Seriously, last night was probably the worst game of the year to watch from start to finish. Unless you thrill to rookie lefties having their way with us, it was the kind of night meant for flipping channels. I found myself wandering up and down the remote so much that I was surprised I caught as many interesting things as I did.

1) A black cat raced into extreme right field and disappeared behind the 338 sign, put off, I'm guessing, by all those distasteful Byrd droppings around home plate. Cats are clean animals and don't care for that kind of rude behavior. The cat was not identified by name. I don't think it was this fella, who is apparently a Mets fan and is billed as a Feline Prince (but is no relation to my Hozzie or my Avery). As long as they're going to try to honor a little Mets history among all the great Dodger history in the Park to be Named Later, maybe they can call the visitors' dugout the Kitty Corner in recognition of the role another black cat played in the 1969 pennant race. Better yet, they could work with trained professionals to rescue some of King Felix's minions, get them some necessary veterinary care, keep them from reproducing, find them some homes or at least fill the Top Hat with some water and let the gang get hydrated. Cats don't really need milk. It gives them the runs…and not like the three Marlon Byrd provided for Mike O'Connor.

2) Ron Darling admitted he would have liked to have returned to pitch for the Mets after he was traded because he was stuck on 99 Mets wins and wanted the round number. I didn't think players cared about those things. Darling had 136 wins in his career but it actually bothered him not to get to 100 as a Met. That's neat enough to make one overlook the No. 33 Greatest Met of the First Forty Years' pedestrian broadcasting skills and inability to come up big on a handful of occasions.

3) Spike Lee was in a DiamondView Suite wearing what appeared to be a brand, spankin' new Mets cap. In an in-game interview (the best kind while silly ol' baseball is taking place down on the field), he was kvelling over Omar and Willie and his old/new favorite team. I'm tempted to say, Spike, make up your mind as to whether you're a Mets fan or a fan of some other local squadron. I guess he has. Whichever team is doing well, he's a big fan. He grew up rooting for whichever team was doing well. He remains loyal to whichever team is in first place. He's the No. 1 celebrity supporter of whichever team is kicking ass. That Spike Lee, he sure knows how to run in front. (Other big names who make their way to Shea prefer to skate).

4) Gary Cohen name-checked one of our favorite blolleagues, Mark of Mets Walkoffs. The answer to the AFLAC (AF-LAC!) trivia question was essentially Mark's post, the one that celebrated Monday night's win with the story of the last time the Mets won a game when the opposing pitcher threw away the winning run. Congrats to Mark for a deserving shoutout. Kudos as ever to Gary Cohen for citing only the best sources. And screw you, Darold Knowles, just on principle.

5) John Maine pitched OK. I guess we'll see him again. He wasn't really all that interesting.

FLUSHING (FAFIF) — Mike O'Connor didn't feign surprise at his success versus the New York Mets Tuesday night.

“The Mets?” the celebrated lefty asked after accepting congratulations from his Washington teammates. “Never heard of 'em.”

When told that in fact the Mets had been in the National League since 1962 and have been leading its eastern division by a wide margin most of the year, the 25-year-old pitcher just shook his head.

“Nah,” he said. “Doesn't ring a bell.”

O'Connor swore he meant no disrespect to those who provided the nominal competition in his second Major League start: “Listen, you face teams all the time. Sometimes they're familiar, sometimes they aren't. Tonight was the first time I've ever seen the Nets.”

Reminded that the Nets are a basketball team leading the Indiana Pacers in the NBA playoffs, O'Connor quickly corrected himself: “My bad. I meant, uh…I'm sorry, what's their name again?”

A Mike O'Connor can be forgiven his ignorance regarding the relative obscurity of an opponent that garnered all of two hits across seven innings. O'Connor is, after all, the reigning Washington Nationals minor league pitcher of the year. He's just become a one-game winner in the big leagues. Most of all, he's a recently promoted southpaw in the best tradition of household names like Chad Zerbe and Brian Barnes. Fans of the New York Mets certainly remember who they are even if they'd have a tough time identifying who their own pitcher was Tuesday.

