Nothing like victory to turn Shea indignities into amusements.

Your co-bloggers and their wives, famous in these precincts for their remarkable patience, took up residence in the upper deck within high-fiving distance of planes leaving La Guardia, and immediately had to marvel at our neighbors to the immediate rear. These guys should have been the subjects of some kind of medical experiment: They combined the manic energy of puppies with the alcohol capacity of Viking war chiefs. They were plenty obnoxious (though at least they didn’t seem to have a mean bone in their bodies), and in an 11-1 loss would no doubt have become unbearable companions early. But as accompaniments to a distant 4-1 win that never seemed particularly in doubt? What the heck. They were tolerable and even fitfully amusing. Or at least ignorable.

Similarly, getting from the top of the upper deck to the 7 train was not an odyssey for the timid. It took half an hour, much of that spent in the human equivalent of stop-and-go traffic on the south side of Roosevelt Avenue, watching one particularly wasted youth climb over the fence (topped with really nasty, sharp metal twists that you wouldn’t want anywhere near your crotch or your palms) between the street and the parking lot four times, falling twice. He kept going back and forth, and I don’t have the faintest idea why. Maybe he just liked falling off fences. (In perhaps the least-surprising development in the history of Shea Stadium, he turned out not to have a Metrocard.) As before, in an 11-1 loss this confinement and nearby dipshittery would have been torture. After taking a commanding 2-0 lead in the NLDS? It was surreal and kind of fun — Would we ever reach the 7? Would Asshat Boy fall off the fence again? Would he respond to the crowd’s increasingly inventive taunts?

Then there was our 7 car — wow. A trio of Shea vendors who’d changed back into their Yankee gear and were rehearsing really lame gangsta raps. Some braying doofus complaining that the top team in each league should just go right to the World Series and suggesting that an NLCS win against the Cardinals “would exorcise the ghosts of Jack Clark and John Tudor.” (Huh?) And, interspersed with drunk staggering Met fans, the handful of outer-borough locals who’d gotten on the empty 7 at Main Street in Flushing and looked up in uncomprehending terror when 56,000 people stormed their car a stop later.

(Oh, and once the 7 finally crawled its way to Times Square, the 2 was running local. OK, that wasn’t so amusing.)

Speaking of taunts, one of our upper-deck neighbors deserved a seat upgrade for high-quality tormenting of Kenny Lofton after his demand that a bus be moved from behind the outfield fence and out of the batter’s eye. (He wasn’t wrong — what idiot thought that was a fine place for a bus? — but let’s ignore that.) After Lofton struck out, the heckler fired off a string of gems, beginning with “TURN OFF THE SCOREBOARD! I CAN’T SEE THE BALL!” and progressing to “TIME OUT — THERE’S PAINT ON THE FIELD!” Good stuff — but, alas, completely inaudible to the players a quarter-mile below. That guy should have been escorted to a spot behind the Dodger dugout at once.

And finally, the elevator at Clark Street, which was filled with Met fans and one young woman in a Yankee shirt, accompanied by her Met-affiliated boyfriend. That was fine. It was even fine when she sighed that “I’m surrounded.” But it was not fine when she began woofing that it didn’t matter, because the Yankees were going to go all the way, that they’d win the Subway Series again.

Normally I let this kind of thing ride; after an 11-1 loss I certainly would have. But after pushing the Dodgers to the brink — and on the same day the Tigers had beaten That Other Team? Nuh-uh.

“Yankees, huh — whose name do you have on the back?” I asked. (Confession: I already knew.)

“Um…A-Rod,” she said.

“Ohh,” I said. “The clutch hitter.”

The car began to snicker.

“I didn’t even buy this shirt,” she stammered. “Someone gave it to me.”

“He was great today,” I said. “And he’s like a .500 hitter — if you’re up 10 or down 10.”

Open laughter now. The Yankee girl hid her face in her boyfriend’s shoulder. And as we walked out of the station, I heard her mutter “it’s true — I hate like half my team.”

Ah, winning. It really does change everything.

OK, Glavine…Tom. It’s on you tonight.

