Well, this one was over the moment the $3 million arm and 10-cent psyche of Victor Zambrano shuffled to the mound (though Pedro Feliciano gets the Ashburn award for valiant service in a hopeless cause), leaving me with less-weighty matters to ponder.

Like this: What the fuck is up with this new song?

If you haven't heard it, and you're not operating heavy machinery and don't have a pacemaker, the New York Observer has the bads. Never before has 74 seconds seemed to last quite so long, has it? You didn't think anything could make you feel more kindly disposed toward “Chocolate Strawberry,” did you?

Once you're recovered, read Newsday for the tale of how this monstrosity was foisted on an unsuspecting world. Personally, my danger sense would have been tingling the moment I heard it was co-written by the president of a Smithtown ad agency. (Mindful of the old saw that there's no such thing as bad publicity, I won't be naming him.) The other co-writer (I won't name him either) once upon a time was part of a group called the New York Citi Peech Boys, who had a regional proto-hit in 1981. Which, perhaps coincidentally, is exactly what “Our Team. Our Time” sounds like — an early-to-mid-1980s rap track, perhaps one from a TV movie or performed at a high-school talent show.

Except it's bending a definition to the breaking point to even call this rap — the rhymes don't start until about the halfway point, and even then they're hide-your-eyes lame: “David Wright, Jose Reyes making sure you're not safe / Just in case Carlos Delgado he's at first base”. As for the mad skillz of the rapper (described as a “freelance artist” — uh-oh), it's possible he's one of those guys in the Quick Lube ad SNY keeps showing. And if I may dip a toe into the waters of lyrical criticism, where are the rest of the starters? No love for Lo Duca, Hernandez or Nady? Was it impossible to top the above couplet?

Anderson Hernandez he's hittin' .183

But we be doublin' that with X-av-ier NAY-DEE!

I mean, how hard was that?

Dave Howard's take? “It was a pretty cool song.” Um, no, Dave — it isn't. (Does Dave have a kid? One between 10 and 40 could have set him straight on this one.) That statement's not quite farcical enough to go up in the Met Utterance Hall of Shame with Art Howe being a man who could light up a room and Victor Zambrano being fixable in 10 minutes, but it's close.

OK, I've made a federal case over a song no one is claiming will replace “Meet the Mets,” and whose roll call of current players ensures it'll have a short shelf life. Do I really care that my ears will be assaulted by a staggeringly crappy first draft of a song at Shea? No, not particularly. It's just that it's upsetting having to endure another wheedling, needy, desperate Met marketing effort that makes me want to put a bag over my head.

Heresy alert: This sense of desperation goes all the way back to “Meet the Mets.” Look, I love “Meet the Mets” — but do I love it for its ricky-ticky instrumentation and hammy Off-Off-Broadway vocals, or because I've heard it 58,000 times when I'm about to walk into Shea or see my team play a baseball game? I assure you it's the latter. Listen to the lyrics: The song's basically tin-cup begging for fans to show up, particularly in the rarely heard second verse:

Oh the fans are true to the orange and blue,

And let em know you're rooting in the stands!

Inspiring stuff if you were introducing the Wappingers Falls Palookas, but doesn't it strike you as slightly small-town accompaniment (“the butcher and the baker”) for the heirs of the Dodgers and Giants in what was still the baseball capital of the world, and has never ceased being its media capital? The same naked desperation can be heard in the horrid modernization of the song, where some worried marketer touches up the mild sexism of “bring your kiddies, bring your wife” and replaces “East Side, West Side” with a frantically inclusive laundry list that stuffs in two more boroughs, Long Island and an entire other state.

But ultimately, “Our Team. Our Time” reminds me of one of my favorite pathetic Met-marketing stories. It was passed along by a friend who heard it from a friend etc., but just see if you don't think it's true:

As 2003 was mercifully coming to an end, the Mets put together a video montage of highlights featuring Vance Wilson and Jason Phillips, to the tune of “Hold On”. (By Wilson Phillips, yagetit?) I actually thought it was pretty clever: The gimmick snuck up on you and made you laugh, the lyrics fit, and it was a rare, welcome case of a baseball team admitting to the fans that no, that was not the Big Red Machine down there on the field.

Nice work — except that the song was by Wilson Phillips.

The story goes that very, very shortly after the montage was unveiled, into A/V Central stomps Jason Phillips. He seems somewhat agitated: “WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT FUCKING GAY SHIT? THAT IS THE GAYEST FUCKING SHIT I'VE EVER SEEN! WHO THE FUCK CAME UP WITH THAT FUCKING GAY SHIT? DON'T EVER FUCKING PLAY THAT FUCKING GAY SHIT AGAIN!”

(Or something to that effect.)

When Phillips stops to hyperventilate, a crestfallen Mets A/V guy tries to manage the situation: “Jason — can we fix it?”

The answer, alas, is no. When you start with a Wilson Phillips song that's the gayest fucking shit not really very cool, things are not fixable. And when you start with played-out Reagan administration beats and a rap a bright sixth-grader would be embarrassed by, you wind up in the same place.

