The best radio promotion I ever heard for the Mets aired the morning after they won the 1986 World Series. It consisted of every station in New York dwelling long and lovingly on the championship achieved in Queens the night before. There was no all-sports radio then, so the conversation was wholly organic, of the moment and impossible to affix a price tag upon. The formats didn’t matter. The hosts didn’t matter. All that mattered was the Mets were the biggest story in town, they had accomplished the biggest thing they could and, because they were on everybody’s mind, there was no way they weren’t going to be on everybody’s air.

So when the Mets in 2013 put out a press release to make official not just that their games will be heard on WOR, 710 on your AM dial, but that they and WOR parent Clear Channel will reinvent the wheel in terms of a “five-year landmark multimedia marketing partnership,” excuse me if I turn down the volume.

Clear Channel is a behemoth that owns a zillion radio stations, including more outlets in New York than the Mets have barely plausible first basemen. Games aren’t going to be broadcast on Z100 or Q104.3 or these other frequencies, but I guess when you hear some non-automated DJ suddenly launch into spontaneous praise of Jonathon Niese’s breaking ball from last evening out at rockin’ Citi Field, we’ll know it was bought and paid for. If this process somehow serves to ultimately ratchet up the excitement over the Met product, Met brand or the Met lifestyle and thus sells some additional tickets or merchandise or whatever allows our team to compete more effectively, well, go for it.

Mostly, though, I get the feeling the Mets had to issue a hype-laden press release, and it wasn’t enough to say, “Adjust your radio a few notches, see you in late February.”

Nowhere in the Mets’ missive touting their “multifaceted strategic alliance” with Clear Channel are Mets announcers specified, which kind of designates the lede for assignment. Besides knowing where the games can be found, all the Mets’ core constituency cares about vis-à-vis radio at the moment is who will be speaking into those WOR mics. Adam Rubin and others have been reporting Howie Rose is a lock to return but Josh Lewin’s status is unresolved.

The first half of that is great news. Howie is as much a part of Mets baseball as the skyline logo. After more than a quarter-century as a near-daily presence in our lives, he’s the aural equivalent of the Woolworth Building, at the very least.

The second half is unnecessarily murky and, from the perspective of the plain old Mets fan, stupidly mystifying. Josh has spent two years working his way up to Williamsburg Savings Bank status, logowise, and he’s done a damn fine job of it. I had my reservations when he was brought on board primarily because I identified him with Fox’s handling of baseball. I now realize holding a Fox microphone during a televised baseball game tends to lower an announcer’s IQ as if by corporate decree (with occasional Burkhardtian exceptions factored in, of course). Josh stopped being a Fox guy the second he sat down next to Howie. By the same turn, Howie’s creeping crankiness —a condition we all contracted via prolonged exposure to Wayne Hagin — commenced to receding when he partnered with Josh.

The team whose losing ways Howie and Josh have communicated may not have been much to listen for across 2012 and 2013, but the team Howie and Josh have formed has been worth tuning into, no matter Met fortunes on a given day or night. They know their stuff, which is no small statement after four years of Hagin sounding as if he just arrived from nowhere in particular. They maintain a terrific pace, which is also not a perfunctory compliment considering there’s an inside-the-park homer from 2007 that Tom McCarthy hasn’t yet finished describing. Best of all, they are splendid company to keep. When you get right down to it, that’s what a baseball listener wants and needs: voices with whom you want to spend the season, pitch by pitch, inning by inning, game by game.

I want Howie and Josh on that call. I need Howie and Josh on that call. I also want and need various morning menageries, whether Clear Channel’s or some other conglomerate’s, playing “We Are The Champions” on behalf of the Mets some future autumn a.m. (AM or FM) not because they are contractually obligated to but because it will be as accurate as the time and temperature they issue every four minutes.

There’s no better multimedia marketing promotion than winning. You don’t need the 105th caller to tell you that.

In the “seventh inning” of Ken Burns’s Baseball — the installment titled “The Capital of Baseball” — the viewer learns that New York was the epicenter of the universe in the 1950s, at least until two-thirds of the Metropolitan Pastime’s contingent was about to be packed up and shipped west. It’s within that portion of the documentary that Burns brought in John Turturro to voice the letter a concerned citizen wrote to Mayor Robert Wagner as the dastardly deeds were being done in 1957:

I am a man of very few words so I will come straight to the point. I voted for you. I pay your salary. I WANT THE DODGERS IN BROOKLYN. I don’t want any excuses from you or any of your men at the City Hall. I WANT THE DODGERS IN BROOKLYN and you can do it by building the sports center. You had better get it built or you’ll not get a vote from me.

Just as John Turturro channeled the sentiments of disgruntled Wagner voter R. Cucco twenty years ago, his same I-mean-business tone would suit my sentiments presently where the machinations of WOR and, apparently, the Mets themselves are concerned.

I am a man of sometimes many words but I will come straight to the point. I am a loyal consumer of your product. I WANT HOWIE ROSE AND JOSH LEWIN DESCRIBING IT TO ME ON RADIO. I don’t want any excuses from you or any of your people at Clear Channel. I WANT HOWIE AND JOSH BROADCASTING METS GAMES and you can do it by signing them to contracts for the 2014 season and many seasons beyond. You had better get it done or…

Oh, damn, this is where my 50,000 watts of Turturroan indignation turn to static because I am a consumer of your product and you SOBs (that’s Students of Broadcasting, I hope) probably assume a fan like me might raise a fuss over disagreeable details but will ultimately tune in when I need to hear the Mets on the radio because, well, I need to hear the Mets on the radio. You smugly believe that since I put up with Tom McCarthy for two years and Wayne Hagin for four more that you can, for reasons not at all understood by me, potentially replace an announcer I’ve come to enjoy and not pay a price for it.

The price is my goodwill, but perhaps that’s not dollars-and-sensical enough for you to care.