I don’t want to contradict myself from yesterday when I said the starting pitcher issue is overemphasized in the postseason, but based on the variables that revealed themselves in Game One — namely the use of all five prime Met relievers — it would be helpful to have Tom Glavine give us those six innings that were requested of John Maine. In fact, if he wants to give us those plus maybe the inning and change Maine left on the table at Willie’s behest, I wouldn’t complain.

Is Tom Glavine a “big-game pitcher”? Who the hell knows? I don’t care about his Brave postseason record. That was a million baseball years ago. As a Met, there haven’t been a ton of big games for him to pitch. 2003 and 2004 were the years Glavine woke up every morning and looked in the mirror and wondered what the hell was I thinking? for signing here. Last year the pitcher and the team seemed to land on the same page as going concerns. And this year Tom was as big a reason as anybody for the Mets clinching the division from the get-go.

So is he a big-game pitcher? Well, it’s a baseball game and he’s a big pitcher and he had a real nice game against the Dodgers in September and not such a great one in June. He’s better of late than he was in the middle of the season. He took his St. Joseph’s for Children and he’s healthy as far as we know. And, though it won’t show up in the boxscore, he’s a Met. Never thought I’d say it with conviction, but he’s one of Ours. During the pregame intros Wednesday, he received an audibly louder cheer than most of his non-starting teammates (including one from this torch ‘n’ grudge bearer in Row R). His Shea greeting owes, I figure, to his career stature, his franchise longevity and the amount we’ve got riding on his head/left arm.

On a club whose rotation probably didn’t turn to plan more than three times consecutively all year (as the plan changed from moment to moment), he’s our rock. I’d say him and Trachsel, but Trachsel hasn’t pitched since September 23 and, as the saying goes, he’s Trachsel. Tonight’s starter is Glavine. He’s Glavine.

He’d better be.

Here’s one vote for starting more games at 4 o’clock. It’s an outstanding time of day to witness postseason baseball in person.

Golden sunlight bathes Shea in early October between 3 and 4. Or so I just learned. As I sat in gorgeous weather waiting for the festivities to unfold, I marveled at how gol’dang good Queens looked, how the construction in what used to be the parking lot (there’s space for maybe eight cars now) is spreading, how this must have been what it felt like in 1969 while Tommie Agee and Ron Swoboda sprinkled their gloves with pixie dust.

Of course we were the 4 o’clock start, us and the Dodgers — media markets 1 and 2 — because our teams and all teams are the scum of the earth, except for the Yankees who make the world go round. We were instructed by ESPN to scurry in unison to our ratholes after sundown so Captain Fantastic could Lead By Example in prime time. Funny, though: Fox has been so buoyed by Yankee ratings October after October that next year not a single Division Series game will be appear on over-the-air network television. Memo to soulless corporations with no feel for what you’re broadcasting…did it ever occur to you that maybe shoving the ex-dynasty down everybody’s throats for a decade soured America on its erstwhile National Pastime?

Meanwhile, first pitch 4:09 PM, despite the pleasing aesthetic aspects, was an admitted inconvenience for a lot of people with steadier jobs than mine. The three people who made my entrance possible by inviting me to be their fourth all showed up long after the action commenced. I heard tales from other quarters of folks with valuable playoff tickets that seemed to be going wanting as Dodger hour approached; responsibility’s an ugly burden. I half-expected Shea to look like The Ted. It didn’t, not at all. Mets fans will fight their way past deadlines and punchclocks and commutation hassles to see three, five, nine or fifteen innings of heartstopping baseball. I saw no pockets of unoccupied orange, blue, green or — where we were — red.

And was it not poetic media justice that the game the elitists just had to have in that all-important 8:20 slot got RAINED OUT? Steve Somers took one irate call after another from Yankee fen complaining about being forced to endure a delay until 10 PM and then be told to get their 26-ringed asses back to the Bronx by 1 PM the next day. Since we’re all sports consumers, I tried to feel some simpatico for those put out by forces beyond their control.

I didn’t.

Now those magnetic Yankees and the oodles of precious eyeballs they’re alleged to attract will be apart as their ALDS with the Tigers continues in the early afternoon. And we will be in the spotlight dance after 8 o’clock. It will be chillier than it was Wednesday and it will be darker and it will be inconvenient for its own set of reasons. If there’s rain (there’s not supposed to be), well, that will suck, too. But we’re Mets fans. We only complain when we don’t have a game at all.

