In February 1998, Al Leiter became a Met. He couldn't have been happier to join the team he said he rooted hard for during his childhood, which he once referred to as "the Mike Vail years".

This is really exciting for me. I feel like a little kid.

All it took was Wayne Huizenga dismantling the World Champion Florida Marlins before they could defend their title. Steve Phillips gladly handed over three prospects in exchange for a durable lefty who threw hard and competed like crazy. One Met minor league who went to Miami was Jesus Sanchez, who went on to a Nelson Figueroa-like career in the majors (23-34, 5.32 ERA over seven seasons with four clubs). One was Robert Stratton, a Met first-round pick who would never make it to the big leagues.

And one was 21-year-old A.J. Burnett, described by The New York Times in the wake of Leiter's acquisition as simply "a righthanded pitcher who has not advanced beyond Class A."

Al Leiter spent seven seasons as a Met, designated more often than not as our ace, and pitching quite a bit like one. He chalked up 95 wins from 1998 through 2004, sixth-most in team history. When there was a big game to hunt down during the Bobby Valentine era, Al usually seemed to be the man in the middle.

He started the first-ever regular-season Subway Series game at Shea in '98; the game that halted the seven-game losing streak down the stretch in '99; the one-game playoff that clinched the Wild Card four days later; the Todd Pratt Game in that year's NLDS five days after that. He may have never been better or more valiant than he was while pitching into the ninth inning of the final Subway World Series game in 2000. He gave 142 pitches and, I swear, every bit of himself to our lost cause.

There were some noticeable bumps along the way (Game Six in Atlanta on short rest, in particular), but it was mostly good times with Al Leiter on the Mets, at least until all Met times went bad somewhere in 2002. Even accounting for the presence of Mike Piazza, nobody quite fit the description "face of the franchise" in those halcyon Met days like Al Leiter.

In December 2004, Al became an ex-Met. He couldn't have been less happy and not a whole lot more bitter about it as he returned to the Florida Marlins as a free agent.

I did not want to leave the Mets and I did not want to leave New York. The reason I am leaving is that Omar Minaya did not want me.

Minaya was new as GM and his charge was to make over the Mets, who had steadily fallen from competitive sight since that night in October '00 when Leiter threw his 142nd pitch at Shea. Out with the old, in with anything that could conceivably distract Mets fans and potential Met customers from the waste case the franchise had become. It was goodbye Leiter one week...

...and hello Pedro Martinez the next week. Pedro would be the new ace on the Mets, effectively replacing Al Leiter as the pitching face of the franchise.

Thursday night, in Game Two of the 2009 World Series, it was a guy traded for Leiter outdueling the guy who essentially took Leiter's place.

I'll bet Al noticed. He was always good at that.

No regrets at either end of the Leiter trail. Scooping him up in the post-'97 Marlin fire sale, even if it cost the Mets a live right arm that is now 1-0 in World Series play, was the right move. It took Burnett until this year, his eleventh in the majors, to win as many games in his entire career as Leiter did as a Met. Lefty Al was the right man at the right time. In that same vein, however, his time was up by 2004, and Martinez — no matter the unfortunate twists his Met journey eventually took — was the right man for 2005.

Good to see ex-Mets keeping busy. There was Burnett, making with his silly pies and getting out Phillies. There was Pedro, elevating his stature (particularly in his own mind) and getting out Yankees. There's Leiter, too, talking a mile a minute on various media outlets in a suit and tie the way he used to in his well-worn Mets uniform after games. Hell, we've even had cause to hear from the generally unmissed 1962 Met Don Zimmer in the last week.

Hey, you know which ex-Met will soon be busy looking for a new team? One I'd love to have back.

Melvin Mora is going to be a free agent. For Melvin Mora and the Mets, there is nothing but regret. Melvin Mora was the most super of supersubs in 2000 when he was deployed as our everyday shortstop once Rey Ordoñez went down to injury. Mora was a lousy shortstop. But he was Melvin Mora, hero of the 1999 stretch drive and postseason and darn good-looking player — shortstop shakiness notwithstanding — through the first two-thirds of 2000. Might have he improved in his new full-time position if given two months to straighten out? Might have he been deployed elsewhere as Steve Phillips searched for a better shortstop option?

Did he have to be traded? For Mike Bordick?

I was on the fence when the word came down on July 28, 2000. I loved Mora for everything had done from the moment he singled off Greg Hansell on October 3, 1999 to ignite the rally that won us a Wild Card tie, but I tensed up terribly every time a ground ball came his way at short. I had an idea at the time for what could be a hot new children's toy: the Bobble Me MelMo. That said, I just assumed he was miscast at short. We could find somewhere else for him in the long-term, couldn't we?

On the other hand, on the day he was traded, we were deep inside a playoff dogfight with no guarantee we'd make it back in '00. We needed serenity now at short. My American League avoidance had left me almost completely unaware of Mike Bordick's tenure, but he was said to have been quite sound. That was good enough for me. The next day, I'm at the Mets game against the Cardinals and Mike Bordick leads off with a homer.

Man, what a great trade!

You know the rest, probably. Bordick, whether he wasn't physically right or simply didn't have much left, sucked up his share of ground balls but was an offensive nonentity after that first home run. The Mets would go to the World Series, but Bordick was not well. Some thug Cardinal named Mike James hit him pretty intentionally on his right thumb during the NLCS. It affected Bordick enough so that by Leiter's valiant Game Five in the World Series, it was Mike Bordick (.125) sitting and Kurt Abbott starting...and not closing the gap between himself and Edgardo Alfonzo when Leiter's 142nd pitch — barely stroked by Luis Sojo — bounced into centerfield for the two lethal runs that effectively ended our most recent World Series participation.

Bordick never played for the Mets again. Mora just kept on playing for the Orioles. Turns out he was a darn good-looking player and then some. The Orioles moved him off shortstop, eventually making him their everyday third baseman. I had no idea until I read it the other day that he's played more games than any Oriole at third base besides Brooks Robinson. He drove in more than a hundred runs twice — 104 the year before last — and made the American League All-Star team twice. He ranks in the all-time Top Ten for Baltimore in eight different offensive categories

I knew he had done well for himself, yet I wasn't aware until checking what an intricate thread he become in the black and orange fabric. In what loomed as his last game as a Bird at the beginning of this October, he came out of the game and was given a standing ovation at Camden Yards. Though amiable about the club not picking up his $8 million option for 2010, he just told the Baltimore Sun, "I wanted to die an Oriole."

Mora was more an Oriole than Leiter was a Met, probably. Yet to me Melvin Mora's a Met. He's been on loan to the O's all this time in my mind. We gave him away in a somewhat understandable move but one that turned out to be ultimately pointless. I'd love to erase that mistake. I'd love for one of the two 1999 Mets who remain active (Octavio Dotel is the other) to come home. We don't need him to play third base, obviously, but we could definitely use him somewhere. How could you not use Melvin Mora on the Mets? He could play left field sometimes. He could fill in here and there. He could be the supersub he was in 2000, but older and wiser.

Less mobile? On the downside? An example of sentimentality trumping practicality? Oh, probably. I don't know. I don't watch the Orioles. They're rarely on anywhere. Melvin Mora left a Mets team in the midst of a two-season playoff run and endured for nearly a decade on a team that never made the postseason, never contended, never had as much a winning record. Melvin Mora is not a talisman, exactly. He's not a franchise player. He's not going to reverse a 70-92 disaster. He dropped off dramatically in 2009. For all I know, at 38, he'd be the wrong guy at the wrong time in the wrong place.

But, no, I'm not thinking like that at this moment, late October 2009. I hear Melvin Mora's going to be available and my eyes light up. My heart melts around the edges. I read "Melvin Mora" and I see him scoring on a wild pitch. I see him throwing out Diamondbacks and Braves left, right and center. I remember a walkoff home run against the Brewers. I remember him square in the middle of that ten-running that beat Atlanta. I see Melvin Mora and drift off into 1999 reverie — more than usual, I mean. I crave a position for him in 2010. Emeritus Met, something like that.

A real, live 1999 Met is still playing baseball. How could I not want him?

During the World Series player introductions Wednesday night, I wanted to figuratively shoot everybody (figuratively, of course, because I'm not nearly as violent as my baseball tendencies of late would indicate). By the ninth inning, however, I had consolidated my hatred.

This wasn't hard. This was sort of easy. These were the Not The Yankees in Phillies uniforms, and Not The Yankees has always been my favorite team in whatever game the Yankees are playing.

That's all I saw after a while: Not The Yankees. My personal Foxwoods Resort & Casino Turning Point of the Game was the play at the plate in the ninth, when Shane Victorino was unnecessarily trying to score a seventh run (who sent him, Razor Shines?) and I instinctively rooted for a collision that would send his head flying toward the Hard Rock Cafe. Oh wait, I thought, I'm going to need this unappealing person to annoy the Yankees some more before this thing is over. I can't wish him well, but I can hope whatever problems he encounters come while sanding his deck in December.

Or taking a champagne bottle up his rectum in a few days.

Sorry to blow the Mets Fan's Worst Nightmare scenario, but it no longer is...not this Mets fan's anyway. Maybe it will be when the cauldron of crimson hatred reopens for bitterness this weekend and the sight of 45,000 Victorinos reawakens my double-sided animus, but not at the moment. I don't like the Phillies; I'm not rooting for the Phillies; I haven't adopted the Phillies in that way I like to find a positive cause for the duration of a postseason when the Mets aren't there (e.g. long-suffering White Sox fans in 2005). But their victory equals Yankee defeat, simple as that. Yankee defeat is the cause which I always support when it's on the table.

Somebody has to pull the trigger. The Phillies have the only weapons left.

Besides surprising myself by deciding it was all right that Shane Victorino's head stayed attached to his neck and such, I also found myself feeling a tad proprietary about those Phillies. Not in the fleeting "my guys" sense I got from the Rays in '08 or Rox in '07 (can I pick a winner or what?), but from a recognition standpoint. We play them approximately a hundred times a year. They're familiar. They're from the neighborhood, if you will — the National League East neighborhood. Despite the Yankees technically receiving their mail in New York, I don't see them much in the course of a season. I avoided YES from April to early October because it aggravated me no end to watch its content, whereas I couldn't help but watch the Phillies prance across 2009 since they interacted with the Mets so often. Hence, last night, when I saw red-trimmed gray uniforms and a blue fence in the background (with no pinstripes clouding my field of vision), it felt less horrific than it should have. At stray moments, I found myself musing that could have been the Phillies playing the Mets at Shea.

I knew that assessment was waaaay skewed from reality, but the familiarity made the whole thing moderately more palatable than I'd anticipated. After all the "who will those downtrodden Mets fans root for?" whinging of the past week (mine no less whingey than anyone else's), I figured we must be involved here somewhere. Therefore, I decided what I'm watching is not a World Series between our two most despised counterparts but rather an MLB company picnic softball tournament. It's round-robin, and it just happens to be these squads' turn to play. Let's say the Phils are the trolls from IT and the Yankees are from the branch office in Hell.

The Mets? They're off getting some barbecue. Probably spilling it all over themselves, too.

Welcome to a special Wednesday World Series-distracting edition of Flashback Friday: I Saw The Decade End, a milestone-anniversary salute to the New York Mets of 1969, 1979, 1989 and 1999. Each week, we immerse ourselves in or at least touch upon something that transpired within the Metsian realm 40, 30, 20 or 10 years ago. Amazin' or not, here it comes.

I never got mad at them for how it ended. Not for a moment did I hold it against them. To this day, even though the ending hurts, it doesn't hurt the way other endings pain me.

Everything before it was too beautiful to allow in an emotion like anger.

GAME ONE: NYM @ ATL, 10/12/99
All I remember about Game One is frustration and ketchup. The frustration was the Mets going to Turner Field and withering at the surroundings. The ketchup was my best friend Chuck's. We watched Game One together that Tuesday night in the office of a rather famous op-ed columnist at a rather prestigious newspaper where he worked. The columnist wasn't there, so we were. We brought in dinner. Chuck loves ketchup. Puts it on almost everything. That drawer most people use in their desks for paper clips and such? It was filled with ketchup packets.

Alas, the Mets approached Game One with no noticeable relish. Chuck, who watches baseball like it's football, screamed for the Mets to sack Greg Maddux. No blitz was forthcoming. Just empty ketchup packets and a 4-2 loss.

GAME TWO: NYM @ ATL, 10/13/99
All I remember about Wednesday afternoon's Game Two is taking a personal day; marveling at Melvin Mora for choosing the playoffs to launch his first Major League homer; and cringing at Kenny Rogers giving back all our Mora-mentum. There was time for Bobby Valentine to align the rotation properly. Reed could have pitched Game Two at Turner Field. He was the only Met to win a game there in 1999. Then use Kenny in Game Four, at Shea, where he was wonderful. If/when Game Six rolls around, you have Rick, again in Atlanta, on plenty of rest, and Al for Game Seven, also not put out. Bobby forgot to ask me, however.

We were allotted three personal days apiece at my job. I used all of mine that year on day games. The Mets went 1-2 on those occasions.

GAME THREE: ATL @ NYM, 10/15/99
My first NLCS game ever. It wasn't easy getting in. My brother-in-law had to shake down his father for the extra pair of tickets their four season seats earned them. These bonus tickets were way up in Upper Deck. His father planned to profit handsomely from them. My brother-in-law harangued him with guilt. Who deserves to go more to see this stupid team than Greg? Lots of yelling ensued, I was told, which I greatly appreciated somebody doing on my behalf (though, to be honest, if it wasn't a playoff ticket for me, it would have been something else; they like to yell over there). Thanking him profusely, I was told "you're on your own for the World Series."

I should only have such problems.

One Game Three ticket from the secret stash went to me, one to a similarly deserving employee of my brother-in-law. It was, in essence, like going to the biggest game I'd ever see by myself. It was weird, but it was the National League Championship Series. I wasn't about to question my lack of company.

***
Friday night, I'm riding up the escalator to the Upper Deck and I hear something.

SUCKS!

Yes, that's it. Each Brave, as he is introduced, is amended by the crowd. Batting leadoff, the leftfielder, Gerald Williams...SUCKS! Batting second, the second baseman, Bret Boone...SUCKS! Batting third, the third baseman...

You have to ask?

Of course Chipper Jones sucks. By now everybody's gotten the memo that Larry Jones sucks, too. Maddux sucks. Smoltz sucks. Cox sucks. Mazzone sucks. You better believe Rocker sucks. Trainers and equipment managers are no better.

How could they be? They're Braves.

***
Lots of NLCS merchandise at the concessions. I grab a pennant and a program. I pass on the t-shirt with the Mets logo and the Braves logo that promises a BATTLE FOR THE EAST. Those are the shirts from the aborted division title showdown from the last week in September. They've been repurposed. They're still $18.

***
Gerald Williams...SUCKS! but he also walks. Then Leiter makes an error. to let Boone aboard. Larry does nothing, but the two baserunners each steal the next base ahead of them. Piazza throws the ball away and just like that it's 1-0 Atlanta.

And it's over. It shouldn't have been. There were 26 outs to go, two of them obtained on a double play initiated by centerfielder Melvin Mora. He catches Jordan's fly and he throws out Boone trying to tag up. Last game at Shea, against the Diamondbacks, Mora threw out a runner from left. We're in the playoffs because Mora ignited a rally on the final scheduled day of the season. He hit his first home run the other day.

Melvin Mora can do no wrong. But no other Met can do anything particularly well against T#m Gl@v!ne (sucks). He scatters seven hits over seven innings. Leiter regains his composure, but he picked the wrong night to give up one unearned run. It's a blowout. A 1-0 blowout.

***
Only pleasant thing that happens in the course of the game: John Rocker trots in to pitch the bottom of the ninth. 55,911 are on hand. 55,909 agree that RAAAH-CKER SUCKS! The only two dissenters are sitting in front of me. They've had approximately twelve beers and one idea, the latter of which they express plainly:

FUCK YOU ROCK-ER!

