It's the new guys who will heal us.

I don't just mean that Angel Pagan has been a revelation, that Ryan Church has so far proved a good bat and an excellent glove, that Johan Santana is Johan Santana or that Nelson Figueroa had a very nice night. (Or that even Raul Casanova chipped in when finally allowed to play.) All those things are true, but there's another factor.

We aren't mad at them.

Those guys weren't stumbling around these precincts after Memorial Day, plummeting back to the Phillies' level in September or getting keel-hauled by the Marlins on Tom Glavine's day of disappointment. Hopefully we'll soon get over being mad at all those branded with the tag "2007 Met" -- it's no fun being mad at David Wright -- but it hasn't happened quite yet. It's too early for that. But it's not too early for thoroughly enjoying the derring-do of Pagan and Church and Santana, the innocents.

Which brings us to Figueroa.

Being a baseball fan of a certain stripe means sentimentality is always waiting to swallow you up if you're not careful. Baseball really is about lyrical green fields and the arc of the ball. But it's also about sweating and bleeding and cheating and managing egos and guys who don't get along and hangovers and baseball Annies and contract strife and labor wars and drug worries and the ruthless business decisions that assemble and maintain teams and franchises and ballparks. It's not all Ken Burns -- black-and-white photos and piano and mannered narration.

But sometimes, man. Shut up, play that piano and let John Chancellor talk.

Nelson Figueroa grew up a Met fan in Coney Island. Scorned for being too small and not throwing hard enough, he wound up at Brandeis University, not exactly a baseball hotbed. His boyhood team drafted him in 1995, but without an excess of faith in his future -- he went in the 30th round, the 833rd overall pick. And then the Mets sent him away in 1998, as part of a package for the utterly forgettable Willie Blair and Jorge Fabregas. He made it to the big leagues with the Diamondbacks in 2000, pitched well for the Phillies in 2001, then tore his rotator cuff after a cup of coffee with the Pirates. Then it was a minor-league deal with the Nationals and a spring-training look-see from the Mariners. It was a tour of duty in the Mexican League and a late-season job with the Uni-President Lions of the Chinese Professional Baseball League. He did well there, but Figueroa was 33, owned a 7-17 lifetime record and a suspect rotator cuff, and was pitching in Taiwan.

But somehow his story was just beginning.

You know the rest, but imagine it from Nelson Figueroa's perspective: He got a minor-league deal from his original team, the one he grew up rooting for, the one that sent him away. He pitched well enough in spring training to shove himself into consideration -- and got cut on the last day of camp anyway. And then got called back almost before he left. Walking off the mound in Miami, wearing a Met uniform at last, he said he didn't want to be seen tearing up in HD.

Heck, he wasn't alone. That was a wonderful story right there, one that made anyone with a heart made of anything softer than granite excuse themselves for a moment because, hey, it's getting a little dusty in here. But you want more? You want Figueroa to take the mound at Shea with his family spilling out of a luxury suite and cheering him on? OK, the baseball gods can do that. You want him to retire the first three Brewers? Well, sure. The first six? Hmm, OK. The first nine? Easy there -- sure, what the heck. The first 12? Man...but OK. The first 15? No. Too much! Sorry.

No, you had to settle for six innings of two-hit, two-run ball -- and a win whose final moments were etched on Nelson Figueroa's face, in the arch of his eyebrows and the too-quick flash of his smile and every nervous duck of his head as Billy Wagner retired the last three Brewers somewhere out there in the fog. No perfect game, no no-hitter -- even the baseball gods can reject a story as too perfect, too cornpone, too hard a yank for the heartstrings to bear.

But that's OK. That's more than OK. We thought about the perfect game, the no-hitter. We thought about it, hoped for it, knew it wasn't coming, nodded our heads when it didn't arrive. I bet Nelson Figueroa did all that too. And I bet he knew there wouldn't be 27 up and 27 down. After all, he knows how things work around here. He knows because as a kid he was one of us, and because now he is -- at long, long last -- a New York Met.

(Tip of the cap to the Star-Ledger's Jeremy Cothran for background via a nicely told tale.)

Welcome to Flashback Friday: Tales From The Log, a final-season tribute to Shea Stadium as viewed primarily through the prism of what I have seen there for myself, namely 359 regular-season and 13 postseason games to date. The Log records the numbers. The Tales tell the stories.

