It was one of those days: Emily's birthday (yes, she shares it with George Steinbrenner and the Republic), a friend in town, outings planned for the birthday girl and Joshua. Lots to do, in other words -- and in the middle of it, a suddenly not-so-appealing date with the Washington Nationals, the who'da-thunk-it kings of the National League East, and practically unbeatable at home. Faced with a critical juncture of the puzzling 2005 season in the form of a battle with a team 10 games ahead of us, Emily and I tacitly agreed we'd do the smart thing: Today was not going to be held hostage by a sub-.500 team, not a day after we spent well over $100 and an entire afternoon watching said mediocre team get three hits off Dontrelle Willis.

Only. Well. Except. Walking across town to Shake Shack, I became acutely aware that it was game time. Game time, and I didn't know what was happening. I couldn't have brought a radio? A few Shackburgers and a caramel shake pushed the vague sense of guilt away, but then the 60-something woman at the table behind us started chatting with a couple in line about the Mets. "I can't stand that Offerman," she brayed in that inimitable New Yawk way. "Why'd they bring him up?" The couple said they had a radio, and there was no score early. "That Ishii," the woman said in disgust before swiftly moving on to Looper, who was "no good." They should have stuck with Benitez, and look how we used to complain about him?

Clearly one of us.

"Benitez is hurt," Emily interjected. We asked the couple what was the score again. Now out-fanatic'ed on two fronts, they had started to look vaguely panicky. It wasn't a debacle, at least not yet. We were able to determine that much.

On the subway, Joshua expressed his certainty that when we got home, he was going to further plumb the subtleties of "Maisy," the vaguely British cartoon mouse whose cheerfully mundane doings rule our TiVo.

"Mommy and Daddy are watching the game," he was told.

We tuned in to see the replay of Wright in a rundown, Reyes moving by fits and starts to third, and Woodward (initially almost unnoticed) doing something bad to his leg -- far too much to take in at a glance, let alone when you've just arrived and are trying to get the basics of score and inning.

Washington 2, New York 1. Top of the seventh. First and third. One out. Not as promising as things had been a moment before we turned on the TV, but not hopeless by any means. Then Daubach strikes out. Groans. They've saved the worst for us, of course: We're just in time to see the team fold, to learn later what colossally typical blunder led to the rundown. Eleven out, what does it matter how many to play.

Only Cameron breaks his bat and drops a little flare behind second base. All tied up. Jubilation. "Did the man hit a home run?" asks Joshua. "No, but good enough," I tell him. He tries on his storm-cloud face. Complicated, this baseball stuff.

Can Roberto hold it? He can. Then the ninth: Wright gets rung up on an evil Sunny Kim pitch, but Reyes beats out an infield hit -- speed never goes into a slump and all that. Reyes obviously isn't leading off -- what's up with that? He has to steal here. Can he? Kim is keeping him close. Can Gary Bennett throw? He wasn't a Met long enough for me to remember. Jose swipes the bag. Can the other Jose -- the elderly, butterfingered one who shouldn't be on this team -- bring him home? He can! Perhaps the woman from Shake Shack should think better of him, at least for today. Perhaps so should we.

But Looper awaits, so 3-2 Mets isn't going to cut it. We need some insurance -- like, say, batting around a time or two. That doesn't happen, but Cameron doubles and the resurgent Beltran singles him home for a 5-2 lead. By now, a brief Emily errand has caused a TiVo pause of a few minutes' duration, so when Looper climbs the hill to face Vinny Castilla I'm hoping the game is, in fact, already over. (And baseball gods please note I don't mean in the Opening-Day-in-Cincy way.)

It is! We win! And immediately I'm swept up in all the usual Met madness I'd dammed away for six unseen innings: Back to .500. Hey, nine out. Sweep these damn Nats and we're six out, that's not so bad. Jose finally got dropped in the lineup, Willie's getting it. But Wright's still hitting behind Anderson, what's up with that? Ohhh, it's the L/R/L/R thing again. Can that really be more important than getting a high-value hitter like Wright more at-bats? Maybe some sabermetrics genius can take it apart and issue a ruling. What did those damn Braves, Phils and Marlins do today? And hey, when the heck is tomorrow's game....

Happy Dependence Day, everybody!

It's that time again. No, not time to flail helplessly against Livan Hernandez, Chad Cordero and the powerhouse National pitching staff that is poised to bury us 14 games deep into last place. It's time for yet another installment of the Faith and Fear Short-Season Awards.

For those of you just tuning in, at the end of the first month or so of the season, we ripped off paid homage to Joe Gergen's old bit in Newsday and rushed to judge the Mets based on a limited body of work. It went over so well, we decided to make this a fractional tradition after the second-sixth of the season and honor the best and worst of the Mets during that particular 16.666666667% of the schedule.

Having just witnessed the Mets play games 55 (6/4) through 81 (7/3), we now present the Third Edition of the Sixthies.

