We could all use our own Ricky Ledee. We could all use a caddy to go in and play for us the day after we’ve had a big time the night before. We could all use a guy who might go 0-for-4 in our stead but nobody would notice and few would complain.

I wasn’t technically hung over Tuesday. I mean half a metallic Budweiser and 187 milliliters of Pommery Pop? Get a good look — that’s not a lightweight anchoring the right side of your picture.

Emotionally was another story. There was no way my head was leaving Monday night behind so easily. Nor was it hitting a pillow ’til dawn’s early light. I recorded Mets Fast Forward at 5 A.M. but decided to sit up and watch it as it aired. Can’t see Josh Willingham fly out to Cliff Floyd enough. Kind of defeated the purpose of setting the DVR, but I’ll sleep when we’re last.

While waiting for the rebroadcast, I read a very funny thread on a very busy Mets message board about what the back pages might look like Tuesday. The running joke was that the New York tabloids are so obsessed with the doings of another team that…well, read it yourself. I especially like #13.

It turned out the local papers did themselves proud. The News abandoned Cap’n Cock…y for one morning and gave us our poster boys, David and Jose, drenching themselves silly in the clubhouse. That was good. But Newsday devoting A1 to Our Fellas out on the field as the Toast of the Town? That’s New York Long Island Honda Dealers Good!

Young David looks awfully comfortable with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a cigar in the other. Let’s make sure we see some variation on that theme a few more times this year and regularly for the next 15 or 20.

Hey, you know what never happened? The Pirate series. It’s a typical soap opera convention, one I recognize from my decade as on occasional (OK, mostly constant) viewer of The Young & The Restless. You have a very intense storyline on which everybody’s lives are focused for a time and then, after it doesn’t catch on, you just write the next episode like it never happened.

Pirate series? What Pirate series? Everybody in Genoa City knows the Mets romped to their clinching unimpeded and undefeated.

Adult beverage consumption did not end in Section 4 Monday night. Last Friday, when the air was thick with nonsense about the necessity of clinching in Pittsburgh, I visited my local liquorium and spent 14 big ones on a bottle of Korbel Extra Dry. (In 1999, I celebrated the Wild Card with a more inexpensive bottle of Rheingold Extra Dry…it was a very good year.) The California champagne — some would claim that its geographic origin makes it merely sparkling wine, but some also claim you can overcelebrate a division title, so some are morons — grew icy cold in the fridge over the clinchless weekend. This was not a bottle that had a chance of sneaking under the nose of Inspector Cloushea, so in the fridge it sat as the last out was made and the fifth title was earned.

Hung over or not Tuesday, the Korbel needed to come out and play. Mrs. Prince earned her taste, and not just in the Met abstract. When I called her on the way home post-clinching, I asked her if she watched. No, she said. Before I could ask what the hell is wrong with you, you just sat and watched three dreadful losses with me and now that we win, you don’t even peek, she volunteered, “I was afraid if I did, they’d lose.”

Wow. Nineteen-plus years of me and this have really done a number on her.

Anyway, we popped our cork in advance of the pregame show and, discovering we don’t own champagne glasses, filled a couple of Mets beer mugs given me by Jim Haines a couple of birthdays ago. I felt compelled to compose a toast on the spot, telling Stephanie that I had never thought in terms of a divisional title per se, but I would have been surprised when we got married in 1991 if I’d been told it would take this long before we would see one together, and that it’s all a lot more fun sharing it with her. Then we raised our mugs and swigged. We’re not a drinking couple, but we are capable of gettin’ swiggy wit’ it once or twice a year.

Stephanie grew flush after three sips, but I began gaining momentum, refilling my mug and telling Avery, whose first anniversary as our kitty was Saturday, what a great cat he is…get your face out of that Iams and give Daddy a big kiss! It was shaping up as quite an evening, but at 6:32, half the power went out in our building and on our block. Very strange. The kitchen was light, the living room was dark, the TV was blank, the radio worked. It wasn’t much of a power outage, yet it was powerful enough to put a damper on my drinking. How am I supposed to develop a taste for this stuff when I have to call LIPA and complain coherently?

I wasn’t really paying attention as the Mets lineup stepped in DiFelices. When the lights came back on at 7:36, there was still a little Korbel left, but it was getting warm and my divisional buzz didn’t need any more enhancement. The dregs went down the drain…the champagne, I mean, not Ledee.

