This has been the summer that Joshua has slowly but surely become attuned to the doings of the New York Mets.

It started with the simple things: wanting to see Mr. Met, or watch the apple come up after a home run. (Explaining the apple's absence during a road game was a challenge.) From there we got into the rules, which aren't so easy to break down into chunks for someone who's just learning and is easily distracted. Three strikes and you're out, three outs and the other team gets to hit, the team with more runs is winning, the teams take turns hitting nine times, if they have the same number of runs they take a turn each again and see if someone has more runs. That's a lot to keep track of right there. Now throw in all the complications: For example, that foul balls are strikes but not if there's two strikes, unless the batter is bunting. (What's bunting?)

A single pitch can start dominos of questions falling, and sometimes you discover you've plunged into the depths of the rulebook without taking care of the basics. (What's a foul ball?) It's hard to explain why a ball that took one bounce before going into the enemy shortstop's glove is bad when a moment before a ball that took one bounce before going into the enemy left fielder's glove was good. And let's not get into force plays vs. tag plays. (Or the fact that last night I realized to my horror that I'd spent three baseball-mad decades missing a crucial part of what makes runs earned or unearned.)

Confronted with all this, Joshua's most-common question remains, "Was that good?" But he's getting it: He knows which number on the TV screen is balls and which is strikes, understands three outs and keeps track of them, gets that the lit-up bases correspond to actual runners, is beginning to understand singles and doubles and triples, and even has a rudimentary grasp of the strike zone. (Which makes him more advanced than Rey Ordonez ever was.) Not bad for someone who won't be four until after the season.

And he's learning his Mets. He knows Jose Reyes (probably his favorite player) and David Wright and will tell you proudly that Jose is No. 7 and David is No. 5. He neat as you please dropped Paul Lo Duca's name into casual Met conversation the other day. He thinks it's funny that there are two Carloses and two Joses. He has heard the hushed talk of this legendary man known only as Pedro. (Starting pitchers are the hardest, since they disappear from view for days at a time.) For the other Mets, he uses the Choo Choo method: "Get a hit, Number 23!"

He's even a more-reasonable fan than I am: When word came that Michael Tucker had become a Met, I made no secret of my unhappiness and freely expressed my loathing for our newest player. (I refrained from using the generally accepted variant of his name, however. Now that he's on our roster, Tucker gets the probationary use of his actual name. Besides, I'm not a completely horrible parent.) Anyway, confronted with a parent excoriating Michael Tucker, Joshua looked stern and had this to say: "Daddy, is he a Met? I'm sorry, Daddy, but you have to be happy about him."

Blasted rational child.

Having two baseball-mad parents has certainly helped him find his way. Joshua knows game time comes around the same he's called to the table for dinner. (And he'll be able to sit where he can see the game.) He knows we'll turn the volume up at bathtime, angle the TV so we can see it from beside the tub and tell him what's happening. He expects we'll turn on the radio in his room so we can keep track of things during the bedtime ritual of books and juice. And being a cunning creature, he's figuring out that if he takes an avid-enough interest in the proceedings, he can con his father into delaying bedtime to explain some arcane rule or wait out a half-inning. When he's particularly lucky, something will happen that warrants a quick dash next door to Mommy and Daddy's bedroom to see the instant replay. The last such event was Piazza's second home run, and Joshua quickly saw a new angle to exploit. But he has a little to learn about what's TV-worthy: A few minutes after Piazza's dinger, he tried to invoke TV privileges for a replay of a long foul ball by Jose Reyes. Nice try, kid.

But the moment Emily and I knew there was no turning back? It was Thursday, around dinner time. The string of lights on the brick wall in the yard had lit up, meaning the game should be starting. (The lights are on a timer set for 7:10. Like you're surprised.) But for some reason, his parents weren't turning on the TV.

"I want to watch the baseball," Joshua said matter-of-factly, with admirable patience. He knows parents are stupid creatures and sometimes need a little help.

"There's no game tonight, kiddo," I said.

"They played during the day," Emily added.

"And they won!" I chipped in.

"But I want to watch the baseball," Joshua tried again, looking less patient.

"There isn't any baseball tonight," I said -- and my son promptly dissolved into tears.

I explained that the Mets had to play in Washington the next night, so they played during the day. They needed to get on an airplane and get to the new city and get some sleep. More tears. I looked hopefully for an encore of the day's game on SNY. No such luck. Emily assured Joshua there'd be another game tomorrow. Nothing doing -- the kid had dissolved into a river of misery. Tomorrow night was not going to cut it -- he wanted the Mets, not excuses.

