As fans, we become familiar with the pattern of a baseball career: make the radar as a prospect, get too much/too little seasoning in AAA, try to stick on the big-league roster, stick on that roster, play until bad luck, injury or age say otherwise, get a farewell that can take any number of forms (a day at Shea, being the last cut in spring training, being one of the first cuts, never coming off the DL, never reporting to that minor-league assignment), vanish little by little into memory.

But something's missing there. That's the pattern for regulars, not for the fringe guys who come and go from the last couple of spots on a roster. (Or clutter them up, if the roster we're talking about belongs to the 2004 or 2005 Mets.) There's a different pattern for these guys, one in which the big-league stints are like islands sticking above the sea, with a lot of years below the waterline. Some of these guys' statistical goal is enough service time to get an MLBPA pension. They're the ones whose entries in the record books make you wonder if there's a typo. The best example I know of is THB bane and Met-for-a-minute Rich Sauveur, who racked up 34 big-league appearances over 15 seasons, only two of those campaigns consecutive. Rich Sauveur's career stats are Dada poetry as it is; look deeper and you realize a lot of the baseball he played -- the overwhelming majority of it, in fact -- has left no trace in most record books, because he played it far from the bright lights.

2000 was Sauveur's final season; he became a minor-league instructor after that. But at least his years between big-league stints can be inferred: There are guys who keep going and going after the big-league season they can't know is fated to be their last, spending the rest of their careers below the statistical waterline. Blaine Beatty gets just two lines in the record book, for his brief stints with the Mets in 1989 and 1991. But without some pretty determined Googling, you'd never know Beatty kept knocking around for six more years in the minors, racking up a dreary itinerary that's a study in perseverance unrewarded: Indianapolis, Buffalo, Carolina, Chattanooga, Indianapolis, Chattanooga, Carolina, Gulf Coast League Pirates (one imagines that was his I'm-too-old-for-this-shit moment), Mexico City, Calgary and yes, finally, Carolina.

Oct. 15 was the day on which a raft of veteran minor-leaguers became free agents. (Specifically, it's guys who weren't on a 40-man roster and had seven years in pro ball.) Perusing the list is like taking a dip in the pool from which the nonroster invitees will soon be drawn, with plenty of double-takes: Kerry Ligtenberg's still around? (And does he still have those ridiculous sideburns?) Peter Bergeron? Donovan Osborne? Curtis Pride?

We have our own guys on this list of course, a mix of failed prospects, played-out Cyclones, and emptied cups of coffee we saw briefly, wondered if we'd see or thought we'd see again: Craig Brazell, Ron Calloway, Ken Chenard, Steve Colyer, Eric Junge, Robert McIntyre, Orber Moreno, Neal Musser, Rodney Nye, Prentice Redman, Jose Rosado. But the lists of other teams' guys also have a lot of familiar names.

Esix Snead, sent packing by the Braves. Jim Mann, Red Sox property no longer. Bobby M. Jones and Jorge Toca, no longer world-champion Chicago White Sox. Brian Rose, farewell to the Reds. Mike Kinkade, now an ex-Indian. Edwin Almonte is no longer part of the Tigers' plans. Brad Clontz, Wilson Delgado and Mark Little have cashed their final Marlins paycheck. Brian Buchanan and the Minnesota Twins have parted ways. Hideo Nomo won't be a Yankee after all. Mike Bacsik won't be a Phillie. Now that the four of them are no longer Pirate farmhands, Jorge Velandia and Jon Nunnally can stop telling Mark Corey they think it's funny Corey's on the same roster as Jason Roach. Jeff Duncan is leaving San Diego. Joe Depastino and Desi Relaford are done with the Blue Jay thing.

So who knew Jim Mann was still in baseball? That Brad Clontz was still submarining somewhere? That Joe Depastino was trying for another day in the Show? I sure didn't. But I bet Blaine Beatty wouldn't be surprised.

My radio antenna is at half-mast today. If it results in static, so what? It's not like there's anything to listen to.

Gary Cohen is leaving the WFAN booth. There go 162 reasons to keep living.

That SportsNet New York has tabbed him the television voice of the Mets merely cushions the blow -- assuming Cablevision actually adds Snigh to my system without too much hoo-ha. Making TV better doesn't nearly compensate for blowing up the radio side.

According to Andrew Marchand in the Post, this is probably a bigger payday for Gary, so who am I to cut him off from that? And the way the world is this past half-century, television is the glamour gig in any given endeavor. The people who like to watch the Mets will benefit from having Gary Cohen as part of their package.

But those of us who live the Mets are at a loss. We consider the radio to be our oxygen, our atmosphere. We don't make a move without it. It would be disingenuous to suggest we'll be withdrawing all our AA batteries now and saving them for the next blackout. No, we'll listen to whoever does Mets games because we are Mets fans. But they'll just be baseball broadcasts. They won't be a way of life.

Imagine being in a bar or some other public place where televisions are tuned to sporting events. You've found one that has the good sense to be showing a Mets game. Usually that's cause for celebration. Now picture it in 2006, a Snighcast glowing between bottles of Jack Daniels and Grey Goose. What could possibly be wrong with this picture?

The sound is down. Gary Cohen is talking about baseball in your midst and you can't hear it. Suddenly he is not even completely necessary to your absorption of the Mets. This is unconscionable. It's an insult to all he and we stand for. It's just wrong.

Lowering the volume is something you do to Fran Healy, not Gary Cohen.

And, as our loyal reader J M reminded me today, what about post-season? The Mets' participation in it is far from a lock but if/when they get there, who's going to do the games? Not Gary Cohen. Who will filter, reflect and interpret the tension of every unbearable moment? Not Gary Cohen. Whose call of the next epic Todd Pratt homer or grand Robin Ventura single – the next indelible, improbable, insane swing for the ages -- will imprint itself on our souls for eternity? Not Gary Cohen's.

There was a time when I and presumably millions like me couldn't imagine a world without Bob Murphy. That world came to pass. There are millions now in the same position. Younger Students of the Game have come of age with Gary as their Murph. He schooled them. He made Mets fans out of them. He can do something like that on TV, but the relationship just won't be as intense. It can't be.

We sung Gary's and Howie's praises and illustrated what made them the best team in baseball here last month. They were doing a game, like most, that had no lasting impact on the franchise but was important to each of us because it was a Mets game. It was a game like that that made me realize how lucky I was to be living at the intersection of Murphy and Cohen. September 29, 1993. Seventeen innings. Mets 1 Cardinals 0. Aficionados will recall it as The Kenny Greer Game. I was working late and had the game on. And on. And on. The game kept going and Bob and Gary did the same. I don't remember what was said but I remember not wanting the game to end. They were so good together. I knew once and for all that these two voices above all others, giving me every pitch on the last Wednesday of the worst season imaginable, were the voices I'd want in my ears this way for the rest of my life if I could have them there.

I can't.

If Omar Minaya or any GM wants to copy a winning formula, good luck. See how hard it is to replicate success on Gotham Baseball.