On the same trip when we buried now and forever The Curse of Turner Field, have we discovered we are subject to a new kind of locale-based dysfunction?

Things don't go as well as they could at the big sack of Soilmaster. Pedro outdistanced by Dontrelle despite pitching brilliantly? That in and of itself ain't nothin' but a thang until you consider that Pedro's odyssey to hip-riddled ineffectiveness began inside the sack when he was ordered to change an undershirt. 'Twas only the first bad thing to happen a Mets pitching stalwart because the schedulemaker insists they go to Miami. Or would Duaner Sanchez be chillin' down South Beach way otherwise?

There's far too much of this sort of nonsense surrounding the Mets at a venue that is audibly friendly to them. The legend of Shingo Takatsu and the infamous "funk" happened there. Mr. Delgado battered Mr. Koo there. Mr. Delgado needlessly detoured there. Mr. Jacobs, who wouldn't have had to have been traded to the Floridians had the idiot agent with the Joe Cocker jones steered his client more eptly, kicked a ball from Paul Lo Duca's glove tonight. That after denting Pedro's armor. Since when does Lo Duca not get a call at home just because he doesn't have control of the ball? Who could forget his brilliant masking of a bobble on Opening Day, the same game when Xavier Nady went 4-for-4.

Xavier Nady was traded with the Mets in Florida.

The Lincoln-Kennedy comparison between Turner Field and Your Name Here/Football Team Stadium doesn't run perfectly down the 50-yard line. The biggest difference is the Braves used their Metmashing as a pivot point from which to dominate the division. The Marlins merely annoy — albeit effectively — now and then. Also, the Marlins have won two World Series since Turner Field opened, the Braves none.

We just lost two of three to the Fish, but we swept the Braves on what is hard to remember was this very same trip. We can still bask in that a bit until the Abreuless, Lidleless, so-happy-they're-gone-they're-hot Phillies cut our lead to a single digit.

Gotta have something besides the steam rising up from the asphalt to sweat over, Mets fans.

The problem with being one of those bloggers who blogs virtually every day is when you take a little trip and decide you're not going to blog that you still think like a blogger. You hear stuff, you see stuff and it is your impulse to post stuff. But you don't 'cause you can't or you won't.

Honestly, it's not so much the substance that went wanting. That's what a two-man operation is for (thanks bro). It's all those headlines that zip through your brain as perfect to the occasion, but the occasion slips away and it's too soon to treat it like nostalgia.

Hence, in the interest of satisfying my own needs, I will share with whoever wants them, my slightly stale, possibly irrelevant headlines and accompanying explanations to make them somewhat useful.

Aw, Hail No!
A cab? A pitcher and a fucking cab? AGAIN?

Nady of Shea I Adored You
I have to admit I've had this one simmering for the right spot — walkoff hit, something like that — since April, albeit in the present tense. All you many accordion fans should get it without prompting. (Sometimes I think I should be writing for Joe Franklin.)

He Was The X-Man, Coo-Coo-Ca-Choo
Some weeks ago, my partner advised not falling in love with players to the point you can't bear to trade them if it's for the good of the team. As a practitioner traditionally guilty of just such sentiment, I nodded and thought, "Nady would be like that." I could see myself, if he were ever swapped out, trying to balance the "he was really important to our big start" instinct with "in the big picture, he's an OK rightfielder and a No. 7 hitter". But we weren't going to trade Xavier Nady this year, so it was going to be moot.

He's His Own Grandpa
Given an evening to reflect on the events of Monday — Sanchez freakishly (or perhaps flukily) injured, R. Hernandez repurposed, Oliver Perez not traded for Scott Linebrink despite what ESPNews kept reporting over and over and over again — this is what I came up with: We traded Mike Cameron and got a reliever we already had. That thinking is so 2005 and ignores a dozen variables, but it is the bottom line on which I landed. Also, as ever, I blame Heath Bell.

King of the N-Men
What bugs me the most (given that little bugs me with a 13-game lead) is that while the rest of the world dwelled on the X in Xavier, I was quite proud of noticing how few Mets there were with a last name that began with N, and Nady was about to trump the lot of them. He left with, what, 14 homers? Well, eleven previous Mets, including pitchers, had last names beginning with the letter N. Those N-Men combined to hit 25 homers in 1,357 Met at-bats. Before Nady 'nocked one out (vs. the Nats) on 4/3/06, no N-Met had gone deep since Jon Nunnally took Russ Ortiz into McCovey Cove on 5/3/00. If Xavier had hit 15 Met HRs, he would have surpassed Charlie Neal's lifetime team N-mark, set at Crosley Field on 6/15/63. Instead, like Marcus Giles and Atlanta's Wild Card aspirations, Nady and Neal will forever be kissing their sisters until we trade for Albert Nujols.

