1976: Rocky is released. The Italian Stallion, as written and portrayed by virtual unknown Sylvester Stallone, enters the lexicon. “Yo” is popularized as a greeting, often followed by “Adrian”. A glass of uncooked eggs is the new breakfast of challengers. Running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and lifting one’s arms in the air in triumph becomes accepted behavior. The movie is an unexpected smash. An Academy Award is earned. Even in a field that includesNetwork and All The President’s Men, it is not an insane choice, for Rocky is awesome.

Also, Lee Mazzilli makes his Major League debut with the New York Mets. Bats .195 in 24 games.

1979: Rocky II is released. Rocky Balboa can’t find anything to do with himself after getting his shot at the title, so despite telling Adrian otherwise, he accepts a rematch with champ Apollo Creed, a.k.a. The Master of Disaster. Mickey trains him like something out of the 1930s. It works. Rocky takes the title in a double knockout. The sequel is OK. Hope they don’t make a ton of these.

Also, Lee Mazzilli makes the National League All-Star team, hits a home run off of Ron Guidry and drives in the winning run with a walk. Bats .303 for the year. Is referred to in the tabloids as the Italian Stallion. The Mets finish last. Dale Murray pitches like the Master of Disaster.

1982: Rocky III is released. On the night it opens, several young men who have seen it shout to those waiting on line for the next show in Lynbrook that “Rocky wins and the old man dies!” Beyond the spoiler alert, Rocky is smacked around by Clubber Lang and requires the Eye of the Tiger to get back what he lost. Brother-in-law Paulie more annoying than ever. Frank Stallone and his band see screen time. Nevertheless, one critic calls it his favorite Rocky. That would be me.

Also, Lee Mazzilli is traded from the Mets to the Rangers for Ron Darling and Walt Terrell, then from the Rangers to the Yankees for Bucky Dent, then from the Yankees to the Pirates for Tim Burke.

1985: Rocky IV is released. Rocky serves as stand-in for America’s Reaganesque resiliency in the Cold War, as the champ with a Burning Heart flies to the Soviet Union to avenge the death of friend Creed at the hands of Ivan Drago in what was supposed to be an all-in-good-fun exhibition match. The Soviets, however, are not about good fun, not at all. Further details elude me as I’ve never been able to sit start-to-finish through this, hands down, the worst of the Rockymovies. The video for James Brown’s Living In America suffices plenty.

Also, Lee Mazzilli languishes as a last-place Pirate.

1990: Rocky V is released. While not much better than Rocky IV, it is mildly watchable. Rocky Balboa’s career is over and he’s managing young Tommy Gunn until his protégé turns resentful rival. Rocky teaches the punk and his Don King-like advisor a lesson while winning the love of his son after losing all his assets and rediscovering what really counts. Or something like that. Thus ends the saga of cinema’s longest-running heavyweight two sequels too late.

Also, Lee Mazzilli spends his first year as a retired Major Leaguer having enjoyed a late surge of success on three postseason teams, the ’89 Blue Jays, the ’88 Mets and the 1986 World Champion New York Mets. Mazz’s pinch-hits in Games Six and Seven are key to his original team — which reacquired him that August — winning their first World Series since Mazzilli was a 14-year-old fan in Sheepshead Bay.

Postscript: Sylvester Stallone spends the 1990s opening Planet Hollywood and movies like Judge Dredd. Neither is nearly as well-loved as the Rocky series. In the new century, he is absent from the local multiplex.

Also, Lee Mazzilli drifts from actor to restaurateur to minor league manager to coach for one his former teams, the New York Yankees where his biggest contribution is jobbing a fill-in umpire in an Interleague game versus the Mets, conning overmatched Robb Cook into calling Todd Zeile out at first base after an apparent double. His affiliation with the success of his employer gets him a job as Baltimore Orioles skipper in 2004. It’s over by 2005. A year later he lands back with the Yanks. He’s tossed out after the club is beaten by Detroit in the playoffs.