So I do my best to provide harmony to their melody.

ROCK-ER SUCKS!

And we get a nice little rhythm going.

FUCK YOU RAAAH-CKER!
ROCK-ER SUCKS!
FUCK YOU RAAAH-CKER!
ROCK-ER SUCKS!
FUCK YOU RAAAH-CKER!
ROCK-ER SUCKS!

Catchy, isn't it?

Only sour note: Rocker doesn't suck. He mows down the Mets in the ninth. Blown out, 1-0. Though I held out some vague hope of an eleventh-hour call for Game Four, I realize this is probably it for me at Shea in 1999. We're down three games to none. I don't think I want to be here for the burial. On the ramp, all I can think is "don't get swept."

And fuck you, Rocker.

***
The 7 to Woodside: My vocal partners somehow wind up in the same car as me. Nearly 56,000 here, nearly a half-hour to fight my way out of the Upper Deck and onto the subway and we're together again. I nod at them. Minutes ago we shared a cause. They don't recognize me. Must have been the twelve beers.

The LIRR to Jamaica: Very crowded. Have to stand. I'm wearing my black Mets cap. Somebody who's had more than twelve beers berates me for not wearing blue. I'm not a real Mets fan.

Fuck you, too.

GAME FOUR: ATL @ NYM, 10/16/99
Saturday night, Game Four. I turn on Channel 4. Bob Costas is all but laying a red carpet for the Braves to stroll to the Fall Classic.

Down goes the sound on the television for the rest of the evening. Up come Murph and Cohen. They would talk me through this thing to the bitter end, whenever it came.

***
Reed is his snow plow best with Braves hitters. Efficient, efficient, efficient. Just removes them and pushes them to the side of the road. Not a lot of strikeouts like he proffered against the Pirates two Saturday nights earlier, but outs. We'll take them. John Smoltz isn't bad either. Nobody scores anything until Oly sends one over the wall with nobody on in the sixth. Rick has a 1-0 lead.

It lasts 'til the eighth. Then, it's the law firm of BAM! & BAM! First Brian Jordan, then Ryan Klesko. Crap! And crap again! Three solo shots, two of them by the Braves. Reed departs after 77 mostly wonderful pitches. Turk takes care of the rest of the inning, but we're down 2-1 and we have only six outs left to our season suddenly.

Just as suddenly, we have more. Cedeño singles off Smoltz. Rey Ordoñez, as was his wont, fails to advance him. Smoltz gives way to ex-Met Mike Remlinger (though I doubt few besides me actually remember Mike Remlinger's 1994-95 fairly decent Met tenure). Agbayani strikes out, but then it's Mora Time. While Melvin stands in, Roger steals second. Melvin walks. Then, with Rocker again on the mound, Mora coaxes a double-steal. Seriously, that's what it looked like on TV. I'm almost sure he told Cedeño to get going. Roger Cedeño stole a club-record 66 bases in 1999, but I can't imagine he thought of stealing third on his own at this moment.

Two runners in scoring position and John Olerud up make for a tantalizing scenario. Except Rocker's a lefty and unhittable. Olerud, however, is unstoppable. It wasn't much of a hit. There literally were, figuratively speaking, 38 hops. Roger and Melvin scampered home. They leapt and bumped and frolicked. They were Milli Vanilli sans dreadlocks.

Girl, you know it's true: the Mets won 3-2.

GAME FIVE: ATL @ NYM, 10/17/99
Four o'clock start Sunday. Too much down time to consider my credo or mantra or whatever you want to call it. No team has ever come back to win a postseason series when trailing three games to none, but several teams have come back to win a postseason series when trailing three games to one. And that's us now. I'd think in those terms that afternoon, but it was too long an afternoon to sit around thinking about it.

So I left the house. I needed a distraction from my diversion. I drove to Tower Records in Carle Place to search out a CD I didn't particularly need, but it was something to do. Of course I'm wearing a Mets shirt. On the way from my car to the store, I pass a mother and two children, both boys, one in Yankee gear.

Do I stare straight ahead? Do I exchange the slightest gesture indicating that we're both in the playoffs and we all might be in the same Series if things go right for both of us? Do I gird for the kind of incivility to which I've grown accustomed from their kind since 1996?

The older kid, not even 12:

Mets! Ha! HA HA! METS! HA!

The mother laughs along. The whole bunch of them are laughing. We're in an LCS against the Braves. They're in an LCS against the Red Sox. Yet my team is somehow laughable.

I grumble at them. They continue to cackle.

***
How do we keep throwing Yoshii against Hall of Famers? He went up against Randy Johnson and we survived. He went up against Maddux and it wasn't helpful. Here we are again, Game Five, and it's Masato and the Mad Dog.

Masato is winning early. The skies are gray, but John Olerud isn't gloomy. He takes Maddux deep in the first inning, with Rickey Henderson on. Mets lead the Braves 2-0. Yoshii leads Maddux 2-0.

Yeah, that'll last.

***
Fourth inning: A Boone double, a Larry double, a Jordan single. Now it's 2-2. Maddux has evened the score with Yoshii.

Hope you like pitching, defense and runners left on base. That's all we're going to have for quite a while.

***
The day game became a night game. The gray skies opened up. Somebody sitting between home and one of the dugouts covered himself with a popcorn bucket. Was it really that hard to remember to bring an umbrella?

Bobby Valentine works day or night, rain or shine. Bobby Valentine came to Shea to manage on October 17, 1999. If the Mets were going to die, it wasn't going to be because a single button went unpushed. The evening became a blur of smartly deployed relievers and well-preserved pinch-hitters. Dennis Cook may not have enjoyed serving as little more than a scarecrow (brought in to complete an intentional walk), but the mere sight of his left arm shooed Ryan Klesko right out of the game. Bobby burned a useful pitcher between Turk Wendell and Pat Mahomes, but what he was gonna save them for — winter?

The bullpen went Hershiser to Wendell to Cook to Mahomes to Franco to Benitez to Rogers from the fourth through the twelfth. Seven relievers surrendered nothing of substance. All the Mets hitters combined to score just as much. It was a Flushing standoff. Seven relievers became eight when Octavio Dotel succeeded Kenny Rogers after The Gambler's two scoreless frames. The Braves got to Octavio in the top of the thirteenth, but not to Melvin Mora. The man who threw out a Diamondback from left the week before and a Brave from center two nights before cut down Keith Lockhart when he tried to score from first on a Chipper Jones double with two out. Melvin's throw beat Lockhart by a significant margin. An attempt to bowl over the aching Piazza was to no avail. The baseball game continued knotted at two.

The Mets didn't score in their half of the thirteenth. Mike was done after that (thanks Keith). Todd Pratt nursed Dotel through the top of the fourteenth. John Rocker, who continued to suck even while pitching a perfect thirteenth, got Ventura to start the bottom of the fourteenth. Having retired Fonzie, Oly, Piazza and Robin as if they weren't the heart of the order, he was removed in favor of rookie Kevin McGlinchy. He wasn't scary like Rocker but he was similarly effective, giving up nothing of consequence.

***
Onto the fifteenth inning of October 17, 1999, the inning everybody remembers. Comparatively few remember the top of it, but it's worth noting that it nearly killed the Mets season right then and there.


The Mets had had a postseason date with Walt Weiss, but they stood him up. That was in October 1988. Weiss was the pending American League Rookie of the Year on the powerhouse Oakland Athletics. He was their shortstop, playing alongside Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire and Rickey Henderson. The Suffern High School graduate was part of a team that was going to meet its literal match in the powerhouse New York Mets of 1988. It was going to be a clash of titans, the most hotly anticipated World Series of the 1980s. The only thing that could prevent the Mets and the A's from meeting would be forgetfulness. Sure enough, the '88 Mets forgot to win the National League Championship Series, letting it slip to the Dodgers instead. Walt Weiss's first World Series, thus, would against Los Angeles, not New York. Being there wouldn't work out any better for the A's than missing it had for the Mets.

Had Weiss held a grudge from 1988 to 1999 against the Mets for keeping family and friends from attending a convenient October affair? Was he still feeling a pinch from the airfare it must have cost to fly them out to the West Coast instead of telling them to drive down to Queens from Rockland? Was Walt Weiss planning on getting even one of these days with those inconsiderate Mets?

Or was he just incidentally screwing them by leading off the fifteenth by singling and then stealing second?

The Braves had left fifteen runners on base since the fourth. Had Mets relievers been any less successful, their season would have been over by now. The guy with the popcorn bucket on his head could have grabbed a towel or something. But nine pitchers conspired to keep him wet. It would be a shame for him to dry off now.

Keith Lockhart must have noticed the man and taken perverse pity. He lashed a two-out triple to center, scoring local boy Weiss and making it Braves 3 Mets 2. Dotel, an alternately brilliant and disastrous starter during the season, had proven the first Met reliever to crack. To his credit, he repaired his fissure, striking out Jordan after an intentional walk to Jones.

Nice recovery. And completely worthless if the bottom of the fifteenth didn't hold something better in store.

***
Shawon Dunston, the centerfielder who had no prayer on Weiss's triple, had a couple of things in common with Walt. First, he was local. Shawon was from Brooklyn. Also, he was an old shortstop. Difference was Weiss was still a shortstop. Dunston had once gunned throws from the hole to first like nobody could. But that was a long time ago by 1999. Now he was mostly an outfielder when he played. Another thing he didn't have in common with Walt Weiss was postseason experience. Walt Weiss was a rookie in 1988 and played on three World Series clubs his first three years, winning the one in the middle. Dunston came up to the Cubs in 1985 and had made only one playoff appearance, on the losing end of the '89 NLCS.

It was ten years later. Dunston had been around, far from Brooklyn, far from his favorite childhood team, the Mets. He wasn't particularly choked up when Steve Phillips acquired him from St. Louis in July. He liked St. Louis. He had just bought a house there. Every ballplayer likes St. Louis and every ballplayer who buys a house is soon traded. Or so it seems. Dunston found himself dabbling in more real estate than he wanted in the summer of '99. Now, in the suddenly very late fall, he was trying to get something started at home.

The Mets made Walt Weiss wait eleven years and fourteen innings for a postseason moment near where he was from. Now Shawon Dunston would make everybody wait almost as long for same. He would not walk (he literally never did as a Met). He would not make out. He would just work Kevin McGlinchy until he could get the pitch he could convert into a single.

We could wait...

***
They don't play doubleheaders in the postseason, but you couldn't have told that from the talk entering the sixth game of the 1986 National League Championship Series. The Mets led the Astros three games to two, having won two dramatic games at Shea. They flew to Houston one win away from a pennant. Yet it was said the pressure was on the Mets. They lose Game Six, they lose Game Seven: it was a daily double. The Mets couldn't win Game Seven because it would be started by the evil Mike Scott, he who scuffed baseballs and made them dip, dart and dance so Mets batters — not even 1986 Mets batters — could hope to touch them.

It doesn't sound legal, but it was.

Scott's warmup act, Bob Knepper, was exactly all the Astros needed. He shushed the Mets for eight excruciating innings, taking an early 3-0 lead and maintaining it clear to the top of the ninth. Knepper had been tough noogies on the Mets all year, long before Scott emerged as resourceful and suffocatingly effective. The Mets — even the 1986 Mets — had all kinds of problems against very good lefties.

To lead off the visitors' ninth, Davey Johnson sent up Lenny Dykstra to pinch-hit for Rick Aguilera. It wasn't a percentage move. It was a lefty versus a lefty. But it worked. Dykstra stroked one to center, over the head of Billy Hatcher. Lenny rolled into third with a leadoff triple. It was still 3-0 Houston and we were about to play eight more innings, but I knew...I mean I knew the Mets would never have to look at Mike Scott again in 1986. They were going to win this game.

Sometimes a leadoff hit tells you everything.

***
On the twelfth pitch of the first at-bat of the bottom of the fifteenth inning, Shawon Dunston matched Walt Weiss and singled. He became the tying run at first. It was the first time the entire game the Mets had needed one of those.

***
Three months before, I wasn't nearly as confident about a Met victory. I wanted to be, because we were playing the Yankees. For a few minutes here and there that Saturday afternoon at Shea, I was supremely confident, never more so than when Mike Piazza just absolutely walloped the bejeesus out of a Ramiro Mendoza delivery, sending it far over the left field wall and on to the roof of the Picnic Area tent. That made the score Mets 7 Yankees 6 in the seventh, and I couldn't resist.

"YEAH! THAT'S RIGHT! YEAH! YOU!"

I don't know exactly what I was yelling or who specifically I was yelling it at, but I was telling off every obnoxious Yankees fan in my section of the upper Upper Deck. When one of them made eye contact, I only pumped up my volume.

"YEAH! I'M TALKING TO YOU! YEAH!"

And all I could think was oh no, what have I done? It wasn't pissing off Yankees fans that worried me (it was quite cathartic, actually), it was pissing off the baseball gods. That wasn't a walkoff home run. This was the seventh inning. There were two very long frames remaining and the Yankees had already hit five home runs. What were the chances they wouldn't hit a sixth?

I didn't have time to calculate the odds. With one on and one out in the top of the eighth, the other team's catcher, Jorge Posada, hit his second home run of the day. Now it was the obnoxious Yankees fans (also known as the Yankees fans) who were braying, squawking, woofing, whatever animal noise they make. We were losing 8-7, and they still had Mariano Rivera waiting around.

They didn't score any more in the eighth, but neither did we. Somehow, they were held at bay in the ninth, which was nice, but here came the bottom of the ninth and here came Rivera and the likelihood that this was going to be the worst day I'd ever experience in Shea Stadium.

Brian McRae grounds out to start the inning. Big surprise. But then Rickey Henderson, on base four times already, walks. Fonzie, so often the man in '99, hits a fly ball that those not in Row T of Section 36 are pretty sure will be caught by Gold Glove centerfielder Bernie Williams. Except that's fool's gold down there. We hear a roar and we see baserunners: Henderson's on third, Alfonzo's on second. Williams, it seems, couldn't handle a fairly simple deep fly ball (my favorite WFAN call of the year: the Yankee fan that week who insisted Bernie was defenseless having to play such an unfamiliar outfield, what with its grass, warning track and fence).

Olerud was up next, and I assumed he'd win it the same way he won it against Curt Schilling seven weeks earlier at Shea. How odd that he didn't. He grounded out. I was genuinely surprised. But then I was confident because Mike was up and...oh, right, they'll walk him.

Bases loaded, two out, we're down a run. Everybody is screaming. Everybody but some effete prig in Row S who's quietly reading the Times. I'm yelling and disturbing him, apparently, because he turns around and gives me this "what's wrong with you?" look that would be appropriate in a Christian Science reading room perhaps, but not here. I'm at an 8-7 Subway Series ballgame, you're reading the Times and I'm crazy, mister? I divined he was there at the behest of his Yankee fan children.

Oh how I hate them.

Anyway, the bases are loaded and my confidence is brimming until I look at the scoreboard because in my hysteria I've actually forgotten. Benny Agbayani started in right and hit fifth, but Bobby took him out for defense once Mike hit the go-ahead homer. But now we're behind and his replacement is Melvin Mora. This is not the awesome Melvin Mora of October. This is the .067-hitting Melvin Mora of July, going up against Mariano Fucking Rivera, who we already know is going to the Hall of Fame. We don't know anything about Melvin Mora except that he makes this a very poor matchup and it's going to suck so much leaving Section 36 among all these fucking Yankees fans who are just going to have their empty existences validated in a matter of moments.

That's when Del DeMontreux announces batting for Melvin Mora, No. 15, Matt Franco.

Ohimigod! Bobby Valentine is an absolute freaking genius! How did we get to the bottom of the ninth of a game in which seventeen different Mets have participated and still have our best pinch-hitter available? How has Matt Franco not been used yet? What was Bobby saving him for?

For this, of course. For facing the best reliever on the planet. For a 1-2 count (ball one considered strike three in some cynical circles) at which point one of the great Rivera's cutters is lined into right field, easily scoring Henderson and, by a hair or two on Paul O'Neill's strong throw, plating Edgardo Alfonzo.

