The game, well, it was a mess: From the first batter Alay Soler faced, it was a question not of if but of when: When would the Red Sox have seen enough of Soler to zero in on those high fastballs and 12-to-somewhere-north-of-6 curves and start hammering them? (The answer, as it so often is, was the 5th, when Varitek's drive to right-center served notice that they had the range.)

Meanwhile, Lester kept sneaking off the ropes before we could land a solid blow, though his confrontation with Wright was a thing of beauty. I tried calling pitches along with Varitek, and kept asking Emily if Lester would have the balls to throw the Mets' best hitter a 3-2 curveball. On Pitch #10 he did, it was a beauty, and that was that. That's a pretty impressive rookie over there. Once Alex Gonzalez sent one over the Monster it was pretty clear it was over, with Beltran's and Marrero's homers just rouge on a corpse. No particular shame in it -- bad performance by a rookie fifth starter, misplay in the outfield, overly aggressive decision by Manny Acta, up against a superb lineup -- but not one to remember. Let's call it the night Jose Reyes didn't fracture a collerbone or break a rib (apparently -- frantic wood-knocking) and move on.

Still, I didn't want to be here in the first place. It's not that I'm scared of Boston -- this team has no reason to be scared of anybody -- but I don't want to play them. Granted, I don't want to play any American League team, but this is different. I like the Red Sox. When they're playing the Yankees I flip over during the breaks and offer them whatever psychic energies I can spare. Each year, if our season expires and they still have a pulse, I'm looking for a seat on their bandwagon. I stayed up night after night to witness the October 2004 heroics of Ortiz and Roberts and Schilling and Foulke and Damon and all the other Idiots, and was thrilled for my many Boston friends when 86 years of rotten karma evaporated in an unlikely sweep.

This isn't unique among Mets fans, of course. Nor should it be: We have common cause, after all. We both dwell in the shadow of an implacable Enemy and Its vile legions, and have spent most of our existences rooting and praying and begging -- usually in vain -- for that Enemy to be brought low. I know there's 1986 and I know some Red Sox fans view us as just the other New York team, the low-tar cigarettes of cancerous Gotham baseball. So be it -- we can't help that. (And, not being insane, wouldn't particularly want to help 1986.) Beyond that, what? OK, they employed the Antichrist, but his days of full-blown depravity were still ahead of him. Some vague nastiness between Piazza and Pedro a million years ago, long forgotten. Carl Everett throwing a fit. A minor free-agent duel over whether or not Pedro would go to no Mets.

Mets at Boston. In June. Well, OK, if we must. But must we? It's like hearing our army has to slug it out with Britain's for three days. What on earth for? Don't we both have better things to do?

There is nothing in the constitution or playing rules of the National League which requires its victorious club to submit its championship honors to a contest with a victorious club in a minor league.
—New York Giants owner John T. Brush, declining to play the Boston Americans after the regular season, 1904

Last week and this one should be ideal. Just about every potential postseason opponent is losing to a team that won't affect our standing for home-field advantage at all. When an American League team beats a National League team that isn't us, we automatically benefit.

But when an American League beats a National League team, you can bend an ear toward the site of the Polo Grounds and hear John Brush grunt and John McGraw curse. These are not pleasant sounds.

On paper, Interleague play and how it's unfolding should be delightful given how well it fits with how I rank the thirty Major League teams by personal preference:

1. Mets
2.-15. American League teams that aren't the Yankees
16.-29. National League teams that aren't the Mets
30. (vacant)

But in reality, I can't stand what's going on between the two circuits. We're the Senior one, damn it, but instead of using our wisdom and experience to outfox Junior over there, we're getting bashed over the head with our own canes. Consarned whippersnappers!

On a night when the Mets could sit back, relax and sort through logo designs for the NLDS program without the formality of playing a baseball game, I took advantage of my Extra Innings package to scout the competition. Here's my scouting report:

The competition sucks.

