To the rest of the world, Endy Chavez and Jose Hernandez are two unremarkable to flawed players. To me, they are behemoths. They have loomed over the past decade's Met fortunes like Shea ushers loom over the entrance to Field Level. They have gotten in the way of a perfectly good time on more occasions than I wish to remember and have added nothing positive to the Mets experience.

That's been my perception anyway. Reality seems to be catching up.

First, Chavez. Was I not the only Metsopotamian doing handstands when we signed him? That's not an Itol'yaso. It's more a matter of wondering why everybody didn't walk around haunted as I was by Endy Chavez's brilliance as a Montreal Expo at least as it pertained to his at-bats against us. During Mets games, Chavez was a .364 hitter in his Canadian guest worker days. After we got him, I figured that would eventually work to our advantage. Never even took into account that he brings defense and speed to the park (nor did I worry that Frank Robinson couldn't get rid of him fast enough — Frank Robinson looks like he'd play with a four-man roster if he could).

Now Endy, after a slow start that had the lumpenmetseteriat lumpin' him in with the J. Valentins and the J. Julios, has us all J. Umpin' for J. Oy. His catch last night must have been the fifth pretty great one he's made this year (and the fifteenth for the outfield as a whole). His running has been something this bench has lacked since, I don't know, Leon "Motor" Brown was in fine fettle, and now he's hitting for us like he batted against us. The Endy Chavez of my perception has caught up to the Endy Chavez of our reality.

So, alas, has the Jose Hernandez that I remember. Did I say he was unremarkable? The dude struck out 373 times in a two-year span, so I guess that would make him extraordinary, but not good. Yet I've been certain that Jose Hernandez is the Death Star. He is Derek Jeter without the commercial presence. He is John Rocker without having said a bad word about our public transportation. He is bad news for Mets fans.

Isn't he?

I got around to looking up his stats lifetime against the Mets. He must be batting .500, .600, maybe .700, I figured. Y'know what his lifetime average is versus New York (N)?

After last night, it's .243 with 10 home runs and 28 runs batted in in 214 at-bats. In the imaginary full season, those are very decent power numbers for a shortstop, but not the Garciaparran-in-his-prime explosion I imagined. And he doesn't even get on base against us in three out of every ten attempts.

So why did I totally expect him to be the trouble he was in the middle of that horrible ninth-inning rally last night? Because I have a fan's selective memory.

This is what I remember about Jose Hernandez:

• That he collected three hits and blasted a how-dare-you? home run against us as a Cub on July 25, 1998 in a huge Wild Card implications game. We lost 3-2 and we finished that season one game behind the Cubs and Giants for a playoff spot. I've blamed a lot of people for that shortfall, and Jose Hernandez is in the Top 10.

• That in the Greatest Game Ever Played, he came off the bench and calmly delivered a two-run single with two out to double our archnemeses' lead over us, stanch our momentum just enough to make our night's, year's and life's task a tad too daunting and, though we wouldn't know if for five more innings, wreck what should have been our historic "first team in the history of baseball to overcome a three-game deficit in the postseason" status. Jose Hernandez was an Atlanta Brave for 56 games. One of them had to be Game Six, didn't it?

• Last night and how he undid Pedro Martinez's W, unhinged Billy Wagner's invincibility and unearthed two of the worst memories I have in Mets rooting (three, counting the obvious analogy to that Friday night in Pittsburgh last July). That all's well ended well doesn't absolve him the least little bit.

I imagine the guy has done other nasty things against us given all the years he's been around and all the teams he's been on, but these are plenty. I don't need to know of any more. Sometimes perception is close enough to reality. The reality is Jose Hernandez is one of the worst Metkillers (therefore one of the worst people) who has ever lived. He's worse than Endy Chavez ever was because Endy Chavez is making up for his crimes against humanity practically every night.

As long as we're resuscitating Jose Valentin and regurgitating Jose Offerman (again!), we couldn't grab Jose Hernandez from the Pirates and stick him somewhere where he couldn't have hurt us? He may only hit .243 against us, but it's the most haunting .243 I've ever seen.

