I should be a Mets fan. I identify with their culture. I appreciate how deep into the Bachman-Turner Overdrive canon the Shea Stadium deejay can dig. I have bitten my palm, Squiggy-style, over the throngs of big-haired women who have the Mets logo airbrushed on their nails.
—Joel Stein, Time, 2000

There were good reasons Sebastian Bach of Skid Row performed before Saturday's game against the Pirates. There were good reasons Gary Dell'Abate, a.k.a. Boy Gary/Bababooey from the Howard Stern show, threw out the first ball. Very good reasons, actually, having to do with the Mets holding Autism Awareness Day. Bach and Dell'Abate (the latter a huge Mets fan) are supporters of a great cause, and it is to their credit that they would use their celebrity to raise awareness, just as the Mets are doing a fine thing publicizing such a fight.

That said...the lead singer from Skid Row...Howard Stern's punching bag of a producer...the Mets. The spirit of Shea Stadium lives. I mean, really, Sebastian Bach, with the hair and the metal and I assume a reality show to plug. And Gary from Uniondale. There is nothing majestic about having these as your celebrities on a Saturday afternoon. There is nothing sacred. There is nothing prim or proper. There is something very much Mets about it.

To which, I say hot damn, bring on the Sebastian Bachs and the Gary Dell'Abates (hell, their stand-ins are usually riding my train anyway) and let's be Mets about this. Let's be Shea about this. Let's bite our palms as Squiggy would at this six-game winning streak and these new places of ours: Citi Field and first, respectively.

Citi Field? Needs work, still. Never mind the blind spots (none of which bothered me from Mezzanine 1...I mean Promenade 414) and the lack of Mookieabilia. It needs to be louder or somehow dirtier without becoming filthy. It needs some Shea to it. In the top of the second, my friend Jeff, he of [friggin'] fantasy camp correspondent fame, read my mind and asked, "Is it quiet here?" We indeed could have been studying for our PSATs when it was a mere 1-0. As it grew into 5-0 and all the other delightful scores until it was finally 10-1, it got louder and maybe a little Sheaish. Needs work in that respect, but on the occasion of my seventh game, I came away with no other complaints, not from the game, not from the park, not even from the overpriced cheeseburger stand beyond center that I finally bore down and tried (good, not great; get a Steak 'N' Shake up in here and we'll talk).

First-place Mets? I want to exult and luxuriate, but I seem to recall being in first place in some other recent seasons and...well, you know. Nevertheless, there are five places available in your National League East, and the one we occupy as a result of our win and the Phillies' loss is the best to have, so let's have it. Let's keep it, too. Let's not let up. But it's May 9 and 29 games in. To paraphrase the great philosopher Howie Rose, the last 133 are the toughest. But this is a better look to the Mets than what constant viewers saw a little more than a week ago. And the sound of "first-place Mets" is, with all due respect to Mr. Bach's charitable impulses, better than "18 and Life" at its loudest and clearest.

Unless 18 refers to Jeremy Reed, who could have pitched for all it mattered by the ninth. Which would have been pretty awesome.

Fuckin' A it woulda been.

Two inquiring minds wanted to know more about Faith and Fear: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets, thus we have two Q&A interviews it is our pleasure to share, this one with Tad Richards of the NY Writing Careers Examiner and this one with Regis Courtemanche of MetsBlog. My thanks to both for their interest and inquiry. The book they ask about is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.

OK, the Mets didn't play a particularly crisp game -- it was cringeworthy when Carlos Beltran and Ryan Church both wound up south of Nate McLouth's eastbound fly ball, agonizing to watch any ball get near Daniel Murphy (unblemished though his record was) and disturbing to see the offense lapse into torpor against Jeff Karstens, whom I don't think it's too uncharitable to call a short-arming junkballer.

But my birthday game was a reminder that there's a big difference between a good team playing slightly flabby baseball and a truly bad one. And the Pirates are truly bad, in a lot of ways. (I know by saying that I've ensured they'll summon up the ghosts of Tike Redman and Humberto Cota and put two shivs between our ribs, but even if that happens other teams will prove me largely correct.)

A lot of their players are simultaneously bad and too old to have much hope of getting better. Brian Bixler has a .261 career OBP, showed no ability to play shortstop, and is 26. I know the Red Sox didn't want to give up Brandon Moss, but after looking at his stats and watching him play tonight I'm not sure why -- he looks like the kind of sluggish player Boston is smart enough to now employ in a limited role, if at all. Freddy Sanchez's defensive strategy seems to be to fall in the general direction of balls, which does make him a perfect keystone partner for Bixler. Nyjer Morgan played a superb left field, and I never would have guessed he's a veteran of junior hockey in western Canada, but he still became 28 while doing all that, which is a little too late to get excited about.

Catcher Robinzon Diaz (perhaps the "z" is for "ZOMG do we suck!") looked impressive and Nate McLouth is genuinely good, but there's just not enough there for anyone to think the Pirates will win 75 games any time soon -- and if you're thinking about farm-system reinforcements, this spring the Pirates' minor-leaguers got beaten by Manatee Community College. It's like surrounding Ty Wigginton and Jason Phillips with lots and lots of Jorge Velandias, only it never ends. Joshua asked about the Pirates and seemed genuinely surprised when I told him that they were an original National League franchise and told him tales of Willie Stargell and Dave Parker and the Killer Bs. This is a proud old franchise that deserves better than the hideous run of pain and futility that's been inflicted on a generation of fans.

But the general hopelessness about the present and future (Yates and Burnett and Veal, oh my!) wasn't the worst thing about watching the Pirates. Rather, it's that they have the worst body language of any baseball team I've seen in a long time. Every time I looked at them it seemed like someone was staring at his shoes, or gaping at an equally confounded teammate, or trudging in a grim little circle while the brain trust glowered out at the field. I remember this brand of corrosively bad baseball (oh Howe do I remember it), and I feel for those compelled to spend 162 valuable afternoons and evenings watching it.

But all that said, the Pirates are in our way, and empathy shouldn't be allowed a place in the equation. And the Carloses showed a welcome lack of human feeling, with Beltran banking a petite yet perfect double off the tarp for the lead and Delgado supplying the exclamation point off Sean Burnett, a sad-eyed LOOGY whose delivery seemed to begin about five feet behind Delgado's head. Given that, I didn't rate Delgado's chances of hitting the ball 42 feet as particularly high, which once again shows what I know: Burnett threw a breaking pitch that flattened out enough for a good look and Delgado hit it about 420 feet. And we were safe in port, Pirate-infested waters and all.

Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History, whose pages include a more local history of class warfare, is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you. Keep in touch and join the discussion on Facebook.