Pistol out and round ball in?

That's useful information. Where can you get the rubber spacers? Mine only has the metal spacers on each side of the handle tang (shown in your second picture laying next to the rubber spacers).
Brewers performance has most all that kind of stuff.. it's a good site for you to look up for the Mopar 4-speed...
anyways like others have said as well I'm not a big fan of those rubber pieces as they make the shifter feels sloppy. It's supposed to take out vibration and make things feel more smooth but in the end I think it makes the shifter feels sloppy. That's why I put a steel spacer in there with a bolt through it like you seeing in the first picture. If you want to get real picky you can put a small spacer on either side of the shifter inside the mechanism or just choose a side and put one big spacer on one side and that's what I do... Once the boot is on you don't see anything anyways...