O'Connor, on the other hand, can't be expected to differentiate among all the teams he's beaten. The Mets certainly did nothing to leave an imprint on his psyche. They can't waste a lot time worrying about their anonymity, however. Wednesday night, they face the daunting task of batting against Pirate starter Ian Snell.

Yes, that Ian Snell. Mike O'Connor and Ian Snell on consecutive nights…makes you wonder whether anybody will hear from these Mets again.

Wanna play in October? You gotta win blowouts and squeakers, extra-inning games and rain-shortened affairs, day games after night games and the tail end of doubleheaders. Included somewhere in that list are games that appeared headed for extra innings except the enemy reliever makes a nice pickup and unleashes disaster. Gary Majewski had a tailor-made double play in front of him, except he threaded the needle so perfectly that Royce Clayton tipped the ball over Jose Vidro's shoulder, ensuring the Nats went home in rags.

An attaboy for Victor Zambrano, who finally pitched aggressively and saw that (whodathunkit?) good things happen when you do. At least for one game Victor wasn't running away from his own stuff; that first-inning K of Nick Johnson with a fastball in on the hands gave me hope that I might not have to spend the evening swearing hideously and throwing things. Still, I kept thinking about “Bull Durham” and Nuke LaLoosh. Not that Victor is anything like the Tim Robbins character in most respects: He's old, timid, doesn't seem to be having any fun and as far as I can tell isn't sleeping with Susan Sarandon. But like Nuke, he needs a catcher who will tell him exactly what to do, and smack him in the nose until he stops doing anything else. Rick Peterson's 10 minutes have become an eternity because Zambrano isn't ever going to learn to trust his own stuff. OK, fine — since Paul Lo Duca trusts Zambrano's stuff, Plan B is that Victor learns to trust Paul Lo Duca.

Well, at least for a night it worked — it was no coincidence that when SNY caught up with Lo Duca after all was said and done, the first thing out of the catcher's mouth was praise for Zambrano.

Can one small step for Zam be a giant leap for Metkind? Here's hoping. And in the meantime? The rose goes in the front, big guy.

If April has produced the template for the rest of the season — fly extraordinarily high, descend without necessarily crashing and then up, up and away in our beautiful balloon — I'll take it.

No broom for sweeping, but no Electrolux for sucking either. The difference between the Mets and the Braves on Sunday came down to one attachment: Atlanta is attached to Jeff Francoeur and we're not. He brought his rake to the park and that was that. Some days you have to decompress like a leaf blower and move on.

So it's only a 2-1 visit to the heretofore Horrible House and only a 6-4 road trip that included two stops three time zones away and only a 16-8 record and only a 6-game lead over everybody.

If only always felt like this, I think we'd all want to drink alone come October. Oops, did I mention the O-Month? Too soon? Of course it is. Let's not end the suspense even if the only two teams to enjoy greater April leads were the '77 Dodgers and '01 Mariners and they both extended their seasons beyond Game 162. Never mind that they didn't win ultimate prizes or that the previous Mets team to secure 16 April victories was the 2002 edition. That bunch won 59 more from May through September, so let's not get carried away.

Instead of the big picture, a few smaller snapshots:

• I sure hope Cliff Floyd starts hitting. He's shown signs. He's lined a ton of hard fouls and atom balls. He's had a handful of bouncers and bloopers fall in, the kind that are supposed to change your luck. Yet he's driving from Georgia to New York in the slow lane of the Eisenhower Interstate System. I'm watching Cliff lunge and flail and I think back to Bernard Gilkey in '97 and Howard Johnson in '92, two Met outfielders coming off huge seasons and not coming close to repeating them. HoJo got hurt and never recovered. Gilkey needed glasses or something. Cliff is doing more than either of them in their dark forest period. However many wins Glavine winds up with, he must insist that his Cooperstown plaque specifies one of them was made possible by the mitt and moxie of Cliff Floyd. His two catches on Saturday night — one off Pratt, one off Francoeur (a sneak preview of his Sunday matinee raking) — were the difference between “same old Turner Field curse” and “no more Turner Field curse”. It's a team game and Cliff is contributing to the team in almost every way he can. Here's hoping he can contribute in his most characteristic way. Though he's filling the Anderson Hernandez all-field/no-hit role with aplomb, I don't think that's what he wants to be doing.

