46: Monday, June 23 vs Mariners
Ladies and gentlemen, as we welcome in the Seattle Mariners, who have come a long way to play at Shea Stadium, we would like to pay tribute of sorts to those who got here from not so far away. As you know, Mets is short for Metropolitan Baseball Club of New York, a team founded to appeal to baseball fans all over the Metropolitan area.

Therefore, tonight we want to recognize several Mets players who grew up in these parts and eventually achieved a dream: Become a New York Metropolitan and play in front of the home folks right here at Shea.

Representing Connecticut, he was a high school phenom in Waterbury and a well-loved Met during his three seasons at Shea in the mid-1990s. Please welcome back Rico Brogna.

Representing New Jersey, he was born in Glen Ridge and starred at Parsippany Hills High School. He was respected throughout baseball as one of the best pinch-hitters and good guys in the game, say hi to Joe Orsulak.

Representing Westchester, from Mount Vernon, he goes down as one of the best players ever developed by the Mets, even if he went on to ply most of his trade in other uniforms. We're glad he's here with us tonight, give a warm hand to Ken Singleton.

Representing Long Island, out of Oak Beach, the man whose cap simply would not stay on his head. How about tipping your cap to the pride of Connetquot High School, John Pacella?

Representing Brooklyn, home to many great Mets not to mention a pretty good single-A team, we brought back a talented lefty who made a real mark during his four seasons in a Mets uniform. Let's say hello to Pete Falcone.

Representing Queens, a schoolboy star from Bayside, he played for the Mets in the '60s, in the '70s and came back for more in the '80s. The author of some memorable hits and great glovework around first base, welcome Mike Jorgensen.

And to lead our Metropolitan players up the right field line to take down number 46, we have someone who got to know Shea Stadium like no other player growing up. He didn't only pitch here, he sold hot dogs here. Nobody could be more local than the Flushing Flash himself. Representing not only the neighborhood, but everyone who ever vended a frankfurter on behalf of Harry M. Stevens or Aramark at Shea, ladies and gentlemen, Ed Glynn.

45: Tuesday, June 24 vs Mariners
Ladies and gentlemen, given the edifice that's steadily rising where much of Shea Stadium's parking lot used to be, it's no wonder we have urged you to take public transportation to every game. The irony that Shea was built with as much parking as it was, reflecting a time when the car was undeniably king without consequences, is not lost on Mets management. Today we are all more conscious of the need to conserve precious resources, which is why Citi Field will be a green facility and we're not talking only about the outfield grass.

Of course being a city field itself, Shea Stadium never could have succeeded without the benefit of public transit, which for tens of millions of fans since 1964 has meant the IRT Flushing line, better known these days as the 7 train. The 7 is world famous because in a very real sense, it carries the world between Queens and Manhattan. More languages are spoken by more people from more places on Earth on the 7 than on any train anywhere. The Mets are proud to be a stop on so elevated a line.

To honor the integral role the 7 train has played in the history of Shea Stadium, we have asked Metropolitan Transit Authority chairman H. Dale Hemmerdinger to take the local out to the right field wall and remove number 45. And to escort him for a safe ride, we've invited back a quartet of Met motormen. Whoever the 7 didn't drive home, these sluggers often did.

Please welcome these RBI specialists back to the Willets Point-Shea Stadium on the 7 line:

• He tagged National League pitchers for more than a decade and a half, including five with the Mets. He drove home 90 runners in 1983, say hello to George Foster.

• One of the real fan favorites in his Met prime, nobody was more colorful around the first base bag, particularly when he went into his home run trot. With 96 runs batted in from the 1978 Mets, how about a warm greeting for Willie Montañez?

• His Hall of Fame credentials were burnished by consecutive Met seasons in which he drove in more than 90 runs, including an even 100 in 1993. How about a hand for Cooperstown's own Eddie Murray?

• And someone who can tell you that if you get off at the Willets Point-Shea Stadium stop, you can check out not only the baseball at Shea but also the site of the 1964 World's Fair. He drove in a then-team record 117 runs in 1996 and two years later when some new uniforms were introduced, he became one of the Mets' original men in black. Welcome home to Shea Stadium Bernard Gilkey.

