Pedro Martinez and Mike Piazza will each be voted into in the Hall of Fame as soon as they're eligible. They have been great for a very long time. They may not have inhabited greatness in tandem when given the chance as early Dodgers and recent Mets, but they are two of the defining players of their generation.

If this sounds like deathgrip of the obvious, well, yeah, but sometimes the players are the thing and Saturday night, one couldn't help but be moved by the sight of legends doing what made them legendary.

Pedro has the world's greatest April record, the greatest record for any month in the history of baseball. Learning that during Saturday's Snighcast gives me a bit of pause for what he'll be in September, but that's a ways off. For now, it's been a revelation, for the second consecutive April, to watch him ply. Keith Hernandez said Pedro earned his paycheck the way he took care of the Padres. I don't know that anybody earns anything over $10 million annually without curing a disease or creating an alternative energy source, but in the terms of what he is paid to do, yeah, he's a bargain.

Martinez and Glavine both have been giving master classes in pitching all April. It's awe-inspiring. Have we ever had this before? Of course we had Tom Seaver when he and the world were young (we just passed the 36th anniversary of T. Terrific's 19-K/10-straight vs. SD) and Doc when Doc was never going to stop being Doc. But that's not what I'm talking about. Pedro and Glavine — sorry, there's only room for only one “Tom” in this paragraph — are bringing a long lifetime of experience at the top of their profession to the mound every fifth day, and they are doing it while still performing at that elevated status.

This isn't Warren Spahn trying to keep it going. These are two aces pitching like Cy Young emeriti, one who some began to doubt in Boston, the other who looked pasturebound after Atlanta. They've combined for eight starts this season and in all eight they have, in the Murphspeak, worn the hitters on their watch chain. It's not Seaver '71 or Gooden '85 or Pedro '99. It's something practically every bit as satisfying. It's not a matter of blowing away the opposition. It's outfoxing them at almost every turn. It's being smarter than the average batter and putting that hard-won wisdom to good use.

It's Pedro striking out eleven and going seven when doing both were ideal. I'm not sure he couldn't have gone eleven and struck out seven, conserving some pop here, working a corner there, teasing a Padre there if that indeed was what was called for. Once the Mets got him a couple of runs, did you doubt Pedro would tease, taunt and tame San Diego? They could don all the camouflage they wanted, but they couldn't hit, they couldn't run and they sure as hell couldn't hide.

If Pedro Martinez was the main attraction (and the indefatigable Carlos Delgado was the featured performer and our 6-7 hitters Nady and Castro headed a strong supporting cast), then you have to give it up for the walk-on made by someone whose name used to stick high atop the marquee and above the title. They're not Mike Piazza & The Mets anymore, but Piazza's cameo as fearsome enemy slugger did not make for an altogether unpleasant sight.

We won 8-1, so I can be generous. Mike got to 399 with a blast off Pedro. Pedro could afford it, so in hindsight, applause, applause. Sadly, I had turned the channel to a Barry Bonds' at-bat in Colorado and missed Mike's mash live (I thought we were still in commercial), but replays showed vintage Piazza, high, deep and almost straight away to center. As 2-1 became 4-1 and 6-1 and 8-1, I could feel good that he collected his first homer since Opening Day, even if it was against us, even if it was in Padre fatigues.

I figured out why Mike Piazza as a Padre taking his swings against the Mets hasn't really moved me. Because he's not a Padre in more than name. He's said all the right things. He talks about the Padres as if he really cares what happens to them, but you can tell he doesn't. He's as likely to throw a game as he to throw out a baserunner, but you know what I mean. This is a soft landing for The Greatest Hitting Catcher in the History of Baseball. This is a place to pad his power totals a little and get some sun and call it a night. He's not pulling that dreadful Johnny Damon “we/us” shtick. He hasn't suddenly contracted “always wanted to be a…” fever. He's a Padre because they pay him to be one. He's back to full-time Met legend as soon as he is no longer contractually obligated to be something else.

Of all the quotes mined from Mike this week, the one I liked the most regarded his amazement that a three-game losing streak in San Diego doesn't set off panic in Petco Park. It's just three baseball games. As Met after Met ran him into the ground, I couldn't help but wonder how many calls to WFAN such a stolen base surfeit would generate if he were still our catcher. I doubt anybody out west will much dwell on the details of Saturday night come Sunday morning. Whether he misses us or we're missing him, I think it's for the best that he is where he is and we are where we are in 2006. At this late date, Mike Piazza deserves a little benign neglect.