• Carlos Beltran can run and hit. We persevered and practically thrived in his absence. Our world didn't end while he healed…a good advertisement for caution amid the long season.

• The heart of the order back intact may mean less pressure for David Wright, a young man who has been issued a ridiculous amount of it by well-meaning folk such as ourselves. Metstradamus offers the only kind of take he is capable of producing, an excellent one, on how our Wright-loving instincts and interests are best-served.

• The untouchables need to be embraced. Jose Valentin hasn't hit for spit, I grant you, but didja see the take-out check he laid on Marcus Giles to break up a DP? Applaud that. Jorge Julio, stray gopher notwithstanding, put in two more solid innings. Get behind that. Kaz Matsui saved the day throughout the trip. Put your hands together for that. Victor Zambrano hasn't done a damn thing well, but he's one-fifth of the rotation. Ya like your first-place Mets? Like all your first-place Mets. Not one of these fellas deserves to be booed Monday night. They return 2-1 from Atlanta, 6-4 from the road, 16-8 from April, 6 up from everybody. These are your returning baseball heroes. Greet them all as such. You're nuts if you don't.

Unsolicited Metsosphere Plug: Piazza, Cameron, Jacobs, et al are gone, but we have one Mike we can still count on, the Mike who writes Mike's Mets. This Mike, making Connecticut safe for Mets fans since 2005, is an incredibly solid read when it comes to keeping up on everything in our world. Make him a part of your Metsian rounds.

So now it's three times that the Mets have won the first two games of a series at Turner Field. Seeing as how we've switched off our vacuum cleaners, I do not believe it is too much to ask for a broom.

We're done sucking. We must start sweeping.

It isn't all for naught if we don't take three of three, but what's stopping us? We owe Kyle Davies for last week and we owe Steve Trachsel a little more than he's received from us in the past, if just to make up for the jerking around he's taken in the rotation. Not that I haven't supported it on occasion or abandoned him now and then, but when researching yesterday's post about the Mets' jarring lack of follow-through at Turner Field, I couldn't help but notice how many times S. Trachsel got S. Crewed, pitching just well enough to lose to a team that didn't know how not to win, certainly when it came to winning against us.

Let's put that behind us, much the way we've put behind us the notion that we can't escape tight ninth innings in that tired pile of bricks, just like we're putting behind us a road trip that would have rendered us inoperative in the past, almost any past. We've played nine games on this journey, three in San Francisco where little usually goes right and two in Atlanta where everything always goes wrong. In the face of travel and history and time zone tomfoolery, we're 6-3 with one to go. The key phrase is one to go. Need that be explained?

The Mets are seven games up on everybody. The Mets haven't ever been seven games up and given them all back. In 1972 — the achy-breaky year when a Carlos Beltran wouldn't have returned as he did Saturday night — our high-water mark was 6-1/2 ahead before injuries and the Pirates drowned us. In none of the other seasons when we played footsie with first without eventually winning did we build any kind of tremendously substantial lead. Say this for the Mets: They haven't captured many divisional flags, but they haven't blown many either.

Can't control what the Phillies, Nats and Fish do today (yes, I'm still tracking the Marlins; you never know until you know), but we've got the very next game the Braves play in our hands. It wouldn't kill us to return home with a six-game margin over them. It wouldn't kill us to make it eight, either.

We're nine over .500 for the first time since the end of 2000. We got to eight over in the 128th game of 2005 and then slipped our way to four under three weeks later before recovering to four over. There is no particular magic in being nine over after 23 dates as we are now. There is no irreparable harm in being eight over after 24. It wouldn't kill us to make it ten over, either.

What I'm saying is I really want a win today. It's strange territory, being in Atlanta wanting a win instead of needing a win. Good teams don't know the difference.

We've got a good team.

Ninth inning, nobody out, Chipper Jones on first after David Wright kicked away a tough ground ball.

Gary — perfectly understandably, and properly — was talking about how this was the kind of game that historically had gotten away from the Mets at Turner Field.

“Fuck that ghost bullshit,” I said. “It's a new year, and this is a fucking good team.”

