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 358 regular-season and 13 postseason games to date. The Log records the numbers. The Tales tell the stories.

6/4/04 F Florida 12-7 Trachsel 13 150-119 L 5-1
You know, when I was a little girl, I always dreamed of being in a Broadway audience.
—Marge Simpson

I have until early Tuesday morning to complete one of my tasks for the 2008 home season. I have to nail down my Amazin' playlist.

Though I was late to the iPod (let me guess — they've all been phased out by smaller, faster, more expensive devices that will themselves be outmoded by the time I break down and buy one), I embrace the opportunity to be my own Vito Vitiello and produce my own Shea Stadium soundtrack, or at least a pregame warmup. Without boring you to tears or scaring you half to death by the breadth of my banality (like I haven't already), I'll let it be known that no Amazin' playlist would be complete without a Broadway component to it.

Meet that rare breed: the straight man born after World War II who is capable of really, really loving without irony Broadway musicals. You probably thought we were an urban myth.

Nope, we're real. And at least one of us thinks the really great ones are that much better because they complement baseball so perfectly.

Not that a lot doesn't, but it all makes airtight sense to me and my earbuds. I listen to ballgames to get the scores on my way to see Sunday matinees. I listen to the scores of Broadway musicals as I enter Shea. Either way, I sit in a large audience, the tickets overpriced, in the hopes of being roused, of being moved, of remembering what I just saw and heard for years to come, of not feeling ripped off in terms of time and money. I stop listening to my soundtracks once I reach my seat at a game. I stop listening to a game once the curtain rises on a show unless the first no-hitter in Mets history seems to be in progress (May 23, 2004, T#m Gl@v!ne vs. the overture to Bombay Dreams, impossible radio reception inside the Broadway Theatre on 53rd Street and Kit Pellow; no wonder he didn't get it — he was triple-teamed).

So it's before whichever performance I'm en route to that I get my fill. Where the Sheabound trips are concerned, it's generally on the train and until I meet whomever I'm meeting, provided Mets Extra hasn't lured me away with the promise of an injury update. I'm alone at that point, alone and suggestible to whatever I'm hearing.

Before the iPod, there was the Walkman, an unbeatable invention — or so it seemed. It had a radio and a cassette player. I stayed with the Walkman long after the rest of civilization had moved on to the Discman, well into the iPod era. I was the master of the compilation tape into the early 2000s in ways that I'm sure there are some skilled silversmiths and elevator operators who can kick ass in this century should anyone ask them to. Nobody asked me to make tapes by 2004, but I was still doing it through that spring. Man, the segues I could produce! I'd describe them, but as indicated, the banality would strangle you.

But I have to mention this one number, because it is the nexus of baseball and Broadway for me. It has no business being so, but that's what it became four years ago and remains to this day. Its pull on me is so strong that I can no longer listen to it without turning to jelly, even though I didn't much the like the show it's from, even though it has no relationship to the Mets except for the backstory I created for it.

It's November 2003, the baseball season is safely tucked away. I'll agree to see most anything when there's no Mets conflict, even Wicked, something Stephanie was interested in, something that had something to do with The Wizard Of Oz, something that darn near coincided with our wedding anniversary. Couldn't turn it down.

The first act was a drag. The show was new yet felt stale. They could have shown The Wizard Of Oz on a big screen and that would have been fresher. We could have been home watching The Wizard Of Oz on our own screen and it would have been cheaper. I love great musicals. I like really good ones. The crappy ones are just three hours out the window, like those comic-strip iterations of $10 bills with wings. Lots of $10 bills.

My mind wanders. I don’t know if it wanders more than other minds because mine’s the only one I’ve had access to while sitting through events that have dead spots. All events have dead spots, even baseball games. If baseball games have dead spots, you can be damn sure everything else has dead spots. This is where the mind goes during a musical's dead spots:

I’m watching a live event that required a ticket in a large public space with lots of other people. This reminds me of baseball. This reminds me of the Mets.

Like Gl@v!ne most nights in 2003, the cast is down 3-0 in the top of the first. They’ve gotta bear down to grab back my attention, because if there’s not a graspable plot twist or a knockout solo, they’re losing me to free agent signings (“If we get Guerrero, then it’s not such a bad lineup”), the memorized pocket schedule if it's out (“I really want to go to that Expos game…can’t believe the bobbleheads are for 14 and under") or, most distracting of all, the past.

This show blows... wish I was doing something else... wish the Mets were playing... wish the Mets were playing right now... the Mets now suck... wish they were better... they used to be better...remember when the Mets were good?