Don't get me wrong: I'll gladly take .769 ball and tragically uncool marketing over .500 ball and a new theme song written exclusively for us by Kanye West. But for now, for once, could the marketers please stop trying so friggin' hard? Cliff Floyd and Pedro Martinez and Carlos Delgado are cooler than any marketing campaign you could possibly try to cram them into. And 10-3, that's pretty cool too. It's simple: Play “Apache,” rifle doubles up the gap, follow good starting pitching with stingy relief, and the rest will come.

For about 30, 40, maybe 50 minutes after last night's game, I swear to you I was as baseball happy as I've been in 20 years. And baseball happy, given my short slate of priorities, pretty much means happy.

No kidding, though. When the enormity of our five-game lead over frigging Atlanta sunk in, I became almost overcome with joy. It was nothing like I remembered since 1986.

This isn't me falling into the hated trap known as the memory hole. I leave that to the know-nothing Kens and Barbies who deliver highlights on TV, blatherers who waste radio airspace and general assignment reporters who write those worthless metro section “baseball fever has gripped the city!” stories. We know different here. We're the institutional memory of this franchise. We know that the convenient storyline, “It's been a sad state of affairs for Mets fans since 1986,” is specious. We know there have been winning seasons and playoff seasons and even a pennant season, that there have been victories that have warmed the cockles and cockles that have warmed to victories.

We know that. You know that. I know that. But here's what else I know:

The last time I felt the way I did last night had to be 20 years ago. This takes into account the extended stretches of satisfaction, excitement and dreaminess that have made me the fan I am today, the ones from 1988 and 1990 and 1997 and 1999 and 2000 plus a few others from less successful campaigns. Those were good. A few were breathtaking. But they weren't this.

The way I felt last night in the wake of beating the Braves was something else altogether. This was first place as a matter of course. This was taking it to a team that had taken it to us. This was having a masterful power-hitting first baseman slugging a huge home run for us, not against us. This was a rightfielder acquired from some distant precinct flourishing, not shrinking. This was a catcher who runs the game and a middleman who stops the bleeding and a closer who ends opponents' evenings and 200-game-winner Pedro Martinez being 200-game-winner Pedro Martinez after all these years.

These are the Mets of 2006. They are ours. OURS! And first place is OURS! Theirs by achievement, but ours by rightful inheritance. We're the caretakers of the estate. We watched after it as the Howes and the Cedeños and the Wiggintons and the James Baldwins overran it and infested it with futility. We've watched the Braves ransack it so many times that we've lost count. Finally we have some real hard-ass types to scare them off with pitchforks.

We're ten and motherfucking two. We're five games ahead of the whole pack of National League Eastern Division jackals. We're No. 1! We're No. 1!

Just like the '51 Dodgers, the '64 Phillies, the '69 Cubs, the '78 Red Sox, the '95 Angels…you get my point. This is why the euphoria only lasted 30, 40, 50 minutes, because I have no concrete evidence that it will continue tonight or next week. Watching Floyd leave with a pulled rib cage muscle and seeing no sign of Beltran actually put me in mind of another great first-place team, the 1972 Mets. Remember them winning anything? They got off to a 25-7 start, had a six-game lead in May and then everybody got hurt. They finished 83-73 and way back in third place.

I don't want to be the 1972 Mets. I don't want to be the 1969 Cubs. The weird part is I don't want to be the 1999 Mets, and if you know me at all, you know that I consider the 1999 Mets representative of all that was worth living for. I was never so wrapped up in a baseball season as I was in 1999. I never cared so much about a Mets team as I did in 1999. No club — no thing — ever lifted me higher or threw me to the ground harder with impunity than the 1999 Mets. That was a year when fate itself hung on every single pitch.

I don't want that out of 2006. I'm too far gone after 10-2. To wind up in a dogfight with the Braves for the division or somebody else for the Wild Card would be to descend from the mountaintop. I like it too much up here to ever leave.

I fear I've been spoiled. 1999 was the best year of my baseball life and I now consider it beneath me, beneath us. It was fine for then, but I've tasted a record-setting five-game lead after 12 games and I don't want to go back. I want a six-game lead after tonight. I can't bring myself to throw out numbers beyond that, but I want great, big stuff out of this season. We can be scrappy as all get out in getting to it, but I want 1986-scrappy, not nearly blowing a playoff spot in the last two weeks of September-scrappy.

So now I've set myself up for disappointment. Anything less than first place will be crushing. Anything that isn't built to an impenetrable lead and soon will have me on more pins and needles than I need. Anything that follows the path of the recent St. Louis Cardinals — stupendous regular season, postseason failure — makes the whole thing an awful, unfair tease. And if we do scale the highest of heights and plant a few flags? If we do win everything there is to win in 2006 and are celebrated justly for it? Then I just know something will go wrong in 2007 and it will be 1987 all over again and I'll be sad.

