Time to start thinking about 2006.

This team ain't catching the Nationals, no matter what the Nats' run differential says their record should be. This team ain't closing 5.5 games worth of ground on the Braves either. I know, you could argue we haven't had a run, one of those where you win 14 of 17 and get some momentum going. But there's no law of baseball that every team gets one of those. Bad teams don't, and neither do plenty of .500 teams. And we're not going to get one either. Those October '05 plans you were holding off making? Get on the phone. You'll be free.

This isn't to say I'm down on the 2005 edition of the New York Mets. Not at all, in fact. We added a superstar center fielder, signing him to a rare long-term deal that makes sense, and will start reaping the dividends offensively once he settles in to his new, extraordinarily demanding city. We have a pair of 22-year-old infielders well worth building on, particularly now that/once they're hitting in the proper slots in the batting order. We've got two outfielders and an ace starter who may give us solid '06 seasons, and if not have already served as veteran leadership to help the next generation through its apprenticeship. We've got some promising young arms maturing at the big-league level or close to it, and can expect a least a couple of arms further down in the system to prove useful. We've got a manager who may move a little slowly for our tastes, but is a firm, respected hand in the clubhouse and a good teacher. We've got a pitching coach who may not always live up to his off-the-cuff boasts, but already has a string of successful or near-successful reclamation projects on his resume. We've got an ownership that's willing to spend and a new stadium and TV network on the way.

So 2006 looks good, and there's no reason the rest of 2005 shouldn't be fun and encouraging. In fact, I think it'll be more fun and more encouraging if we let go, if we accept. This club just has too far to go to play postseason baseball this year: Too many old players aging too fast, too many young players who won't be ready in time, too many declining or dead roster spots that can't be cleared in the next couple of weeks. It's not going to happen, and that's OK.

Since it's not going to happen, here's hoping Omar and Willie and the Wilpons do the smart things in the next few weeks. From my admittedly flawed, fannish perspective, here's my list:

ARMS
* It no longer matters that Ishii and Glavine are dragging down the starting rotation, so keep them in there with hopes of moving them at the deadline.
* Listen to any takers for Zambrano. He's certainly earned the chance to stay, but might be worth more in a trade.
* Figure out whether Seo, Heilman or both deserve starts in August and September, and make sure they get them.
* Move Looper and/or Roberto Hernandez if the right deal comes along.
* Solidify roles for Ring, Bell and Heilman (if he remains a reliever) so we know what we have.
* Continue the Danny Graves experiment, but cut the Dae-Sung Koo one short.

BATS
* Listen to any offers for Piazza, Floyd or Cameron. Don't trade Floyd and/or Cameron for the sake of trading them, but they may have more value now than they ever will again.
* Get rid of Matsui by the time pitchers and catchers report again. He's not a dog, but he needs a new start. We may never find out if he was hurt, couldn't change positions, couldn't adjust to natural grass, hated New York, or exactly what went wrong, but it doesn't matter anymore.
* Determine, as best one ever can, the right long-term place in the batting order for Reyes, Wright and Beltran and let them get 200+ at-bats there.
* Figure out which veterans can really be teachers in part-time roles, and give the other spots over to minor-leaguers who could use a taste of the Show.

Post-Script: Funny, but my reaction to the Nationals last night was the opposite of yours. I'm actually coming to like them. Sure, Jose Guillen seems like a jerk, but other than him it's hard not to root for them. They're a bunch of kids and journeymen you've barely heard of or forgot were still around, and yet they win one-run games and somehow do everything right, and they're unbeatable. In fact, I daresay they remind me a bit of the story of a hangdog squad that made good the year of the moon landing.

Hell, I hope we go 11-0 against them the rest of the way, but I wouldn't mind rooting for them come October. (I don't think they'll make it, but that's another post.) It's a great story for that franchise and for Washington, and I'm happy for both of them. And nope, even though you've chronicled our struggles and our frustrations with the Expos quite ably, I don't mind that tri-color M in their history. What I hated about the Expos was the turf and the dead air in the stadium and the weird mirror glass behind home plate and the air horns going BRAAAP! BRAAAP! all the time and Youppi and the acres of empty, jaundice-colored seats and the random road trips to Puerto Rico. All that's gone, and in my mind the Expos and their essential Exponess went with it. This is a new team, and I bear them no ill will beyond the fact that they're ahead of us in the standings. Which, as I said too many words ago, no longer matters. With 11 exceptions, Come October, what the hell: Go Nats!

XM Radio allows me to listen to the home broadcasts of every team in the Majors. It's ideal for tracking the competition in a five-team divisional race, and when that evaporates (I think I just heard it go pffffft), it will no doubt be useful for any Wild Card business as long as that lasts.

It also has had one unintended effect: It got me hooked on Washington Nationals games. Well, not the whole games, just the ends. Just the part where they emerge victorious at RFK and their announcer, ex-Met fill-in and long-ago Tidecaster Charlie Slowes, exclaims, "The Nationals win again! Bang Zoom go the fireworks!"