2006: Rocky Balboa opens December 22. He’s going to fight one more time. He’s 60. It’s not a comedy. He tellsNewsweek, “everyone makes mistakes. I look around at people my age, and I can see it in their eyes — a kind of bittersweet reflection: ‘I didn’t live the life that I wanted, and now I’ve got all this stuff I want to say, but nobody wants to hear it.’ I was feeling that, and if you don’t get it out, it can become a beast that tears you apart.”

Also, Lee Mazzilli is hired to be in-studio analyst for Mets telecasts on SNY two months after an extended on-air audition by Zeile does not produce a regular gig for 2007. Lee’s presence frees up Darling to announce more games. Mazzilli is excited about joining the SNY team. “This is a great opportunity for me,” he says in a press release. “The Mets are a huge part of my life. I grew up with this organization.”

Yo.

You’ve thought it. I’ve thought it. We’ve all thought it if we’ve gone to our share of games at Shea Stadium between 2001 and 2006:

Trachsel’s pitching? I always see Trachsel!

It was rarely thought with enthusiasm.

Now that going to Mets games will presumably no longer carry any threat of Trachselization, at least not in the sense we came to understand it, I felt compelled to explore whether there was any truth to the perception that Steve Trachsel started every time I showed up at Shea.

To be fair I knew the answer was no. I know who has started for the Mets in every single game I’ve ever been to. I write it down. It’s the only player-specific notation I make in The Log, the steno pad I’ve had since high school. In it is page after page detailing the bare-bones essentials of each trip I’ve made to Shea since my first one in 1973: Date, Opponent, Starting Pitcher and Result (W or L and score) in ink; day of week, all-time record vs. opponent, number of starts per pitcher, all-time regular-season record at Shea in lead.

There are other pages devoted to games “elsewhere” and even a page that has managed to fill up with “postseason” info, but they, like the heart of The Log, contain no data pertaining to who might have hit three homers, stolen three bases or racked up his 151st career pinch-hit. That’s for memory and the Internet. But the starting pitcher is inscribed for history’s sake.

Knowing who started a dispiriting Friday night loss to the Padres in 1979 and who started a dispiriting Friday night loss to the Padres in 1996 is certainly one way of distinguishing one dispiriting loss to the Padres from another. (Falcone and Isringhausen, if you were wondering.) Plus, the starting pitcher is the only thing we’re told days in advance. We may assume Jose Reyes will be leading off and playing short when we’re making plans to buy tickets for Wednesday, but nobody lists the probable shortstops. The identity of the centerfielder is never fodder for surefire small talk either. Who’s going tomorrow? Beltran? Cool. But it sticks with me going on three decades that the first time I ever attended a Mets game without adult supervision, the LIRR conductor asked “who’s starting?” and I told him, “Craig Swan,” and I felt very on top of things (even if Swannie wasn’t, losing 3-1 to the Cards).

The only entities that win or lose are the team and a pitcher. Sometimes it’s a reliever, but his identity doesn’t emerge until after the fact and it’s almost never considered flattering. If you’re Billy Wagner, you’re not supposed to lose and you’re rarely permitted to win. If you did, you probably did something wrong. Come to think of it, I have absolutely no idea what Billy Wagner’s won-lost record was last year.

I can tell you with a flip of The Log who I’ve seen start for the Mets more often than anybody else in my 323 regular-season home games. I can tell you who I saw start once and only once. I can give you all the in-betweens as well.

But I wanted to learn a little more than I already knew I had at my fingertips. I wanted to figure out whether my starting-pitching experience has been utterly random or quirkily aberrational or perfectly normal. So in conjunction with The Log, I did a little research and discovered a few fascinating (for the middle of December) facts.

First of all, thanks to Ultimate Mets Database, I now know 217 different pitchers have started Mets games since 1962. I have attended games started by 83 of them, or 38.2% of all Mets starters. Conversely, I didn’t see 134 Mets pitchers throw a game’s first pitch. As my first Mets game came in the franchise’s twelfth season, obviously I missed a lot of pitchers.

