The scoreboard presented a fact all through Saturday's game: the Mets were beating the Marlins. But my considerable gut told me different: the Mets are in trouble.

This is what this season and this September have come down to — feeling the game instead of following it. Even though the Mets led and were never in anything remotely resembling trouble against the Marlins, I never watched or listened calmly, not for a single batter, not until the 27th Marlin out was recorded.

The truth is the Mets won easily; that's a fact. The truthiness of the matter — and isn't that what Stephen Colbert has been teaching us to feel for two years? — is nothing feels easy anymore.

That a problem? Only in that it reflects the state of the Mets heading into their final eight days of the regular season, hopefully not their final eight days of 2007 baseball altogether.

Devoid of context, Saturday gave us a glorious game, featuring the strikeout stylings of Oliver Perez, a power burst by the almost but never quite forgotten Ramon Castro and some fairly Valuable David Wright action. Moises Alou continues to set the Mets' hitting streak record and the Mets have something that is technically a winning streak.

In context...phew!

All I could do, for the most part, was count down from 27 to 1 and cross every digit that flexes that Ollie was up to a complete game or the modern-day equivalent: an eight-inning masterpiece. It's both the truth and the truthiness that says relying on the Mets' bullpen to not lose a Mets' win is very, very dangerous these days.

Total props to the Damned Duo of Guillermo Mota and Scott Schoeneweis from Friday night for bailing their team out after a lengthy rain delay (and after Pedro Martinez bailed himself out with those frozen-custard strikeouts of Cody Ross and Miguel Olivo). They reversed a biblical flood of bad fortune, no doubt about it. But do you expect anybody in this pen — those two in particular — to replicate such competence on consecutive days? That's why I was rooting for Randolph and Peterson to forget this is 2007 and pretend it was 1968 when it was still legal to send a starter out to begin the ninth.

Failing that, the best we could hope for in these Wagnerless times was Heilman, a five-run lead and a lousy three outs. The most frightening image of this game was the recurring shot of the Mets' bullpen: all those sorry pitchers lingering on directors' chairs set up down the third base line; it looked like a casting call for the gates of hell. Heilman struggled to throw 24 pitches but escaped the fire down below. It was only the five-run lead that made me confident he wouldn't do us in. And I consider myself a solid supporter of Aaron Heilman.

Tim McCarver (who is a back spasm to listen to when not leavened by the genial grace notes of Ralph Kiner) did echo a point that had been hatching in my head these past couple of days, that this is not the way you want to go into a postseason. Just get to the postseason, of course, and then we'll quibble, but boy...what a mess in terms of health this roster is. Beltran was out there despite the bruise to the knee he took Friday. Delgado rushed back at probably well less than 100 percent. Lo Duca's been hanging in there with a battered hand. Green was hit today. You can hear Castillo's knees barking through the television. Alou is always one stiff breeze from dismemberment. If you can't admire this team for the way it's been playing, at least admire that many of them are playing at all.

They are on the field, they are trying and, for two straight days, they are succeeding. It should feel good. Most I still feel anxiety. It's so different from early in the season when the Mets would be trailing by some disturbing margin and I'd think, "all we gotta do is get a coupla guys on." These days I look at a five-run lead over a last-place team and wonder how we can possibly avoid blowing it. The truthiness — the feeling surrounding this club — is still quite shaky.

Good thing the standings reflect only the truth.

It's been a long time since I had no idea what the New York Mets were up to. Sure, there's been a game here and a game there that saw me nod off in the middle innings or when it was the 12th with no end in sight, games that left me to wake up the next morning wondering what happened. But that was easy enough to repair -- just pad on over to the other room and pull up My Yahoo.

This is different. I'm in a Mets-free world. We're coming to the end of three days in Milan, and staying in a hotel on the outskirts of town, in what is basically a forlorn office park. The hotel itself is more like a slightly upscale hostel. It has Internet access, but getting it is mind-boggling: Scratch off a card, enter an ID, put your cellphone number in the Web form, get an SMS message on your phone, enter that as your password. This, I suppose, is the Italian urge to make straightforward things extremely complicated. I mean, really. Why not have the password delivered by carrier pigeon, or materialize in the entrails of a spring lamb? My cellphone is currently a borrowed one with a SIM card bought in London. My phone number? That remains somewhat theoretical. I managed to send Emily text messages, but neither her replies nor that password ever showed up in return. Some combination of the UK code minus the London prefix plus or minus a zero would do the trick, but only if you are much smarter than I am. I fussed with the card for a while, fussed with the front desk, and then gave up. (Besides, not to be disloyal, but staying up until 4 a.m. was kind of messing with my ability to be a decent employee, which is why I'm over here.) No Net. No Mets.