This phenomenon, looking forward to a grown man imitating the sound of a firecracker, is childish, I admit. I started tuning into these games to hear the Nationals lose because the Mets might pick up ground on them (hahahahaha). But as you also know, the Nationals rarely lose at home. So while my enemy-tracking via XM was failing miserably, I found myself anticipating Slowes' triumphant signature signoff. Sure it reads corny, but for some reason it's endearing on the air. I didn't want the first-place Nationals to keep winning, but I liked hearing what was said when they won.

What an unexpected dilemma. Cripes, I was actually disappointed last week when the Nationals beat Pittsburgh. No, not disappointed because of what it meant to the Mets' standing in the pennant race (hahahahaha) but because a rain delay forced the game past midnight. There's no doubt a local ordinance against setting off celebratory fireworks that late, so Slowes ended it with "Bang Zoom, the Nationals win again!"

Didn't have the same spark. I wanted my fireworks call. I knew and I know that it was wrong, that it was sick, that it was counterproductive and that the Washington Nationals, as much of a marvelous story as they are, are to be loathed as a National League East rival.

And I do loathe them. Tuesday night reminded me that this deceptively ragged band of Exponentials, from cantankerous Frank Robinson to volatile Jose Guillen to fossilized cleanup batter Carlos Baerga to Jose Vidro (who is a vicious adjective unto himself and thus requires no modifier) all the way to the disappointingly unlooperlike Chad Cordero, are despicable as opponents. I may have pitied them at the very end when they were Montreal but I wasn't terribly concerned that the likes of Jamey Carroll be given a good home (which RFK, the prison exercise yard of MLB, isn't) and a bat with which to club us.

But with the Mets down there in a last-gasp attempt to close the chasm on the division leaders (hahahahaha), I had to see if there was anything to this slight flirtation I'd indulged in with their play-by-play guy. I've had my passing other-team infatuations. They never wear well. I'm not cut out for summer flings. I'm a one-team man.

My first and probably most meaningful rendezvous came in 1978 when I ran around town in a Red Sox cap because I just knew they were going to inflict humiliation on the Yankees that they would never live down. There were people who assumed I was a Red Sox fan for real. That's how convincing I was. Then there were 1982 and 1991 with the Braves when they were feisty underdogs in another division, and 1993 and the nutcase Phillies of Lenny Dykstra who provided a font of amusement and a touch of inspiration while the Mets dedicated themselves to finishing eighth in a seven-team division. My previously copped-to distant -- now dormant -- thing for the Angels was more an October fancy, but I retained some nominal feeling for them post-2002.

You'll notice all of these little winks I made toward other teams came in years when the Mets stank on ice. My beloveds didn't give me a reason not to look around, and to be fair, I never strayed very far. I was just looking for a little action when I wasn't getting the good stuff at home. But the 2005 Mets are, at least for another week, contenders (haha...stop laughing already). Except for '93, which doesn't (or shouldn't) count, I've never flirted with an N.L. Easterner. Yet here I was, a little too into what Washington was up to. Even Stephanie noticed something was going on.

Could "Bang Zoom" really be that much of siren song to me? I tuned in to the Nationals' series against the Cubs from Chicago over the weekend. That meant it was Ron Santo and Pat Hughes doing the games. I found myself rooting for the Nationals even though not a single bang nor a solitary zoom would filter through the XM. Mind you, I viscerally hate the Cubs (you never forget your first hate) and they are, technically, part of the same Wild Card scramble we're in. But I didn't like that I was just a little happy for the team that beat the Cubs.

To see if there was anything serious to worry about, I turned XM to the Natscast of the Mets game Tuesday night. This would be the real test. If I were actually drawn to "Bang Zoom" after a Mets loss (which seemed inevitable, rally or not), then I knew I had a problem. Frankly, I was concerned.

When the teasealicious ninth inning was over on MSG, after Brian Drawback brought shame to uniform No. 13 (I swear that for about an eighth of a second after I saw those digits, I thought the next hitter would be...well, you know who), I checked in with XM, whose signal is about a minute shy of real time.

Drawback popped up to deep short on DC's Z-104 just like he did on MSG. "The Nationals win again!" proclaimed a hearty Charlie Slowes. "Bang Zoom go the fireworks!"

I heard no fireworks. The only sound I heard was me snapping out of it.

I was no longer charmed by Bang or taken with Zoom. I had no use whatsoever for the Washington announcer or his partner whose last name happens to be Shea (yet actually referred to the excitement of "Nationals basketball" during the dreary wrapup). Any slight attraction to the first-place Nationals -- whose only appeal is that they are not the second-place Braves -- ended right then and there. All I could do in the aftermath of a bitter Mets loss was channel the spirit of Tanner Boyle:

Hey Slowes! You can take your signature call and your fireworks and shove 'em straight up your ass!

C'mon Mets. Let's go home.