They have the WB. You can view the varieties of Soilmaster. I've got Internet access of a sort. I can writhe around on a couch going insane while we suck.

Tell me something good. Shingo Takatsu entering the rosters of The Holy Books in singularly wretched fashion doesn't count.

Before we skedaddle for Jersey, I'll leave you with a tale of baseball and New Orleans.

There aren't a ton of them -- Rusty Staub is from there, but beyond that it hasn't been so long that the town even had a minor-league team. But I do have one, from the two summers when I lived down there. The second summer I fell in love with Emily. The first summer she wasn't around, and I fell in love with reporting and writing and storytelling and all the things that have somehow sustained me since then, thanks to some kind-hearted and tough (by proper turns) folks at the Times-Picayune who taught the world's greenest intern everything his little mind could hold.

Baseball took a back seat then -- my summer-sublet shotgun at Esplanade and Chartres, on the edge of the Quarter, didn't have a TV, and in those days before the Internet, satellite radio and crazy bloggers New Orleans may as well have been Mars for Met-watching. The best I could do was scouring the long version of AP stories that moved over the wire at work. So my Met watching that summer was limited to Braves and Cubs games, on whatever TV I could find.

The most-reliable venue I could find was a bar in the Quarter ostensibly for Chicago expats. This wasn't really a tourist bar, though they'd take their money -- its clientele was a little harder, and all knew each other in that borderline-unhealthy bar way. (New Orleans is singularly experimental and open-minded when it comes to bars of whatever theme.) But they'd always have the Cubs on, so for the two series we played against the Cubs in the summer of '89, I was there.

I was young and dumb back then, so my habit was to drink about a beer an inning, which means my memories of the early innings would be crystal-clear with the intensity of a fan getting the rare treat of seeing his team, and the later innings not so much. The regular bargoers accepted me or shrugged me off -- until an odd incident that Retrosheet suggests must have come during the July 28-30 series at Wrigley.

At some point during the Mets-Cubs game one night, the bartender decided to switch on porn on another TV -- and we're not talking sanitized hotel-room porn. (This was a bar that was always trying to attract more female customers. Never worked. Mystery to me.) So now I'm on about beer five. If I turn my head one way, the Mets are in a tense game with the hated Cubs on TV; if I turn my head the other way, hardcore porn.

Being a good fan, I of course keep watching the Mets.

Which seems fine until it's time for my next beer, at the inning. I look up at the bartender is staring at me from his station down at Porn Central. So are all the other customers. They're not particularly friendly stares. Uh-oh. What have I done now? Did I just get caught openly rooting for New York? Would anyone really care?

"We got a question," says the bartender.

"OK," I say, suddenly aware that I'm at least a couple of beers too late for an adroit navigation of bar-stool diplomacy.

"We noticed you keep looking at that --" and the bartender indicates the TV that's been showing the game -- "and you don't seem interested in looking at this." And he points to the heavy breathing and pneumatic goings-on. "And we're wondering why that is."

Man, I think, I haven't been called gay for liking the Mets since about 1981. And I've never been the subject of a recreational beating because of it. That may be about to change. In fact, it likely is about to change if I say the wrong thing.

So I point to the set with the Mets game and say, "Well, I'm not sure what's going to happen here," and then point to the porn TV and add, "but I've got a pretty good idea how this is going to turn out."

Total silence. Then, broken -- thank Christ -- by all of the regulars laughing at once. They keep laughing. They buy me beer. From then on, I'm golden in that bar, even if I am a Met fan.

That was 16 years ago. It's numbing to think what's happening down there now. That bar probably isn't flooded -- the Quarter's pretty much the highest ground in the city -- but has it been looted? Has it burned? I hope not. I hope things are back to normal there and everywhere else down there as soon as possible. But "soon" doesn't seem to be in the cards. Maybe not even "possible". Just heartbreaking.

Anyway, not to leave you a down note. Take care of our blue-and-orange lads. See you if the vagaries of vacation dial-up allow.

That was it? That was the vaunted "roll" we waited to get on for 4-1/2 months? Nine of eleven against three certifiably lousy teams and one that's roughly our peer? Now it's over?