The men who started the 13th, 14th and 16th most games in Mets history — Al Jackson, Jack Fisher and Gary Gentry — were all gone by July 11, 1973, my first appearance. Couldn’t do anything about them. This led me to wonder who I didn’t see start, particularly who didn’t start for me when, by all rights, he should have. Was there somebody who was always on his throw day when I had a ticket?

Yes. The Met who started the most games since I’ve been going to games but never started in my presence was somebody I would have preferred had never become a Met, at least via the route he traveled to get here. That would be Pat Zachry. He is No. 17 on the all-time Mets starts list with 113, a somewhat meaningless stat for my purposes since we’re talking only about starts at Shea. Zachry’s key data is the 55 times he started for the Mets at home between 1977 and 1982. In the years he was in the rotation, I went to 20 Mets games. So how is it possible that he and I missed each other every single time?

Zachry was hurt more than I remembered. The most starts he had in any one season as a Met was 26 in 1980, but that was my year to collect my one-and-done markers from Roy Lee Jackson and Mark Bomback. Two years later, I went to games on August 12 and 14, Swan and Mike Scott sandwiching Zachry. Just luck of the draw that I missed him. I did watch him record a win in 1982, but that was in long relief of my sole Charlie Puleo sighting. Only now am I realizing that a pitcher traded to the Mets for Tom Seaver picked up for a pitcher traded from the Mets for Tom Seaver.

No wonder I hold no ill will for Puleo and a ton of it for Pat Zachry.

Whatever the factors, what are the odds I wouldn’t get a single Pat Zachry Mets start? Between 1977 and 1982, I saw Puleo start. I saw Bomback start. I saw Ray Burris start. I saw a prehistoric Terry Leach start. I saw a posteffective Randy Jones start. I saw Dave Roberts and Wayne Twitchell, for crissake. Not that I was really angling for a piece of Pat, but still. I mean, how much luck of the draw is there?

Probability is measured as total number of occurrences of an event divided by total number of trials. Zachry’s Met tenure covered a period when the Mets played 430 home games (accounting for his midseason 1977 arrival — for Seaver — and a 1979 fog-enshrouded tie with Pittsburgh). Given his 55 starts, there was a 12.79% probability that if you went to Shea Stadium between the Seaver trade and the end of ’82, you’d see Zachry start. Hence, I should have seen him start 2.558 of the 20 games I attended.

But I didn’t. Go figure.

Who else escaped The Log? Frank Viola’s shorter if more successful Met term, which included a 20-win season in 1990, ran its course without my bearing witness. He started 41 of the 193 home games the Mets played while he was a Met, or just over 21% (Sweet Music was also durable). I only made it to Shea 8 times between August 1989 and September 1991, the whole of the Viola era. I should have seen him make 1.7 starts. Instead, I got Sid Fernandez thrice, David Cone twice and Bobby Ojeda, Ron Darling and Doc Gooden once each. I’m not complaining.

Likewise, Jason Jacome, Kevin Kobel and Wally Whitehurst slipped through my cracks, even if I had nothing against alliterative initials. I never went out of my way to avoid them but I never made an extra effort to see them. That could describe just about any starting assignment. Sometimes there’s a bit of extra juice in choosing a date — hey, Bill Pulsipher is being called up this Saturday! — but mostly it’s the game first, rotation spinning where it may. When I wasn’t going to that many games in a given year and a pitcher was here only a couple of years, it would figure the occasional Walt Terrell would come and go without me cheering him on in person.

My attendance was quite scattered until the past decade when it picked up dramatically. Since 1997, I’ve been good for an average of 22 games a season, which makes my missing any starters since the late ’90s a little suspicious…especially since there has been such a plethora of starters in the last ten years. I inked most of them in The Log, but not all. Tyler Yates, for example, made four home starts in April and May 2004, months when I was preoccupied enough by non-Mets matters to keep me from Shea (it happens). I went to 29 regular-season home games in 1999, but none of them was the pair that Allen Watson started. To Jeremy Griffiths: It was nothing personal, I swear, that I managed to have other engagements on August 3 and September 1, 2003.

