There are worse things than being a .500 ballclub. For one thing, when you continually find yourself one below, you are continually given chances to climb back to .500 and then can continually hold out hope that you will inch one above .500. It gives you something to shoot for and allows you to have humility, which comes from being humble and not having Humber.

You can also take comfort in the notion that a win is never more than a day or two away. Losing too many robs you of hope. Winning makes you take it for granted.

I guess we're just right.

In terms of competitive alignment, maybe we've been looking at this all wrong. I keep thinking we're just about to get on the roll that will put us well beyond .500 and turn us into the team that won't be caught. Maybe what's going to happen is we'll just keep chugging along a win and a loss at a time while everybody else in the East suffers the one big meltdown that each of them is due. Then, as they all sink below us, we'll be the team that can't be passed. Right now, that's probably as good a shot as we have to win -- or not lose -- this thing.

Credit Eddie Coleman with the line of the year in the bottom of the fourth. With the Mets far ahead but rain threatening to render the whole matter unofficial, the precipitation suddenly ceased. Maybe, Eddie speculated, Pedro simply put his hands up and made it stop.

So today we go for the split. Which is to say, we go for the right to tread water at .500 again. With four more days off the calendar. Like I said a couple of days ago, a split here is like being on death row and the governor doesn't call: You're not dead, but you sure are closer to it. And, of course, Pedro might lose 1-0. So the choice today is between "we lost 3 of 4; time to sell off saleable pieces with an eye on 2006" and arguing about whether or not it's late enough that we should sell off saleable pieces and look to 2006. Oh boy!

Meanwhile, Philip Humber is getting a second opinion on his elbow. Met doctors say he needs surgery. I'm confident the second opinion will be "there's nothing wrong with this fine young man's elbow that a couple of Nuprin wouldn't fix -- in fact, you should send him to the Show immediately!" Ha ha! (Last year the docs really would have said that, only to admit a few months later that they'd looked at the wrong elbow.) I think I just heard the sound of eight million dollars being flushed down the Tommy John. But wait, you say: Lots of young prospects have that procedure. Why, some of them even come back with extra oomph on their fastballs, or crazy movement they never had before. Yeah, but most of them don't. Most of them don't come back at all. Hope we read about you in 2007, Phil.

Getting back to the dismal present, could we please end the Danny Graves experiment? Or at least relocate it to Norfolk? Nothing against Mr. Graves, who seems a decent young man liked by his teammates and all that, but, well, um, he can't pitch. He finished May with an ERA of 7.36 and since then has managed to raise it to 7.85, which is hard to do. Surely there are things about Juan Padilla or a bullpen-bound Kaz Ishii that we could learn instead of amassing more evidence that Danny Graves is a dead roster spot.

My pal Pete and I hit upon the preposterous idea of walking to Keyspan Park today, so we're off on our Brooklyn sojourn. Where are the Mets trudging to, and how long will it take them to get there? I'm no longer willing to even hazard a guess.

The less said about Saturday night, the better, with the exception being another round of pat-on-the-back, don't-hang-your-head, go-get-'em-next-time kudos for Victor Zambrano. He's only gotten to live up to his name four times all year despite pitching like a victor (not to mention a new man) for the last two months. Hey Mets lineup, are those bats in your pocket or are you just unhappy to see him? Take out your wood and starting whacking home some runs for him. In fact, don't wait for Zambrano's next start. Act now.

Think about the wonderful starting pitching we've gotten the first three nights of the second half and try to figure out why we've derived only one win out of it. Don't think about it too much, though. You'll not want to face another dawn.

Now it's up to Pedro. It's always up to Pedro, isn't it? We wouldn't have it any other way in these circumstances even if we'd rather it not come to this. We'd rather Mr. Martinez be asked to put an exclamation point on a four-game statement, not erase the same aggravating question marks that always seem to pour down in buckets on our heads after these Brave abominations. Whatever symbol is called for, Punctuatin' Pedro will know what to do.

It was said during the winter that Pedro Martinez was, in effect, replacing Al Leiter in the Met rotation. Al won 10 games for a lousy club last year. Pedro won 16 for an eventual world champion. Al's ERA was almost seven-tenths of a run lower than Pedro's. Those who can't stand for any of us to be happy scoffed that given the numbers, it wasn't much of a tradeup. These were the same people who wrote off the opposable thumb as just another finger.

As Leiter attempts to resuscitate his career back where it all began (who else wants to bet that "in my heart of hearts, I've never taken off the pinstripes" will be uttered in some form or fashion by the Senior Senator from the State of Self-Absorption?), Pedro is tasked with saving our season...again. There isn't that much left to save, but a split with the Braves is a lot better for morale than losing three of four, especially if the final two come at the hands of pitchers -- particularly Hampton (ptui!) -- who had been disabled until five minutes before their first pitch.

This is a job for Pedro Martinez. He's going on six days' rest and avoided that trip to Detroit. He's our man. If he can't do it, no one can. But make no mistake about it, he's ourman. Not everybody's caught on to that inconvenient little reality.

In Saturday's Times, a generally good columnist named Harvey Araton genuinely offended every fiber of my being with the suggestion that Pedro is in the wrong place at the wrong time. His point was that the "best rivalry in sports," between the first- and third-place teams in the American League Eastern Division, which of course is the axis upon which the world -- never mind baseball -- spins on, was better when Martinez was at the center of it. OK, as far as that goes, but Araton would reverse the events of the past eight months altogether in the name of saturation:

I miss Pedro. I wish he were here, still pitching for the Red Sox, who foolishly let him escape to the Mets, or for the Yankees, who stupidly spurned his advances.

Maybe Araton still wishes he were writing for the Daily News, which devotes most of its sports pages, a chunk of its news hole and an occasional Thersday feature to Red Sox-Yankees, Part LXXXVI. Regardless of where he works, the important thing the writer stumbled across is the need to embellish "the best rivalry in sports." Why are we selfishly holding onto our ace when he could be doing the only organizations that matter some good? Let's get Pedro Martinez to Fenway tonight. He can pitch alternating innings for both clubs.

Better yet, how about Bud Selig declares a periodic draft of the best players from the 28 MLB also-rans so the elite two can fill in their respective trouble spots as warranted? Albert Pujols would look awfully good in a Yankee or Red Sox uniform...Miguel Tejada would look awfully good in a Yankee or Red Sox uniform...Jake Peavy would look awfully good in a Yankee or Red Sox uniform…see? It's easier than thinking!

It's not our problem that Boston is reduced to hiring distasteful, overgrown urchins like David Wells to take starts while its formerly imperious foe runs its rotation like Bob Barker. Sean Henn, come on down! Tim Redding, come on down! Al Leiter, come on down! More Gong Show than The Price is Right, really.

The Mets' guess was on the nose when they signed Pedro Martinez. He's better off with us (and us with him) than trapped in somebody else's tired storyline.