Getting your bearings when you show up in the middle of a radio broadcast is always hard, and generally at least mildly comical.

So it was with me, back in New York more or less for keeps. The second the plane from Salt Lake City hit tarmac at JFK, I flipped on my radio. Something big was going on -- that much was obvious. The crowd was roaring "JOSE! JOSE! JOSE! JOSE!" The crowd sure didn't sound like it was on the wrong end of a 7-1 score. But then Howie and Tom were talking about a fracas, something Jose was in the middle of. Jose Oliva Alomar DiFelice Not Thrown out Bucknor Now at Third JOSE JOSE JOSE JOSE. That's what I was left trying to process, with my ear and the earbud and the radio and my hand and the airplane window making a rather ludicrous sandwich.

Oh my goodness, I thought -- have the Mets finally engaged in their first fisticuffs since Pete Harnisch decided Scott Servais's attitude would be improved by some shots to the jaw? I was briefly pleased -- it's fairly amazing and somehow faintly unmanly for a baseball team to go 11 years between dust-ups, and Reyes seemed not to have been excused from the proceedings. But then I got paranoid. Maybe things aren't so good after all. Maybe I'm hearing the crowd finally releasing all its emotions because the Marlins are up 4-1 but the Mets are being rather literal about showing some fight.

Nope. As if he'd known I'd be coming in late, Howie Rose rather breathlessly noted that there was a lot going on for a game that was only half-over. The Mets are up 10-0 and John Maine is throwing a no-hitter, he explained.

Oh. OH!

It took forever to get home -- JFK to the Van Wyck to the LIE to the BQE, with traffic all the way. I didn't care. The cabbie had the game on, and obligingly turned it up for me. As Maine came closer and closer to history, I found myself fretting. How typical for the Mets' first no-hitter to be a deck instead of a hed. (Newspaper talk, but you get the idea.) One of the first Faith and Fear blog posts I ever wrote in my head was about the aftermath of that impossible-to-imagine feat. After Andino's ball took a funhouse hop off Wright's knee to Reyes' glove, I started wondering if I should stick to the program and unleash that long-ago-composed post, or scrap it for the bigger news of the day. Mike Jacobs struck out as the taxi neared Brooklyn Heights (five outs to go), so I started worrying about jinxes. What if I walk in the door and some Marlin call-up immediately gets a hit? Shouldn't I stay out on the stoop listening to the radio? But that's insane -- Maine was recording outs when I was 30,000 feet over the Midwest. And all the time I'm worrying about the Phillies and tomorrow and what it all means, annoyed with myself for being preoccupied with the sideshow of the no-hitter when we were still trying to ram our way back into the big top.

The Mets being the Mets, Maine of course didn't do it -- Paul Hoover's little worm-killer won him admission to the Clubhouse of Curses, and Maine had to content himself with a performance that was merely godlike. Paul Hoover, Jeez Louise. Tom McCarthy was going on and on about how the Marlins' lineup was now without Hanley Ramirez and Miguel Cabrera (whose pathetic sloth would probably have gotten him thrown out, had he switched places with Hoover). Tom clearly thought this was of import, but I was shaking my head. Didn't he know it's always the guy you've never heard of -- the Kit Pellow or Jimmy Qualls of the roster? Paul Hoover is a 31-year-old journeyman catcher who arrived at the ballpark today with eight career hits. Of course it was going to be him. If you'd told me the Marlins would keep us in the no-no cold with a 45-foot dribbler with two outs in the eighth and showed me the roster, I would have pointed right to Hoover. Because I'd never, ever heard of him.

And you know what? Who cares. Maine pitching a one-hitter, Maine pitching a no-hitter, Anderson Hernandez getting the win in emergency relief in the 23rd inning -- the only thing that mattered today was that W. And we got it, and the L from Philadelphia a couple of hours later. (And a much-needed L from San Diego not long after that, with the Padres' postseason celebration was delayed by Tony Gwynn Jr. Baseball doesn't need surrealists -- the surreal is built into the very fabric of the game.)

Our season could have ended today, but it didn't. And now matters are clear: Win, and get to play at least one more game. For a team that's battled complacency and a fan base that's struggled with its own expectations, that stark simplicity should concentrate the mind marvelously. Tomorrow is enormously simple and simply enormous.

We rooted like hell. They played like crud.

We the fans may be Mets in every emotional way, but it was proven again Friday night that we the fans cannot hit, hit with power, run, throw, catch and pitch.

And...wait for it...neither can the Mets.

