Optimistic Mets fans everywhere, this one included, spent all day Sunday considering the symbolic value of Ryan Howard’s caught-looking strikeout that ended the Phillies’ 2010 World Series hopes. “Just like Beltran,” we said, hoping Howard and the hated Phils would suffer the same fate Beltran and the Mets did after the 2006 NLCS.

The Situations were far from identical, of course. The Phillies won the World Series in 2008 and got back there in 2009. Howard earned the love of the Philadelphia fanbase with three home runs in that series, and — though these things can turn quickly — probably will not soon suffer the same nonsensical and misdirected hostility from the fans and media that Beltran endured.

Many Mets fans tend to overrate the Phillies’ intangibles (underrating at the same time their very-tangibles). The Phillies have been the bad guys in the N.L. East for four seasons now, so we look at them like they’re 25 T-1000s, ignoring their humanity and trumpeting their apparent inability to be destroyed, citing their arrogance and their will and their remarkable capacity to overcome injuries.

But no team is invincible in a five- or seven-game series, and though Brian Wilson hardly cast the Phillies into a vat of molten steel, that 3-2 slider on the low-outside corner reminded everyone that the Phillies might not be so mighty after all, and inspired columns like this one and this one examining wounds in their mechanism that might not heal themselves instantly.

(OK, enough of that metaphor. </terminator2>, if you will.)

Truth is, the Phillies will still have Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels at the front of their rotation next year, and a trio that good makes them unlikely to collapse completely. And if we — me — here at TedQuarters are unwilling to accept that Beltran and the Mets became magically unclutch and weak-willed upon the Wainwright curveball, we must recognize that the same will be true for the Phillies.

But since we’re in a celebratory mood, we can look down the road with rose-colored glasses on and find more important similarities between those Mets and these Phillies.

Those Mets locked up a ton of payroll in some longterm deals that rendered them financially inflexible. These Phillies already have $143 million spent for 2011 and and $89 million committed to seven players in 2012. Both clubs thinned their organizational ranks with a series of trades aimed to help at the Major League level. Injuries, you already know, took their toll on those Mets teams. Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley, both on the long side of 30, both missed time with injury this year.

So though it’s probably silly to expect the Phillies to fall apart as dramatically as the Mets did in 2009, it is certainly reasonable to expect that they won’t be able to dominate the division much longer.

The Braves, I am concerned, could be a problem.

Pretty poor job by the New York papers last night. Jeff Francoeur not only had a hit, but his trademark cannon-arm fired a costly error in the Yanks’ second-inning rally.

And yet we’re only treated to one Frenchy sider, courtesy of the Daily News. That puts the tally at eight, and it’s starting to look good for anyone who had the under on 20.

Shocked to read not a single recap of Francoeur’s stay in New York, with his old apartment and favorite restaurants and everything. Maybe those are forthcoming, or maybe — heaven forbid — the papers are actually going to focus on all the exciting real baseball stuff.

And if you’re the type of person who cares about these things — and I bet you are — Francoeur now has a grand total of 10 ALCS at-bats and two hits to only eight articles. This man needs a bigger stage.

“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.