Emily and I couldn't really look at each other, because you don't want to ever actually explain to your child that on some level you're happy he's crying. We soothed him as best we could, but we couldn't have been prouder. The kid's got the family bug. No turning back now -- he's one of us.

Still, this presents a problem: If he was this sad about a day game, how on earth do I explain the offseason?

We usually trot out this reminder early in the season when we're still adjusting our ballological clocks to the idea that we won't go 162-0, but the bromide is true anytime: You're gonna win a third of your games, you're gonna lose a third of your games and what you do in the other third determines your year.

Stick Friday night's mellow misfire in the pile of 54 about which you can't do spit. Not that it should have been impossible to overcome a 2-1 deficit to the last-place Nationals, but look at the variables working against us.

• Lefties with stuff need not apply. Billy Traber followed in the tradition of soft southpaws everywhere, baffling and beguiling Met bats while leaving every pane of glass at RFK undisturbed. Don't let him be traded where he can hurt us — and god forbid a potential playoff foe gets ahold of Zane Smith. We'll be doomed. Redeeming feature: Lastings Milledge timed a slopball and singled. There's hope for this kid yet.

• Heck hath no fury like a Met prospect scorned. I knew Billy Traber was a familiar name. When I heard the story from Howie — he was a top draft pick selected by Steve Phillips for whom Steve Phillips was already making excuses and placing blame before trading him for Roberto Alomar — I figured the fix was in. Bonus points on this count for Alex Escobar's mini-revival. He was in that trade and he probably wanted a piece of us. What, you thought I was only as good as Robbie Stinking Alomar?

• Bang zoom, they were due. Cripes, we hadn't played in Washington since Jefferson was president and we hadn't lost in Washington, it seemed, since the Adams administration. It had been merely eight straight over them there, but you can't swat Nats every night.

• I'm sorry, Mr. Glavine, but the offense is reserved for Mr. Trachsel. For Stevie Shoelaces, the Mets may very well have found a way to score eight runs and win 8-7. For Tom Tentative, not so much, but the important thing was he got sharper and sharper in defeat, especially in the sixth, his final frame, the one he had to talk Willie into (Willie doesn't get talked into much, I'm guessing). Lately we've witnessed a return to health by Pedro, a rounding into form by Duque and now a second straight start in which Glavine is kind of getting it together. I'd love to get you past 287, big fella, but just keep overcoming into October. Good advice for us all.

• The Homestead Grays have always been more legendary. The New York Mets are now 2-2 dressed as New York Cubans, winning at home over the Chatham All-Stars (a.k.a. Toronto Blue Jays) in 2001 and in Kansas City against the Monarchs in 2004, losing last year to the Crawfords in Pittsburgh and last night in D.C. Result aside, nifty throwback threads...or as Julio Franco put it, "hey, these fit just like I remember."

The magic number is stuck at 36 over the Phillies, who won an endless game in Cincinnati. It went 14 and pitchers were pinch-hitting on both sides, raising a question: Do managers run through their benches quicker than they used to? How is it Davey and Bobby managed marathons and still seemed to have a Rusty Staub or Matt Franco available at the last possible moment? Or are benches just so much thinner because bullpens are so much more bulging? But I digress. The Phillies won, as did the Braves, the Marlins and of course the Nats. We lost. Everybody picked up ground on us.

Tough to say that with a straight face.

I know it happened last Tuesday post-Sanchez, but I'd bet (not that I bet on anything but the ponies, which is perfectly legal) there haven't been three nights all season when everybody in the division gained a game on the first-place Mets. That's why what could have been an irritating-as-hell 2-1 loss in August was so easily shoved onto the 54-L pile. Not that I haven't known for quite some time that nobody's gonna get us, but after having just won five in a row and increasing the games-ahead to 14 and the games-above to 25, this may have been the first one-run loss in 2006 that I really and truly greeted with "so what?"

Lest you think I was slacking, I also knew very well that if we had won, we'd be 26 over for the first time since ending 2000 that way and we'd be in sight of 30 over, a perch we've reached in only five Met campaigns ('69, '85, '86, '88, '99). Also, once we get to 15 up, we can think about 16 up, which would be the largest margin the Mets have ever floated above the field in any year that wasn't 1986.

Assuming nobody taxied back to the team hotel or limoed up to Atlantic City for some action, these are the problems with which a Mets fan can joyfully deal.