The signature contest of the 1999 season goes down as Mets 9 Yankees 8. Matt Franco is awesome. Bobby Valentine is no slouch himself. And all of us who deserve to feel wonderful are beyond happy.

***
Hey, whaddaya know? It's the fifteenth inning of the literal do-or-die fifth game of the NLCS and look who Bobby Valentine has saved for just this moment: It's Matt Franco, batting for Dotel.

Again, I'm surprised. I shouldn't be, but I am.

***
Franco stepped in. Dunston took off. He stole second.

There. Just like that.

No Met baserunner had gotten as far as second since the sixth. Practically an entire regulation baseball game had passed since a Met was in scoring position. By my reckoning, however, Dunston was home. I got the same feeling from his leadoff single that I got from Dykstra's leadoff triple thirteen years earlier. Now it was essentially a leadoff double and we had Matt Franco up. Bobby had saved him all these innings precisely because there had been no great reason to use him before. Don't waste Matt if there's no runner in scoring position. We finally have one.

Franco walked twenty times as a pinch-hitter in 1999. It was a record. He walks here. It's not surprising, nor is it particularly bad news. Would have been neater had he driven in Dunston, but he took what McGlinchy gave him. Matt Franco was the master of taking.

***
Twenty-seven home runs. One-hundred eight runs batted in. A batting average of .304. And with two on and none out, he is asked to bunt.

So Edgardo Alfonzo bunts. He can do it all and do it well. Fonzie sacrifices himself for the greater good. As a result, Shawon Dunston is on third and Matt Franco is on second.

How I loved that man.

***
Bobby Cox attempts strategy. He orders Olerud walked. He sticks with McGlinchy, even though he can theoretically end this series if he can escape this inning unscathed. Cox used Smoltz to finish out Game Two even though Smoltz would be his Game Four starter. Kevin Millwood, the Game Two and potential Game Six starter, could have come in here. So could have Gl@v!ne, who pitched Friday night and wouldn't see action again until Wednesday at the earliest, if at all. They weren't relievers but they weren't McGlinchy either. Pennant on the line, Kevin McGlinchy's not necessarily your best option if you have others.

Bobby Valentine has none anymore, not where the bullpen is concerned. He is warming up his last two pitchers: Rick Reed and Al Leiter. They're both starters. One went in the last game. One is going in the next game if such a thing exists. As if to emphasize the point, he replaces leadfooted Franco at second with normally speedy Cedeño. Roger's been sitting with a bad back. It's all Mets on deck now. He's the last position player Valentine has. His last two pitchers are throwing.

Leave no Met behind.

***
McGlinchy stays in to face Pratt, who came in for Piazza when Mike could go on no further. There was a time when that would have seemed risky, but that was before Todd Pratt made himself a Met legend by ending the NLDS with a home run eight days ago. It was also before the fifteenth inning and its prevailing anything-goes ethic. If Bobby could have snuck a Mets uniform onto the popcorn bucket guy, he might have sent him up to hit.

And I would have had all the confidence in the world in him.

***
When Mookie Wilson dodged an inside pitch from Bob Stanley in Game Six in the 1986 World Series, millions of Mets fans exhaled. We couldn't lose in the tenth inning as it appeared we would. Kevin Mitchell raced home and made it Mets 5 Red Sox 5. That was the burden lifted right there. We'd keep playing, at least a little longer. We were no longer down to our last out, our last strike.

It's one of those facts that's known but not widely acknowledged because of what happened next. What is remembered much better is how the Mets won Game Six. Of course it's worth remembering, what with the ground ball trickling and the first baseman not fielding it and Ray Knight racing home and pandemonium overtaking Shea. But it was tied. All hope was not lost when the ball went through Bill Buckner's legs.

Tying a game is important. What Todd Pratt did, drawing a walk, was important. By accepting ball four from Kevin McGlinchy, he ensured that the Mets season was not over in the fifteenth inning. We had inched back from the brink.

It's one of those facts that's known but not widely acknowledged because of what happened next.

***
Dean Palmer had a fine 1999 with the Detroit Tigers. Maybe he would have had a fine 1999 with the New York Mets. In the offseason between '98 and '99, there was a local baseball columnist — Tom Keegan in the Post — who insisted in that way tabloid columnists have of hammering points into submission that Palmer was exactly the free agent third baseman the Mets needed to get over the hump. Look at those numbers: 34 homers and 119 ribbies for Kansas City. Think of how perfectly that righthanded power would fit behind Mike Piazza. The Mets must get Dean Palmer!

The Mets had another idea, another free agent third baseman. Third base wasn't actually a problem for them. Alfonzo did a more than representative job there for two seasons. It was second that was a mess. Carlos Baerga was nothing close to what he had been in Cleveland. He'd be gone after '98. Fonzie was versatile. What the Mets decided to do was tap that versatility and shift him to second. It would make third base a hole again, however. That was an old Met story.

The new Met solution? Not Dean Palmer of the Royals, but Robin Ventura of the White Sox. His power numbers were lesser, but he was a lefty (allowing Bobby Valentine to mix up his batting order to confound opposing managers: Fonzie the righty preceding Oly the lefty, who was ahead of righty Mike who would then be followed by lefthanded Ventura). And he was a Gold Glove third baseman. The Mets had never had one of those. Fonzie deserved one in '97, but Robin Ventura was supposed to be state-of-the-art.

I say "supposed to be," because who the hell knew what went on in the American League? I didn't. I knew Ventura was a hot prospect once, fought with Nolan Ryan once and was presumably a good hitter, though everybody in the American League had eye-popping stats. It didn't seem like a bad idea bringing in Robin Ventura.

I had no conception, however, what a great idea it was.

Steve Phillips, reasonably maligned general manager of those Mets, made one indisputably awesome move as team architect when he signed Ventura. He transformed the infield, transformed the batting order and transformed the clubhouse with one stroke. Robin was everywhere in 1999. He was out front as no Met had been since Keith Hernandez. Not the same type of personality from what we could tell but he seemed to fit the mold of guy who came in and led the team by deed and example. Keith came over in 1983 and the Mets were much better by 1984. That Met hump from 1998 — just missing the Wild Card in exasperating fashion — suddenly got a lot more scalable with Robin Ventura at third, batting fifth, raising all kinds of Mojo.

***
Robin was having a lousy postseason. He hit .214 against Arizona. His final average against Atlanta would be .120. And nobody remembers any of that.

***
At first, it was a grand slam home run, right out of the Robin Ventura playbook. Robin hit grand slams like some guys take toothpicks when leaving a diner. He hit one in each end of a doubleheader in May. While it was certainly triumphant and dramatic — how's that for understatement? — it was, to a certain extent, what you'd expect out of Robin Ventura.

What it turned out to be was something nobody would have ever expected.

Ventura against McGlinchy. Ventura swings. It's a long fly ball. At that point, the game is over. The ball has gone to deep right. It's a sac fly if nothing else. From its trajectory, it can't be anything worse for the Mets or better for the Braves. If it can be caught by Brian Jordan, there's no way he can throw out Roger Cedeño unless Roger Cedeño is literally paralyzed.

Keeping an eye on the ball, it's becoming rapidly clear that the ball will not be caught by Brian Jordan. It's too deep. It's not going to the wall. It's going over it. It is indeed a Robin Ventura grand slam.

It is triumphant. It is dramatic. It is incredible, actually. It is instantly the most Amazin' thing any Met has done since Mookie put the right English on that ball he hit to Buckner. We've gone from a 3-3 tie to a 7-3 win. We are very much alive.

We are so happy.

I know I am. Mrs. Prince and I have positioned ourselves in front of our TV, right in front of it, I mean — on the floor. As Robin's fly ball climbs higher, I stand up and watch. And once it's out and it's a grand slam, I'm overcome. I jump up and down, but that's not enough. I have to launch myself as Robin has launched his four-run homer. I must make like a missile and head straight for my wife. We are going to do what teammates have been doing for years. We are going to dogpile on the mound.

She doesn't know this. She's seen celebrations on the field, but she forgets details. What's more, she's not on the field. She's on the living room carpet. Now we both are. I have jumped on top of her. I am screaming and hugging and screaming. Stephanie does not have the capacity to raise her voice in any discernible fashion. Once we rode a roller coaster. She let out a sound like a car alarm laughing nervously. That's what I heard here.

Nobody was injured in the celebration of this grand slam, I'm relieved to report.

***
I've got nothing on Todd Pratt when it comes to forging togetherness with teammates. Tank, who was on first when Ventura swung, is delirious that the Mets have won this game. First, he does the right thing. He runs to second. That's what you do on a hit. You run forward, you take your base. Cedeño ran home from third, certainly. Olerud arrived at third from second. Robin, natch, ran to first. Everybody tagged the next base.

But that's all that's going to get tagged. Pratt turns around from second and heads toward first. Robin is distressed and waves him off. You can't run in the wrong direction! You have to keep running to third! You...

"They're mobbing him before he can get to second base!" the ever thorough Gary Cohen reports.

You can't stop a Tank in its tracks. The Mets, who had been doing the unbelievable for weeks, defied credulity yet again. They turned a home run into a single. Because Pratt jubilantly tackled Ventura — and every other Met followed — Robin technically didn't hit a homer. He didn't drive in four runs. He drove in one. It wasn't a 7-3 final. It was 4-3. The Mets still won, just not by as much. The ball cleared the fence, but it was a single.

It was a grand slam single.

Only the Mets.

***
Next day at work all I wanted to talk about was the Mets. And all anybody wanted to talk to me about was the Mets. There was this one very flinty woman from Oregon. We had never had a conversation that rose above cordial and businesslike. Yet on the elevator on the way out that Monday night, she said, "That was some game yesterday. I'm not a baseball fan, but I couldn't stop watching. Fifteen innings...that was incredible."

Yes, I said. Yes, it was.

GAME SIX: NYM @ ATL, 10/19-20/99
In my favorite movie musical, 1776, Stephen Hopkins, cantankerous delegate from Rhode Island, positions himself near John Hancock as the members of the Continental Congress are called to sign the Declaration of Independence. Hancock tells Hopkins to take his seat. Hopkins refuses — he wants to see each man's face as he certifies this new nation, the United States of America.

Tuesday prior to Game Six, I had a list of people in my head whose voices I had to hear. I wanted to talk to every one of them in the space between the Grand Slam Single and whatever the forthcoming evening held. In 1776, Ben Franklin warned that if we do not hang together, we shall most assuredly hang separately.

I wanted us to hang together.

In the course of Tuesday, some of these people I ran into. Some called me. Some I called. The last one on my list was Richie, my steadfast friend with whom I had shared the Matt Franco Game, the Melvin Mora Game and a moment before the Todd Pratt Game. Had to get him on the phone before first pitch. Left a message with one his daughters. He called me back during the pregame show. I didn't exactly say I was calling out of a desire to hear the voices of the Mets fans who had grown important to me, but I didn't have to.

We compared notes on Ventura and wondered whether Leiter could get it done on three days' rest. It wasn't a long conversation. Whatever happens, Richie said as he'd been saying for weeks, it's been a great ride.

Yes, I agreed. A great ride.

***
I didn't know what was going to happen in Game Six, but I also knew what I'd been experiencing since September 21 couldn't go on forever. The Mets went down to Georgia almost exactly one month earlier trailing the Braves by a single game with twelve to play. Everything unraveled. Then everything was furiously stitched together. Then it all but came apart. Now, after Olerud beating Rocker and Ventura beating McGlinchy, it was all coming together again.

Could it hold? Could the Mets really do this? Could they go to Turner Field where they'd been almost completely unsuccessful in 1999 (and an overwhelming flop since they started playing meaningful games there in September 1997) and win one game? If they could win one, could they win a second? Was there enough left in them, even after an off day, to survive after 23 Mets played 15 innings Sunday?

I didn't know what was going to happen. Deep down, though, I knew it couldn't keep going.

***
On Fox at 8 o'clock, That '70s Show, one of my favorite sitcoms of the late '90s, was on. In "Laurie and The Professor," Eric's sister is revealed as getting more than tutoring from one of her instructors, wink, wink. It was a very funny episode.

What wasn't amusing is why I was watching as it aired on October 19, 1999.

I flipped over from NBC because the Mets game was going down in flames and Al Leiter was getting lit up like those funny cigarettes they were always alluding to in Eric Forman's basement. Nobody on That '70s Show, however, was getting as high as Leiter's ERA.

The Mets game had no laugh track.

***
Bottom of the first, no score.

He hits Gerald Williams.
He walks Bret Boone.
They both steal.
Piazza's throw sails away from second.
They both move up an additional base; Williams scores, Boone on third.
Braves lead 1-0.

He hits Chipper Jones.
Brian Jordan singles home Boone, Chipper goes to second.
Braves lead 2-0.

Andruw Jones reaches on a fielder's choice; each runner moves up a base.
Eddie Perez singles home Chipper and Jordan; Andruw moves to third.
Braves lead 4-0.

Leiter exits. Mahomes enters.
Brian Hunter flies to center, scoring Andruw.
Braves lead 5-0.

Walt Weiss grounds into a double play.
Big help.

***
There was nothing else to nervously flip back and forth to. That '99 Show was clearly having its season finale and I couldn't avoid that it was little more than a remake of that '88 debacle, the seventh game of the last National League Championship Series the Mets played and lost. That night we waited 'til the second inning to fall hopelessly behind, 6-0. It was over early and it stayed over.

I had no sense Game Six here in 1999 was any different whatsoever. We had fought so hard, through all those raindrops on Sunday and all those storm clouds in September, but all it got us was a five-run deficit with eight innings to go.

If the Mets were going to quit on me, I was going to quit on them — sort of.

***
"Let's get some Chinese food."

Who could eat? Who could hold down anything on a night like this? Yet as that 5-0 score remained intractable, I had a passing yen for Chinese. I would have let it go, but staying glued to the tube wasn't helping matters, so what the hell? Stephanie agreed and I called the closest Chinese place I knew, Fu Yu Kitchen, and ordered up a storm. Basically everything I liked, including every starch I could think of. Lo mein and fried rice...and fried dumplings I needed like another Braves run. We never order fried dumplings. But this was the night our season was going into the deep fryer. Might as well jump on in after it.

I told Fu Yu I'd pick it up. I believing in picking up as opposed to delivery, so that's not unusual. Rather strange that I'd choose the middle of a Met playoff game to break away from the action, but this action was eminently breakawayable. No problem, normally, as I could listen in the car for the short drive over. Except I planned to walk the few blocks. Well, I could bring the Walkman and stay tuned to every pitch.

No, I decided, I'm not going to do that either. I'm going to shut off the TV and not turn on a radio. Mind you, it could have been the most inconsequential of Mets games in the most inconsequential of Mets years — it could have been an exhibition game on tape delay — and I would never not watch or listen if the Mets were involved. But not now, not with the Mets still alive and fighting for a pennant. I opted to shed all contact with my team for however many minutes this pedestrian trek would take. I couldn't figure out whether I was exercising some sort of strategy or genuinely fleeing them. Whatever it was, it would be silence where the Mets were concerned.

Just like their bats as they continued to trail 5-0.

***
I told Stephanie to hold on a moment. I'd be ready to go as soon as I got my jacket.

But not just any jacket.

For my eighteenth birthday, I was given, by my soon-to-be future brother-in-law (two months before he proposed to my sister), a satin Starter Mets jacket, blue with a big spongy orange NY and the blue, orange and white trim on the cuffs and collar (I never noticed the white on TV). It was the same one I'd begun to drool after in 1980 as I watched Joe Torre come to the mound or Neil Allen rise to get loose or Lee Mazzilli appear on Kiner's Korner. These satin Starter jackets were pretty popular back then. Maybe not the Mets' version, but that's the only one I was interested in. I don't remember mentioning it to Mark, but Mark was the king of what he liked to call "pandering" to others' interests on their birthdays.

Consider me pandered.

