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Let's hope not, Mets fans. But the past three days bode ill for the future of the season.

On the field, the Mets had a fabulous month of July. They went 18-8, including a 10-game winning streak from July 5th to July 17th that vaulted them back into contention and put them, briefly, into first place. The streak was their longest in 17 years, the longest this year in the NL, and tied with Minnesota for the longest this year in the majors. Jose Reyes tied for the major-league lead in hits for the month with 39 and was tied for the most triples with 4. Fernando Tatis, given the chance to play regularly with the injuries to Moises Alou and Ryan Church, led the majors with a .397 batting average for the month. Carlos Delgado went on a tear at the plate and returned to the clean-up spot. Oliver Perez led the majors with a 1.38 ERA for the month. More details about the Mets' performance for the month are available in the the MLB "Gameday Press Pass" for August 1.

Off the field, however, things didn't go so well. Ryan Church continued to suffer from the effects of post-concussion syndrome. Moises Alou tore a hamstring and was lost for the season, with retirement a stron possibility. Pedro Martinez's father passed away. And Omar Minaya failed to make any deals by the non-waiver trading deadline of July 31 to bolster some of the team's weakenesses.

The first three days of August have borne out the seriousness of those weaknesses. Minaya was in the market for a corner outfielder but failed to land ex-Met Xavier Nady, who went to the Yankees from the Pirates. Now the mets are platooning two rookies, Nick Evans and Daniel Murphy, in left field, with Endy Chavez returning to his role as the fourth outfielder and lead bench player.

Probably more significantly, Minaya was interested in upgrading his bullpen, after closer Billy Wagner had an MRI and had to miss a day and Duaner Sanchez failed miserably as his understudy, in what turned out to be a waste of eight superb innings from Johan Santana and a come-from-behind Phillies win in the ninth inning (July 22). But July 31 came and went with no help for the bullpen.

And so what happens? The bullpen blows the first two games in August, both of the losses charged to Aaron Heilman, the second occurring after Wagner fails to hold a two-run lead in the ninth. And then, on August 3, the offense hints that it might have been playing over its head during the previous month and fails to score any runs. All this to the Houston Astros, who -- even with the sweep of the Mets -- are four games under .500 and 13 games behind the Cubs. Meanwhile, John Maine has been put on the disabled list, and Wagner may follow him, pending the results of another MRI.

Just when when we were ready to think that the team had finally put last year's choke behind them . . .

In a previous post, I compared the fortunes of the Mets and the Yankees as the month of June began. The Mets were 27-27 and the Yankees were 28-27.

A lot has happened since then. At the time, I was looking forward to Joba Chamberlain's finally starting for the Yankees and to Pedro Martinez's finally returning to the Mets after nearly two months on the disabled list. As June began, the Yankees seemed to stumble: after Joba's first start, which last only 2.1 innings, the team's record was 28-30. Meanwhile, Pedro looked good in his first outing. Joba would eventually find his way, pitching better with each outing. Pedro, on the other hand, would lose his way, looking simply awful in his fourth game back, a 9-0 loss to the Yankees. He found his form again last Saturday against the Rockies, but left after 4+ innings with a slight groin strain. Ominous.

The Yankees started June in 4th place, one game above .500 and 5.5 games out of first in their division. At the All-Star break, they've improved to 5 games above .500 at 50-45, but they're 6 games out of first.

The Mets started June at .500 and 4 games out of first. Their sloppy play led to the firing of manager Willie Randolph and coaches Rick Peterson and Tom Nieto in the middle of the night after the first game of a Western swing. They continued their .500-calibre play for the beginning of Jerry Manuel's tenure as coach.

And then something happened to the Mets: the players loosened up off the field and tightened their play on the field, and the team reeled off nine wins in a row before the All-Star game. Carlos Delgado found his stroke, Mike Pelfrey found his control, and the reserves and part-time players (subbing for injured starters Ryan Church and Moises Alou) started providing timely hits and big defensive plays.  At the break, the Mets are 51-44, 7 games above .500 and only half a game behind the Phillies. General Manager Omar Minaya's looking like a genius these days.

Despite the ugly 9-0 loss in the fifth game, the Mets ended up winning this year's Subway Series 4-2.

Meanwhile, Boston has finally overtaken Tampa Bay in the A.L. East., while the two Chicago teams remain atop their respective divisions.

