OK, Glavine...Tom. It's on you tonight.

I don't want to contradict myself from yesterday when I said the starting pitcher issue is overemphasized in the postseason, but based on the variables that revealed themselves in Game One — namely the use of all five prime Met relievers — it would be helpful to have Tom Glavine give us those six innings that were requested of John Maine. In fact, if he wants to give us those plus maybe the inning and change Maine left on the table at Willie's behest, I wouldn't complain.

Is Tom Glavine a "big-game pitcher"? Who the hell knows? I don't care about his Brave postseason record. That was a million baseball years ago. As a Met, there haven't been a ton of big games for him to pitch. 2003 and 2004 were the years Glavine woke up every morning and looked in the mirror and wondered what the hell was I thinking? for signing here. Last year the pitcher and the team seemed to land on the same page as going concerns. And this year Tom was as big a reason as anybody for the Mets clinching the division from the get-go.

So is he a big-game pitcher? Well, it's a baseball game and he's a big pitcher and he had a real nice game against the Dodgers in September and not such a great one in June. He's better of late than he was in the middle of the season. He took his St. Joseph's for Children and he's healthy as far as we know. And, though it won't show up in the boxscore, he's a Met. Never thought I'd say it with conviction, but he's one of Ours. During the pregame intros Wednesday, he received an audibly louder cheer than most of his non-starting teammates (including one from this torch 'n' grudge bearer in Row R). His Shea greeting owes, I figure, to his career stature, his franchise longevity and the amount we've got riding on his head/left arm.

On a club whose rotation probably didn't turn to plan more than three times consecutively all year (as the plan changed from moment to moment), he's our rock. I'd say him and Trachsel, but Trachsel hasn't pitched since September 23 and, as the saying goes, he's Trachsel. Tonight's starter is Glavine. He's Glavine.

He'd better be.

Here's one vote for starting more games at 4 o'clock. It's an outstanding time of day to witness postseason baseball in person.

Golden sunlight bathes Shea in early October between 3 and 4. Or so I just learned. As I sat in gorgeous weather waiting for the festivities to unfold, I marveled at how gol'dang good Queens looked, how the construction in what used to be the parking lot (there's space for maybe eight cars now) is spreading, how this must have been what it felt like in 1969 while Tommie Agee and Ron Swoboda sprinkled their gloves with pixie dust.

Of course we were the 4 o'clock start, us and the Dodgers — media markets 1 and 2 — because our teams and all teams are the scum of the earth, except for the Yankees who make the world go round. We were instructed by ESPN to scurry in unison to our ratholes after sundown so Captain Fantastic could Lead By Example in prime time. Funny, though: Fox has been so buoyed by Yankee ratings October after October that next year not a single Division Series game will be appear on over-the-air network television. Memo to soulless corporations with no feel for what you're broadcasting...did it ever occur to you that maybe shoving the ex-dynasty down everybody's throats for a decade soured America on its erstwhile National Pastime?

Meanwhile, first pitch 4:09 PM, despite the pleasing aesthetic aspects, was an admitted inconvenience for a lot of people with steadier jobs than mine. The three people who made my entrance possible by inviting me to be their fourth all showed up long after the action commenced. I heard tales from other quarters of folks with valuable playoff tickets that seemed to be going wanting as Dodger hour approached; responsibility's an ugly burden. I half-expected Shea to look like The Ted. It didn't, not at all. Mets fans will fight their way past deadlines and punchclocks and commutation hassles to see three, five, nine or fifteen innings of heartstopping baseball. I saw no pockets of unoccupied orange, blue, green or — where we were — red.

And was it not poetic media justice that the game the elitists just had to have in that all-important 8:20 slot got RAINED OUT? Steve Somers took one irate call after another from Yankee fen complaining about being forced to endure a delay until 10 PM and then be told to get their 26-ringed asses back to the Bronx by 1 PM the next day. Since we're all sports consumers, I tried to feel some simpatico for those put out by forces beyond their control.

I didn't.

Now those magnetic Yankees and the oodles of precious eyeballs they're alleged to attract will be apart as their ALDS with the Tigers continues in the early afternoon. And we will be in the spotlight dance after 8 o'clock. It will be chillier than it was Wednesday and it will be darker and it will be inconvenient for its own set of reasons. If there's rain (there's not supposed to be), well, that will suck, too. But we're Mets fans. We only complain when we don't have a game at all.

Great Timo's Ghost! After following Jason's suggestion and reading Jayson Stark, I just realized the Double Tag Double Play was the spiritual undoing of the last Game One the Mets were in. This time it was our outfielder and our infielder who executed beautifully, and this time it was the other team's baserunners who looked clueless, presumptuous and defeated.

The Kent-Drew Kamikaze also echoed the first regular-season game Paul Lo Duca caught as a Met, when everything turned on his WHOA! play at the plate. Then he knew exactly what he was doing. Here, he had no idea what was going on, yet the result was twice as great. May this first postseason game Paul Lo Duca caught as a Met set the same kind of tone he and his teammates set six months and a day earlier.

I had just settled down. Now I'm revved up again.