Moises Alou has been around for hundreds of years.
A 1-1 count with 1 out is neutral-neutral-neutral.
Carlos Gomez is the best or perhaps just fastest Met.
Ramon Castro hit a triple-decker...no...double-decker home run because it was good for two runs.
The "Jose!" song helps Jose Reyes.
Every baserunner aims to steal the next base in front of him.
We're supposed to yell "CHARGE!" a lot.

Some things I didn't know and a few that I could always use refreshing on all came at me with blinding speed and accuracy today from one Joshua Fry, my seatmate for much of Sunday afternoon's abbreviated win over the Nationals. Joshua, 4 going on 5 (which describes how many innings we needed to beat the rain and Washington), truly knows his stuff.

He knows what a hitter's count is.
He knows what a pitcher's count is.
He knows what fouling off a ball with two strikes means.
He knows we root for three outs only when the other team is up.
He knows that those guys who run onto the basepaths after the third inning are responsible for cleaning the field.
And he really did call David Wright's stolen base in the third. It was uncanny.

A bit of the nomenclature and calculation needs ironing out (in the case of Alou, hundreds and hundreds of years might actually be correct — I mean how much do we really know about the guy?), but otherwise, Joshua already understands baseball and the Mets better than a lot of people who go to Shea Stadium and demonstrate only their cluelessness when they open their mouths. Joshua, on the other hand, knows what he's talking about. And he explains it in detail and with patience and not a little charm. I couldn't possibly imagine where he gets all this from, but he obviously gets it good.

"I'll see you at the next baseball game," he told Stephanie and me when we parted ways.

Good deal for us.

There's never a wrong day to consider Tom Seaver's career, but every Hall of Fame induction day in particular, I like to think about our only authenticated Mets Hall of Famer. Seeing as how his pitching speaks so well for itself, I thought it would be appropriate to choose five lines from five starts from around this time of year during his prime and, well, marvel at their consistency and almost uniform dominance.

July 27, 1970
Mets 5 Giants 3 @ Shea
Tom Seaver, age 25, pitches 9 innings.
Gives up 3 earned runs.
Allows 6 hits.
Walks 3.
Strikes out 6.
Seaver walks and scores what proves to be the winning run in the 5th on a Ken Singleton base hit.
Gaylord Perry takes the loss.

July 27, 1971
Mets 3 Cardinals 2 @ Shea
Tom Seaver, age 26, pitches 8 innings.
Gives up 2 earned runs.
Allows 6 hits.
Walks 1.
Strikes out 7.
Leaves for a pinch-hitter in the 8th, trailing 2-1.
Mets score 2 in the 9th to win.
Danny Frisella gets the decision.

July 28, 1972
Pirates 3 Mets 1 @ Three Rivers
Tom Seaver, age 27, pitches 7 innings.
Gives up 2 earned runs.
Allows 4 hits.
Walks 4.
Strikes out 8.
Dock Ellis pitches a complete game.
Time of Game: 2 hours 5 minutes.

July 27, 1973
Mets 2 Cardinals 1 @ Busch
Tom Seaver, age 28, pitches 9 innings.
Gives up 1 earned run.
Allows 9 hits.
Walks 2.
Strikes out 8.
Only Cardinal run scores in the 1st on a double play.
Seaver lowers ERA to 1.96.

July 26, 1974
Mets 3 Cardinals 0 @ Busch
Tom Seaver, age 29, pitches 9 innings.
Pitches a shutout.
Allows 4 hits.
Walks 1.
Strikes out 5.
Losing pitcher Lynn McGlothlen allows 12 hits but pitches 8 innings.
1974 is by far the worst of Tom Seaver's 10 full pre-Massacre seasons as a Met and he still throws 5 shutouts, completes 12 games and strikes out 201 batters.

In these five essentially random starts, the Mets scored 14 runs for their ace. Seaver's ERA was 1.71 across 42 innings facing the likes of Bobby Bonds, Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Lou Brock, Joe Torre, Ted Simmons, Willie Stargell and Manny Sanguillen. He went 3-1 with one no decision.

None of these starts was a record-breaker. I don't particularly remember any of them and I've never read anything noteworthy about them. But in this era when we practically genuflect if a pitcher goes at least six innings and gives up no more than three earned runs (and faint if he goes beyond seven), it's worth remembering that Tom Seaver exceeded such parameters as a matter of course. For a decade. For us.

I sometimes can't believe we ever call any other Met pitcher great.

With due respect to any pitchers currently on the cusp of milestones, I know we should never call any other Tom terrific.

If it wasn't Willie Randolph burning his entire bench in the seventh (whywhywhywhywhy), leading to the sight of Tom Glavine pinch-hitting in the ninth, it was Lastings Milledge air-mailing everybody south of the loge on a throw home, or Mike Pelfrey crawling out of the wreckage of his usual one bad inning, or Pedro Feliciano pitching like he was tired, or Aaron Heilman doing the same, or Jose Reyes popping up pitches. Yes, I know Pelfrey looked good the rest of the time and Milledge made a terrific play to offset that one and Carlos Delgado looks like he's coming around, but in the end none of that mattered, so I can't really muster the enthusiasm for finding an umblemished oat or two in this bunch of horseshit.

One of the unwelcome themes of this year has been the Mets somehow staying in first place despite themselves, reflecting a malaise we've all pondered and tried to define without quite getting it -- we've treed the sucker, but the dogs can't get him down. Is it the routine blowouts? The lack of hitting with RISP? The career years turned into average years? The transmutation of Carlos Beltran back into porcelain?

In the darker hours of the night, we sometimes have a worse thought: Is this what the early stages of Yankeeization feel like? (OK, I've wondered it in the dark hours of the night.) Last year we dominated. Now we're not dominating. I want to dominate. You're in first place, shut up. Yeah, but we look flat. You're in first place, shut up.

Yeah, but we look flat. So shut up yourself.

I don't think it's that our expectations have been raised by last year, so that merely being in first place now isn't enough. I think there's some of that at work here, but it's a pretty small part of what's going on. Rather, it's that this team's default condition seems to be flat -- a certain distracted torpor that's hard to endure, and sure doesn't make for a very compelling storyline. Can a talented team playing uninspired baseball hold off two fundamentally flawed teams trying to close the distance? I think it can, and then it's anybody's ballgame, as the 2006 Cardinals will be reminding fans of mediocre teams for a generation to come. But what a half-assed plan for taking care of business. Bad baseball, players lingering in the netherworld of the semi-DL for who knows how long, dumb managerial decisions -- it's tough to watch a summer of this stuff and tell yourself that it'll be OK once some magic wand is waved, that Pedro will make everything better, or that Moises Alou will restore order. (He sure restored order for the Nats tonight.)

I'm a Met fan. I watched Bruce Boisclair and Jeff McKnight and Chris Jones and Jorge Velandia and Jason Phillips and Vance Wilson and Jeff D'Amico. It's pathetically obvious, after all these years, that I'll watch anything that shows up wearing blue and orange. But for a first-place team, this year's Mets squad is remarkably hard to watch. Too often they look they'd rather be doing something else, and inevitably that makes you think that maybe you ought to take that under advisement yourself.

Last night I comforted myself by taking solace in the fact that there would be two games today. It struck me as a beautiful thing. What I forgot was that a crappy enough game can make you forget all about a victory won six-odd hours earlier.

Joshua runs the bases tomorrow, weather permitting. The Mets run the bases tomorrow, Nationals pitching and their own inclination permitting.