I'm listening to the Yankees-Red Sox game and you can hear the roar after every pitch, and it hurts a little -- though only a little -- knowing our game tonight will be acoustically attended by the muttering of a sparse crowd and the lonely cries of Aramark dealers.

Last night I was pawing through my wallet for something or other and found the last page of my pocket schedule. I tossed it -- I know the rest by heart, thanks. I left the full schedule on the fridge for another day for sentimental reasons. Pretty soon we'll be down to countable outs, then to pitches (here's hoping we're counting down Rockie outs and pitches, not our own) until finally we'll be on our feet, cheering for the final seconds even though a part of us will suddenly be hoping -- score and situation be damned -- whoever's at bat fouls off the next, oh, 73,000 pitches or so just to keep the end from coming.

Anyway, a wishlist for these final six hours, written as if I'd posted it early last night, as I intended to. We won't get all these things. We may not get any of them, except for the back-dated one. As with the standings and the reason there's wild cheering in Fenway now and won't be much at Shea tonight, that's baseball. If you're not willing to risk disappointment, best not to show up in the first place.

So here's the list:

1. A winning season. .500, while an accomplishment, would suck at this point. (Done.)
2. A big final-day crowd to bid Mike Piazza adieu. (Shame on Met fans if this doesn't happen.)
3. 400 homers for Mike. (Three more in the last two games? Possible, but unlikely.)
4. 100 RBI for Cliff Floyd. (He has 97. Doable.)
5. 67 steals for Jose Reyes. (He has 59. Ain't happening.)
6. A hit for Anderson Hernandez. (All it takes is one.)

And then -- "then" as in "tomorrow" -- it'll be winter.

Update: Oh yeah, duh...

1a. Finish in third place. Screw draft picks; our drafts all stink anyway. (Doable. We're there now, after all. Though -- no surprise in our crazy division -- we could still finish last.)

"You're a winner! Teddy knows!"
—One of the three clichés spouted by the Executive Teddy Bear my mother gave my father on his 50th birthday

82 Wins!
Eleven wins better than 2004!
First winning record since 2001!
We are over five-freaking-hundred once and for all!
And one win from clinching at least a third-place tie in the only division in baseball where nobody will have a losing record!

If there's a bigger story in New York baseball this morning, I'm not aware of it.

Oh all right, there's another team playing another series of some consequence, but I don't see the Yankees and Red Sox as more important than the Mets and the Rockies. I don't. I'm not kidding. That's not meant to be snide or ironic or snironic (or, in deference to our new network, SNYronic).

All year long, thanks in great part to my encampment in the 'sphere, I have been so focused on the Mets and so oblivious to everything else that whenever I hear a TV or radio voice start to tell me that the Yankees are playing a big game, I reflexively say, "Who gives a shit? Nobody cares!" It's almost a mantra. So Friday afternoon, when there was a live broadcast from Fenway Park to hype the game that was to take place there Friday night, I said the same thing. And I meant it.

It took me a moment to realize, oh yeah, somebody probably does care.

But not me. Not more than secondarily. My primary concern? The Mets. Always the Mets. Game 1, Game 100, Game 160. Doesn't matter.

In Game 160, our team -- the only one we've got -- had the cool, clear eyes of a seeker of wisdom and truth, yet there was that upturned chin and that grin of impetuous youth. Oh, I believe in them. They've succeeded in baseball in 2005.

The Mets are a winner. Everybody should know.

NOTE TO OUR LOYAL READERS, THE BEST BLOG READERS IN ALL OF BASEBALL: Faith and Fear in Flushing will see you through that first difficult week of Mets Withdrawal with our Year-End Spectacular, running Monday, October 3 through Friday, October 7. After the briefest of hiatuses (hiatii?), we will return to this space on a recurring basis throughout the offseason in attempt to make the winter go away as fast as possible.