In 2006, as every schoolchild knows, 13 different Met pitchers were entrusted to get things going. Interestingly, nobody was a classic emergency starter — every one of them got at least three shots at starting, with at least two home starts included. The Log tells me I nailed 11 of the 13, with only Jeremi Gonzalez and Brian Bannister eluding my grasp. Barring trades or disasters (or in the case of Gonzalez, a disastrous trade), out of my grasp they shall stay.

That’s mostly who I didn’t see. But who did I see? Like I said, 83 Mets starters. None more than Al Leiter. The Senator leads the list by far with 37 starts between 1998 and 2004 (not counting two starts in the ’99 playoffs, because it’s the playoffs, and his return with the Marlins in 2005, because he was the enemy). Al Leiter and I got to know each other very well. We should have. I was on hand for 36.5% of his Shea starts, nearly two of every five. Since he was in a five-man rotation and missed some starts due to injury here and there, it’s phenomenal how twinned we were.

How phenomenal? The probability of seeing Al Leiter start at Shea from ’98 through ’04 was a tad over 18%. I shouldn’t have seen him start more than 29.37 times. Perhaps he grabbed Watson’s, Griffiths’ and Yates’ turns when I wasn’t paying attention.

Following Leiter are six double-digit stalwarts.

Rick Reed 24

Steve Trachsel 20

Bobby Jones 19

Dwight Gooden 11 (6 in 1993 when the K Korner was kwiet)

Tom Glavine 10

Masato Yoshii 10 (fits right in, eh?)

As alluded to at the top, into every Log a little Trachsel must fall. I don’t think I was inhaling more than my fair share until 2006 when my life became a veritable Trachselpalooza. I saw Steve Trachsel start 6 times in my 22 dates at Shea. Seeing as how 10 other pitchers divided 16 other starts, I don’t understand what that was all about.

In terms of anomalies, Trachsel and 2006 is hardly the sore thumb of The Log. Six starts for one pitcher isn’t even a record, though it is excessive. The most I ever saw one pitcher start in one year was one-year wonder Kevin Appier. Got 9 helpings of Appier in 2001, the only season any was available. I attended a never-to-be-approached-again 38 contests at Shea in ’01, so if somebody was going to pitch, I was going to see him. That included the brief yet ubiquitous tenure of one Bruce Chen. Chen came in late July for Turk Wendell and Dennis Cook. He made 6 starts at Shea. I was there for 5 of them. Apparently, we both signed up for the Tuesday/Friday plan.

Being an integral part of Kevin Appier’s and Bruce Chen’s Mets careers (on hand for 56.3 and 83.3 percent of their respective Shea starts, all in 2001) is, uh, nice, but I’m happier to know I caught 1.5% of Tom Seaver’s lifetime Mets home starts, 0.6% of Jerry Koosman’s (my first game) and 2.2% of Jon Matlack’s (including my first win). I don’t know what to think of making only one of Anthony Young’s 18 Shea starts and that one being the one in which he set the record for consecutive losses by a pitcher starting and/or relieving.

My real badge of honor comes from being a hundred-percenter a half-dozen times. Of the 83 starters in The Log, there are 6 whose every single home start as a Met I observed in the flesh. One of them, Juan Acevedo, made two Mets starts, both at Shea, both in 1997, both with me looking in. Don’t tell Juan the first time I was there was mostly to see the other team’s starter, rarely a motivating factor, but in this case the visitors were the Blue Jays and their pitcher had last pitched against the Mets in 1986 and…oh, all right, it was Roger Clemens. Jeering the Rocket, cheering the Avocado, it was all good; we won.

Of the other five for whom I was 100% behind, three — Twitchell in ’79, Jason Roach in ’03 and the late Cory Lidle in ’97 — made two Mets starts total, but just one each at home. The remaining two hurlers received one lone Mets start apiece. One was recurringly ridiculed 1986 lefty specialist Randy Niemann, pressed into duty by a backlog of August doubleheaders. Niemann made other starts for other teams, so while he was a novelty in ’86, his unusual appearance (he started and won) was not quite akin to that which I was party seven years later.

