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.

How About The Pottery Barn Student Center At Barnard?*

The concept of selling naming rights has gone beyond just stadiums and arenas:

A Victoria’s Secret Student Center might seem incongruous in the company of Milbank Hall, Brooks Hall, and the Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger Residence Hall on Barnard College’s four-acre campus. It hasn’t happened — yet. But if Victoria’s Secret offered, well, the possibilities are open.

In a push to raise $20 million for its largest, most costly expansion project to date, the liberal arts college is selling the naming rights for a 70,000-square-foot building currently under construction with an online ad seeking a corporate or private sponsor to foot the bill, administrators said.

“It’s not typical to raise $20 million gifts by posting them online, but I think it would be a brilliant thing to do if a company wanted to demonstrate its commitment to women and higher education,” the vice president for institutional advancement at Barnard, Cameran Mason, said.

A $20 million corporate outlay would be one of the largest donations the college ever received, she said, and would represent about 10% of the school’s endowment. The board of trustees would ultimately have to approve the donation, and would likely reject a contentious donor “such as a convicted felon,” Ms. Mason said.

*And when crafting your lede (or political cartoon — Sean Delonas, we’re looking at you!), feel free to refrain from suggesting more obvious tie–ins because most of the ones that automatically come to mind are actually not very funny . . .

Spent Ten Years In Long Island City And Neither CVS Nor Gristedes’ Felt Any Pity . . . We Carried Groceries From Everywhere! The Bodega’s Prices, They Were Never Fair!

Only in New York will thousands of “settlers” “homestead” a “neighborhood” years before even basic infrastructure needs are met:

The settlers of a neighborhood called Queens West do not exactly have to plow the earth for their sustenance, but they do have to lug their groceries in from Manhattan or Brooklyn, often on crowded subway cars. Many just buy their groceries online.

There is no supermarket in Queens West, the name used by real estate agents and residents of this luxury community rising in the borough’s Hunters Point section, and the selection at nearby convenience stores is limited and pricey.

So in an oft-repeated daily ritual, a white truck stamped with a FreshDirect logo arrives at the doorstep of a high-rise building. A deliveryman hops out to unload box upon box of veggies, cold cuts, cereal and more. The truck is then off to the next multimillion-dollar high-rise.

This fading industrial sector may be experiencing a renewed vitality because of its perch across the East River from Midtown, but its renaissance is at a quirky phase: The influx of residents is outpacing the goods and services that make a neighborhood. It is a car without an engine, a cup of ramen noodles awaiting a splash of hot water.

FreshDirect, the online grocery delivery company whose headquarters are near Queens West, has therefore become essential since it began service to the community in August 2005. But the community’s point-and-click culture faces a drastic — and for some, welcome — change early next year.

Rockrose Development Corporation, one of the major developers in the area, recently signed an agreement with the Amish Market to open a 21,000-square-foot store on the ground floor of one of its buildings. The supermarket, along with a Duane Reade drugstore, is expected to open early next year, signs that Queens West could be maturing from a settlement to a community.

“I’ll Never Have To Leave The Neighborhood”

Is can’t be a coincidence that Bloomberg’s Upper East Side residence on 79th Street is within New York’s proposed congestion pricing zone while his 3,600-square-foot, uh, pied-à-terre in the London neighborhood of Knightsbridge is situated in that city’s actual congestion charging zone (.pdf), can it? Nah:

The residence Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg keeps here is not in the grandest house on the block. Spread over three floors of an attached red brick Victorian, the apartment overlooks a quiet locked garden in one of the city’s most exclusive precincts, where Ferraris and Bentleys roll past the boutiques of Hermès and Chloé.

But the apartment is a place of welcoming elegance, with artfully planted window boxes, heavy tasseled drapery and the warm glow of a chandelier highlighting gilt details on the ceiling. And Mr. Bloomberg, who has hardly been here since taking office in 2002, says he plans to spend more of his time enjoying it when he is no longer mayor.

Indeed, earlier this year, property records show, the mayor spent more than $7 million (3.5 million pounds) to extend his hold on the Cadogan Square property through 2113. Apartments in London are generally not sold, but are leased for decades.

Mr. Bloomberg’s visit to London over the weekend was for official business; he was meeting with Mayor Ken Livingstone and learning more about security and traffic measures in London that might work in New York.

But it was also a homecoming of sorts for the mayor, a lover of parties and art. He was honored at a buffet reception given by 100 friends at the prestigious Serpentine Gallery, on whose board he once sat. And it allowed him a rare night in the 3,600-square-foot flat, which once served as his platform for conquering the London social scene.

“It brings back a lot of memories,” Mr. Bloomberg said on Monday at a City Hall news conference here with Mayor Livingstone. “I said to Ken on the way over, ‘You know, after I finish this job I’m sure I will spend a lot more time in London because it’s exciting and they have great museums and nice people.'”

And nice digs. The mayor’s office declined to confirm details. But the apartment, with a spiraling, filigreed central staircase, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a drawing room, office and study, according to plans at Britain’s land registry, was decorated by Jamie Drake, who is known for exuberance and has festooned rooms for Madonna as well as for Mr. Bloomberg in his Upper East Side town house.

Those who have visited say the flat is filled with American art, including works by Andy Warhol and Henry Moore in addition to Jasper Johns. Mr. Bloomberg’s love of finery is also reflected in the mahogany doors and marble columns.

Like real estate on Mr. Bloomberg’s Manhattan block, East 79th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, property on Cadogan Square is not cheap. Records from the real estate agency Strutt & Parker Lane Fox indicate that in 1997, the apartment cost about $5 million (2.8 million pounds) for a lease of about 26 years.

. . .

Talking to reporters on Sunday in Blackpool, where he had addressed delegates at the Conservative Party convention, he said of his New York home: “I get a haircut two doors away from these buildings, I live a block and a half away, my favorite Greek diner’s across the street. I’ll never have to leave the neighborhood.”

And you’ll have to pay the greenback equivalent of 8 quid to get in . . .

A-Rod’s Guilty Pleasures

There’s something unnervingly unmanly about the idea that Alex Rodriguez gets pumped up by listening to Pat Benatar:

Alex Rodriguez’s choice of music in spring training was perfectly fitting for his personality. As he prepared for the season, he played the Pat Benatar song “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” over and over, at high volume, in his earphones. The message was purposeful, motivational . . . and just a little forced.

Knock me down, it’s all in vain, I’ll get right back on my feet again!