A royal blue t-shirt that says Amazins. A navy blue sweatshirt that says NEW YORK METS MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL. A bright orange hoodie that says NEW YORK. A blue satin jacket that says Mets. A dark green parka just in case.

And that was above the waist.

I was ready for the worst. They said it would be cold and I believed them. As a bona fide veteran of postseason sitting, I learned in 2000 preparation is key. I wasn't going to be caught off guard.

The only thing I wasn't ready for was a loss. There have been so few.

Who remembers the last time the Mets lost before Friday night? It was in another month, another season, with another couple of pitchers still prominent in their plans. Besides the paucity of losses there was the lack of severity surrounding them. You have to go back to Shea Stadium being genuinely frigid on April 5 to find the previous time when a Met loss — the second game of 2006 — carried more than symbolic significance.

That was the night Ryan Zimmerman reached Billy Wagner and the left field stratosphere in rapid succession. How long ago was it? Jorge Julio took the loss. How important was it? It knocked the Mets out of first place...for 24 hours. They recovered and, though we would be intermittently irritated on 64 more occasions between April 15 and September 27, they weren't materially affected. You could argue the Mets hadn't "suffered" a defeat of substance since September 2005.

Until last night. Now that was substantial.

For whatever reason, I wasn't cold. Maybe layering works. Maybe the Shea wind tunnel simply skipped my one particular row of my one particular section of the mezzanine — an area, I have to assess, that wasn't as boozy as my other stops this October and, perhaps as a result, I have to confess, not quite as much rabid fun. Maybe I was just fortunate, luck already having brought me there instead of my couch. I had no prospects at being at this game until rain, rescheduling and religion forced the original ticketholder out of his Friday night slot. I was more than happy to swap him a set of Andrew Jackson trading cards for his admission (and thrilled that he was able to find his way in Thursday, so I didn't feel like a secular Selig vulture feeding off the bum circumstances MLB and meteorology dealt him).

Strange how quickly attending postseason affairs at Shea went from wishful thought to giddy reality to something that by definition became ritual this month. Four games, four go's. Nobody's more surprised or delighted than me.

I suppose you're waiting for the inevitable punchline, the "some prize that turned out to be," but no. On my way in last night, at the juncture where I step off at Woodside to turn toward Shea, hundreds poured out. Big roar went up. A cacophony of "LET'S GO METS! LET'S GO METS!" mixed with "JOSE! JOSE! JOSE! JOSE!" and even a little "Meet the Mets" ("butcher and baker" verse, no less) ensued. Oh, I thought, here we go again with this.

Slap me. Slap me hard. Don't ever let me find fault in being caught in a nightly crowd of exuberant Mets fans ever again. Yes, some were liquored up and many were too young to fathom. "Isn't it funny that the last time the Mets won was 20 years ago and we were born 20 years ago?" I heard one adult tell another. It wasn't that funny. But the sensation of being in a mass of Mets fans marching to Flushing in October will never not be wonderful.

Can't say the same about a number of other elements, however, including Willie's addiction to Guillermo Mota; the deployment of the Sandman when it's clear the ocean needs to make more sand; John Maine's reversion to Kris Benson sans the mouthy lifemate; the inability to not hit into crucial double plays; the aversion of Carlos Delgado to trickling grounders; the nice try but you got your glove on it so why don't you catch it business in right; and...crap, it was a loss. What do I want? Blood?

A little.

The obvious of October is don't lose games you can win. Don't lose games you lead. Don't lose games you lead twice. Don't lose games in which you make Chris Carpenter look like Karen Carpenter. Don't lose games to which your bullpen just devoted five innings of its finite resources. Don't lose games that could you put in front two-oh.

I wasn't cold, but I came away with a chill, reminded as I arrived home what winter feels like. Basketball and hockey scores infiltrated the 20/20 updates. I could make out my breath. Win or lose in St. Louis tonight, there are no more than five games left at Shea this month if things go various combinations of wrong and right. Go very wrong and there are none. With the unknown being exactly that, who knows if this particular stadium of ours, destined for demolition after 2008, will ever host another night at the time of year when you don't dare not layer?

Approaching Shea, I dared to dream of sweeps and World Series. Leaving it, I envisioned nothing. Absolutely nothing.

It's October 14. It's too soon.

So Taguchi? Ya gotta be kidding me, Billy!

Like every other wearer of blue and orange, I was huddled in worry about Big Bad Albert, who'd shown signs of getting his pilot light relit in his seventh-inning battle against Mota. Worried about Albert. Worried about Billy Wagner pitching in a non-save situation. Worried about So Taguchi? Only on the off-chance that he might eke out a walk ahead of his Pujolsness.

Oops.

In an effort to be philosophical about it all, I suppose Billy was due for a stinker after a half-season of almost universally praiseworthy work. And from early on this game had the look of an ugly, no-rules pig pile with groin kicks and eye gouges and unchivalrous things happening down in the muck: Maine and Carpenter couldn't find their release points, Jim Joyce couldn't find the strike zone, Fox couldn't find a radar gun that didn't add 3 MPH to everybody, and I was absolutely unable to find solace even in a 3-0 lead. Too much unease in the night.

By the way, if you're at home and feel like the anxiety of October baseball may finally shred what's left of your sanity, try TiVo. With Emily at the game tonight, the duty of getting Joshua through bath and into bed fell to me. Reluctantly, I paused Fox at about 7:45 and unpaused it at 8:18, expecting to zoom through half an hour of blather and catch up to live action just in time for first pitch. I quickly realized the game had actually started at 8:05, meaning I was 14 minutes behind real life and wouldn't catch up until the middle innings.

The funny thing? On delay, even an NLCS game seemed less important -- at least for me, there's something about watching plays you know already happened that robs them of their power. I actually found myself doing little chores and flipping through a magazine in the early innings, something that's fine for the regular season but borderline treason in October. And then, the instant I caught up and TiVo and real life were once more in sync, the tension arrived so fast and hit so hard that it was like a pile-driver into the couch.

Unfortunately, I caught back up not long before things went awry. With Mota on the mound, I do wish Pedro had called a pitch in from the dugout against Scott Spiezio and that ridiculous thing on his chin, which I believe is known as a landing strip when adorning another region of the other gender. With Wags nearing the end of his implosion, I wish somebody had reminded him that Spiezio seems incapable of hitting anything offspeed, so why on God's green earth would you throw him another fastball? I wish Shawn Green had made what would have been a fairly incredible catch. On the other hand, I got my wish that Spiezio's ball wouldn't go out, which it seemed certain to do, and wouldn't be erroneously but understandably revised into a home run, which it wasn't.

Reyes is awake. Delgado is hammering the ball (and the occasional grounder smacked his way, but oh well). Most of our bullpen did just fine. But we're grasping at straws here. Because tonight sucked, and now we go to St. Louis and trot out Trachsel and Oliver Perez, which could potentially suck a whole lot worse.

For a team that apparently expired in the last days of September, the Cardinals sure are a nasty breed of undead. Can we win three more games before they do? Of course we can. But will we? Going to St. Louis up 2-0 with Carpenter behind us wouldn't have killed the Cardinals, but it would have planted a stake in their collective heart while we hunted around for wafers to stick in the mouth and waited for sunlight to turn them into smoke. Now? It's pitch black and there are things going bump in the night.