Wasn't John Shelby in our camp one particularly misbegotten spring? I remember being upset about that. Though it wasn't as bad as Jim Leyritz, which prompted Emily's funniest-ever reaction to a Met atrocity, as well as proof that she's a baseball fan of the first order, and hold any grading on the gender curve, thank you:

Me: The Mets did something awful.
Emily: Oh no, what? Is it going to upset me?
Me: Yes.
Emily: Did they get [name of some player we hated at the time but weren't possibly going to acquire -- possibly Chipper]?
Me (briefly baffled that this is what she'd think): What? No. No. Not a major move.
Emily: Who?
Me: You have to guess. I refuse to say his name.
Emily: This is stupid. I won't get it.
Me: What player would it most upset you to see in a Met uniform?
Emily (instantly): Oh my God, they did NOT get Jimmy the King.
Me: YES.
Emily: No! I hate them!

It's funnier, of course, since JTK never made the team. In a similar vein, I enjoyed seeing him during last year's playoffs, being interviewed in his so-three-years-ago Jimmy Cagney roughneck hat and his ridiculous leather jacket covered in team logos, braying his eternal loyalty to the Vertical Swastika. I enjoyed it because the dark legions of the V.S. lost -- had they won, I'd still be seething that JTK was the final harbinger of doom.

Thinking back, that '88 debacle was my first brush with personal, adult-sized disappointment at a Mets disaster. Falling short in '84 and '85 (and looking like it would happen in '86) hurt, but it was a kid's hurt, somehow -- I dwelled on it, but it didn't infect everything else I did. '88 was different -- watching Keith Hernandez crawling through the mud filled me with a personal dread, like I was now fated to go under the wheels of a bus myself, Shelby and Scioscia felt like not being able to breathe, and Game 7 was a long, slow slide into corrosive anger, one I watched all of only because I knew when it ended there would be no more Met games until March. That year I didn't watch a single inning of the World Series -- something I've never willingly done since  -- and friends who knew what a baseball fan I was asked how I could possibly live with myself having missed Gibson's homer. Kirk Gibson? I wanted to see Kirk Gibson like I wanted to see a surprise midterm.

Actually, now that I think about it, the first brush with that kind of disappointment wasn't '88. It was Terry Pendleton's homer in '87. Which suggests that the change wasn't adulthood, but having won it all. Winning changes everything, I suppose, and not all of it's for the better. Oh well. If it happens again anytime soon, I'm pretty sure I'll figure out a way to endure the not-for-the-better part.

(I will now go turn around three times and spit. Sorry, man.)

The worst stomach-punch of them all, though, had to be that second meltdown against the Braves in '01. I was stuck working on the weekend, away from home because of 9/11, and after it had all come unglued (goddamn Armando, goddamn Franco) I really thought I was going to vomit. The only thing I could think of was having read that when you felt nauseous, you were supposed to put your head between your knees. So I did. For about 45 minutes.

Some actually substantive stories today about the bullpen: Looper, DeJean and Felix Heredia are seen as locks, with Bartholome Fortunato and Heath Bell leading the rest of a field that includes the likes of Grant Roberts, Scott Strickland, Todd Van Poppel and Roberto Hernandez. Having Felix Heredia be a lock for your bullpen doesn't strike me as a good thing. Meanwhile, I know the Mets, being a modern baseball team, will opt to watch the Hernandezes and Scott Stewarts of this world blow instead of trying a Fortunato or Bell. Sigh. Oh well, we'll deal with it. As long as Franco doesn't come in to face Brian Jordan. 

(I really did turn around three times and spit. I'm insane.)

"I've got a speech if he wins, I've got a speech if he doesn't."
"You wrote a concession?"
"Of course I wrote a concession. You want to tempt the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing?"
"No."
"Then go outside, turn around three times and spit. What the hell's the matter with you?"
"It's like 25 degrees outside."
"Go."

-- A sensible Toby Ziegler admonishing a presumptuous Sam Seaborn on "Election Night" in "The West Wing"

Last fall, I was going on about one thing or another with Chuck, articulating my anxieties over Cardinals versus Astros or Red Sox versus Yankees or Kerry versus Bush (two of three ain't bad), and as I planned and replanned and edited my strategies for following and potentially affecting the outcomes of each contest, I blurted in all seriousness to him, "I'm not a superstitious person."

Chuck takes pride in claiming to know me better than anybody else does. He stopped me in midrant.

"Greg," he told me, "you're the most superstitious person I know."

I waited for the laugh to indicate he was only joshing me. But he wasn't. When I doth protested too much, he catalogued about a dozen instances of how I had told him over the years I wore this or that, stood here or there, thought that but not this so I wouldn't disturb whatever forces of nature were going to work in favor of whatever cause ­-- almost always the Mets ­-- I absolutely needed to succeed at that moment.