A few moments later, Andruw Jones smacked the ball to Reyes, and I knew it was a double play, because of course Andruw Jones wasn't running hard. Two out, Jeff Francoeur up, high fastball, and we've taken the series, ensured a winning record for one of the year's toughest road trips, and moved out to a seven-game lead. Thank you very much. *

It's been an article of faith in recent years that “this team” — whatever “this team” means in a given season — isn't afraid of the Braves, that the horrors of Turner Field and the Jones Boys and the magical expanding Maddux/Glavine/Smoltz strike zone and the Tomahawk Chop live mostly in the minds of us fans, and not in the players' skulls. I always tried desperately to believe that and somehow convinced myself that I did, right up until the point where Brian Jordan annihilated us or Braden Looper blew the save twice, when I'd realize that I'd never thought anything of the sort and had just been waiting for the headsman to show up with his ax.

I've seen the Braves lie in the weeds until midsummer too many times to get giddy, NL East April records notwithstanding, and heard too much oddly dour/swaggering early-season talk from the respective clubhouses to doubt the Braves will be the thing under the bed until our division's sun finally rises and proves them a figment of our collective imaginations. But something feels different this year, and I think I know what it is. And it's corny as all get-out: Whatever this year's crop of Mets believes about the Braves/Mets rivalry or Turner Field is a lot less important than the fact that this team believes in itself.

Chipper comes off the DL, takes Pedro deep and puts them back in the game? That's OK, just keep dealing and keep the pressure on their pen. The closer gets given a big lead and somehow puts the tying run on base with an old Met hero at the plate in enemy colors? Hey, bear down, do your job, we'll get home safe. The third baseman boots a ground ball with the thinnest possible margin for error and the meat of their order coming up? Get another ground ball, we'll see what happens this time.

The walls are bleeding, there's an evil face in the fireplace and the batboy keeps twitching his finger and croaking WURDNA? Shine a flashlight that way, stick with me and fear no darkness.

* OK, right after the ghost comment I did turn to Emily and say, “If Andruw hits a walkoff I'm gonna have this TV off before he reaches first base,” but that's just sensible, like one-handing away a big Band-Aid that's covering six inches of leg hair. My point stands.

The Devil who Went Down To Georgia and wound up laying that golden fiddle on the ground at Johnny's feet made out better in his trips there than we have. But we're not the devils in this. We've been lambs to the slaughter, particularly upon arrival.

We go down to Georgia, we go down in Georgia. Not much of a tourism slogan, but true enough. Ultimate Mets Database confirms my hunch: Of the 26 first games we've played in Turner Field (first of one, two, three or four), we've lost 17 of them. That includes the sweetly bitter 1999 National League Championship Series because why wouldn't you count that?

After last night, we're 21-54 all told at the Dead. Subtract those first games and we're 12-37. So we're not particularly good when we show up (.346) but we're absolutely dreadful (.245) for the rest of our stay.

You may be thinking, as I am, “You mean we've won nine series-openers in Atlanta since that place opened? Wow!” But even that's not terribly impressive. We won our very first game there, part of a three-of-four taking in July '97 that had me at home and Joe Benigno on WFAN insisting that this guaranteed the Mets would be in the playoffs…that year. Didn't happen because it was a tease. The Braves are good at letting us have the occasional opener so we are lulled into believing god-knows-what about ourselves. In '97, it was “we can beat these guys.”

If you can stretch back far enough, you'll recall we were actually a pretty good match for Atlanta when we weren't a pretty good match for anybody. In the otherwise unremarkable Metsian years of 1994, 1995 and 1996, when the Braves were winning two pennants and a World Series, we were 18-17 against them. Then they come to Shea in June 1997 and lose two of three to us. Our first trip to Turner, with the bat slipping repeatedly from Todd Pratt's hands and Butch Huskey sparking and Alex Ochoa completing a dramatic comeback on Sunday Night Baseball, continued our mysterious mastery of our otherwise betters. That ESPN classic brought us to a 3-1/2 year cume of 23-19 against what had been the best and most consistent team in baseball during that period. It was only a matter of time.

But time for what we didn't know. Eliminate that first opener on July 10, 1997 and, because we don't what will follow it, last night's, and we're 7-17 in Turner openers. Seventeen painful losses, yet seven great wins, right?

