Rieber: Mets' past hears cheers, but present is a different story

The day started with a heartfelt ceremony remembering the Mets' glorious past and ended with gut-wrenching uncertainty about the team's present.

The stands weren't full at the beginning when the Mets inducted four principals from their 1986 World Series championship era into the franchise's Hall of Fame. They were nearly empty at the end after a 14-1 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks, who are 5-1 vs. the Mets and 0-10 vs. the rest of the National League since the All-Star break.

Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Davey Johnson and Frank Cashen made for a nice quartet of honorees and were greeted warmly by the crowd of 35,014. And it was a fun touch when Gooden threw out the first pitch to Gary Carter, even though he bounced it.

Unfortunately for Mets fans, there was a game to sit through. It included an ineffective Oliver Perez mop-up appearance. That should tell you all you need to know.

"It definitely hurts your pride a little bit when you perform in that manner," manager Jerry Manuel said. "We didn't pitch, we didn't hit and we didn't catch it. So it's somewhat embarrassing in front of your home fans."

Jonathon Niese was nearly perfect for the first three innings and then very imperfect after that. Arizona scored three in the fourth and five in the fifth, six coming on a pair of three-run home runs by Adam LaRoche.

Throwing errors by David Wright and Angel Pagan, the first costly and the second not, contributed a shabby feeling to the Mets' play. Errors lead to boos; long home runs like the ones hit by LaRoche (and later Stephen Drew and someone named John Hester) generated gasps and groans and then more boos on a day that the Mets hoped was meant for cheers only.

"A loss is a loss no matter who sees it," Wright said. "It's nice what they did before the game. There's a lot of history there. You're talking about some of the best players to ever play in the city. Obviously, the game didn't work out the way you wanted it to."

It's not the first time a team has lost on a day when it celebrated its past. Even the Yankees lose on Old-Timers' Day once in a while. But the Mets have a smaller margin for error with their fans, who while celebrating the 1986 championship team are always reminded there hasn't been another one since.

There won't be one this year, either, something the front office wisely conceded when it stood pat at Saturday's trade deadline. The Mets' future is Niese (yesterday's meltdown notwithstanding) and Ike Davis and Josh Thole and Ruben Tejada and youngsters as yet unseen in Flushing.

The present, unfortunately, is Perez and Luis Castillo - both of whom entered the game with the Mets down nine runs in the eighth inning - and Carlos Beltran and Jeff Francoeur and other players the Mets would have trouble giving away.

That's why Mets fans were better off Sunday concentrating on the retired stars who were literally in their midst. For the price of a ticket on the suite level, fans got to mingle with the inductees, plus former Mets such as Mookie Wilson, Gary Sheffield and David Cone, and, for some unknown reason, porn star Ron Jeremy, who posed for pictures in the same hallway as the former players.

Cone, who skillfully works both sides of the street as a former Met and Yankee, was generous with his time, signing and posing for a seemingly endless stream of middle-aged fans. Even kids got their baseballs signed, including one who looked at the signature and told his little buddy, "It says, 'David Something.' "

So maybe not everyone is interested in the past. If you went to Citi Field Sunday, it's pretty much all you had, though.