Yesterday morning the colleagues with Blackberrys (which between the nervous editors and IT guys would be everybody else) gave me the crushing news of Miami Part 1. This morning, though, is our free day. No info. So I went to Venice.

I didn't have to go that far -- they have Internet cafes in Milan. But I wasn't inclined to spend my free day in Milan, which has some nice things but is fairly unlovely overall -- there's the Duomo and a lot of buildings that have that important, stolid Federal Reserve look, but otherwise it's a gritty, working town rather than a tourist spot. There was Lake Como, where I could hobnob with George Clooney and act out stilted dialogue from Attack of the Clones, but tomorrow we'll be in Lausanne, which I'm told looks somewhat similar. Venice was three hours away by train -- far, but I've spent 38 years on Earth without ever seeing it, so who can guarantee I'll get another chance? And there's the whole global-warming thing.

I'm happy I got up and navigated the train system with the minimum competence required. Because Venice is soooo worth it. Every street is interesting. I've been here about three hours, and you do not get tired of walking over bridges or darting down little calles or just looking at colorful houses next to canals and wondering what it would be like to live there.

But until I got to this Net cafe, Venice brought me no closer to the Mets. Instead, I was left fussing and worrying and trying to extract portents from random sightings: There's a cat sitting on that railing above the canal! Right in my view from lunch! I like cats! Greg Prince loves cats! The Mets must have won!

And hey, they did. On the other hand, if the cat had plunged into the canal, I suppose I could have just written off October. And maybe followed my furry messenger to the bottom of the Adriatic.

Doesn't it seem like the Mets have been playing one endless game since Monday, with the score Opponents 39 Mets 36, heading to the top of the 47th? They've been in a mostly empty stadium that isn't Shea; the fans are mostly Mets fans; they score early but it doesn't seem to matter; they give up runs, they give back runs, they have runs tacked on to them; they are thrown out, they fall down, they are carried off; we endure total and complete apoplexy...yet because the other team isn't much good either, somehow they sometimes win.

Oh — and sometimes it rains.

As familiar as one game atop another on this numbing road trip has felt, however, sometimes you see something you've never seen before.

***
These are the strangest of possible words:
"Martinez to Mota to Schoeneweis."
Trio of Met arms, two for the birds,
Martinez and Mota and Schoeneweis
A starter whose rehab's complete
Two pen men we urge take a seat
Friday night in Miami they accomplished their feat
"Martinez to Mota to Schoeneweis."

***
And sometimes you see something else you've never seen before.

***
Twenty-three was iconic
Like Junior Griffey's nerve tonic
No Met had ever managed to hit in more

Cleon started the tale
He'd share it with Mike Vail
They established a streak
That others would seek
To break but fail

Until Huuuuu-bee!
Went twenty-four consecutive
Until Huuuuu-bee!
Went to the plate and was selec-u-tive
Hubie Brooks set the hit streak mark
Occasionally would hit 'em from the park
Our man Huuuuu-bee!
He hit in twenty-four...

Along came Piazza
Stronger than a matzoh
There wasn't much this catcher couldn't do

Batting was his forté
Like hearing Hendrix play
While swinging for fences
He upset defenses
Ev-e-ry day

Mike Piaaahhh-zza!
Went twenty-four consecutive
Mike Piaaahhh-zza!
Became the record's co-executive
Mike Piazza tied the hit streak mark
Occasionally would hit 'em from the park
Along with Huuuuu-bee!
He hit in twenty-four...

Now there's a big old asterisk
By the name we all know as David Wright
Dave streaked across two seasons
But for fairly plain reasons
A two-year streak simply doesn't count
It's not the Wright amount

Moises Alou is
Not some Johnny Lewis
Or any random garden-variety Met

He healed his aching quad
Drained base hits from his bod'
At forty-one
He's having fun
Where no Met's trod

Moises Ahhhhh-loo!
Went twenty-five consecutive
Moises Ahhhhh-loo!
Has issued a direc-u-tive:
"Brooks and Piazza...they were fine;
But the Met hit streak mark you see is mine"
Moises Alou
Has hit in twenty-five

(Straight games!
Straight games!

Moises Ahhhhh-loo!
Has hit in twenty-five

Straight games!
Straight games!

Alou's the guy...
Who hardens his hands...
Oh gross!

Hit more!
Hit more!)

Sincere regards to the inspirational figures of Franklin P. Adams and Terry Cashman, parodied with affection in this space, I assure them.