That’s too bad. If you don’t keep Howie and Josh together, I will view it and hear it as an abuse of my trust. It may not mean a thing to your pocketbook in the short term, because I can’t swear I’d ease my foot off the going-to-games gas pedal in any meaningful way or even resist the temptation of orange-and-blue merchandise if there’s a spiffy new item that catches my eye. Yet I will be genuinely pissed off. And I’ll remember it. And somewhere along the way, you’ll have whittled away at our team-fan relationship.

I only know what I read in Capital New York, but the pieces of the story that have emerged — that new flagship WOR wasn’t necessarily anxious to retain Howie Rose (perhaps because they believe putting a shiny 710 stamp on Met broadcasts supercedes Met listeners’ needs) and that Jeff Wilpon hasn’t rushed to secure Josh Lewin’s services (perhaps because Josh’s sparkling chemistry with Howie and his own quick wit elude the COO) — are, as they say in chin-stroking journalistic circles, troubling.

The Mets said they were going to WOR, but I look at Howie and Josh not confirmed to the world at large as the Mets broadcast team of record right now and well into the future, and I’m pretty sure WTF? is the real frequency over which ownership and its new radio partners are intent on transmitting.

WOR still hasn’t found a pregame host for Mets baseball, but that — in case the name doesn’t give it away — is only about what happens before the game starts. Before the game starts doesn’t count. Just like Spring Training. Just like all the talk that fires up the Hot Stove.

It doesn’t count that Clear Channel and the Mets dragged their corporate feet from the end of September to the middle of February before making official that Howie Rose and Josh Lewin would continue to do what they’ve done so well. It’s unfortunate that it took that long for internal machinations to play out, but the important thing is they played out to an agreeable result. When the Mets begin to play in search of the most agreeable results of all, it will be Howie and Josh maintaining their half of the best broadcasting tradition in baseball.

You know what I’m talking about. We’ve heard it uninterrupted since 1962. It’s why we were so sorry to lose Ralph Kiner and are so gratified that the Mets have announced steps to pay him the tribute he deserves this season. It’s why even the hardest-to-take Mets games have made for easy listening. Howie and Josh are strong links in the chain that extend back to the beginning, deeply resonant voices speaking on our behalf. They know what we’re thinking because they’re thinking it, too. They know what we want to know and they tell us.

We already knew they’d be happy to be certified for 2014 and hopefully many years beyond, but it’s nice to read it in their own words before they take to 710 AM to tell it to us personally. It seems appropriate that Howie would go through a solid sports media columnist like Newsday’s Neil Best to express his enthusiasm for continuity at a new Met frequency while Josh would start a blog in order to thank the fans from the bottom of his ever audible heart and offer to buy us a beverage in appreciation of our collective support. They are who they are individually and they’re something else together.

I don’t need a drink. I need a Mets game, even one that doesn’t count. Here’s to the fact that one is coming to a radio near us in just over a week. Here’s to the fact it’s those two who will be bringing us every pitch.

Some things that don’t matter:

* Ike Davis vs. Lucas Duda. Ike’s doing a lot better in Pittsburgh. That’s great. He was a mess in New York, capable of spending months looking unsure which end of the bat was up. Ike wasn’t going to get fixed here, so I wish him the best there. Duda came up as a scary-looking hitter who couldn’t play defense and now strikes us as an average defender who can’t hit. Can he get fixed here? My reaction is increasingly to sigh.

* Jacob deGrom being snakebit. Josh Lewin said this on the air while I was sitting on a ferry with my own Joshua fuming about my shitty baseball team, and I shook my head. I like Lewin — he’s genuinely funny, obviously enjoys baseball and has coaxed Howie Rose into poking his head out of his Get Off My Lawn shell. But he was wrong about that one. Jacob deGrom’s problem isn’t that he’s snakebit, but that he has too many teammates who are bad at baseball. Slight progress was made in this regard, at least, as the Mets finally stopped pretending not to notice that Jose Valverde was pitching with a gigantic fork in his back — he got Farnsworth’d after undoing deGrom’s first career win. Valverde will be replaced by Vic Black, who at least has a possible future as an effective big-league reliever. Too bad reaching this obvious conclusion cost the Mets several games. Why was Valverde on the roster in the first place? We’ll get to that.

* Whether or not fans should boo. The sports-radio trolls will beat this one to death tomorrow, because people like fighting about it and so it will drive ratings. Whatever. It’s stupid. No, seriously: It’s stupid. I don’t care and neither should you. Most fan booing is free-floating anger looking for a target because team owners are smart enough not to appear in public, and so it lands on whomever’s doing badly at any given moment. Does it affect players? Until a stats-minded man or woman shows me a real effect, I’ll dismiss it as the Clap If You Believe in Fairies theory of baseball — Tinker Bell thanks you for your faith, but to Daniel Murphy you’re a civilian and he could give a shit what you’re doing up there in the Promenade.

* Dave Hudgens vs. Keith Hernandez. I love Keith, but the danger of playing the crazy-uncle role is the actor winds up trapped in the part. Over the last three decades I’ve read thousands and thousands of words about Keith Hernandez, more than enough to convince me that he was a brilliant student of hitting and a smart cookie away from the diamond too. This is a guy who earned respect sitting in on academics’ Civil War seminars, for Pete’s sake; he’s far too smart to play the Neanderthal role he’s fallen into when discussing hitting philosophies, defensive shifts and other studies of the game he once would have found illuminating. Keith has grown close-minded about the game he loves, and it’s a shame to see. In other words, I agree with the just-departed Dave Hudgens on this one — the Mets’ hitting problems aren’t a reflection of a poor philosophy, but of lousy students. It will be interesting to see if Lamar Johnson can be a better teacher, and that might actually have a short-term impact on the Mets’ fortunes. But what Keith Hernandez thinks of it and what Dave Hudgens thinks of Keith Hernandez’s opinion is just more talk-radio bullshit.

* Those hats. Actually those hats were a fucking atrocity. But they don’t matter either.