I wore that jacket at every opportunity in the frigid winter of 1981. It was too cold to wear it alone, so I wore it under my parka and to all my classes. When I went to college, I wore that jacket whenever the temperature would dip enough in Tampa to make it feasible. One January morning I was in the airport there, in my jacket. The older woman working the newsstand cashier asked me if I was one of the players. The Mets trained in St. Petersburg. I swear I think she was serious.

The jacket accompanied me home from college. I wore it to the parade in 1986. Wise guy in the building where I was working that day asked me if I just ran out and bought it; how ignorant, I thought — they stopped making the NY this thick around 1984. I wore it back to Tampa for a wedding a couple of weeks later. Not at the wedding but when I got off the plane, even if it was too hot for that sort of thing. The groom picked me up and was happy to see it. Why shouldn't you wear your Mets jacket? he asked. Your team just won. I was wearing that jacket the Friday night in May 1987 when I took Stephanie to her first Mets game. It was chilly. I offered it to her. She declined. I mentioned it in a letter to Chuck. Chuck made it the basis of his best man toast at our wedding.

The jacket had been everywhere with me as long as I could fit into it. Its last public appearance had been September 26, 1997, the final Friday night game of that year. It was already a tight squeeze. During that postseason, MLB introduced a new line of outerwear. Out were the cap logos on the left breast. The next style would be the team name across the chest. Time to move on, I said. In February '98, at the Mets Clubhouse Shop on 47th and 5th, I bought the new one. It became my Mets jacket of record.

But not tonight. The real Mets jacket emerged from the closet and around my torso as best it could. It felt more like a vest now, but it was staying on and we went outside.

Definitely tight. And it fit perfectly.

***
We walk in the living room, turn on the television. It's the top of the fifth with two out. The Mets are still trailing 5-0, but at least it's not more. Bobby Bonilla is pinch-hitting for Pat Mahomes who shut down the Braves after wriggling free of Leiter's mess. We have a runner on first, and Bonilla singles.

Bonilla singles?

Bobby Bonilla?

It's just a pinch-hit, and the Mets don't cash in, but it's a glimmer. Anybody else, maybe not. But Bonilla? Whose last hit was September 21? Whose last hit before that was September 13? And whose last hit before that was June 23? Bobby Bonilla's been saving it up for now?

This going out for Chinese was a damn fine idea.

***
Kevin Millwood sailed along through five innings. Not a big surprise. He was 18-7 in the regular season. I saw him toy with us at Shea in early July. I tried to get a taunt of MILLLL-HOOOOUUUUSE! going, but nobody, not one damn Mets fan, joined in. Sure, people, let's just roll over and die for another stud Braves starter. Way to go.

Finally, though, the spell was breaking. After Turk retired the complacent Braves in order in the top of the sixth — no doubt they were mentally packing for the World Series — the heretofore impervious Kevin Millwood developed cracks. Fonzie led off the bottom of the sixth with a double. Olerud singled, moving Fonzie to third. Piazza lofted a fly to left, deep enough to bring home Edgardo. It's 5-1. Robin comes up and doubles. Johnny O is too slow to go beyond third. But then Darryl Hamilton drives them both home with a single.

Mets pull to within 5-3. Exit Milhouse. Enter Mulholland. It looks promising as ancient Terry walks youthful Benny. Alas, Rey lines into a double play to Weiss ending the sixth right there.

But we're in it. We're in it! We're only down two. It's all about taking this one game and one run and out at a time now. We're not trying to come back from three games to none. We're not even trying to come back from three games to two. We just need to do one thing at a time right. We just scored three runs. We need to not give any back to the Braves.

And I need to call Fu Yu and go back there. They left out the lo mein.

***
This time I'm driving there and this time I'm listening intently to every pitch. I need Turk to keep being awesome. I don't need the lo mein, but I paid for a big bag of Chinese food and I want what I paid for. I should have checked, I really should have. That's why I believe in picking up as opposed to delivery. When I pick up, I can count the items and figure out if anything's missing. But the bag was already bulging and I was a little distracted before by the game I walked away from.

As I park in front of Fu Yu, Turk hits Brian Jordan, perhaps intentionally, perhaps not. In June that would have been a great piece of rivalry theater. In October, with four innings remaining in the life of 1999, it's a leadoff baserunner for the Braves. Still, I take glee that a Brave has been hit. I believe I wished his wrist (already hurting) broken, which violates a bushel of karmic commandments I was developing in my head. I would have to do penance.

I grab the lo mein (beef) with Fu Yu's apologies and I'm back in the car in time to hear Wendell has loaded the bases with two outs. I'm running up the steps as Dennis Cook takes in place. And I see Jose Hernandez — a Met pox from his stint with the Cubs — single in Brian Hunter and Andruw Jones.

Braves 7 Mets 3. Fucking lo mein.

***
The hammer's coming down. Bobby Cox didn't go to a starter in relief when one might subdued the Mets for good Sunday, but he does now. John Smoltz, who closed out Game Two and threw seven strong in Game Four, is now here to end the Mets' season. No more fooling around with McGlinchys and the like. This is John Smoltz, 1996 National League Cy Young Award winner, a veteran of every postseason since 1991. Smoltz had never appeared in relief before last Wednesday, but he excelled at it immediately: three up, three down. If he can give Cox two innings like that here and hand the ball to Rocker, we are so doomed.

But John Smoltz, who would miss all of 2000 for Tommy John surgery and then return as one of baseball's best closers for several seasons thereafter, doesn't have what it takes in his ad hoc role as setup man. For the first time in this series, the Mets pounce.

Matt Franco, hitting for Cook, doubles. Hard.
Rickey Henderson, in one snit or another since Bobby V started taking him out for defense against Arizona, doubles. Hard.
Franco scores.
Braves 7 Mets 4.

Fonzie lifts a fly to right that sends Rickey to third.
Oly singles home Rickey.
Braves 7 Mets 5.

Up steps Mike Piazza. And he hits Smoltz about as Hard as I've ever seen any batter whack any pitcher. He goes to the opposite field, but he could have gone to the opposite planet. This thing had sizzle. Sizzle, and enough height for it to matter. It was a no-doubt two-run homer.

Mets 7 Braves 7.

***
Mets 7 Braves 7.

***
Mets 7 Braves 7.

I can't say it enough. The Mets had tied the Braves. The Braves had led 5-0 in the first. They led 7-3 about five minutes ago. And now all our pent-up offense was exploding. For Bobby Cox, John Smoltz, leaving in favor of Mike Remlinger was not the right call. To Mike Piazza, who hadn't hit anything like he hit that pitch in this entire postseason, John Smoltz was the disease — and Mike, à la Sylvester Stallone in Cobra, was the cure.

Stallone: I don't deal with psychos. I put 'em away.
Piazza: Same thing, 'cept substitute starters masquerading as relievers.

The disease was wiped out. The lead was wiped out. The score was even. The Mets were no longer hopelessly behind. They were at jump street. This was that whole new ballgame you're always hearing about. Also, I decided as I comprehended just how new it was, the greatest ballgame I'd ever experienced.

And it was only the seventh inning.

Mets 7 Braves 7.

***
Even though the Mets' next pitcher was our executioner from eleven years earlier, all thoughts of 1988 had been banished. As Orel Hershiser commenced to relieve Dennis Cook, I was certain this wasn't anything like anything the Mets had ever been involved in This was something else. It wasn't taking place at Turner Field. It was playing out on a whole other plane. This game had grown ethereal. It was the seventh, but it felt much later. It felt later than it did Sunday night in the fifteenth. It felt later than it did in Houston in 1986 when the Mets and Astros went to the sixteenth. It felt later than all those "one strike away" moments that culminated in Buckner. I'd been watching baseball since 1969, a pretty unprecedented year in its own right, and I had never felt anything like I was feeling right then and there as Hershiser faced Boone to start the bottom of the seventh.

To paraphrase Jackson Browne, Game Six of the 1999 National League Championship Series had danced right out onto the edge of time.

There it would stay until it was resolved.

***
"People don't realize how good Chipper Jones really is," I told Stephanie. "He gets a lot of flak, but he's a great player. A great hitter. And Cox is a helluva manager. There's a reason the Braves are here every year."

This was my new tack. Sit/stand/pace, but whatever I do, praise the Braves to the heavens with a straight face. Let the baseball gods know I know how lucky we are to have arrived on this plane. Take none of this for granted. Respect the opposition. Don't get them angry.

Beat them...with extreme decorum.

Chipper buys it. Same as Boone before him, same as Jordan after him. Moral Orel sets them down in order.

Top of the eighth. Benny singles to right. I remain humble. Rey finally puts down a sacrifice bunt. Benny to second. I thank whatever lucky stars are allowing this to happen. Melvin, as if sent by the heavens, hits for Hershiser and lines one into center. Benny, no sprinter, is sent home. I'm in total fear of Andruw Jones' award-winning arm, but there's no play. Agbayani scores unaccosted.

Mets 8 Braves 7.

***
Remlinger escapes further trouble. We require six outs to force a seventh game. It's up to John Franco to secure the first three.

And he fails.

The first lead the Mets have had all night and Franco doesn't hold it. He gets one out but then gives up a single to the irritatingly unstoppable Eddie Perez, who's only playing because Javy Lopez (no picnic either) is injured. Cox, the most outstanding leader of men since John McGraw, inserts old Otis Nixon to run. Nixon is a crook; he steals second and takes third on another spectacular Piazza throw to center. Brian Hunter singles him in.

All too quickly, Mets 8 Braves 8. Or Braves 8 Mets 8. I can't tell anymore.

***
Top of the ninth. John Rocker. Three up, three down.

***
Bottom of the ninth. Armando Benitez. Two up, two down. That marvelous Chipper chap walks and steals second. But Brian Jordan strikes out.

Extras.

***
John Rocker was not yet the most hated man in New York, but even if he had never given an interview to Sports Illustrated regarding mass transit and ethnicity, he would have been well on his way. Rocker invited Mets fans to despise him partly by sneering, but mostly by pitching. His arm was more frightening than Andruw's. Olerud's Saturday success notwithstanding, Rocker was generally death on lefties, certainly on our lefties. Before the name John Rocker came to stand for other things, it stood for some very effective relief pitching.

Which I was quick to remind the baseball gods I was properly aware of.

But this Benny Agbayani wasn't bad either. There was nothing about him that suggested he should have been playing in a game like this with everything on the line. He had been up in the middle of '98 for a cup of coffee. Not Benny Bean coffee, which Agbayani's popularity would yield before his Shea days were over — just a quick gulp of big league exposure as he wore off-the-rack No. 39, and then it was back to a Norfolk Tides uniform. Nobody was publicly clamoring for Benny Agbayani to return to the Mets in 1999 when he reappeared on the roster in May. But now we couldn't imagine our lives without him.

Benny came up and electrified Shea as few other rookies had. It wasn't just a matter of quick production (though ten homers in his first 73 at-bats surely helped). He was a throwback in a way, a cause. He was an unformed Ron Swoboda for the almost-millennium; a Kevin Mitchell with less versatility but every bit as rootable. You just wanted to root your heart out for the unsung Islander who wore No. 50, came to bat to "Bennie And The Jets" and rounded the bases to the theme from Hawaii Five-O. We'd had Sid Fernandez in the '80s, but he was sullen. Benny was happy to be here. We couldn't get enough of this kid.

Now, it appeared, Benny couldn't get enough of playoff pressure. He got on in the eighth and scored the Mets' first go-ahead run. Leading off the tenth, Benny walks. Ordoñez, dizzy from successfully sacrificing Agbayani in the tenth, reverts to futility and pops out. Screw it, Benny says, and steals second (he was picked off first, actually, but a bad throw got him the bag). Melvin Mora, swiftly transcending cult hero status, singles. Benny takes third. And Todd Pratt, who replaced the battered Piazza in a double-switch, hit a fly to Andruw Jones. It didn't look that deep to me, but Benny raced home.

Agbayani...Mora...Pratt. This is who gets it done for us in the tenth inning of sudden death.

Amazin'.

***
Mets 9 Braves 8.

For what it's worth, it was the same score by which the Mets beat the Yankees in July.

***
"Ohmigod!" I exclaim to Stephanie. "They sent him and he scored! I can't believe it! Andruw Jones has a fantastic arm and I'm not blowing smoke!"

The Mets take the lead. But I've blown my karmic cover.

Well, it's all out on the table now. The Mets are ahead 9-8 and I don't care who knows it. No need to be cute about it anymore.

Let's Go Mets!

***
Rocker escapes further trouble. We require three outs to force a seventh game. It's up to Armando Benitez to secure them.

And he fails.

A single to Andruw. A flyout by Greg Myers, but then a walk to Klesko. Ozzie Guillen — did you ever notice how many veterans you never think of as Braves always seemed to be dotting the Atlanta roster? — hits for Weiss, and that Cox sucker turns out to have made the right call. He singles to right, scoring Jones. It's tied again, 9-9.

***
John Olerud would lead off the eleventh. Shawon Dunston loomed as the pinch-hitter for Benitez. Robin Ventura would be up after him. You have the two guys who drove in the winning runs in the last two games bracketing the guy who got the impossible rally started Sunday night. Plus, Rocker was gone and the journeyman Russ Springer was in there. Springer was a righty. Olerud and Ventura were lefties. It represented an excellent chance for the Mets to take back the lead.

But it went by without a murmur. Oly, Shawon, Robin...nothing.

***
"That was the last time Titanic ever saw daylight."

That's what old Rose said in recalling the escapades of young Rose and her lover Jack in Titanic in the moments before the iceberg entered the picture.

***
The only Mets Bobby Valentine hadn't used in fifteen innings of Game Five were Al Leiter and Rick Reed. The only Mets Bobby Valentine hadn't used through 10½ innings in Game Six were Reed — the prospective Game Seven starter; Yoshii — the Game Five starter who flamed out in the fourth; Dotel — who pitched the final three innings of Game Five, surrendering the short-lived Brave go-ahead run; and Rogers, who preceded Dotel with two shutout innings.

Every game is being managed as if it's the last game ever. It's the last game of the season if it's not managed correctly. What is the correct choice for Bobby V here?

Reed? Reed should have started this game, but you have to have somebody for Wednesday night if there is a Wednesday night. You have to trust somebody else to keep you alive for a few more innings before you go to your last best option, which would have been Reed.

Yoshii? You know, I never heard him mentioned as a possibility. He hadn't been overwhelming in any of his postseason starts, but he had been solid in the last couple of months of the season. Wasn't a serious option, apparently.

Dotel? Hopes were very high for Octavio when he came up as a starter. Half the time he was brilliant. In seven starts (six of them Met wins), he went at least seven innings, never giving up more than three earned runs or five base hits. He struck out nine or more four separate times. Yet the other half of the time, he was dreadful, explaining why in fourteen starts, he compiled an ERA of 5.38. Dotel wasn't starting here, but he was going to have to go as long as he possibly could. The cliché applied to Dotel and to the Mets: there was no margin for error. One run and that was it.

Rogers? He was Bobby Valentine's choice. He was mine, too.

***
"He walked him," Bob Murphy told us, referring to Kenny Rogers issuing unintentional ball four to Andruw Jones with the bases loaded in the bottom of the eleventh. "The season is over for the New York Mets." Gerald Williams had doubled, was sacrificed to third and then Bobby told Kenny to walk the next two guys. The Mets were falling off the edge of time.

Braves 10 Mets 9.

"What a horrible loss for the New York Mets."

***
Regrets? I've had a few. Misgivings galore as well. What-ifs up the yin-yang. But no anger from Game Six of the 1999 National League Championship Series. None. The Mets were Lynyrd Skynyrd that last night in Dixie. They all did what they could do.

Kenny Rogers doesn't bother me. Does an eleven-inning 10-9 loss bother you?