Um, I don't know about that. The next three times we touched down in the land of the Delta blues (the airline, not the river), we really could have used a win and we didn't get one. Not in the quixotic September of '97, a Wild Card bid still dancing tantalizingly down the third base line (it was picked off when Bobby Jones' right hand was too sweaty or perhaps not sweaty enough to properly control the ball in the first inning on 9/17), not in the pre-All Star heat of '98 (or have you forgotten Glavine outclassing Brian Bohanon on 7/3?) and surely not in the taping of the ever-reviled Jay Payton PSA of 9/25/98 when Major League Baseball fed him those memorable lines, “Kids, always be sure that you're Out At Third.”

I thought it was a New World Coming on June 25, 1999 when the Oleruds overcame the Odalises. We won the lidlifter 10-2, pulling to within two games of first place. We left Atlanta four games out. The less said about the next three times we went down to Georgia (the beginning of the September slide; NLCS Game One; NLCS Game Six), the better for the moment.

We ended the '90s having opened in Atlanta's shiny new jewel box eight times. We went 2-6. The two wins set us up for several falls. What would the new century bring? No wins, no tease. We lost both openers (7/21, 9/18) in 2000 and counted our lucky stars — we can admit that now — that there was no further opportunity for “revenge” in the playoffs.

OK, that made us 2-8 in these situations. Since we've established we're 9-17 overall, you can do the math and figure that we're 7-9 opening series at Turner Field since 2001. Even if we put aside last night's as previously suggested, we're 6-9. Not great, but not quite as awful as we perceive, eh?

Perceive again. MLB decided intradivisional play needed to be increased. That gave us three regular-season series per annum in Atlanta. Instead of waiting around until June or July, we got one out of the box in 2001. And we won on Opening Night (4/3) when Robin Ventura hit two homers, a go-ahead blow off Rocker in the eighth and, after Franco and Wendell would give it back, the winner off Ligtenberg in the tenth. We were 1-0, they were 0-1. I skipped home from work where I refused to leave until it was over (it was a long game and a long skip) and came back the next day convinced that this was going to be 1986 reincarnated. It wasn't. We came back to Atlanta twice in 2001, losing painfully when it didn't seem to matter (6/28) and routinely when it couldn't have mattered more (9/28).

That brought us to 3-10 from 1997 to 2001 in the first games of Turner series. The next three years would be the golden age of those affairs. What? You don't remember 2002, 2003 and 2004 as any kind of golden age?

Exactly. The Braves let us have fun when it was of no use to us and no harm to them. It may not have appeared that way early in 2002 when we were making statements left and right, or so we thought. We slammed them good on April 5 by a 9-3 score, behind the power bat of Jeromy Burnitz and the power arm of Pedro Astacio. Yeah, this was gonna be the year.

It was gonna be the year, all right, but not the year of anything good. The Braves shook off our statement, went on to win the division by a zillion games and, in the way others store their socks, folded us and stuck us in a drawer the next two times (6/3, 9/10) we dropped by.

By 2003, even the hardest-core Mets fan had to admit the mostly imaginary Mets-Braves rivalry was on hiatus. They were still champing and we were in full collapse. No wonder, then, that it was the first year in the history of Turner Field that we won more series-openers there than we lost. Or have you forgotten the glorious rocket unleashed by Tsuyoshi Shinjo to nail Chipper at home for the final out on May 23? His throw and companion high-five from Timo Perez was surely the high point of Shinjo II, and it set the stage for…absolutely nothing. That we lost a heartbreaker on July 17 didn't impact our last-place destiny any more than when we barely held on come August 26. We were 66-95 in 2003 with or without Atlanta's help.

2004 was an expectation-free season. Still, we couldn't help but get our hopes up when Kaz Matsui began the year by hitting its very first pitch out of Turner Field. Yup, it was another exhilarating Opening Night in Dixie, April 6, the kind of night that proves nothing is proved on April 6. When the Mets returned to The City Too Busy To Lose on July 30, they were hanging on to some faint playoff hopes. They traded for Kris Benson and Victor Zambrano and proceeded to faint. The Mets would turn so lifeless by September that they'd fire Art Howe without actually dismissing him. His going-away present? His last road win on September 28. It was in Atlanta, the last series-opener he'd ever manage away from Shea (I'm assuming forever).

