Well, darn. Hottest hitter on the club up, tie game just a worm-killer/little dunker/smash single/double/triple/home run/wild pitch/passed ball/balk away, and all for naught. As Joshua likes to say sagely, "That happens sometimes." Wonder what tomorrow will bring -- no closer is safe, that's for sure. Dan Kolb's meltdown was one of the more startling gag jobs I've seen in since...oh hell, since Looper on Opening Day. If Marcus Giles gets eaten up by that mean hop on Victor Diaz's shot to second, Kolb could easily have departed the loser with a big zero under IP. But he got two outs out of it, somehow, and we had too far to go, despite some pretty stirring heroism.

I see (OK, hear) lots of faults -- most glaringly, Jose Reyes makes Ryan Thompson look like an OBA machine and Kaz Matsui seems to be hypnotized by any ground ball that arrives at more than a 1-degree angle -- but you know what? I'm coming to really like this team of ours. You never know if they're going to do something brilliant, brave, boneheaded or bizarre, and everytime you assume any of the four is impossible, it happens. Or almost does.

So we clawed our way back to the summit, slipped on a patch of ice and fell off again, this time for keeps. So what. I can't believe it's 13 hours until we get another game. Get those guys back on the field and give us some more ball!

I was gonna tell a baseball-card story about Royce Ring and Rich Sauveur, but it'll wait.

Hey, maybe I'm not so crazy after all. My hunch, stated Monday, that Captain Carlos was taking care of Mike so Mike could take care of opposing pitchers finds some resonance via Marty Noble who sensed something not altogether "subtle" at work Sunday.

Beltran told MLB.com's Noble that he believes in Piazza: "I wasn't thinking about what he did [Saturday] and Friday. I was thinking about what a great hitter he's been in his career. What a great hitter he still is.''

Noted Noble, "Beltran's demonstration of confidence -- not too subtle to the trained eye -- was rewarded when Piazza lined a double into the left-center-field gap."

"I don't say I knew what was coming," Beltran elaborated. "But I know Mike can hit and get big hits."

On the other hand, all anybody knew about Mike Matthews was he got hit hard Sunday. Just like that, it's adios Matthews and hello, hello (¡hola!) Royce Ring, a lefty-lefty roster swap at that vertiginous place called the Mets bullpen. I didn't form any particular attachment to Matthews, who leaves behind a 1-0 record, but I'm curious as to why he's gone so quickly. He's had a couple of bad outings, as his 10.80 ERA attests, but he's also had a couple of good outings. Now we go with two unproven lefties, Ring and Koo, which coincidentally were the sound effects heard between verses of "Muskrat Love," a song to which no reliever enters the fray. As ever, we can lay all our pitching issues, like a large, succulent rat, at the feet of King Felix. If Randolph hadn't kept Heredia around (for an unwieldy total of three lefties), there would have been room for Matt Ginter. If we had Matt Ginter, we wouldn't have had to have called on Aaron Heilman.

And if we hadn't called on Enigmatic Aaron, we wouldn't have had two absolute gems from which to get our hopes up, so forget about Ginter. I already have, but it does seem wasteful to have tossed a serviceable starting pitcher overboard for paperwork's sake.

Monday night's game seemed well in hand when Stephanie got me interested in an article she was reading in Psychology Today about personality traits. While we tried to decide whether I was avoidant or schizotypal, I revealed to her a theory I've been working on that I've built a baseballcentric world for myself as a reaction to the unsatisfying familial bonds I grew up subconsciously rejecting. This went deep, as deep as Cliff Floyd went in the sixth. As I made breakthrough after breakthrough in expressing my lingering disappointments over my blood-relationships and how I use the Mets as a substitute for family (and not in the lame way the Jimmy Fallon character claims to in Fever Pitch), I couldn't help but notice the top of the ninth was turning into a disaster.

"Remember the Thanksgiving when...damn, he let that ball play him!..."

"And Father's Day last year, when everybody was at each other's...pick up the ball, David!…"

"The thing is, we've never been close..get it together, Looper!..."

"One parent was constantly overwhelming while the other was constantly underwhelming...goddamnit, Julio Franco is up!..."