What will the second half hold? Here's hoping that the baseball races remain close and scintillating -- and that the presidential race turns out to be anti-climactic, with Obama opening up a big lead.

What's that you say? McCain has closed the gap to a statistical dead heat according to the latest Newsweek poll? Nate Silver -- please explain!

I'm glad to see that someone else thinks there's a connection between baseball and politics.

A couple of years ago, when I was circulating a book-length manuscript called Bush-League America: George W. Bush and the Church of Baseball (its later subtitle was Conservatism and Cosmopolitanism in American Baseball and Politics), a couple of the agents I contacted said that they didn't see that there was any link between Bush and baseball. I found this puzzling, given that without his connection to baseball Bush wouldn't have been able run for Governor of Texas, let alone President of the United States. (You'll get the basic idea behind the book if you read this post.)

Reading Newsweek magazine this week, I was drawn to an article about Nate Silver, the man who devised the PECOTA forecasting system, which has proven incredibly accurate in predicting future performance by major league baseball players on the basis of comparisons to past performance by "comparable" players. (PECOTA stands for "Player Empirical Comparison and Optimization Test Algorithm.")

Now, Silver is bringing his methodology to political forecasting, and he created a stir with his surprisingly accurate forecast of the the results of the recent Democratic primaries in North Carolina and Indiana. According to Silver, ""Baseball and politics are data-driven. But a lot of the time, that data might be used badly. In baseball, that may mean looking at a statistic like batting average when things like on-base percentage and slugging percentage are far more correlated with winning ballgames. In politics, that might mean cherry-picking a certain polling result." [Click here to read the Newsweek article.]

Silver's work will no doubt find a place in the next revision of Bush-League America, which I'm hoping to complete just after this November's presidential election. From what both agents and university press editors told me, the manuscript either needs to become  more scholarly or much less scholarly. I'm choosing the latter, and, inspired by a reading of Shalom Auslander's memoir Foreskin's Lament, I think I have a revision strategy that will work. Stay tuned.

Some numbers related to my three previous posts:

Total Number of Delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August: 4,234
Number of Pledged Delegates: 3,409
Number of Superdelegates: 825
Number of Delegates Needed to Clinch the Democratic Nomination: 2,118
Number of Delegates Allocated to Barack Obama: 2,156 (1,762 pledged, 394 super)
Number of Delegates Allocated to Hillary Clinton: 1,923 (1,636, 287 super)

Number of Potential Running Mates for Obama Mentioned in CNN.com's Article: 18

[Figures from CNNPolitics.com as of 9:30 a.m.]

Days Until Election Day: 153
Days Until George W. Bush Is Out of A Job: 214

Last Night's Yankees Score: Toronto 9, Yankees 3
Number of Innings Pitched by Phenom Joba Chamberlain Last Night in His First Major League Start: 2.1
Number of Joba Chamberlain's Uniform: 62
Number of Pitches Thrown By Joba Last Night: 62
Number of Runs Allowed by Joba: 2 (1 earned)
Yankees' Record: 28-30
Yankees' Place in their Division: Fifth (Last)
Games Behind the First-Place Tampa Bay Devil Rays (!): 7

Last Night's Mets Score: Mets 9, San Francisco 6
Number of Innings Pitched by Veteran Ace Pedro Martinez Last Night in His First Start Since Injuring His Hamstring on April 1: 6
Number of Pitches Thrown By Pedro Last Night: 109
Number of Runs Allowed By Pedro: 3 (all earned)
Number of Hits Made By Pedro: 2
Number of Runs Batted In By Pedro: 1
Mets' Record: 29-28
Mets' Place in their Division: Fourth
Games Behind the First-Place Philadelphia Phillies: 4.5

Number of Baby Stick Insects Currently Resident in Our House: at least 12

As the second month of the 2008 baseball season comes to a close, it's worth noting that the Mets and the Yankees are each in fourth place in their respective divisions with nearly identical records: the Yanks are 28-27, the Mets are 27-27. Both teams have been plagued by injuries.

The Mets currently have bragging rights by virtue of their sweep of the two Subway Series games at Yankee Stadium two weeks ago, though those games hardly turned out to constitute much of a turning point for the Mets. Indeed, they went on to a humiliating four-game sweep in Atlanta, with ancient nemesis Chipper Jones once again dashing their hopes, en route to a 1-6 road trip. They've won 6 out of 14 since the series with the Yankees.They've put Willie Randolph's job in jeopardy and their inconsistent play has kept last year's collapse fresh in the minds of their fans.

