You get a shiver in the dark
It's been raining in the park, but meantime...

Know why I'm particularly happy that it was Chris Woodward who walked us off into victory Tuesday night? Because every time he comes to bat, Shea's P.A. plays a few notes from a Dire Straits song, usually 1979's "Sultans of Swing". I'm not a Dire Straits fan per se (though "Sultans of Swing" is No. 480 on my Top 500 Songs of All Time list, "All Time" encompassing the years 1972 through 1999, but never mind that right now) nor is Mark Knopfler a personal hero of mine. I just like the idea that a 29-year-old ballplayer chooses something relatively ancient and probably obscure to the current generation of players as his theme. "Sultans of Swing" seems more suited to a middle-aged softballer. Or a relentlessly sedentary writer/editor/consultant. Or Gerald Williams.

Good on ya, ya erstwhile Torontoan, for giving us a shiver in the dark in the eleventh inning and for reaching back more than a quarter-century for your intro music. You make me feel so young. You make me feel there are games to be won, homes to be run and a wonderful fling to be flung especially when you, the Woodman, pinch-hit instead of Williams, the human white flag.

Last year, ESPN.com did as in-depth a study as anybody could ask for on which songs are requested by which ballplayers when they come to bat or the mound. As a Jay, Woody went for "anything by Creed". Glad he switched.

If you've already forgotten how various 2004 Mets set the stage for their respective individual dramatic presences, Jason Phillips rocked you like a hurricane, Todd Zeile let it whip and Mike Stanton associated himself with the red, white and blue.

The flag awaits his apology.

A hit that ends a game at Shea, which by definition ensures a Mets win, is music to the eyes as well as all other senses because when the hitmaker gets to first, he generally raises an arm in the air and pumps a fist, just as Woodward did against the Padres. Ain't that fun? Ain't that joy in a kid's game? The rest of the time a batter who as much as smiles "better watch his step" lest he "violate" the "unwritten rules". That's why almost all players effect the grim visage of investment bankers about to take a conference call even though they've just batted a baseball off the bottom of a scoreboard 430 feet away.

Last week, when Wright cracked his second homer against the Braves, there was a swelling demand for a curtain call. I knew we wouldn't see one. Diamond Dave is too cognizant of protocol and his single year of service time to acknowledge the crowd as early as the fourth. Too bad. One of the things that made the 1986 Mets so beloved by the fans was the way they stepped out of the dugout to wave their caps -- anytime, anywhere for having done anything. No shyness about it. No worrying about how it looked, only how good it felt. The practice made the other team mad but our guys cared about us, not them. I've never understood why it's so wrong for ballplayers to demonstrate that kind of emotion as the rule and not the exception.

Imagine being a Major League Baseball player. You're living the life. You're being paid exponentially beyond anything approximating your or anybody's value to society. You get to run around baseball fields almost every day or night for six months in front of tens of thousands of people at a time, many of whom worship you, cheer you and wear garments with your name and number on the back. To top it all off, your employer will play a song real loud just for you. Not only should you express exuberance when you do something good, you should jump up and down and clap and go "WOO-HOO!" every couple of minutes just because.

That's what I did when Chris Woodward said thank you, good night, now it's time to go home.

The antithesis of the baseball team as an exercise in unpredictable ebullience can also be interpreted as the deadliest, most consistent winners we'll probably ever see in our lifetimes. In fact, we just saw 'em. See 'em again, if you dare, at Gotham Baseball.

I hope Alex gets a game that good -- well, OK, it would be nice to have one not quite as long, and one played on a night not quite as much like an armpit or a stagnant aquarium in the sun. (New York City is really no place to be right now.) Weather aside, though, that was a good 'un. Heck, any game that ends with the guys wearing your colors clustered around home plate waiting to spring is, by definition, a good 'un.

Still, for a while it felt like a game on a treadmill, which I suppose is fitting for a season on a treadmill. Exactly how many times were we going to have a runner at second with one out and walk away with nothing? Exactly how many great relievers could the Padres run out of the bullpen? Exactly when was Trevor Hoffman going to come out and blitz us for God knows how many innings? (Thankfully, that never happened.)

While we're sort of on the subject, how terrible are the Padres' uniforms? In fact, have the Padres ever worn a uniform that isn't rub-your-eyes ridiculous? They change them every other year, spinning up the color wheel like crack-addled hamsters while the designs morph from godawful to uninspired and back, and not even by accident do they ever hit on something worth greeting with more enthusiasm than, "Well, I guess that's better than the old Padres uniform."

I mean, we know bad uniforms. We started out OK (combining the Dodgers and Giants colors gave us an identity as a newborn expansion team, even if our infatuation with ol' Ebbets Field and Polo Grounds favorites served us poorly for a time), mucked things up with the wretched side stripe of the 1980s, banished that only to usher in the thankfully short-lived METS with a tail (which can be seen, for some unfathomable reason, on minor-leaguer Jim Burt's 2005 Bowman card), and then unleashed sartorial hell, with the ice-cream caps probably the low point. Now the classic pinstripes are hardly ever seen, and we're usually screwing up the fairly cool black unis by wearing them with that awful blue-billed cap. If there's any rhyme or reason to when we'll be wearing black or snow white or pinstripes, it certainly escapes me. If I had my say, things would be simple and predictable: Home rotation would be pinstripes as the norm, black on the weekends, snow white on holidays, no blue bills ever. Road would be grays as the norm, black on the weekends and holidays. There. Was that so hard?

But compared to the Padres we look positively classic. Shudder.

Speaking of shuddering, I'm beginning a tiresome and probably futile campaign of complaining about the dead roster spots occupied by Mister Koo and Danny Graves. Koo couldn't manage to get any lefties out, which is his only purpose for being on the team, and was only saved from disaster by a lucky roll up Piazza's arm that deposited the ball in perfect throwing position for Mike to nail Dave Roberts on what sure looked like a lazy call at second. (Jose tagged the immediate space around Roberts' various limbs repeatedly, but I'm not sure he actually got the runner.) As for Graves, well, it would be cruel to state the obvious. Why, oh why, can't we see Ring as the lefty specialist? I don't much care who replaces Graves. OK, not Mel Rojas or Rich Rodriguez, but other than that I'm open to anything.

And why in the name of James Baldwin and Scott Erickson is Ishii getting another start? Augghhh!

On the other hand, there was David Wright batting ahead of Piazza in the batting order. About time -- let's hope it lasts longer than the Jose Reyes Bats Seventh experiment. Braden Looper managed to avoid the dreaded Closer's Second Inning debacle. Kris Benson was masterful. And Chris Woodward, well, he sent us all home happy.