When I think of "Mets vs. Phillies," I think, naturally, of the episode of Silver Spoons where Alfonso encourages Rick to skip school to go to Shea Stadium. It's Mets-Phils, and to further lure Rick to the game, Alfonso points out that it's "jacket day." Oooooh. And then there was probably some lesson about staying in school, but I forgotteded.

Well, I didn't get a free jacket, nor did I skip school. But I saw a Mets-Phillies game. Here's the wrap-up of my day at Shea.

Chan & I arrived at Shea 2 hours before game time, only to find out there was no batting practice. So we just walked around for a long time. I immediately spotted a guy with an "El Guapo" t-shirt on. You know, the one with the ~ over the "L," which is something that doesn't exist in the Spanish language. Who let that one get by? I said, "El Guapo!!" to him, and pointed to my Sox hat. He was psyched, but not that much. He was the first of what turned out to be a huge number of Sox fans I'd see (for a Mets-Phillies game).

We were in the front row of the section above field level. I looked down below and saw a girl wearing a Sox T-shirt with a girl wearing a Providence shirt, and their boyfriends. I yelled down to them, and they were much more psyched than the El Guapo guy. Then I saw a girl with a Nomar shirt, and later, two other people with Red Sox shirts.

Toward the end of the five hour, 13 inning game, I looked to my right, past a whole lot of empty seats, and saw a woman with a Sox hat. I waited until she looked over, and then gave her the point, and then the point to my hat, and she gave me a nod back. I told Chan I felt like I was in a secret society. Then we all cheered when the scoreboard gave Sox highlights from Friday night's game.

In this Mets game, on the third anniversary of the terror attacks, the teams were tied after nine innings, with each team having 9 runs on 11 eleven hits. And the errors were 2 for the Phils and 001 for the Mets. So that was weird. Along with the fact that the Phils ended up winning 11-9.

I was hoping to catch the yanks game in the car on the way home, since the Mets game was at 1:15, and the yanks' was at 4:30 (the Sox played at 10:05). But the Mets game didn't end until about 6:20, so the yanks were already in the 8th when we got out of there.

At one point, the Phillies pitcher got thrown out of the game, just for throwing to close to our old buddy Cliff Floyd, with the winning run on 1st base. The dude rightfully got pissed, and threw a bunch of stuff on to the field, including a big cooler.

It was a good game, a lot of rallies and comebacks. Eighteen pitchers were used, tying a record. Seeing a Shea Stadium crowd going nuts always brings back bad memories, but I could've counted the number of people there, so it wasn't quite like, you know, that year.

I'll be going again tomorrow for a doubleheader, which will probably have even less fans than on Saturday. So I'll have an even better chance at a foul ball. I came really close on Saturday, but it wasn't to be.

If you ever go to Shea, just go to your seat and stay there. The ushers wouldn't let you sit one section away from where you're ticket says you should be, despite the fact that the entire crowd could've fit into the lower deck. And these ushers are also notorious for being the oldest, rudest, crankiest, white haired-iest geezers in baseball. But those guys aside, it was a fun day. I actually like when games go that long, especially when I don't care who wins. And I always seem to pick the craziest games to go to. So watch for some weird stuff at Shea on Monday, Fenway on Wednesday, and yankee Stadium on Friday.

Too bad about today's games. 3 1/2 back again, but I'm confident. And I got my letter from the Red Sox about my first round playoff tix that I'll be getting for having bought a 10-game plan. I am psyched.