Here’s the one thing that really does matter to the fortunes of the Mets: The front office never knows what its budget is, and so cannot plan.

Write that one down and stick it above your computer screen. Put it in your sig file. Turn it into an acronym. FONKWIBICAP. It’s even catchy.

Hudgens himself gave us a peek behind the curtain on his way out in chatting with the New York Post. First he conspicuously left “ownership” off his list of people who’d given him a fair shake. Then he said that “I have nothing but respect for Sandy and no doubt he will turn things around if he’s allowed to.”

If he’s allowed to. In other words, if Sandy Alderson is given an actual budget he can plan against instead of being misled by ownership and having in turn to mislead others.

Too bad that hasn’t happened since Sandy arrived.

This is the fundamental thing wrong with the Mets. All the rest of the stuff that drives us crazy is a sideshow, a symptom of the real problem. The Wilpons keep their finances secret, telling their employees to say things that contradict the things they were told to say earlier. As a result, the front office must play a difficult strategic game while ignoring ever-moving goalposts. Is it possible to win this way? Yes — perhaps Matt Harvey recovers from Tommy John surgery and the team’s surplus starting pitchers are traded for hitters and enough guys have good years and because of all that the Mets are contenders next year, or the year after that. But there’s no margin for error — everything has to break right. It probably won’t — not because the Mets are star-crossed or cursed, but because this stuff is hard and there are 29 other teams run by mostly smart people seeking the same goal, except those teams’ owners give their front offices a budget written in ink.

Or, put more simply, FONKWIBICAP.

Greg and I did a podcast last week and someone asked when this will change. I kind of laughed and asked how long the questioner expected Jeff Wilpon to live.

To be clear, I hope Jeff Wilpon lives a long time — I have nothing personally against him or his father. The point is there’s no obvious solution to the Mets’ fundamental problem. The singularly useless Bud Selig doesn’t care if the Mets are run like a third-rate orphanage. The next corporate fox picked to guard baseball’s henhouse won’t either. When will the Mets once again be run the way the National League’s New York franchise should be run? The answer has more to do with the real-estate business than it does with baseball. Maybe another real-estate bubble will save the Wilpons and revive the Mets. That would be nice. But maybe they’ll hang on, continuing to refinance loans and pushing both the day of reckoning and the Mets’ window of competitiveness into the future, as commissioners say they aren’t concerned and GMs give up or are sacrificed to sate the bloodlust of fans too dim to look behind the curtain.

The life of a dug-in owner is a lot longer than the career of a Jacob deGrom or even a Bobby Abreu. Ask Blackhawks fans how long it took to stop being a pathetic joke. Ask Clippers fans how long their nightmare has lasted. Until something changes, expect a lot more losing, a lot more sideshows, and a lot more ignoring the only problem that matters.

Terry Collins said the other day that “fun time” is over. I hate to disagree with the manager of the defending National League champions, but I’d say fun time is just getting started.

Collins was referring to the Yoenis Cespedes Off-Hours Charismatic Carnival, which, to be fair, was loads of fun. More fun than:

• a barrel of profiles of longshot candidates to be the last man out of the bullpen;

• endless speculation over how many games the stoic, stenosisic Captain might play;

• another round of thoughts from Neil Walker regarding how different New York might be from Pittsburgh;

• and whatever else would have filled our field of vision once the adrenaline rush of confirming New York Mets baseball players were going about their business in Port St. Lucie, Florida, inevitably wore off.

Yoenis made the deadliest week on the baseball calendar come alive (save for a pig who used to be alive). There were the sweet, sweet rides that gave conspicuous consumption a good name. There was the equine entrance that proved Noah Syndergaard makes for a more comfortable sidekick than Chris Christie. There was that bit Carnac came back to deliver with Ed McMahon.

“Trains and boats and planes.”
“Trains and boats and planes.”
“Name the only three ways Yoenis Cespedes hasn’t come to camp in the last week.”
“HIYO!”

Hi Yo, indeed. He was an international man of mystery behind the wheel. He was a rootin’, tootin’ sight up on his high horse. He was a Western-style presence when he went whole hog. Oh, the butcher and the baker and the people on the streets — where did they go?

Well, we know the butcher went to meet Yoenis’s not-so-little piggy, who cost our Most Visible Player seven-grand, or what probably accumulates on the many passenger seats of the Yoenis fleet. At that rate, I was hoping Piggy would trot out alongside Ces before the Home Opener, wearing a matching No. 52 and four or five neon-green sleeves (including one for the tail). Instead, he’s slated to be the guest of honor at a future roast. Somewhere Foster Brooks is clearing his throat and, perhaps, his glass.

Will the pig become links by breakfast tomorrow? Will the player be on the links by nightfall? (He likes to golf, you know.) These were the questions that preoccupied us when there was nothing else to think about. The word spread of Yoenis the Kid, and for that we were grateful. Now it’s vaya con dios vaquero, hello five-tool superstar. You and your pals can go commit some baseball now.

Real Fun Time 1.0 commenced at 1:05 Thursday afternoon, and it will be in effect until the required system upgrade kicks in on April 3. The New York Mets were on the air on WOR, featuring some guys we’ve all heard of, some other guys we’ll hardly hear of again. The first voice of spring we actually needed to hear from was Josh Lewin’s. He welcomed us to baseball, choosing to channel word of Terry’s down-to-business declaration through Richard Jenkins’s exasperated Dr. Robert Doback in Step Brothers, because that’s how Josh rolls. “Rumpus time,” Lewin aptly quoted, “is over.”

Last week, there was so much room for activities. From this week forward, there’s only one activity worth our attention. Play ball.

Emily and I spent yesterday getting Joshua settled in at boarding school, which was emotionally fraught, as expected, and also a lot of work. That second part was less expected — there were meetings and receptions, and I wound up assembling shelves and bookcases in a third-floor room in 88-degree heat.

I hadn’t bargained on that, but got it done and then we faced the daunting task of a 4+ hour drive back to New York. That’s a journey I’ve made many, many times — but not usually while quite that tired.

