They weren't as tangible as what the Yankees were doing.

The anvil fell lighter starting November 4, 2001, the night when Luis Gonzalez flicked a soft line drive into short centerfield and the pain eased some. The Diamondbacks, then the Angels, then the Marlins and then, most deliciously, the Red Sox all lessened the burden of being a Mets fan. We weren't winning anything from 2001 to 2004, but neither were they, by their standards. We didn't have much, but at least we had Elimination Day.

Nevertheless, even when The Yankees had stopped automatically winning World Series after 2000, they still had the cloud. It still obscured everything, not that the Mets were difficult to obscure in those particularly dark days. Yet the moment was at hand there in the spring of '05 for change to take hold. Not right away, maybe, but we were getting back in the game. We were improving. They weren't. They were making the playoffs, but weren't a sure thing anymore. By 2006, we were a better bet. We even went further in our quest for No. 3 than they did in their quest for No. 27. The Cardinals tripped us up, but we had the momentum. This team, this town...it was all there for us.

And it never happened. The Yankees experienced a rough October of 2007, but they got an October. We pulled up short on September 30. The Yankees bowed out altogether in 2008, but so did we, in far more humiliating circumstances. They were all but eliminated when they closed their stadium but they looked sharp and stood tall on the way out. We simply went "thud!" for a second year in a row.

Then 2009, which might as well be 1996. They're World Champions and we're trying to figure out to dig our way out from 90+ losses. It's like the promise of '05 and the reasonable satisfaction of '06 and even the excruciating teases of '07 and '08 never happened. It's like the two good years of '99 and '00 and the two decent years of '97 and '98 never happened. It's like 1996 all over again. The Yankees are champions of baseball and New York and we are...who are we again? And are we going to throw four years and $20.4 million at Bernard Gilkey?

I don't know if I ever learn anything, but I'm going to try to learn not to care about them all over again. This blog was a big step in that direction. Except for the annual Subway Series sets and a little peripheral schadenfreude, we've stuck to our New York team pretty exclusively since February 2005, at least until developments warranted otherwise in October 2009. (Stupid developments.) I'd have preferred we hadn't become a sidebar to what just transpired. I'd have preferred the World Series From Hell Scenario not grown legs. Though I annually write about the World Series no matter who's in it, I'd have preferred staying out of it altogether.

We'll deal with the Phillies when the National League East demands it. We'll ignore the Yankees as best we can until May 21 at Citi Field. Our mission is the Mets. They're hell enough these days. Even so, I take comfort from what the first Mets blogger to put down roots here in the Metsosphere, Steve Keane of Eddie Kranepool Society, had to say in the wake of the inevitably unavoidable outcome of the final six baseball games of 2009.

[T]he big difference between Mets fans and Highlander fans is that we have a passion and love for our team, the Highlander fan has a love and a passion for Championships.

It's the sort of thing we told each other in other autumns of our discontent, particularly the autumn of 1996. If it sounds like the last refuge of an also-ran and an excuse for rooting for a certifiable loser when everybody else is riding high from winning, that's because it does.

Which doesn't mean what Steve wrote isn't true. Because it is — the part about us, for sure. I'm willing to go along with his diagnosis of them, but the confetti's cleaned up and the special sections are bundled for recycling, so I'm not worried about them going forward.

They're going to be how they are, just more so for a while.

We have, as Steve put it, Mackey Sasser and Mike Vail and Glendon Rusch to give us an "ah yeah" smile. We cherish our champions. We relish our reserves, too. We take it all in, no matter how distasteful, and we keep coming back. Right now we feel like roadkill from somebody else's parade route, but we're already up and marching to our own drummer. I don't know that that's a good or healthy thing, but it's what we do, and we're already doing it in ways we don't even realize.

We're done rooting against the Yankees. We're done rooting against the Phillies. We're rooting for the Mets.

God help us.

***
The New York Review of Books' November 19 issue was the first one I ever picked up, and I was not sorry once I got to page 22. Printed there was a story by Michael Kimmelman about the no longer so new ballparks in New York. What made it worth reading was the generous helpings of quotations it contained from The Last Days of Shea by our friend Dana Brand. We're very happy for Dana since he's been reading TNYROB a lot longer than we have and he says it was a thrill to find himself excerpted in there. You'll be happy (and, because of the subject matter, a little sad) if you pick up a copy of The Last Days of Shea, a book that brings you back to the old ballpark both psychically and physically one more time.

As trophies and t-shirts were being passed around Wednesday night on five different channels, I flipped to SNY out of curiosity. Would they be taking their New York sports mandate seriously and covering the grim doings at Yankee Stadium? Would they have something special on to cheer up the rest of us? Would there be racing from the Meadowlands?

They were airing a repeat of The Best of Mets Weekly which, at that moment, featured Dave Howard giving Julie Alexandria a tour of a Citi Field luxury suite. I can't say it made me feel any better.

But this does, courtesy of Neil Best's Watchdog blog on the now restricted newsday.com (which I can still access thanks to being spun inside Cablevision's customer web):

Call it offseason filler if you must, but SNY's new "Mets Yearbook," debuting Thursday night after its "Hot Stove" show, is off-the-charts cool for sports and TV nostalgia buffs.

The series features 27 season highlight films from 1962 through '88 that had been languishing in the Mets' archives for years.

The ones from the early years were made for promotional purposes and shown mostly to community groups; they were not designed for television and in some cases never have been seen on TV before.

Gary Morgenstern, SNY's VP of programming, said the hodgepodge of films followed various formats and were of varying lengths but have been turned into half-hour shows for "Mets Yearbook."

The first five — 1971, '84, '75, '68 and '63 — will be shown on Thursdays in 2009, with about 10 more in '10 and the rest sometime the following year.

So far I have watched '71, '68 and '63.

The '71 show includes footage of an old-timers' game in which Satchel Paige is seen pitching, and in which Bobby Thomson pitched to Ralph Branca. (You read that right.)

In the '68 show, Gil Hodges is seen going over scouting reports in the locker room with his young pitching staff, including Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman.

The '63 highlights were most interesting of all, because they included extensive, full color, rarely seen footage of the Mets playing at the Polo Grounds.

That includes the final major league game played there, after which Casey Stengel is shown walking off through centerfield in a scene similar to the one featuring Tom Seaver and Mike Piazza at Shea 45 years later.

We've all rolled our eyes incessantly at SNY's lack of imagination and dismal deployment when it comes to the Mets archives. But this is a great and encouraging sign. This is what we've been asking for since 2006. MSG does this sort of thing relentlessly and beautifully with MSG's Vault. Show us old Mets stuff. Show us old games (we've seen 42 by my count, some of them 42 times apiece, it seems) but also show us footage and clips and highlights and oddities. Show us these films...and that's what they're doing.

Kudos to SNY. It's nice to receive a little good Mets news on a day like this.