We walk in, a beaut of a stadium with fans scattered in so many nomadic clumps amid acres of green seats. We catch a dog and a brew and take a seat, any seat, really. Not for the first time in my lifetime of Mets rooting I wonder:

What have we gotten ourselves into?

Our left fielder, Jason Bay, steps to the plate. He was once a top slugger. That was a millennium ago. Now he’s batting.156, with 7 home runs and 18 runs batted in, a figure most left-field sluggers reach in early May. We are no longer in early May.

He hits a Nerf-ball of a pop fly that the right fielder shags.

Bay is one of three starters this September evening with batting averages under .200. In fact, our pitcher, R. A. Dickey, the 37-year-old knuckleballer, currently is outhitting Bay.

To be a Mets fan this September, as in so many others, is to be a gourmand of loss.

Some nights the losses taste like chewing on a Blue Smoke pulled pork sandwich laced with LSD — a 16-1 Thursday blowout featured six straight Phillie hits to open the game. Other nights, the steady drip of 2-1, 4-0, 3-2, 2-0 losses offers weirdly blissed-out exercises in lotus eating.

Tug on a Bud, munch on a chicken quesadilla and que sera sera.

Mets fans often frame our loyalty in terms a medieval monk would understand. Perseverance; suffering; pain: all good. I wander through a desert of empty left-field seats, sidle in next to Basher Najjar, 31, and pop the existential question:

Why remain a Mets fan?

He looks at me, shrugs, smiles. He came to the Mets in as random a fashion as fate could contrive — his father told him he could root for the first team he saw on television and he turned to Channel 5, 7, then 9.

He saw catcher Mackey Sasser, a not-so-great catcher who in a very Met-like manner later forgot how to throw a ball back to the pitcher.