What exactly is the point of being a contender if you can't build on an early 4-0 lead over the Pirates? Or can't preserve a 5-1 lead bequeathed you by six innings of Pedro Martinez? Are the Phillies and Marlins both really flawed enough to let this crew of light hitters and heavy downers pass them? Can't anybody who doesn't have a strained left forearm get ninth-inning outs?

There were too many of these games earlier in the season, but that was when the season looked for naught. They've brought us to the edge...no they've brought us over the edge into contention, into believing 2008 could be something else. On days like this (and there have been quite a few), it looks like nothing else but more of what the Mets were doing early on and a little too much of recently. Not tacking on, not shutting doors, not kicking lousy teams who have no reason to beat you but do to the proverbial curb. It is they who kicked, it is we who are curbed.

This was a disgrace. Some games are that plain and that simple.

Yesterday's score was briefly Marlins 8 Mets 1. It was a Sunday. I even managed to wear the same 2006 Division Champs shirt I wore to Shea when that scenario was last in effect. I'm glad the final was 8-2. Well, glad wouldn't be nearly the right word, but I've had enough Marlins 8 Mets 1 Sundays to last me into the next ballpark.

Jane Jarvis was in the house yesterday. Jane Jarvis was out in centerfield for the revealing of the number that indicates how many games are left at Shea. Jane Jarvis is, to date, the best invitee of the season. She may be the best they have all year.

Jane Jarvis was on the Thomas Organ for sixteen seasons, the first sixteen seasons of Shea Stadium. She was the sound of Shea. She and us. That's all you needed. All we knew of Jane was her picture in the yearbook and the Thomas Organ ad, the one we were told was her keyboard of choice. When Shea was the happiest place on earth in the '60s and '70s, it was Jane who set the tone.

You may recall a serious accident at an East Side apartment building this March, one where a crane collapsed and killed several people. Residents needed to be evacuated, among them Ms. Jarvis, 92. It was more than a little disorienting.

“I guess my world fell around me,” she told the Times. “A lot of people get hurt by things like this, and no one even suspects it.”

Between the accident and the final season at Shea, people wondered how she was doing and if she'd be back for one more appearance. It was disheartening that the Lincoln Mercury representatives and other nonentities had been getting the call to take down a number while true icons of Shea were going ignored. No icon of Shea was truer from 1964 to 1979 than Jane Jarvis. In May, she told SNY.tv's Barry Wittenstein that she hoped she could be part of the stadium farewell.

Yesterday she was. She's relocated to New Jersey, she's in a wheelchair, but she's still Jane Jarvis. When that recording of "Meet the Mets" went up on the PA, you were reminded that Jane Jarvis never left Shea Stadium even if she hadn't been organist in residence since 1979. Before, during and after her introduction for her countdown moment at least one fan applauded wildly from wherever he was.

Jane Jarvis, you may have heard, is more than a ballpark organist. She's an accomplished jazz musician. She was an executive with the Muzak corporation. She's recorded a slew of albums. She can still play. I learned that a few years ago.

My wife runs a senior center in midtown. The church that hosts the center invites the community in for midweek, midday jazz concerts. On the bill one Wednesday afternoon in the fall of 2003 was Jane Jarvis. She was the featured attraction, backed up a small combo. Jane Jarvis, then in her late 80s, was playing the piano and playing it with elan. She was playing with style. She was playing with heart.

The only thing she wasn't playing was "Meet the Mets". This was the other side of Jane Jarvis, the one for whom Shea Stadium and the Thomas Organ was a gig in a lifetime of gigs. She had moved on. I, of course, hadn't. As happy as I was to be feet away from a legend, I was waiting and waiting to hear one of the only two songs I associated with Jane Jarvis.

The show was ending. Stephanie, as emcee of the event, informed the audience that in case you didn't know it, Ms. Jarvis was the organist at Shea Stadium for many years and if we all encourage her, maybe she'd give us a little of her signature tune. This wasn't a crowd of baseball fans (I think her Shea credentials came as news to most of them) but they were up for it. Everybody applauded.