The Phillies and their agreeable failure to trip up the Red Sox you know about. The Braves we've already tossed dirt on and they did nothing to brush any off against the Skanks (even though it would have been universally permitted under 2006 rules). The Cardinals, everybody's other consensus pick to see October, got clobbered by Cleveland, continuing a mini-collapse that started at the hands of the White Sox and was extended by the Tigers. The Astros, allegedly enhanced by the return of the Rocket, were embarrassed in Detroit, same as they were shamed in Chicago, just like they were made to look bad in Minnesota. The Twins have moved on to swat Los Angeles...the Dodgers, that is. The Los Angeles Angels came back on Colorado, one of five so-called contenders in the National League West. The Brewers won, but they were playing the Cubs. And the Brewers are an Interleague team unto themselves.

The only NL team besides us with a winning record against the AL is the only NL team that won against the AL last night, the Marlins. All of the Sunshine State was no doubt abuzz (paid attendance at The Sack: 7,416) as the Marlins beat the Devil Rays. The Devil Rays. The Devil Rays are the Royals with heat stroke. Nevertheless, the Devil Rays and the Royals have winning Interleague records.

The National League's performance en masse versus the American League to date can be summed up in three words.

Dis.
Gust.
Ing.

What has become of our league? We organized first. We integrated first. We hit and run. We write nine men onto the lineup card and mean it. We won just about every All-Star Game every summer from the time I was born to the time I was old enough to drink. We are the league of Mathewson and Wagner and Frisch and Ott and Musial and Kiner and Hodges and Mays and Aaron and Clemente and Koufax and Gibson and Seaver and Bench and Carter and Hernandez to name a few.

We are the league that spread the wealth. No suffocating dynasties for us. Everybody gets a chance to win. We have the best stories in our library: Tinkers to Evers to Chance; The Miracle Braves; The Gas House Gang; The Whiz Kids; The Shot Heard 'Round the World; The Boys of Summer; The Big Red Machine; We Are Family; Us.

Have you ever heard a single player or manager who's spent quality time on both sides say they prefer the American League style of play? I never have. Never. It's the one thing that remains different. They can mash up the offices and the presidents and the umpires and the balls, they can unfetter player movement so nobody's a lifer anymore, but the games remain dissimilar. The designated hitter is favored only by the lazy-minded, the offense-insatiable and the fourteen guys who cash DH paychecks.

The sole edge the American League has on the National League is they have more better teams. The Tigers are roaring. The White Sox can't be darned. The Athletics are in great shape. The Twins are suddenly moving in double time. The Blue Jays, as we saw, could take wing at any moment. The Red Sox, as we will see, are red hot. And some other team that plays nearby isn't half-bad.

The National League? We're all alone here.

Maybe the Cardinals will pick it up, but they seem to be stuck in the wrong gear. We witnessed the best of the Reds and they were one Billy Wagner BS from losing three of four. Haven't played the Rockies yet, but the Diamondbacks and Dodgers and Giants and Padres? Oh my. The Brewers are a little scary, but only to a point. The Astros have a post-pennant hangover, Clemens or not.

You know who remotely frightens me? Florida. Seriously. The Marlins have played extraordinarily well for a month, become clearly the second-best team in the East and if they swim to Shea for four on July 7 within a single-digit of us, I may actually produce a bead of Fish-related sweat. Yet for all that, they're 7 under, 6-1/2 out of the Wild Card and 13 behind us. With all due respect to their young, talented, exciting and underpaid ways, they're the Florida Marlins...and this isn't 1997 or 2003.

If our worst problem is the extremely unlikely possibility that teal lightning will strike thrice (and we'd have to blow like nobody's business to not freefall into the safety net of the Wild Card), then I guess we have no immediate problem other than a tough first game of three tough games in Boston and, though we take 'em one at a time, three more tough games in the Bronx. After that, nothing but National League.

That still means something, no matter what the records say.

Fresh off her fill-in stint at Always Amazin', a member of our little FAFIF family, Jessica1986, has debuted a promising Metsian blog of her own, Chicks Dig The Pitchers' Duel. If you've read her comments here, you know she'll be bringing the heat over there. As Muggsy no doubt advised Big Six, go get 'em kid.