As the CPR of baseball nostalgia gives me mouth-to-mouth, funny thing about Wicked. It's still not much good, but the score is beginning to get to me. It's got that late '60s, early '70s Broadway feel the more I listen, that modern, hopeful vibe I associate with, well, the Mets. It's that moment in time when New York, whatever its problems, is congenitally optimistic yet humble. It loves the underdog and is willing to throw off the musty odor of the past. It loves the Mets. It's embracing a more contemporary style of musical, just like it loves Shea more than any other facility. It's got Company. It's got Pippin. Seaver to Sondheim to Schwartz...

Hey! Pippin! The guy who wrote Pippin, Stephen Schwartz, wrote this! Well no wonder it seems familiar. Pippin may be more than 30 years old in the fall of 2003, but its soundtrack, at least a little of it, is timeless to me. Its opening number is one of my Mets songs. In 1998 and 1999, I played Magic To Do over and over again because it, like critical junctures of those seasons, put me in mind of 1973 because a commercial for the show ran over and over again that September.

That's how this mind works. Wicked's getting interesting in the sense that I'm in a pennant race now, first '73, then '69, at least the way I've idealized it. 1969 is a transfer point for the 7 at Times Square. And we all know that once you hop the 7, anything is possible.

Like the 2003 Mets growing into something palatable in 2004.
Like being what they were only a few short years ago.
Like those almost halcyon days when The Best Infield Ever flew across the Shea dirt like those dancers up on stage are doing.
Like when Ventura and Olerud and Alfonzo and Ordoñez were...

What's that song they're doing? "Defying Gravity"? Wow, I like this! It soars! It's the first song I've heard all day that I like. And what a theme. "Defying Gravity," that could be a whole new "Mojo Risin'" for when we get good again, like I know we will even though we're saddled with Art Howe and T#m Gl@v!ne. What a shame this song wasn't around in '99. Rey Ordoñez, now there was someone who defied gravity. Can't you just picture some latter-day Sign Man holding up one that says DEFYING GRAVITY after Rey-Rey leaps into the air? Or Robin goes to his back hand? They could bring Kristin Chenoweth or Idina Menzel to Shea to sing the national anthem! They could make t-shirts! I'd buy one!

"Defying Gravity" ended the first act. I was loving Wicked at intermission. Even if I spent the second act ignoring it so I could deconstruct Game Six of the '99 NLCS (again), it was well worth whatever we paid to see this show.

The day the soundtrack was released, I bought the CD. When the time came for another compilation tape, I added "Defying Gravity" to the mix. And when I finally got to my first game of 2004, which wasn't until early June, I hauled to Shea for probably the last time my Walkman to listen to that cassette. It just so happened that as I alighted at Gate E to wait for Laurie and her friend, "Defying Gravity" came up. As I leaned against the closed side of the day-of-game ticket windows, I was back in my nexus, Broadway meeting the Mets, 1969 meeting 1999, the two of them pecking on the cheek the slight but tangible promise of 2004. I expected nothing out of this year, yet it was somehow overdelivering. The Mets were winning a bit more than they were losing. The Mets weren't hellaciously out of first. The Mets were...

The Mets were defying gravity!

I could never again listen to that song without a fistful of Kleenex at the ready. And I could never resist the temptation to listen to it when I or the Mets needed a boost. Come the afternoon of October 18, 2006, it was the last song I listened to before leaving the house for another Game Six in another NLCS. Come the evening of September 28, 2007, on the first iPod playlist I ever made, it was the track that stopped me dead in mine on the LIRR as I tried to figure how a one-game deficit on a Friday night might revert to a one-game lead by Monday. On a random Sunday afternoon last December, I heard it and paused it. I couldn't handle it, not in the offseason, not after the way September ended, with the Mets not defying but submitting to gravity.

A new season means a new playlist and that means all new. None of last year's 16 will be among this year's 64 (I've gotten more comfortable with the iPod of late). No more BTO. No more Metallica. No more "All Right Now" even if it figures to be applicable well into the 2010s. And no more "Defying Gravity" in my ears en route to Shea in 2008. In the last year of the old ballpark, I won't need nearly that much help being roused or being moved.

40: Tuesday, July 8 vs Giants
Ladies and gentlemen, as we welcome the team formerly known as the New York Baseball Giants into Shea Stadium, we are reminded of the links the Mets share with their forebear whose history is all too often overlooked when discussing the development of baseball as our national pastime and our Metropolitan passion. Look no further than the orange NY the Mets wear on their caps to understand that the road to Shea Stadium truly wound through the Polo Grounds, and that road began to take shape long before 1962. It dates to the 19th century and wraps around names like John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, Bill Terry, Carl Hubbell, Mel Ott and Monte Irvin to name just a few of the New York Giant greats.