When the Howe Epoch was mercifully truncated, we were looking at the New Mets. It was new era, a new team, there was even a new blog to record all the good news in 2005. Yet for all the Omar, the Willie, the Beltran and the Faith and Fear, it was back to old tricks. The Mets lost their first first game in Atlanta on April 8. They lost their second first game in Atlanta on May 23. And they lost their third first game in Atlanta on September 5. The 2005 Mets, unlike their immediate predecessors, really could have used those games. They didn't get them.

Why do I bring up all this relentless unpleasantness? Is it because happiness doesn't let me sleep on Saturday mornings? Is it because, on the heels of my second television appearance in a month, I plan to audition for the role of Debbie Downer's brother Dennis? Is it because I'm nostalgic for disappointment?

No, that's not why.

It's because as giddy, giggly and goose-pimply as I wish to be with a six-game lead in very late April, I feel I've been here before. I've seen glimpses of this sort of thing. This is the year we have Atlanta on the ropes. This is the year it's gonna be different. This is the year the Mets don't succumb to any Turner Field curse, jinx, hex, disease, malady or whammy.

I sure hope so. I'd sure like to think so. History doesn't have to be precedent, but it sure has been. There is no logical reason to think nine years of dismal failure has to guarantee a full decade of this crap. We've heard that this guy and that guy weren't here when Bobby Jones couldn't grip the ball or Jay Payton didn't stop at second or Kenny Rogers wouldn't throw strikes, right up through “what does Billy Wagner care now that Braden Looper was blowing the same game twice last September?”

Billy may not care, but it kind of occurred to me last night.

I gotta see more before I gotta believe. I've seen happy hints in the past. In 1997 and 1999 and 2001 and 2002 and 2004, I witnessed nights like last night that were going to shift the plates and turn the tides and mute the chants and blunt the chops. The Mets were going to overtake the Braves one of these years, one of those years, one of any number of years.

It hasn't happened yet. Just because we're 15-7 and they're 9-13 doesn't mean it has. It should. It definitely should. Then again, we should have won two of three at home last week. I reluctantly accepted one of three because I didn't think a series win at Shea Stadium was crucial for the psyche of this team and the complexion of this race (and it's not as if I had a choice). A series win at Turner Field is. A series sweep at Turner Field is, too. Too much to ask? Let's get aspirational for once in our lives. In every Mets @ Atlanta series I've cited, the Mets have occasionally won the first game; nine times, to be exact, including last night. Do you know how many times they've won the second game of these series after winning the first game?

Twice.

TWICE! The Mets have won the first and second games of series at Turner Field twice since the building opened in 1997. They did it on their very first visit and they did it five years later, that odd Saturday when recently converted reliever John Smoltz gave up eight ninth-inning runs (and some journeyman named Aaron Small gave up a ninth). That was probably Super Tease One on the countdown. The Mets took the Braves on a Friday night, then a Saturday night and we were all atwitter. It was April 6. We were 3-2. They were 2-3. The next day they beat us.

And so it went.

I couldn't be sicker of the whole thing. I've tried to find dark humor in all of this, but I'm far from amused where the Mets, the Braves and Turner Field are concerned. I am seriously happy that the Mets beat the Braves 5-2 last night, but the happiness seriously gets put on hold at 7:05 tonight.

Last night was only the first game of the rest of our life. At Turner Field, we've never handled that second part well at all.

Phew. Or whew. Or new.

I'll definitely take new. There was too much old in the atmosphere, and I'm not talking about Ralph Kiner in the booth or Jimmy Carter in the stands or Julio Franco in a beautiful doff of the helmet. Them I like. Everything else I feared.

Whether it was the presence of Roger McDowell and Terry Pendleton in the same dugout or the creaky continuation of Brian Jordan as a Major League player or the unwarranted return of Lawrence Chipstein Jones or just about every late loss in that hot tub of horror engrained deep in my gray matter, I could barely function in the bottom of the ninth. It begged to be lost. It cried to be lost. It was bound to be lost.

