No reason to freak out. We go into September 1.5 games out with a chance to make it .5 before the day's done. Back in spring training, if you'd given me a choice between that scenario and whatever was behind Door #2, I'd have taken 1.5 games out and never wondered about what else we might have had.

But still, damn.

Strange game -- at the beginning, as we were marching out to a 2-0 lead and looking for all the world like more was coming, this felt like one of those nights when baseball's a sweet dream, when your players can do anything asked of them and look like they know it, too. And it wasn't just the scoreboard that made me think it -- it was the crowd roaring and the cool, calm looks on the faces of Beltran and Floyd and Wright and Co.

But things slowly started to turn. Maybe it was the hideous heat, or the slow realization that Pedro didn't have it and was mixing and matching grumpily out there in search of something that worked, or that Brett Myers (who desperately needs a grooming intervention -- he looks like a fricking cartoon character with his bald head, Magic Marker-black eyebrows and red chin beard) was mixing and matching and finding somethings that worked, or that the Phillies were approaching their at-bats with demonic concentration and not letting a single mistake pass them by. By the time Kenny Lofton made like it was 1990 out there, for all intents and purposes breaking us, I wasn't even that surprised.

I was surprised, however, to see Pedro back in the seventh. I didn't figure out until later that he was well under a normal pitch count, but then this was no normal night. What made me sure he wasn't coming back was the way he was clearly gathering everything he had left and airing it out in the sixth, bringing the velocity up as far as he could (to 88 -- something is wrong, by the way, intensity of wrongness unknown for now) like an exhausted horse that can smell the stable and so breaks into a trot anyway. And when's the last time Pedro J. Martinez forgot how many outs there were? When he came out in the seventh the needle was clearly on 'E,' no matter what the pitch count said.

Oh well. Get 'em tomorrow. Please. Because I hear we got a road trip coming or something.

Is that an earthquake?
No, it's Ramon!

Fans of Romy & Michele's High School Reunion, which include my six-pack partner and myself, will recognize the above line and may have very well applied it to the eighth inning Tuesday night. Laurie and I have been tossing it back and forth all season every time our backup catcher gets a big hit.

We've used it a lot.

Was it only in July that we were all kvelling from our catcher's dramatic home runs and the curtain calls he was generating? Different month, different backstop, same response. Who was the last catcher not named Mike Piazza to receive a curtain call at Shea? The immediate answer would be Todd Pratt, but did Todd Pratt actually get a curtain call for his Finley-veiled series winner? It's not like he actually went into the dugout and returned to the top step at the audience's behest. (Just realized he was in the house tonight. Think he thought of that?)

Maybe Jason Phillips was lured out in 2003 but he was probably playing first (say, does Mike still have to break the record for most curtain calls by a catcher?). Vance Wilson? Hearty applause once or twice at best. If it wasn't Pratt, you may have to trek all the way back to Todd Hundley when he was hitting it hard for the previous unMiked catcher curtain call.

So much for getting lost in the moment. The important thing is that a Met rated a curtain call. They all did.

Ramon Castro's blast off Ugueth Urbina (the second-greatest home run Uggie's ever allowed; this explains the greatest) will surely stand the test of time as a touchstone in Mets history. It was a game-, season- and life-altering event.

Unless we lose the next two. So let's not do that.