4/8/08 Tu Philadelphia 16-19 Perez 10 195-164 L 5-2
The Mets lost the final Home Opener in Shea Stadium history to the Phillies. But I won. I usually do.

I am hesitant to admit what fun I have at Shea even when the Mets lose, even when the Mets collapse. But it is fun for me to go and be what I can't possibly be anywhere else. I can't be completely in my element anywhere else. I can't be completely surrounded by Mets fans anywhere else. I can't do what I honestly believe I'm supposed to do anywhere else. Those feelings are enhanced by Met wins. They are surprisingly little diminished by Met losses.

By the time I get home after a loss, sometimes the loss overtakes me as it did Tuesday, especially as it did Tuesday. It really was too much like what ended last year when I was almost having fun in spite of the Mets, at least until the Mets cut off their noses to spite our faces. But that was at the very end of a very long season when the whole concept of fun becomes subordinate to angst. Tuesday was the beginning of what is not yet a long year. Tuesday you could lose one and by Thursday you could wonder, the unhelpful 5-2 result notwithstanding, why you were so upset.

You had fun at Shea Stadium with your friends who are Mets fans just like you and were surrounded by smiling strangers (the sober ones) who are Mets fans just like you. You hadn't been immersed like that in a Koonce age. How could you let a score get you down? How could you not let a score lift you up?

The score of the second part was from 1970's Company, which opened on Broadway twelve days after the Mets raised their 1969 World Championship flag. I told you last week how I like to listen to soundtracks from Broadway musicals en route to Shea. It was by rigged chance — its insertion in the Amazin' 2008 playlist was intentional, the timing of when track 11 would click on a coincidence — that as I began to ascend an ancient staircase from a teeming commuter railroad platform I heard this lyric through my earbuds:

Another hundred people just got off of the train
And came up through the ground
While another hundred people just got off of the bus
And are looking around

Yes, and they were all wearing some variation of orange, black and blue. And better yet I heard it seconds after receiving a phone call from Dan, waiting for me at Gate E. I've been to a handful of Mets games with Dan since 2002, the dreariest of them a death march to mediocrity in September 2005 when Reyes was a foal, when Wright was a pup, when Beltran was a deer in the headlights, when Martinez was not yet Old Yeller, when Jose Offerman romped in fields of gold....when nobody expected much of our Mets and even fewer were showing up to confirm their lack of expectations. It was during that sorry series, a Nationals sweep, that I connected Company and "Another Hundred People" to the Mets, fans exiting a briefly rolled bandwagon that had halted by the hundreds, by the thousands. But there were me and Dan, still on it then, as we had been individually and together all those years, with no substantial clue that the wagon would regain traction in 2006 and expectations would soar and another million people would get on to our train for the next few seasons.

I could have looked to any number of people to keep me Company at the last Home Opener Shea Stadium would ever host. I thought of Dan first. I thought of September 2005. I thought of a spectacularly warm midweek afternoon in April 2002 when we converted our e-mail relationship to face time in the middle innings of a hard-luck loss to the Braves (as if there's any other kind). I thought of late March 2007 when we chatted and I declared that I could live without attending that particular Opening Day at Shea (a lie, it turned out), but it sure would be nice to be there in 2008, the last one. Yes, Dan said, that is something to think about. I figured Dan had probably moved on to other thoughts in the intervening year, but that's OK. Remembering conversations like those is what I do.

That and pine for Shea Stadium, something I backed off from doing after one particularly hectic Home Opener a few years ago until a trusted friend with an impeccable Met pedigree — Dan, again — turned me back around, convinced me it wasn't Shea's fault some fans were louts, some were drunks, some were unpleasant and that it wasn't Shea's fault that the Mets ran the place out of the FEMA handbook and into the ground. Don't take it out on Shea, Dan more or less said. The message sunk in. Embrace what will come later later. Embrace what is here now. I tracked down two tickets on my own a couple of weeks ago and contacted Dan. He arranged for the day off from work and to await me by noon at Gate E.

"Do I pick you up or do I meet you there or shall we let it go?"
"Did you get my message? 'Cause I looked in vain."
"Can we see each other Tuesday if it doesn't rain?"
"Look, I'll call you in the morning or my service will explain."
And another hundred people just got off of the train.

