OH YEAH, THE METS. I only watched the first inning of the last game, a rare case of self-restraint. I'd been thinking of going to Shea. Maybe I should have, though I don't know how I could have stood it. The Daily News reports:

Deafening chants of "Let's Go Mets" rocked the big house in Queens an hour before the opening pitch.

The carnival mood - fueled by the Mets' dramatic win a day earlier - quickly turned to deathly silence as the Marlins pounded ace Tom Glavine like they were the ones battling for a playoff spot.

When the club first hired Glavine in 2003, I fretted that it was just another bizarre Met donation to the knacker's yard of expired talents. But after a bad start he played gutball reliably. He was the natural choice to bring it home Sunday. The pathetic response of the rest of the team was, alas, expected -- if you can't get more than one run in the first with Dotrell pitching that badly, what good are you? -- but Glavine hadn't started that badly since 1989. His face in the dugout afterward showed the exquisitely private agony of the big-game pitcher, jaw tight, eyes ablaze: how could I fuck up that bad? But he got no balm from the Shea faithful but a shower, nay, a hailstorm of boos.

Which was exactly as it should have been.

The reverse mojo enjoyed and suffered by Cubs and (til recently) Red and White Sox fans is historic. But Mets fans never needed a history of suffering. We were inoculated and immunized against the usual side-effects of futility by their awful first season -- hence their ironic early cognomen, the Amazin' Mets. Like potholes and crime, suffering is part of the Mets' DNA.

This made their "Miracle Mets" World Series win in 1969 enduringly singular -- not like any Yankee Series win, but a battered fist punched upward through despair. I still remember a WOR-TV promo of the time that played "The Impossible Dream" and showed the grizzled visage of Casey Stengel on the line, "That one man, scorned and covered with scars." It was about redemption for the underdog, as was "Ya Gotta Believe!" a few years later. Even in defeat, the Mets had become a belief system. The Yankee ascendancy that followed was fine for those who worshipped at that cathedral, but Mets fans remained lower-church Believers, praying for the return of the Miracle.

The 1986 team was allegedly it -- a harbringer of a butched-up National League dynasty in New York. But then came Strawberry's pre-season fistfight with Keith Hernandez (the only recorded case, a local sportwriter observed, of Strawberry hitting the cut-off man), then Straw swinging through an Orel Hershiser fastball in the NLCS, and then a deep miasma of Isringhausen, Jeff Kent, Saberhagen, Bobby Bonilla, Bobby V in a fake mustache, Kenny Rogers walking in the winning run in the 1999 NLCS, Timo Perez overrunning his base and Derek Bell pulling up lame at the wall in Game 1 of the 2000 series, Art Howe, Mo Vaughn's fat ass, etc.

We supp'd full with horrors then, and came to Shea ready to jeer. I saw "Captain" John Franco, the last World Series-winning pitcher on the team, greeted with cries of "OH NO!" when he came in from the bullpen. I saw grown men draped in vintage Mets paraphenalia dramatically jerking the thumbs-down from the upper deck. With no Miracle on the horizon, we still attended our lower church, but mocked the ceremony and splattered the celebrant. Yankee Stadium was never like this. Though we were acquainted with glory, we were used to ignominy, and when that was all we had we reveled in it. We knew how to lose.

In this same period, New York itself eschewed loserdom. It was Giulianified -- safe, and rich, and beloved of the nation. Even the Yankees (spit) gained fans in most major markets; during the regular season you could hear their bellowing in stadia from Seattle to Baltimore. No one loved the Mets except us. Our stadium was a toilet and our team was shit. We didn't give a damn. Shea was for locals. Families spread out on the cheap seats. When the season-ticket jerks fled for the suburbs in the fifth inning, we took their seats. Shea in its way preserved a piece of New York from before Giuliani time, where victory was not expected and you could express a negative opinion of management without getting thrown out.

The New Mets were our next great chance. Even last year's NLCS had a silver lining: fate had been cruel but the team was tough and local hero Willie Randolph had brought them a long way. Next year would be worth waiting 'til. Well, we saw how that worked out: a big-town beginning followed by a big-time collapse. "Jose Jose Jose" followed by Shinjo-level booing. Glavine out after one-third. Willie standing dull-eyed in the dugout. We began to see that our Mets were not what our mythology demanded -- neither a Miracle nor scorned nor covered with scars. They were overpaid journeymen shamefully bereft of the fuel we fans had thought they shared with us: hope.

The other day I saw some newspaper columnist giving us grief for not giving Glavine a gentler sendoff. Fuck him and fuck you. We are not like other fans, however long or short their period of suffering. We are the children of '62: born to lose, contemptuous of quit. We are impervious to dynastic bullshit and will cheer lustily for the Tribe to extend the Bronx goons' endlessly edifying ringless streak. And come April, from every section we'll let you hear how we feel, long and hard. We are not impressed by the new Shittyfield you offer us. We want blood. We want a manager who will bestir himself to get thrown out every once in a while. We want players who will dive for a grounder. We want a team worthy of our exquisite suffering. We want a Miracle.