There was only one New York Mets pitcher who made only one start in his entire Major League career who made it at Shea Stadium in front of me. Talk about probability.

Since 1962, the Mets have played 3,572 regular-season home games. But in only one of them (.0002799%) did this fellow start. Since 1962, the Mets have announced paid regular-season home attendance of 88,836,858. But only 27,904 (.0003141%) can say they held a ticket for the Saturday afternoon makeup doubleheader of August 7, 1993 and, take it from me, only a fraction of them can say they a) showed up and b) stuck around for the nightcap. Those of us who did can say they witnessed the only start by one Michael Anthony Draper.

Yes, I saw normally neglected Rule V middleman Mike Draper’s only Major League start. Filling in for a bleached-out, bum-kneed Bret Saberhagen, Draper lasted three innings, gave up three runs, all earned, on five hits and three walks. Down 3-0 with one out in the bottom of the third, Dallas Green sent up Tim Bogar to pinch-hit for him. The Mets would take him off the hook with three that inning and eventually win the game 10-8, another Michael (Maddux) grabbing his first Met win and another Anthony (Young) notching his last Met save. It was Draper’s final Major League appearance. He was DL’d August 13 with a bad elbow and elbowed out of the organization at the end of September, unconditionally released and likely forgotten by everybody but me and Boogie.

Boogie?

Almost exactly a year after his one and only Major League start, Stephanie and I were in a faux Fifties diner, Boogie’s, in Chicago (it couldn’t be real Fifties — it was 1994). On the wall above the cash register, there were maybe a dozen plates signed by local and national celebrities. Many were sports stars or at least participants. One toward the end of the row required a double-, triple-, quadruple-take to confirm it didn’t say Mike Ditka. It didn’t. It was autographed by 1993 Met Mike Draper. It probably said best of luck.

Which was quite generous of Mike, given that his luck of the draw had yielded him just the one start.

On October 1, 2005, the Mets beat the Rockies 3-1 and raised their record to 83-78.

On October 1, 2006, the Cardinals lost to the Brewers 5-3 and lowered their record to 83-78.

The Mets clinched a tie for third place.

The Cardinals clinched a division title.

The next day, the Mets would complete their season with a loss.

The next day, the Cardinals would prepare for the playoffs.

The Mets won 12 more games in 2005 than they won the year before.

The Cardinals won 17 fewer games in 2006 than they won the year before.

The Mets finished 2005 tied for third with the Marlins.

The Cardinals finished 2006 as World Champions.

83-78.

83-78.

On October 1, 2005, the Mets beat the Rockies 3-1 and raised their record to 83-78.

On October 1, 2006, the Cardinals lost to the Brewers 5-3 and lowered their record to 83-78.

The Mets clinched a tie for third place.

The Cardinals clinched a division title.

The next day, the Mets would complete their season with a loss.

The next day, the Cardinals would prepare for the playoffs.

The Mets won 12 more games in 2005 than they won the year before.

The Cardinals won 17 fewer games in 2006 than they won the year before.

The Mets finished 2005 tied for third with the Marlins.

The Cardinals finished 2006 as World Champions.

83-78.

83-78.

Got my Sports Illustrated 2006 Sportsman of the Year issue yesterday. The winner is Dwayne Wade, a basketball player, judging by the uniform he’s wearing. I hear he’s good.

Of more interest than this year’s choice was the cover gallery SI printed of all its Sportsmen, Sportswomen and Sportsgroups. Of the 53 annual accolades it has bestowed, 12 (fully or partially) have gone to baseball players.

1955: Johnny Podres

1957: Stan Musial

1965: Sandy Koufax

1967: Carl Yastrzemski

1969: Tom Seaver

1975: Pete Rose

1979: Willie Stargell

1988: Orel Hershiser

1995: Cal Ripken

1998: Mark McGwire & Sammy Sosa

2001: Curt Schilling & Randy Johnson

2004: Boston Red Sox

Sportsmen? Some, sure. Probably. Others? Uh…

Rose bet on baseball.