44: Wednesday, June 25 vs Mariners
It's good to have you at the game, ladies and gentlemen, and for those of you watching at home, it's good to have you looking in. Sometimes you see things that the camera picks up before the folks here do, and as a result, some people become instantly recognizable outside of Shea Stadium. One such person experienced that phenomenon 22 Octobers ago when she added a new bit of body language to the fan vernacular. A longtime season ticketholder, you know her as the lady who sat behind home plate throughout the 1986 postseason and twirled her arms tirelessly. Put your hands together for Bo Fields.

Some people catch even the camera crews at Shea by surprise. Our next guest, who will join Bo in taking down number 44, did not come through Gate A, B, C, D or E on the evening of October 25, 1986. Yet he found his way into the ballpark from above, however briefly. The Mets couldn't officially approve of his actions then — and we're certainly not sanctioning them or anything like them now — but we have to admit the thought of this man and his parachute brings a smile to our faces more than two decades later. Say hello to Michael Sergio.

43: Friday, June 27 vs Yankees
Ladies and gentlemen and guests who are joining us here tonight for the first time in 2008, this is the juncture in the game when we pause to pay homage to the people and events that have defined Shea Stadium across its 45 fun-filled seasons. But it turns out another nearby baseball stadium is also commemorating a final year, and we'd like to give it our own special tribute.

Since that structure opened in 1976, it has hosted many memorable ballgames and provided the stage for many a superstar. When we think of that place, we are moved to recall one evening in particular. The night was as historic as any in the annals of New York baseball and we have with us the pitcher who made it so.

His lifetime record as a Met at Shea Stadium was 14-13. But as a Met at the other place, he threw nine scoreless innings and collected a 6-0 shutout in the first-ever regular season Interleague game in the city of New York. Please welcome back to remove number 43, the author of that June 16, 1997 masterpiece, Dave Mlicki.

42: Saturday, June 28 vs Yankees
A good Saturday to you, ladies and gentlemen. Saturdays at Shea between the Mets and their crosstown opponents have always been special and have rarely failed to produce drama of the highest order.

The dramatics were never as intense as they were on the afternoon of July 10, 1999. In a back-and-forth affair that featured six home runs by the visiting team and one massive shot to the picnic tent roof by Mets catcher Mike Piazza, it was our special guest who will be taking down number 42 who brought down the house. It was his two-out single in the bottom of the ninth off the opposition's closer that plated the tying and winning runs to give that particular battle of New York to the Mets by a score of 9 to 8. To everybody who was at Shea Stadium that Saturday afternoon, there is no question what game they saw. It was the Matt Franco game.

Ladies and gentlemen, pinch-hitter deluxe Matt Franco.

41: Sunday, June 29 vs Yankees
Ladies and gentlemen, it's been said in New York you're either a Mets fan or you root for some other team. Few are the issues that can bridge the divide. But tonight we hope we can if just for the moment that it takes to remove number 41 from the right field wall.

More than a hundred men have played for both the Mets and their local American League counterparts. But nobody has been more celebrated or beloved by both fan bases than this man, who not played for but coached and managed both teams in a career highlighted by his piloting of the 1973 Mets to their improbable National League pennant. Accompanied by one of his many protégés, Willie Randolph — another man who has achieved a measure of success on both sides of the Triborough — welcome home to Shea Stadium the one, the only Yogi Berra.

Numbers 52-47 were revealed here.

Helen and Madeline attend his funeral, using veils to cover their horribly deteriorated forms. They continue to bicker endlessly as they did when younger, and react mockingly when the priest describes Ernest as having attained eternal life and youth through his good works. Leaving, they tumble down the stairs and shatter into pieces (although this seems merely to annoy them further).
—Conclusion to the Wikipedia plot synopsis for Death Becomes Her, a movie about those who refuse to accept aging and mortality as facts of life

The first name that crossed my mind was Ken Henderson. Ken Henderson was a Met for literally less than a week in 1978, but his fleeting presence made a lasting impression on me. There was a game very early that season in which he and Steve Henderson drove in three runs apiece and we beat the Cubs 6-0 and the Mets moved to 4-1 and led the N.L. East by a full game on April 10. Bob Murphy couldn't stop raving about the batwork of "the Henderson men". I'd had high hopes for Steve Henderson; he should have won the Rookie of the Year over Andre Dawson. I'd had high hopes for the 1978 Mets; I picked them for fourth no matter how they'd previously spiraled head-on into sixth. I'd lost track of Ken Henderson since he was a Giant in the early '70s, but here he was, batting fifth and homering and adding veteran experience to a young team that was going to jump out of the grave of 1977 and into the thick of contention right away. 1978 was going to be different from 1977.