Dotel instead of Rogers? With hindsight, sure. Reed on two days' rest instead of Leiter on three? Absolutely, and I said it back then. Reeder was far more capable of giving the Mets quality innings after his efficient work the preceding Saturday than Leiter would be having thrown many more pitches that Friday. Al would throw pitches Tuesday, but zero innings. Do I wish the two closers who, between them, saved 436 regular-season games as Mets, could have figured out a way to have saved the biggest one they ever didn't in October? Yes, I do wish that. I also wish Turk Wendell hadn't lost his cool and hit Brian Jordan in the sixth because it set up two extra runs we didn't need to give back. But I liked that Turk hit Jordan because Jordan overdid a slide on Piazza later that same inning (proving, ultimately, that he deserved to be brushed back). And I liked Turk.

I liked Armando and Johnny, the two closers who couldn't seal shut a jar of mayonnaise that night. I liked Al despite his Arpielle mini-excavator impression in the first, digging that five-run hole with precision and velocity. Shoot, I liked Kenny Rogers as much as one could.

I liked them all. I liked every 1999 Met by the time it was over. No, I loved every 1999 Met (well, maybe not Bonilla) by the time it was over. They were infallible in my eyes, even having lost. Maybe especially because they lost, but lost in the most winning fashion imaginable, by never, ever giving up. By not going gently into that Turner Field night. By even getting to Game Six, let alone Game Five, Game Four and everything they got to, clear back to when they made the Pittsburgh series count.

I loved 'em. I loved what they accomplished and what they almost accomplished. Baby, I loved their way.

They're Teflon. No other Mets team that didn't go home with a flag-spiked trophy is so coated. I get angry at the 2006 Mets once a night during the postseason. I get angry at the 2000 Mets for lacking in the World Series everything they seemed to have in the playoffs preceding them. I get angry at the 1988 Mets for the same reasons everybody else does. Though I repressed it for more than three decades, I at last discovered ire for the unlikely 1973 National League Champion Mets for not capturing a world championship that was within their grasp. Of course I get mad at the 2007 and 2008 Mets on an hourly basis.

Not 1999. They pulled up short of what could have been their destiny. They didn't even get a seventh game. They used it all up in the sixth and the fifth and the fourth. They went 2-1 when they needed to be 4-for-4. They weren't perfect when perfection was demanded. They did not become the first team to be down three games to none in a postseason series and force let alone win a seventh game.

But they made me believe they would. That was worth something.

***
I never believed in a Mets team the way I believed in the 1999 Mets. I believed in them for weeks, albeit right after not believing they had a chance in hell. That's all right, though. Baseball is not burdened by a clock. There's always time to collect your beliefs and align them correctly. I found my belief during the Pirates series and held it tight in the one-game playoff at Cincinnati and throughout the NLDS versus Arizona. I did what I could with it through two bland losses at the Ted, which rhymed with dead, which is what I assumed we'd be after losing Game Three. I lunged at Game Four just asking they not be swept. When they weren't, the belief light went back on.

I thought we could win that series after John Olerud bounced the proverbial 38-hopper past John Rocker and between Ozzie Guillen and Bret Boone in Game Four. There went that ball and here came Roger Cedeño and Melvin Mora, crossing the plate and leaping like Milli Vanilli. Except they, like our chances, were authentic.

After Game Five, which the Mets won on a single to right, I listened to WFAN so I could indirectly share the joy with other Mets fans. Instead Yankees fans called in to berate Mets fans for not curbing their enthusiasm. Up to that moment, it felt like it would be a wonderful thing if we could keep winning. From then on, I became determined that we must win. I wanted to shred Atlanta and move on to the World Series. I wanted to beat the American League champion very badly suddenly. The A.L. champion had not yet been declared, but it was just a matter of time. Bring 'em on, I thought for the first time in my life. I had wanted no part of the Yankees in a potential World Series because that would entail rooting for them to beat Boston. At last, a loophole: leave them for us to finish off. Let us shut up every fucking member of the Fun Police who dare tell us how we should react in the hours after Robin Ventura ends a fifteen-inning struggle for survival.

Bring. 'Em. On.

Never got there. Never got by Atlanta. By the time the Yankees were brought on, a year later, it wasn't the same. There was no Olerud. There was no Mora. There was no Cedeño. Kenny Rogers and all, I thought we could have won a 1999 Subway Series, I really did (and do). We had a great lineup that year. We had a great bench. Assuming Al Leiter got his rest and Bobby Valentine stopped using Rogers away from Shea (all his troubles were on the road), we had a big-time big game pitcher to lead the way. We had Reed and Yoshii and Hershiser, all of whom I trusted. We had the kid Dotel. We had that bullpen that had cracked some but had yet to crumble. We could've won the '99 World Series. We could've won the '99 NLCS. We just didn't start realizing that soon enough.

If I could tell the 1999 Mets anything ten years later, it would be to rev up sooner. Don't wait for 0-3 to get serious. It was great for melodrama, but, ultimately, it wasn't terribly effective.

***
Game Six was as heartbreaking a loss as a Mets fan could imagine. But ohmigod, it was a great game. I have to say it was the greatest baseball game I ever saw, even if the Mets lost it.

How did the Mets lose that game? Silly question. They fell behind by a lot early. And they played it in a place where they almost never won. They went down to a team that always found a way to confound them.

But how did they lose that game? They came from behind — twice. They took a lead — twice. They had just won two improbable games against a team that was ripe to be taken once more, and once after that.

Such complex circumstances. Such an intricately woven contest. It showed no sign of ending. Its running time of eleven innings, four hours and twenty-five minutes (starting on the 19th, ending on the 20th) doesn't begin to do its perpetual nature justice. It existed on the edge of time — a baseball apocalypse unfolding before our disbelieving eyes and ears. Yet at any moment, it was going to be over. It had to be. Something like this couldn't go on forever.

Yet how could it end? How could it just come to a halt? How could everything that led up to Game Six lead up to anything less than Rapture? Or Game Seven, Reed vs. Gl@v!ne?

How?

Twenty-three years ago tonight I got to do something I haven't done since. I got to watch my team become champions of baseball.

I didn't know it would be the last time I'd have that pleasure for at least twenty-four years. I wasn't thinking about what the future held that Monday night, October 27, 1986, at least not beyond my ability to complete some long-avoided work overnight and head to the ticker-tape parade in the morning before dragging myself to my standing every-other-Tuesday freelance gig in the afternoon.

The future didn't exist as Jesse Orosco fired strike three past Marty Barrett. Everything was that moment. 1986 was completely about getting to that moment — and now we were there. The 162-game romp, the exhaustion in Houston, the stay of execution versus Boston...and now the reward. It wasn't about the parade or the t-shirts I'd buy or the videocassette they'd release. It was about the moment and the satisfaction. I had waited through this World Series and the National League Championship War. I had waited through 108-54. I had waited through the Cardinals in '85 and the Cubs in '84. I had waited through seven absolutely dreadful seasons of the Mets as a nonfactor in their sport. I had waited through the mediocrity that had preceded the awfulness.

It was seventeen years and eleven days from October 16, 1969 to October 27, 1986. I felt every second of it wrapped up in the moment Gary Carter caught that third strike and rushed Jesse Orosco. All the Mets joined in. I joined in, from home, with my parents; and on the phone, with my friends. It hit me quickly and sank in slowly: We were World Champions.

I doubt a waking hour went by between strike three and the day the next season started that I didn't think about the Mets being World Champions. I didn't know that would be it for the rest of the '80s, all of the '90s and the first decade of the next century. How could I? It was 1986. Everything went to plan. Everything was perfect. When the last thing you saw was your team winning the World Series, how could you imagine everything wouldn't always be perfect?

Immense frustration enveloped the Mets in the seasons that immediately followed, but I don't think the afterglow of 1986 completely wore off for me until a full five years went by. The Twins and Braves played a gripping World Seven Game Seven exactly a half-decade after we won ours. Man, I thought, it's suddenly been a long time since that was us in the World Series.

We had just experienced our first losing season since 1983. There was little to connect the 1991 Mets to the 1986 Mets by then. We were on the wrong side of history. 1986 would continue to fade, and the failures of the next bunch of years would turn it undeniably into the past. That moment from that night, Orosco striking out Barrett, was now something you had to reach back for. It wasn't part of the present the way it seemed to be for the previous five years. It wasn't immediately accessible. From October 27, 1986 to October 27, 1991, I just kind of assumed it was an option. You know what we should do? We should win another World Series. Why don't we just do that? Instead, it was a point of reference from another time, just the way 1969 became by the mid-'70s.

The Mets have been in one World Series since 1986, not winning in 2000. Every season is an individual entity now, so it's tough to say how far we are from another trip. Three years ago, we were an inning away. As 2010 approaches, it would appear we are light years from returning, but it's not necessarily like it was in '84, '85 and '86. You're never really sure whether you're building toward something or falling apart. For all you can fathom, you're a couple of moves from surprising everybody — including yourselves — right away. The Mets weren't supposed to land so far from the World Series in 2009. Maybe they're closer to the next one than we know.

Maybe not. We'll have to find out.

Boy, I'd love to have another October 27, 1986, another moment of ultimate satisfaction that hits me quickly, sinks in slowly, stays with me continuously for months on end and seems like part of the present for years thereafter. When fans of other teams want to taunt you, they hit you with the year you last won if it's been a while. No doubt, it's been a while. Fourteen different franchises have won World Series since we last did. There are so many other years that have transpired between 1986 and now, making it from another time several times over. You don't just reach back for it. You gotta stretch behind you as far as you can...and then you probably need a pretty long stick from there just to touch it.

Yet you can't taunt me with 1986. You can only delight me. Sure, I wish it weren't 23 going on 24 years ago. Sure, I wish a few more like it had materialized since. I wish we were playing for another one this week, not just grumbling in the general direction of those who are. Them's the breaks, though. Winning a World Series is hard, as we learn again and again. Just getting to the playoffs is harder than it looks, too, at least for us. If there weren't a severe degree of difficulty attached to achieving that which is so extraordinarily satisfying, a moment like that which took place October 27, 1986 — when Orosco struck out Barrett and the Mets became champions of baseball — wouldn't glow so brightly from then to now the way it does.

And it does.

Congratulations to the 2009 American League champions. They invested well and they followed through. They made the Twins and Angels look like the Nationals and Mets. They earned what they've achieved to date.

That said, both World Series teams, particularly their fan bases, are loathsome, and I'd like to see both of them lose.

Of course I want the Yankees to lose more. Of course, of course, of course. If you went to Villanova or live in South Jersey, I understand if you feel differently. If you've had ultra-unpleasant experiences in the city of Philadelphia and all you want is for those people who inflicted them on you to feel disappointment, that's absolutely valid.

I have to confess I was surprised by the level of vehemence toward the Phillies vis-à-vis choosing sides in the comments accompanying Jason's call to arms. I was present for 2007 and 2008. I hated the Phillies a whole lot for taking what the Mets let them have. I wasn't crazy about them in 2009 either, but they won the National League pennant without our being much involved on their march. They're an abstraction in my Met life at this point.

The Yankees are omnipresent. Their fans are omnipresent. I'm a New Yorker and a Mets fan. That doesn't jibe with a desire to see the Yankees succeed. Not one I could possibly conjure anyway.

It wouldn't matter who they were playing: the '09 Phillies, the '99 Braves, a hypothetical grouping of '85 Cardinals and '69 Cubs...I hate the Yankees. I hate the Phillies, just not nearly as much and for not nearly as long. Someday the Phillies will suck again and we won't care about them any more than we care on a given day about any particular National League opponent. The Yankees will still be the Yankees.

Eternal beats transitory most every time.

Either way, the Mets lost 92 games. It's not our battle — just our headache for the next four to seven games and during whichever parade whose brass bands we're unfortunate enough to overhear.

Welcome to Flashback Friday: I Saw The Decade End, a milestone-anniversary salute to the New York Mets of 1969, 1979, 1989 and 1999. Each week, we immerse ourselves in or at least touch upon something that transpired within the Metsian realm 40, 30, 20 or 10 years ago. Amazin' or not, here it comes.

Let others, for now, stew over what would be the worst World Series outcome possible. A Phillie repeat? A Yankee return? One is a kick in the head. The other is a kick in the groin. The key word here is kick; the key result is pain. Don't sweat it. Perspire, instead, over this baseball conundrum:

Which was the worst Mets season ever: 1979 or 1993?

Why ask? Besides, "Why not?" Well, as part of this year's salute to the way Met decades have ended, I've intermittently alighted on 1979, inevitably pointing out its seemingly limitless depths of despair. The bottom line with '79 is always that it represented the bottom of the barrel. Yet I know it shares that barrel bottom with another Mets season, 1993, a year whose chronic shame I've managed to recurringly harp on with and without the impetus of an obvious Flashback angle. I've been pissed off at both of them for ages. Hence, to me and to history, 1979 and 1993 go together in dreggy fashion the way that 1969 sits alongside 1986 at the top of the Met heap.

Yet I see no point in choosing between world championships to determine which one of those was better. They're both great, they're both awesome, they're both unsurpassed — even by one another. When you only have two world championships, there's no point in slighting one to honor the other. They're like our kidneys. I don't want to do anything to damage either.

Worst on the other hand...I know either '79 or '93 must take the dishonors, I'm just not sure which. That's what we're going to try to determine here today.

Those years are our only two choices, by the way. This is not an open-ended question like Jason's September query regarding most disappointing Mets season. I'm not looking for nuance here. I don't seek to delineate disappointing from devastating. I'm not looking to calibrate my definition of worst. When I say worst, I mean worst, as in so thuddingly bad you don't have to think about it.

And there are only two candidates. There's 1979. There's 1993. That's it. There can be no other.

Not grisly 2003.
Not mortifying 2002.
Not dismal 1996.
Not wretched 1992.
Not godforsaken 1982.
Not abominable 1977 (treacherous, but at least Seaver was around for some of it).
Not hideous 1967 (dispiriting, but at least Seaver was around for all of it).
Not the 40-120, 51-111, 53-109, 50-112 quadfecta of 1962-65.

No, not even 2009, a six-month Met nightmare whose misery only Mets fans could find a way to extend without the benefit of actual playoff participation.

2009 continues to be the essence of crummy. I hated it. You hated it. We all hated it. The wounds are too fresh not to still be ruing. Yet 2009 was the bleeping Catalina Wine Mixer when juxtaposed with our loathsome finalists. 2009? We were in first place in May. We were a game out in July. We entertained vaguely plausible Wild Card hopes as we entered August.

Don't give me 2009. Don't give me 2003. Don't give me 1992. Don't give me 1977. And I won't accept anything from before 1969.

Y'know why? Because no Met years compare to 1979 and 1993 for utter badness, total despair, relentless hopelessness and a crystal-clear indication that the end time was nigh. You could compare and contrast 1979 and 1993 with other losing propositions, and maybe some other season would sneak ahead on points and make a case as worse than the Dyspeptic Duo...but that's won't be necessary, for I've done my own unique brand of intensive research to narrow down our choices to two.

Here is what was involved:

1) I lived through 1979 as a Mets fan.
2) I lived through 1993 as a Mets fan.
3) I survived.

I know about Worst Teams That Money Could Buy. I know about Tom Seaver and Dave Kingman being traded. I know Grant Roberts, Mark Corey and Tony Tarasco were allegedly high on everything but performance. But those are early-round losers from my perspective. They were bad, but they weren't super bad. They weren't 1979 bad or 1993 bad.

Only 1979 and 1993 answer to those fetid descriptions.

Saturday Night Live once did a game show sketch called ¿Quién es Mas Macho? in which the object was to determine which Latin leading man was the most manly. Por ejemplo, Ricardo Montalban or Fernando Lamas? It is in that spirit that we now present our own take on the concept: ¿Cuál es Mas Mal?

That is to ask, which is more bad: 1979 or 1993?

We wish both our entrants the worst possible luck.

