I should feel more disappointed. What's wrong with me?

I dunno. Is it that we all figured that between Brown and Zambrano, we and they would take turns cringing at the sight of our starter? Was it that while we played horrible baseball, they played only slightly less horrible baseball? Was it the momentary cheer from Heath Bell making like Jaime Cerda? (Heath, please let the comparison end there.) Was it accepting that Roberto Hernandez was due for a bum note again? Was it thinking that, what the hey, now we've got the same record and we can get this thing on in earnest?

Maybe. But I think it's that we've done this every year for a good long time now, and it's just hard to get up for it the way I once did -- which means (luckily right now) that it's also hard to get down the way I once did. (Gotta get up to get down. I think George Michael said that. Let's just move along.) I think it's that while we don't look like shoo-ins for the division or even an 82-win season, we also look nothing like the walking disaster of the last two seasons -- while at the same time, the Collapse-o-Meter may or may not toll for them, but they're clearly not the same how-dare-you-get-blood-on-my-wheels juggernaut they've been. It's a three-game series in May. I'm a lot more worried about those Braves and Marlins next week.

Or maybe it's that when your scuffling, infuriating but persevering starter gets into trouble in the 6th and gets the perfect, tailormade, kiss-your-sweetheart-and-pump-your-fist one-hop grounder he needs for the double play, and then it clanks off the second baseman's glove, some of the fight goes out of you. And when on the next play, your now slightly perturbed-looking starter gets a one-hopper to a Gold Glove first baseman who's ready to throw home, and then it clanks off his glove, you know that God's turned His back, and while you can come back and play tomorrow, tonight's not ending well.

Proper perspective on things, left numb.... Hmm. Proper perspective on things, left numb.... Ah hell. Ask me tomorrow.

Does it seem to you that every "innovation" baseball has come up with over the past decade or so has done us very little good? They realigned divisions in time to give us the endless Braves (who would've made for better company pre-1991 than the Cubs, Cards or Bucs did at precisely the wrong moments); they instituted a Wild Card that we were, granted, able to benefit from twice, but think how many we could've used in the '80s; and they concocted Interleague play right after the other New York team won its first World Series in a generation, making the other New York team seem like far more than it really was.

Not that 1986 needed any enhancement, but in retrospect, it would have been sweet to have seen this particular circus covered back then as it is covered now except with the tables turned. The local tapeheads could have gone to Yankee Stadium and pestered Mike Pagliarulo and Dennis Rasmussen about the pressure of going up against the mighty Mets. Dan Pasqua could've talked dreamily about what a dream come true it was to go to an exciting place like Shea where the fans are world-renowned and every pitch is an event. The Mattingly crowd could have sputtered on about how their man would finally get some recognition now that he'd be able, at long last, to share the big stage for a few days with the larger-than-life likes of Carter, Hernandez and Strawberry.

Meanwhile, Davey Johnson could have scoffed at the whole thing, reminding reporters that our big rival is St. Louis, this thing is a nuisance. Doc Gooden would go on regular rest against the Expos because the Yankees wouldn't present reason enough to mess with our rotation (hell, use Rick Anderson -- it's only the Yankees). Mex would've said one game is like the next. And Wally Backman would've added something insulting and dismissive and then backed it up. When it would be over and the Mets had taken their usual four or five of six, the storyline would be "same old, same old, the Yankees are forever trying to measure up to the Mets but they never quite manage to do so." And Steinbrenner would fire Piniella and dig up Alvin Dark.

But no, we didn't get that. Instead, we know what we've gotten since 1997. We know the tone. We know the condescension and patronization directed toward our little major market ballclub. We know that every year, at least one newbie on our end will cop to being impressed-to-awed with the opposition or at least the opposing ballpark and its (genuflect) monuments. We know that it will be treated by everybody official on this side of the ledger as a milestone in the schedule just as we know that the participants in the other dugout will do no more than yawn for public consumption. And we know that no matter what we do in the actual series of games -- even if we win most of them as we did last year -- it will be belittled and diminished in hindsight because, well, we're the Mets and they're the Yankees.

Nevertheless, I'll be up for this when it starts. I can't help it. I watch lots of baseball, but the only things that I can depend on to rev my motor every single time are the chances that the Mets will win and that the Yankees will lose. To have a dual opportunity for both present itself in the course of a single game that counts is too good to dismiss.

It's been this way since Andy Pettitte faced Lance Johnson to start the very first of these games. I was on my way home from work, listening on my Walkman and jumping out of my skin with every pitch. The Mets were playing the Yankees...for real! That we beat them rather easily that night (All Hail Mlicki) codified that it wasn't such a bad idea.

And by the way, this had nothing, not a damn thing to do with the "little brother" myth that's been perpetrated by the brain-dead baseball media in this town over the past ten years. Little brother, my ass. When I came along, there was only one baseball team that mattered in New York and it was the Mets. That's how it looked to me in 1969 and anything that's happened more recently is something I see as a brief aberration from the way things are supposed to be and, deep down, truly are. In any case, we don't have a big brother in the Bronx, just a drunken, boorish lout of a distant relative twice removed.

Since June 16-18, 1997, each series and each game has at the very least grabbed my attention and usually kept it. Maybe I should be cooler about it. Maybe I should be cynical by now. Maybe I should be downtrodden. Going into tonight, after all, it's 16-26. But there have been too many good moments that have followed Mlicki -- M. Franco vs. Rivera; J. Franco vs. Posada; M. Piazza going deep vs. Rat Bastard Clemens, Ramiro Mendoza and some poor sap named Carlos Almanzar to name three; Shane Spencer going short vs. Tanyon Sturtze; Mo Vaughn practically redeeming his sorry tenure by shredding David Wells; Al's cutters frustrating the whole lot of them; Roger Cedeño stealing home; even Estes' home run despite his lousy aim at an ample, vile target -- to write off the Subway Series as a gimmick or to find it irredeemably futile. As bad as the 26 losses were, the 16 wins were that much better.

Sure, Interleague still feels a little unnatural on rhythms attuned to a National League schedule, but no matter how others may frame it, it boils down to the team we love the most versus the team we hate the most. If you can't get up for that, then geez, what's the point of loving and hating in baseball?