Watched the Mets finally beat, well, some of the St. Louis Cardinals today, and remembered how cruel baseball can be. No, it wasn't knowing that the season's done, we're cooked, etc., though that stank. It was the matter-of-fact way the calendar had turned to 2006. There were the Cardinals, resting up for October. There was the shocking sight of football, played for keeps when it's still 80 degrees out. (And a few innings after my initial outrage, I was hitting RECALL to see how the Saints were doing.) But mostly, there were the verb tenses. Like O'Brien and Seaver discussing Carlos Beltran hitting another home run for Pedro, and how that had been an early storyline of the season. Tom pointed out that's not such a bad deal, since it would work out to 35 or 36 home runs for the year. Dave acknowledged that but noted that it's not going to happen.

Hey, I thought, whaddya mean it's not gonna happen? Carlos just hit No. 15, so...oh, yeah. He's right. Shit.

'Twas the day of past tenses. Didn't make the playoffs. Failed to catch the Braves. Didn't justify his big contract. All suddenly inarguable, leaving us with nothing more than agate-type goals to arrive at, or to miss. Can Jose Reyes break the single-season mark for steals? Can David Wright beat Gilkey's doubles record? Can he drive in 100? Can Braden Looper retire a lefty in 2005? Can Piazza somehow hit 400 in our uniform? With the exception of the last question, which does hurt (particularly since the answer is "no"), the only sane response is: Who the hell cares?

Well, I care. And so do you. And so do 100,000 or so other souls, to varying degrees. But we all care in such a small-'c' way, compared with what we had to care about less than two weeks ago.

Remember? Ramon Castro smashed an Ugie Urbina slider over the fence for a 6-4 win and we were half a game out of the wild-card lead? Win the next day and we'd enter September as an if-the-season-ended-today playoff team? Yeah, that was August 30th. August 30, 2005, not 2002 or 1996 or 1971 or 1840, though it sure feels like one of those dates now. August 30th. Christ, that's a paycheck ago. It's still getting over a bad flu or a case of shin splints. It's the same fricking haircut.

What the hell happened to us? Look at the schedule and you might say doom actually arrived a bit earlier, when we got on a plane out of Phoenix and apparently left the bats behind. But still, the offensive slumbers of the San Francisco series would have been forgiven if we'd beaten the Phillies on August 31. We didn't, of course. We lost that game and have lost all but two of the ones since. How many games out of the wild card are we now? I don't know. How the hell can I not know when less than two weeks ago I could do the honors for the top five teams in the hunt?

It's not unfair -- baseball's grimly and totally fair -- but it sure is cruel. Twelve days ticked off the calendar and it's garbage time. Hell, we can't even have little victories: No sooner do we get Piazza back to continue his last hurrah, even if it's just for sentimental reasons now, then he gets knocked out of the lineup by a deranged reliever.

Twelve days. Twelve fucking days turned summer into winter. What the hell happened to us?

[T]he schedule has a little party up its sleeve for us...We have struggled (and thus far failed) to maintain mediocrity without facing a single game west of Addison Street. There are three trips pending that carry the Mets into Pacific Daylight and Mountain Standard: OAK-SEA in June; SD-LA in August; ARZ-SF slightly thereafter. The American League entrants are awful but they are awful far away, too. Long distance has always been enough of an excuse to scramble the Mets' equilibrium. The N.L. West teams are all sorting themselves out but none appears to be cake.

That's nineteen dates due to cause us trouble. Toss in a week of COL-HOU, both weak sisters, but both on the road. Now it's 26 games that are lurking in the wilds of the west. Oh, and four in St. Louis in September when it may not matter anymore. That's 30 geographically unfriendly stops in our future.

There's no rule saying the Mets have to go, say, 10-20 out in the great wide open. But would you bet on much better having seen how this team plays away from Shea and knowing what they do as a rule when they travel that far? Without looking up everybody's docket, I know Atlanta has already been to San Diego. Washington has played in San Francisco. Florida's seen Chavez Ravine. Our divisional rivals have already had to take at least a little bite out of their western obligations. We haven't. That's what worries me.
—Me, May 26

By beating the Cardinals on Sunday, the Mets finished the Dirty Thirty I harped on over and over at 11-19. So it turned out there was no rule that they had to go 10-20.

But it did kill their season. Yes, the city of Atlanta killed their season, too, but that's always been widely reported ("always" being the operative word). I knew coming in to 2005 that every time the Mets have a wacky starting time, like 8:05 or 2:15 or 9:40 or anything after 10 o'clock, it seems to be trouble.

And it was. It drives me crazy. I don't understand why they couldn't win one extra game against every opponent west of the Mississippi River. OK, not Arizona -- they took all four games in Phoenix. But everywhere else? Consider:

Oakland 1-2
Seattle 0-3
Colorado 1-2
Houston 1-3
San Diego 1-2
Los Angeles 1-2
San Francisco 1-2
St. Louis 1-3

What gives? Besides us? Win one more game in each of those series (and they each included maddeningly winnable losses) and suddenly we're 79-64. We could still suck at Turner Field and be the clear Wild Card leaders. It would be the best of all Met worlds!

But no, the Mets insist on traveling poorly at any distance. When we pack up the last bit of regret from this season in whatever receptacle we choose, be sure to slap a tag on it and ship it to the wrong destination. Because when it came to road games, the 2005 Mets played like lost luggage.

We really shouldn't have to play the Gas-House Gorillas anymore.

Wham! Another homer!

It was a one-sided, knock-down, drag-'em-out ball game right from the very first inning.

Seven hurlers pasted our pathetic palookas with powerful paralyzing perfect pachyderm percussion pitches.

One...two...three strikes...we're out!
One...two...three strikes...we're out!
One...two...three strikes...we're out!

It was a shellacking we'll never forget.

Albert Pujols could lick us in a ball game with one hand tied behind his back all by himself.

Gerald Williams is only 93-1/2 years old.

Was this trip really necessary?