Fortunately, we knew the game would be on.

That’s also familiar territory for me — I’ve racked up thousands of miles with the Mets as my companion, on various radio stations. The At Bat era has changed that somewhat. I no longer feel compelled to extend an evening’s drive to get into the outer edge of radio range, or to cut a drive short to hear the end of a good game. And my time-honed skills at following a game through every third or fourth word and the pitch/pace of the announcers are admittedly less important in the digital age.

But At Bat isn’t a perfect replacement, at least not yet. Instead of the wow and flutter of distance, you get the dreaded message BUFFERING. Instead of storms drowning reception in static, you get the even more dreaded message AUTHORIZING. The difference is that there’s no picking out an occasional word of a radio feed when it’s supposedly doing one of those two things. You get silence. Absence. You get nothing.

Emily and I started the journey with a relatively short drive from Joshua’s new school to a diner we like outside of Worcester, where I paid vague attention to the first inning of the Red Sox-Blue Jays game. Then it was time for the big push. We tuned in just in time to hear Jacob deGrom give up a two-run single to his pitching counterpart Ben Lively. That was bad. On the other hand, the Mets were playing the Phillies, which is usually good.

Not tonight, though. Lively struck again, taking Jake deep for a two-run homer and an improbable four RBIs on the night. The rout was on, with Phillie after Phillie reaching base while deGrom trudged around the mound looking baffled and irritated. (I don’t know that for sure, as all I had was radio, but I can guess.)

A Phillies’ lead of more than a touchdown in the last month of a terrible season wouldn’t normally be a must-listen, but my wife and I were a captive audience. And the hours to come renewed my appreciation for the work of Howie Rose and Josh Lewin.

Last night’s game epitomized forgettable, and the WOR radio team had to know the audience had gone from small to imperceptible once deGrom had been sent to the showers. But Howie and Josh kept on plugging, chronicling events and chatting companionably as if Citi Field was the place you’d want to be.

They talked Al Luplow and Shane Victorino and Don Rose and Dillon Gee. They honored J.P. Crawford‘s first hit and used that as a jumping-off point to discuss the perils of rain and official games and whether Crawford’s milestone might be washed away, like Jay Bruce‘s home run against the Braves. (The rain never showed up at Citi, though we drove through buckets of it in Connecticut.) They talked about Mets’ injuries and next year, and Giancarlo Stanton and Roger Maris and Barry Bonds, and how Brandon Nimmo kind of looks like Maris (he does), and along the way they covered whatever it was the Mets were doing out there on the field with no discernable success.

In short, they did yeoman work, getting two weary travelers all the way to 684 above White Plains. With the storm having turned WOR into a sea of static (oh for the days of WFAN’s strong, clear signal) I’d switched back to At Bat, which decided it was time for some buffering as Matt Reynolds batted with two outs in the ninth and the Mets down eight. So we switched over to WOR, which was broadcasting a commercial.

“Reynolds hit a home run that went so far the Phillies were spooked into changing pitchers,” I told Emily.

Well, maybe not. The ballgame was over. But so was our drive, near enough. Howie and Josh had been given almost nothing to work with and spun that into three hours of entertainment. Thank you, gentlemen. And thank you, baseball — even the part where you get beat by eight runs.

Oh, as an addendum: an hour after we got home, I was dazedly scrolling through Twitter and discovered the Red Sox-Blue Jays game we’d seen the beginning of east of Worcester was in the 17th inning.

The plan was a good one: head down to Philadelphia for Saturday’s night game, for which friends had sweet tickets through a work event. I was excited to see Noah Syndergaard, our pals, the Mets, and to get another look at Citizens Bank Park, which back in the last years of Shea opened my eyes to how much better a modern park might make things.

Not so fast, said Mother Nature.

The radar was a sea of red to the west. We knew we didn’t need to hurry to be there for first pitch. Then came the rains — vengeful, Biblical rains. It didn’t take a baseball lifer to guess there would be no first pitch.

Ah well, so it goes.

But then it looked like Sunday’s game would vanish too.

This time, the weather-related havoc turned out not to be an entirely bad thing. The Mets and Phils were delayed long enough for Emily and I to take our seats in the front of the Megabus back to New York — we arrived (in radio terms) as the Mets had the bases loaded and one out against Aaron Nola in the top of the first. Alas, nothing came of it, and as the bus pulled out Jacob deGrom took the hill for the bottom of the first.

He was still there as our lumbering bus navigated central Philly traffic and construction.

He was still there as another round of passengers got their bags settled and arranged themselves on board.

He was still there as the bus headed across the Delaware River.

He was still there when we crossed into New Jersey.

It felt like he might still be there when the sun ran out of fuel, swelled and engulfed the Earth. That would probably interfere with the game even more thoroughly than a thunderstorm.

DeGrom was there for 45 pitches in all, a frustrating, quietly mesmerizing Verdun of a struggle. Like the Mets, the Phillies loaded the bases. Like the Mets, nothing came of it. DeGrom, incredibly, escaped without scoring a run. Except he didn’t really escape — that inning ‘s overwork ensured his departure.

The game then settled into a slow grind as our bus rolled up the turnpike, with Emily and I on an earbud each. It’s been a while since I was radio-only, and once again I found myself thankful for the presence of Josh Lewin. Lewin is still “the new guy,” but at this point that’s by default — somehow this is his seventh season calling games alongside Howie Rose. As has been the case since Lewin arrived in 2012, I appreciate his quirky sense of humor, his quick wit, and most of all how much he’s loosened up Rose. Howie is a treasure, but years of undistinguished radio partners had left him sounding cranky and bored by 2012. The new guy (sorry, it’s inescapable) has helped him shake off the rust, making his crankiness once again endearing. And there are few radio duos better at rising to a game’s occasion: that endless first inning brought out the best in them, as they kept track of pitches thrown, balls fouled off, remarked on the strange lack of action, eyeballed deGrom with his recent injury in mind, and searched for historical precedents.

