The problem with a loss like this -- and make no mistake, this was one of those "I got mauled by a grizzly bear and fell down a ravine and got disemboweled when I fell on a pointy rock and now cougars are uncoilng my guts and EATING them while I'm still alive" losses -- is that it makes all the good stuff recede until it feels like it was a long time ago, and thus of no possible use in making you feel better.

Jose Valentin? Once upon a time he capped a very nice night at the plate by coming up to hit lefty against a left-hander for some bizarre reason and came through with a laser beam over the center-field fence. Man, you should've seen it: The crowd was going insane. It was particularly nice because it gave us the lead late in a singularly frustrating game, one that had been marked by crappy fielding, lukewarm pitching, failures in the clutch, a terrible giveaway at-bat from a guy who hit two home runs last night (Nady! What the hell?), a veteran costing us a run by not running hard with two outs (Delgado! What the fucking fuck?), long drives not quite going over the wall and a general feeling that our baseball team couldn't get out of its own way. Valentin's homer erased all that, like opening a window in a stuffy room.

Thing is, I can't quite remember when that timely, wrong-side-of-the-plate home run was. I think it was sometime in May.

Aaron Heilman? Heck, he's had a rough stretch, but you should have seen him. He was being depended on again, and you could tell he was a little nervous, and he got stuck facing Ryan Freel, whom we were unable to retire that entire series, and sent him packing on a gorgeous change-up. Talk about a key confidence builder for a guy we need back in top form.

Great pitch. Did I see it on Mother's Day? Been a while, whenever it was.

And then there was Jose Reyes. Oh, that Jose. Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated just wrote a very interesting piece about him, one that's a perfect marriage of new stats and old-style scouting, asking if Reyes isn't, in fact, far more valuable than his stats might indicate. And it was followed by a very interesting debate, for those who like diving deeper, among the readers of Baseball Think Factory. Lots to chew on there, and then Jose gave the debaters even more to think about, pummeling Reds' pitching left and right and capping it with the ninth cycle in Mets history. Oh, the crowd has never done the Ho-ZAAAAAY Ho-ZAAAAY Ho-ZAAAAY HO-zaaaay chant more happily, and Reyes has never grinned more ear-to-ear than he was grinning right there. I think that grin might've reached all the way around to the back of his head and bisected the whole business, in fact.

Nice moment. Having a little trouble placing it, though. All I remember is it was sometime before Billy Wagner showed up and there was the grizzly and the ravine and the pointy rock and the cougars. Which is really all I can think about now. The Mets' A/V folks, responding to whatever strange portents guide them, have started playing Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" at Shea after losses, and while nothing won't make that choice bizarre, I can't much argue with it right now. (I'm not sure it mentions cougars or throwing one too many fastballs, but close enough.)

Oh well. Wagner hadn't given up a run in a month. Everybody else in the division lost. Lots of summer to go. Day game tomorrow.

If you've got any more straws, I'm ready to grasp at them.

As a people, we set our alarms to go off on Opening Day. For us, that's the flashpoint that turns the clocks, the calendars and our raison d'être ahead. The season began. The non-season went away. Those are the only seasons we care about.

But it's worth noting that summer is here. It crept in on little cat feet at 8:26 this morning. Actually, if this summer is anything like my Avery, it leapt onto our collective stomach, purred loudly, let out a shrill MRRYAAHHHH! and leapt off again to repeat the process from a running start four or five more times in a row.

I hope this summer is like my Avery. I think it will be.

It rarely occurs to me that whatever is going on in the present won't always sustain. The dead of winter is the dead of winter and, as such, baseball is never going to get here. What we call spring, mid-February to late March, wears out its welcome fast; the countdown to Opening Day works as slow as Steve Trachsel circa 2001. Fall, even if you're lucky enough to participate in its Classic, is just winter's anteroom. And winter, as we've already established, never ends.

But it did. Summer has arrived in every sense of the word. We are soaking up the sun on the longest day of the year atop the tallest elevation the National League East standings have to offer. We are Flushing Mountain High. I am convinced that being inside summer with the Mets being in first place is the rule, not the exception. Not should be, but is.

You have no way of proving me wrong on June 21, 2006.

The last icy fingers of the so-called winter sports have finally lost the last of their unwelcome grip on the back pages and highlight shows. On consecutive nights, the Heat has become something for which we seek a cool drink and Hurricanes, again, calamities to be fervently wished away. The hockey and basketball trophies have been awarded. Nobody will yearn for those activities to return anytime soon. Nobody. Nobody counts the days to when we all have to take our running around inside.

It's the first day of summer. Is it too late to make it to the Midnight Sun Game? It's never too late to play it. The Beatrice Bruins are heading from California up to Fairbanks to take on the Alaska Goldpanners tonight at 10:30 local time. They've been playing this game on the first night of summer for a solid century. The 1985 game lasted 'til 3:06 AM and the electric lights served no purpose beyond the decorative. The sun shines over Fairbanks for 24 hours when summer begins.