Aw, no reason to be hard on this instant trivia classic of a batting order. They won, right? Of course they did. It is traditional; furthermore, it is historic. In the five seasons when the Mets have played games after clinching playoff spots (including 2000, but not 1973 and 1999), the Mets are 28-8 for the remainder of their schedule, including last night. No power outage or momentum stop for our fellas, even when the guys playing out the string are barely Our Fellas.

Avery, did I ever tell you what a beautiful cat you really are? Gimme another kiss!

Took the day off from work, largely so I could lie around the house being tired but happy. The Mets’ starting lineup did too — Emily and Joshua and I came back from dinner to find it was 2-0 Marlins, with Michael Tucker at the plate and nobody out. Tucker got a hit, Chris Woodward stepped up, Ricky Ledee was on deck and I realized that I had no earthly idea where we were in the batting order.

Woody doubled, putting runners on second and third as I got Joshua ready for his bath and watched with much vaguer than usual attention. Somewhere around helping Joshua remove a stubborn t-shirt (remember when you were little and they’d get stuck on your head?) I noticed Ledee pop out, Mike DiFelice come to the plate, and Tom Glavine busy himself in the on-deck circle. Ah, now at least I had my bearings — though I was interested to see the top of the lineup. Would a single regular be playing? I hoped not. Let them have a relaxing night in the dugout. We’re the NL East Champs. Home field isn’t in question. Nobody except Tom Glavine cares about winning this game.

Then Scott Olsen coaxed a third strike past DiFelice.

“GODDAMNIT DIFELICE!” I bellowed.

Oh well. Kind of hard to break habits formed over 149 games.

And there’s a lesson there. When your first eight are Hernandez, Chavez, Milledge, Franco, Tucker, Woodward, Ledee and DiFelice, and you still find yourself yelling at eighth-place hitters for not making contact, baseball’s got you by the throat, and it’s too late to do anything about it, not that you’d want to do anything so silly.

Tonight’s game was proof of something we all know but sometimes don’t like to admit: We root for laundry. But you know what? On nights like this, that seems perfectly sensible: A nice at-bat that ends with a solid single on a 3-2 pitch is a nice at-bat whether the man with the stick is Carlos Beltran or Lastings Milledge. And a bases-loaded single that brings home a go-ahead run is a thing of beauty whether it’s just another line in Carlos Delgado’s notebook, or a exclamation point on the far-briefer resume of Michael Tucker. Baseball played right is a pleasure to watch and cheer for, whether it’s the best lineup in the National League doing the honors, or Willie’s irregulars.

No mounted police on the field, no plastic over the lockers, no warnings not to enter the field. Just a simple, quiet, well-earned victory. And that can be a mighty satisfying thing too.

Addendum because I was curious: We’re now 3-1 in meaningless JV affairs the day after clinching division titles.

* On Sept. 26, 1969, the Mets beat the Phillies, 5-0. Clendenon hit a homer. Koosman won his 17th.

* 1973 doesn’t count — our win in the first game of an Oct. 1 doubleheader with the Cubs meant there was no Game 2. If you want to get technical about it, we lost the first game of 1974. Tug got the L; Mac Scarce got the win for the Phils. Little did anyone know those two would soon be more deeply connected.

* On Sept. 18, 1986, we beat the Cubs, 5-0. HoJo had a three-run homer, pacing a lineup that featured Stanley Jefferson, John Gibbons and Dave Magadan. Rick Anderson pitched very nicely for the win; some kid named Maddux took the L.

* On Sept. 23, 1988, Doc took a 1-0 lead into the ninth against the Cardinals. But then Vince Coleman walked, stole second and came around on an Ozzie Smith single. Pedro Guerrero then brought home Ozzie with a sac fly, sticking Doc with his eighth loss of the season.

Attention citizens of the National League Eastern Division: You have a new champion.

There isn’t a combination of Phillie or Marlin or Brave or National wins that adds to a hill of beans now. They can’t touch us in 2006. We win.

It is fricking remarkable that we haven’t been able to say that since 1988. Back then, we lorded it over five teams, four of which don’t live here anymore. That was the same group we started with in 1969, the year we won our first, the year I watched my first. Then it was the Cubs, Pirates, Cardinals, Phillies and Expos who couldn’t lay a glove on us. It’s 37 years, two expansions, one realignment and one franchise shift later, but it feels familiar. It feels right. It feels home. The Eastern Division of the National League: Our House.

I was watching Sports New York for all we missed while we were there and I’m seeing this Met and that Met talking about how great this is for them as individuals as well as a team and I believe them. I believe everything tonight when it comes to the Mets.

