Eighteen home games remain in the 2007 season. Eighty-one home games can be assumed (barring weather, wildcat strikes, goodness only knows what) for 2008. And then that's it for regularly scheduled baseball at Shea Stadium.

There are 99 games left in the life of the ballpark that was born in 1964 and is slated to die before it can turn 45.

Holy Phil Mankowski! Y'know?

Like the Delta Shuttle roaring in for a landing just over the visitors' bullpen, time is just flying by. Those eighteen remaining games will be over soon enough, giving way — knock concrete — to some irregularly scheduled baseball in October. Those are extra innings, nothing you can pencil in yet, not easy to get your mitts on. Then we count down to next year and next year we count down from 81. When we get to zero, maybe there'll be some more extra innings. We hope so. But then those will end, too, and that will be that.

It's really happening. We're in double-digits. There are fewer than 100 regular-season games left at Shea Stadium. Ever.

I must be inoculating myself against the bitter end (I mean promising beginning) because without really meaning to, I've been at Shea a lot this year. A real lot. Friday night marked my third consecutive game and my 25th of the season, a crowded dance card even by my personal hardcore standards.

Twenty-five home games is more than I have made myself present for in any Mets season but two. In fact, last night's Los Mets fiesta at the expense of Los Dodgers tied pennant-winning 2000 for third place in The Log's regular-season pages (which don't reflect the five delightful dates tacked on that October). I believe I'm done for this weekend, but I'll be back out there when the Astros come to town, and have no reason to think I won't show up at least once for each remaining opponent. If I get to an even 30, then this here 2007, for all its faults and foibles into which we have so deeply delved, will have passed my beloved 1999 (29 games) for second place all-time. I suppose I could go nuts, purchase a Pennant Race Pack and give all-time champ 2001 (38 games) a Dynamet Dash for its money, but that's a fairly prohibitive exercise in terms of time and resources. Going to more games this year than in my favorite year will be a significant enough fan achievement.

In case you're wondering — and I can't imagine you are — the Mets are 16-9 with me in attendance in '07, behind only my '01, '99 and '00 regular-season Shea win totals. I am apparently the antidote to the home record blues (the Mets are 18-20 without me...so why don't they "take care" of me?). And just when I begin to get nervous that I'm anathema to victory, such as I was Thursday night after back-to-back L's, it was W time again Friday.

At the risk of being unnecessarily sappy about it, especially when I've stoked my share of "what's wrong with my first-place team?" discontent, every game at Shea Stadium feels a bit like a win to me in 2007. It's not just that I'm trying to enjoy what little time Ol' Leaky and I have left together; it's that I no longer even have to think about how much I want to be there. I'm just drawn to Shea, like a Paul Lo Duca to a flame. If you're not getting paid to do so, you don't voluntarily show up 25 separate times in less than five months to a place that is not particularly convenient to you. It must be more fun than I let on.

Plus there's always something new. Yes, new, despite the age of the facility and the nominal repetition of the exercise. I've made Shea debuts with a fistful of people (including the two I joined Friday night) who've entered my life this year and my fandom and I have been enhanced by their companionship. I suppose I'll be doing that sort of thing at Citi Field, going to games for the first time with somebody I've only recently met. When I do, I'll tell you if it's exactly the same, if it's way better or if it doesn't really measure up to the experiences I've had forging relationships where I've been doing it for so long. For now, I've got Shea and it's still showing me new and good times.

For Los Mets night, I sat in the left field loge...and I mean the left field loge. We were in a box to the fair side of the foul pole, a 90-degree drop from Tommie Agee territory. This was my 348th regular-season game at Shea Stadium yet my first sitting in just that loge spot, taking in just that view and perspective of the ballpark that won't be there the year after next. It made for a magnificent vista. Deep fly balls in our direction were best left to the imagination, but otherwise, you saw everything. Unlike in fair territory in right, you saw the scoreboard. You saw the DiamondVision. You saw Lastings Milledge tumbling and snaring. You saw Carlos Beltran covering acres of ground. You saw Moises Alou and wished he wouldn't get in Beltran's way. You had to squint, but you saw the Los in Los Mets.

I wouldn't go so far as to say this was Bizarro Shea, but I met my companions outside Gate A, which is literally completely opposite of where I do most of my meeting, at Gate E. It wasn't the first time I'd gone in at Gate A, not even the first time in 2007 I'd gone in at Gate A, but I definitely felt like Kramer when he found himself in a panic downtown far away from his familiar Upper West Side. I don't even know if Gate A is in 718.