OK, this is sick, as is this: guilt. Guilt?! Guilt from what? I'm watching last night as Pedro is wriggling out of jams and Andruw Jones just misses with one into the wind and there's no Chipper in sight and somehow I'm thinking, “Well, the Braves didn't get the breaks. The Braves are undermanned. This isn't a true test of the Braves.”

Just lock me up now before I do harm to someone with that kind of thinking. The Braves are at a disadvantage? The Braves have injuries? Like we weren't physically to say nothing of mentally challenged when playing them series after series, year after year? They came out on the short end of a bad bounce or two? All balls have done in a thousand Mets-Braves games is bounce their way. I hate the Braves, so I know I can't possibly feel sorry for the second-least sympathetic organization in baseball.

What is it then? Is it that the Mets don't deserve happiness? That some other baseball team deserves it more? The Red Sox got theirs. The White Sox got theirs. You don't have to wait 80-90 years to get yours. Cripes, it's been 20 years! Isn't that enough?

As I'm peeling back the layers on this onion, I'm finding my problem is a mash-up of expectation, perception and defensiveness. Though I came of age when the Mets were good, I never expect something like a 10-2, 5 GA start out of them at any time since. But I have always perceived them to be capable, and I'm extremely defensive when somebody — friend or foe — tries to paint us as some kind of perpetual, congenital loser. When I hear other Mets fans say things like, “Whaddaya expect? We're the Mets,” I bristle hard. I expect better than that. I perceive us as not long-suffering (even though I have, in fact, suffered for long periods of time because of the Mets). I guess I consider the Devil Rays the exemplar of übercrappiness and we generally haven't been them. It's almost as if it's been good enough for me not to be Tampa Bay.

But the rest of the world doesn't see it that way and, as much as I hate to admit it, I do care what the rest of the world thinks. When we finish with records like last year's 83-79, I want to sprint into the streets and do a jig that screams, “We had a winning record!” But nobody cares. Nobody cared when we finished 88-74 in 1997. It set my soul on fire, but by 1998, the memory hole beckoned. “Mike Piazza turned the Mets into winners.” The dickens he did! (Sorry, Mike; we loved having you, but we didn't all-out suck when you got here.) I could have lived with improving incrementally, auditioning Aaron Heilman as closer, enduring the fits and starts of Mike Jacobs at first, but then they go and drop Billy Wagner and Carlos Delgado into our laps and I'm ebullient…until I wonder if that's somehow unfair because we spent money that a team like the Devil Rays doesn't have.

And my head goes round and round like this.

I worry that we won't win the next game. I worry that we'll win too many games. I worry that we won't win enough World Series. I worry that we've done something wrong to be doing everything so right. I worry about displaying an uncharacteristic sense of entitlement and then I worry that I don't think I deserve better and worry that that reveals something as self-destructive as excessive haughtiness would. I worry that my worrying will screw up a 10-2 start with 150 games to go.

Then I get down to worrying about the normal things a normal fan worries about, like injuries and age on the pitching staff and a thin bench and bullpen depth and whether hot starts by Lo Duca and Nady and Sanchez are going to last because if everything doesn't continue to be the festival of Our Lady of Perpetual Victory that it's been for all of two weeks, I just don't know what I'm going to do with myself.

Which is why I'm better off confining my thoughts to those 30, 40, 50 minutes after a big win when everything is perfect.

Until they start weighting the games played in September heavier than they do the games played in April, tonight begins a very big series against the Braves. Don't let anyone tell you different.

It's not too early to take this three-game set very seriously. It's the Mets and the Braves and no Mets fan needs an explanation of all that can, should or might entail.

The Braves have been legitimately on my mind from the first weekend of the season when I noticed them losing in San Francisco. (Usually they're in my head a lot sooner, whether or not there was any point to them being there.) We were winning and it was hard to not want every possible positive milestone to fall our way. We've already got the best record we've ever had after eleven games. We've already won our first four series, a franchise first. We've already established that we lead every baseball team in the world.

Including the Braves by four games. And that's what I really wanted.

It's not too early to do what I was doing around 4 o'clock yesterday: flipping frantically between the Mets in the bottom of the eighth and the Braves in the bottom of the ninth.

Pitch to Delgado…

Home Depot commercial…

Pitch to Delgado…

Piggly Wiggly commercial…

Pitch to Delgado…

Goody's Headache Powder commercial…

Pitch to Delgado…

Droopy fannypackers filing out of Turner Field and vocal confirmation that — yes! — they were leaving after a Braves' loss…

Delgado circling the bases to massive cheers.

First reaction:

Delgado hit a home run and I missed his swing?

Damn!

Quickly revised take on the situation:

The runs count and the Mets are going to replenish their margin over Atlanta and they'll probably show a replay or ten.

ALL RIGHT!

I discovered the Braves lost and returned to find the Mets had just gained three valuable insurance runs during the seconds that I was away. This was the baseball equivalent of Mia Wallace rhetorically asking Vincent Vega at Jackrabbit Slim's, “Don't you love it when you go to the bathroom and you come back to find your food waiting for you?”