It's Like One Million Degrees
Speaking of whom, I was in St. Louis for the last three days. You think it's hot here? Well, it probably is, but St. Louis took the hot cake.

It's Like One Billion Degrees
How hot was it? I don't have a swift reply. It was too darn hot for that sort of thing (the Post-Dispatch ran a front-page story this morning about how nobody in town was in the mood for "hot enough for ya?" repartee). Every time we got into our hotel elevator, it posted the outdoor temperature and every time we looked, it was 102. That's not a temperature. That's a fever.

It's Like One Trillion Degrees
If it's the searing middle of summer and I've dragged my wife to a mid-sized American city, it can mean only one thing: Somebody opened a new ballpark. Stephanie agreed to visit Busch Stadium II — or III, depending on how you take your Sportsman's Park — in early May when it sounded charming. Then came that nasty heartland hurricane followed by bulletins of power outages followed by forecasts for like one trillion degrees. My wife has the prettiest eyes, but that's not to say they're not capable of transmitting the stare of death.

It Sure Holds The Heat Well
We conserved energy in St. Louis. No, we blasted the hotel AC at will (while allowing our home to rise to a WLIR-high of 92.7 degrees while we were away). I mean we left the midday sun, which was straight out of that Twilight Zone episode in which the earth is heading the wrong way, to mad dogs, Englishmen and Cardinal Nation. If I wanted Stephanie's company for the Wednesday night game, she insisted on the joys of room service and demurred my bright ideas about going over to the park and taking many looks around.

I See Red People
Fortunately, our hotel was directly across the street from Busch. By paying through the beak for the desired view, we could watch Tuesday night's game go on in virtual luxury box isolation. And what a view! We could see just about everything one needed to see, augmenting the silent tableau with the folksy radio call of Mike Shannon (whose classy eatery we visited and enjoyed if not as much as the pilgrimage we made to The Greatest Restaurant Chain Ever) and the professional pipes of John Rooney. Almost as good was the chance to stand sentry, peek out the curtain at odd hours and make sure nobody stole the stadium. We could see life go on from climate-controlled comfort. What Stephanie and I couldn't help but notice was how red everybody was. Not from the burn of Ol' Sol but in homage to their lord god bird. We knew this from watching St. Louis games on television for many years, but it really strikes you being in the heart of it. As Stephanie noted, for all the ballparks we've been to (30 for me, 22 for her...all with, uh, me), it's an unmatched phenomenon. Not wanting to fire the ire of the locals, she requested an evening's blue and orange amnesty to purchase a red shirt with a red bird. Sportsman that I am, I went out into the heat and bought it for her with the caveat that come a potential Met-Cardinal LDS/LCS, it is hidden deep in the closet along with that one snapshot she took of a baseball-related tickertape parade that passed beneath her office window in the late 1990s.

Soulless Cages
For those of you itching to plant yourself inside Sheabbets Field in three years and partake of all that retro goodness you've seen elsewhere, I'm here to report it's overrated if not delivered correctly. Though I found Cardinals fans' self-ballyhooment as the best in baseball to be as laughable as Jeff Weaver's pitching — they boo bad things, they cheer good things, they say lame things, they wear red things — I'm willing to concede the franchise's historical track record...or as Stephanie observed as we listened to Shannon, "Do you think he brings up Stan the Man every game?" For all its brickiness and Musial statuary, I didn't feel very much Cardinalogy in the new building. Busch II/III only has four months in the books and it's perfectly fair to assume you can't manufacture ballpark lore like Whitey's Rats could manufacture runs. Maybe it takes time, but they got it right in Baltimore and Pittsburgh and even Philadelphia. Something's missing in St. Louis. Something needs to happen in that stadium before it can truly be their home field; God forbid it's a pennant in 2006. Until then, it will remain a very nice piece from the retro catalogue and not a lot more. Keep that in mind as you kiss Bill Shea's playpen goodbye. Our current facility may not be objectively gorgeous, but like the round Busch that's not there anymore, its team's fans spent four decades imbuing it with soul to spare.

