Well, that one might be shown as a future episode of Phillies Classics.

The rain didn't really show up (I had visions of Gavin Floyd, Xavier Nady and Aaron Rowand), but neither did the Mets' bats. Johan Santana showed up all right, pitching a dazzling game ... with the exception of that sixth inning. For all his wonderfulness, Johan seems to have these occasional mini-Leiter episodes, two-batter or one-inning spurts in which his location goes on the fritz and he seems as puzzled as you are by it. (Maybe it was that he was wearing a patriotic-looking cap that clashed hideously with his uniform. Seriously -- if you tried to leave the house wearing that color combination, your wife would call you back in a no-quarter tone of voice.)

While we're dwelling on Santana's (very small) faults, he also arrived with a reputation as a Hamptonesque hitter. And when he came up with the bases loaded and none out in the fifth, I was sure his Mike Hampton moment had arrived. He was going to hit a double up the gap, maybe even channel his inner Felix Hernandez, and tomorrow's papers would be all about how Johan had figured out the way to win was also to do the hitting. My baseball radar was off all night. Instead, Santana turned in the kind of saucer-eyed at-bat you'd expect from a pitcher just arrived from the American League. Reyes, Chavez and Wright managed to scratch out two runs when we should have had more (Wright and Beltran looked overanxious all night, I thought), and it was bite-your-nails time. Johan's Leiter episode followed, Chad Durbin was masterful in relief, and Duaner couldn't find that third out. Ballgame.

The other night, in that back-and-forth game against the Cardinals, Wright tripled with one out in the eighth and the Mets up 7-5. Beltran struck out looking and the score stayed 7-5. I briefly mourned the duck who'd been allowed to keep paddling around on the pond, but I figured it was OK. We were going to win, right?

We weren't. We didn't get the run home then, just as we didn't get it home tonight with Reyes on third and one out in the first. There's a valuable reminder in that of the meaning of baseball life, I suppose. If you'll allow me a little Monty Python, every run is sacred, every run is great. If a run is wasted, the baseball gods get quite irate.

And so, I imagine, does Johan Santana.

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

5/15/82 Sa Los Angeles 1-1 Puleo 1 6-13 W 6-4
7/22/87 W Atlanta 2-2 Darling 4 19-27 W 4-3
8/7/01 Tu Milwaukee 5-0 Chen 1 126-94 W 3-0
With Shea gone, where will the Rick Monday Guy go?

The Rick Monday Guy is also the Billy Smith Guy. Either way, where will he (or they) be if there's no Shea anymore? Where will I turn to hear a drunken Rangers fan take out his hockey frustrations on an opposing baseball player? How does he exist without Shea?

The Mets were playing the Dodgers. The Mets were actually beating the Dodgers, yet the occasion, a perfectly pleasant Saturday night, wouldn't have been complete without the Los Angeles centerfielder being informed of one undeniable fact from this one fine fellow in my Mezzanine midst:

"HEY MONDAY! IT'S SATURDAY!"

Not once, not twice but to infinity and beyond. The soul of wit and the personification of repetition were activated in the service of reminding Rick Monday his surname matched one-seventh of the week, one of the sevenths it wasn't that night. Poor sap, his ancestors never knew what he'd be coming up against.

"HEY MONDAY! IT'S SATURDAY!"

Didn't Fred Flintstone use a line like that on prehistoric Tuesday Weld stand-in Tuesday Wednesday? Hey, maybe the Rick Monday Guy worked for Hanna-Barbera. Their cartoons were just that clever.

For good measure, the Rick Monday Guy loved the Rangers. Or, more accurately, hated the Islanders. The teams played a predictable playoff series that spring, the Islanders prevailing as they tended to in the early '80s. This must have been under RMG's skin, because he linked Rick Monday of "HEY MONDAY! IT'S SATURDAY!" fame with the Isles' Stanley Cup-winning goalie.

"HEY MONDAY! GO PLAY WITH BILLY SMITH!"

There may have been something mentioned about what exactly Rick Monday could go play with Billy Smith. "Between his legs," I think the gentleman suggested. I don't think it was hockey.

While there were no Rick Monday fans per se in Mezzanine, I believe it was the sight of an explicitly clad Islanders fan — we did used to exist in visible numbers, believe it or not — that set him off. There may have been cross words between RMG and the Islanders fan. There may have been a little more action than the Mets scoring four in the first even. It felt a little tense up there. Joel and I hoped we wouldn't have to square off based on hockey allegiances since he liked the Rangers and I liked the Isles; after all, we thought we were there to watch the Mets. I don't remember if RMG was eventually hauled off or simply passed out. I doubt the latter. Shea made few pretensions toward being family-friendly in 1982.

***
With Shea gone, where will the "can of corn!" guy go?

There was a denizen of Cliché Stadium who in 1987 had to, just had to greet every single fly ball Ron Darling teased from Atlanta batters in the second and third innings with the hoariest baseball banter in the books.

