When you lose all three games, you can play the what-if game if you’d like, but when you drop all three, it’s no fluke. I mean, it’s frustrating for everybody. You kind of look back and wonder if I had done this differently or done that differently, if the series could have swung in our favor. Everyone takes it to heart when you get swept like this, but at the end of the day, it’s pretty clear: the Mets were the better team, and there’s no getting around that or disputing the fact.

To not win one game is frustrating, because you wonder if we could have gotten some momentum what could have happened. But they got off to an early lead. Yeah, there were balls, obviously, not hit hard, but they got hits and they got runs.

So now our season is over, but you don’t get something like this taste out of your mouth overnight. It takes a lot longer than people think, especially if you watch baseball like I will, and I think it’s good to watch and see what happens and use it as a motivational tool.

Then, once the World Series is over, you give yourself time to unwind and get your mind away from it, and before you know it, the offseason goes by so fast that you start working out again.

I think we did so many good things, and upstairs they did so many things to give us an opportunity to win -- and they’ll do everything they can to continue that this winter. This isn’t where they ultimately wanted to get to. They want to win a World Series. This was just step one and we all want to go further. This series doesn’t just motivate players, it motivates an ownership. In the end, it didn’t work out, and they’re going to retool and give us whatever it is we need.

But this sure is a frustrating way for it to come to an end.

I’ve been fortunate. I’ve been on teams down 2-0, down 3-0, and never lost. If we win Game 3 on Saturday, I’ve always felt there’s more pressure on the team that’s leading than on the team that’s trailing. That team -- in this case, the Mets --- doesn’t want to go to a Game 5. If we get to Game 5, there’s even more pressure on them.

With that being said, it is tough to win, but we’ve gone on three-game win streaks before. We just need to play it like a regular game, instead of looking at it like a deficit. We’ve lost two in a row before and we’ve come back. We need to keep it that simple.

We shot ourselves in the foot a little bit in the first two games. Those things happen and the Mets capitalized. You look at any playoff game -- any big game -- and every small thing, right or wrong, is magnified. Sure, you’d like to take those plays back, absolutely. In close games, that’s what it comes down to. So there’s no formula, no right way to say, "Tomorrow, we’re going to do this." You never know what happens.

We’ve got to find a way to score runs, because the offense that we’re up against is going to score. We won’t win 1-0, 2-0. We have to score runs and do a better job. In my game, for example, it wasn’t the two solo home runs that hurt me. It was the inning that they scored two in the sixth. You have to limit them from getting a big inning.

Going into the game, we may have to try different things. You hear Tigers manager Jim Leyland say that we’re two different teams. The Mets hit home runs, we’re base to base. Maybe we will try different things. Maybe we force the issue. I’m not the manager and I’m not telling people what to do, I’m just looking at the situation and where we’re at.

Losing Nomar Garciaparra is a major blow, but this Dodgers team has confidence in all 25 guys on our roster. In a perfect world, he plays like he has. But if he doesn’t, I hope rookie James Loney has the kind of game that he had in Colorado; he recorded nine RBIs to tie a single-game franchise record. Injuries happen. Guys are going to get banged up at the wrong time.

The Mets played a different style on Thursday -- more little ball -- and they executed some bunts. We obviously didn’t play every bunt perfectly clean, and we gave them more opportunities. You give any lineup extra outs and you’re asking for trouble. We even got out of some jams or it could have been a whole lot uglier. So even though they scored, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

When you’re playing good teams like this with so much on the line -- and especially on the road -- you have to play close to a perfect game, and when you don’t, you get the results we’ve gotten the past two games.

But this series isn’t over. I was part of the team that did it in 1999 with Boston. We lost the first two games to Oakland, then we won the next three.

The way you’ve got to look at it is that we just need to go on a three-game win streak, and we’ve won three games in a row before this season. We’re also going home now, and there’s always an advantage to playing at home. And we have great pitching. Any team would take their chance with Greg Maddux on the mound.

I just hope we get off to a big lead in Game 3 on Saturday. Today, we didn’t have a lead at all. In Game 1, we had a one-run lead and I gave up a couple runs. But if we get off to a good lead -- I mean with multiple runs, and get the home crowd behind us -- we can gain some momentum.

To start off, no, I’ve never seen anything like that double play where we got two guys (Jeff Kent and J.D. Drew) thrown out at the plate. In fact, I still haven’t seen anything like it, because I didn’t have a very good view. I wish I had seen exactly what happened. Back-to-back guys thrown out at the plate? On the same play? In the dugout, it was like, shock. It was like, "Did anybody see what happened? Like, did that really happen?"