That was after five games. Ken Henderson came out in the sixth inning of the seventh game of 1978 — he crashed into Shea's right field fence, twisted his left ankle and sprained his big toe for good measure — and never played for the Mets again. He was traded to Cincinnati in May for Dale Murray to whom, by 1979, I referred regularly as the Master of Disaster. The Mets finished last in '78, like they did in '77, as they would in '79.

The next name that crossed my mind was Jose Reyes. He seemed to do something to his hamstring one night in May last year. It didn't look good. We all held our breath. Losing Jose Reyes would pretty much end the season right then and there. We'd had proof from 2003 and 2004 (not that 2003 needed much help). Jose took off to recover for exactly one day, the five-run ninth day, and was in fine fettle, at least physically, the rest of 2007.

Of course Jose Reyes is about a century younger than Pedro Martinez. And Pedro is about a thousand times more important to the scheme of things than Ken Henderson ever was. But somewhere between their fates — the player who disappeared, taking with him the promise of entire season, and the player who gave us all a good scare that turned out to be nothing more — lies our man Martinez.

One gropes when speaking about Pedro and injury because one can't bear to face the unfaceable. It was cruel irony that SNY was rerunning Tuesday afternoon's Daily News Live late last night and a spirited debate ensued over how favorably the one-two combination of Johan Santana and Pedro Martinez compared with Seaver and Koosman, Gooden and Darling and so on.

Right now, it does not compare very well.

This is the time of year when we count our chickens, no matter how we attempt to resist the temptation. If you can't be optimistic about your team before Passover, when can you? Think the '78 Mets wouldn't have finished out of the money had Ken Henderson been on call for all 162 games? You can think that in early April. You can think that Santana and Martinez are as money as a one-two gets in 2008, even if Martinez had started exacty eight of the Mets' previous 207 outings. You can take succor from what you saw out of Pedro in his one month of sustained action last year and what you glimpsed in clips from the back fields of St. Lucie this March. You can reason that a fragile 36-year-old who has been handled with the most delicate of organizational kid gloves is a 17-game winner in waiting because of who he was before the kid gloves went on, who he is even as they were gingerly removed for his 21st professional season.

That's early April thinking, and that's OK as far as it goes, which sadly was the fourth inning in Miami last night. Early April sure got late quick.

Every time the Mets have a hamstring mishap, Keith Hernandez seems to be on hand to remind us, "That's not good." The effective portion of Keith Hernandez's career all but ended with a hamstring injury in 1988. I can still see him crumpling between second and third in Busch Stadium. It happened on June 6. Joe McIlvaine kept calling it a day-to-day thing. Once the days became a week, he was DL'd. He was eligible to come off on June 22. He came back on June 23 and reaggravated the damn thing on the 24th. We next saw him on August 5. He hit a huge home run to beat the Pirates. It was inspirational, as Keith always was, but his decline was in full acceleration from that hamstring on.

Nobody's more inspirational than Pedro Martinez. The way he pitches, the way he talks, the way he acts, the way he battles back from injury after injury. That's a permanent part of his package now, sadly. Nobody rehabs quite like Pedro. Nobody works harder, has a better attitude, sets a better example for the kids at the complex, looms larger in your anticipation of his healing. Nobody gives a better interview describing his progress to Kevin Burkhardt. It's all very admirable, but you'd sure like to have not learned so much of this side of Pedro Martinez's resiliency. Orioles fans went a good 18 years before discovering how Cal Ripken handled a trip to the DL. That's the way to do it if you possibly can.

Whatever silver lining they find after Pedro has his Martinez Resonance Image taken, I won't believe them. I believed the return of Brian Bannister was just around the corner for more than three months of 2006, just down the block from Moises Alou in 2007. I believed Ken Henderson was "out of combat for a couple of days" as the Times' Joe Durso put it thirty years ago. I no longer believe anybody when it comes to appraising somebody else's injuries. I'll believe in Pedro as best I can before we see him again, though out of necessity I'm investing the balance of my faith in the likes of Perez, Maine, Pelfrey, Santana and Nelson Figueroa or whoever emerges from the cast of thousands that never seems to want for work around here. Among the pitchers who continue to pitch, we probably have the makings of a very fine one-two combo. I won't be counting on Pedro Martinez as a component of that equation any time soon.