Mets’ season will be defined by this 10-game gauntlet

Call me crazy. But you know what I miss most about the “Mike and the Mad Dog” radio show on WFAN, even now, 15 years after they went their own way (calling it another lonely day)? This is what I miss:

Their game-by-game breakdowns of the NFL schedule. You remember:

DOG: Week 1 … Giants home to the Cardinals …

MIKE: That’s a win.

DOG: One-and-oh! Week 2. Giants, home to the Lions …

MIKE: That’s a win.

DOG: Two-and-oh! Week 3, Giants at the 49ers!

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MIKE: Dog, that’s a loss …

It’s a perfect football exercise, and one of the reasons why it was so enjoyable when Mike Francesa and Chris Russo did that was because everyone does it. Well, maybe not everyone , but certainly anyone with a favorite team in the NFL.

And the NFL knows it, too. They release the schedule, this is the dominant conversation at millions of water coolers, inside thousands of saloons, within countless zillions of text-message threads. And it never stops, either. Fans continually upgrade those week-by-weeks as the season marches on. It’s perfect.

It is — or should be — less so for baseball seasons. Nobody with full retention of their sanity would ever dare to go game-by-game across all 162, and nobody other than Francis of Assisi would even think to smile and listen to all of that without running for the door. And, frankly, St. Francis himself would probably beg you to stop by the time you reached April 15 or so.

Still. In small samples, it’s hard to resist.

And so, astride all those watercoolers, inside all those taverns, within all those text threads, at least the ones involving Mets fans, the faithful were looking forward to the first six games of this nine-game homestand, saw the A’s and the Marlins just sitting there, waiting to be thrashed, and the optimists among them said, “Five-and-one, worst case,” and the pessimists said, “This feels like 1-6 to me,” and, as often happens with these things, neither the greatest hopes nor the worst fears were realized. It was 3-3. Step up, step back. Two steps ahead, two steps back.

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And now?

And now.

Starting Monday, the Mets began a 10-games-in-10-days stretch that, almost certainly, will define their season. Think of it this way:

On the morning of Memorial Day, the Mets were D.O.A.: 22-30.

On the morning of the Fourth of July, they woke up back at sea level: 42-42.

On Labor Day …

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Well, by Labor Day, by a week from Monday, we’ll certainly have a fuller picture of things. On Monday the Mets started a three-game series with the Orioles, tied with the Yankees for tops in the American League. Then they head out to San Diego for four with the Padres. Then it’s on to Phoenix for three with the Diamondbacks.

And there’s a very different tone now along the watercoolers, in the bars, in the threads. Perhaps the Orioles aren’t playing near-.700 ball as they did for about two months, but they remain formidable. And a year ago, when the teams played about this time, the games had a varsity/JV scrimmage feel to them.

The Diamondbacks got swept in Tampa Bay this weekend and the Padres dropped two of three in Denver, but they are still the two hottest teams in the National League over the last 3 ½ weeks. These 10 games will be a bear, and while there’s three awaiting them on the other side against the White Sox on Labor Day weekend, by then things could feel awfully different.

“I’ll sign up for 3-7 right now!” crow the pessimists, fearing worse, much worse.

“We play better against the better teams!” scream the optimists, not caring if there’s any real anecdotal evidence to back that up other than a 4-0 record against the Yankees.

It’s the Mets who have to actually play the games.

“Who we’re playing doesn’t matter,” the manager, Carlos Mendoza, says. “It’s our job to get wins and we’ll treat it that way no matter what. We’re not looking that far ahead.”

He’s no fun to play the Mike-and-the-Mad-Dog Game with. That much is for sure.

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