The Mets have lost nine of their last ten and four of their last series, including two sweeps. The offense isn’t producing, pitching hasn’t been clutch and suddenly routine plays are anything but. The Mets are playing at a level that hasn’t been this poor in quite some time as the Mets head to Yankee Stadium to complete the 2007 Subway Series against a red hot team coming off an eight game winning streak. Judging by the mood on the blogosphere, it seems that most fans and writers agree that there is no end in sight for the still first place, yet stale Mets.

I speculate that there is a promising halt to the June slide Friday night. If this team can’t get motivated to go smack the resurgent Yankees around in Yankee Stadium with the pinstripe biased press craving to write-off the Mets as finished, then the pilot light is out, folks.

The Pitching match-ups look like this:

• Game 1 Ollie Perez vs. Roger Clemens
• Game 2 Tom Glavine vs. Tyler Clippard
• Game 3 El Duque vs. Chien Ming Wang

The Mets desperately need to take 2 out of three this weekend and game one is essential. That’s right, Game One, set for June 15, 2007, thirty years to the day Tom Seaver was traded to the Reds. Some might grade that moment as the low point of the entire history of the franchise. I submit that thirty years later the Mets approach another potentially significant moment in Mets history.

Those that have been around awhile or too young to remember but have done their due diligence in the works of Leonard Koppett, Howard Blatt, Peter Golenbock and Dennis D’Agostino know too well that the Mets Organization is pockmarked with dramatic highs and very dreadful lows. The gutting of a championship franchise, the exuberant joy watching a reliever fling his glove high in the air and fall to his knees in euphoric victory. The Grand slam single and bases loaded walk. Those images require no additional description, date or opponent; Mets fans can see them in high definition merely by closing their eyes. Friday night, against this fan base’s most hated opponent is the perfect setting for one such moment; one way or the other. Just another regular season game; hardly.

The chance to change the direction of the season, the chance for a victory against a hot opponent, a notorious villain in a hostile stadium requires intestinal fortitude, toughness focus and execution. And the chance to do in on one of the biggest stages in regular season play with the dynamic stuff of pitcher the Mets acquired via trade that could be ultimately described as the antithesis of the Tom Seaver deal for the orange and blue boys.

Oliver Perez, the electric armed, though occasionally erratic, southpaw finds his team handing him the ball once more in a desperate situation. Whether Ollie is aware of it or not, he is also receiving the chance to ease the aged misery of diehard Mets fans. Fans whose loyalty never faltered even when Donald M. Grant gave them a justifiable incentive to waver exactly three decades ago to the day.

I’m not suggesting that a loss Friday night would equal the heartache of the Seaver trade. Not at all; but the opposite would provide Mets fans a much more satisfying memory, one of defeating Mets enemy number one in Yankee Stadium when no one else thinks it likely, to reflect on when the calendar turns to June 15th every year. Would building up so much anticipation on a single season game risk for an enormous let down Friday night and into Saturday morning? Sure, but if Mets fans were averse to risk, heartbreak or disappointment, they would surely be wearing Yankee colors on Friday night.

And isn’t the propensity to risk heartache the reason we’ve stuck around so long?