Meteoric or Mediocre?

Conventional baseball wisdom has it that you can't take every single game serious as death. If you are a player or a manager or an executive or an owner, perhaps. Me, the überfan? I find it impossible to treat any of them as if there isn't something important going on. Blame my skewed priorities or take the logical approach that we only have 162 shots at this thing. (Listen, I haven't surrounded myself with reasonably like-prioritized individuals like yourself over the past decade just so I can be told “it's only a game,” so I know to some degree you are on the same page.)

Is any one game life or death? Only by government decree, and to borrow from Homer Simpson from earlier tonight, with Commander Cuckoo Bananas in charge, anything is possible. But literally, only those games that ruin your chance to continue your season, to go beyond the allotted 162, are life or death. Everything else is part of the rich pageantry, and any given game, no matter how disappointing the result, shouldn't be cause for concern.

But string a few of 'em in relative proximity, and then you've got a problem. The Mets have done just that all over again, losing five of their last seven, and it's taking its toll one one's ability (OK, my ability) to take things one day at a time.

It seems like I was just strolling up the street on the afternoon of April 4 for my Opening Day sandwich to enjoy in advance of the first pitch of the 2005 season. That sandwich is long gone, my friend, as is almost a quarter of the schedule. Thirty-eight games in the book. Thirty-eight games we're never going to get back. Thirty-eight episodes of baseball, not some pompous, overwrought multipart documentary by a Red Sox fan who reconfigured what happened in 1986 to fit his own sorry provincial take, but actual baseball that we live and breathe as it happens.

We're 19 and 19. That's mediocre, buddy. That's .500 on the nose. That's winning some and losing some over and over and over again.

That's the Mets this year? You are, it's been said by many, what your record says you are, so we're a break-even proposition until our record tells us different. In the long view, that's not so bad, and not just by dictionary standards. This is a franchise whose last edition, it will be recalled, finished the season at 71-91, so if they continue to play at a .500 clip, by gum that's 81-81, a ten-game improvement.

But you and I, we know different. We've watched this team take flight from time to time this year. We've watched them be absolutely meteoric. Sure, there was the six-game winning streak that seemed to obliterate the five-game losing streak, but just as telling there were those innings here and those innings there where my gosh, I just wanted to believe we were seeing a corner being turned — turned and left behind.

Some corners take longer to navigate than others in this game that we so adore. Going from being the debilitated Mets of 2001 through 2004 to the bolstered Mets of 2005 and beyond will take some work. We're rubbernecking the construction right now. I wish it didn't take a whole project, but apparently it does. There are precious few 1969 Mets years and even that was preceded by an energized 1968 that told the folks that something good was going to happen sooner or later. It just happened ridiculously soon.

When Duquette took over for Phillips, the “r” word, as in rebuilding, was uttered sotto voce. Of course you can't market a team in New York as a thing that's gonna be good, just you wait. There is no wait in now, know what I mean? Nobody can wait. But fans like us, we wanted rebuilding, having had the prefab structure that was slapped together with Alomar, Vaughn, Burnitz and Cedeño disintegrate on impact.

So we got a teeny, little bit of rebuilding between mid-2003 and the end of 2004. We got Reyes when he was healthy enough. We got Wright when he was raw. Mostly we got Shane Spencer and Karim Garcia instead of Vladimir Guerrero and more Todd Zeile in his twilight than I dreamed possible. Then we (Wilpon) got bored and said the hell with it, we're not rebuilding, we're going for it, more or less.

But guess what? This season is still one of rebuilding. Well, rebuilding on high-priced amphetamines, perhaps. It's been sped up with Pedro and Carlos and a few other additives, but it's not a finished product. If only I could remember that from day to day, I could step back and think of games like this weekend's as some version of experience to which things are chalked up. I could appreciate two competitive games, one that I listened to as I took a long pre-theater walk through Manhattan and the other that I watched from a mezzanine box.

We lost both. The first one I was able to deny away: It's a beautiful day, my wife and I are going to see Sweet Charity on a Saturday night in the greatest city in the world, so what if we lost a one-run game when we had a lead? The second one, I almost managed to sweep under the rug: First warm day at the ballpark, one or two little victories (explained in a moment) embedded in a loss. Hey, we dropped two of three to the defending National League champions, a team leading its division by a comfortable margin, no shame in that, go get me some chalk.

But phooey. Phooey, phooey, phooey! Those games were there for the taking. No Rolen at all. No Pujols in the lineup Sunday. No sense that the Cardinals had it goin' on. And we didn't win more than once. We keep doing that, not winning games that we could, not winning games in which we play pretty well. I was all full of phooey by the time I got home.

We've done a pretty decent job considering the rotation tatters more by the week and that our first baseman and catcher are barely hitting .400 between them. I keep seeing good stuff and then expect it to be the norm. It's not. Floyd won't hit two Monsta shots every night of his life. Cameron won't come through in the ninth just because he came through earlier. Reyes…to tell you the truth, my favorite Met is really beginning to make me wonder, but that's too depressing to contemplate right now.

The point is maybe we are what our record says we are and maybe that's not awful and maybe — hopefully — it is a step toward the finished product that unfortunately is at least a year away. I'm not giving up on 2005 exactly, just attempting to become more accepting of its emerging contours. It will make the life-and-death angle a little easier to take for the next 124 days and nights.

As for the small victory of Sunday afternoon, it came when LaRussa sent Pujols into pinch-hit against Heath Bell, ostensibly to pound a nail in the Mets' heart. There was, as I predicted, a smattering (more like a generous sprinkling) of Cardinals fans in the house. Honestly, they weren't any more annoying than I was in Washington. They were rooting for the visiting team is all and I wasn't in the mood for it. Not their fault, per se. One guy in particular, though, tried the patience that we as Mets fans have forcefully foresworn.

Pujols is announced into the game. The guy, sitting a couple of boxes away, stands and starts chanting M-V-P! M-V-P! M-V-P! Fun is fun, of course. Cliff's heard M-V-P! chants on occasion but I think as deluded as Shea makes us all, we know we're kidding; it's May. But this guy was ridiculously serious about it. Now I like to give opposing stars their props. If Pujols had been in the starting lineup, I would've respectfully applauded when his name was read, maybe even when he came to bat in the first. But as a pinch-hitter late in the game, screw that, he's the enemy.

More than most encounters of this nature, I was locked in on Heath Bell and Albert Pujols. I knew we were probably going to lose this game. I know Albert Pujols will have many great days. I wouldn't bet against him actually winning Most Valuable Player this year. But J.C. Martin, I'll be damned if the M-V-P! guy is going to get that kind of satisfaction right here, right now.

Heath Bell struck out Albert Pujols. And I stood up, clapped and hooted and then turned toward him and shouted…

M-V-P! M-V-P! M-V-P!

What made it even better is that the guy with him, a Mets fan, was already doing the exact same thing.

No matter how mediocre your team reveals itself to be, this is the kind of stuff you can glean only from baseball, bless its seamy white exterior.