RECORD
The most simple measurement is to look at wins and losses. The '79 club went a horrendous 63-99, the worst Mets mark since 1967, when the Mets could still be reasonably excused for being at the tail-end of their expansion mode. The '93 team went 59-103, worst Mets mark since the last of the original (if pardonable) dark days of 1965. As a bonus, the '93 Mets sank from 8-7 to 21-52 at one point, never winning as many as two consecutive games — that's two months of 13-45 baseball, a clip worse than Casey Stengel's first Mets club registered for all of 1962. Records don't say everything where awfulness is concerned. No record was worse than 1962's and I'm told, all things considered, it wasn't so bad. The records sure as hell say something here.

Mas Mal Record: 1993

OUTLOOK
The 1993 Mets were actually considered a contender in the National League East that spring. The conventional wisdom was they were hamstrung by injuries in '92, and all their high-priced talent would surely bounce back from what had to be an aberrational annum (you might want to file that sort of appraisal away for when you start hearing it from men named Wilpon and Minaya this winter). There was nothing but doom predicted for the 1979 Mets. They were awful in '78, they'd be at least just as bad. Hence, one team lived down to its perceived capabilities, one crashed versus expectations. Maybe it's a personal preference, but I'd rather have a little false hope going into April. I can always get depressed later.

Mas Mal Outlook: 1979

SAGGING START
After an exhilarating 10-6 win on Opening Day, the Post's back page snorted that the Mets were in first. Ha-ha, big joke. The Mets would climb to 2-0 and stay tied for the top spot. After five games, they were 3-2, a game behind the front-running Expos. And that would be that for winning records in 1979. Before another victory could be chalked up, a six-game losing streak would ensue. The die was cast for another lousy season. Fourteen years later, the Mets had their way with the brand new Colorado Rockies to start 1993. Their 2-0 start was spoiled when they were swept at home by the Astros. Well, those things happen. The Mets went to Denver, took two in a row and appeared righted. They lost the finale, but couldn't beat the Rockies like a drum forever. Two wins in Cincinnati was more like it. The Mets were 6-4...and would never be as many as two games over .500 again. It took 17 games to establish a losing record, 22 games (8-14) to signify something was really off about 1993. They had the same mark the '79 Mets had at the same juncture.

Mas Mal Sagging Start: Push

SIGNAL EVENTS
You knew it was going to be dreadful in 1979 when Charles Shipman Payson, widower of Joan, declared he'd had enough and planned to sell the team out from under his daughter Lorinda. Why, you might wonder, was that dreadful? Good Mets fans everywhere prayed for new ownership. The dreadful part was that Charles, who was uninvolved in operation of the team, revealed he was a Red Sox fan. Good bleeping god, the guy who technically sort of owns the team doesn't even root for the team. More tangibly, the Mets played games of fourteen, eleven and twelve innings versus Montreal in early April and lost each of them. Over in 1993, while Bobby Bonilla was etching his personal aesthetic onto the schedule by threatening to show Worst Team co-author Bob Klapisch one borough or another, Eddie Murray was grumbling early and often that umpires were out to get him. They were indeed ejecting him at home plate for arguing and not getting out of his line of sight at second base when he requested. Eddie Murray had come to the Mets the year before with a reputation as one of the revered players in the game. Now he couldn't get a break from the men in blue. If a surefire Hall of Famer couldn't be cut slack, what Met would be?

Mas Mal Signal Events: 1993

ROSTER PHILOSOPHY
The 1993 Mets were loaded with credentials coming out of St. Lucie, even if those credentials had been cheapened in 1992. Murray, Bonilla, Coleman, Saberhagen, Gooden, Johnson, Franco, good old Sid Fernandez, newly minted Met Tony Fernandez, even ancient Frank Tanana — All-Stars every one of 'em...some even recently. The 1979 Mets were built on the cheap. How cheap? So cheap Joe Torre wasn't permitted to keep his own Tanana, Nelson Briles, who came with a price tag of $60,000 — which wasn't a lot, not even then. Forget your extravagances, Joe: It's rookies and perpetual prospects for the '79ers. Even Dick Young mentioned in print and on TV how cheap the Mets had gotten. Dick Young!

Mas Mal Roster Philosophy: 1979

APOCALYPTIC EPISODE
The 1993 Mets fired their manager in May and their general manager in July. The 1979 Mets honored Pete Rose in April. Jeff Torborg and Al Harazin deserved what they got. Pete Rose did not.

Mas Mal Apocalyptic Episode: 1979

UNWANTED ATTENTION
The 1993 Mets became a local joke early and a national joke late. There was all the losing. There were all the hijinks, most notorious among them Vince Coleman's firecracker. There was more losing. There was record-setting losing. At the point when they should have faded into obscurity, David Letterman debuted his CBS show and made the Mets his go-to punchline. Jay Leno, meanwhile, had Anthony Young on to commemorate the end of his losing streak. The 1979 Mets, on the other hand, disappeared quickly. Nobody expected a thing out of them and they delivered. Call me a masochist, but I prefer existing, even horribly, to completely evaporating. Nevertheless, there's something to be said for keeping your losing to yourself.

Mas Mal Unwanted Attention: 1993

FREAK INJURIES
Lee Mazzilli was the only Met regularly exceeding expectations in 1979. Thus, we shuddered when Dan Norman ran smack into him and Lee required a stretcher. Nothing terrible came of it, fortunately (except for the realization that that was the hardest hitting Dan Norman would ever do as a Met). In 1993, Vince Coleman's backswing of a golf club in the clubhouse (well, it is a clubhouse) nailed Doc Gooden in the ear. Tony Fernandez missed time with a kidney stone. He was traded for Darrin Jackson, a dependable outfielder in other stops. With the Mets, he contracted a thyroid condition called Graves Disease, an affliction made famous by Barbara Bush that same year. Those were the kinds of things that happened to 1993 Mets, who played like former First Ladies — though perhaps without as much guts.

Mas Mal Freak Injuries: 1993

DESOLATION
788,905. For as long as I live, I will know the 1979 Mets home attendance. I had time to count it. The 1993 attendance was respectable on paper (seven figures, anyway) because it was the first year the N.L. used the phony A.L. method counting tickets sold. Lots of tickets sold to Shea Stadium in 1993 went unused. Somebody told me her temple was having a charity auction. When four box seats to a Mets-Dodgers came up for bid, there was awkward silence then nervous laughter. The '93 Mets weren't even a good charity case. But somebody actually bought those tickets in the first place, even if nobody wanted them later. No religion would have blessed the 1979 Mets, not even the really compassionate ones.

Mas Mal Desolation: 1979

PEER PRESSURE
Variations on "Mets suck, you suck" were well in vogue before 1979. Like we didn't realize that. It stung more in high school than it would in adulthood. It was said in more polite terms among adults, but the 1993 comprehension that the Mets sucked all over again and, that on some level, we would have to bear the brunt of their suckiness was not welcome. As a grown-up, I was more pitied than mocked. Plus the Yankee thing was just revving up in '93. In '79, they were coming off two world championships. Did I mention high school?

Mas Mal Peer Pressure: 1979

ICON OF AWFULNESS
Richie Hebner didn't want to be a 1979 Met. He made it clear in advance he didn't want to be a 1979 Met. So the Mets went out and traded for him. He never stopped not wanting to be a 1979 Met. His words and deeds affirmed it. Vince Coleman didn't want to be a baseball player or a responsible citizen from the looks of how he behaved. He would have been a vile presence on any team. Throwing the firecracker at a girl in the Dodger Stadium parking lot was the last straw. He was whisked from active duty and eventually released. Richie Hebner gave Mets fans the two-armed salute when booed. He was maintained for the balance of the season before being traded to Detroit. Boy, this is a tough one. Both were incredible a-holes. I'd say nobody got literally burned by Hebner, but that doesn't take into account psyches. Honestly, this is like choosing between the Phillies and the Yankees in the thus-far hypothetical 2009 World Series.

Mas Mal Icon Of Awfulness: Push

HORRIBLE PITCHER
Frank Tanana couldn't break glass. Eric Hillman couldn't crease Saran Wrap. Mike Maddux simply couldn't get anybody out. But when you're talking pitching on the 1993 Mets, you're talking Anthony Young, 1-16. Yes, a hard-luck 1-16, but it couldn't all be luck. Sometimes you make your own luck. AY manufactured 27 consecutive losses over two seasons. He had a hand in them, certainly. In 1979, Pete Falcone compiled a 6-14 record, as we learned he had concentration problems on the mound. I wonder what else he had to think about besides the batter and the three runners he put on base. Still, he won six games; Wayne Twitchell won five; Dale Murray, the master of disaster, won four. How could Anthony Young not win even one for almost two years?

Mas Mal Horrible Pitcher: 1993

EMBLEM OF EMBARRASSMENT
The 1979 Mets gave the world Mettle the Mule. He was paraded around the warning track before the games and was supposed to deliver clean baseballs to the umpires during games. As if those baseballs would have remained clean had this harebrained scheme actually been implemented. The de Roulet daughters, promotional geniuses behind Mettle, actually wanted to use batting practice balls in games. Would have saved money, never mind that it wasn't up to code. The 1993 Mets did not bother any animals, except when Bret Saberhagen filled his toy rifle with Clorox and pumped it in the direction of a pack of beat writers. Hey, maybe Whitney and Bebe could have bleached the used balls white!

Mas Mal Emblem Of Embarrassment: 1979

ALL-STAR REPRESENTATION
Lee Mazzilli was the fleeting feelgood story of the '79 Mets. His appearance in the All-Star Game was the year's highlight: a game-tying home run off Ron Guidry, a game-winning walk off Jim Kern. And John Stearns was in attendance at the Kingdome to cheer him on. The '93 Mets were represented at Camden Yards by Bobby Bonilla. None of us particularly cared if he ever came back.

Mas Mal All-Star Representation: 1993

DIMMING LUMINARY FROM A BETTER TIME
The '93 Mets still had three '86 Mets in the house: Doc, Sid, HoJo. Gooden, then 28, wasn't what he was, but he was still pretty good considering his supporting cast: 12-15, 3.45 ERA. The only 1969 Met hanging in there in 1979, was Ed Kranepool. Eddie, 34, unwittingly played his last game on September 30, going out a .232 hitter and .162 pinch-hitter.

Mas Mal Dimming Luminary From A Better Time: 1979

YOUTH OF AMERICA
You couldn't tell much from their first-year performances, but four 1979 rookie Mets would go on to make quite an impact, if not necessarily as Mets. Mike Scott would be a Met bane; Neil Allen would be Met bait that snagged Keith Hernandez; Jeff Reardon would become a first-class closer elsewhere; and young Jesse Orosco, pitching in relief Opening Day only because of how cheap the Mets were, would close out another season down the line and make one of the longest-lasting impressions in major league history. Some rookie 1993 Mets weren't necessarily as futile as their veteran counterparts: future one-hitter twirler Bobby Jones, eventual contributor Butch Huskey and slugging outfielder Jeromy Burnitz (who, alas, slugged more consistently in other uniforms). The downside of the '79 youth movement was shoving an underdone Kelvin Chapman into the starting lineup at second base. He'd return somewhat seasoned in '84 and be of some value. 1993 not ready for prime timers Doug Saunders and Tito Navarro (91 plate appearances between them and exactly 1 RBI) never returned and nobody missed them.

Mas Mal Youth Of America: 1993

HIDDEN GEMS AMONG THE DROSS
Craig Swan never developed into the second coming of Tom Seaver, but he put up 14 wins and gave Joe Torre 251 innings in '79, both career highs. After some early struggles, Jeff Kent began to emerge as one of the harder-hitting middle infielders in the National League in 1993, finishing with 21 homers and 80 RBI. Swannie, 28, we knew about, so it was hard to consider his quality season a diamond in the rough. Kent, 25 and already annoying his teammates, was indeed something of a revelation. Torre would also get better as a manager, but his improvement didn't net us even as much as a washed-up Carlos Baerga for our troubles.

Mas Mal Hidden Gems Among The Dross: 1979

POINTLESS TRANSACTIONS
Early in the 1979 season, the Mets gave the Pirates their shortstop Tim Foli in exchange for Frank Taveras. Foli would win a ring — and was praised as the "glue" of the Pittsburgh infield ad nauseum throughout the postseason. I saw Taveras strike out five times on night in May. The big trading deadline move in 1979 was bringing in two veteran pitchers, Dock Ellis and Andy Hassler. They couldn't have been of less use. Later, a deteriorating Willie Montañez was shipped to Texas for soft tosser Ed Lynch, a likable, articulate righty who nonetheless kept the Mets from winning their division in 1985 by duking it out with Mariano Duncan of the Dodgers in September and messing up his shoulder in the process. The '93 Mets gave up on Tony Fernandez because Dallas Green thought he was jakin' it. Tony Fernandez, like Tim Foli, was a World Series winner in the October that followed his trade from the Mets. It reflected badly on us, but it's not like trading him was the reason we weren't also in the World Series that October.

Mas Mal Pointless Transactions: 1979

SAVING GRACES
Anthony Young was in line for his 28th consecutive loss on July 28 when Ryan Thompson rescued him in the bottom of the ninth by driving in the game-tying run against the Marlins, and Eddie Murray ended his misery at 27 straight defeats by banging a walkoff double to score Thompson. Final: Mets 5 Marlins 4 Young WP (1-13). You'd have thought the 1993 Mets had just won...well, maybe not the World Series, but for a second, you could imagine everything didn't suck so resoundingly. The 1979 Mets established a club record by scoring ten times in one inning against the Reds on June 12. That was astounding and terrific, naturally, yet it's always bothered me slightly that Sergio Ferrer was robbed by third baseman Ray Knight to end the barrage. Little Sergio, as Steve Albert called him, went 0-for-7 on the season, the final seven at-bats of his career. At least Knight would make it up to us down the road.

Mas Mal Saving Graces: 1979

WEIRD-ASS GAMES
1993 gave us a no-hitter (against the Mets, in case you weren't sure); a 17-inning 1-0 game won by Kenny Greer, who never pitched as a Met before or after that seventeenth inning; and a rain delay that was waited out in the bottom of the ninth of the 162nd game between the sixth-place Marlins and seventh-place Mets even though the score was 9-2 — even though there were 200 losses already on the field. But these bizarro occurrences had nothing on 1979, which saw 1) a game in April in which four strike-replacement umpires conferred for nearly half an hour before ruling that Jack Clark caught a line drive from Lee Mazzilli, reversing themselves twice in the process; 2) a game in May that was fogged out in the eleventh inning and ruled a tie after Bill Robinson literally couldn't find a Joel Youngblood triple; and 3) a game in August in which Ed Kranepool left the field thinking it was over...but it wasn't, because Frank Taveras had called time before what appeared to be the 27th out. The 1979 Mets went 2-0-1 in their weird-ass games. The 1993 Mets went 2-1.

Mas Mal Weird-Ass Games: 1993

PROMOTIONAL EVENTS
The 1969 Mets reunited for the first time at 1979's Old Timers Day. Fireworks Night came to Shea for the first time the same year. With the 1993 Mets, you were just happy somebody didn't fling an explosive directly at you.

Mas Mal Promotional Events: 1993

FANTASTIC FINISH
The 1979 Mets needed to win all six of their final games to avoid losing 100 games. They somehow did it. The 1993 Mets mostly needed the season to end, but they, too, won their final six. In doing so, they avoided setting quite possibly the dumbest record ever: most losses by an established franchise in an expansion year. By going 59-103, the '93 Mets were only as bad — not worse than — the 1962 Cubs. Of course by going 59-103, the '62 Cubs finished 18 games ahead of the 40-120 1962 Mets. The '93 Mets finished five games behind the expansion Marlins and languished in seventh place the only time a National League Eastern Division team could do so. I was happy we didn't lose 100 games in 1979. I sort of hoped we'd set that expansion year record. It would have been fitting.

