"At exactly 4:42 Wednesday afternoon, or 7-1/2 hours before the night would end at Citi Field, the man who wants to be Jason Bay again trotted toward the batting cage, black bat in his hand, the bounce of a Little Leaguer in his step, his search moving into yet another day, in the daily laboratory known as batting practice.

Bay hopped in and roped five balls to center and right, and then turned and drove a ball into those elusive left field seats, right over Tom Seaver's No. 41. He did this in front of Dave Hudgens, the Mets' hitting coach, and the man charged with helping Bay become the player he has always been, except in Flushing.

"It's obviously still in there. It hasn't gone anywhere," Hudgens said. "Over the last 10 days he's made some good adjustments." Hudgens talked about Bay's swing path and him using his lower body more, and then he paused and said, "You have to walk before you start running, if you want to get some confidence back."

The Mets played their 74th game of the season Wednesday night, and kept playing past midnight until they beat the Oakland A's in 13 innings. On a night when the club left 15 men on base and found out that slugging first baseman Ike Davis would be out for three more weeks and maybe a lot longer than that, you naturally thought about power shortages and about Jason Bay, who not only didn't get any confidence back against the A's. He looked absolutely lost. The Mets may have won for the second time in six games, but looked offensively challenged doing it, and it's hard to fathom there will be any sort of long-term offensive prosperity with Davis and David Wright out and Bay hitting like a latter-day Mario Mendoza."