No fiction: The last time we held a four-game lead over Atlanta heading into a series with Atlanta was…actually, it's never happened. It has literally never happened. The Mets and Braves weren't in the same standings from 1969 through 1993. We weren't better than them between '66 (when they flew south from Milwaukee) and '68, and I know for certain we haven't edged them for more than a moment since '94. Hell, even when we swept them in the first NLCS, it was only by three games.

This is so unprecedented that I don't know if you call this kind of Mets margin a Big Mac, Le Big Mac or a Royale with Cheese. But I do know there is a whopper of an opportunity at hand.

I heard yesterday that a win tonight would give us the fastest five-game lead in baseball history. The '81 Athletics of Shooty Babitt — I've always loved that name — sprinted five up on the White Sox after 13 games. They were in first place when the strike came, good enough to stamp their ticket into that year's juryrigged playoffs. But they were only 1-1/2 ahead on June 11, meaning that if there hadn't been a strike in 1981, who knows what would have become of them?

Those A's are immaterial to us except to say that breaking their fastest-five-game-lead mark tonight won't mean a whole lot in the long term.

But it would be awfully nice.

As the constant reader knows, we don't endorse any looking ahead around here. That's just asking for problems. But I don't think it will screw with the cosmic batting order to spell out the four things that could happen between now and late Wednesday afternoon.

We could win all three and be seven games ahead of the Braves.

We could win two of three and be five games ahead of the Braves.

We could win one of three and be three games ahead of the Braves.

We could win none of three and be one game ahead of the Braves.

You can figure out how to rank these four scenarios in terms of idealness to the home team (no choice has been as clear-cut since “The Lady or the Tiger”), but suffice it to say that none of them irretrievably buries us and none of them permanently elevates us. These games are important because they are the games we play this week and, of course, because they are games we play against the team that has repeatedly won the title we seek. That team has proven itself quite capable of defending that title over and over and over. I've no reason to believe they have lost that capability.

Neither the world nor the season ends between now and late Wednesday afternoon no matter what happens. Both entities do, however, have a chance to become exponentially nicer places in which to watch Mets baseball.

That's big, even in April.

As Brian Bannister continued to battle the Brewers and himself today, en route to a rather hard-fought, exhausting win, I was struck by an odd, unwelcome thought: Why am I not giving him the Zambrano treatment?

This was B.B.'s line today: 5 IP, 6 H, 1 ER, 5 BB, 4 K, 112 pitches, 63 for strikes.

This was V.Z. last week: 5 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 4 BB, 3 K, 87 pitches, 47 for strikes.

And yet when Bannister got in jam after self-created jam, I was urging him to bear down, to focus, that he had eight guys behind him, all that usual rah-rah shouted-at-the-TV stuff. When Victor's being Victor, the best I can muster is generally an exasperated, “Come on, Victor,” delivered in the tone usually reserved for dogs that you've decided just aren't ever going to be housebroken.

But is that fair?

Victor, of course, was traded for Scott Kazmir, who Met fans will always assume would have been the next Franchise if left to blossom in Queens. Does that play a role? Or is it something worse? For a time this afternoon, I wrestled with this thought: Is Bannister, with his big-league pedigree and cerebral interviews, getting a break from me that I won't give Zambrano — a Venezuelan whose native language isn't my own? Or is that just the years of liberal-arts brainwashing finally leaving some trace in my psyche?

I decided that I was innocent, that there really are a host of reasons to grade Bannister on a curve. First and most obviously, his stats reflect the grand total of three starts, while Zambrano is approaching his 100th career start. Bannister seems to have a plan out there, taking a page from Al Leiter in preferring to walk a guy and work on the next hitter than risk a ball up the gap. (Granted, the execution of that particular plan can be excruciating to watch, but it is a plan.) I don't get the impression that Zambrano ever has a plan beyond surviving the next pitch. Bannister has serviceable stuff around a good curve, but his biggest asset is having the guts of a burglar. Zambrano's stuff is much, much better: He throws harder and can contrast his fastball with a good change and that amazing slider. But he doesn't seem to have any idea how good he is — whenever he gets in trouble, he nibbles like an ancient junkballer, his mechanics go to hell, he leaves his defense flat-footed, and then you have to endure constant pats on the rump and visits from the pitching coach. After which he still exits early and tires out the bullpen.

I don't have any doubt Zambrano cares: Heck, as a new Met he cried in the clubhouse in Colorado after it became clear he was hurt and the Kazmir trade would look like a short-term disaster. But his body language isn't exactly heartening to see, while Bannister's keeps you believing. When Bannister's facing the bases loaded (even if it's his fault) the expression on his face is that of a bright young student facing a difficult but interesting math problem. Zambrano, on the other hand, looks like he has the wolf by the ears and doesn't know what the hell to do next. Is that the kind of semi-phrenology old scouts who don't believe in numbers trade in? Maybe. But it's sure hard to get past.

OK. I absolve myself of bias — beyond the bias of having had my hand pressed onto the hot Victor stove too many times. Bannister's young and seems determined to improve; Zambrano's not so young and can't seem to get out of his own way. Though the role of youth in all this should serve as a warning for Bannister: A younger Victor would have been cheered, too.

