Postage Due

I was at the post office Friday afternoon and stood in line behind somebody who looked very familiar. It was driving me crazy, so I tapped him on the shoulder to ask if he was who I thought he was.

“Excuse me, aren't you the 2009 Mets?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

“Wow, I'm a big fan.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Shame about how you've been going lately.”

“Yeah, well, whaddaya gonna do?”

“I've never seen you at the post office before.”

“Oh, I come here all the time.”

“Ya don't say? I don't mean to pry, but I can't help but wonder, big fan that I am, what you have in that box there.”

“This? It's just tonight's game.”

“Tonight's game?”

“Yeah. I'm just mailing it in.”

“You're mailing it in?”

“Yup.”

“Tonight's game?”

“Uh-huh, that's right.”

“You do that a lot?”

“Most of the time, especially this month.”

“You mailed in last night's game in Atlanta?”

“I mailed in that entire series. Last few series, actually.”

“You can do that?”

“It's easy. Easier than showing up at any rate.”

“How do you just mail it in?”

“It's easy. The post office has these boxes, designed to hold all nine innings in these compartments as you can see here. Then you just seal these flaps shut. They've already got adhesive, so you don't need tape or anything. I like to mail these games in as quickly and quietly as possible.”

The box wasn't yet closed and my curiosity got the best of me.

“Forgive me for snooping, but I only see eight innings in your box.”

“No, there's nine.”

“Nine compartments, but you only have eight innings.”

“Hey, you're right! Damn. I'm next at the counter, too, and I don't feel like running home to get the ninth inning to mail in. If there's one thing I don't like to do, it's run home.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Ah, I'll just mail in these first eight innings and go do the ninth in person.”

“Let me get this straight. You're going to mail in most of tonight's game against the Nationals, but you're going to show up for the ninth inning.”

“Yeah. I do that sometimes.”

“I don't remember you showing up for the ninth inning in a while.”

“I don't do it often, but on occasion, if I absolutely have to.”

“Well, good luck tonight.”

“Yeah, right.”

***

By losing to their new archrivals Friday night, the Mets have made it possible to clinch next-to-last Sunday when I'll be there. It'll be September 18, 2006 all over again! Except as farce! Four thoughts in honor of the 4th place magic number remaining at 4:

• A Rosh Hashanah gift from the Jerusalem Post: Michael Freund visits with the great Gary Cohen here.

• Just came across this July 2006 Web gem in print via the No Mas Frank 151 Sports Issue: An Amazin' remembrance by Steven Isenberg, an aide to Mayor John Lindsay, on how Hizzoner, down in the polls, latched onto the Mets' bandwagon forty summers before the one that's winding down now. Required reading here.

• Miss Amazin' Tuesday? Say it ain't so! But if you did, amaze yourself with Section Five Twenty-Eight's lively recounting of the action here. My thanks to Paul Vargas for chronicling our Two Boots doings so diligently and colorfully since June. He and I, I believe, are the only ones who made it to all four readings. (Danny Frisella would be proud.)

• Per the question Jason asked within the last 24 hours, which got such a wonderful response from so many, I'll throw in my Top Five Most Disappointing Mets Seasons in Mets History: 1) 1987; 2) 1996; 3) 1982; 4) 1991; 5) 1971. Mind you, that's not worst seasons or most crushing seasons or thuddingest collapses. Those were seasons when my hopes — sometimes high, sometimes middling — were dashed in ways I hadn't seen coming and it really, really ruined everything. 2009? It's one of the most demoralizing seasons in Mets history. There's a difference…though I'm too demoralized to delineate.