Only the Braves in Turner Field could make a three-run deficit seem like a tie. Only the Atlantans could find a way to cancel insurance runs just by coming to bat. Only the 11-for-11 National League East champions could make Billy Wagner look like Braden Looper look like Armando Benitez look John Franco look like a cheap watch.

It was only a matter of time before this one got away. Renteria never hits Wagner, Cohen said. So he gets a hit. Chipstein, he of the two-run homer off Pedro (he never hits him either), strikes out, but there's the more dangerous Jones and Dangerous Jones made his elbow a part of it all; HBP, two on. Some nonentity strikes out but then Jeff Francoeur relives his rookie glory. Somehow Renteria doesn't score on the sophomore's hit. It's the bases loaded and it's Billy Wagner showing this uncomfortable habit of not being quite what we paid for and who is he facing?

Todd Pratt.

Forget Arizona and 1999. Don't forget it, of course, but I didn't think it was relevant. It's not like Todd Pratt could touch Wags last week, but then Gary had to go and remind us that Tank caught Billy for the past two years. I've always assumed catchers who face their old pitchers should be able to own them. Then I remembered that Todd Pratt, for his many, many impressive attributes, isn't really much of a hitter. Never was and he sure isn't now. And Billy Wagner, even a Billy Wagner who is more of a Mad Hatters Tea Cup Ride than a monorail, is never going to be mistaken for Matt Mantei.

Like that matters to the man wearing a Braves uniform in Turner Field against the Mets.

But it wasn't Looper and 2005. It wasn't Benitez and 2001. It wasn't Franco and 1998. It wasn't even Jolly Roger getting taken deep by Terrible Terry in 1987 when everything looked so good. It's when everything looks so good that we're in trouble. I'm back in Shea in my mind to the night the magical comeback was close but so gone 19 Septembers ago. And I'm back at Shea in 2001 when Brian Jordan was Andruw Jones (though Andruw Jones was pretty much Andruw Jones then, too) and he was squashing our spirited surge. I'm in whichever ballpark Franco is coughing up a thousand deaths by nicks and cuts and mixed metaphors. And mostly I'm in Turner Field watching Braden Looper turn to goo a year ago.

Except it isn't last year anymore. It really isn't. It isn't any of those years when Braves are giants and Mets are mutts and Turner Field swallows us alive. This isn't one of those years when we're gasping and grasping and trying to move up. We can't move up because we're already on top. All we can do is bring the hammer down.

And we do. Billy Wagner strikes out Todd Pratt on three pitches.

Game over, you tomahawk-chopping dilettantes. Pedro beats Smoltz again. President Carter gets dragged under by a changing tide again. (Sorry, sir, we have to part ways when it comes to that cap you were wearing. But didja catch the size of that footlong Rosalynn was working on? It oughta be suspended for ingesting performance-enhancing substances, not Iriki). David Wright was David Wright for the first time in a little while and Kaz Matsui was Edgardo Alfonzo for the first time in his life and Paul Lo Duca was taking no guff and as much as we need Carlos Beltran back, I sure like what Endy Chavez is doing. Sanchez was perfect and Reyes was clutch and Carlos Delgado made the most productive out of the year.

But I still couldn't breathe fluidly until the bottom of the ninth was history. This is not an outfit against whom you hatch a single chicken ahead of time. This is the bunch that has made an ASS out of U and ME more times than I am able to count. This was the Braves in Turner Field.

Was.

Mets win 5-2, lead the East by six. It doesn't mean a whole lot when there's another game Saturday night, but it means everything right now.

The latest issue of Baseball America features the Opening Day rosters for every club (major and minor-league) that began play in April, making it a perfect resource for tracking down those who have strayed from the Met fold.

I'm not talking so much about the big leagues: We've accepted that Todd Pratt is a Brave, noticed that Danny Graves is an Indian, shook our heads to imagine Ty Wigginton as a Devil Ray and grimaced (mildly) to find Kelly Stinnett a Yankee. (Though I'd missed that Roberto Petagine is a Mariner and think there's something ridiculous about Jason Phillips as a Blue Jay.) What really interests me is running a finger down the agate type and finding familiar names on AAA rosters, or even AA squads — old vets still holding on, fourth outfielders who came in fifth, drinkers of cups of coffee hoping for a refill, and so on. Ex-Mets all, still playing ball, still waiting for one more chance. (Which they may not get: Witness the quietly tragic career of Blaine Beatty.)