But I’m looking at that clubhouse footage and listening to those interviews and I’m thinking it can’t be any better for them than it is for us.

Oh sure, they’re the champs. They’re the ones who made it so. Becoming a division champion is a big deal for them. But them becoming a division champion New York Met…well, like I said back when we still had a magic number, this 1 was for us.

It’s huge for Delgado and Lo Duca because they’ve never seen the business end of October before. But Delgado and Lo Duca weren’t Mets last year. They’d be happy to earn this result wherever they were.

It’s a great accomplishment for Wright and Reyes. They’re two of the best young athletes we’ll ever see. But they’ve been at this professional baseball thing for just a few years. They weren’t alive when I had already put in 14 seasons on behalf of the club they now call theirs.

Much is to be said for Trachsel, a Met with nothing to show for it except a nice paycheck since 2001. Floyd and Glavine got here in 2003, a very, very inauspicious moment to start being Mets. Aaron Heilman was a Met when being a Met wasn’t cool — and when being Aaron Heilman was highly unfashionable. I don’t doubt they all feel they’ve been through the wars as Mets. They have…a few. It is we, however, who bear the scars of almost every battle this team has fought in the span of our sentient memories.

We love Jose Valentin and Endy Chavez and Chris Woodward and Shawn Green and Mike DiFelice and Carlos Beltran and Pedro Martinez and Billy Wagner and everybody who did this thing we toasted several hours ago. Of course we loved hundreds of guys who tried and failed to do this thing several years ago and several decades ago. We will love the next bunch that comes along, too. We are Mets fans. We love Mets. It’s the proportions of that affection that change, usually in sync with Met fortunes.

This bunch here is very special. Good players we know they are and good guys they seem to be. We wait all winter for a baseball season and boy have they given us one to luxuriate in and remember, I suspect, eternally. I will forever be grateful to every Met who won me a National League Eastern Division title in 2006. I will forever be happy for each and every one of them. They should be proud of their respective accomplishments in their chosen field.

But it can’t mean more to them than it does to me; does to Jason; does to Laurie who brought us her camera, her bubbly and her passion with three outs to go; to Jim who draws Mr. Met for us; to AlberstonMets who came by and introduced himself in the flesh; to jm with whom I just got off the phone; to CharlieH and to MetLady516 and to Inside Pitcher and to Mo and to Rusty and to Student of the Game and to Jacobs27 and to Kingman Fan and to Bicycle Mom and to Joshua and to NostraDennis and to dmg and to Joelster63…and forgive me if I don’t call the complete roll of commenters who make our blog whole and doubly forgive me if I’m missing you who should be terribly obvious to me, to say nothing of our blogging brothers and sisters whose collective efforts make us a part of something bigger than ourselves and, of course, you readers we don’t know except that we know that you’re out there.

Winning this National League Eastern Division championship means a lot to us, doesn’t it?

We look at the script Mets on those uniforms and that’s our name. That’s us. However it happened, we became Mets a forever ago. We don’t get paid. Doesn’t even occur to us how much being Mets costs us in dollar terms let alone man and woman hours devoted to this cause we’ve made our own across each and every one of our lifetimes. We bleed, we sweat, we cry because, c’mon — what else are we gonna do?

We can do everything for this team except hit, hit with power, run, throw, catch and pitch. So we do what we can. We wear them and we hope them and we yell them and we live them and we write them. We do it with only limited promise and no guarantee of success most years. We do it on the slightest chance that every now and then we can call ourselves the champion of something. It’s not a dealbreaker when we can’t, but it surely serves as a contract extension into perpetuity for us when we do.

We are the 2006 National League Eastern Division Champions. Congratulations everybody. We did it.

It’s been a long time since I rock and rolled,

It’s been a long time since I did the stroll.

Been a long lonely lonely lonely lonely lonely time.

I didn’t think I’d been nervous until I started realizing just how many things I’d forgotten.

Like where was my hat? Normally if there’s a game to be played I’ve got my beloved, faded, battered Cyclones hat on my head. Or, failing that, my gray Mets hat with the NY in stars and stripes. (I don’t know why, I just like that one.) Or, should neither of those seem lucky, the blue and orange NEW YORK one, or the blue and red BROOKLYN one. Or those old standbys, the black NY hat or the hat that was a Met hat when it never occurred to marketers that there could be more than one. Not today. I came back from my office bathroom having changed into my black away uni, rummaged through my bag and realized I didn’t have my hat. How could I leave the house today of all days without it?