So he'll wear 33. He'll hit a few more out. Barring injury or early retirement, he'll come to Shea the second week of August to doff his helmet and cause a Mike-sized buzz, and two months later, I'm guessing, quietly depart from active participation in the game he dominated for a decade — and still can when his muscle memory cooperates.

The Padres had three hits. Mike had two. When he got the first one, the homer, it shouldn't have been surprising. The stats say he owns Pedro Martinez, which is a pretty impressive piece of real estate to claim. The second one was a solid single in the ninth that I was sort of, kind of, just a little hoping would have some lift and distance to it, because with a seven-run lead, would it have killed us to have seen Mike hit No. 400 in a Mets game?

No, but it would not have been optimal. Jorge Julio, perhaps imbued by a stream of shots poured down his throat while laid out flat on a bartop the way a crumpled Popeye revived from the cans of spinach Olive Oyl forcefed him (or don't you read the gossip pages?), has been suddenly, shockingly lights-out the last few times he's pitched. He was dynamite in the eighth. It would do us no good in the long-term to see him blow up in the ninth, not after the first two Padres got on via strikeout-wild pitch and error. Piazza's ensuing single scored nobody and Julio proceeded to emerge unscathed and the Mets had a win and maybe, just maybe, a bulletproof bullpen in the making.

That's an important detail, but a detail for another day. When you've seen Pedro Martinez continue to be Pedro Martinez for seven innings and Mike Piazza guest star as Mike Piazza for one mighty swing, it seems almost blasphemous to mention that anyone else played baseball Saturday night.

…that if I weren't so tired, and hadn't imagined like three innings ago that the Care Bears were skipping around the room laughing at me, and hadn't been yelling “SAVE US!” at each new Met batter in a voice more than a bit tinged with hysteria, and hadn't been hiding under the covers during random Padre at-bats, and hadn't been wondering if I could just wake up in the morning in the time for innings 43 and up, that I'd be more disappointed that we lost that one. In fact, in the morning I know I'll be more disappointed. For now, it means I can sleep.

That last shot of Woody Williams awkwardly high-fiving the fan through the screen (a fan who'd just got a full beer from somewhere) did make me smile, however. They must love him in San Diego.

Go get 'em tomorrow. But you know what? Let's play one.

What a strange game.

Every West Coast game is strange, from our perspective over here on the other side of the continent. Right about the time body and mind are getting ready to shut down for the night, there's three hours of baseball to be dissected and fretted over. Now throw in Steve Trachsel, who can make you feel like it's past your bedtime at 2pm on a sunny Sunday. And top it off with the fact that I conked out at 8:30, set my alarm for 10:05, and wandered upstairs, groggy and confused, in the middle of Reyes' leadoff at-bat.

What day is it? What year is it? Who are we playing?

Oh yeah, it's Thursday, 2006 and we're playing the Padres. In fact, there's Mike Piazza in San Diegan togs. Is there a stranger franchise of respectable antiquity than the Padres? Blame East Coast bias, but they're one of those teams I always forget about, playing in the shadow of the Dodgers in a uniform and colors they change every year. We see them seven times a year and the rest of the time they're some vague presence time zones away. So while I felt a happy flash of recognition the first time Piazza swung his front foot out of the box to gather his thoughts (batting stances are like smells for how they can snap your memory instantly into focus), it felt less like a proper reunion than it should have. It's not like he's a Phillie or a Yankee (ugh) or an Oriole or a Red Sock or something else we could keep proper track of. Instead, here's a glimpse of him in the wee hours, in the anonymous uniform of the West Kamchatka TBDs, wearing 33, in a park that never seems properly lit. And then somehow he turned into Doug Mirabelli halfway through. Strange things happen out here on the West Coast.

Kaz's inside-the-parker was fun (what inside-the-parker isn't?), though I couldn't help notice that Piazza helped by managing to get himself out of position. It behooves all of us — doubters, booers, and mere giver-uppers — to hope that Kaz can relax in the eighth slot and be the player every scouting report swore he'd be. Or even be half that player. With Anderson Hernandez suddenly and shockingly injured (and apparently injured rather seriously), this is Kaz's chance. One would say his last chance, if not for the fact that our braintrust seems to regard Jeff Keppinger with the disdain usually reserved for hubcap thieves and teens buying loosies from the deli. (Someday I'd like an explanation for that.) Let's call it this Kaz's latest chance, and hope he takes it. An inside-the-park home run and hanging in there on the pivot when it really, really mattered is a nice start.