Either way, we're all on the outside looking in now. We are not in first place, which is in and of itself not a crime. I would contend, however, vacating first place two games before the season's end after holding it so seemingly tight for so long should be.

Then again, having to be a part of this team looks like punishment enough from here.

I've made the mistake of flipping on the Mets' flagship radio station during the day this week and being told that Mets fans weren't showing up and weren't showing support. Of course I'm only some guy who's been out there among tens of thousands of Mets fans for three consecutive nights, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but there have plenty of Mets fans at Shea this week and there has been plenty of support. Anybody who thinks this fan base hasn't gotten behind its team to the cusp of the bitter end is clearly looking or listening for a storyline that does not exist.

These fans, of which I was one of 55,298 (more or less), were great last night. With every reason in the world to turn our collective back on the Mets, we didn't. We roared from the first pitch. Even when succeeding pitches proved inadequate, we kept roaring for our team. There was no mass booing, even though there was every reason to produce it...if, in fact, you are the type who is inclined to empty corrosive fluid out of your lungs.

Perhaps it shouldn't be noteworthy that fans of the local team attended the local team's sporting event and cheered enthusiastically for the local team, particularly with the local team tied for first place and time running out. Perhaps it shouldn't be worth noting, but after so many losses in so short a span with such dreadful consequences for the local team's position in the standings, I think it is.

The Mets did not play nearly as well as we rooted. They fell behind, but we rooted for them — hard. They stayed behind, but we rooted for them — harder. I tend to forget that a lot of people who show up to Mets games are relatively uncomplicated people. They don't overthink the issue. They show up and they want their team to win. They don't come up with reasons to be down on them away from the ballpark and they find ways to encourage them once they're there. That's who was at Shea Friday night: Mets fans who wished the Mets would win. It was the best part of this game and maybe this season.

My night began as it almost always does, on the 6:11 to Woodside. As I rode and listened to my Amazin' playlist (you don't wanna know what's on there), I found myself recalibrating the default memory of my fanometer. I was no longer set on 1998, the choke. I clicked forward a notch to 1999, when the circumstances were maybe more dire (seven consecutive losses and a bigger Wild Card lead being blown) but the outcome (win, win, win, a little help) much more rewarding on the final weekend. I realized I was no longer rooting for the 2007 Mets. I was rooting for just the Mets — the institutional Mets who are capable of pulling a 1999, the Mets who give us reason to believe and hope even when they stumble, even when they fall as they did in 1998. I was rooting for the Mets who made me the fan I am today, all of them. It just happened to be 2007 while I was doing it.

I think that's what a lot of the people at Shea Stadium were doing Friday night. The names they wore and chanted and beseeched may have corresponded to those on the field, but this wasn't all about Lo Duca and Beltran and Wright and Reyes and Alou and Green. It wasn't necessarily about Piazza and Alfonzo or Knight and Backman or Agee and Koosman either. It was about being a Mets fan, being in it for better or worse, thinking that worse isn't what this has to be. Thinking that maybe if we do our best for them, they'll do their best for us. If that's a clichéd portrayal of what a Mets fan is, then just say we spent Friday night at Cliché Stadium.

If the Mets did their best, their best isn't very good. Their best hasn't been close to worthwhile for weeks. Maybe these Mets just aren't very good.

I didn't take a train home. My friend for all seasons Jim had parked in the Southfield (they named the lot across Roosevelt this year like a gated community for some reason) and offered me a ride. By the time we pulled out, we were fuming at the result as you'd expect. I'm loyal. Jim's loyal. Jim's so loyal that he eschewed his threat to drink six beers and boo everything in sight so he, too, could root like hell. But our loyalty doesn't cloud our judgment. And as Jim drove and Willie Randolph and David Wright offered their critiques and excuses on Mets Extra, we fumed more.

Jim and I were owed at least one beer for our trouble, so we stopped in a watering hole he knew not far from where he grew up. And after letting loose an ear-steaming monologue probably far more entertaining than anything I am capable of piecing together at the moment, I noticed I had become another cliché: my head was literally on the bar and I was figuratively crying in my beer.

I'm somewhere between my cliché personas now. There are two games left for the second-place Mets just as there are for the first-place Phillies. Those need to be played and I'm still capable of acknowledging that games that aren't yet won or lost are still up for grabs. The Mets could win Saturday. The Phillies could lose. For technical reasons, I will continue to root like hell when I make my fourth consecutive appearance at Shea today. But otherwise, I'm nearly as resigned to the fate of the 2007 Mets as the 2007 Mets indicated they are by their dismal actions on the field Friday night.

If they played the way we root, this thing would have been wrapped up in August.