It was a treat to listen to, though after that they didn’t have as much to work with. The game became a snoozy back and forth. Yoenis Cespedes (who arguably shouldn’t have been out there in the first place, given we all know how pushing him through a leg injury ends) connected for a home run in the sixth; Paul Sewald left a slider over the fat part of the plate in the bottom half of the inning for an enemy homer. 3-1 Phils.

Meanwhile, we were nearing New York — and I was worrying about my phone’s battery. We’d been at 47% when I got on the bus, with nary a USB port to be seen. I’d conserved power by resisting the temptation to check Twitter, email and other scores, so as our bus crawled through Mother’s Day traffic in Hoboken I wondered what percentage of phone and game remained.

The bus reached its New York stop with the Mets down to their final out and Asdrubal Cabrera at the plate as the tying run, facing Edubray Ramos, against whom he had done wonderful things before. Two strikes, and I dared to peek at my phone. Its battery counter read 2%.

I was hoping the Mets had enough game in them that I’d need more than that. If not, well, at least I’d see things through.

But that look proved fatal — it was Orpheus sneaking a glance over his shoulder. As Ramos got the sign, my screen went black. I didn’t know it at the time, but about a minute later, so did the Mets’ chances.

* * *

Longtime readers know that I’m semi-obsessed with Mets ghosts — guys who were on the active roster but never got into a game. Going into this season there had been nine of them, starting with Jim Bibby back in 1969 and running through Ruddy Lugo and Al Reyes in 2008. Two of the Met ghosts — Billy Cotton (1972) and Terrel Hansen (1992) — suffered the additional indignity of never getting to play in a big-league game for anybody.

Ghostdom can be a temporary thing. Corey Oswalt became one earlier this year, escaping when he was called up again and got into a game. Matt Reynolds spent the 2015 offseason as a ghost, with the additional asterisk of having been added to a postseason roster, before shedding his ectoplasm in 2016.

But I’ve never seen a ghost quite like Buddy Baumann.

Baumann — whose full name is the rather regal-sounding George Charles Baumann IV — was designated for assignment by the Padres at the end of April after pitching a third of an inning against the Rockies, during which he got, well, rocked and wound up suspended for being part of a brawl.

The Mets called him up for Friday’s game, but he had to serve the one-game suspension he owed MLB. Saturday’s game was rained out. Then Baumann was sent back down to make way for deGrom on Sunday.

Huh.

So is Baumann a ghost or not?

I’ve concluded that he is, though it’s a tentative, softly voiced ruling.

It’s a fact that as I write this, there was never a Mets game in which Baumann could have pitched. That would indicate he’s no more a ghost than, say, Justin Speier, who worked out with the Mets and even threw in the bullpen during a game, but was never on the active roster.

Yet while Baumann couldn’t have played, he was on the active roster. You have to be on the active roster to be suspended — that’s why his Met tenure began so oddly. He had to be activated so he could absorb the punishment of being inactive, or something like that.

Here’s hoping Baumann returns — besides clearing up the above, the Mets could sure use a second lefty. For now, he’s the most spectral ghost of all, the wandering soul who was here so he couldn’t be here.

To borrow a phrase favored by Josh Lewin, what did we learn on Saturday afternoon watching the Mets lose in the Bronx, other than Saturday afternoon Subway Series conflicts have diminished in appeal since Matt Franco was in fullest bloom?

We learned the phrase “den Dekker” is Dutch for “not Lagares”.

This is linguistic clarification gleaned after the Mets center fielder of the moment lost three fourth-inning fly balls in translation. Mets fans with memories longer than a Yankee Stadium short porch home run will recall Matt den Dekker was originally cast as the can’t miss defensive whiz in the attempted 2013 reboot of the Mets as a competitive baseball entity. Turned out den Dekker did miss — loads of time, due to the injury which opened the gates for Lagares to take his projected Gold Glove role — and could miss, specifically a trio of not easy yet not impossible chances hit in his general direction Saturday. They went for a triple, a double and a single, but when measured by cringe factor, the first was a boot and the next two were reboots. Given that Matt is 0-for-17 since his surprise recall from obscurity, one wonders what his particular major league acumen is at present. Someday, some kind soul might rediscover Matt den Dekker and lovingly recall him as the Billy Murphy of his time. That day is not today.

We learned Ron Hunt’s spiritual grandson Brandon Nimmo owns a record that somehow wasn’t Ron Hunt’s when the day began.

Brandon, when not leading with his grin, has spent 2018 putting his body into enough pitches to gain first base without swinging or taking. Standard-issue players only get hit incidentally. Brandon is clearly custom-made. By uncomplainingly accepting two more plunkings, Nimmo moved past not Hunt but Lucas Duda to claim the mark for most hit-by-pitches in a single Met season. He has fifteen marks overall on his body, not counting the couple he tried to sneak in when the umpires were being picky and ruled he made no attempt to elude what was coming at him. Some give some; Brandon gives all.

Hunt, the godfather of taking one for this team, did establish the franchise HBP record in 1963 with 13 and held it alone until 1997, when John Olerud unassumingly tied it. Duda’s impression of a tree trunk fooled pitchers into dinging him on the anatomy fourteen times three years ago. Nimmo has taken bruising to a whole new level. Congratulations?

We learned everything and everybody conspires against the Mets.

Not just those pesky Yankees batters who hit balls toward den Dekker. Not just those flinty Yankees pitchers who throw balls toward Nimmo. No, the whole universe. Why else would umpires eject two men wearing Mets uniforms who were, at most, only half-involved in the outcome of the game? First, home plate ump Larry Vanover tossed Pat Roessler, the hitting coach, for daring to point out what a crummy job Vanover was doing calling balls and strikes. Then, Hunter Wendlestedt thumbed Asdrubal Cabrera from the proceedings because Cabrera still gives a damn. Cabrera was called out on appeal of a checked swing and reacted in disgust, spiking his bat to the ground. Instead of Wendlestedt admiring that somebody assigned designated hitter participation for the day still has enough of a pulse to remain engaged in the outcome instead of strolling detached from defensive duties back to the dugout as presumably most DHs do in the overwrought softball league, the umpire who decided he himself is the attraction removed Asdrubal. Not pictured: Mickey Callaway racing to his player’s defense. Cabrera would be replaced with Devin Mesoraco. Not pictured: Devin Mesoraco doing much in the way of hitting, designated or otherwise.

