If the Mets have led you to claw fingernail marks in your own palms this year -- stigmata I think we all bear -- then this was baseball as sweetest absolution. Stagnation, frustration, expectation, exultation and exhalation were the night's procession, as some bullpen tightrope-walking was followed by a barn-burner of an 8th inning and then a relatively sweat-free 9th. This is the way --

Hey, have you been to my Web site lately?

Wait a minute, I think the shortstop of a third-place team wants to sell us an SUV! What was that, Mr. Jeter? No, I haven't taken your Ford challenge, whatever that is. Look, I don't mean to be rude, but you're interrupting. Could you come back at the end?

The day didn't begin auspiciously, not with the news that Billy Wagner has increased swelling in his pitching elbow, leaving our closing arguments to the tender mercies of Heilman Sanchez Feliciano Smith Schoeneweis Stokes and Ayala LLP, a bunch of Lionel Hutzes of late when it comes to laying down bullpen law. Nor did things look good when the Mets grabbed a 2-0 lead only to do their usual hare-and-the-tortoise imitation, falling into a doze against Jo-Jo Reyes and allowing Chipper and this year's squad of Bravos Anonymous to perform recon and ambush Oliver Perez. (Ollie was due for a tepid performance, so gets only a mild scolding -- but it was scary to rediscover how naturally eye-rolling, muttering and hair-pulling accompany a Perez start.)

But things started to turn with Ayala's Shea debut. The newest Met was handed a tough --

Have you been to my Web site lately?

For Pete's sake! Yes, I've heard of the Ford Edge. I'm aware that you have one, Derek, or at least that your TV pitchman self does. We're discussing a pennant race here, so do me a favor and get back in your vehicle. Now look at your side mirror. Does it say BLUE JAYS IN MIRROR MAY BE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR? It does? Then why don't you worry about that challenge and leave us in peace?

Ayala was handed a tough assignment: first and third and one out with the Braves up 3-2. It was reassuring to see Dan Warthen out at the mound after he retired Omar Infante, I assume to tell Ayala not to be macho for his new teammates and to pitch around Brian McCann in favor of Jeff Francoeur if he'd rather. That was good -- but it was better to see Ayala coolly erase McCann and the threat. As for Heilman, he's probably always going to look like a kicked hound out there on the mound, and we're just going to have to get as used to it as we can. But just when it looked like the roof was going to cave in, he got Gregor Blanco to foul out to Wright and give us a chance at a second inning against Jeff Bennett and the Costco-sized bag of sunflower seeds he carries in his cheek.

As for Nick Evans, he probably isn't ready....

Have you been to my --

I know, I know, you've definitely got an edge. Everybody says so -- taxi drivers, sassy meter maids, construction workers, vague baseball types wearing blank hats. And yes, I get that you've got an Edge, not an edge, and I can get one too. Sometime between the first viewing and the millionth, that little narrative twist lost its effectiveness. Enough!

Nick Evans needs more seasoning, but it's impressive how well he works counts -- even when the home-plate ump is calling the black and then some, as Charlie Reliford was in the 8th. Evans walked, Wright walked as Bennett buried slider after slider in the dirt, Beltran dribbled a little excuse-me single up the line and it was Carlos Delgado up with the bases loaded and one out. Bases loaded, as we all know, has not been kind to us this summer. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but I believe the Mets were 3 for 43,412 in that situation, and 1 for their last 37,297. Not good odds --

Have you been --

All right, now I'm getting pissed. Look, Jetes. No one thinks you have any relevance to Met baseball except hacky columnists and ad-sales drones. So why don't you just take it somewhere else?

Not good odds, but there you had it: Carlos Delgado against Will Ohman, one pretty important late-summer game in the balance, the victorious Phillies no doubt gathered in their clubhouse to watch. Delgado got decent wood on a foul down the left-field line, which of course means absolutely nothing, and here came the second pitch from Ohman and OH MAN! OFF THE WALL! EAT IT, BOBBY COX! CHANGE THE CHANNEL, PAT THE BAT! WOOO!

Actually I was terrified. The ball took a crazy, Augustinian bounce right off the pad to Blanco, who came flying out of nowhere to snare it with his bare hand and fire home, assailing me with visions of Endy Chavez becoming Richie Zisk. All would come to nothing, and this awful game would rise to the surface of Gary Cohen's play-by-play and this blog's postgame lamentations on many dark days in the future, leaving us to brood over the play that had short-circuited a pennant drive.

But no -- Blanco had done everything he could, but he was a long way from home and Endy was starting from third, not first. He was safe, David Wright had come home right behind him, and Delgado was standing on second at the center of the happy Shea Stadium roars. And then the worm finally turned for Damion Easley and it was 6-3, and then the Round Mound of Pound smacked one down the left-field line and it was 7-3, and not even a superhuman play by Yunel Escobar could undo this one.

Have you --

SHUT UP! I DON'T CARE! JUST GO THE FUCK AWAY!