Mas Mal Fantastic Finish: 1993

LONG-TERM IMPLICATIONS
Seven years after their respective debacles, the teams that had been the 1979 Mets and 1993 Mets were each in a World Series. Orosco became an '86er; Franco and Jones made it to 2000. The Annus Horribilis of '79 did get the team sold in 1980, to a group that rebuilt the franchise into a viable entity, contender and champion. The trauma of '93 made ownership more image-conscious, if nothing else. Poor behavior was frowned upon and fan-friendliness — the institution of the DynaMets Dash and the return of Mr. Met — was in vogue. The team would improve on the field in '94 and then alternately backslide and rise until '97 when Bobby Valentine revved them up for a sustained late '90s pennant run. Joe Torre's succeeding Mets clubs fell well short of contention, as did George Bamberger's and Frank Howard's. It took five years and Davey Johnson to right the ship.

Mas Mal Long-Term Implications: Push

VIBE
Which felt worse? In a way, 1979, hands down. The Mets were in clear descent through '77 and '78, yet '79 — despite a record similar to its ungodly predecessors — felt several steps lower. There was just a barrenness to it that no other Mets year has ever evinced. They were expected to do nothing and they did it comprehensively. Fans from that era can recite the roster staples by rote almost: Mazzilli, Henderson, Stearns, Taveras, Flynn, Youngblood, Swan, Zachry. We rooted for them despite our better judgment. We indulge them in retrospect because they gave us our stripes for when better times came around. We try to forget the Hebners, the Elliot Maddoxes, the Jose Cardenals, the journeymen who didn't seem thrilled to play for us. Then again, the 1993 Mets were pockmarked by guys like that: Chico Walker, Ced Landrum, Jeff Kaiser, Paul Gibson and so on. Less wattage, to be sure. Sadly, the Murrays, Bonillas, Saberhagens and Colemans gave off the same kind of light. Everybody was a journeyman in 1993, no matter how accomplished. The two years before '93 were bad, but they in no way prepared us for the plunge we would take. It was a whole new kind of bad. Perhaps because a World Series wouldn't be won anytime soon thereafter, it doesn't seem as roguishly charming as '79. In a way, it's 1993, hands down, as feeling worse.

Mas Mal Vibe: Push

Conclusion? These were the two worst years the Mets have ever had. To say one is worse than the other is to implicitly pardon the one you don't choose. Neither deserves to be remembered as better than any other.

But at least the Angels are still alive.

At last, the Daily News learns how to spell the name of a 300-game winner correctly — read Jesse Spector's Q&A with Jason and me here.

For a fan base that fancies itself the carriers of the You Gotta Believe legacy, we are making me sick.

Yankees? Phillies?

Yeech. Phooey.

You gotta believe in something better than the infinitesimal lesser of two enormous evils.

You gotta believe, if only for another night, in the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim still have their wings. They play tonight. They need our support. I'd given up on them in defense against onrushing disappointment, but I now realize I was too early and that it is not too late.

Prepare yourself. You know it's a must. Gotta have a friend in Aybar, in Figgins, in Lackey. Gotta line up on the side of the Angels. For you, it's a matter of contingency. For me, it's a matter of faith.

In the summer of 2002, my cat Casey died. I was miserable. He became, for the next several months, my spirit in the sky...my angel, if you will. I communicated with him there as best I could. He may not have been in a position to listen, but I had faith he was up there somewhere. Come October, after we found the strength to give Casey's brother Bernie a new companion named Hozzie, Stephanie and I and our cats discovered together the Anaheim Angels. The Anaheim Avenging Angels. The Angels avenged four consecutive horrible Octobers by clipping the wings off the Yankees in only four American League Division Series games. We all felt good about them.

The Angels made the World Series. I watched as they lined up for Game One in Anaheim. Maybe they'd been doing this all year or maybe it was just something they picked up for the occasion, but their stadium public address system played, in a loop, the introduction to "Spirit In The Sky" by Norman Greenbaum, the song I had quietly dedicated to Casey after he ascended to wherever he ascended.

That's why the Angels are my favorite American League team. That's why I was thrilled all out of proportion when they won the 2002 World Series. That's why I will not give up on them just yet.

You gotta believe in something. Believe in the Angels. Believe in them tonight.

My fellow Mets fans,

Tonight we gather neither in triumph nor in joy. Rather, we have assembled out of necessity, driven by the need to oppose a deep-seated evil. Tonight we must make choices that will not sit well with any of us. Tonight we must make choices between unpalatable courses of action. Tonight we must do what many of us, in all honor, once swore we would not.

These are not easy times. We have been bested on the field of battle and outmaneuvered in the arena of ideas. Our fires have been banked, damped by misfortune and miscalculation. For now, our yesterdays are brighter than our tomorrows. We may mourn that we have come to this pass, yet we stand here nonetheless.

And here, stand we must. We have proven unfit to play a role in the combat about to unfold before us. Yet this grim judgment, however impartial its verdict, must not lead us to reject our larger calling, or to turn aside from our unhappy duty. We are bystanders, yet our voices must be heard. We are reluctant, yet we must commit.

We have profound differences with our league-mates to the south. It would be the stuff of childish fantasy not to acknowledge this. We abhor their Hawaiian braggadocio. We reject their penchant for domestic violence. We disdain the partisan yowling of their maroon rabble. To offer them fellowship runs counter to all we profess and everything we hold dear. We are neither friends nor allies. It is only wisdom to state this clearly, calmly and without apology.

Yet wisdom is nothing without a sense of proportion. We must not profess blindness citing the mote in our eye, while ignoring the beam that would blot out the light for all. Our neighborly disagreements are profound and the canyon between us is deep. Yet deeper still lies the chasm into which we now both stare.

My friends, there is another evil loose in our nation, one that makes the misdeeds of our league-mates in maroon look small. We have a greater enemy, and a higher calling. This greater enemy gilds all that it touches in gold, then scorns those who can afford only brass. This greater enemy gathers mercenaries and reprobates and evildoers to its banner, and declares them paragons. This greater enemy declares that pitchers shall not hit. This greater enemy conflates arrogance with tradition, and bequeathed wealth with hard-earned success. This greater enemy is attended by a howling mob that knows neither reason nor humility nor decency.

This greater enemy cares not for our disagreements and disputes, real though they are. Twenty-six times has this foe bred a vile plague, one that reduced our nation to lifelessness and blighted all that we hold dear. Though we are not allowed to fight, neither are we required to adjourn in silence. We must lift our voices against tyranny, though we would have chosen most any other champion. We must shout down injustice, though our voices cannot conjure fairness. We must oppose a great evil even if it means supporting a paltry good. We have been called, and however reluctantly, we must answer. It has fallen to us to do what must be done, and to heed a summons we would pretend not to hear.

My friends, this too will pass, and the banner of the blue and orange will fly once again in triumph. I eagerly await that day, and the restoration of all that is just and proper. As do all of you. But for now, we must serve a more difficult cause, and we must do so with all we can wring from our reluctant hearts. This is necessity. This is obligation. This is duty.

My friends, the conflict we wish had never come to pass is upon us now. Join with me. Say the words we would rather bite back. Say them firmly, and clearly, with loud voices, though none of us possesses a glad heart. Say them with me now, and we will face these difficult days together.

ICH BIN EIN PHILLIE.

Welcome to a special Wednesday edition of Flashback Friday: I Saw The Decade End, a milestone-anniversary salute to the New York Mets of 1969, 1979, 1989 and 1999. Each week, we immerse ourselves in or at least touch upon something that transpired within the Metsian realm 40, 30, 20 or 10 years ago. Amazin' or not, here it comes.

In the span of six summer days in 1989, the Mets traded Mookie Wilson and Berke Breathed stopped drawing Bloom County. Both entities had been a staple of my life over the previous nine years.

That's it, I thought at the time, the '80s are really ending.

I loved Opus the penguin. I loved Mookie the centerfielder. Many fine things happened to me in their time. Yet I was never crazy about the 1980s as a decade. I always I was loitering in them with a visitor's pass. Josh Wilker of Cardboard Gods articulated my feelings on these artificially arranged ten-year periods almost exactly earlier this year when he wrote:

I am a citizen of the 1970s. I have resided in other decades, but I have always felt like a foreigner within them, or have mostly ignored them altogether, an expatriate with no interest in participating in the local customs.

Like Josh, I'm at home in the '70s, a structure I entered at age 7 and exited by chronological necessity the day after I turned 17. No matter how much that decade objectively sucked, it will always be where I live, psychically (sort of like Shea Stadium). When I was forced to leave figurative home on January 1, 1980, I was at a loss. Never mind that it was during the 1980s that I graduated from high school, graduated from college, met my future wife and came of age in all those ways a person naturally embraces. I just disliked it being the '80s. The values, the politics, the hair...I don't know what it was, I was just deep-down uncomfortable with what surrounded me for ten years and was tangibly relieved when I crossed the finish line to January 1, 1990.

I've had nothing against the '90s or the '00s, per se. You get older, you don't delineate decades as reflexively. I once asked my dad what the '60s were like. He shrugged. To him, I suspect, they were just years during which he was over thirty. Hell, some days feel so random that if Christmas is mentioned, I can't remember without thinking first whether we're closer to the last one or the next one.

Maybe I resented that when the '70s ended, nobody asked me to sign off on the '80s. Thus, I mistrusted them — but it's not like I didn't enjoy a good bit of them. For instance, I enjoyed Bloom County on the comics pages. "Come On Eileen" was a great song. SCTV was a great show. And the Mets were never better as a long-term proposition.

When we think of the Mets of the '80s, we tend to jump right to one particular year, 1986, and one particular month, October. Of course that was the height of the decade and, arguably, the franchise. From the standpoint of kicking ass, which is the idea in sports (and a pretty big societal priority in the '80s), nothing in the annals of Mets baseball touches 1986. Members Only jackets, Trickle Down economics, the staggering popularity of The Cosby Show...lots made me cringe back then, but I had no complaints with the baseball back then.

When the Mets were at the top, it was unimaginable they wouldn't stay there. Mookie Wilson himself, about as humble a "Bad Guy" as that team featured, stood before the City Hall ceremonies that capped their ticker-tape parade and exclaimed a hope we would all take as an implied guarantee:

1986: Year of the Mets!
1987: Year of the Mets!
1988: Year of the Mets!

Of course. Of course there'd be more than one year for these Mets. There'd be year after year. The Mets of the '80s were built to last. That they didn't make '87 or '88 their years in the same sense as '86 didn't lessen the sense that it was their time. The Mets ran a contest in 1989 encouraging fans to submit designs for a secondary logo, one that commemorated the previous half-decade. The Mets had baseball's best record from 1984 through 1988. They were, according to their own marketing acumen, excellent again and again...so draw something!

Met hubris wasn't easily detected by us Mets fans in the last year of the 1980s because it was a way of life. We were in the middle of it, so how could we see it for what it was? We could be asked to create logos celebrating our quasi-achievements and accept the challenge with a straight face. We could read profiles such as that which appeared in a high-flying business magazine called Manhattan Inc. informing us that the Mets were "the IBM of baseball" and be confident of receiving perennial returns on our investment. We could watch a Cy Young winner like Dwight Gooden go down with an injury at the beginning of July and calmly accept as his replacement another Cy Young winner like Frank Viola at the end of July.

We were the Mets. We were excellent. We would be, repeatedly. Everything and everybody said so.

Then we traded Mookie Wilson.

With him went our would-be magnum opus of a decade. Well, him and Wally Backman, traded the December before; him and Lenny Dykstra and Roger McDowell, sent to Philadelphia in June; him and Rick Aguilera, part of the payment for Viola; him and Lee Mazzilli, waived the same frenzied night that Frankie V was acquired and Mookie W was shipped to Toronto for Jeff Musselman.

The Mets traded Mookie Wilson for Jeff Musselman. Next time you watch a clip of Mookie hustling down the first base line during Game Six of the 1986 World Series, try to think of anything Jeff Musselman did in a Mets uniform or could have conceivably done that would make a trade of Mookie Wilson for Jeff Musselman sound remotely reasonable.

You'll be thinking an awful long while.

The last year of the 1980s was truly a last gasp for the Mets of the 1980s the way we remember them. Gary Carter and Keith Hernandez, each 35 and hobbled, were still on hand but had faded badly in '89. Mex hit .233, Kid .183. Neither played in even half of the team's games. Both would bid adieu to Shea at season's end twice: on the field to standing ovations in the team's last home game on September 27 and at a press conference in the old Jets locker room on October 3.

Kid:

"I can still play this game, and I know there'll be an opportunity out there. But these have been five great years. I heard the cheers and I heard the boos, and I like the cheers a lot more. Maybe I'll hear more of them.''

Mex:

''It's sad because these have been six-and-a-half great years, and I'll always be a New Yorker and a New York Met. But then come the cold realities. You can't retire at 65 in baseball.''

That left Doc and Darryl as the 1986 stalwarts who would lead the Mets into the new decade. Darling, Fernandez, Ojeda, HoJo, Teufel and Elster were the only other veterans of the World Series team to see 1990 in blue and orange. The '90 Mets would contend to the final week of the season but fall short. They'd also be the last Mets team to finish over .500 until 1997. The IBM of baseball went bust.

Mookie Wilson wasn't exactly igniting the 1989 Mets toward an encore as division champion when he was traded. Having ceded centerfield to the cleverly obtained Juan Samuel, Mookie was batting .205 as a reserve and the Mets were seven games out of first when he was cut loose. That said, you don't trade Mookie Wilson from the Mets. You just don't.

And if you do, you don't trade him for Jeff Musselman.

The Mets, despite an encouraging August surge, fell flat in September. They finished in second place, six games behind the Cubs, at 87-75. It was a respectable record for mere peons, but these were the alleged paragons of Excellence Again and Again. All those moves were supposed to be the stuff of a forward-thinking IBM-type enterprise, one for which progress was paramount. Yet the 1989 Mets signaled a return to mediocrity. They were a huge disappointment in real time, the first Mets club to not win at least 90 games since 1983.

Even for someone who never fully embraced the decade in which they occurred, 1983 and 1989 make for fascinating '80s Met bookends. If you checked out of Metsdom after their seventh consecutive losing season in '83, you'd walk away thinking the '80s were and always would be a terrible time to be a Mets fan. The team started the decade with the last four of those losing seasons, showing only intermittent promise that things would ever get better. By the middle of 1983, mired in last place with a record of 37-65 (their worst 102-game mark since 1965), there seemed no tangible progress on which to hang one's Mets cap. The Mets' marketing slogans in those dark days — The Magic Is Back; The Magic Is Real; Now The Fun Starts — could have been brought up as evidence in a false-advertising lawsuit. It was all talk and no action...except for the losing that wouldn't stop.

Then it began to stop. Not enough to save the 1983 Mets from their fifth last-place finish in seven seasons, but enough to propel them to a final record of 68-94 — if one could be said to be propelled to a record that encompasses 94 losses. It was better than it sounds. The Mets won 31 of 60 in their final two months. Two months of winning baseball was an accomplishment for those Mets. Winning 68 games was an accomplishment for those Mets. It was the most they'd won since the 86 they posted in 1976. These were baby steps, but longer strides awaited in 1984, when 90 victories became the norm and success would become expected.

As viewers of this decade's greatest television drama Six Feet Under will recall from the episode in which Nate Fisher began to fade badly, the ecotone is that space where two environments overlap. For the Mets of the '80s, 1983 and 1989 were most ecotonic.

Look at your 1983 Mets. They started the season with Tom Seaver pitching, Ron Hodges catching and Dave Kingman in the infield. That's how they ended the 1975 season. Everybody was happy to have Seaver back, but still — Hodges, Kingman, Craig Swan, Rusty Staub, Mike Jorgensen, John Stearns...does this sound like a team that was about to turn a corner? Or relics uncovered during Shea's 1980 refurbishing?

Ah, but Mookie Wilson was there. So was Wally Backman, albeit in a limited role. Doug Sisk made the Opening Day roster (winning what Seaver started). Darryl Strawberry was called up in early May. Ron Darling was given his first start in September. Danny Heep pinch-hit most reliably. Neil Allen, a reliever whose welcome had clearly worn out, was famously traded in June for Keith Hernandez, not only solving first base and the third slot in the batting order, but clearing the closer role for a rapidly developing Jesse Orosco. By the end of 1983, fully one-third of the 1986 World Series roster was in place. The torch was being passed to a new generation of Mets.

