Welcome to Flashback Friday, a weekly feature devoted to the 20th anniversary of the 1986 World Champion New York Mets.

Twenty years, 43 Fridays. This is one of them.

Wednesday, January 1? Technically, maybe, but irrelevant.

The day in February when they reported? Heartening, but we're talking mostly calisthenics at this point, and stretching is a stretch.

First exhibition game in early March? It didn't count.

How about Tuesday, April 8? Opening Night. Can't say it didn't count, it did. Still does, but that's not quite it either.

By my calculations, 1986 didn't really become 1986, not the way we think of 1986, until Friday, April 18.

That was the night the Mets of 1986 turned into the 1986 Mets and made 1986 the year that stops us in our tracks when we hear it mentioned, regardless of context. That's when 1986 became 1986 in the way that 1969 had always been 1969, the way 1973 was 1973, the way 1985 never quite made it to being 1985. That was the night everything we have come to associate with the greatest year in the history of the franchise began to coalesce into one beautiful, bulging parcel of baseball magnificence.

Friday, April 18 was the night the Mets beat the Phillies, 5-2. It was satisfying enough. It put Ron Darling in the win column for the first time all year. It saddled Steve Carlton with the 35th of 36 losses he'd absorb at the hands of the Mets on his otherwise illustrious dossier. It marked the Major League debut of the unfortunately named Philadelphia utility infielder Greg Legg (so glad I wasn't in elementary school when this occurred). It was presumably a good time for the majority of the 26,906 who paid their way into Shea Stadium. Most importantly, it boosted our record to 3-3.

That's right. For the first, last and only time in 1986, we climbed to .500. We stayed there just long enough to wipe our feet on its WELCOME mat.

Mets fans figured this moment, the great launch, was coming. Our entire offseason was based on it. Our tongues hung out in anticipation of it. But when it begins in earnest, we don't necessarily know what we've got. It was just a 5-2 win that snapped a three-game losing streak, the first game we got to play in four days after a nasty spell of wet weather. Yet we can now say with the certainty of Agee-HoJo hindsight that April 18, 1986 was the date on which we departed the cusp of becoming the best team in all of baseball and actually started being it.

It was just one game, but then there was another, the very next day, Saturday, April 19. Greg Legg sat it out. Greg Gross pinch-hit and walked. Greg Prince was utterly delighted as he watched Doc Gooden strike out ten Phillies who didn’t share either of our first names. I wasn't all that surprised and I'm guessing neither was he when, with the score knotted at two in the bottom of the eighth, Davey Johnson let his starter lead off. Doc could hit, and even if he couldn't (and this time he didn't), he could pitch. Why take him out? Gooden popped up, but Kevin Mitchell, batting first in the order for the first time in his career — and starting a big league game for the first time since his 1984 cup of Sanka (when he hit a weak .214 and spent all of '85 on the farm) — singled. Tim Teufel didn't do anything, but Keith Hernandez singled Mitchell to second. Steve Bedrosian replaced Shane Rawley. Gary Carter let out a big smile at John Felske's maneuver, singling Mitch home. Doc came out for the ninth and, despite the walk to Gross, finished things off. Mets win 3-2. Now they're over .500.

Sunday, April 20 saw Greg Legg and Greg Gross both get chances against Sid Fernandez. Sorry Gregs, you're on your own. Four in the first (including three on a Danny Heep homer) was all El Sid needed.

An 8-0 win before the home folks.

A weekend sweep in Queens.

Three in a row with the Pirates coming in.

For all their advances, the Mets were only in third place. Recall, if you will, that we were scuffling when the week began, succumbing to St. Louis in the Home Opener, falling into (eek!) fifth place after five games. Then, as the rains wiped out the rest of that series, an unyielding front of naysaying drenched New York, pouring doubts that maybe these Mets, runners-up in '84 and '85, weren't that good after all.

Could our season really be in ruins so soon? All based on the small sample provided by the unfortunate events Monday, April 14? It was six days later and the Mets had strung three wins together, yet had picked up but one length on the first-place Cardinals — just that Sunday, in fact. The Red Nemesis lost 2-0 in Montreal, as two Expos with impeccable pedigrees, Herm Winningham and Hubie Brooks, scored the only runs of the game in the home eighth. Now they, the Cardinals, were 7-2 and we, the Mets, were 5-3. The incoming Pirates, for the moment, stood between us at 6-2.

These were not yet the Pirates of Barry Bonds (brought up: May 30), Bobby Bonilla (traded for: July 23) or any of the battlin' Buccos who would seize the East in the early '90s. These were the Pirates of Lee Mazzilli and Bill Almon and Slammin' Sammy Khalifa (how'd we miss him?). This was unknown manager Jim Leyland's first opportunity to show his stuff. Maybe it was the night he took up smoking.