In my spectacularly unambitious existence, one of the recurring mini-plans I harbor is to get up and hustle off to a day game to which I don't hold a ticket. Real spur of the moment stuff. I don't know that I've ever done it, but it always sounds adventuresome. Ultimately, as I sit on the couch and 1:10 comes and goes and the Mets' chances come and go, I think, “ah, just as well I stayed home.”

On the short end of an 8-2 thump, if viewed via Snigh, I imagine I would have reached exactly that conclusion. But I did hold a ticket and I did go and despite the end of the winning streak (to say nothing of my lifelong whammy over the Brewers, which was on borrowed time considering “my” first loss to them had already been miraculously deferred last August), it was just as well that I went.

Don't like to lose. Don't like to Log a loss, even an inevitable, had to happen sometime loss. But I like going to Shea. That's right — to Shea, not generically “to a ballgame”. This was the first chance I had to experience Dead Park Walking for real since it was slapped with its eviction notice more than a week ago. Put aside the inevitable can't-win-'em-all final and it was typical Shea the way I'll likely remember it when it's gone and I myself don't have that long left.

• It was full: Not endless bathroom line full but pretty close. How do they keep setting attendance records? First place and clear skies make for an attraction like no other. There were even multiple scalpers working the LIRR exit. Amazin'.

• It was loud: M-V-P! Let's Go Mets! Hoo-Lee-OH! (First name, not last.)

• It was vibrant: Only Jorge Julio truly killed the mood, and then only until the next half-inning. I'm officially against booing, but it was rather amusing to watch the hapless reliever get it until Beltran made a great third-out catch. Beltran got cheered until the crowd, as one, realized Julio was slinking off the mound without abuse, then they remembered to turn on him again. Until PavlovVision replayed the catch. In a believey mood, I want to believe this guy can be resuscitated, but he can't even seem to tuck in shirt successfully.

• It was colorful: Blue fences, green grass, orange seats…nowhere but Shea. I'll miss the orange seats even though I rarely sit in them. Is anybody ever going to install orange seats in anything that isn't ironic again?

• It was mismanaged: The only thing more useless than a Shea usher is no Shea usher at all. I had the pleasure of hundreds of fans staring at their tickets right between me and the batter because there was nobody to steer them to their seats. I could have helped them, but then where would be my moral indignation?

• It was head-scratchingly stupid: The carnival that occasionally alights on the premises when the Mets are away was open and accepting suckers beyond the left field fence. Why were carnies allowed to pound stakes in the parking lot and operate their cheap thrill rides when there was a sellout throng presumably circling the Van Wyck for a spot?

• It was baffling in its simplicity: In yet another between-innings take on Match Game, a fan was asked to complete the phrase “third blank”. She said “third base,” but if she had found such distractions as these inane questions “third-rate,” would have she still won the prize?

• It was big-hearted: You can't honor Jackie Robinson or Rachel Robinson or Jackie's Negro League predecessors enough, and they always do this with class and dignity. The next joint may look like Ebbets Field, but the ultimate Dodger's memory has been preserved and kept alive for all time at Shea.

• It was too loud: Confidential to Vito Vitiello — please turn down the bass for the next angelic choir that serenades Mrs. Robinson. And us.

• It was situation normal, all fouled up: As the Jackie tribute got underway, Cliff, David and Carlos B. were in right, stretching and tossing and preparing as they normally would have. Once they realized what was going on, they stopped what they were doing and paid respectful attention to the big screen. When it came time for the players to line up for a presentation of some sort, the three of them quietly moved to the right field foul line so as not to disturb the goings-on. I thought that was touching and uncommonly self-aware, a very sweet tableau. But into the void rushed an extremely familiar club executive frantically waving them over to the rest of their teammates. He was just doing his job, I suppose, but from the mezzanine, it seemed overly officious. Here were three Mets (a rainbow coalition, for what it's worth) paying homage to a true legend in what appeared a sincere, adult manner, and here were the protocol cops going nuts. It could have happened on any field, but it seemed business as usual for Shea — rearranging deck chairs while the Titanic's singers nearly blew out my ears, thanks to the bass being turned up to 11.

• It was loyal to a fault: Spotted on the backs of fans who had to shell out and special order them: PHILLIPS 23 and JACOBS 27. Talk about jumping the gun, to say nothing of that old chestnut, the tri-toned PULSIPHER 21. The PIAZZA 31s haven't been abandoned, but the modern look held sway. There was swarm of REYES 7, BELTRAN 15, FLOYD 30 and MARTINEZ 45 and a budding smattering of LO DUCA 16, WAGNER 13 and DELGADO 21. Needless to point out, every middle-aged man in New York is apparently dying to be confused with WRIGHT 5. In one advance ticket window queue after the game, there were three WRIGHT 5s lined up in a row as if for induction into the David Corps. I oughta know, I was the third of three.