"What it all boils down to is...yes! yes! we won!"

The game wasn't lost on us and the irony wasn't lost on me. Like I said, maybe I'm not so crazy after all.

Eeeek. But it all turned out OK.

I'm officially onboard with your psychological explanation of Carlos Beltran's strange double push bunt on Sunday. It's genius, it shows true leadership at work, and I very much want it to be true. And it's worked for two days, hasn't it? Perhaps Carlos is the Gen. Patton Mike always wanted to salute and follow. Stranger things have happened.

This was a scary one -- our galling ineffectiveness early (we got effective late), the wait for Aaron Heilman to revert to the form from Heilman-Ramirez I (he didn't), Kaz Matsui continuing to bunt stupidly (but not fatally stupidly), Roberto Hernandez finally pitching poorly (but cleaning up his own mess), Braden Looper battling a tight strike zone and some bad luck (but not enough bad luck), David Wright booting a potential game-ending play (but...well, hang on), David Wright booting a second potential game-ending play (but not having the ball hit at him a third time), and realizing that it was over and we'd won the damn thing, 5-4. (But the Braves will be back tomorrow.)

Funny thing: Early on, I found it odd that the usual Met-Brave nerves weren't firing. Part of it is not being able to see the tomahawk and the familiar faces. But it's also that a lot of the familiar faces aren't around anymore. Chipper and Andruw remain, and Smoltz, and Brian Jordan returned to torment us, and Bobby Cox is still stamping around in the dugout whining and scowling, and Leo Mazzone is davening of course, but Maddux is gone and Glavine (where'd he get to, anyway?) and Eddie Perez and Javy and Rocker and Boone and Millwood and all the other guys who just killed us are no more. The only one of the new guys I've managed to truly loathe is Rafael Furcal -- Julio Franco's too great a story, I wish Marcus Giles were on our team, and the rest of the guys are just too new to really register. This is a team in transition, and while I've gotten pretty good at rooting for laundry, with the exception of the Yankees it's just too taxing to stay good at hating laundry.

Heck, maybe the turnover on the Mets will have the same effect. What business do Beltran, Pedro and Minky have being terrified of the Braves? Nowadays it's just sportswriters and fans who get tight at the merest glimpse of them. I'm sure tomorrow the papers will say games like tonight's are the kind of early-season acid test the Mets used to fail and so things are looking up, but the truth is games like tonight's are the kind of early-season acid test 22 or 23 other guys wearing some bizarre concoction of blue, orange, white and black used to fail against 17 or 18 other guys wearing gray and red and navy blue.

Maybe I'm just not feeling mythic. Don't get me wrong: I'm glad Willie took Heilman out with a lot to feel good about. I'm glad Cliff looks like he's swapped legs with the 2001 model. (Frantic wood knocking.) I'm glad Mike may not be quite as old as I feared two days ago. I'm glad Wright's homer wasn't erased by those two ninth-inning botches. I'm glad Braden can go home hearing "Loo" instead of something similar. And I'm glad tomorrow's Pedro-Smoltz II: The Fury in Flushing. I'll be up for it. But mostly because it's Pedro-Smoltz, not because it's Mets-Braves. Not yet? Not anymore? Guess we'll find out.

Postscript: Will someone please, please, please explain to me how Looper wound up taking the mound to "Lightning Strikes"? For the uninitiated, "Lightning Strikes" is from "Rock and a Hard Place," the dismal 1982 Aerosmith album recorded with a couple of studio nitwits standing in for Joe Perry and Brad Whitford, an album Aerosmith now basically pretends never existed. I don't think it's been heard in public since...well, since 1982, probably. It's like finding a Dylan fan who worships "Neighborhood Bully," a Stones fan who's got "Indian Girl" on repeat, a Springsteen fan who won't stop going on about "Mary, Queen of Arkansas." It's like finding a Met fan who lives in his 1993 uniform top with the hideous underscore tail. It's just deeply weird.

I know it's at least mildly insane to obsess over the musical choices made by/for a middling closer, but I can't help it. This stuff bothers me.