Also conspiratorial, as long we’re into conspiracy theories, was Miguel Andujar being awarded second base despite fan interference on ball he hit to right. Some dope representing everything we identify with fealty to that facility’s host team reached several feet over the fence with a glove and treated his find as a home run caught. Proving we’ve come a long way since Jeffrey Maier was hailed by a besotted city for his precocious ingenuity, Andujar was penalized two bases and awarded only a double. He should have been ruled out. So should have a majority of the 47,102 in attendance just on principle.

We — or at least I — learned there is no hope for the hopelessly hopeful.

What a crummy game this matinee had become by the ninth inning, with the Mets trailing, 7-3, and Aroldis Chapman on the mound to nail down the non-save. Kevin Plawecki, who keeps his usefulness to himself, walked to lead off. Amed Rosario poked an infield single under Andujar’s glove (serves him right for conspiring with that doofus the right field stands). Still, what’s gonna come of it? Ty Kelly was sent up to pinch-hit for Matt den Dekker…is a sentence you wouldn’t expect to read from a description or account of a Major League Baseball game, but, you know, Kelly walked on four pitches to load the bases. Son of a gun, it brought Jose Reyes to the plate with at least a chance to do the very same thing. Four balls, none close to being ruled strikes by even this pack of crooked umps, resulted in a Mets run. Nimmo was next and Nimmo did a Nimmo, which is to say he set that hit-by-pitch record. It was now 7-5 and I wouldn’t get up from where I sat. Understand I wanted to get up for a diet cola refill a dozen or so pitches earlier, but I got it in my Mets fan head that something was happening, so I better not budge. The All-Star closer on the other side was wild as a March hare in July and if the Mets could figure out a way to stand by while he continued to self-immolate, well, call me Matt Franco in 1999!

Except it’s not 1999. It’s 2018. Chapman was pulled by his manager. Mesoraco’s manager, having little if anything to choose from on his bench, left Devin in to wreak havoc versus Chasen Shreve. Havoc wasn’t having it. Mesoraco slapped his way into a twin-killing One more run scored, but the bases all but emptied. There was a little fuss at the end, with Wilmer Flores up and Reyes on third, but the chemistry was not right. The game ended in an undesirable 7-6 decision. For all it mattered, I could have budged.

We learned the identities of two Oakland Athletic minor leaguers who are now two New York Mets minor leaguers.

Meet third baseman Will Toffey and relief pitcher Bobby Wahl. Meet them eventually, I suppose. Toffey is a Rumble Pony, Wahl a 51. Neither is a flaming hot prospect. Both are our concern because they — along with a satchel crammed with International Slot Money — were traded by the A’s to the Mets for more or less the best righthanded reliever we ever had, Jeurys Familia. Familia registered 123 saves as a Met. The only righty closer with more for us was Armando Benitez; I’ll take Familia. I would have continued to have taken Familia, especially had there been myriad saves to be had in our near future. Few are on the horizon, so business is business, and business dictated farewell to the arm that touched off more celebratory soirées than any in Mets history. Jeurys was on the mound when we clinched everything we clinched in 2015 and 2016, four preludes to champagne showers in all. The Mets have only poured bubbly over one another twenty times. Close your eyes and you’ll see Familia in the highlight reel of your mind.

Maybe those two minor leaguers will become major contributors. Maybe that International currency will be invested wisely. Yay, if any of it works out for us. I’m never thrilled to say goodbye to somebody who helped us prevail, especially when we’re doing so little of that of late.

These are the saddest of possible words:
Toffey and Wahl and slot
A pair of A’s and a bucket of bucks
Toffey and Wahl and slot
Exchanging our closer from all those wins
Not that Jeurys was devoid of sins
But Familia memories should elicit grins
Toffey and Wahl and slot

We learned Yoenis Cespedes has a couple of heels giving him hell.

We learned that late Friday night, actually. Callaway learned it later Saturday morning. Or so he said. Or he clarified that he knew what was up all along. I don’t know. Who listens to what Mickey Callaway says in hopes of learning anything anymore? While the Cespedes mess indeed represents a blob of bad form on the part of this disorganized organization, I think it’s worth remembering a player who lifted us to unimagined heights in 2015, in conjunction with Familia and a cast of characters that is no longer extant, is hurting. Imagine this franchise, under this ownership, going to the World Series. It’s beyond the imagination in 2018. It wasn’t on the radar as late as 2014. It was barely wishable as late as this date in 2015. But along came Ces on July 31, and up the ladder we went.

In light of Yoenis’s contributions to the Mets briefly standing for something better than they did before and do now, I lean toward thinking he’s not solely at fault in whatever communication mishap has bogged down his return to action. In West Wing terms, Yo’s actions align with President Bartlet keeping his MS quiet. The lot of us has responded as Toby Ziegler did: in stunned disbelief that nobody thought to mention it until now. None of us has been Donna Moss asking if the president is in pain. Maybe that strain of thought, whatever the heft of President Cespedes’s contractual status and the irritation inherent in his characteristic diffidence, should cross our minds a little. In non-TV terms, I hope he feels better soon.