• It was geeky to a fault: As I stood in said line, I saw emerge from the METS OFFICES feet away, over a 20-minute span, Mrs. Robinson (elegant as all get out), Howie Rose (rushing off to a hockey game or I would have tackled him, praised him to the high heavens for 20 years of outstanding service then harped on him for some comment he made about the racing stripe unis in 1995, but he was really double-timing it to his car, so I let him go) and Ron Darling (displaying smart suit, briefcase, swagger and bulk, has aged without getting older; looked like he was guesting as an ex-ballplayer turned prosecutor on L.A. Law). After I exchanged last week's rainchecks for a date deep into the future, I hoped beyond hope that I would see one more celebrity. Sure enough, as I turned to leave, and whose path crossed mine but that of…GARY COHEN! Yes, HIM! Hero to thirty/fortysomething bloggers from Baldwin to Brooklyn! Even more so than David Wright! Couldn't tell you about his X-ray vision because he cleverly hid it behind very dark shades. But a scintillating conversation ensued in which I said “HI GARY!” and he said “Hi!” I'm including the exclamation point because he didn't seem to mind that I said hello. A group of three women then told him, “YOU'RE WONDERFUL!” And he told them, “Thank you!”

• It was, if not heaven, close enough.

• It was why we buy calendars and felt-tip markers to count down the days to baseball season. We wait for pitchers & catchers, then the first exhibition game and then Opening Day and, if not's one and the same, the Home Opener. Why do we forget to look forward to the rest?

• It was all vaguely incomprehensible unless you've been to Shea more than 300 times, but even if you haven't, you couldn't have found a better place to sit in shirtsleeves and yell and figure out what you needed to figure out.

• It was home.

What bugs me about the condemnation process and death dance inficted upon Shea is the lazy tack the Bill Madden-Hacky Hackerson types have taken: “It's a dump.” It's not a dump. I will not even concede the popular, more sympathetic, “But it's our dump.” It's clearly not the optimal baseball experience as we (and jaded grumps whose professional credibility depends on how much they themselves can dump on everything) have come to understand it, but on a Saturday afternoon like this particular Saturday afternoon, it's fine. It's more than fine. It contains a baseball game hosted by a first-place team that you and 55,000ish persons are rooting for (give or take a reliever) and it's 78 degrees in the middle of April and it's sunny and, geez, whaddaya want out of life?

Days like yesterday aren't days for the circular debate of how much better a new park can be and how much better, say, PNC Park is. I know how much better PNC Park is than Shea Stadium. I'm the Long Island branch of the PNC Park Fan Club. I'd kidnap PNC Park if I could bring the bridges and the river behind it with me just so I could have somewhere to sit and meditate during commercial breaks. But when our team is going as well as our team is going and we're surrounded by tens of thousands of others who share the same affection for our team and when it's not raining and not freezing — and as long as the toilets are working — then, geez, a day like Saturday at Shea is pretty damn sweet.

I'm glad I went. It was fun.

Well, rats.

It's a funny game — you go from marveling at being behind in exactly two innings to wondering how on earth the team got beat by the likes of Tomo Ohka. Stifled, in fact. Well, so it goes. I'll take 8-2 for the next 10 games with nary a complaint. Meanwhile, some thoughts:

* Does Jorge Julio have options? I'm not ready to run him out of town on a rail or moan that I would have preferred more time in the lukewarm bath that was Kris Benson, not with what the radar gun shows on Julio's fastball. But he's obviously all kinds of messed up and he's equally obviously a sensitive sort. The fans were booing him during Opening Day introductions (which was ridiculous, but too late for that) and Julio doesn't look like the kind of player who can keep that from getting into his head and doing all sorts of damage.

* Speaking of booing, the Carlos Beltran nastiness seems to be behind us. A week ago the stadium would have been deafening after he let that weird little dunker from Prince Fielder fall in front of him. Today the fans shrugged it off. Who says New Yorkers can't let bygones be bygones now and again?

* What exactly does Jose Valentin bring to the table? I know you're supposed to give a player 40 games before making judgments, but that can't apply to pinch-hitters. Valentin has shown absolutely nothing.

* Still, Valentin might stick around given Victor Diaz's continuing fits of dopiness, like that awful misplay last night. The way Willie looked at Diaz from the dugout, I wouldn't have been entirely surprise to see Victor immediately turn to stone. Something tells me he'll be looking at the real-estate listings for coastal Virginia before too terribly long.

* On the flip side, the chiding finger wag Delgado gave Wright after his poor throw last night was priceless, particularly with that million-watt smile of his.

* Gary Cohen gets unconditional love from me, but some SNY producer should talk to him about those shots of the booth. Every time we get one there's Gary staring at Darling or Keith like he's Superman using his X-ray vision, then turning that same laser-beam look into the camera. Frankly, it's a little creepy. Gary! Relax! You're among friends!