My cell phone rings at home at 9:45 AM. I'm only very recently showered. The readout says it's Sharon. I had told her I'd look for her and her husband Kevin and her all-world son Ross in wherever they're keeping the parking lot. Her family tailgates on Opening Day. I had never done any such thing. I didn't know how I'd find them, but I'd try. If she was calling at 9:45, I was guessing there was some terrible traffic between Central Jersey and Shea, that they were running late, that the tailgating was off.

No, that wasn't it at all. They were already there. Was I there? Because if I was, I could come by right away.

I haven't even left the house yet, I said, but by 11:30, you'll probably see me if I can see you. Where are you?

You'll see us, she said. You can't miss us.

If Sharon, Kevin and Ross Chapman are the Beatles of Mets fan families — and for my money they are — then I'm their Murray the K. Depending on how many kids are involved on any one of their outings (they have another son and a daughter who are not big into baseball), I am the fourth or fifth or sixth Chapman. It's a fab group to latch onto, especially on Opening Day.

As another hundred people got off of the aforementioned train, I made my way across the LIRR boardwalk, through the 7 station and down the new staircase that — once made permanent — will presumably glide us right into the Jackie Robinson Rotunda. Halfway down those stairs, I couldn't miss it: no, not the Rotunda; the Chapman minivan. They got what will probably be Space 1A in 2009. It was actually pretty damn good for 2008.

Sharon greeted me with a media guide. Kevin offered me a quesadilla (their menu honored Ollie Perez's Mexican heritage). Ross peppered me with minor league trivia that I couldn't answer. And I was, for the first time in my life, tailgating at Shea Stadium. Citi Field, too.

Hold on, I said, I gotta go get Dan. Given that Space 1A didn't exist until this season (I think this is where we used to get off of the train), I had no idea you could park so close to Gate E.

They find each other in the crowded streets and the guarded parks
By the rusty fountains and the dusty trees with the battered barks
And they walk together past the postered walls with the crude remarks
And they meet at parties through the friends of friends who they never know

I had goaded Dan into taking an early enough Metro-North so there would be no way we'd be gypped out of our magnetic schedules and the laying on of Shea family horseshoe wreaths and all the pomp of Opening Day. But now I was shaking his hand, twenty to twelve, and telling him, "I've got these friends, they're tailgating, they're right over there and..."

"Let's go," Dan said.

Within about two minutes, it's quesadillas all around, Dan and Sharon comparing notes on the concert she's attending that night (Santana — who else?), Kevin inviting passersby to partake in his bounty and Ross doing shtick with a plush version of the Home Run Apple. My blolleague Coop, who finds me when I'm not finding her, stops by with her dad, our fifth accidental meeting in our last seven games. (There would also be a Very Special Laurie sighting in the upper deck as she searched high, low and unsuccessfully for a pretzel; we agreed it was good Shane Victorino didn't hurt himself colliding with Jayson Werth because neither of us wanted to feign sympathy for a fallen Phillie.) More than an hour before the last first pitch and I'm eating, I'm drinking, I'm quite happy to be here. I'm watching wave upon wave of Mets fan tromp on by. They drove. They parked. They dressed for the occasion. So many blue caps. So many satin jackets. So many worn blankets. So many who sense the sincerity of the last opener for the ballpark about to gain dignity by dint of its death sentence.

I suppose I should be impressed or taken aback by Citi Field having gone and grown into a big boy over the winter, but I had spent the wee hours Monday night surfing from one Web album to another tracking its progress just so I could avoid shock. I wasn't surprised the successor was taking definitive shape. I was actually a little surprised that I wasn't surprised. Maybe I should have used spoiler tags and not looked so I would be surprised. But it was too tempting. How could I not look? I still don't know what to make of Citi Field except that someday when it's the only ballpark on the premises, I hope to take a guided tour of it or perhaps be told of its wonders by those who gain admission to an actual Mets game.

