Yesterday’s outfield collision between Mike Cameron and Carlos Beltran was one of the most jarring ever seen on a baseball field. The snap of Cameron’s head as it met Beltran’s was as violent and disturbing a picture as the image one imagines when thinking of the career-ending skull fracture suffered by Yankees Hall of Fame outfielder Earle Combs when he ran into a concrete wall on July 24, 1934. One can read about those things, but words and still pictures don’t come close to depicting the true horror of the situation.

For the Mets, the collision reverberates on two levels. Independent of pennant race implications, there is the human dimension of the injuries, the hope that neither player will have a serious, lasting, or life-altering injury. After that, somewhere way down the emotional depth-chart, is the accident’s impact on the team’s fading wild card hopes.

With or without the two star outfielders, the Mets are an extreme long shot to make the postseason. Though the team is just 3 1/2 games behind wild card leader Houston, they trail four teams – the Astros, plus every team in their own division not managed by Bobby Cox.

Worse, the Mets have no games left with the Astros, while the teams in front of them do. Washington played its final game against Houston last night, but the Phillies and the Marlins will play a total of seven games against the Astros during September. Those teams will have their destiny in their own hands; the Mets will need help. Their best hope is that those teams abuse the Astros and the wild card lead moves into their own division. Then, since the Mets themselves have nine games remaining against the Nationals, six against the Phillies, and six against the Marlins, they can beat up the new wild card leader themselves.

Again, there are problems with this, and they are due to the schedule, not to today’s potentially devastating injuries. In addition to those NL East competitors, the Mets have six tough games against the Braves during September. All other considerations aside, those games could bury the Mets for good.

Meanwhile, if an NL East team does not claim the wild card after the games with the Astros, Houston just might coast. While they have five games against the Cardinals, they also play the flat lined Cubs 10 times, the Brewers 10 times, and the Pirates seven times. Essentially, the Mets’ chance to grab the wild card came in Houston from July 28 to July 31, when they lost three of four games, scoring a total of 13 runs.

Not to belittle Cameron’s injuries, but the Mets can survive his loss despite being outfielder poor. After the game, the Mets took the most obvious course of action and recalled Victor Diaz from Norfolk, where he was hitting .300 BA/.353 OBA/.541 SLG with 10 home runs in 170 at bats. Diaz can hit, and even if he regresses to the averages he posted with the Mets – .242/.369/.435 – there is not a great gap between this level of production and Cameron’s .275/.345/.482.

At 23, with just 63 career games to his credit, Diaz’s true level of production has yet to be established, but it’s likely somewhere between the stellar numbers he posted while subbing for Cameron in April – .295/.427/.525 – and the cooler numbers he posted in May, when his playing time began to decrease. The 4-for-31 stretch in June that earned him a trip to the minors was the creation of the Mets’ decision to prioritize Cameron over Diaz; the younger player rode the pine for too long, and had too many difficult pinch-hitting appearances to maintain any kind of stroke.

In fact, GM Omar Minaya’s decision to retain Cameron in the face of frequent importuning to send him elsewhere, may seem, by the end of the season, to have been one of the factors in the team’s failure to contend strongly in the shaky NL East.

The Mets idled during June and July, going 27-26 during those months – not falling out of the race, but not making hay either. Meanwhile, the Braves busied themselves in July, going 18-8.

If Beltran is out for a significant period of time, the Mets have fewer options; this is a team so thin in the outfield department that Gerald Williams is on the major league roster and Chris Woodward has been making appearances in the pastures. The team’s top prospect, 20-year-old Lastings Milledge, is playing at Double-A.

But if Beltran’s shoulder is better than it looked, the horrific event yesterday may not have to mean the end of the Mets’ season.

Mr. Goldman is the author of “Forging Genius,” a biography of Casey Stengel.