* Speaking of SNY, why do I have to look at Derek Fucking Jeter every half-inning? If he's not hitting against Josh Beckett in a videogame, he's trying to sell me a Ford or showing me around his “crib” or just smirking about something or other. I thought the whole idea of our network was less looking at DFJ. Instead, I probably see him for more minutes per game than Cliff Floyd. Enough. I hearby announce my boycott of all products using His Smugness as their spokestool. *

I'm gonna quit before this gets all Larry King. Ben Sheets tomorrow. Ulp.

* Since I don't play console games or have a car, I'll grant this is completely symbolic.

Good morning, fellow fans of the best team in baseball. Our winning streak is extended to seven, our co-best start in franchise history remains intact and so does our four-game lead over the second-place team — five in the all-important loss column, a queue I thought we might wind up visiting after vintage Glavine gave way to shaky Aaron, but, as mentioned previously during this most pleasant skein, it's a team effort. There will be nights when it's Heilman picking up the starting pitcher, just as it was the formerly unlikable starter who gave the generally dependable bullpen a wide enough berth to stumble but not falter.

A fella could get used to this kind of sameness. On this count, I won't be careful what I wish for. You know that Twilight Zone episode in which the small-time crook dies and thinks he's gone to heaven because he's receiving everything he's ever dreamed of — and receiving it with no exertion of effort — and he tells his celestial guide, played by Sebastian Cabot, that he's bored with it and he wants to go to the “other place,” and Sebastian Cabot cackles and tells him, “This IS the other place!”?

Well this ain't that. This is pretty sweet. 8-1 feels about as ideal as could be and an immediate-future template on which I will gladly sign off. No complaints, Mr. French. No jadedness here, not with the likes of Carlos Lee looming for at least another eight at-bats this weekend. As the sun shines over Metsopotamia and I prepare for my second try at my first game at Shea, I say carry on, Mets, carry on.

The standings say we're 8-1, but I'm thinking we're riding a 20-5 wave. No, that's not a projection, but what the Mets have compiled dating back to last September 16. What am I, some kind of Jimmy Rollins advocate? Have I lost my sense of direction? Don't I know that when one season ends, it ends and that we start fresh?

Yes, I do know that. But it strikes me that the way Willie's Mets didn't quit at the end of 2005, after they initially collapsed, may have carried over at least a little. True, some of the heroes of the Great Salvation — Jakey, Bert, Piazza, Padilla — are no longer a part of it all, but I think the culture carryover is genuine. You may dimly recall that the Mets were rocking through the Wild Card race when they essentially stopped playing ball at the end of August, spiraling into a dreary and familiar 3-15 disappearing act. Just when it seemed like a case of Howe We Doin' was in full effect, they turned themselves around and finished 12-4.

It could just as easily be attributed to picking up uncontested points in garbage time, but I don't think so. Randolph instilled a blend of professionalism and expectations throughout 2005 and his team never quite reflected it until those final two weeks when they seemed to play like the slogan said. Next year was finally now, albeit better better late than never. Remember, they were beating the Marlins and the Phillies who desperately needed those games, sweeping the Nationals on the road who had just embarrassed us at home and taking a couple from the Braves, which is never a bad habit to get into.

It's the first season in quite a while when the Mets aren't trying to erase some predecessor humiliation, and I don't think it's a coincidence that the results have been positive. The highly touted imports aren't saddled with the burden of changing the atmosphere and the holdovers have are benefiting from persevering through the growing pains of 2005.

Except for David Wright, who dared to strike out Friday night for the first time all season. Tsk, tsk, don't let that happen again, young man.

Congratulations to our heretofore Snigh-deprived readers in Western Connecticut whose cable provider, Charter Communications, has gotten with the program and added the most important network in the world to their suddenly vital television machines. In particular, I'm happy for my friend Larry who badgered customer service representative “Jim” for a reported half-hour last week until “Jim” hung up in tears. “Just give this guy his Mets games already! I can't take another phone call like that!”

Like the 2006 Mets, whatever it takes, folks, whatever it takes.

No, not a fantasy of 8-1 or 21-1 or 161-1, though I'm happy to indulge in those. And no, we're not talking about '80s cheese-rock hits, though if you now have Aldo Nova stuck in your head, I apologize. (Unless you're now air-guitaring up a storm, in which case you're welcome. And I'll now avert my eyes.)

I'm talking about fantasy baseball, which sucked me back in last year after 14 years in recovery. Fantasy baseball is a lot easier than it was in 1989, when as commissioner I would lose every Wednesday night (In New Orleans! In the summer! When I was 20!) to compiling stats using USA Today's stats. Now it's all done at the speed of light, with no arguing about whose waiver-wire claim made the answering machine first or who jumped the gun on that pitcher just called up from the minors.

But for all that, one thing hasn't changed: I'm still a ridiculous homer when it comes to assembling a fantasy team. And because of that, I'll never win. And I don't care.