The Yankees, meanwhile, have gone 8-and-4 since losing to the Mets. No one's talking about firing Joe Girardi. 

The Mets are hoping that this homestand will turn things around. They took two out of three from the first-place Marlins and have taken two out of three from Joe Torre's Dodgers. And they're putting Johann Santana out on the mound tomorrow night for the final game of the series.

With luck, however, Santana will win but won't be the big story of the week. With luck, the big story will be the successful return of Pedro Martinez to the mound on Tuesday night after missing seven weeks.

But Pedro may not get the back page of the tabloids on Wednesday morning, because the Yankees also have some interesting pitching plans for Tuesday night: they're finally going to start their bullpen phenom Joba Chamberlain.

Let's hope that Tuesday serves as the start for a better brand of New York baseball than we've seen over the last two months.

Congratulations to the Red Sox on winning the 2007 World Series in decisive fashion! And congratulations to Mike Lowell for winning the award for Most Valuable Player in the Series!

Now here's a bit of advice for the Sox: forget about A-Rod and re-sign Lowell. Here's why.

You've now won two World Series titles in four years, and commentators are suggesting that you can become a dynasty, particularly now that the Yankees seem to be in disarray. You've won eight straight World Series games. Your last Series loss was Game Seven in 1986 to the New York Mets.

Remember who won the Series MVP that day? It was  a veteran third-baseman named Ray Knight. In many ways, he was the embodiment of the championship spirit of the Mets that year. Knight wanted to re-sign with the team, but the Mets had other ideas and let him leave as a free agent. Knight became the first person ever to join a new team the year after winning the World Series MVP award.

After the 1986 Series, commentators were predicting that the Mets would become a dynasty. It never happened. The Mets have won exactly one World Series game since 1986  (One explanation can be found below, in my post "The Crypto-History of the Historic Collapse of the New York Mets.")

Nothing against Howard Johnson, Knight's annointed successor, who was an appealing player, had some great season with the Mets, and is now one of the team's coaches. But we're talking about chemistry and karma. Subtracting Knight from the team subtracted something much more than a third-baseman and a bat from the line-up.

So, Red Sox, learn a lesson from the New York Mets: re-sign Mike Lowell and keep chemistry and karma intact! 

I'm watching the fourth game of the World Series, which the Red Sox are leading 4-1 going into the bottom of the eighth. They already lead the Series 3-0, so a win tonight would win it all.

I'd been telling my friends who cared that I thought that whichever team won the first game of the Series would win the second and eventually the whole thing (though I was agnostic about the question of a sweep).

I figured that all the talk about how the eight-day layoff might affect the momentum of the Rockies, who had won 21 of 22 games going into the Series (including all of their playoff games), would, in fact, affect the Series.

If the Rockies were to win game one, they (and the Red Sox) would believe that their momentous streak was continuing and that would propel them to victory in the second game. If, however, the Red Sox, were to win, they (and the Rockies) would believe all the doom-sayers who predicted that the layoff would kill the momentum (as had been the case with the Detroit Tigers last year) -- effectively killing the momentum.

The impact of psychological factors on a baseball team is not to be underestimated. Just ask the Mets.

Meanwhile, Fox has just announced that agen Scott Boras has told them that his client Alex Rodriguez would in fact be opting out of his contract with the Yankees in order to become a free agent. A-Rod has ten days after the conclusion of the World Series to make his decision about whether to opt out. Boras apparently cited A-Rod's uncertainty about the future of the Yankees -- about the managing situation, about whether the team would be able to re-sign its prominent free agents, about the "ownership transition" -- as the factors in his decision.

I can't say I'm surprised. A-Rod proves himself to be the solo operator that I described below.

Hmm ... the Rockies have just hit a two-run homer to cut the lead to one run. It ain't over 'til it's over? We'll see ... about both the Rockies and the Rod.

POSTSCRIPT

The following day Major League Baseball criticized both Boras and Rodriguez for the timing of their announcement. MLB's chief operating officer, Bob DuPuy, wrote in an e-mail to the Associated Press: "We were very disappointed that Scott Boras would try to upstage our premier baseball event of the season with his announcement. There was no reason to make an announcement last night other than to try to put his selfish interests and that of one individual player above the overall good of the game. Last night and today belong to the Boston Red Sox, who should be celebrated for their achievement, and to the Colorado Rockies, who made such an unbelievable run to the World Series."