Freude Mets
1. Cliff Floyd: Hey now, you're an All-Star to us.
2. Pedro Martinez: Hey now, you're the whole galaxy.
3a. Charlon Woonderson: He's great no matter where he plays.
3b. Mars Andward: Him, too.
4. Jose Reyes: It must be nice to outrun your flaws.
5. Victor Zambrano: Can you believe Tampa Bay traded a bulldog like him for an unproven minor leaguer?

Schaden Mets
1. Kaz Ishii: Norfolk's beautiful this time of year.
2. Tom Glavine: So is San Diego, big shot.
3. David Wright: Take a deep breath and try not to think when you field.
4. Braden Looper: You pick the worst times, I swear.
5. Gerald Williams: Granted, he hasn't done anything. And he never will.

Most Runyonesque* Episode
1. This is the way old "Marlon" Anderson ran last month, running his home run home. This is the way old "Marlon" Anderson ran running his home run home in a Met victory by a score of 5 to 3 in the second game of an interleague series in 2005. This is the way old "Marlon" Anderson ran, running his home run home, when there was one out in the ninth inning and the score was Angels 2 Mets 1 and the ball was still bounding inside the Met yard. This is the way --

2. His mouth wide open. His warped old legs bending beneath him at every stride. His arms flying back and forth like those of a man swimming with a crawl stroke. His flanks heaving, his breath whistling, his head far back.

3. Angel infielders, passed by old "Marlon" Anderson as he was running his home run home, say "Marlon" was muttering to himself, adjuring himself to greater speed as a jockey mutters to his horse in a race, that he was saying: "Go on, Marlon! Go on!" People generally laugh when they see old "Marlon" Anderson run, but they were not laughing when he was running his home run home last month. People -- 34,000 of them, men and women -- were standing in the Met stands and bleachers out there in Flushing roaring sympathetically, whether they were for or against the Mets. "Come on, Marlon!" The warped old legs, twisted and bent by many a year of baseball campaigns, just barely held out under "Marlon" Anderson until he reached the plate, running his home run home. Then they collapsed.

4. They gave out just as old "Marlon" Anderson slid over the plate in his awkward fashion with Jose Molina futilely reaching for him with the ball. "Larry" Young, the Major League umpire, poised over him in a set pose, arms spread wide to indicate that old "Marlon" was safe.

5. Half a dozen Mets rushed forward to help "Marlon" to his feet, to hammer him on the back, to bawl congratulations in his ears as he limped unsteadily, still panting furiously, to the bench where Willie L. Randolph, the chief of the Mets, relaxed his stern features to smile for the man who had tied the game. "Marlon" Anderson's warped old legs, neither of them broken not so long ago, wouldn't carry him out for the top half of the next inning when the Angels made a dying effort to undo the damage done by "Marlon." His place in the lineup was taken by "Braden" Looper, whose legs are still unwarped, and "Marlon" sat on the bench with Willie Randolph.

Other Life-Affirming Moments
1. The CliffMonsta battles Brendan Donnelly for about an hour and wins.
2. Pedro throws a no-hitter against the Astros...except for the two hits he gives up (a mere technicality).
3. Call-and-response exercise wherein Gary Cohen says "Fly ball to center. Should be playable for Bernie Williams..." and I ask "or is it?"
4. Carlos Beltran blasts one out in Oakland when somebody not named Pedro has started.
5. Mike Cameron doesn't go to the Skanques for some jerk who doesn't want to be here and we don't want him no way no how, unless maybe...NO! Screw you, Sheffield.

Why Life Needs Affirming
1. 2-7 against the American League West.
2. Jose Offerman, first baseman.
3. Fucking Looper in the fucking ninth inning in the fucking Bronx. FUCK!
4. Except for the Sunday night half of the doubleheader against the Giants, we haven't won a home game all year on a Sunday. The "day of rest" thing isn't meant for you, fellas.
5. Upon closer inspection, the Times Piazza pin is a little blurry.

Key Transactions
1. ANNOUNCED: New York City will support an Olympic bid that will allow a new Mets ballpark to be built whether the Olympics come here or not. Or so they say now.
2. RELEASED: Aaron Heilman, from the mound at Safeco Field too soon when he could have done us some good.
3. DESIGNATED FOR ASSIGNMENT: More than half of the Opening Day bullpen. Woo-hoo!
4. RECALLED: Carlos Beltran's legs and his ability to use them.
5. INELIGIBLE TO PLAY: Mike Piazza's right arm, but it keeps insisting on making throws anyway.

Phrases I Thought I Might Get To Use But Didn't
1. I can't wait until they release him and turn him into Mike DeGone.
2. Abreu sliced through Manny like he was a stick of Hotel Aybar Butter.
3. With a name like Mientkiewicz, he must really know how to stretch.
4. Thankfully, Omar wasn't addled enough to sign Danny Graves.
5. It'll be a tough homestand, but at least we get four games in Washington after it's over.

*A classic play deserves a classic description. Damon Runyon penned this account of Casey Stengel's game-winning inside-the-park homer in the 1923 World Series when the Giants took on the Yankees. Eighty-two years hence, only the salient facts have been altered.