In 1989 my sole mission in our $260 league was to have Gregg Jefferies, whose MVP rookie season for the Mets was assured and obviously destined to be followed by his presiding over the peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union and helping us all ascend to Heaven. I don't remember how much I paid for him, but we all can guess it was too much. Oddly, I don't remember which other Mets I had on that team — I have vague recollections of a bidding war for David Cone, one I probably lost because I'd already blown my money on Jefferies. The rest of the Jaison D'Etres? I enjoyed Jeff Bagwell's rookie year and got decent production out of a young Luis Gonzalez, but my roster was mostly given over to the likes of Luis Salazar and Randy Tomlin. Long season.

I played for the rest of my college career, something I came to regret for the usual youth-is-wasted-on-the-young reasons. Those were years I could hang around with my friends eating long, extended lunches and dinners, with youthful metabolisms keeping us from ballooning to truly Vaughnesque proportions and an ever-shifting cast of pals — including smart, cute women — coming by to chat. And when they did, we'd be saying things like, “Von Hayes went 3-for-4 last night, but the rest of my lineup went 3-for-36 with only 2 RBIs!” Which is basically like spraying girl repellent in a 20' radius.

For years after college, I'd make signs to avert evil whenever anyone mentioned fantasy baseball. But last year I got sucked back in when a new friend of mine invited me to join a Yahoo league. I felt like Rip Van Winkle. In this league you had a galaxy of stats and news at your command and moved players on and off the bench daily, a level of activity I wasn't used to. Ours was a mixed league, meaning there were twice as many players available and really no place on a sensibly constructed roster for part-timers and scrubs, no matter how gutty or admirable they were. And it didn't help noting that Jeff Bagwell, that fresh-faced rookie I'd ridden to mediocrity in college, was now a gimpy veteran hanging on. Christ had I gotten old.

I did OK, but my roster strategy hadn't changed one whit since 1989: I was eager to believe the hype about rookies, and I had to have Mets. Fortunately, most of the Mets I had to have turned out to be good bets: David Wright anchored the new-look D'Etres quite nicely, Cliff Floyd had a terrific year, I was a surprisingly good predictor of when Victor Diaz would have a good game and when he wouldn't, and my faith in Mike Jacobs was rewarded. (On the other hand, I traded Tom Glavine a week before he started down the road of Eventual Metdom, and it took me a while to realize that middle relievers are essentially useless. Adios, Heath Bell.)

There's no retaining players in our league, so this year I had to start from scratch. I wound up with the #2 pick in the draft, and so had to field friendly questions from rival players: Would it be Pujols or A-Rod?

Neither, I said. I'm taking David Wright.

Judging from the reaction after I did what I'd said I'd do, nobody believed me. (Other notable members of the 2006 Jaison D'Etres: Tom Glavine, Xavier Nady, Mike Jacobs and Scott Kazmir. I cut Anderson Hernandez, whose defense doesn't translate to fantasy baseball, and got beat on a waiver claim for Brian Bannister.)

So far the Wright pick is working out just fine. And it's let me formulate my rules for Playing Fantasy Baseball Without Being a Godless Sellout:

1. Don't make your head and heart play tug-of-war. I wouldn't be aghast even if Wright were hitting .158. Having him on my team ensured I'd never have to experience that weird Rotisserie double vision — “Wright just hit a three-run homer for the guy whose team I'm playing this week, I am so screwed. Oh yeah, we won. Wheee.” He's my favorite player, and when he does wonderful things, there's a tiny bit of extra happiness involved — an extra spoonful of caramel on the sundae.

2. That said, don't overdo it. My #2 pick wasn't Steve Trachsel. Being loyal doesn't mean you have to be silly.

3. No Yankees. Ever. Last year, I weakened and traded Jim Thome for Chien-Ming Wang, and when Emily found out she almost divorced me on the spot. A few hours later Thome's elbow fell off. A few days later it turned out Wang's shoulder was hurt. I didn't need God (or Emily) to hit me with a thunderbolt to wise up. This year, I even excluded all the Yankees from the players in the draft pool, ensuring there was no way Yahoo might auto-draft some minion of Satan if I got called away from my PC. I also excised Clemens, Chipper, Braden Looper, Kaz Matsui and Victor Zambrano. In this forum I don't think I need to explain any of those. (OK, I did take Jeff Francoeur.)

4. Keep your priorities straight. Dontrelle Willis is on my fantasy team. When Wright's little bloop triple fell in last week, denying the D-Train a W, I was leaping and whooping like a lottery winner. There are no exceptions. None of this “Well, of course I hope we win but I hope we win 1-0 and Dontrelle strikes out 10 and the lone run is a homer by Wright, who also goes 4 for 4 and he's the only guy to reach base.”

Will I win? I sincerely doubt it — if you're anything other than ice-cold and ruthless, you're not going to win most fantasy leagues. Will I finish the season without having given in to divided loyalties or acquiring another Yankee? You'd best believe it: In my book, they call it a fantasy league so you don't get it confused with the one that matters.

So. Glavine, put those Brewers in their place. And Derrick Turnbow? I know you're a member of Jaison D'Etres, and I appreciate the saves so far. But should you somehow find your Cabbage-Patch-Kid-looking self on the mound in the ninth tonight, my team's coming to get you. My real team. And you'll hear me cheering.