The Yankees' brass maintained that they would not negotiate with Rodriguez once his decision to opt-out of his contract with them was made official. Hank Steinbrenner said, "The bottom line is ... do we really want anybody that really doesn't want to be a Yankee?" He pointed to Derek Jeter, who, "since he was a little kid, all he ever wanted to do was play shortstop for the Yankees. That's what we want." A-Rod may want to be a Yankee, but clearly it isn't what he wants most.

One of my close friends, a diehard Yankee fan, lays the blame at Boras's doorstep. "I think the solo operator is Scott Boras," he wrote in an e-mail. "A-Rod is his cyborg, whom he rents out to the highest bidder."

Bart Giamatti, the President of Yale who became the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, began his marvelous speech “Baseball and the American Character” with the observation that “baseball fits America so well because it embodies the interplay of individual and group that we love.”

I've just finished watching the Cleveland Indians defeat the New York Yankees 6-4 to win their American League Division Series, 3 games to 1. Cleveland embodied that interplay of individual and group. The Yankees did not.

Tonight, I watched Alex Rodriguez drive in his first postseason run since 2004. It was a solo home run. Rodriguez drove himself in. It may well have been his last hit as a Yankee. There's no doubt that A-Rod is a baseball virtuoso, but it seems to me more and more that he's also what Giamatti referred to as a "solo operator."

In his speech, originally delivered to the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1985, Giamatti described the home run as the one situation in baseball in which the aftermath of a pitched ball “fails to involve the team.” He described the home run as “the dispositive triumph of one over the other, the surrogate kill.” In all other situations, Giamatti wrote, “the communal choreography of the team eventually takes over. . . . Whether on offense or defense, the virtuoso is subsumed into the ensemble. The anarchic ways of solo operators are subsumed by a free institution.”

Cleveland played as an ensemble. The Yankees played like a bunch of unsubsumed virtuosos and solo operators.

It’s likely that the Torre era is now over.

Or, rather, that the second half of the Torre era is now over. I tend to think of Torre I as 1995 through 2001, the years that saw the Yankees reassert themselves as a perennial postseason power, winning four World Series (1996, 1998-2000) and an AL pennant (2001). Torre II begins with the signing of Jason Giambi and is notable for the signings of Mike Mussina, Hideki Matsui, Randy Johnson, and A-Rod. The Yankees won the AL pennant in 2003, but they haven’t won anything of note since A-Rod joined the team in 2004. Indeed, the most notable event of Torre II was probably losing the ALCS to the Red Sox after leading it 3-0 in 2004, allowing the Red Sox finally to break the so-called “Curse of the Bambino” and win World Series for the first time since 1918.

If Torre II didn't live up to the expectations generated by Torre I, I'm not sure it's Joe's fault. He played the hand he was dealt and, this season especially, he played it like a master. But there's only so much you can do with virtuoso solo operators. Out of all the signings I mentioned above, only one, I think, turned out well. 

There are times in baseball when a home run isn’t what you need. For example, when you’re several runs down, and there are men on base, and a home run will clear the bases but not get you even. In those situations, it may be better to hit something less than a home run, simply to keep the rally going, to leave it to the next batter to build on your achievement. There are some times when a single would be enough: for example, the fourth inning of game 2 of the ALDS between the Indians and the Yankees, when A-Rod struck out swinging, with Derek Jeter on second base. At the time, Jeter represented a crucial insurance run; it might have proven to be the game-winner. Or the top of the ninth in the same game, when A-Rod struck out swinging again, with Bobby Abreu on second base, representing the go-ahead run and, again, possibly the game-winner.

Sometimes a home run can propel you to victory, as in game three, when the Yankees, down 3-0 early, managed to gain the lead on a home run by Johnny Damon in the fifth inning. But more often it’s the crucial, two-out single that’s the key to victory. Cleveland managed to get those. Cleveland’s first three runs in game one came on two-out singles. Three of the runs in their five-run fifth came with two outs, as did two more in the sixth. Cleveland’s winning run in the eleventh inning of game two came with two outs. And in game four, Cleveland opened up with a home run, but the rest of their runs were driven in by a double play and a some well-timed singles. The Yankees hit three solo home runs, including Rodriguez’s. The last one made it 6-4 in the ninth and brought Rodriguez to the plate. A solo homer would have made it 6-5. A single would have brought the tying run to the plate. Rodriguez popped out. And Jorge Posada, who had an amazingly prolific season at the plate, struck out swinging.