I don't know who the hell's going to close. I don't know if our assemblage of random corner outfielders can keep doing it with mirrors. I don't know if we can hold off the Phillies. But games like this make you believe that maybe, just maybe, things might turn out all right. That maybe, just maybe, this team has come through doubt and dismay with both renewed confidence and a certain killer instinct. Or, if you prefer, that they've now definitely got an edge. Baby.

Turns out somebody who'll be working at Shea tonight has a healthy respect for the place. Too bad it's Chipper Jones.

Ray Glier has a terrific article in the Times this morning catching up with our old pal Larry Wayne. As you know, Mr. Jones and we have an enduring and somewhat sordid history together. Chipper sheds some light on the root cause of an unfriendliness that transcends boxscores.

You might remember the tipping point for why Larry became the most public of Shea enemies. It was at the end of a searing series between us and the Braves, a bitter eleven-inning loss that appeared to have knocked us out of the playoff picture for 1999. At the finale's conclusion, legend has it, Jones was being harassed by a field box fan that come World Series time, New York's other team was going to do in Atlanta and how. Chipper's infamous response was, "Now all the Mets can go home and put their Yankees stuff on."

The nerve! We already didn't like him for his Braveness and his success. But that tore it. John Rocker would be a passing fancy. Hating Chipper Jones would be forever.

But The Chip adds a wrinkle I either missed or he's making up. I can't quite believe I would have missed it because I was pretty well on top of that 1999 limp to glory, but maybe I did. Or maybe Chipper's burnishing the legend to make himself a little less loathsome in a deathbed bid to get Shea on his side before there's no more Shea to take sides. Jones tells Glier that the field box fan who heckled him was wearing "a split jersey, half Yankees, half Mets, and a split hat, half Yankees, half Mets".

He was? There are such garments? In New York? People wear them? And they are allowed into Shea Stadium?

That in itself is more detestable than anything Chipper has said or done at Shea, and he's committed plenty of war crimes against Met pitching since 1995. One cringes to imagine that such a prime spectating spot would be taken up by a human being dismal enough to sport a New York-New York jersey divided against itself.

Even still.

Let's assume Chipper's baseball hermaphrodite existed. Let's assume this Big Foot of the box seats really roamed the orange aisles of Shea and there truly was such a creature who uttered those ugly sentiments of surrender to Mr. Jones while we were only two out of the Wild Card with three to play. Even with the heat of battle still rising from his neck, what the fudge was Chipper thinking to lump all New Yorkers together like that? He'd been around long enough to know Mets fans were Mets fans and the other thing was the other thing. He'd been in a World Series over there and had just played for his life over here. Come on!

Today's Larry Jones is contrite, almost, sort of, just a little. “I was like, ‘Come on bro, pick a side,'" he explains to Glier in 2008. "I was a punk kid, I didn’t know better. That’s when I said it.”

Well sir, we are a sensitive people and we took it to heart. In 1999, it was no simple task to be a Mets fan in New York. Thus, if you wanted to fire up the base, you did it. We didn't like lots of Braves then or in the years that followed, but we really hated you. You killed us with your bat, but it was your mouth that made you transcendent. Why do you think nobody ever got worked up when Brian Jordan showed his face — and that guy destroyed our postseason dreams in September 2001.

But y'know what? There's something about Larry. Maybe it's just his longevity; or it's the sentimentality whirling in the air with only 22 home games left; or it's that Chipper Jones really does seem to have a thing for the ballpark for which his son is named beyond his lifetime .310 batting average there. Jones, now able to tell New Yorkers apart (at least by cap design), swears he received good wishes during the All-Star Break from all stripe of Gothamite on his abbreviated quest for .400. The feeling, after fourteen seasons, is suddenly mutual.

Sure, he tells Glier, he likes Shea Stadium because he sees the ball and hits the ball so well, but "having to deal with the Mets year in and year out, all those games that were so important, the history of the love-hate relationship, the passion of their fans, it makes it special to go there.”

Obviously nobody is left on the Mets from those Mets who battled those Braves so fiercely when we were learning Chipper's real first name. Nobody's left, that is, but us, his Greek chorus. The only '99 Braves who remain in that uniform this week (accounting for injuries to Smoltz and whathisname) are Bobby Cox and Chipper Jones. Cox is simply a bore. Jones...I dunno. There comes a time when you almost, sort of, just a little begin to feel something that isn't total, complete and burning animus for a player you've always loved to hate.

I won't feel this way for Pat Burrell when he grows grizzled, believe you me. I'd tell you what I dream of for Yadier Molina down the road except it would incriminate me in a court of law. But Chipper Jones, father of Shea Jones, constant tourist aware enough of his surroundings at his surroundings' end to admit that he wants a piece of his veritable home away from home, that he and his kid will be taking pictures together on his final trip in next month? Him I can respect.

While booing the crap out of him tonight per usual.