“I don’t think anybody could have felt as bad as I did,” he said. “Not only did I have a whole team on my shoulders in that at-bat, I had a whole city. At the time, I just knew I’d be up in that situation again in the future and that then I was going to come through.”

Actually, McCovey was wrong. That Game 7 at-bat was the closest he came to being on a championship team. The Giants in the 1960s had five Hall of Famers — McCovey, Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry — but as McCovey recalled, “We always seemed to be one player away from winning it all.”

– Karen Crouse, New York Times.

Good read from Crouse on McCovey, who still goes to the ballpark and works with Giants hitters regularly despite being mostly confined to a wheelchair by back and knee problems.

But the excerpted section made me think about the Mets, and not just because most things make me think of the Mets.

Did people write columns like this one about Willie McCovey? I’m not asking that rhetorically, either. Seriously — did Giants fans deem McCovey an unclutch loser and clamor for his trade? I wouldn’t be shocked to hear that they did, since the bizarre tendency to blame a team’s problems on its best player long predates David Wright.

Cliff Lee was spectacular last night. As advertised, really. Master of puppets, pulling strings, twisting minds, smashing dreams, the whole thing.

It’s awesome to watch, especially when it happens on a big stage against an excellent Yankee lineup. But it still doesn’t mean the Mets should pursue Lee this offseason.

I’ve long held that signing Lee to a long-term, big-money deal would ultimately do the Mets more harm than good, seeing as he’s a 32-year-old pitcher likely to require a contract that takes him deep into his 30s. In the comments section here recently, though, Metropolyglot made a good point that made me briefly reconsider my position:

Lee is the best free agent pitcher available for quite awhile. Look around the league — teams have made a habit of locking up young elite pitchers (Jimenez, J. Johnson, Lincecum, Hernandez, Price). Furthermore, they’re all more or less signed to team-friendly deals. The only reasonable get is probably Zack Greinke and that’s not until 2013. If you’re serious about contending in 2012, you have to sign Cliff Lee, or prepare to rape the farm system.

It’s a reasonable thing to consider, especially with rumors spreading that Greinke wants a trade but no part of big-market baseball and word coming down that Yu Darvish is staying in Japan for now.

But I still say signing Lee — at least to the type of deal he’s expected to get — would amount to a mistake for a team with finite resources. The odds just seem so long that he’ll be worth anything like the type of money he’ll be earning three and four years into the new contract.

That means, like Metropolyglot suggests, that the Mets likely won’t be finding an ace on the open market for a reasonable cost anytime soon. To that I say a couple of things:

First, who knows what happens from here? It’s easy and reasonable to look around the league at all the great pitchers, see that they’re mostly locked up and conclude that the Mets will never have a great pitcher, but things change in weird ways all the time in baseball. Hell, look at Lee’s emergence in the 2008 season. Or, for a perhaps more reasonable, less miraculous-seeming example, look at the way Dan Haren became available at the deadline this year.

Second — and something that comes up here a lot — there’s no hard and fast rule that you need a true, branded ace to contend. Don’t get me wrong: It helps. Having great players is an excellent step toward having a great team. But a strong, deep pitching staff combined with a potent lineup can make a pennant run too. Plus there’s enough regular fluctuation in baseball that if you have a few good, healthy pitchers in your rotation there’s some reasonable chance one can pitch like an ace over the course of 32 games.

And the best way to find an ace is still to develop one. Right now Jenrry Mejia appears to be the Mets’ best shot at one — and that’s at least a couple of years down the road. Plus I suppose there’s some chance Jon Niese goes all Cliff Lee and turns into an ace.

But investing in scouting, overslot draft picks and international free agents would go a long way to assuring that the Mets find a frontline starter eventually, or at least the right pieces to trade for one.

Two more Jeff Francoeur stories in area papers, bringing the total to six thus far. If you’re playing at home, that’s three articles for every plate appearance Frenchy’s had in the ALCS, and nearly an article per pitch he’s seen. Even in a rough outing, it took CC Sabathia all of seven pitches to retire Francoeur twice last night. Frenchy swung at five of them.

Kudos should to go Andy McCullough of the Star-Ledger for turning in a balanced Francoeur feature, one that, after swipes at the Mets, mentions Francoeur’s petulance upon losing his job in Flushing and success in a diminished role in Arlington.

The second Francoeur feature comes from Mike Sielksi of the Wall Street Journal, he of the memorable “No Cameras for Francoeur’s Milestone” piece which some have claimed was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. This Francoeur piece is straightforward and rather damning. Sielski calls Francoeur a role player — rightly — and writes that “he needs to understand and acknowledge it.”

But best of all, Sielski includes this stunning tidbit:

Even then, though, Mr. Francoeur couldn’t contain his delusions of grandeur when it came to the money he might command on the open market.

He isn’t eligible for free agency until after next season, but during a conversation before a game in Philadelphia, he referenced Jayson Werth, Ryan Howard and Joe Mauer—three of baseball’s elite players—in talking about the factors that might affect where he played in the years to come.

Wow.