So it’s on to the championship series: in the NL, Arizona versus the surprising Rockies, winners now of 17 games out of their last 18; in the AL, Cleveland versus Boston. May the best ensemble win!

[Giamatti's speech was reprinted in the October 1986 issue of Harper's magazine. You can also find it in A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti, edited by Kenneth S. Robson, with a foreward by David Halberstam (Algonquin Books, 1998).]

"The greatest late September collapse in the history of major league baseball is now complete." That's what Mets' announcer Gary Cohen said after Luis Castillo struck out to end the team's 162nd game, an 8-1 loss in which the Mets trailed 7-0 after the first half inning. Minutes later the Phillies defeated the Washington Nationals to win the Eastern Division, a division the Mets had led for over four months but lost on the final day of the season. Never before had a team with a seven-game lead and only 17 games left to play failed to finish in first place.

All around the city, Mets fans were asking themselves, "How could this have happened?"

I'm afraid I know. And only I know.

In spring training, the Phillie's shortstop, Jimmy Rollins proclaimed that the Phillies were the team to beat. Mets fans laughed, particularly when the Phillies stumbled out of the gate. Rollins, now a likely frontrunner for the NL MPV award, finished with a rare 20-20-20-20 season (20 stolen bases, 20 homers, 20 triples and 20 doubles). Some people may want to add another 20-20 for vision in predicting that the Phillies would be the team to beat in the East. But that was only true for two days. For almost all of the season, the Mets were the team to beat. The irony is that the team that finally beat them wasn't the Phillies, but the Mets themselves.

How did it happen? I know, and I wish I didn't.

How could the Mets let themselves get swept not once but twice by the Phillies in the final five weeks of the season? How could the Mets go 1-6 in the final week of the season at home, playing against the fourth- and fifth-place teams in their division and a St. Louis team that had to fly in to Shea for a one-game make-up series? How could the Mets lose a game that they had led 5-0 on the final Wednesday of the season, and what was a rookie doing starting that game anyway? How could 300-game winner Tom Glavine give up seven runs in a third of an inning of work in the final game of the year after John Maine had pitched a near no-hitter the day before to give the Mets control of their destiny once again?

If you want to know why, read on. If you're a Mets fan, read it and weep.

What follows is the crypto-history of the New York Mets for the past 21 years. It begins on October 25, 1986.

Here's the short version: it was all my fault.

On the eve of the 2006 World Series, with an important national midterm election looming soon afterward, it's worth reconsidering what the literary scholar Jacques Barzun wrote half a century ago: "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game." After all, a lot of Americans have taken this idea seriously, including the man who currently sits in the Oval Office.

Bush owes a lot to baseball. His public life really began with his stint as managing partner of the Texas Rangers, and as a politician, talking baseball has helped him to promote himself as a man of the people. He and his speechwriters know how to use baseball imagery to make the values associated with his politics seem to be natural, timeless, and distinctively "American." Was it any surprise that the video biography shown before his address to the Republican Convention in 2004 was called "The Pitch" and climaxed with his appearance at the World Series in New York shortly after 9/11? History may well remember that moment as the finest of Bush's presidency.

As the baseball season winds to a close, I find myself thinking back to its beginning -- indeed to the pre-season and the inaugural World Baseball Classic. The U.S. team was a disappointment, and Japan defeated Cuba to win the title. I remember wondering at the time whether George W. Bush had taken any interest in the tournament. I remembering thinking that he should have, because it might have led him to rethink the way he invokes the so-called national pastime. It might even have taught him a political lesson or two.

At the start of each game of the World Baseball Classic, a television announcer would intone: "The game that means 'America,' now means so much to the world." But this is nothing new. The Japanese have been playing organized baseball since 1873. Baseball is now cherished in Japan and Korea and across the Caribbean and Latin America. As far as exporting our cultural traditions goes, we've been much more successful with baseball than we have been with democracy. Fidel Castro doesn't love the U.S., but he sure loves el béisbol.

There's an allegory about both American power and the American character be found in the Classic somewhere. Team USA may have entered as the nominal favorite, but it didn't make the semi-finals after losses to Canada, Korea, and Mexico. Mission not accomplished.