McGwire’s not here to talk about the past.

Sosa no habla, quite suddenly.

Johnson? Outta my [bleeping] way, grump, grump.

How did they miss Barry Bonds?

In their day, I’m sure all these choices looked sane. But with the same issue of the magazine running a piece in which Tom Verducci dismisses McGwire from Hall of Fame consideration based on his squirmy non-defense at the steroid hearings of 2005 and all it and the arc of his build implies, it just goes to show ya how fleeting sportsmanship can be.

The current Hall of Fame ballot has three candidates who were all mortal locks for January 2007 when they hung ’em up in October 2001: Ripken, Tony Gwynn and McGwire. (And of course Paul O’Neill would enter via the intangibles wing.) Gwynn’s many batting titles and Ripken’s perfect-attendance record still stand. McGwire’s 583 home runs and his world-turning 1998 no longer exist.

I don’t know about that. I saw it. You saw it. We all saw it. McGwire overwhelmed baseball for a half-decade and excelled at it for the better part of 15 years. We were naming him Sportsman and All-Century and an Interstate highway. I understand the impulse to erase the unpleasantness we now feel after putting two and two together. That, though, is more our problem than his. He played. He produced. He was celebrated. By us. In his time, there was nobody like McGwire, just like there would be nobody like Bonds in McGwire’s wake.

They did what they chose to do. We didn’t discourage them. Baseball didn’t stop them. Mark McGwire rocked the sport. Money was made off him at every turn. The Verduccis and their ilk, the professional tut-tutters who now know better, covered him up close. If there was an attempt to expose him, it didn’t get very far. McGwire was good business, good copy, extraordinary video. He was handed a bat and did untold damage with it. That was his job. If he hurt himself along the way, well, a Hall of Fame plaque isn’t going to unlearn him of whatever lesson we think we’ll teach him by denying his career the affirmation it earned. He’s still the one who has to live with his insides.

Kids get the wrong message from that? Things can be done.

Parents and coaches: Drive home the fact that we didn’t know then what we seem to know now and “you pick up a syringe, I’ll break your hand.”

And to the baseball establishment, including institutions like the Hall of Fame and Sports Illustrated: Ease up on the equating of athletic success with humanitarian achievement. Pete Rose had a great 1975. O.J. Simpson rushed for more than 2,000 yards. And Randy Johnson marched in from the bullpen on no days’ rest to shut down the Skanks like they were Channel 2 cameramen. On the field, they were greats. Off the field, assume nothing. You want to recognize them for the hitting and the running and the throwing? Do so. But get over the “integrity,” “sportsmanship” and “character” folderol that are codified into the HOF voting criteria. It ain’t the Hall of Saints.

Got my Sports Illustrated 2006 Sportsman of the Year issue yesterday. The winner is Dwayne Wade, a basketball player, judging by the uniform he's wearing. I hear he's good.

Of more interest than this year's choice was the cover gallery SI printed of all its Sportsmen, Sportswomen and Sportsgroups. Of the 53 annual accolades it has bestowed, 12 (fully or partially) have gone to baseball players.

1955: Johnny Podres

1957: Stan Musial

1965: Sandy Koufax

1967: Carl Yastrzemski

1969: Tom Seaver

1975: Pete Rose

1979: Willie Stargell

1988: Orel Hershiser

1995: Cal Ripken

1998: Mark McGwire & Sammy Sosa

2001: Curt Schilling & Randy Johnson

2004: Boston Red Sox

Sportsmen? Some, sure. Probably. Others? Uh…

Rose bet on baseball.

McGwire's not here to talk about the past.

Sosa no habla, quite suddenly.

Johnson? Outta my [bleeping] way, grump, grump.

How did they miss Barry Bonds?

In their day, I'm sure all these choices looked sane. But with the same issue of the magazine running a piece in which Tom Verducci dismisses McGwire from Hall of Fame consideration based on his squirmy non-defense at the steroid hearings of 2005 and all it and the arc of his build implies, it just goes to show ya how fleeting sportsmanship can be.