Let's call the roll, with a little help from Ultimate Mets Database.

Esix Snead, prover of the truism that you can't steal first base and owner of one unexpected, excellent home run, now toils for the Ottawa Lynx, earning a Baltimore Orioles paycheck.

Matt Ginter, whose departure paved the way for the arrival of Kaz Ishii, is now a Pawtucket Red Sock.

Hideo Nomo yet lives, toiling for the Charlotte Knights in the White Sox' organization. And one of his teammates is Jorge Velandia.

Brian Buchanan, one of the more-pointless Met pickups of recent years, is still around, playing for the Louisville Bats and dreaming of being a Cincinnati Red. (Which is somehow a nice dream so far this year.)

Brace yourself for this one: Someone is paying Felix Heredia. Fortunately, it's the Cleveland Indians, who assigned him to the Buffalo Bisons.

Jaime Cerda, who broke in as an unlikely Yankee slayer, is now getting used to breaking stuff that doesn't break as a Colorado Springs Sky Sock. Send him $5 and maybe he'll drill teammate J.D. Closser during BP.

This one is not a typo: Bobby M. Jones is in Double-A, pitching for the Erie Seawolves. That's the Tigers' system. And that's incredible.

Sure, the Florida Marlins have a bunch of our young players. But they also have some not-so-young ex-Mets: Momentary third-string catcher Tom Wilson, anonymous outfielder Mark Little and Mike Kinkade, he of the not-proud-to-a-fault home-run sprints, are all at AAA. (For some reason the Marlins' AAA team is now the Albuquerque Isotopes. That's convenient.)

Joe McEwing's grit and guts and other intangibles are now on display in east Texas: Super Joe is making his latest stopover on the way to a long career as a beloved coach and manager with the Round Rock Express, the Astros' AAA squad.

The Mets once took a gamble on speedy Jeff Duncan. Now it's the Dodgers' turn: He's a Las Vegas Sun. Craig Brazell, meanwhile, is back in AA. Ouch. I doubt that being told that the Jacksonville Suns have a link to Met history would be much comfort.

Jason Tyner is now a Rochester Red Wing. The Red Wings are now the Twins' AAA team, which is ludicrous. Shouldn't they be renamed the Triplets or something?

You'd think the Yankees had a crush on us: The Columbus Clippers' roster includes pot-averse Mark Corey, human action figure Scott Erickson and first-Cyclone-in-the-Show Danny Garcia.

Matt Watson, who was only a Cyclone because we were cheating and only a Met because we were desperate, is a Sacramento River Cat (that's the Athletics' AAA team), alongside Moneyball star Jeremy Brown.

Watch out, Clippers! Here come the Indianapolis Indians, whose roster of proto-Pirates includes C.J. Nitkowski, Scott Strickland and Raul Gonzalez — yeah, that Raul Gonzalez. And clinging to baseball life with the AA Altoona Curve is Met-for-a-minute Jason Roach.

Stuck behind some fella named Pujols on the Cardinals' depth chart is Memphis Redbird Brian Daubach. He's now a teammate of Prentice Redman, whose extended family hates us twice as much as they used to.

Whatever happened to Ricky Gutierrez? He's a Portland Beaver, which means he's already tired of opposing fans' funny comments. One of his teammates in Portland is the plucky, ultimately luckless Eric Valent.

Sticking with the Northwest, Kevin Appier apparently isn't done: He's listed as a member of the 2006 Tacoma Rainiers. Wonder if their scoreboard displays an INSANE APE graphic when he strikes somebody out.

We don't have James Baldwin to kick around anymore, but International League hitters do: He's a member of the Syracuse Skychiefs, Toronto's AAA team.

Alberto Castillo remains in the game, donning the tools of ignorance for the New Orleans Zephyrs, the Nationals' AAA club. I hope he still daydreams about beating the Phillies late one 80-degree afternoon in March, because we were there and it was nice. Laissez les bons temps roulez, Bambi!

Oh, and Jose Valentin is now toiling for the Single-A Lake Elsinore…oh, wait. No, he's right where we left him. Rats.