Until they start weighting the games played in September heavier than they do the games played in April, tonight begins a very big series against the Braves. Don't let anyone tell you different.

It's not too early to take this three-game set very seriously. It's the Mets and the Braves and no Mets fan needs an explanation of all that can, should or might entail.

The Braves have been legitimately on my mind from the first weekend of the season when I noticed them losing in San Francisco. (Usually they're in my head a lot sooner, whether or not there was any point to them being there.) We were winning and it was hard to not want every possible positive milestone to fall our way. We've already got the best record we've ever had after eleven games. We've already won our first four series, a franchise first. We've already established that we lead every baseball team in the world.

Including the Braves by four games. And that's what I really wanted.

It's not too early to do what I was doing around 4 o'clock yesterday: flipping frantically between the Mets in the bottom of the eighth and the Braves in the bottom of the ninth.

Pitch to Delgado...
Home Depot commercial...
Pitch to Delgado...
Piggly Wiggly commercial...
Pitch to Delgado...
Goody's Headache Powder commercial...
Pitch to Delgado...
Droopy fannypackers filing out of Turner Field and vocal confirmation that — yes! — they were leaving after a Braves' loss...
Delgado circling the bases to massive cheers.

First reaction:
Delgado hit a home run and I missed his swing?
Damn!

Quickly revised take on the situation:
The runs count and the Mets are going to replenish their margin over Atlanta and they'll probably show a replay or ten.
ALL RIGHT!

I discovered the Braves lost and returned to find the Mets had just gained three valuable insurance runs during the seconds that I was away. This was the baseball equivalent of Mia Wallace rhetorically asking Vincent Vega at Jackrabbit Slim's, "Don't you love it when you go to the bathroom and you come back to find your food waiting for you?"

No fiction: The last time we held a four-game lead over Atlanta heading into a series with Atlanta was...actually, it's never happened. It has literally never happened. The Mets and Braves weren't in the same standings from 1969 through 1993. We weren't better than them between '66 (when they flew south from Milwaukee) and '68, and I know for certain we haven't edged them for more than a moment since '94. Hell, even when we swept them in the first NLCS, it was only by three games.

This is so unprecedented that I don't know if you call this kind of Mets margin a Big Mac, Le Big Mac or a Royale with Cheese. But I do know there is a whopper of an opportunity at hand.

I heard yesterday that a win tonight would give us the fastest five-game lead in baseball history. The '81 Athletics of Shooty Babitt — I've always loved that name — sprinted five up on the White Sox after 13 games. They were in first place when the strike came, good enough to stamp their ticket into that year's juryrigged playoffs. But they were only 1-1/2 ahead on June 11, meaning that if there hadn't been a strike in 1981, who knows what would have become of them?

Those A's are immaterial to us except to say that breaking their fastest-five-game-lead mark tonight won't mean a whole lot in the long term.

But it would be awfully nice.

As the constant reader knows, we don't endorse any looking ahead around here. That's just asking for problems. But I don't think it will screw with the cosmic batting order to spell out the four things that could happen between now and late Wednesday afternoon.

We could win all three and be seven games ahead of the Braves.

We could win two of three and be five games ahead of the Braves.

We could win one of three and be three games ahead of the Braves.

We could win none of three and be one game ahead of the Braves.

You can figure out how to rank these four scenarios in terms of idealness to the home team (no choice has been as clear-cut since "The Lady or the Tiger"), but suffice it to say that none of them irretrievably buries us and none of them permanently elevates us. These games are important because they are the games we play this week and, of course, because they are games we play against the team that has repeatedly won the title we seek. That team has proven itself quite capable of defending that title over and over and over. I've no reason to believe they have lost that capability.

Neither the world nor the season ends between now and late Wednesday afternoon no matter what happens. Both entities do, however, have a chance to become exponentially nicer places in which to watch Mets baseball.

That's big, even in April.

As Brian Bannister continued to battle the Brewers and himself today, en route to a rather hard-fought, exhausting win, I was struck by an odd, unwelcome thought: Why am I not giving him the Zambrano treatment?

This was B.B.'s line today: 5 IP, 6 H, 1 ER, 5 BB, 4 K, 112 pitches, 63 for strikes.
This was V.Z. last week: 5 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 4 BB, 3 K, 87 pitches, 47 for strikes.

And yet when Bannister got in jam after self-created jam, I was urging him to bear down, to focus, that he had eight guys behind him, all that usual rah-rah shouted-at-the-TV stuff. When Victor's being Victor, the best I can muster is generally an exasperated, "Come on, Victor," delivered in the tone usually reserved for dogs that you've decided just aren't ever going to be housebroken.

But is that fair?

Victor, of course, was traded for Scott Kazmir, who Met fans will always assume would have been the next Franchise if left to blossom in Queens. Does that play a role? Or is it something worse? For a time this afternoon, I wrestled with this thought: Is Bannister, with his big-league pedigree and cerebral interviews, getting a break from me that I won't give Zambrano -- a Venezuelan whose native language isn't my own? Or is that just the years of liberal-arts brainwashing finally leaving some trace in my psyche?

I decided that I was innocent, that there really are a host of reasons to grade Bannister on a curve. First and most obviously, his stats reflect the grand total of three starts, while Zambrano is approaching his 100th career start. Bannister seems to have a plan out there, taking a page from Al Leiter in preferring to walk a guy and work on the next hitter than risk a ball up the gap. (Granted, the execution of that particular plan can be excruciating to watch, but it is a plan.) I don't get the impression that Zambrano ever has a plan beyond surviving the next pitch. Bannister has serviceable stuff around a good curve, but his biggest asset is having the guts of a burglar. Zambrano's stuff is much, much better: He throws harder and can contrast his fastball with a good change and that amazing slider. But he doesn't seem to have any idea how good he is -- whenever he gets in trouble, he nibbles like an ancient junkballer, his mechanics go to hell, he leaves his defense flat-footed, and then you have to endure constant pats on the rump and visits from the pitching coach. After which he still exits early and tires out the bullpen.

I don't have any doubt Zambrano cares: Heck, as a new Met he cried in the clubhouse in Colorado after it became clear he was hurt and the Kazmir trade would look like a short-term disaster. But his body language isn't exactly heartening to see, while Bannister's keeps you believing. When Bannister's facing the bases loaded (even if it's his fault) the expression on his face is that of a bright young student facing a difficult but interesting math problem. Zambrano, on the other hand, looks like he has the wolf by the ears and doesn't know what the hell to do next. Is that the kind of semi-phrenology old scouts who don't believe in numbers trade in? Maybe. But it's sure hard to get past.

OK. I absolve myself of bias -- beyond the bias of having had my hand pressed onto the hot Victor stove too many times. Bannister's young and seems determined to improve; Zambrano's not so young and can't seem to get out of his own way. Though the role of youth in all this should serve as a warning for Bannister: A younger Victor would have been cheered, too.