I had a best friend, growing up, named Bill. I'm still very close to him today. Whenever I need a helping hand, or to be cheered up, I know I can count on Bill. I had another friend, Mookie, who I hung out with when Bill wasn't around, basically. We weren't quite the "Three Amigos," but Mookie seemed at the time like another lifetime friend--if only the kind you have opposite political views from, and who moves far away, but you still keep in touch with. But when I was ten, my family went to Aruba on vacation. Mookie fed our prize goats while we were away. When we got back, all the goats were dead. Mookie left the barn door open, and a pack of wolves came in and ate them all up. Mookie never meant any harm. In fact, had we not given him a chance to ruin our lives, he never would have. Mookie never did move far away. He's still around. I see him occasionally. But any magic between us died when those damn goats did.

Now, I know what you're saying: Jere, you're absolutely full of shit. There are no such thing as "prize goats," and you've never been to Aruba. True and true. Have you ever heard of a metaphor? Jeez.

If you're having trouble figuring this one out, well, Bill is the Red Sox and Mookie is the Mets.

The Mets were the perfect team for my family to get behind in the early eighties. The Red Sox would always be our team. There was never any issue with jumping ship. But we lived closer to New York than Boston, my dad's buddy had great seats at Shea, the two leagues never played each other, and as my dad taught me from an early age, when the Mets win, Steinbrenner gets mad.

So, we'd go to a few games a year, my dad and I, in '81, '82, '83. (I was born in '75.) I'd get to see baseball on a school night, we'd have great seats, and we'd have the place all to ourselves. There wasn't even any traffic to beat. The Mets were bad, save for the aging Kingman and Foster.

I was the first to realize there might be trouble in paradise in the summer of '86. I remember my mom excitedly saying, "Looks like the Red Sox and Mets could go to the World Series." I didn't like it. To this day, I don't like that our World Series team and theirs happened to be the same year. I knew at the time what it was leading to. I didn't want to have to root against the Mets, but, of course, I wouldn't have rooted for anyone, ever, against the Red Sox, for any reason. So I just hoped the Astros would take them out, let us have our World Series, and root for them when they played some other AL team for all the marbles in some future year.

But we all know what happened. Shea Stadium still gives me nightmares. The look of it at night is like some haunted mansion. Welcome to Shea, Jere, welcome to your personal hellhouse.

I want to root for the Mets. There's always that reason: they're the Yanks' rival. But with all the Yankee fans who root for the Mets as well, it's hard. And to openly root for the Mets in October at Shea, well, I associate that with rooting against the Red Sox. I find myself rooting against the Mets in these games. I see the fans, the "bad" ones, in the crowd, the ones who would make fun of my Red Sox fandom just like a Yankee fan would. And I want them to suffer. Wouldn't it be cool to see them lose at home, on some mystical error in the ninth?

But then I think of the "good" Met fans. The ones who maybe came from Dodger or Giant blood. The ones who truly hate the Yankees, and have no reason to hate us. In fact, if I were a Met fan, I'd love the Sox, for the obvious anti-Yankee reasons, but also because the Red Sox gave the Mets a World Championship.

So you see the thoughts I wrestle with.

One solution I've come up with is to go the game tonight, root for the Mets, and make all those bad memories turn into good ones. I'd also be able to know that a new Mets championship will bring a whole new set of highlights to New York and baseball in general. Mets fans will think of something else besides Buckner when they think of "World Series." And since we've got ours now, a whole big bowl of wrong will have been emptied out quite a bit.

And what a world it would be, knowing that the Mets and Red Sox have won it all since the Yanks have. Yeah. That sounds good.

So I'm checking craigslist. I checked it yesterday up until game time. Tickets are relatively cheap, especially late in the day. I'll see what happens. Even without all the history, a Game 7 so close to me is something that's hard to pass up.

This game tonight will either give the Mets a chance at changing history, or just kind of keep things the same in the Jere/Mets world. I'm excited to see what happens.