The security's a lot tighter at Gate A, apparently. Uniformed TSA types didn't simply and indifferently paw at my bag — they aggressively searched it. I mean they opened my glasses case, examined my radio, asked me "what's this for?" when handling my innocent iPod splitter (which I didn't even know was still in the bag). I actually don't think this was a Gate A thing, more a Fiesta Latina Night thing, sadly. I'm willing to give those who make these decisions the benefit of the doubt as to why there were suddenly crisp white-shirted securitarians (no Mets or Shea logos on their uniforms) by the escalator at the entrance to loge checking tickets. I don't think it was because loge is undergoing some kind of field level gentrification, but rather somebody figured out that when the Mets host postgame concerts, they often get patrons who don't know their way around Shea and thus wouldn't know loge from mezzanine any more than I know salsa from merengue. Actually, it's not a bad idea. They do that in Broadway theaters, you know. (Come 2009, we'll all be strangers in a strange seating chart land and we'll need all the help we can get.)

But the superdiligent searches of bags? Gee I wonder why they chose this particular promotional night to be all Checkpoint Charlie and not, say, DHL Drawstring Bag Night, which was Thursday. Threat Level Los Mets? I wonder if any families who came to Shea specifically for Fiesta Latina Night but decided the baseball was good enough to merit a return on a future evening will wonder why there's not that kind of security when there's no Fiesta in sight (and I'm not the only one wondering). Something tells me marketing and operations did not dance on the same page in advance of Friday.

I have no idea why there are people who get up in arms over the Mets' acknowledgement that Latinos y Latinas play and/or watch baseball. It's New York, there are lots of people who speak Spanish, there happen to be lots of players who do the same. If it's good for business and it's good for the standings, I'm all for it. All anybody wants is a good ballclub. In our little slice of loge, there were fans of every international strain, it seemed, and you know who they cheered most wildly for? Whoever on the Mets did something good. Those are my kind of fans. As I've said via my actions 25 separate times this season, we Metropolitan-Americans gotta stick with our own kind.

Fox is doing something brilliant for once: Watch today in the third inning for a reunion of longtime totally awesome broadcast team Tim McCarver and Ralph Kiner. Oh baby I love it!

A funny thing has happened since I admitted that I don't particularly like the 2007 Mets -- they've started growing on me.

No, the just-concluded three-game set with the Padres wasn't good for the W-L record or the heart. But the Mets beat Trevor Hoffman once, then came leaping out of the coffin twice more. There is the small matter that they didn't win either of those games, but for me, the larger matter is that they didn't do what the '07 Mets were doing far too often earlier this season. They didn't listlessly take a beating, but went out biting and snarling. Much better.

The other thing was that, well, I missed them. With Joshua at DisneyWorld this week with his grandparents, Emily and I sacrificed the last two Padres games for the social ramble. I caught the last two innings of the middle game in a bar, tuning in just after Guillermo Mota finished sucking. As for the finale, I heard the first two innings, then tuned in after dinner, heard the score was 6-1 San Diego and shut the radio off with an I-don't-need-this-shit snap. Slapstick followed when we got home and I had to process that a) we'd lost 9-8 and b) we'd somehow led that game on the way to 9-8. That's great! Wait! That's horrible!

So by tonight it had been too long. I shook my head over the little LOS on the uniforms (it's not like the regular ones say THE), but didn't particularly mind. And I was eager to beat B(r)ad Penny, whom I've despised ever since his Marlin days for his Clemenseque troubles with impulse control as well as on general principles -- somehow the combination of his being a messy, sweaty hulk and that fussy pageboy 'do annoys me beyond measure. Watching Penny wilt in the heat and on the scoreboard was satisfying. As was watching Oliver Perez gather himself (the opening of every Oliver start just has to be a cliffhanger, doesn't it?) and then regain his worrisomely absent velocity and cruise.

Reyes continues to run wild, David Wright packed a month's worth of highlights into a single game, and somehow Mike DiFelice got three hits. And we even got to see Endy in the dugout and Lo Duca via remote, not so far away wearing Cyclones motley. Incredibly, come Monday the 2007 2.0 lineup (with Castillo for Valentin and Milledge for Green) might actually all be on the field at the same time.

Was everything perfect? No. Delgado is lost in his own personal dark forest again and Wright's comment that Billy Wagner "looked good" proves that David knows when it's more important to play teammate than scout. Because Billy was certainly not good -- first he was sloppy, and then he threw Jeff Kent a slider with a big fat target on it, one that Kent just missed driving over the fence. (Which I don't want to even think about right now. Because I'd be in the fetal position under my desk, and it's filthy under there. I'd be trying to smother myself with dust bunnies. I might even succeed.)

Anyway, all was well enough when the credits rolled. One more tick off the late-August clock, one more night to watch the Braves and the Phillies and the standings and wonder if now is the time to think about the end of the season and what may lie beyond. Not yet -- it's still too early. But it's not too far off now. Keep rolling like this and we'll be discussing it soon enough.