I don't know. At a certain point it was so off-the-chart bad — it got funny. My central nervous system was telling me something.
—Aaron Altman, Broadcast News

Let's be clear that these things happen in the course of a season, no matter how good a club is. Teams lose badly sometimes. It can happen with no warning, even at home in the middle of the day in the middle of the week. The Mets have a history of such degradations falling out of the bright blue sky and onto their heads — even the really good Mets.

The 1969 Mets were spanked hard in a daytime doubleheader July 30, a Wednesday afternoon at Shea, by the Houston Astros, 16-3 and 11-5; things got so unseemly that Gil Hodges marched straight to left field to legendarily inform Cleon Jones he was injured. The 1986 Mets, behind Dwight Gooden no less, took it on the chin and probably up an orifice or two from the Reds, 11-1, on the Wednesday afternoon of July 9.

It happens. It doesn't necessarily reflect your overall operation. It doesn't mean you are what you ate, even if you just ate it big time.

Sometimes, of course, it does. I don't know that the Mets losing this afternoon, another Wednesday, by an undeniably embarrassing tally of 13 to 1 means they are the kind of team that is barely good enough to beat an otherwise lousy Pittsburgh Pirates one night and horrid enough to get their heads kicked in by them the next day. I do know that since the truly scintillating evening that Armando Benitez balked Jose Reyes around the bases and Carlos Delagdo took him deep into the Flushing night, your New York Mets are a strictly break-even proposition: 69 and 69 dating back to May 30, 2007. That's 136 games. That's 84% of a full season, all managed by Willie Randolph, all masterminded by Omar Minaya, all featuring the stars David Wright, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, John Maine, Oliver Perez, Billy Wagner, Aaron Heilman and others.

69 and 69 is more alarming than 13 to 1. 13 to 1 is just plain ridiculous. Take it from one who witnessed nine frigid innings of it from Section 1 of the upper deck.

Yes! Yes, I went to this abortion of a debacle of a fiasco of a game! Yes, this was my chosen midweek afternoon in the sun! And yes, this was the absolute worst pounding I ever saw the Mets absorb at Shea Stadium in 36 seasons of Logging such matters. Except for one night in Detroit in 1997 when I was more concerned with the ballpark than the ballgame, I had never seen the Mets lose by as many as a dozen runs.

I have now.

Statistically, it was the worst home loss I ever experienced. Emotionally, it wasn't in the same ballpark as the Day of Devastation exactly seven months earlier, but having sat through September 30, 2007 and April 30, 2008, I detected some eerie parallels:

• Seven runs in an early inning off a starting pitcher who showed no gumption as things got worse and worse.
• Luis Castillo unhinging the starting pitcher with a fumbled double play ball.
• Luis Castillo making the last out.
• The Mets looking like amateurs against a team allegedly not on their level.
• No crowds to fight through on the way to the exits.

Differences? That was a numbing afternoon for reasons that have been exhaustively documented. This was just farcical. Also, today was like 40 degrees colder and the entire season was not at stake. Plus, we didn't start on time this time. I was with my friend Rich whose wife is expecting in about six days. Her water has yet to break, but the Mets' did. Add "been at a game delayed because a ruptured main wouldn't allow hosing of infield" to my lifetime attendance record.

Either way, the Mets delivered a twelve-run, bouncing loss.

Omar help us if there are any more days like this at Shea Stadium, but I mildly pity anyone who hasn't sat through one of these from late start to silent finish. Seriously. This was one of those days when you could really understand the instinct to boo, but after the umpteenth Met miscue, you didn't have the energy to take part. This was one of those days when you remembered what 1978 felt like every day, when you imagined what 1967 felt like all year. It was blustery and sparse and bad but not the end of the world because it wasn't the end of the season. You can handle this a little better in April, even on the final afternoon of April. This was one of those days when the Nikon Camera Player of the Game was either the school group that kept up a LET'S GO METS! chant as the innings grew late and the sun grew elusive or the school group that filed out after the eighth but not before shouting toward the field, BYE METS!

I hope we're not all saying that soon where the 2008 season is concerned.

Some nights we invoke Bob Murphy and offer a happy recap. Some nights we channel Gary Cohen when the big hit is outta here! Some nights we are thrilled to make like Howie Rose and put it in the books! Some nights we even have to agree with Fran Healy that Shea Stadium is rocking!

Tuesday night brought to mind the unlamented Steve Albert because the Mets won a game he might have called scintillating — except unlike Steve, we make no pretenses about our sarcasm.

That was not one of your more scintillating walkoff wins. But the key, after eleven innings, is it was a win and 187,932 fans or whatever fictional figure they posted as the paid attendance left less unhappy than they might have had it not been. Surely it could have gotten surly late.

But don't call me surly. Even if Santana's gopher is still nibbling a little too heartily. Even if Sanchez and Wagner have forsaken perfection as their guiding principle. Even if Reyes' sextet of on-base appearances was overshadowed by his inability to keep one Pirate off base at the worst possible moment. Even if Heilman...ah, you know from Heilman. And even if Delgado was burdened by no vexing decisions regarding curtain call or not to curtain call. Don't call me surly, because a win is a win is not a loss.

Let us not accentuate the negative. Let us glory instead in Ryan Chruch's lefthanded jacking, which can be impressive. Let us note the six times Jose Jose'd his way on base. Let us remember why we fell in love with Endy Chavez lo those two years ago, first and foremost for the offensive spark we see again now that Endy is playing and regaining traction (at least until Moises Alou returns and inevitably winds up in traction). Let us not forget that the only homers Johan surrendered were soloists and that he was otherwise clean. Let us hand it to Scott Schoeneweis for covering home as he did and to Raul Casanova for shoveling Schoeney the 2-1 assist that cut down Jose Bautista at the plate in the seventh. Let pause and ponder what kind of manager sets the wheels in motion so someone named John Wesley Van Benschoten can pitch to someone named David Allen Wright with the bases loaded in the bottom of the eleventh with less than two out.

I'm not sure, upon reflection, how that could have been avoided once Endy was balked to second and bunted to third, but it sure seemed more fait accompli than it had to. You put on Reyes, you let him take second and you then pitch to Castillo who walks. Could have the Mets, even our hard-to-hug Mets, not cashed in? Against the Bucs? David comes up, the annually feisty if perennially futile Pirates go down. One pitch, one fly ball, one win that couldn't be avoided, done deal. For Pittsburgh, he says at the risk of offending the gods, I suppose simply asking somebody to retire Wright and Beltran was not an option.

The vengeful spirit of Hans Wagner notwithstanding, what really spooked me was the matchup that had Duaner Sanchez facing Xavier Nady in the eighth. July 31, 2006 and everything after flashed before my eyes. Sanchez gets into a cab; Nady gets onto a plane; Oliver Perez comes into and out of his own; Guillermo Mota and Shawn Green arrive with much baggage; '06 grows less certain; '06 just misses being a year for the ages; '06 becomes '07; '07 becomes '07; '07 becomes '08; '08 becomes the year we look for excuses to be relentlessly pissed off at our team...or the excuses seek us out on their own. Maybe all that arguably sprung from the events of that red-letter date in Mets history is why even walkoff wins around here can sometimes seem a little less than scintillating.

But we'll take them. And don't call me surly.