That ain't gonna cut it. Neither is the new math, the one in which we have now lost five of six. It's a trend. It's practically a way of life.

I suppose one could get on the Infamous Victor Z for continually wriggling into just enough trouble that getting out of it with limited damage was damage enough. Yeah, if Trachsel had started, he would've thrown his weekly one-hitter. Seems Dontrelle Willis is an awfully good pitcher and without The World's Greatest Cat taking matters into his own paws, we can't touch him.

We can't touch a lot of pitchers who aren't Dontrelle Willis either lately.

Trach is back in the rotation, if there is indeed a rotation, Monday in Atlanta. By then we could be 5-1/2 out. Ouch -- worst-case scenario in effect, y'all, but this team is more Happy Time Harry than Jiggle Billy right now.

Baseball Team Hunger Force...Assemble! Cause if we don't, we're stuck at No. 4 in the 'hood, G.

Your Name Here Stadium always brings me down. With the passing of the Big O from the scene, is there a worse ballpark to look at on TV than this one? RFK at least has the curiosity factor on its side. And Shea, for all the beating it takes by every beat writer who must've gotten stuck in an elevator there, at least has pretty colors, especially if you're partial to infield green, fence blue and box seat orange.

Y'know what Miami's YNHS reminds me of? North Haverbrook -- the town that had the Monorail Cafe yet denied that a monorail (monorail!) had ever come through town. Really, the N.L. expansion teams of the '90s are a lot like that the cities screwed over in that Simpsons episode. Bud Selig/Lyle Lanley sold a bill of goods to Florida, Colorado/Ogdenville and Arizona/Brockway, and don't they regret ever having signed on the dotted line? Well, sir, there's nothing on Earth like a genuine, bona fide, electrified Major League franchise!

The Marlins, no matter how many World Series they accidentally win or no matter how much they wipe the Soilmastered floor with us, were a bad, freaking idea. Maybe not in concept. South Florida's a big market, sure it should have a baseball team. But that hollow facility (one of the few I've never been to but also one of the few I have no desire to see) just visually wreaks. That whole tired-teal meets prefab-retro meets NFL-first is just so stuck in 1993. The Dolphins tore up the turf Thursday night so it had that going for it Friday. Then throw in those insipid sacks of Soilmaster Red that the cameras always capture in the Mets' dugout. They don't have a closet or something? It's not a baseball stadium and it never will be without baseball fans.

Maybe South Floridians are geniuses for avoiding this place but save for a few post-season games and an opener or two, have you ever seen a concentration of Marlins fans in YNHS? Lousy sports town. They had an ABA franchise called the Floridians. They would report an attendance exponentially higher than it could possibly have been. When called on it by an eyewitness who was able to count the house during timeouts, the team's PR man suggested that you're not taking into account all our many fans who are out at the concessions or using the rest room. Say this for the Floridians: They led the ABA in chutzpah.

Now for a moment from the world...

Don't know about the rest of you, but as much as I love complaining about the Mets' performance and their opponents' subpar accommodations, I find myself caught in between. I won't lay a "sports aren't important in the scheme of things" rap on you because we've all made a relatively conscious decision that they are. But watching the citizens of New Orleans and Mississippi struggle in the condition that they've been left to struggle in makes griping about almost anything else seem silly by comparison.

The video of the convention center and all the suffering it portrays is particularly jarring. I've been in that convention center as a reporter covering events that involved copious amounts of food and water. The electricity worked. The plumbing worked. There was regular sanitation. Whatever else I saw of New Orleans, however quirky, charming or rundown, was functional. It's hard to believe that that city and the one I've been watching on television when I haven't been watching the Mets are one and the same. It's unfathomable that those are our fellow Americans who have been crying out for official help that's been criminally late in arriving.

Don't get me wrong. The Mets losing to the Phillies and the Marlins and falling behind in the Wild Card race still bites and I still relish making time to note it to myself and to all of you. But I sincerely hope that rooting for an inconsistent sports team is eventually everybody's biggest problem in this country. I appreciate that you let me use a bit of your baseball-reading time to mention that. It's been on my mind as much, I'm guessing, as it's been on yours.

I'm sure you know where to find them, but here are links to the Red Cross and the Salvation Army.