It's a city of strangers
Some come to work, some to play
A city of strangers
Some come to stare, some to stay
And every day
Some go away

Citi's the stuff of some other time. Tuesday was the stuff of Shea, before the game, when even the strangers were familiar, when even the post-apocalyptic Mets were worth our anticipation, when even the cops didn't seem to notice Kevin's Margaritas were as delightful as his quesadillas. At some point Dan and I pulled ourselves away from the feast to assure ourselves of magnetic schedules and a fighting chance at special-edition programs and all the Shea you could get, the last time you could get it for the very first time all year.

While another hundred people just got off of the bus
And are looking around
At another hundred people who got off of the plane
And are looking at us
Who got off of the train
And the plane and the bus
Maybe yesterday

***
There were many fine perspectives on Shea's First Finale amid the Metsosphere this week, but two deserve special note: Dana Brand as he comes to grips with all the day's juxtapositions and The Legend of Cecilio Guante narrating a one-of-a-kind photo essay that shows why Shea is Shea...and why it won't be for much longer.

So long as they end properly, tense, nobody-can-break-through extra-inning games are the coolest. There's the initial annoyance/delight of free baseball (emotion dependent on whether your team's the one that tied it up or the one that let it get tied), the settling in for the long haul once things aren't settled in the 10th, and then the fretful wait from the 11th until whenever things will end. You figure out the rest of the rosters in your head. You think about the tales of redemption that might fit (Bruntlett? Delgado?) and try to spin plot reversals along with the baseball gods. You figure the end is near when it isn't (Jesus, they're a hit away with Utley up) and are sure the game will never end when in fact it's about to (Schneider and Clark make meek outs to start the inning, what's the use), and the whole time you're thinking that somebody's fated to wear the laurels and somebody's fated to wear the goat horns and soon it will make perfect sense who was who, even though you can't possibly guess who will be who at the moment.

Another fun thing about these marathons (again, assuming all winds up OK) is how much of the regulation game disappears into the ether of "almost forgot about that." Like John Maine's mostly reassuring start -- he looked unfocused and gassed at the end, but it was April and an unseasonably warm night. Like Brian Schneider's rifle-armed erasure of Shane Victorino at second, which left me with my fist in the air and Victorino pop-eyed in protest. (He thought he was safe; he was out.) Like the pinball shot hit off the first-base bag immediately afterwards by Chase Utley. (In our recent nine-game stretch of martyrdom, that would of course have been preceded by Victorino being called safe, and followed by all sorts of bad things; instead Maine somehow escaped after walking the next two guys.) Like Pedro Feliciano coming in, pitching dismally, and then finding his slider in the way you devoutly hope off-kilter relievers will, while knowing they rarely do.

Where predictive powers are concerned, I was right about two things and wrong about one. First, I was right that Aaron Heilman was not going to follow Feliciano's example in righting himself. I had paused the game while rushing out to get spaghetti sauce, returned to watch Marlon's epic at-bat, then TiVo'ed too far through the commercials and missed Ryan Howard's bomb entirely. How in hell is it 3-2? I wondered, and almost thought for a crazy second that Heilman's mere presence is now worth an enemy run. (Just to make me think I really was insane, SNY then stubbornly refused to put the Phils' third run up until the end of the inning.) It's cruelly ironic that with the Mets down two starters, the reliever who'd most like to start is instead auditioning credibly to be the guy called in to catch bullets in his teeth when it's 7-0 in the second.

Next, I was wrong about what Scott Schoeneweis's arrival meant -- as was most of Shea Stadium, by the reaction. Schoeneweis got the ground ball he also got in the home opener, this time with better results -- and just maybe, a chance for a do-over with Met fans. HIs fist pump was uncharacteristic, welcome, and well-earned.

And finally, happily, I was right about Angel Pagan emerging as the hero. One of the occupational hazards of baseball blogging is with the game in the balance, you find yourself rehearsing posts in your head. (This post was provisionally titled "Sent Me an Angel" until the Shea Stadium A/V guys made the same musical connection.) Pagan has been easily the best story for the 2008 Mets, a minor-league hero come back wiser and, so far, much better than the player we sent away. Of course in a game like this Pagan just had to fire a sharp shot up the middle, instead of a little parachute that could have let Reyes walk home. Of course Jayson Werth just had to hurl the ball in head over heels. Of course Reyes just had to be within a whisker of an eyelash of an iota of a sliver of being out. But no matter. He wasn't; we win.

The first 2008 classic's in the books; more importantly, it feels like 2007 is finally over.