God bless Johan Santana.

In the beginning he didn't look particularly on his game -- the Cubs were getting pretty fair swings against him, and I was more than a little sick to my stomach thinking of finding Johan on the wrong end of a 3-1 or 4-2 score, the recipient of stoic attaboys and brave shrugs. Even Seaver couldn't shut the other guy down every night. Can't kill the guy for losing once every three months. But Santana seemed to gather himself in the fifth, disarming the pointy part of the Cubs order with just six pitches. And then the nuttiness began. After Sean Marshall erased Ryan Church on three pitches, Nick Evans got hit by a riding fastball and Santana launched a little roller and half of a baseball bat in the general direction of Mark DeRosa. The bat overtook the ball and tapped it once again, shades of Mike Sharperson scoring Stan Javier a million years ago for the Dodgers against the Giants, and all hands were safe. (If you click through that link, don't miss the stated reason for Tommy Lasorda's ejection. I love Retrosheet.) Marshall spread his arms in disbelief and dismay, and a wild hope sprang into being in orange-and-blue hearts everywhere. Jose Reyes struck out, but Luis Castillo managed a walk (I still blame him for everything, so don't even start) and up came David Wright. David Wright who, for all his heroics and all our adoration, tends to squeeze bats into sawdust with the bases loaded, feeling it's his solemn duty to hit five-run homers. Not this time -- Wright shortened up his swing and poked one over the infield to get us even.

Santana survived his personal Tommy Hutton, the otherwise-not-particularly-immortal Reed Johnson (now 12 for 22 against His Johanness), and next inning the Mets jumped all over Chad Gaudin, with Jose Jose Jose Jose's 200th hit the triple-in-the-corner exclamation point, complete with Jose all but turning a celebratory cartwheel at third. If Miguel Oliva felt a twinge of annoyance somewhere, fuck him -- that was one of those baseball moments where all the accumulated disappointment and doubt of a team's struggles explode and dissipate in a second of release, transmuting agony into joy. (I'll always think of John Olerud blasting a grand slam off Greg Maddux after the Mets' near-death experience back in 1999 -- I have the vertical jump of a box turtle, but that night I leapt into the air as the ball sizzled over the infielders' heads and I didn't come down until an inning later.)

Santana, Wright and Reyes. Not a bad blueprint.

The rest? Well, I'm now on a first-name basis with Phil Cuzzi, whose strike zone was apparently determined by some permutation of the Zodiac, a mood ring and whatever he divined from pawing through the entrails of a spring lamb. ("PHIL!" I bayed at Cuzzi in the eighth, after his determined refusal to ring up Mark DeRosa ran Johan's pitch count higher and higher. Mild to the point of invisibility for me, but I was too frightened for a decent show of profanity.) Pedro Feliciano provided the usual Met-reliever nausea, but Luis Ayala looked better than he has in some time (possibly helped, it must be admitted, by Lou Piniella sticking with the JV) and we were home.

The Phillies have lost. While I've been writing this, the Pirates have given up a lead against the Brewers, taken it back (against Guillermo Mota, no less), and allowed the Brewers to tie. Final score to be determined. Whatever happens there, even Santana's arm can't be reloaded until this weekend at the earliest -- Carlos Zambrano and Rich Harden await against the enigmatic Oliver Perez and the faded Pedro Martinez. So be it. We'll worry about tomorrow when it becomes today. Even when the news is the happiest, there's only so much a Met fan's heart can take.

P.S. Happy Yankee Elimination Day, everybody!

"I have tickets for the Mets tonight. Great seats for probably a terrible game. I'll be by at five."
—Ken Cosgrove, Sterling Cooper, 1962

Yeah, it was pretty terrible at Shea Monday night. Lifetime game 409, regular and postseason combined, might have a hard time cracking my personal top 400 had August 2002 never occurred. Enduring Marquis' grand slam, the festival of futile relievers, wave upon wave of Cubbiephile inanity, the standing/sitting/standing/sitting Mets fan in front of me who bumped his head into mine as I bent down to retrieve my radio to monitor Beltran's well-being (ouch for all of us) and, yes, the Amazin' Luis Castillo — he's actually batting .249, or 249 points higher than I would have guessed — mixed to make the remainder of my planned septupleheader at Shea look about as sure a thing resultswise as AIG.

Speaking of which, Endy's fence has changed for the last week, and I don't think it was voluntary. Since October 19, 2006, we've all recognized the AIG slogan as iconic even if many of us didn't know anything else about the company until last week. Well, given that they needed a government bailout to avoid utter calamity, I suppose it wasn't surprising that when I peeked at left field as the first inning began, I noticed an alteration to the adscape. There are now two AIG logos where there was only one. The second one replaced the previously emblazoned, now inoperative motto:

THE STRENGTH TO BE THERE

One supposes that with all their other problems, AIG didn't need to be brought up on charges of untruth in advertising. (I wonder if the Feds will repossess our Endy bobbleheads.)

The Mets are still running first for the Wild Card. Do they have the strength to be there? Only because they are one length ahead of the Brewers, you'd have to say technically, yeah. You'd also have to ponder if the Brewers could possibly be any worse than they've already been of late, because we are going to need them to drown in their own suds if Monday's and Sunday's and Saturday's games are leading indicators of the Mets' abilities to avoid choking on their own final six-pack.