Great Timo’s Ghost! After following Jason’s suggestion and reading Jayson Stark, I just realized the Double Tag Double Play was the spiritual undoing of the last Game One the Mets were in. This time it was our outfielder and our infielder who executed beautifully, and this time it was the other team’s baserunners who looked clueless, presumptuous and defeated.

The Kent-Drew Kamikaze also echoed the first regular-season game Paul Lo Duca caught as a Met, when everything turned on his WHOA! play at the plate. Then he knew exactly what he was doing. Here, he had no idea what was going on, yet the result was twice as great. May this first postseason game Paul Lo Duca caught as a Met set the same kind of tone he and his teammates set six months and a day earlier.

I had just settled down. Now I’m revved up again.

There is a tendency to overreact to the last thing seen. And ya know what? It’s the best tendency in the world.

I was at Game One today and I had the most awesome time ever, it was the greatest game ever, the greatest win ever. The Mets are the most excellent team ever and the Dodgers suck like nobody else ever has.

Perspective.

Who needs it?

Let history steamroll and iron out the details. I just know that Shea Stadium was never as pumped for anything as it was for this mighty win. Except for the occasional ball one or strike two to the wrong batter, we were loud, we were proud, we were Mets. We didn’t shut up. I like to make the case for silence between pitches to permit necessary contemplation and all that crap, but this is the playoffs. It was fun to keep up the noise for nine innings. It was vital.

Besides, if it weren’t for crowd reaction, I might not have gleaned the turning point of the game and maybe all time, the eye-rubbing, throat-catching, you-gotta-be-kidding double tag at home plate in the second. I’ve seen replays since, but in person, here’s how it went, at least in my head:

Shit, it’s gonna fall in. It’s at the wall. C’mon Green, get to it. Get it in. Kent’s gonna score, but maybe we can get Drew. Somebody’s in front of me, let me peek around. Did he tag him? He tagged him! He’s out! Whoa, what’s that roar? Ohmigod, he tagged somebody else! Wait! He got Kent in the first place? And THEN he got Drew? Holy crap! There’s two outs and no runs on the scoreboard! HOLY FUCK! OHMIGOD!

It would have been so wrong to have not won after that and the Mets complied with all that was right. A brilliant day, a brilliant view from high atop beautiful Western Flushing. A fantastic crowd from the obligatory SUX! that followed every Dodger introduction (especially for hitting coach Eddie Murray but not for Marlon Anderson, though I imagine his goodwill has expired) to the spontaneous vocal accompaniment to Branford Marsalis’s “Star Spangled Banner” to every Met motion toward the good, whether Maine’s four innings, Carlos D’s four hits, Wright’s clutchrageous batting or every reliever providing relief. Billy Wagner gave up one run, but he wasn’t gonna give up two. How did I know? ‘Cause we wouldn’t let him.

For those of you scoring at home I went with the New York Giants cap, using the logic I applied in May when I wore the California Angels hat to psych out the Yankees. That’s right you Los Angeles fuckers, you’re not safe playing New York’s National League representatives on October 3 or October 4. Fifty-five years ago, it was a Shot. Today it was two tags. Go back to your crappy Ravine. Sure enough, I saw a guy in a Brooklyn cap on the train on the way in and I stared at him through three stops until he seemed unnerved.

I experienced a weird runup to first pitch. Around 12:30, I became very jumpy. Not “oh no John Maine is starting, Royce Ring is around, god only knows” nervous, just good old “it’s October and the Mets are playing and nothing — nothing — is more important because geez, this is exactly what we hope and pray and play for all the days of our lives” nervous. It was really here. Picking the Giants cap was a big deal. Fixing two turkey sandwiches on whole wheat and wrapping them in foil (I’ve NEVER thought to do that, even when I was a kid) was a big deal. Parking in a local municipal lot halfway to my train was a new and potentially momentum-affecting thing. Theoretically I wanted to treat everything like it was just another game, but it wasn’t. Shake things up. Lose that 9-13 record from the regular season. I’m 1-0 baby.

We all are.

YEAH!!! FUCK YEAH!!!