Faith and Fear does occasionally have some business to attend to, so periodically your bloggers get together to exchange blog-related news and ideas. ("Faith and Fear: The Interpretive Dance" will blow you away with both its kinetic nuance and its rococo wardrobe.) But tonight we were wary that the Olympics would squeeze the Mets off the TV in various bars and pubs, so we opted for a sit-down at my house. And thus it was that Greg and I held down either end of the couch and passed papers back and forth with the Mets as backdrop.

And what a backdrop! While we were chewing over our agenda for the night, Mets kept hitting and running around and getting walked and the score kept climbing. "You know," Greg said finally, with cheerful disbelief, "I just realized that the Mets have been up since I got to your house."

If only it were always so easy. I actually felt sorry for Jason Bergmann, left in to absorb a fearful beating for no apparent reason. Soon enough Keith was doing his usual blowout thing of all but ordering SNY's viewers to turn off the game and do something more interesting with their evening (they must love that in the truck), the two of us and Emily were comparing the horrible local ads that run in Kings County with the horrible local ads that run in Nassau County, and the only suspense was whether Brian Stokes would earn a rather ludicrous save. Well, unless you count whether any Nats fans would be left above the loge. If there were, I tip my cap to them. The Nats had four hits and are now 33 games under .500 -- at the risk of getting all Mex on you, that's devotion, even on a nice summer night.

These games are the flipside of fiascos like Monday's implosion against the Pirates, which was the kind of game that's like letting the water gurgle out of the warm bath of the soul. Except we tend to go into cruise control during laughers, chatting and reading and attending to household business, while bullpen meltdowns and ill-timed offensive brownouts and other varieties of cruel defeat leave us stretched out on the rack, helplessly focused on the awful things that are happening to us. Or, to borrow from some writer preoccupied with something other than baseball, laughers are all alike, but every bitter defeat is bitter in its own way.

Well, they showed us. That bullpen of ours — they sure don't stink!

For one night they did all right, Smith and Feliciano in particular. Was it all because Jerry Manuel called them out, challenged them, questioned their intestinal fortitude? Because Jerry Manuel, as smooth an operator with the press as any Mets manager, is smart enough to call it as it truly is? Because sooner or later you're going to have the roulette wheel spin your way?

Is that what it takes to get six outs around here?

I don't know if I ever dreaded the Mets holding a lead the way I was dreading it all day Tuesday. Even the thought they'd hold a lead frightened me. One run? Three runs? Ten runs? It wouldn't be enough. I knew it, you knew it, everybody knew it.

Except for that plucky band of bullpeners who met before the game at the behest of temporary relief corps captain Scott Schoeneweis and decided that enough simultaneous sucking and blowing was enough.

Manuel had made it clear (as if it had to be clarified) that the performance on Monday was abysmal and that a change was gonna have to come. It would come from Eddie Kunz if necessary; it would come from Sammy Starter if it had to. I don't know about Kunz, the backpack-toting rookie, but apparently the notion that one of those hothouse flower boys from the rotation would be sent to the 'pen to right the sinking ship seemed to offend the delicate sensibilities of those paid handsomely to get an out here, an out there. Other Pedro answered afterward to Kevin Burkhardt that yes, it was something of an insult. Schoeneweis, the beat writer's temporary designated go-to reliever (Feliciano gets the save, Scott gets the questions; what was that Lo Duca said about other guys on the team speaking English?), revealed he had called a crisis meeting before the Nats game. With Wagner out, he took it upon himself to be their leader. Leader of a lost and troubled tribe at least before Tuesday. And like Feliciano, Schoeneweis all but spat with rage (albeit nicely) about how wrong it would have been for a Perez or a Pelfrey or, once activated, a Maine to be cast among them.

And not because it would be a blot on a Perez or a Pelfrey or a Maine to associate with the likes of Schoeneweis, Sanchez, Heilman, Smith and Feliciano.

You have to admire the relievers' chutzpah, acting as if their exclusive club is too good to be breached by men who sometimes have to throw six, even seven innings. Now I don't know if Ollie or Pelf or the recovering Johnny Maine could adjust to life among the specialists. Once in a great while, however, a starter takes one for the team and it sends a great message. Twenty-nine years ago, Goose Gossage had his thumb broken by Cliff Johnson in a clubhouse tiff and defending Cy Young winner Ron Guidry stepped in to serve as Yankee closer. It was a remarkable gesture and it even worked for a while. That was 1979. That was Billy Martin managing. Still, that was chutzpah.

Maybe Manuel's threat that if you fellas don't clean up your act, I'll be sending a new broom down to the 'pen to clean it up for you breached their weird sense of entitlement. Maybe it occurred to the lot of them that, as Schoeneweis put it of their arsonist ways, "Enough was enough."

So they couldn't have had this fantastic meeting before the loss to the Pirates?