As for the offensive explosion, like seeing Big Mike again it somehow didn't feel the way it should have. Part of it was Jake Peavy mowing us down in the middle innings, when this game sure looked like one of those dead-assed coast-to-coast losses you chalk up to jet lag and the cruelty of the schedule makers. Another part of it was how sudden it was — so sudden I wouldn't be surprised to see the team lapse back into offensive drowsiness today. It came and went in a flash, like one of those rainstorms that soaks people but comes so quickly it runs off before it does the plants much good. (Not that I'll be giving the W back.)

Maybe it's just the brownout against our eldest rivals, but this team's health continues to worry me. Beltran left again; MRI today. (Eeeek.) There's the thing with Floyd's ribs, Delgado icing his elbow and shaking his wrist, A Hern's bulging disk…enough of a list that it gets a restless mind looking for problems everywhere else. Will Reyes take a misstep? How's Pedro's toe? Isn't Matsui due to trip over a bat and shatter his pelvis? And David Wright may be healthy, but he looks like he could use a mental-health day: You can see him fretting before throws to first and he seems anxious at the plate.

Ack! Enough! We won. That's the important thing. The rest of it? It's just San Diego in the middle of the night.

As a service to our readers who adhere to more traditional work schedules, this blog provides a series of snappy in-the-know water cooler comebacks to prove that you are fan enough to handle the West Coast start times even if you really aren't.

Faith and Fear in Flushing: We stay up and watch the Mets win so you don't have to.

LAME OUT-OF-IT CO-WORKER: Kaz Matsui sucks.

SMART IN-THE-KNOW YOU: Not when he was hitting that inside-the-park home run in his first at-bat, his third year in a row with a homer in just that situation.

LOOICW: Kaz Matsui can't play second.

SITKY: Kaz hung tough on a great double play after the Padres loaded the bases with nobody out. They didn't score.

LOOICW: Julio Franco hasn't done anything except yell at Carlos Beltran.

SITKY: Julio Franco became the oldest man EVER to hit a home run in a Major League game.

LOOICW: I don't know why they keep Endy Chavez on the club.

SITKY: Endy put down the most beautiful drag bunt to bring home Reyes from third.

LOOICW: Delgado's slumping.

SITKY: Delgado hit a BOMB.

LOOICW: Floyd's in a funk. He'll probably be out indefinitely.

SITKY: Cliff was back in the lineup and drove in the final run.

LOOICW: Jose Valentin will never get a base hit.

SITKY: Jose Valentin got a base hit.

LOOICW: Jorge Julio is worthless.

SITKY: Jorge Julio pitched another 1-2-3 inning. He looked pretty sharp doing it. The whole bullpen came through.

LOOICW: The Mets lost two in a row to the Braves and have to go on a ten-game road trip. They're so screwed.

SITKY: The Mets increased their lead to 3-1/2 over idle Atlanta. Good pitching, timely hitting. They played like the first-place team they are no matter where they are.

LOOICW: Mets suck.

SITKY: Mets rule. You suck.

Gary Cohen is a sharp guy. When the Mets visited Phoenix in 2000, Todd Pratt came to bat in front of Diamondbacks fans for the first time since October 9, 1999. Reaction was muted, to say the least. How, Gary asked Ed Coleman, can these fans not be booing the man who put them out of the playoffs ten months ago?

Yesterday, he inverted the question as Pratt caught the day game after the night game for the Braves. Tank, he noted, got less than a hero's welcome Monday when he stepped in to pinch-hit in the ninth. How, he asked Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez, can these fans boo the man who is rightly remembered for knocking that home run over the wall?

I love the romantic notion that Todd Pratt should be above reproach, but Pratt's a Brave now and, more importantly, someone who attempted to stand in the way of a key victory (he struck out to end Pedro's 200th). He's been slipping in and out of town since the summer of 2001, usually getting a start or an at-bat in one 8-2 Mets-Phillies game after another. He'd always received a hand because there was no harm in having him up.

It was different the day after Turk Wendell was traded to the Phillies from the Mets in the middle of a series between the two. He came into a tight spot at Shea against his old team with the outcome of that particular game hanging in the palm of his right hand. His old fans, the people who thrilled to every slam of Turk's rosin bag, understood this and he generated an ambivalent response; it's one thing to applaud an “enemy” hitter in the top of the second, it's another to celebrate the other guys' pitcher in the ninth if the score is tied. When Robin Ventura ended his and the Phillies' day with a walkoff wallop, I remember the cheering felt much more intense than if he had hit it off the likes of Rheal Cormier.

