Wilmington, Delaware, is decked in brick red, an insurance capital clad in provincial reassurance. The luxury condos jut from the ground where lighthouses once stood, the sea no longer a hub for anything but oil and lost dreams — its sandy borders home to silkscreen and rollerblades, ATVs and MTVs, the soft laughter of a child, anything but the fishermen (and women, lest us forget) who settled here centuries ago and dipped their nets into the salty tumescence, removing carp, tuna and the occasional lost shark, their parallel eyes gaping simultaneously toward heaven and hell.

It is through Wilmington that my train travels, away from Washington, D.C. and to New York, a stretch run through the playoff hopefuls booked months ago when the National League wild card and even, for the Washington Nationals, National League East division title seemed in reach. But the Nationals’ and Mets’ hopes fade now, their seasons rocking to and fro like those schooners but now gutted and rotting, tossed back into the churn as chum for the real heavyweights.

After defeat has been realized — and know that neither team will publicly admit to this before the last out has been made — a team’s character wafts from the playing field like fresh mulch. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays, for instance, have become playoff spoilers even though no postseason banquet awaits them, befuddling the New York Yankees like a stubborn VCR, scoring runs seemingly at will and even spoiling closer Mariano Rivera’s magical year.

I think back to my days in the early “˜60s watching spring training scrimmages in Tampa and wonder what those fans — young and old, timid and raucous — must think of this young bunch, their swift legs propelling their low centers of gravity around the bases as if in perpetual orbit. But then I sadly realize that they — so starved for baseball that they would sacrifice a perfect Gulf Coast afternoon to watch some unknown from Albany strike out for not the first time — are probably dead or betrayed by the game, their calloused palms now clapping for the Buccaneers or grandchildren if at all, those March afternoons not even distant memories to them but still cherished by me. Like Johan Santana’s circle change, the game’s allegiances rotate and shift, its seams always visible, even in blur.

For the Nationals, whose season began as if from William Goldman’s pen, the playoff fade is not in itself defeat. No matter where they finish in the standings (fifth place is likely), for four months their name was at or near the fore of newspaper box scores, a simple display of black ink that seemed defiant and even naïve. “Who do they think they are?” we wondered, knowing that for every rise there is a swoon, but wishing that this one time it would not be the case. And so they faded and we could not even feign surprise as we applauded their heart and effort, our caps askew in tribute to the cherubic closer Chad Cordero, a young man with a face softer than cured leather, and a smile painted onto our lips at the unexpected greatness of John Patterson, a no-name pitcher whose performance has been Clemensian in its efficiency. But alas they could not hit (RFK Stadium’s caverns can only take so much blame), and the luck ran dry.

The Mets should be so lucky. “This year is a packed 6 train,” advertisements throughout all five boroughs read. With Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran — the offseason’s two most significant moves — on board, the Mets sought to shed their slow and dull image, previously defined by the lumbering gait of catcher Mike Piazza and the molasses delivery of pitcher Al Leiter. The Amazins were now quick, Latin and playoff bound. But Beltran could not match his October 2004 performance (no one but Mays, Bonds or Ruth could), and Pedro was brilliant, inconsistent and brittle — the hallmarks of his spectacular career. The 2005 Mets were no different from any of the franchise’s other teams: a propensity for error, a love affair with .500, a team of Almost Theres. Only a horrific outfield collision (which sidelined Manny bait Mike Cameron) and the maturation of young third baseman David Wright — New York’s first budding superstar since Derek Jeter — distinguished this season from any other: right field’s home run apple rises and falls like the tides, the Mets split another series, another day dawns.

Though I can’t help but to cheer the Mets on (it is in them that our daily battles live), their inevitable disappointment brings me comfort. Those around the game have changed so much in the past 40 years that at times I feel like a high school teacher: the only constant in the room. But even as those stalwarts from Tampa chant their “Go!”s elsewhere, those red stitches stay the same. The crack of the bat — the audible version of the exclamation point — will never alter. And so, like a Wilmington fisherman, I trawl back into the Atlantic, heedless of time and technology’s insistent movement, a stiff headwind my only concern.