Shea-denfreude!

If you’re enjoying watching hapless Mets fans suffer following the team’s unprecedented collapse, rest assured that there is a busy third day of coverage. First, the Times’ Murray Chass on what could have been:

This was supposed to be the game the Mets played, this afternoon’s game between Colorado and Philadelphia that begins this year’s postseason. But the Mets won’t be playing at Shea Stadium today. They have all scattered to their homes in various countries to dwell on their stunning collective failure and ponder their new place in baseball infamy.

Then there’s manager Willie Randolph’s cries for help:

In the roughly 40 hours that had elapsed since he left Shea Stadium on Sunday evening and returned yesterday morning, Willie Randolph had symbolically distanced himself from the Mets’ collapse. Randolph shaved his mustache, and his explanation — “Not a good time to be recognized in this town,” he said with a knowing smile — probably contained a kernel of truth.

His droll acknowledgment of the team’s failure to make the playoffs — a flop, he learned yesterday, that would not cost him his job as the team’s manager — offered a rare glimpse into a man whose public persona remained defiantly low-key and positive, even as the season was unraveling.

But yesterday Randolph opened up in a way that he seldom did during the season, conceding that the team may have been overconfident and acknowledging that his frustration has kept him awake at night.

“I’ve always been associated with winning, and it hurts deep down inside, really hurts, to be associated with this type of collapse,” Randolph said. “That’s not how we play the game, and there’s no way in the world that I thought we would be in this position right now talking about this; I thought we’d be preparing for the postseason. But it’s a cruel lesson in life and baseball. Make your bed and you live in it. We definitely set us up for this disappointment.”

. . .

“When the finality comes down, and you know that you didn’t reach your goal and you didn’t achieve what you wanted to achieve, it really tears you apart inside,” Randolph said. “Like I said, I’ve been there before, but this is probably the most pain I’ve felt since I’ve been in baseball.”

Not so bad, though, that he considered doing anything drastic. Asked again why he decided to shave his mustache, which will live on in the television footage and photographs chronicling the collapse, Randolph said, “I tried to cut my throat, but I aimed too high.”

And on top of all that, it’s revealed that reliever Scott Schoeneweis may be linked to Major League Baseball’s steroid scandal:

As Major League Baseball moves into the postseason, published reports linking players to performance-enhancing drugs continue to appear, creating a continued distraction for the sport and raising questions about whether the drug-testing program introduced in recent seasons is being outmaneuvered.

The latest report came Monday, when ESPN.com reported that Mets relief pitcher Scott Schoeneweis received six shipments of steroids in 2003 and 2004, when he played for the Chicago White Sox.

. . .

At Shea Stadium yesterday, Mets General Manager Omar Minaya said that the team had no knowledge of anything linking Schoeneweis to performance-enhancing substances when they signed him.