Gerald Perry flies to McReynolds..."can of corn!"
Andres Thomas flies to Mookie..."can of corn!"
Bruce Benedict flies to McReynolds..."can of corn!"

By the next inning, when Glenn Hubbard was skying one to center, Joel and I knew what was coming..."can of corn!" We giggled and snorted and asked loudly enough to be heard, "CAN OF CORN?" Yes, we were familiar with the expression. But no, we had never heard it repeated so incessantly, not even on SportsChannel.

I think we hurt the "can of corn!" guy's feelings. He turned around and gave us this beaten look. "Well," he said. "That's what it's called."

After that, he kept his cans of corn to himself.

***
With Shea gone, where will the Todd Zeile petitioner go?

There was a freelance chanter prowling the Mezz in 2001, a young man who was going to solve our summerlong Todd Zeile problem by working us all into a frenzy one row at a time.

This guy comes up to Jason and me, who are minding our own business, and asks if we've had enough of Todd Zeile grounding out and being generally useless. Sure, we said. Everybody'd had enough of Todd Zeile, few having had more of him than us in our Tuesday/Friday plan year.

Well, the guy said, this is what we have to do: Start a chant. It's gonna go like this:

TRADE
TODD
ZEE-EEL!
[clap-clap...clap-clap-clap]

C'mon, he said, if we all do it, the front office will have to listen.

TRADE
TODD
ZEE-EEL!
[clap-clap...clap-clap-clap]

I kind of nodded. Jason said something to the effect of uh, I dunno about that. But our new friend, as if presaging by two years the recall effort staged against California Governor Gray Davis, was sure he was onto something.

TRADE
TODD
ZEE-EEL!
[clap-clap...clap-clap-clap]

The petitioner moved on to another row, seeking more converts. He eventually took up the chant and the rhythm on his own. A few joined in. I might have tried it once for novelty's sake. Jace was steadfastly having none of it. As if I couldn't have guessed, clap-clap-clap was not part of his vocabulary.

In the following offseason, however, Todd Zeile was traded.

***
Shea Stadium hasn't been just about big moments and momentous interactions. It's been about the jerks, the weirdoes, the strange dudes. It's been about those you wish would move to another section or get thrown out. They are as much a part of Shea Stadium as the feral cats. No one's sure where the cats will go when Shea is torn apart. The jerks, the weirdoes, the strange dudes? Citi Field will have some 13,000 fewer seats than Shea Stadium. Something tells me people like these will find their way in with no problem. They always do.

And they almost always sit near me.

ST. LOUIS (FAFIF) — Mike Pelfrey credited the latest in a string of strong performances Thursday night to the guidance he's received from an individual Mets fan.

"Greg's been on my ass all year," Pelfrey revealed. "He's been pushing me to pitch better for quite a while. It finally started to sink in. I should just pitch better and maybe he'll get off my ass."

And pitch better Pelfrey has, winning his last four decisions and lowering his ERA by more than a run since Greg saw him on Memorial Day night.

"Yeah, Greg wasn't too happy with me then, all that nibbling I tended to do," Pelfrey said. "He let me have it but good. I thought he was being a little hard on me earlier in the season when I pitched pretty well. I was like, 'hey, I threw five or six innings, I didn't walk too many, isn't that good enough?' Greg said it wasn't, and he was right."

The toughlove approach seems to have truly worked on Pelfrey, now pitching the best sustained baseball of his Major League career. Against the Cardinals, he put up seven innings of one-run ball, allowing six hits and two walks while striking out six.

"When I have a lead like I was able to get tonight," Pelfrey said, referring to the Mets' offensive onslaught, "Greg said I should just relax and throw strikes. As usual he made more sense than all my pitching coaches combined."

It's been an up-and-down season for Pelfrey who ended Spring Training as the Mets' No. 5 starter by default and showed flashes of progress in April but was held back in May by an inconsistent approach.

"Trust my stuff, Greg said," Pelfrey recalled. "He was getting tired of the uncertainty that just dripped from my face. I'm a big guy, I throw hard, just go for it...that was his message. Message received, Greg. Message received."

"Pelf's got all the ability in the world," David Wright said. "All that was missing was listening to Greg. I know it did me all the good in the world when he told me to lighten up a little and not fight Jerry on taking a day off." Noting the possible tweak to his back during the final game of the Mets' just-completed four-game split at Busch Stadium, Wright added, "I wanted to stay in, but Greg thought with a big lead I should just get the hell out of there and sit the hell down — his words. With the wonders he's worked with Pelf, you think I'm not gonna listen to Greg?"

Next up on the Mets' schedule is a critical four-game set in Philadelphia against the first-place Phillies. Greg is advising the Mets keep their heads on straight and start winning a few games in a row. "Greg's got a point there," said shortstop Jose Reyes. "If we start listening to Greg, no telling how far we can go this year."