But when you think about it, we still scored a run that inning and we were ahead. And when we fell behind, everyone thought we were still going to win the game, and right up until the last pitch with Nomar Garciaparra up at the end, because who else would you want up there in that situation? We never think we’re out of it. It’s a really good trait we have. Nobody thinks we’re out of it, even though they have a phenomenal closer (Billy Wagner). But look, we scored a run off him and had the tying run at second base.

Like I said before, I knew it was going to be exciting -- the atmosphere and everything -- and it was. We knew the crowd would be a big advantage for them and it was. We’ll see the same thing when the Mets come to L.A. Baseball should be difficult on the road, especially in the postseason, but if we win tomorrow, we’re in the driver’s seat playing two of three at home.

Tomorrow, we’ve got Hong-Chih Kuo going, and I know he’s a rookie and he’s only got one win -- and they’ve got Tom Glavine going and he’s got about a million wins -- but I like our chances. Kuo being left-handed, he’ll turn around their power guys and that might be an advantage to us.

Their power guys hit a couple of home runs off me, especially Carlos Delgado; he hit that ball about 500 feet up on the camera tower. But I got hurt giving up the two runs on David Wright’s hit. It was a good game and all the games will be just like this -- they could come down to a pitch or a hit and, probably, will come down to the bullpen -- and I still like our chances. You look around this clubhouse now, nobody’s overreacting to this game. We’re coming back  tomorrow and we’ll play a good game.

This is a good time for me to leave. I’ve got a lot of family here, and we’ll probably talk about every single pitch of this game. I love baseball, and I’ll go back and watch some TV and come back tomorrow ready to play.

Today started about as far from baseball as possible. A few of us left the hotel and went to Ground Zero. I hadn’t been there in three years. We walked around and thought a lot about what it means. I went over to Station 10, the fire station that’s located right across the street from where the towers fell.

A couple of the firemen recognized me and yelled my name. They called us over, and we spent maybe an hour with them. They showed us around the station and we talked. I didn’t want to get into too much detail, but I was curious and they told us about what it was like on Sept. 11. They were the first responders, being right there across the street. It kind of puts our job in perspective. A bad day for us really isn’t like a bad day, compared to what those guys go through.

After that, we walked around a little bit, then got back to the hotel and came over to the workout. It’s something to look forward to -- well, not the media part; I wasn’t looking forward to that -- but just getting into the playoff atmosphere, putting on the uniform, getting back into it after a day off.

We had our pitchers meeting, which I think was really smart. We usually do that the first day of a series during the regular season, but tomorrow’s going to be really hectic, so it was smart to do it today. We went over the Mets, as far as what we want to do against them. We came up with an overall game plan, and I think we’re all feeling pretty good about it, even though we know their lineup has a lot of weapons.

Now we’re heading back into the city, and there isn’t much planned -- a little dinner, watch some baseball and be ready for tomorrow. I won’t do anything different than I would for any start, but I don’t care who you are or how many times you’ve done this, there’ll be nerves. I’ve always felt the first guy who settles down has the best chance to win.

I think we have a pretty good feeling about this series. Like I’ve said, we didn’t back into this. We earned it. We’ve played really well and we’re confident, and we’ve got to continue the roll.

We get on that plane Monday and head to New York and that’s when it will really start to sink in. That’s when we start to get ourselves in the mode for playoff baseball. And fans should expect to see the same type of game that we’ve been playing the last two months instead of what they saw the first four months.

By that I mean, a team that doesn’t give up, a team that finally has found its niche as far as roles in the bullpen, because we have a bona fide closer in Takashi Saito. And when we added Greg Maddux that gave us a huge lift with the starting rotation.

When you look at the way we played the last two months of the season, and especially the last month and really the last week, I think that’s very encouraging not only for us, but for the city of Los Angeles. You know, we didn’t back in. We didn’t get into the playoffs because some team lost a bunch of games and let us in. We earned this. We won seven games in a row.

But it’s going to be a wild series. From the fans' point of view, it should be very intriguing. You have two well-established organizations from two of the biggest markets, so it’s going to be exciting for everyone.

When we get to the park for Tuesday’s workout, we’ll be looking at a lot of game film and go over the scouting reports and see what they’ve done the last 10 days or so, but by this time in the year, you know what they’ve got. It’s more like a chess match.

And fans should expect a lot out of this team, because the players expect a lot out of this team. This isn’t a situation where we made it this year and that’s the accomplishment and whatever happens, happens. That’s not the way we feel.

Fans should have expectations for a team that had the second-best record in the league. This team is loaded with players who know what it takes and know how much fun this is. We were built for this time of year.