Yes, the Mets and Giants, as the only two National League entries to explicitly represent the City of New York on a going basis, can be said to have sprouted from the same family tree. Yet it is just as true that they have grown apart over the years. Mets management looks forward to rectifying this historical oversight at Citi Field with the opening of the William A. Shea New York Mets Hall of Fame and National League Museum, an institution that will celebrate the rich heritage of the Mets, the Giants, the Dodgers, the Cubans, the Bushwicks, the Bridegrooms and almost every team that made a mark on Big Apple baseball. It will, in fact, be home to our own beloved Home Run Apple, on display forever more for fans to reach out and touch. It will stand as a symbol that where New York baseball heritage is concerned, the Apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

That said, the New York Mets and the San Francisco Giants are clearly separate entities and their shared history is that of opponents. And at no time in the 46 seasons that they have played each other has their competition cut so close as it did in October of 2000, when the Mets played and defeated the Giants in the National League Division Series, going ahead and clinching those playoffs right here at Shea Stadium.

To recall that most memorable of Mets-Giants showdowns, we have the two standout players from eight autumns ago.

• An instant fan favorite, he inscribed his name into New York postseason baseball history with a 13th-inning home run that turned the tide in that series. It was one of many dramatic hits he collected in four seasons as a Met, but none was bigger. Please welcome the outfielder from Honolulu, Hawaii and the inspiration for Benny Bean coffee, Benny Agbayani.

• Joining Benny to peel number 40 from the right field wall was a solid, occasionally spectacular starting pitcher for the Mets for eight years, including an All-Star season in 1997. The game with which he is indelibly associated, however, is Game Four of the 2000 NLDS when he threw a one-hit shutout against the Giants and secured the Mets a berth in that year's league championship series. A pretty fair righthanded pitcher from Fresno, California in his own right, say hello to Bobby Jones.

39: Wednesday, July 9 vs Giants
A great tradition at Shea Stadium in its first two decades, ladies and gentlemen, was the annual celebration of Old Timers Day. As the Mets were too new for too many Old Timers of their own, it always gave the club great pleasure to welcome back great baseball stars of the past, no matter what uniform they wore in their previous lives. In that sense, no ballpark in America could claim a better appreciation of baseball history than Shea Stadium.

One of those Old Timers Days in particular was a very special occasion. On July 16, 1977, the Mets crowned their ceremonies with a salute to New York baseball royalty, the four centerfielders who defined the position in the city before the Mets were born. It was a breathtaking moment to watch these four men, legends all, enter the field of play through — where else? — the center field fence.

Two of those centerfielders, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, sadly are no longer with us. But two are and both grace us with their presence today to remove number 39 one position over, in right field. One was a Giant, one was a Dodger, both were Mets and both mean the world to millions of baseball fans. With them is the songwriter who was inspired by a photograph of their appearance that Saturday afternoon to compose a tribute that turned into one of baseball's most famous musical odes.

Ladies and gentlemen, give a great big Shea Stadium welcome as they enter once more through the centerfield fence to the Say Hey Kid, Willie Mays, the Duke of Flatbush, Duke Snider and the author of "Willie, Mickey and the Duke," Terry Cashman.

38: Thursday, July 10 vs Giants
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this break in the action at Shea Stadium. There will be no additional fee should this game go into extra innings, but we will have to go a long way to match the bargain the fans at Shea Stadium received when the Mets and Giants matched up on May 31, 1964.

That was a Sunday and, as was the custom in those days, there was a doubleheader. One game ended. Another game began. And it continued. And continued. And continued some more.

Thirty-two innings of baseball were played at Shea that afternoon, evening and night, twenty-three of them in the second game. A day of baseball that began shortly after 1 P.M. ended at nearly 11:30. Another half-hour or so, and the Mets and Giants would have finished off May and played into June.

Needless to say, a lot of players saw action on May 31, 1964. We have several of them here today to remove number 38 from the right field wall.

The starter and winner for the San Francisco Giants in the opener, he's a Hall of Famer and has many friends and admirers here in New York. Ladies and gentlemen, the Dominican Dandy, Juan Marichal.

From the nightcap, the starter for the Mets, a pitcher who appeared in 62 games that season, setting a workload record that would stand for quite some time, Bill Wakefield.

An outfielder who hit .300 for the Mets in '64, his three-run homer in the seventh tied the score at six all and was the reason so many Sunday dinners went uneaten in the Metropolitan area that night. Say hi to Joe Christopher.

When a game goes long, plenty of pitchers take the ball, but usually one has to stay in and take one for the team. That job in this marathon went to the righty who gave manager Casey Stengel nine innings of relief. It was experience like this that helped make him such a valuable pitching coach in later years. Welcome home to Shea Stadium Galen Cisco.

If you think a day of baseball that lasts 32 innings can take it out of you, you're probably right. For one man who played that very long day, it would be his final day in the majors. Give a nice round of applause to one of the Mets' pitchers from the nightcap, an original Met, Craig Anderson.