Jane had this look of "I've been a serious musician for 75 years and you want to hear what?" But, pro's pro, she departed from her set list and dove right in to "Meet the Mets". It was just a few bars, but it was dreamy.

Until she segued into the other song I associate with Jane Jarvis: "The Mexican Hat Dance". And that was off the charts thrilling. Jane Jarvis' "Mexican Hat Dance" is the ultimate pregame soundtrack in my mind. Always will be. And here it was, a command performance almost.

The audience in the church knew exactly when to clap. Just as I did yesterday.

After that 2003 performance, I brought my giveaway CD from 1996 up to the piano, thanked her for playing those two songs and asked her to autograph the liner notes. She did so, regally. Why not? She's Jane Jarvis, Queen of the Thomas Organ. Her playing will always rule.

Yesterday may have been the dreariest baseball game I've ever attended.

Emily and I were coming back from Philadelphia in a rental car, and with insufficient time to go home and get on the subway, we were stuck driving. We'd been warned about this, but it's true -- it's hard parking at Shea when there's a new stadium in the lot. We wound up beyond something called the Aquatic Center, a piece of Queens real estate I'd never heard of. I have now, and I can tell you it's very far from Shea Stadium.

So we finally arrived to find our friends Chris and Peggy, and endured the business end of an ass-kicking, one of those horrid games that leaves you in the duck-and-cover position for half a game. When Carlos Delgado's bid for a cosmetic home run was foiled at the wall, I turned to Joshua and reminded him of the day he and I watched Willie Harris deep-six a Met comeback by snaring a Delgado drive in much the same spot. This is father-son bonding over shared torment -- the part of baseball fandom that doesn't come with soft focus and acoustic guitar, but with Limp Bizkit and the two of us turning into the Ligues.

By the time Cody Ross was denying us, it was raining. While I was taking Joshua to the bathroom they announced that the Mets Dash wouldn't be held. By now Joshua's seen more than his share of Dashes lost to rain and ESPN being grabby. He gave me a shocked look, saw it was true, threw back his head and began to wail. Then the Mets finished losing and we trudged back to the now aptly-named Aquatic Center in the rain to sit in traffic on College Point Boulevard. "I am never thinking about this game again," I said in the car, and with the exception of this blog post I mean it.

It was a day that desperately needed a silver lining, and fortunately there was one -- a gathering of bloggers in SNY''s suite, set up through the kind auspices of MetsBlog's Matt Cerrone. (Thanks, Matt!) I couldn't stay for long -- had to get back to Emily, our friends and our overtired kid -- so wasn't able to meet everyone I wanted to meet or gawk at what life in a luxury suite is like, beyond noting that up there the beer is not only free but served in -- ooh la la -- glass bottles. But seeing Matt and the MetsBlog folks and Coop and Anthony and Brooklyn Met Fan up there gave me a feeling of honest-to-goodness Blog Brotherhood. In 2005, when Greg and I started Faith and Fear on a spring-training lark, blogs were an afterthought for the Mets and a way of thinking about the team that was reserved for Netheads. Two and a half seasons later, thanks to all those folks' hard work and thoughtful writing, MetsBlog is an integral part of the SNY/Mets ecosystem, and blogs of all stripes are becoming a crucial way for fans get their news, stage their debates and cherish the histories of franchises and fans alike. No, we weren't in the press box -- but if I'd wanted to be in the press box, I would have gone that route a long time ago. We were on the same level as those guys, just down the hall, and that struck me as just right.

The other silver lining? As a couple of posts and comments here have noted, I've now entered what is sometimes delicately called a career transition -- my 12 1/2 years with the Wall Street Journal Online ended on Friday. Fortunately, the very next business day turns out to have a Met game added to it. Mets-Pirates, 1 p.m., and you'd better believe I'm going. Because of all the summer days I wanted to but couldn't. Because I'm sure as heck not interested in sitting around the house wondering what to do with myself. Because I can.

Yeah, the weather report is iffy. It's OK. That's the difference between silver linings and plain old silver.