Six years later, once Hernandez and Carter said goodbye, only eight World Series Mets survived. In the six months prior, as Dykstra, McDowell, Aguilera, Mazzilli and Wilson were cleaning out their lockers, the 1989 roster hosted Frank Viola and Juan Samuel; Don Aase and Wally Whitehurst; Phil Lombardi and Jeff McKnight; Tom O'Malley, Craig Shipley, Blaine Beatty, Lou Thornton and the immortal Manny Hernandez — no relation, talent or otherwise, to Keith.

The 1989 roster had its share of talent that came along after the formation of the '86 champs and before their dissolution: Cone, Jefferies, Myers, Magadan, McReynolds to name a few good to very good players. Samuel had been a star not long before 1989 and Viola would win 20 games in 1990. But the times they were a-changin' in Flushing and not for the better, not the way they were in 1983.

Thing is the 1989 Mets were a legitimate contender, if a continually frustrating and ultimately disappointing one. If you went to one of their games, it probably meant something in the standings. You at least thought it did. You could legitimately spend that entire spring and summer watching the scoreboard and worrying that glorious worry of the fan whose team has something to play for. This was what you had been told the 1980s Mets were all about.

But was it as much fun as the other bookend, 1983 once 1983 foreshadowed an era of potential greatness? The Mets weren't rising from last no matter what they did that summer, but what a delight it was watching them not fall even further through the floor. There was Keith Hernandez being everything you hoped he'd be when you heard he was en route from St. Louis. There was Darryl Strawberry simultaneously getting used to major league pitching and earning Rookie of the Year honors. There was Jesse Orosco saving or winning nearly every game in which he pitched. There was Ron Darling giving you an idea of why they traded Mazzilli to get him. There were Walt Terrell and Hubie Brooks, too. They wouldn't stick around to 1986, but they were showing enough to make you optimistic for 1984. Again, no contention with that '83 team, no chance of it, but no boundary for what you could imagine they might do with a little growth and a little help.

The Mets of the '80s, circa 1983, were Mookie Wilson racing out of the box no matter how futile the prevailing competitive circumstances. The Mets of the '80s, circa 1989, were Mookie Wilson donning a Blue Jays uniform as part of an ad hoc reconfiguration aimed at remaining viable in the short term.

The 1983 Mets nurtured players whom we would come to know as 1986 Mets. The 1989 Mets shed them.

The 1989 Mets finished six out yet were more done than we realized. The 1983 Mets finished 22 out yet were just getting started. I'm not sure we realized that either, but it began to feel pretty good there toward the end. At any rate, nobody was calling valedictory press conferences and saying sad farewells.

It's the section between these bookends we remember best about the 1980s Mets. It's the story smack in the middle, 1986, that defines the decade. It was the Year of the Mets, just as Mookie said it was. It guaranteed we'd willingly accept nothing less in the years that would follow, even it meant rather cavalierly offing those who got us to 1986 in a lame effort to lunge for one more echo of that once-in-a-lifetime season.

It's not like the Mets haven't sent their key players away in other decades. But doing so to those players from that team...no wonder I'm still a little uncomfortable with the 1980s.

Todd Pratt's 1999 NLDS-winning homer is underranked on Mets Walkoffs' list of the Fifteen Most Metmorable Postseason Home Runs, but I can't say any of those slotted ahead of his are unworthy either. Check it out here.

People who think computers play baseball will say the Angels are down 2 games to 1. But computers don't play baseball. And when you have a teammate like Derek Jeter, and you see the way he goes about his business and how calm he is after a game like that, it's like you've won. So the computers may say the Angels are down just one game, but if you're in the Yankee clubhouse you feel like you just won two games. That's the kind of player Derek Jete --

I'm sorry, I came down here and Joe Morgan was futzing around with my computer. (Who even knew he could type?) Joe, you can see yourself out. We're not here to talk about whatever the heck just happened involving an evil team in a league that doesn't play real baseball. No, we're here for the 5th annual admission of a new class of Mets into The Holy Books.

Brief review for newcomers and the similarly obsessive: I have a pair of binders, dubbed The Holy Books (THB) by Greg, that contain a baseball card for every Met on the all-time roster. They're ordered by year, with a card for each player who made his Met debut that year: Tom Seaver is Class of '67, Mike Piazza is Class of '98, Jose Reyes is Class of '03, etc. There are extra pages for the rosters of the two World Series winners, including managers, and for the 1961 Expansion Draft, with the latter including the infamous Lee Walls, the only THB resident who neither played for nor managed the Mets. (Previous annals here, here, here and here.)

When a player has a Topps card as a Met, I use that unless it's truly horrible -- Topps has been around a decade longer than the Mets, so they get to be the card of record. No Met Topps card? Then I look for a Bisons card, a non-Topps Met card, a Topps non-Met card, or anything I can get my hands on. Topps had a baseball-card monopoly until 1981, and minor-league cards only really began in the mid-1970s, so cup-of-coffee guys from before '75 or so are a problem. Companies like TCMA and Renata Galasso made odd sets with players from the 1960s -- the likes of Jim Bethke, Bob Moorhead and Dave Eilers are immortalized through their efforts. And a card dealer named Larry Fritsch put out sets of "One Year Winners" spotlighting blink-and-you-missed-them guys such as Ted Schreiber and Joe Moock.

Then there are the legendary Lost Nine -- guys who never got a regulation-sized, acceptable card from anybody. Brian Ostrosser got a 1975 minor-league card that looks like a bad Xerox. Leon Brown has a terrible 1975 minor-league card and an oversized Omaha Royals card put out as a promotional set by the police department. Tommy Moore got a 1990 Senior League card as a 42-year-old with the Bradenton Explorers. Then there are Al Schmelz, Francisco Estrada, Lute Barnes, Bob Rauch, Greg Harts and Rich Puig, who have no cards whatsoever -- the oddball 1991 Nobody Beats the Wiz set is too undersized to work. Best I can tell, Al Schmelz never even had a decent color photograph taken while wearing his Met uniform. (I've stopped writing to him in search of one for fear that he'll call the authorities on me.) Anyway, the Lost Nine are represented in THB by fake cards I Photoshopped together.

A 10th Lost Met seems unlikely -- today it's rare to sign a pro contract and not wind up on a card somewhere. (Though next year Topps will be the only company allowed to use team logos on its cards, leaving Upper Deck to produce products that I fear will look something like the "cards" we used to cut off the back of Hostess boxes.) During the season I scrutinize new card sets in hopes of finding a) better cards of established Mets; b) cards to stockpile for prospects who might make the Show; and most importantly c) a card for each new big-league Met. At season's end, the new guys get added to the binders, to be studied now and then until February. When it's time to pull old Topps cards of the spring-training invitees and start the cycle again.

Anway, time to meet the Class of 2009: the many, the less than proud, the submarines. If we see more than a few of them next year something will have gone badly wrong. Again.

Here they are, in order of matriculation (group photo here):

Sean Green -- Green arrived in New York via a trade that sent away the beloved Endy Chavez, and bearing the same name as Shawn Green, the briefly inspiring but mostly dreary rightfielder I nicknamed "One Hop" for his apparent inability to catch anything hit more than three feet in front of him. Neither of these associations was his fault. What was his fault was that he spent long stretches of the year pitching like Aaron Heilman, down to biting his lip with a glum expression that all but shouted, "I can't believe this is happening to me again." (And why take that number, Sean? Why?) That said, there's no particular reason not to bring Green back: Middle relievers tend to yo-yo around a median of competence, and no Met pitcher should be judged without an acknowledgment that they played with stone-handed infielders and a stupid manager. But just thinking about Green uncorking a wild pitch and looking like a kicked dog makes me want to throw something.

J.J. Putz -- Arrived with a history of elbow problems, departed with his season cut short due to elbow surgery. Shocking. The Mets will have 10 days after the World Series to either pay Putz $8.6 million for 2010 or to buy out his option for $1 million. This would seem like a no-brainer, but Putz will undoubtedly work super-hard in the offseason, want to prove something to his teammates, bring a veteran presence to the bullpen, and so on. Ow, this stove is hot! Ow, this stove is hot! Ow, this stove is hot! Ow....

Francisco Rodriguez -- Lived up to the ignominous history of recent Mets closers by being quietly terrible. Remember when he walked freaking Mariano Rivera with the bases loaded? The first time he gave up a walk-off grand slam to a player who had no business hitting one? How about the second time he did that?

Jeremy Reed -- About as close to anonymous as you can possibly be for a player who stayed on a big-league roster for an entire season.

Alex Cora -- Cora is one of those guys whose attitude and work habits you wish you could bottle -- a smart, wise, tough player who made everyone around him better. Unfortunately, since everyone around him was terrible, the best Cora could do was make them merely bad -- an adjective that statistically one would have to apply to Cora himself, however reluctantly. The man played a good chunk of the year with busted ligaments in both thumbs, and that should be applauded. But he's the kind of guy you desperately wish your team would bring back as a coach, while dreading that a two-year contract is in the offing instead.

Darren O'Day -- Vanished around Tax Day after 3 2/3 innings for the Mets as a Rule 5 pick. Wound up in Texas, where he naturally put together a terrific season. Ladies and gentlemen, Omar Minaya!

Gary Sheffield -- Sheffield was greeted by the New York press corps and plenty of fans as if he were an Al Qaeda member -- clearly he was done as a player and could only bring woe, misfortune and rancor to the idyllic world of the Mets clubhouse. So what happened? He turned out to still have plenty of life in his bat, did a lot better than anyone could have anticipated playing the outfield (meaning he was somewhere below average), and quietly proved a very good teammate. (Jeff Francoeur credited Sheffield for a tip that helped his swing.) Sheffield did eventually blow up and cause a ruckus, but for once in his life he was right to do so: The dead-and-buried Mets put Sheffield on waivers, saw him get claimed by the Giants, and pulled him back instead of getting a prospect or two and rewarding Sheff with the chance to play the final weeks for a team with a heartbeat.

Livan Hernandez -- If the old guard of baseball GMs had run prehistoric human society, no one would have ever discovered fire, the wheel or agriculture. Exhibit A is Livan Hernandez, a profoundly terrible pitcher who for years has reliably eaten up innings and vomited forth baserunners, runs and losses. Enter Omar Minaya with a bag of money; exit hope and dreams of a better world organized around something other than superstition and phrenology. Players like Livan Hernandez make me want to cry even when they're not on my team.

Omir Santos -- Omir was the first player to become a bone of contention between stat guys, who looked at his nonexistent minor-league track record, inability to walk and unlikely BABIP and held their noses, and look-and-feel fans who loved Omir for his flurry of big hits and apparent joy in what he was doing. I tend to side with the stat guys on this one, but with the caveat that Omir Santos is the kind of player whose unlikely success makes you want to jump up and down and throw an impromptu parade. His home run off the perennially childish Jonathan Papelbon was the last flicker of life in the 2009 season; if someone actually made a highlight film of this hideous year, I wouldn't be surprised to find that the credits rolled right after that moment.

Casey Fossum -- Made his Mets debut on April 21 against the Cardinals with two outs in the fifth, the bases loaded, and the Mets clinging to a 4-3 lead. Walked the first hitter he faced. On four pitches. Yes really.

Ken Takahashi -- 40-year-old Japanese rookie lefty pitched competently enough, though he got killed by lefties while handling righties decently. Which made about as much sense as signing a 40-year-old Japanese rookie lefty in the first place.

Tim Redding -- A big dude with a silly beard and a cheap-looking shamrock tattoo, Redding began his Mets career by getting his rear end handed to him by the University of Michigan, which most baseball fans will agree augurs poorly for success. He then got pounded for much of the early part of the season, after which the Mets cruelly let him twist in the baseball wind, telling everybody but Redding himself that his release was a done deal. Redding wasn't released, as it turned out. To Mets fans' slow-building astonishment, he pitched well again and again in late August and September and ended the year as the Mets' most-reliable starter. This sounds like a bad joke but actually is meant as honest praise. Redding took a lot of abuse, hung in there, and changed some minds. Kudos to him.

Fernando Martinez -- The latest wildly hyped Mets prospect arrived in late May, and turned out to indeed be the Second Coming. Unfortunately, he was the Second Coming of Don Hahn. F-Mart looked hopelessly overmatched at the plate, uncertain in the outfield, made boneheaded mental errors and then was lost for the season due to injury, furthering the suspicion that he's made of porcelain and nitroglycerine. Martinez only just took his first legal drink, so he still has plenty of time to find himself, but his initial impression suggested he's not close to doing that.

Wilson Valdez -- Actually played pretty well as 2009 Mets replacement shortstops went. This isn't the same thing as praise, but in 2009 it's about as close as you can get.

Emil Brown -- Had five at-bats in early June, collecting one hit. He would have had another, but he passed Luis Castillo on the basepaths and was called out. It was that kind of year.

Fernando Nieve -- Plucked off the waiver wire from the Astros, Nieve proved a nice surprise, actually beating the Yankees and looking like he had some kind of future. So of course he went down as if shot in a July game against the Braves. Torn quadriceps, gone for the year. (Jon Niese, his replacement, had essentially the same progression in miniature: Looked promising, grotesque injury, gone until 2010.)

Jon Switzer -- Debuted against the Yankees, got his brains beat in, heroically lowered his ERA to 8.10, vanished.

Elmer Dessens -- A pudgy reliever with a goofy name, Dessens seemed like the latest punch line to an increasingly unfunny joke when he arrived in June, but pitched well and proved dependable.

Pat Misch -- After pitching tolerably but mostly anonymously for the bulk of the summer, Misch absorbed one of the more-fearful beatings I can remember against the Braves in late September, giving up eight runs on seven hits in an inning and a third. In his next start, he stared down the Marlins to pitch a gutsy complete-game shutout, probably the best performance of the season by a Mets starting pitcher. Sometimes it's nice to be wrong.

Jeff Francoeur -- The poster boy for sabermetricians inveighing against baseball primitivism, Francoeur is almost comically aggressive at the plate, making you wonder if no one's ever told him that four balls will gain him first base. After languishing in Atlanta, he came to the Mets and immediately became either lucky or good, lashing balls all over the park, playing with a billion-watt smile and carrying on despite a bad thumb. It'll be fascinating to see how he fares in 2010, and how he's received by the fans if the statistical gods are against him. Oh, and he hit into the 15th unassisted triple play in big-league history to end a game against the Phillies. It was that kind of year.

Angel Berroa -- Records show he played for the Mets, and Topps gave him a baseball card for some reason. Apparently the morphine had kicked in by the time he arrived, because I either don't remember him or have blotted his tenure out of my mind.

Cory Sullivan -- A hard-nosed journeyman outfielder, he became something of a fan favorite (by the low, ironic standards of 2009) for seeming to retain a pulse in the pitiful days of $5 StubHub tickets and playing for draft picks the Mets will be too cheap to sign. Sullivan seems like he could prove useful as a bench player in a better season.

Andy Green -- Oh, I'll let Greg tell the story.

Lance Broadway -- Failed White Sox prospect was thoroughly mediocre as a general dogsbody at garbage time. If it doesn't work out, at least he can pursue a reasonably lucrative porn career without having to resort to a screen name.

Josh Thole -- Interesting catching prospect showed a precocious eye for the strike zone and a nice, compact stroke at the plate, giving us some reason to hope as the season circled the drain. (Why did Jerry give Thole time to learn at the major-league level while seeming to forget Nick Evans existed? Don't ask me.) Thole probably won't return until summer, if not 2011, but unlike most of the Class of '09, we'll actually look forward to his return.

Tobi Stoner -- Former Cyclone could really help the Mets sell more merchandise to snarky college kids. We'll have to reserve judgment on what he might contribute in actual games.

My goodness, that was depressing. But take heart! Every second brings 2010 closer! And a plague year like this CAN'T POSSIBLY HAPPEN AGAIN! RIGHT? RIGHT?'

Just tell me I'm right.