The current Hall of Fame ballot has three candidates who were all mortal locks for January 2007 when they hung 'em up in October 2001: Ripken, Tony Gwynn and McGwire. (And of course Paul O'Neill would enter via the intangibles wing.) Gwynn's many batting titles and Ripken's perfect-attendance record still stand. McGwire's 583 home runs and his world-turning 1998 no longer exist.

I don't know about that. I saw it. You saw it. We all saw it. McGwire overwhelmed baseball for a half-decade and excelled at it for the better part of 15 years. We were naming him Sportsman and All-Century and an Interstate highway. I understand the impulse to erase the unpleasantness we now feel after putting two and two together. That, though, is more our problem than his. He played. He produced. He was celebrated. By us. In his time, there was nobody like McGwire, just like there would be nobody like Bonds in McGwire's wake.

They did what they chose to do. We didn't discourage them. Baseball didn't stop them. Mark McGwire rocked the sport. Money was made off him at every turn. The Verduccis and their ilk, the professional tut-tutters who now know better, covered him up close. If there was an attempt to expose him, it didn't get very far. McGwire was good business, good copy, extraordinary video. He was handed a bat and did untold damage with it. That was his job. If he hurt himself along the way, well, a Hall of Fame plaque isn't going to unlearn him of whatever lesson we think we'll teach him by denying his career the affirmation it earned. He's still the one who has to live with his insides.

Kids get the wrong message from that? Things can be done.

Parents and coaches: Drive home the fact that we didn't know then what we seem to know now and “you pick up a syringe, I'll break your hand.”

And to the baseball establishment, including institutions like the Hall of Fame and Sports Illustrated: Ease up on the equating of athletic success with humanitarian achievement. Pete Rose had a great 1975. O.J. Simpson rushed for more than 2,000 yards. And Randy Johnson marched in from the bullpen on no days' rest to shut down the Skanks like they were Channel 2 cameramen. On the field, they were greats. Off the field, assume nothing. You want to recognize them for the hitting and the running and the throwing? Do so. But get over the “integrity,” “sportsmanship” and “character” folderol that are codified into the HOF voting criteria. It ain't the Hall of Saints.

Hey, a trade: Brian Bannister for Ambiorix Burgos.

You know, Ambiorix Burgos. Yes, that Ambiorix Burgos. From the Royals.

What? Not up to speed on Kansas City’s erstwhile closer? Me neither. Closer for the Royals is the baseball equivalent of Maytag repairman. And no, I can’t pronounce it either — hard to believe he couldn’t fit in on a team with Grudzielanek and Mientkiewicz.

Let’s see…he’s young, he throws hard, he’s prone to wildness…in a bullpen that could use a little boost, he’ll do. We’ll see what Ambiorix Burgos does under the jacketed wing of Rick Peterson, away from the pressure of ninth innings and removed from the serenity of western Missouri. Until he lets in a run, couldn’t hurt.

As for the other tradee, fate wasn’t Brian Bannister’s friend, at least not a dependable one. The Mets were just short enough on starting last spring so that he could emerge from the pack and win a slot. They scored (and he battled) just enough for him to keep him from losing. And he hit just enough to screw up his season. He never made it to May. The way he squirmed in and out of trouble, it’s hard to imagine he would have made it to June unscathed.

Alas, he got hurt and, except for a couple of cameos late, fell out of the team picture by the time we clinched. When future triviots ask each other to name the 13 starting pitchers employed by the Mets in their division championship season of 2006, Brian Bannister will be a name you remember because you remember it or you completely forget after coming up with “Lima…Gonzalez…and, oh, whatshisname, that other one, the one who doubled and pulled his hamstring in San Francisco, he flirted with a no-hitter his first start, walked a lot of guys…yeah that’s it! How many is that? Only twelve? Who am I forgetting?”

With Pelfrey, Humber and Perez loosening up, Bannister is the starter we could afford to trade for a 22-year-old, 98 miles-per-hour reliever, even if it’s sad to lose a Cyclone. May an unexpected thrill ride await him in K.C.