Or perceived.

I knew from the get-go that last night would be one of those catch-as-catch-can games, grabbed by bits and pieces while out and about. That's one of the joys of baseball, after all -- when life dictates that you be elsewhere, you can nearly always sneak off for a half-inning or at least a quick update. (And most of the time, some truly marooned baseball fan will chase after you and beg to know the score.) Mindful of the Greg Commandments, I was carrying my portable radio.

A portable radio is your friend -- mine is a nondescript little silver thing with a loop that lets it hang around my neck. The letters have long since worn off of it, and each spring I have to figure out what button does what through trial and error, but a few minutes' refresher course usually suffices -- it's a portable radio, after all, not the space shuttle. I carry a pair of earbud headphones as well, and it's the easiest thing to put the radio around your neck under your shirt, pop one earbud in and keep track of the game while remaining at least nominally part of the world. I've even become fairly good at putting the bud in the opposite ear and carrying on a conversation. (Emily may dispute this.)

As excuses for not watching/listening to a whole game go, I had a good one: Last night was the second installment of Varsity Letters, a monthly showcase of great sportswriting read by the authors. Tonight's authors were Mark Lamster, whose "Spalding's World Tour" sounds like an intriguing look at 19th-century baseball; David Margolick, writer of "Beyond Glory," about the 1938 rematch between Joe Louis and Max Schmelling; and Jeff Pearlman, whose new Barry Bonds bio, "Love Me, Hate Me," I devoured last week. If you're in New York City the first Wednesday of next month, drop by.

I listened to the first inning while walking across the Manhattan Bridge, marveling that I'd barely heard of most of the Pirates. (Freddy Sanchez? Ronny Paulino?) Ian Snell's on my Rotisserie team, setting up an unstoppable force/immovable object debate, since the universe seems to have dictated as laws of physics that the Mets can't hit rookie starters and that my fantasy team sucks. But I couldn't tell you what Snell looks like, beyond guessing he's bipedal. Across the bridge, I stepped outside the astonishingly tasty, astonishingly dirt-cheap Dumpling House in Chinatown (I'm full of recommendations today) to hear David Wright and Cliff Floyd's misery continue. Then we made our way to Varsity Letters.

And then, an interlude. Look, a portable radio is a must-have, but there are some situations in which even a subtle bud-in-one-ear is verboten: The list includes weddings (during the actual ceremony, in the receiving line, whenever your significant other threatens you with bodily harm), funerals (the whole shebang) and when authors are reading from the books they spent so much time and trouble writing. Even were I not a writer myself, I like to think my vestigial sense of decency would have seen me through this one.

After the reading, I popped a bud back in my ear -- just in time to hear "Enter Sandman."

"3-1 Mets, Wagner on his way in," I told my companions, offering a jaunty little thumbs-up because hey, these were the Pirates. I even let myself think that this was a pretty nice fantasy-baseball outcome: Pedro would be 6-0 and Snell couldn't have pitched too badly in the loss, so it was all good. Perhaps that's when the Baseball Gods decided punishment was in order: Suddenly those anonymous 2006 Pirates became the anonymous 2005 Pirates who sank their pointy little teeth into Braden Looper's hinder one dreary night last July: Tike Redman and Humberto Cota, meet Jose Hernandez and Ronny Paulino. As the authors shook hands and signed books, I stood in the middle of the room frozen in shock and dismay, hand over one ear.

Extra innings passed largely without me, because I was risking being rude and because the night had already demonstrated that I wasn't exactly a good-luck charm. Another of the joys of baseball on the radio: Listen for a second or two in extra innings and you know what's going on, even if they don't tell you the score. Howie and Tom chatting matter-of-factly about the weather with the Pirates up was a pretty good indication that I could check in again after a couple of minutes. So it went until, finally, one more check before heading out into the night....

"Delgado being mobbed by his teammates!"

Hmmm. Did he just win them over with a stirring declamation about the bombing of Vieques? Did he just do something really cool with the donut in the on-deck circle?

No, silly. That's a walkoff. No thanks to me, but I'll take it all the same.