Ces did return on Friday. Homered and everything. Then he revealed his heel problems and reported that if he opts for the surgery he indicated he ultimately needs, he’ll be out quite a while, deep into 2019. By no means is that what anybody wanted to hear, nor was it the avenue by which we would figure something like it would be said. We were reminded Saturday what a Met lineup without Yo looks like. Callaway used two DHs and got nothing for his trouble but one ejection and a devastating double play. When we get back to baseball played like it oughta be, Cespedes will have to stand on two aching heels and man left field or first base. Also unimaginable. We’ll see what an MRI and a visit to a specialist yields. Maybe the Mets will put out a press release when they know something. They don’t at this time retain a general manager who speaks on issues fans would want to know about.

They still have fans, somehow.

The Mets played the Nationals Saturday and the Nationals were eliminated from postseason contention. Unfortunately, the two events were completely disconnected from one another. The final blow to Washington’s mathematical prayers was struck in St. Louis by Tyler O’Neill, whose walkoff home run put an end to whatever infinitesimal chance the Nats had of losing another NLDS.

That was just bookkeeping. The Nats have been out of all races for a good long while. Not as long a while as the Mets have been, but long nonetheless. Also freshly plucked from the prospective October picture are the Phillies, whose amalgam of feisty youth and experienced pickups dropped the ball (literally and figuratively) as September wore on. Left standing in the East are our new champions, the Atlanta Braves. Congratulations to the team that outclassed all its generally sad sack competition. Saying nice things about the Braves doesn’t come easy, but I do appreciate that they got the celebrating out of their system before their next stop, which is Citi Field. Plus they have Lucas Duda. Good luck to our old first baseman in his strange new uniform.

Three paragraphs in and I haven’t bothered mentioning the Mets lost, 6-0, to the Nationals on Saturday, which seems fair considering the Mets barely bothered showing up Saturday. The Nats didn’t exactly play inspired “we’ll get ’em next year!” ball, but the Mets raised indifference to a whole new level. In a battle between starters who were chosen for their existence, Austin Voth outdueled Corey Oswalt. Maybe not so much a duel as a sharing of a hill in the middle of a diamond, each of them taking turns throwing for a spell. Oswalt was OK over five innings, giving up only two runs while not being Zack Wheeler. Voth was either dynamite in allowing merely a lone infield hit over five innings as a substitute for Tanner Roark, or the Mets batting order, unlike Oswalt, didn’t really exist.

No disrespect to Voth, but I’m going with the latter. The Mets played as if they were the ones hungover from toasting a division title. Perhaps they were carried away by the stat the club’s press notes spotlighted Saturday, the accurate though questionably relevant grip the Mets held on first place in the NL East, if one was to pretend the season began July 1. Alas, with the Braves’ win and the Mets’ loss on Saturday, we have ceded the top spot in that highly mythical division; don’t expect a dogfight to the wire with Atlanta, which might still believe the season includes games from prior to July 1. Despite the Mets’ indisputable if limited success of late, the pesky Nats can still make them look very first-half. Six-nothing was uncompetitive, for sure, but merely an appetizer of a beatdown compared to how the Nats feasted on the Mets’ carcass on July 31 (25-4) and August 26 (15-0). Somehow we’ve won the season series from our alleged archrivals anyway.

The game may have been Sominex on its own merits at Nationals Park, yet it came across as more fun than a barrel of McNeils in living rooms across the New York Metropolitan Area. SNY almost always makes a good time out of bad baseball. Saturday’s was a particularly cheeky telecast because Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez were able to focus on three things that had zero to do with the wan action itself.

• A pigeon wandering the circumference of the mound, oblivious to the machinations of Voth and Oswalt.

• A kid in the stands dressed as and acting like a major league umpire, except he demonstrated professionalism for nine innings

• Two adult men dressed in what were described alternately as snuggies or onesies. It was Mets-themed garb, mind you. Otherwise they would have looked ridiculous.

I don’t know exactly what the game sounded like on the radio because I was tuned into the television, but I am confident that Howie Rose and Josh Lewin made the day every bit as entertaining sans pictures. Those are our guys up in that booth. You know you’re listening to the voices of the Mets when you hear their homey, playful and empathetic tones. Howie and Josh are not an interchangeable unit. You wouldn’t swap them out with voices from any other franchise. Howie has ascended to Bob Murphy status in his synonymity with Mets baseball. Josh is the ideal companion when Howie is anchoring and a singular presence in his own right on play-by-play. Like those commercials for nectarines used to suggest, it wouldn’t be summer without them. Or spring. Or a generous helping of autumn when we’re really lucky.

Mets games are moving to WCBS on your AM dial next season. Different parent company, different executives, maybe somebody who has some idea that “we have to put our own imprint and/or a fresh spin on the broadcasts.” Word to the radio wise at Entercom and 880 AM: don’t. Don’t mess with Howie and Josh. They are ours. They and the immortal Chris Majkowski, who’s been producing Mets radio without pause for a quarter-century, and the pregame and postgame master of ceremonies Wayne Randazzo. Wayne, who joined the crew in 2015, emerged quickly as not only a true talent but an intrinsic part of the family, which is extremely commendable for someone who entered our midst from the foreign land known as Chicago. Yet he’s blended in beautifully. As much as I miss the regulars on a given night off, Wayne makes up for their short-term absences with enthusiasm, intelligence and outstanding chops. He does the same on TV, making the occasional Gary Cohen breather borderline bearable. I definitely want Wayne at WCBS, too.

In a perfect Metsian world, Pete McCarthy shifts frequencies with his compadres. I don’t know if that’s in the offing because WCBS doesn’t seem as likely to devote additional blocks of programming to sports talk. That projected void would be a loss for Mets fans. Pete has been sensational since creating the Mets On Deck show at WOR in 2014 and leading out of games with the Sports Zone. Pete reminds me of Howie Rose hosting in his 1050 days: smart, committed, a fan at heart but a journalist in approach. He respects his audience and has a knack for not overly indulging the dopiest of callers. I’ve anticipated listening to Pete after a terrific Mets win and have found his perspective essential after a terrible Mets loss.