Turk hadn't done anything wrong in July of '01 except get traded and go to work. Tank didn't do anything wrong this week except continue his career by associating with a most unsavory cast of characters. Yet we as Mets fans can't have that when we're trying to make magic. Who are these players who dare spoil the trick? Traitors! Even if we calm down and realize they're just professionals pursuing their craft, we can't look at them and any longer see guys who are paid to help us win ballgames and, if we may dream, championships.

Which brings us to the cleanup batter for the other team tonight.

In a matter of minutes, I'll turn on SNY and see Mike Piazza in a Mets game for the first time since August 21, 1997 wearing something other than a Mets uniform. It's not an unprecedented happenstance but we're out of practice at witnessing it, so it'll be weird.

But I have the feeling it won't be that weird. I'm surprised at how little I've thought of Mike Piazza lately. If the Padres weren't on the schedule, he would have faded even further from contemporary consciousness. When he does occur to me, he shows up as a hero, all right, but a hero from the last century, maybe the very beginning of this one. He's as relevant to where my Mets head is right now as Duffy Dyer — good guy, he helped, what's next?

He would have to charge the mound to make me dislike him and I know he never would and I never could. I'll be happy to get a look at him. I wish him well. But Mike will be out there trying to beat us. He's one of the Thems now. I've got my mind set on Us.

If the remnants of a tree are shaped into nine Louisville Sluggers and flail in the forest and make no sound, can those who flailed so miserably really be in first place?

“Our Team, Our Time” is beautiful music compared to what the Mets mixmasters have scratched out over the past 18 innings. When two of your MCs are not in full effect, y'all, whaddaya expect?

Something better than reviving the seasons of Kyle Davies and Tim Hudson? Guess not.

It was another day of the less said, the better (though I did let out my first “godmotherfuckingdamnit!” of the young season when the last out was made less than two hours after the first pitch was thrown). Not exactly the bon voyage one desires in the departure lounge for a West Coast trip, but not a killer. We won one scintillating game, got our ass kicked the next night and were on the short end of what was either an awesome pitchers' duel or an argument to bring back greenies. We should win all series at Shea, but taking only one of three to the Braves at home isn't alarming given the nice little cushion we built for ourselves. And taking two of three in Atlanta (assuming we don't deteriorate in California) will make what's just happened very distant very quickly.

One of the guys in my e-mail group (the more extreme elements of which spent the early hours of Wednesday gleefully TP'ing Zambrano's house) said we didn't get much out of our “vaunted offense”. I would argue there ain't much vaunt there when your Nos. 3 and 6 hitters are nursing their hammy and ribby-cagey, respectively. Valentin? Chavez? Suddenly, much in the way we're playing down to the level of our beloved new theme song, we also seem to have gone out of our way to even things up with the debilitated Braves. It's like some kind of desperate after-school pickup game.

“No fair! Chipper's home sick! And Edgar has a piano lesson! And Marcus got detention! We don't wanna play!”

“Deal. You're up first.”

No more making fun of Anderson Hernandez's infinitesimal batting average or salivating over his goldening glove. He's out. Kaz is back. Maybe he'll hit a home run in San Diego on the very first pitch he sees.

First place is still first place, but I'm closing in on Earth once more. My brain no longer semi-seriously expects 130 wins, so maybe I can both relax and get back on more normal edge versus where I was Monday night. I still want more than to scramble for a Wild Card, but for some strange reason, fate generally doesn't ask my opinion. With Beltran and Floyd aching, I'm reminded again of those '72 Mets. They were so good so early and so injured so often thereafter. Let's hope this isn't that. Let's also hope we're not the '96 Orioles. I remembered the other day that my Baltimore correspondent, Dr. Fred Bunz, was amused at how when those O's got off to an 11-2 start, local radio was referring to them as “the Bulls of baseball.” The Bulls won the NBA championship that year. The Orioles didn't do the same in their sport.

Meanwhile, I'm off to another shaky start at Shea, 0-2, having attended Tuesday night (I was the one you didn’t hear booing), 0-4 going back to late 2005, 1-6 since the night Pedro gave up all those home runs to the Phillies and we commenced along on our slippery slope out of the playoff chase. Strangely, I continue to leave these games in a good mood. Saturday was just nice. Tuesday I was happy to make the in-person acquaintance of one of our 'sphere's outstanding out-of-town blolleagues. And you know that old saying…

When two Mets bloggers meet at Shea Stadium for the first time, an Agee gets his wings.

Rooting for the New York Mets is easy to do, at least from a technical standpoint. Rooting for the New York Giants is a different story since they're kind of out of business for almost 50 years. Find out how it's done at Gotham Baseball.

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.