No News Is Good News
It was a good trip and perhaps more details will seep out should they seem pertinent to our ongoing discussions, but after three days of the oppressive Missouri suns (surely there was more than one) and monitoring Tony LaRussa's moods (they're not good) and keeping up with a trickle of crooked numbers from Miami (we're still in first by a ton, right?) and discovering that our prime setup man and starting rightfielder are now, respectively, a Pirate and a patient, home is the place to be: Pedro and Dontrelle, me and the couch, the remote and Snigh. Long-term, any baseball that isn't the Mets is for the birds.

Baseball, man -- it'll kill ya.

Good luck teasing the storylines out of this one. First we pounded poor Ricky Nolasco, who must be seeing orange and blue ghosts in his sleep. Then -- and it feels like we've done this too often -- we went to sleep at the switch. 6-0 became 6-1 became 6-2 became 6-3 as the Marlins pecked away at Trachsel. Trachsel was Trachsel; Roberto Hernandez was unlucky, seeing a strikeout turn into a baserunner and his teammates let his runners score to make it 6-5; and David Wright...well. David Wright may be The New Franchise, but even The New Franchise isn't immune to slumps and wearing down during the dog days. Wright twice came to the plate with the bases loaded and nobody out, and came up empty both times. Ten men left on base. Ouch. Somebody please give the guy a breather.

Speaking of 23-year-old superstar third basemen, Wright and Miguel Cabrera sure had opposite games: Wright was hopeless at the plate, but made a sparkling play in the field; Cabrera drove in four, but managed the difficult trick of having a 3-for-5 night that he should be ashamed of. This Marlins team could be a beast pretty soon -- they're young, talented and play hard. At least most of them do. Their All-Star third baseman, amazingly, routinely sulks and loafs his way through games. It was startling to see Cabrera get lectured about setting himself on throws in his own dugout; it was even more startling to note that the person delivering the well-earned lecture was Dontrelle Willis, a 24-year-old pitcher. Cabrera is far too good to play a game this beautiful this badly. Even though it benefited us tonight, it's a shame to see.

Back to our struggles: It didn't help that in the late innings we had to take on both the Marlins and the home-plate ump. Mike Reilly's incorrectly calling Jose Valentin out on a pickoff was excusable -- bang-bang play, not a great angle -- but Andy Fletcher didn't give Chad Bradford two pitches he deserved, and then gave Joe Borowski one he didn't. I kept waiting for the Andy Fletcher mask to get torn off and reveal the demonic visage of Angel Hernandez.

Even once Cliff had been excused for the night, I was hoping that Valentin might let us exhale by hitting one over the fence and setting up Heilman (very good once again) for a cakewalk save. But I knew better. Baseball being baseball, it had to come down to Billy Wagner back in the fire, didn't it?

C'mon, admit it: After Wes Helms singled and Wags somehow hit Brian Moehler, you thought we'd lost, didn't you? When Helms got on base I got up from my desk where I was listening to the radio and took up my sometimes-lucky post on the steps, but the thing I was keeping uppermost in my mind was this: When the Marlins tie it or beat us, don't wake up Emily and Joshua screaming obscenities.

But somehow Billy found his location (and wasn't distracted by the odd sight of Joe Girardi pinch-running for a pinch-runner, something I'm pretty sure I've never seen before) and also found a little luck. Hanley Ramirez couldn't bunt, he fanned Dan Uggla, and then here came Cabrera, doing the one baseball-related thing he reliably cares about doing. That rising fastball was a thing of beauty -- kept the back pages safe for Billy, our butterflies at bay and snuffed talk (at least for now) of any kind of post-Braves letdown.

Great game -- once we had it won.

On Another Front: I was heartened to see the Mets send Pelfrey down and hand the fifth starter's spot (at least for now) to Maine, particularly since I figured they'd do the opposite. To me, this wasn't a question of 17 scoreless innnings and rotational justice -- ask Aaron Heilman about that -- so much as it was about choosing strategy over splash, something the Mets haven't always been good at. Maine has the kind of swing-and-miss stuff that's scarce in our rotation right now, and wouldn't seem to have a lot left to prove in AAA. If he can build on what's been a successful year so far, he might have an important role to play in the postseason -- and I don't think there's a better way for him to study up than to get repeated, relatively low-pressure starts.

Pelfrey is in his first months as a professional, and obviously looks like a big piece of our future. We can see that, and we don't need an extended audition to be reminded of it or to be convinced to come to the ballpark. But he's not ready: Like a lot of young pitchers, his primary battle is still against himself, and his to-do list begins with harnessing his other pitches and refining the location on his fastball. The big leagues isn't the place for him to do that -- not yet, and not if it comes at the expense of what Maine needs to do. Pelfrey will be back, but for now, it was right for him to go. Good move by the Mets.