The radio business made the imminent departure of the Mets from WOR as inevitable as their arrival was nearly five seasons ago. I had my doubts about 710 AM. It wasn’t a naturally baseball-friendly environment, but to iHeart’s credit, they carved the Mets a very nice niche. Save for a few promos, you could avoid altogether any hint of the objectionable non-Mets programming on the station (which was basically all of it) unless you forgot you left your radio tuned to their frequency the night before. If planting the Mets on WOR was designed to heighten the crossover appeal for their other offerings, I doubt it worked, incessant nudges that I could wake up to Len Berman and partner of the moment notwithstanding. But for those several hours a day when we needed WOR, WOR was there for us in a meaningful way. The reception could have been a lot better, but the sense that the Mets mattered on 710 was genuine. It felt like they mattered more on WOR more than they did the previous twenty years on WFAN, a station devoted to sports, a station that was founded on the backs of the Mets. I’ll forever fondly associate the WOR era with the run to glory in 2015, just as I smile thinking about WHN announcing it was home of the World Champion Mets in 1986.

The games will go on at otherwise all-news 88 and the broadcasts will evolve to some extent. They always do. At their core, it’s Mets baseball, and that figures to come through no matter what. Still, there was a certain personality, an identifiable flair to the WOR years, 2014 to 2018, and I will always appreciate the best of it. Here’s wishing everybody who made them a great listen only good.

I was going to bemoan that we can never keep a splendid team together, but we kept Howie Rose and Josh Lewin together for seven fun-filled seasons, making them the longest-running Mets radio tandem since the Hall of Fame duo of Bob Murphy (Frick Award, 1994) and Gary Cohen (New York State Baseball HOF, 2018) held forth from the end of the Eighties to the early Aughts. Be happy for what has been, not sad for what is no longer, or whatever the phrase is, I guess, but Josh leaving us before we migrate from 710 to 880 is a blow to fun-loving Mets fans everywhere.

That’s the word I keep coming back to: fun. Josh was fun. Josh brought fun. Josh made Mets radio more pure fun, perhaps, than it ever was. Tuning into Mets baseball can be fun on its own merit — it’s Mets baseball! — but nobody who preceded Josh (it seems overly stuffy to refer to him by last name) ever seemed to be having such an out-and-out good time keeping us apprised of balls and strikes. That sense of glee…that honest-to-goodness happiness to be here…it transmitted cleanly through the crackling deficiencies of WOR’s signal. Josh didn’t just appreciate or embrace announcing Mets baseball. He got a huge kick out of it.

Before any misguided radio management types, in their nebulous quest for a “fresh” sound or whatever they’ve bizarrely decided is required at a new frequency, dared to possibly kick him out of it, Josh stepped away from the Mets booth on his own steam. The Post’s Andrew Marchand this week reported that Josh is taking his talents to San Diego to anchor the Padres’ pregame and postgame coverage (and doubtlessly do a damn entertaining job of it). Given Josh’s work on behalf of UCLA athletics and his previous connection to the Chargers, it makes sense that the Rochester native’s center of gravity shifts all the way west. As Albert Hammond might have sung, seems it’s always Josh in Southern California.

Aside from having all the on-air tools of his trade down pat, Josh was the right Met voice at the right Met time, the first of our play-by-play announcers who understood that much of the sports world before, during and after games now revolved on social media. He wasn’t constantly kibitzing on Twitter, but he was present and certainly didn’t resist the platform’s shall we say charms. There was less of a barrier around him than we were used to from his profession. He intrinsically got the community aspect of fandom, virtual and actual. The kid who grew up rooting for Willie Montañez and Nino Espinosa had been around the majors plenty — four other teams plus nationally on Fox — yet he was clearly ready to let his Met flag fly when he alighted in Flushing in 2012.

Perhaps the online exposure to the way fans can be in this day and age led him to be a little more likely to allow his innate allegiance to the orange and blue reveal itself across the innings. I’m not sure if Josh was severely bummed when his childhood team lost a game, but he understood the vast majority of his listeners were when theirs did. “We” and “us” didn’t infiltrate his patter, thankfully, but there was a palpable difference between how he called a Met’s home run and that struck by an opponent. Consider the emojis you’d click in those respective situations and you can hear his disparate tones. Raised on Murph generally concealing his partisanship and forever admiring the way Howie can elevate an outstanding performance by somebody in another uniform, I have to admit the more obvious pro-Mets tilt didn’t always burrow snugly inside my ears. But I totally dug where the tilt was coming from.

Play-by-play isn’t the only reason you listen to baseball on the radio. You listen for the company, the companionship. If you’re lucky, you feel an announcer is talking to you. With Howie and Josh, we were luckier because we felt we were hanging with them. And why wouldn’t we want to? They were talking about the Mets for three hours a night, finding that sweet spot between taking it as seriously as you did and recognizing there’s a reason a game is referred to as a game. It was more than the idealized image of having the radio on in your backyard so you could keep up with the action. It was being invited over to their backyard for a barbecue, Howie practically asking if we want another burger, Josh graciously passing us another beverage, Conforto sending a ball into the gap and Cabrera chugging home from second. The sun may have set, the darkness may have overtaken the sky, the occasional mosquito may have required swatting, but you never wanted to get up and leave this little party they were throwing.

The deep dives into Seinfeld. The most Yiddish-inflected broadcast since Molly Picon was in high demand. The namechecking of the season ticketholding residents of Section 318, directly beneath their booth. The railing at network stooges (Howie’s trademark Sunday night grudge, but one egged on good-naturedly by his partner). Affection for the franchise. Affection for its followers. You didn’t have to be Sly Stone to recognize Howie and Josh created hot fun in the summertime. Spring and fall, too.

Seven years weren’t enough for this most splendid of teams. But they will have to do.

—

I don’t know if this merits a “full disclosure” disclaimer, but full disclosure: Josh Lewin has been a genuine friend to this blog, extending a stream of unexpected kindnesses toward this blogger through his seven seasons in the Metsian midst. Like his indelible descriptions of Jordany Valdespin and Ike Davis walkoff grand slams, they won’t soon be forgotten.