And finally, as a bookend, we have another Hall of Fame pitcher, the winner in Game Two. He contributed ten innings in relief and though he might have had a little help from under the bill of his cap in settling matters that Sunday night, it was getting late and nobody complained. Please greet one of the greats of his time, Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry.

37: Friday, July 11 vs Rockies
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We hope you're enjoying the opener of this final series before baseball's All-Star break. The National League squad this year will be managed by Rockies skipper and former Met Clint Hurdle and we wish Hondo luck in securing home field advantage for the senior circuit in the 2008 World Series, wherever it happens to be played.

The All-Star Game has always held a certain magical spell over fans, particularly the young ones who thrill to see, for one night, all the greats of the game on the same field, especially the players from his or her favorite team on such a big stage.

To remove number 37 from the right field wall, we've assembled a galaxy made up of some of the All-Stars who have represented the Mets through the years. Joining us tonight:

• Twice the Mets' representative at midsummer classics, he rejoins the Mets payroll in 2011: Bobby Bonilla.

• Ten wins by the Fourth of July made him too good for Tommy Lasorda to ignore, welcome back 1978 National League All-Star Pat Zachry.

• He was the last Met to win 20 games in one season and, en route to that total, was called on to join the N.L. stars in Wrigley Field. Say hi to 1990 Mets All-Star, Long Island's own Frank Viola.

• A two-time Cy Young winner in the American League, he came to the Mets and demonstrated some of the best control the game had ever seen in 1994, winning 14 while walking only 13. No wonder he was an All-Star that season, Bret Saberhagen.

• He is co-holder of the Met record for most home runs in a single season and was named to the National League All-Star team in 1996 and again in 1997. One of the most popular Mets of the '90s, give a warm welcome to Todd Hundley.

• And closing out our All-Star salute is one of the great closers in Mets history. Best known for closing out the last Mets world championship, he held onto his glove in the 1983 and 1984 midsummer classics. Let's hear it for the southpaw who pitched forever. Ladies and gentlemen, Jesse Orosco.

36: Saturday, July 12 vs Rockies
Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, on this late Saturday afternoon, scheduled as it was to accommodate our friends at Fox television. Because the Mets and Rockies are their Game of the Week, we are able to welcome back to Shea an announcer who honed his craft and became one of the best in the business during his sixteen years as a Mets broadcaster, a tenure highlighted by his work during the 1986 championship run.

A popular voice in New York and eventually everywhere — you might even say that oh baby, they love him — we have asked Tim McCarver to step out of the Ralph Kiner Television Booth for a few moments to remove number 36 from the right field wall. And to accompany him, we have three of his fellow announcers from that golden era of Mets baseball:

• He was Tim's and Ralph's partner in the Channel 9 booth from 1983 to 1989 and described the last out of the '86 division-clincher. Give a warm Shea Stadium welcome to Steve Zabriskie.

• He called one thrilling moment after another from the WHN radio booth alongside Bob Murphy in 1986 and later worked with Timmy on TV. One of the most recognizable voices in all of sportscasting, Gary Thorne.

• And a longtime colleague of Tim's who became known to Mets fans over SportsChannel, Fox Sports New York and MSG. Won't you make Shea Stadium rock one more time for Fran Healy?

35: Sunday, July 13 vs Rockies
It was 31 years ago this evening, ladies and gentlemen, that New York experienced a night like no other in modern times, a night literally and figuratively darker than any other. It was the night of the 1977 blackout and, wouldn't you know it, it plunged Shea Stadium into darkness smack in the middle of a game between the Mets and the Cubs.

To commemorate that most unusual event in Shea Stadium history, we've gathered some eyewitnesses...well, they'd have been eyewitnesses if they could have seen what was going on.

From the Mets bullpen, he was as in the dark as anyone else a little after nine o'clock that night, but his pitching always brought a little light to the situation. A terrific reliever and longtime member of the Mets organization, he helped engineer the Colorado Rockies' amazing pennant drive last season as their pitching coach, please give a warm hand to Bob Apodaca.

Umpiring from behind home plate and with no choice but to suspend the game after an hour-and-a-half when it became obvious the lights were not coming back on anytime soon, say hi to longtime National League ump Harry Wendlestedt.

On the mound and in his windup in the bottom of the sixth, he actually completed the July 13 game when the action was picked up again in September. Talk about a complete game: he went nine innings over two months! The Chicago Cubs' pitcher on the night of the great blackout of 1977 and a future Met, Ray Burris.

And leading our contingent of blackout veterans to the rightfield wall in broad daylight to peel number 35 from the wall, he was the Mets third baseman enjoying a banner season in '77 but had the misfortune of being at the plate when Shea went dark. His thoughts, he later related, were, "God, I'm gone. I thought for sure He was calling me. I thought it was my last at-bat." Obviously, he had some more at-bats and plenty of life left. Please welcome home to Shea Stadium, Lenny Randle.

Numbers 46-41 were revealed here.