The National League has been mostly about streaks in 2008. There was a time when the Diamondbacks looked unbeatable. There was a time when the Dodgers looked as if they'd buried the Diamondbacks. Suddenly Arizona trails Los Angeles by only two games. The Phillies were 3½ behind us less than two weeks ago. We're 2½ behind them now. Neither the Mets nor Phillies figured as Wild Card possibilities in late August because there was no way Milwaukee could be caught. Now Milwaukee is trying to catch us. The Cubs have been the only block of granite in the N.L. this year — and, hey, what a great time to invite them over for a four-game set.

This could all be very bad news for the Mets or it could all be slightly less terrible than it looks now...which is about as optimistic as I'm willing to get after Monday night. Beltran lived, Johan's going and New York owes Chicago one where the date 9/23/08 is concerned. Clearly, signing Luis Castillo to a four-year deal should go down as Minaya's Boner, but we need to get past that. Just as the jobbed Giants hung in there a hundred years ago, the Mets will keep playing and all of us who bought tickets to every inch of Shea Stadium's final week will find, somehow, the strength to be there.

I've had the good fortune to be on hand for a remarkable run of classic games at Shea Stadium -- I was in green or red seats for the Grand Slam single, for the 10-run inning, for Agbayani's home run, for Bobby Jones's one-hitter, for the NLCS clincher in '00, for the first home game after 9/11, for Pratt hitting one over the fence.

I've also been to some horrible, gut-wrenching nightmares at Shea. I saw Brian Jordan kill our unlikely 2001 pennant drive, saw Glavine beat Leiter by a 1-0 score in the playoffs, and I've seen Yankee fans woofing and displaying the Vertical Swastika more times than I care to count. Heck, just eight days ago I watched Greg Norton take Luis Ayala deep. But considering the circumstances, I may not ever have seen a game more grindingly awful than the opener of this, the last-ever regular-season Shea homestand. (And the jury's out on whether we'll need that second qualifier.)

First of all, every Cub fan in the New York area was apparently in attendance. That's fine. In fact, good for them: Tonight's game was a decent mathematical bet to be their clincher, and while the Cub faithful missed that, they had a chance to cheer on their victorious team and dream about what might come in October. But not blaming them isn't the same as wanting them there. And they were everywhere, on all sides of me and Greg, whooping for each Cub and waving at each other and taking celebratory pictures and yammering about Northwestern and the Illini while we downtrodden Met fans struggled to breathe with September cinderblocks on our chests. It was seriously just a few notches below a Subway Series game in terms of the percentage of enemy fans.

Oh yeah, and then there was the game, with Jon Niese unfortunately unable to locate his pitches and Luis Castillo unfortunately able to locate his bat. Niese's youth gets him a pass, but why does Jerry Manuel continue to let Castillo near a baseball field? He may actually be the worst position player in the major leagues -- a player so stupendously useless that he deserves a plaque in some kind of Anti-Hall of Fame, a Bizarro World Cooperstown in which embarrassed baseball officials pay you to numbly view exhibits about how a beautiful sport can be played so lifelessly. Castillo has little speed left and subpar range, but his skills in the field and on the basepaths shine compared to what he can do at the plate. This is a man closing in on 6,000 major-league at-bats and 20 sacrifice flies, and tonight was a showcase for his unique talents: In the third, with a runner on third and one out, he only escaped grounding into a double play because he tapped the ball so feebly. In the sixth, with runners on first and second and none out, he put enough wood behind a grounder to earn his GIDP, short-circuiting a Met rally. And he really shone in the ninth as the Mets' last hope, looking at two strikes from Kerry Wood and then offering the vaguest of waves at strike three, like a hospice patient shooing a fly. I'd already shredded my throat booing Luis, but I managed to croak in agony at Manuel in the ninth, pleading brokenly for him to send anybody else up to the plate. And I do mean anybody: The list of people I'd rather have seen begins with Argenis Reyes (who isn't any better and might actually be worse, but at least creates outs with some enthusiasm), includes all the Met pitchers, then expands to include Greg, myself, and the option of picking a member of the Pepsi Party Patrol at random and sending him or her up to the plate blindfolded with a rolled-up t-shirt for a bat.

Best of all? Luis Castillo is Met property for 1,102 more days. Thank you, Omar Minaya.

For much of the middle innings Greg and I could barely speak -- we sat slumped in our chairs, watching terrible things happen on the field and the scoreboard. Wow, Aramis Ramirez almost hit one out. Look, the Braves are lifting their skirts for the Phillies again. Jeez, can't the Red Sox at least eliminate the Yankees? Nope, we couldn't even seek refuge in Schadenfreude. I would occasionally grunt or mutter a curse; now and then Greg would mumble unhappily or emit a low moan of vague torment.

There are six games left at Shea, and the Mets somehow still are in the lead for a playoff spot. But my goodness, it feels like there are 60 to go and the team's so hopelessly out of it that it's already held the fire sale. Despite what the papers tell you, this isn't a collapse, just a desperately flawed team trying to limp across the finish line with a suspect rotation and a truly ghastly bullpen. (After he was taken out, Luis Ayala trudged off the mound not to boos but to the ambient noise of utter indifference.) There's no shame in this September swoon -- the Mets redeemed a dreadful year that looked lost with a summer revival. But that was a while ago now. I can imagine them bellyflopping into the playoffs ahead of the equally suspect, just as psychologically shot Brewers. (And then who knows?) But I find it easier -- a lot easier -- to imagine them coming up short again.

It won't hurt like last year did -- with any luck, nothing in Met fandom will hurt quite like that for years and years. But it sure won't be much fun.