Brewers 6

Mets 3

Melancholy doesn’t begin to describe Gary Carter Night, even though the guest of honor did everything in his power last night to impose his positive will on the surroundings.

Carter, the Hall of Fame cornerstone to the franchise’s glorious 1986 World Series victory, was honored for last weekend’s induction to the Hall of Fame. But, even though it may be a cliché, the 2003 Mets are candidates for the Hall of Shame.

“Pray for these guys on the first base side,” Carter told the crowd during the pre-game ceremonies. “One day they will be back in the winner’s circle.”

They weren’t last night, though, as the last-place Amazins’s spit up a 6-3 loss to the awful Brewers, the Mets’ fourth straight loss.

“The Kid” couldn’t inspire a dugout of kids and past-their-prime veterans, not for a night and certainly not for an entire season.

Tom Glavine’s first-inning ribcage injury and Rey Sanchez’s pregame plane ticket to Seattle only reaffirmed that the 2003 Mets were a team of question marks that performed poorly. That Glavine will likely miss his next start was one more pockmark on what may be a 95- or 100-loss season.

“That’s just piling on,” Art Howe said of Glavine’s injury. “It’s testing our mettle. There’ll be a day when we look back on this time, and, hopefully, we can all just kind of laugh about it and remember when.”

There was a time when Carter and the teammates who joined him on the field for the ceremony – Keith Hernandez, Howard Johnson, Bobby Ojeda and Tim Teufel – were downright dangerous in blue caps and white pinstripes. Now the Mets wear black caps and black jerseys, dressed like pseudo-bullies hoping to intimidate.

The ’86 team had – and still has – undeniable chemistry.

“Hopefully, we’ll be like that some day,” said Ty Wigginton, one of the few current Mets who would’ve fit in perfectly in ’86.

The Mets (43-63) dropped a season-low 20-games under .500. The disappointing Glavine left after an inning due to a strained right oblique he suffered on a pitch to Richie Sexson.

The normally dependable Dan Wheeler served up two bombs in his four innings. Although the Mets had a 2-1 lead, Royce Clayton smashed a flat Wheeler slider for a three-run homer to left-center in the fourth.

The Mets scratched and clawed to get within a run in the fourth, which only magnified their current plight.

Met waiver victim Brady Clark iced the game in the top of the ninth with a two-run double off Mike Stanton, ending any hopes of a miracle comeback a la the ’86 playoffs.