Monday night, April 21 was cold enough to hold attendance to Shea's '86-lowest, a little over 10,000 — or more than 30,000 fewer than had been in the house the beautiful Sunday before. Leyland's Pirates, however, seemed prepared to give the Mets the kind of hot foot Chuck Tanner's band of merry pranksters had lit the September before when they won several contests they had no logical business winning. Pittsburgh was as dreadful a reason as any that the Mets hadn't caught the Cardinals in '85: Pittsburgh won 57 of 161 games, yet eight of eighteen from the Mets. No great surprise, then, that the Pitts carried a 4-2 lead into the bottom of the eighth. We were used to their uncooperative, bottom-feeding ways.

But 1985, for all its charms, was over. This was 1986. This was the year the Mets didn't screw around with last-place teams anymore. This was the year Ray Knight didn't bat .218, didn't look finished, didn't get booed like his middle name was Siskdeñotsui. With two out, Cecilio Guante walked George Foster. "Big deal," he must have thought. "I'm facing Ray Knight."

But facing Ray Knight was becoming a very big deal in 1986. In the season's ninth game, which he'd finish batting .391, the third baseman smacked his third home run of the season, or half as many as he had accumulated in all of '85. The game was tied at four. Pirates being Pirates, they scratched out a run off of Roger McDowell to take back the lead (Joe Orsulak singling in Mazzilli in what now seems like a cosmic gag but then wasn't terribly amusing). "Big deal," the '86 Mets must have thought. "We're facing the Pirates." Pat Clements came into pitch to no particular effect. Teufel would drive in Dykstra and Carter would plate Teufel and years before the term gained currency, the Mets would have celebrate their first walkoff win of the season.

We were now tied with Pittsburgh for second, one in back of the idle Cardinals.

The next night, Tuesday, April 22, it rained on Bob Ojeda, but having been beaten out of starts by precipitation in the preceding weeks, nothing but a man-eating (or Coleman-eating) tarpaulin was going to stop him from taking the ball for his new club. They played through the raindrops and Ojeda came out dry as a stone. We didn't know this fellow very well, having been enamored of our young guns Gooden, Darling, Fernandez and Aguilera. Ojeda was a few years older. He'd been around with Boston; who knew what went on up there? But tentative fifth starter Bob Ojeda immediately became go-to guy Bobby O against the Bucs, throwing seven frames of four-hit ball. The Mets scored in each of the first five innings, ensuring the lefty a decision.

Score? Mets 7 Pirates 1.

Homestand? 5-1.

Winning streak? Five.

Cardinals? Lost in Chicago in the ninth on a walk, a passed ball, a sac bunt, a fielder's choice gone awry, an intentional walk and a Ryne Sandberg sac fly. Whitey Herzog's team was beaten in a walkoff in the kind of inning Whitey's teams usually sprung on other poor suckers. Why, this sort of setback hadn't befallen them since the ninth inning of the sixth game of the previous fall's World Series in Kansas City when they were two tantalizing outs and one disputed call away from a championship that never came. The Cardinals lost Game Six and then lost Game Seven and now had lost two in a row for the first time since. The 3-2 Cubs' win forged a two-way tie atop the National League East between us and our tormentors of record.

The next day, Wednesday, April 23, while the Mets traveled to meet them in St. Louis, the Cards were again kicked to the Waveland Avenue curb, 6-0, dropping their record to 7-4. Taking this third consecutive loss for the Redbirds was Rick Ownbey, making the second-to-last start of his career. Rick Ownbey's first start had been four years earlier as a mildly touted Met. The next June he was traded with Neil Allen for Keith Hernandez. Ownbey's lifetime record would wind up 3-11, which, if you glance at it quickly, looks a lot like Keith Hernandez's batting average at any given Met moment in '84, '85 or '86. That trade sure seemed like a long time ago.

Same could be said for the Home Opener that supposedly revealed some fatal flaw in the Mets...the same Mets who were now 7-3 and all alone in first place.

The Mets of 1986 had been written off prematurely and swept the Phillies.

The Mets of 1986 faced a painful Pittsburgh reminder of their 1985 shortcomings and dispatched it and Pitt with flair, then ease.

The Mets of 1986 were now the 1986 Mets. They were hot, they held a lead and they were headed for Busch Stadium.

This was gonna get good.

We may be the last Metsian blog to plug this thing, and judging by our in-box, where five thoughtful e-mails alerting us to it sit, everybody else in the world knows about it already. But if you're still in the dark, check out what can only be called an unreal re-enactment of the greatest moment in all of human history.

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.