Pedro cures all. So much for the can't win on Sundays, can't win outside the division inside our own time zone, can't win when half of Team FAFIF steals away from proximity.

Ah, Pedro. I'd still prefer our ace do at least a flyover of Detroit Tuesday night (according to our redoubtable radio guys, Carlos and Mike, like most lavishly compensated players, each has a private plane booked to whisk them to and from the festivities). He really is our star of stars. A couple of weeks ago, I gave him the highest honor at my disposal and added MARTINEZ 45 to my t-shirt rotation. I wasn't planning to. I wandered into the Mets Clubhouse Shop on 42nd to browse and Pedro's garment just kind of called to me. Maybe I'll wave it at the screen during the introductions.

About time we beat the Pirates. My middle-of-the-night ode to their park and their past notwithstanding, my favorite Bucs-Mets memory occurred at Shea in 1989. I took my best friend Chuck, then living in Washington, to his first game in a generation. He's not that much of a fan but he does know how to get caught up in the moment. When Dave Magadan hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the eleventh to win it, I was happy. But Chuck was delirious beyond all recognition. The sendoff he directed toward the visitors that night -- FUCK YOU PIRATES! FUCK YOU! over and over again -- remains a touchstone of our shared vocabulary.

That's Mets baseball to me. That's why it's so hard to not have it readily available during the All-Star break. We are winding down the first of 99 consecutive hours without a Mets game. I can feel the withdrawal pangs coming on. Chills...sweats...the need to see somebody caught off second or nailed at home. I think I'll go lie down and lose track of how many outs there are.

The National Funeral Directors Association called. They said they're considering filing suit. Seems one of our relievers is giving graves a bad name.

The makers of the Heath Bar called. They say candy revenue is down. Kids all of a sudden would rather eat cauliflower than have anything to do with their product. Bell sales are off, too.

Jason Phillips called. Asked "how's that trade working out?" Then he laughed hysterically and hung up.

The New York Cubans called. They want their uniforms back.

The president of Cuba called. He's extremely upset that the Cuban people are being besmirched by the temporary use of their nationality to identify "such a piss-poor, imperialist-dog baseball team," and he's not too crazy that we have a guy named Castro "who can't score from second on a double which I could do even at my age while smoking a Cohiba and restricting freedom."

The mayor of Pittsburgh called. Says the Mets can have any block of rooms in any hotel in the city. Just stay a little longer -- you're great for business.

Such indignities visited upon a sub-.500 team yet again, one trying to do the right thing by honoring the Negro Leagues (the Pittsburgh Crawfords having been honored seven runs more Saturday night) and wondering what it has do to get on the good side of mediocrity.

Dave O'Brien said the Mets looked sheepish and embarrassed around the batting cage following Friday's fiasco. I look forward to the adjectives he brings to today's telecast. I would suggest ashamed, besotted, bewildered, hopeless, inept, morose, moronic, futile, pointless, overpaid, underachieving, unbelievably hopeless and, perhaps, no longer viable. He's a professional announcer, I'll leave it to him.

At 9:18 P.M. EDT, when Jack Wilson's grand slam cleared the left field wall, the bases and my head of any idea that the Mets could win the game, I'm almost certain the competitive portion of the Mets' season ended. Almost. You can never be too certain with baseball. I spent the summer of 2001 telling anybody and everybody to stop bringing up 1973, that this team, the '01s, could not make any kind of run. Then I spent late August and September being delightedly wrong. But if memory serves, we didn't actually win in 2001. We dug a hole. Holes have a way of getting deep. This one we're working on is growing cavernous.

Jack Wilson, huh? He's one of those guys who was good the year before who isn't having nearly the season now but when the Mets come to town it's the good old days all over again for him. Aren't the Mets always falling prey to guys like that? Jack-MF. Jack ripped us. Jack be quick and all that. Jack Wilson, as motel-registry a name as there is in baseball, checked us out of contention. Almost certainly.

I can't blame Jack Wilson or any of his little friends. This isn't the Pirates' fault. The Pirates don't get to do nothin' ever, so why shouldn't they have a few kicks at our expense? It's not like we did anything meaningful to prevent them.

It shouldn't be like this. Obviously we shouldn't be losing 11-4 to anybody, let alone a team that even after the last two games has the fourth-worst record in the National League. But it shouldn't be like this for the Pittsburgh Pirates in general. After the Pirates probably sweep us Sunday (our Sunday record is 3-11...our non-division, Eastern time zone record is 0-5...our record when my co-blogger leaves the state is 0-6...you do the math), they'll still be the Pirates. Regardless of their success against us in their cameo on our schedule, it's hard not to put some pity in Pittsburgh.

Man, the Pirates. I can't believe what's become of the Pirates. They were the Pirates, y'know? For the first decade and change of my baseball life, they were the one team in the National League I respected more than any other. They were the first team I ever saw slap the kibosh on the Mets, in 1970. Sure I rooted against them big-time then and throughout our extended run of competence in the early and mid-'70s, but geez, how could ya hate those Pirates? How could ya hate Roberto Clemente? How could ya hate Willie Stargell? I wanted us to beat the crap out of them in September of '73, and we did, but overall, they were so classy and so good.

Seems every time the Mets visit Pittsburgh (which isn't nearly enough for my taste; they could just place a camera up behind home plate and pan the PNC vista until the sun goes down and I could get the score later and call it a very satisfying evening), the telecast contains an homage to Roberto and an homage to Wilver and a nod to Ralph, of course, and a mention of Mazeroski. It's like this franchise ceased to exist as a going concern after 1979, and that they built this beautiful showcase -- if you haven't been there, go there, it's by far the greatest ballpark in the National League, Wrigley included -- just so there'd be an appropriate backdrop from which to reminisce.

There was another golden age of Pittsburgh baseball, the one in which the Pirates were good for yet another Mets-bonking. I don't have any warm feelings for the Bonds-Bonilla-Van Slyke group of 1987-1992. They were a real good team and deserved respect but, yeech. Leyland. Bonds. Bonilla. Especially Bonilla. I wasn't penning any paeans to them in the summer of 1988 when they wouldn't get off our heels. We were the big, bad Mets. They were the relentless Bucs who were undeniably on the rise but had to be kept at bay for at least one more season. There was a series that June when Three Rivers, which never sold out, was jammed with Mets-haters. Fans had to be ejected for what they were yelling and throwing at HoJo and Lenny (forebears, apparently, of the moron who spat at Cliff on Saturday night). Every time we played them, we somehow managed to trump them at just the right moment for us and the wrong moment for them. They got payback in 1990 and 1991 and 1992. It was a good rivalry two different times.

I guess that's what I miss. I miss the Pirates being the Pirates. I miss the National League East when it had Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Chicago to do battle against. As mentioned on occasion, I've disliked the Cubs since I was old enough to know enough to hate a baseball team. The Cardinals of 1985 and 1987 forever left a bad taste in my mouth where The World's Greatest Baseball Town is concerned. But those Midwestern clubs have gone on to forge major identities elsewhere and don't seem all that odd not to have around.

The Pirates, by contrast, couldn't afford to retain Bonds and never recovered. They haven't been remotely good since they were usurping our perceived prominence in the division. Pittsburgh may have been better than us by 1990 but they never seemed beyond human the way our Atlantan oppressors have been for far too long. The two of us should have kept it up but instead economics and realignment have kept us apart. I miss playing them on a regular basis.

This weekend, I mostly miss beating them every now and then.