It matches the sun in my heart this time of year. Barring a return of those non-puffy, non-cumulus clouds that have haunted Shea every recent evening, I wonder how long it will stay light above the Mets and Reds. Fifth inning? Sixth inning? Shouldn't matter, assuming the Con Ed's been paid, but it's neat. Neat. A sixth-grader's term for staying outside and playing ball and actually seeing what you're doing 'til nearly nine o'clock. I haven't done that in decades, but knowing I theoretically (very theoretically) could makes the first day of summer a perennial keeper.

Is there something better than knowing there's nothing separating the New Mets and Ol' Sol but clear skies and that Ol' Sol promises to pack an extra dose of stamina tonight? That as much as there are 92 scheduled baseball games in front of us and hopefully somewhere between 11 and 19 more to breathlessly anticipate, there is, in a happy way, nothing more to look forward to because we're exactly where we always want to be? We're there.

This is the sweet spot — the longest day of the year and the largest lead in the Majors.
This is what we mope about missing all winter — summer...in the starting blocks.
This is what we can only imagine when it's snowy and seventeen — first place...by 9.5 miles.
This is our New York Mets reality on June 21, 2006.

Take a moment and love it.

Lots of entertainment tonight.

Highlights:

* It's a family game. Take Jose Valentin getting tagged out at home plate by little brother Javier after a rather eventful trip around the bases, including a no-doubt-double-take-inducing wave of the arm from Manny Acta. Jose had 360 feet to go; unfortunately, his tank apparently held enough fuel for 350. And no one could have guessed that Ken Griffey Jr. would find the best cutoff man a centerfielder could imagine in the pitcher's mound. Bam! Jose looked like he'd have been happy to take a few minutes there at home plate. Can't say I blame him.

* How perfect was it that Xavier Nady then promptly hit a conventional home run, with no need to tire oneself out or pick up third-base coaches or tangle with catchers? It's an unfair game, Jose.

* Trachsel going deep was high comedy in itself, particularly when he was then trying to rechannel his mantra and recalibrate his visualizations or whatever it was he does while the rest of the dugout wanted to bullyrag him for a home run.

* With the game safely in the W column, watching the Yankees and Phillies trade broadsides was entertaining too. There was no bad outcome at that point: Phillies win, they pick up no ground and I can wallow in a big mucky field of Schadenfreude; Phillies lose, we get back to 9 1/2 games and the Servants of the Beast still spend tomorrow muttering about how Moose didn't look right and they gave up seven runs. Life is good.

* Braves lost. They're 11 under .500 and John Smoltz is being asked if he'd accept a trade to help the club. Hypothetically of course.

* Keith dropping a muuuultitasking from that Red Roof Inn commercial that sticks in your mind like a bit of popcorn under a tooth.

* With Delgado reaching 20 home runs and Beltran at 19, Todd Hundley's single-season home-run mark seems like it could definitely be in jeopardy. Good. Nothing against Hot Rod, but I always thought that mark would be Piazza's and should be Piazza's. Never happened, but it's time for a new name atop the column.

* Four Mets -- Wright, Reyes, Lo Duca and Beltran -- are atop the All-Star balloting at their positions, and Glavine has to have earned a trip. For some strange reason my image of the All-Star Game has undergone a recent change from "ludicrous exhibition" to "cherished stitch in the fabric of the game." (My innate hypocrisy is always at the ready should I need it.)

* The Cyclones are back!

Lowlights? Hell, 33 years of being a Met fan ensures I can root around until I find a few. Let's see:

* Gary Cohen is too smart to either not have read Moneyball or to be misrepresenting it on the air. On what page in what possible universe does Moneyball suggest a hitter not be aggressive on a 2-1 pitch in favor of trying to work a walk? C'mon, Gary. You're better than that.

* Speaking of SNY, a pox on in-game interviews. Let Trachsel go take a leak and get an ice bag instead of discussing the ups and downs of his splitter. I've got half the night and all day tomorrow to dissect such things, as well as any points Sandy Alomar or Willie Randolph might have to make. Right now I've got a game to watch and so do they. Could we please do that?

* The Cyclones are back, but they got beat. They got beat by the Staten Island Yankees. They got beat 18-0 by the Staten Island Yankees. The grasping at straws in the postgame press release is pretty entertaining: "Wantagh native and Stony Brook alumni Nick Abel pitched the only back-to-back scoreless innings of the night. In addition, the Cyclones had runners on base in nearly every inning". Nearly every inning, huh? Still, the folks in the Cyclones press office did admit that this was one with "the final outcome never truly in doubt". Two touchdowns and two safeties and it was never truly in doubt? Gee, ya think?