(As an incompetence bookend: I brought the digital camera, pulled it out of my bag in a happy Shea Stadium, turned it on and saw a beautiful image of the field and the happy baseball team below. Atop it, strange words: NO MEMORY CARD. Oops.)

The champagne didn’t make it either, though I did remember it. I’d loaded my bag up Greg-style for camoflague — work shirt, t-shirt, book, printed manuscript pages, umbrella (no rain in forecast), the memory-card-free camera, and miscellaneous crap grabbed from my office to put the largest number of barriers between the eyes/hands of a security guard and the moderate-sized bottle of Verve Veuve Clicquot I’d found in a cabinet during a hasty search on Friday night. By the time I was done it was like carrying a cinderblock.

I knew I wouldn’t make it, though: The security guard dug through that bag like he was fricking Heinrich Schliemann while I waited for the inevitable. Finally he held up the champagne and simply shook his head, pleasant but implacable. I mumbled something lame about a dinner and BYOB, surrendered my bottle, and trudged into Shea with my enormous load of now utterly useless crap making me list to port. (Happy ending: Faith and Fear friend Laurie came through with mini-bottles smuggled in one of those umbrella carriers some bags have on the bottom. She’s a crafty one, that Laurie. Oh, and her camera had a memory card in it.)

Everything else went just fine, of course. The Cubs put up crookeder and crookeder numbers, the Mets played crisply, and the crowd was going full throttle, ready to push the team across any finish line it came near. Up in the mezzanine, Greg and I fretted and then stop fretting and started wondering if Steve Trachsel, who often pitches the way continents meander across oceans, could possibly beat the news from Philadelphia. He could and he did — pitched wonderfully, in fact, and in near-record time. For all the attention Pedro’s abortive return got on Friday night, Trachsel’s storyline had to be just as compelling. He’s never going to be loved at Shea, not with his water-torture pace and his head-down trudge to and from the dugout (the 5+ ERA doesn’t help either), and he stands slightly apart on this team, a holdover from previous administrations who can’t plead that he merely arrived early. But did he ever do his job when it needed to be done. It was disappointing that Trachsel couldn’t tip his cap or wave his hand to the crowd that gave him a standing ovation — what was there to visualize at that point, Steve? — but what the heck, he probably didn’t know what to do when confronted by a Shea standing ovation. Here’s hoping he gets to ignore some more standing Os.

The rest? Signs premature (NL EAST DIVISION CHAMPS before we were), to the point (CLINCH) and irritatingly off-point (BRING ON THE YANKEES). Public-address messages that would have seemed like jinxes in other years — we were entreated not to go on the field (“illegal and dangerous”) before the top of the ninth. Yankee fans got booed — my favorite target was a teenage girl in a camoflague Yanks hat whose walk around the mezzanine was paced, metronome-style, by a section-by-section YANKEES SUCK! chant. Various Mets were treated to unofficial MVP lobbying; “Around the Majors” showed highlights from the completely meaningless Reds-Astros game, a dose of habitual Shea incompetence that was somehow comforting; and Reyes and Valentin were serenaded with their shared first name. (“Jose Jose Jose Jose! Other Jose, Other Jose!” Greg and I improvised cleverly.)

And, of course, there was a final line drive and a lot of yelling and drinking of warm, properly smuggled champagne and a long, happy subway ride home with the exhilirated faithful. After a game I like watching the Met share of my fellow riders slowly decrease as the distance from Shea increases and people peel off for the near-infinite number of familiar routes taking them from Shea to their homes, until I’m down to knots of Met fans and then scattered sightings and finally the one or two fans who happen to live where I live and happened to have left the stadium at the same time I did, a coincidence that usually allows for a brief exchange of happiness or reassurance or commiseration before we go back to our non-baseball lives.

Tonight my 7 car was filled with booming Mets chants all the way to 42nd Street, despite various Met rooters being disgorged for the LIRR, the 4/5/6 and the B/D/F. They were still chanting on the 2/3 platform at 42nd, and I could hear them all the way down to 14th. (LET’S! GO! METS!) and then Chambers (LET’S! GO! METS!), the chants and sightings gradually dwindling until finally I got off at Clark Street and there was just me.

Just me, but I wasn’t exactly alone. There was my uniform shirt and the astonishingly heavy bag and the flush of yelling and booze and victory and the season of blissful memories so far and the now-official glee and hope and anxiety for the future — that marvelous collection of things that come with being, at long last, NATIONAL LEAGUE EAST CHAMPS.