In all those instances, I insisted, I was kind of kidding around with him, but now that he mentioned it, I guess I was a little more serious every time that I let on how worried I was about jinxing and kiboshing and gumming up the works for the Mets even though I have yet to play in a single game for them.

Being told you're superstitious after a lifetime of being sure that you're not must be like finding out you were born in Utah. "I'm a Utahan? I am? Wow, who knew?" I don't avoid ladders, I don't care much for the Osmonds and I'm not one of those fans who thinks he's So Crazy because he has a hundred little rituals spoken and unspoken, but evidence is evidence. And Chuck knows me better than anybody else does.

Last night, another dear friend got in touch to ask if I was going the partial season ticket plan route again, à la what you and I did in '01 and '02. "It might be nice to have a shot at playoff tickets," she said.

It was like 25 degrees, but I demanded she go outside, turn around three times and spit. As of this writing, I don't believe she has.

So now we're screwed.

There's too much damn blind optimism around this team right now and it scares the hell out of me. When Mets fans who should know better are worried in February about playoff seating, I'm reminded of whichever 1920s tycoon it was who decided it was time to sell off his securities when he heard shoeshine boys furiously exchanging stock tips.

Yes, this is the time of year when every team's a contender, every rookie's a keeper, every McEwing's a McCovey. That's fine. But I'm used to having my Mets sensibilities offended by sneering, not cheering. Usually by now (and it hasn't been totally absent), I'll read something about how the Mets have some nerve aspiring to finish as high as last and I'm ready to crack media heads.

Instead, I read yesterday a comparison between this new, untested infield which could be, if all goes well and nobody gets hurt, pretty serviceable and the (gasp!) 1999 Greatest Infield Ever. Olerud, Alfonzo, Ordoñez, Ventura. Twenty errors all year. Two gold gloves. Shoulda been three.

I've heard our rotation -- three old guys coming off not peak seasons and two younger guys with a history of arm problems -- referred to as the best in the National League. Better than the Braves. Better than the Dodgers. Better than the Marlins.

And Carlos Beltran has been elevated from very talented .267 hitter to the only "six-tool player" in baseball because not only can he do it all on the field, but he's comping the kids at Gold's Gym, where I can just hear hamstrings a poppin' any minute now.

Worst yet, I've been told the Mets are answering their phones, "The New Mets." I thought back to the New Orleans Breakers of 1984. Yes, the New Orleans Breakers, a USFL franchise which had just moved to the Bayou from Boston. The Breakers had been doing well in their division at mid-season, so their switchboard operator greeted callers with "First Place New Orleans Breakers!"

The New Orleans Breakers fell out of first, didn't make the playoffs, moved to Portland and evaporated along with the rest of the league within two years.

Come to think of it, did our Tuesday/Friday plan of a few years back yield us any playoff tickets?

It's not superstition I'm selling here. It's pre-emptive non-presumptuousness. All of my tics and impulses are not about doing things to help my team win. It's to keep the other team from beating us. I can't help the Mets, I know that. The best I can hope to do is not hurt them. I haven't worn a rally cap since the mid-'80s because the one time I did, it killed a rally. I almost never clap with two strikes because when I do, it always leads to four balls. Always. It's only because of my complicated commute and commensurate stadium exit strategy that I dare stand up with two outs and a six-run lead in the ninth. I don't actually think Looper or Benitez or Franco or Skip Lockwood has it in the bag. Why would you think I would think that?

The tipping point from happy, proactive "we're gonna win!" rooting to anxious, preventive "oh god, how I have effed them up now?" writhing came the afternoon of October 9, 1988. I had a friend in high school with no interest in baseball. He went to college and settled in Boston and developed -- as one will, I suppose -- a fondness for the Red Sox. I had teased him a little bit two years earlier when his new team lost to my old team in the World Series. But he was a good guy and he was not unsympathetic to our cause. And in October 1988, the possibility existed for a Mets-Red Sox rematch.

Except on the Sunday afternoon in question, the Red Sox had just been swept out of the American League playoffs, four games to none, by the A's. The Mets would play that night, up 2-1 on the Dodgers with Doc Gooden going at Shea. I called the guy in Boston and got his machine. I left him a message of condolence and told him to look at the bright side: Now you can root for the Mets in the World Series against Oakland.

That night, in case you've forgotten, the Mets were three outs from going up three games to one when Doc walked John Shelby and surrendered a home run to Mike Scioscia, knotting the score at four. The Dodgers won in the twelfth. They went on to win the pennant in seven.

Needless to say, I don't pencil in World Series appearances or angle eight months out for playoff tickets since then.

And I try not to use the phone at all if I can help it.