Phew. Or whew. Or new.

I'll definitely take new. There was too much old in the atmosphere, and I'm not talking about Ralph Kiner in the booth or Jimmy Carter in the stands or Julio Franco in a beautiful doff of the helmet. Them I like. Everything else I feared.

Whether it was the presence of Roger McDowell and Terry Pendleton in the same dugout or the creaky continuation of Brian Jordan as a Major League player or the unwarranted return of Lawrence Chipstein Jones or just about every late loss in that hot tub of horror engrained deep in my gray matter, I could barely function in the bottom of the ninth. It begged to be lost. It cried to be lost. It was bound to be lost.

Only the Braves in Turner Field could make a three-run deficit seem like a tie. Only the Atlantans could find a way to cancel insurance runs just by coming to bat. Only the 11-for-11 National League East champions could make Billy Wagner look like Braden Looper look like Armando Benitez look John Franco look like a cheap watch.

It was only a matter of time before this one got away. Renteria never hits Wagner, Cohen said. So he gets a hit. Chipstein, he of the two-run homer off Pedro (he never hits him either), strikes out, but there's the more dangerous Jones and Dangerous Jones made his elbow a part of it all; HBP, two on. Some nonentity strikes out but then Jeff Francoeur relives his rookie glory. Somehow Renteria doesn't score on the sophomore's hit. It's the bases loaded and it's Billy Wagner showing this uncomfortable habit of not being quite what we paid for and who is he facing?

Todd Pratt.

Forget Arizona and 1999. Don't forget it, of course, but I didn't think it was relevant. It's not like Todd Pratt could touch Wags last week, but then Gary had to go and remind us that Tank caught Billy for the past two years. I've always assumed catchers who face their old pitchers should be able to own them. Then I remembered that Todd Pratt, for his many, many impressive attributes, isn't really much of a hitter. Never was and he sure isn't now. And Billy Wagner, even a Billy Wagner who is more of a Mad Hatters Tea Cup Ride than a monorail, is never going to be mistaken for Matt Mantei.

Like that matters to the man wearing a Braves uniform in Turner Field against the Mets.

But it wasn't Looper and 2005. It wasn't Benitez and 2001. It wasn't Franco and 1998. It wasn't even Jolly Roger getting taken deep by Terrible Terry in 1987 when everything looked so good. It's when everything looks so good that we're in trouble. I'm back in Shea in my mind to the night the magical comeback was close but so gone 19 Septembers ago. And I'm back at Shea in 2001 when Brian Jordan was Andruw Jones (though Andruw Jones was pretty much Andruw Jones then, too) and he was squashing our spirited surge. I'm in whichever ballpark Franco is coughing up a thousand deaths by nicks and cuts and mixed metaphors. And mostly I'm in Turner Field watching Braden Looper turn to goo a year ago.

Except it isn't last year anymore. It really isn't. It isn't any of those years when Braves are giants and Mets are mutts and Turner Field swallows us alive. This isn't one of those years when we're gasping and grasping and trying to move up. We can't move up because we're already on top. All we can do is bring the hammer down.

And we do. Billy Wagner strikes out Todd Pratt on three pitches.

Game over, you tomahawk-chopping dilettantes. Pedro beats Smoltz again. President Carter gets dragged under by a changing tide again. (Sorry, sir, we have to part ways when it comes to that cap you were wearing. But didja catch the size of that footlong Rosalynn was working on? It oughta be suspended for ingesting performance-enhancing substances, not Iriki). David Wright was David Wright for the first time in a little while and Kaz Matsui was Edgardo Alfonzo for the first time in his life and Paul Lo Duca was taking no guff and as much as we need Carlos Beltran back, I sure like what Endy Chavez is doing. Sanchez was perfect and Reyes was clutch and Carlos Delgado made the most productive out of the year.

But I still couldn't breathe fluidly until the bottom of the ninth was history. This is not an outfit against whom you hatch a single chicken ahead of time. This is the bunch that has made an ASS out of U and ME more times than I am able to count. This was the Braves in Turner Field.

Was.

Mets win 5-2, lead the East by six. It doesn't mean a whole lot when there's another game Saturday night, but it means everything right now.

The latest issue of Baseball America features the Opening Day rosters for every club (major and minor-league) that began play in April, making it a perfect resource for tracking down those who have strayed from the Met fold.

I'm not talking so much about the big leagues: We've accepted that Todd Pratt is a Brave, noticed that Danny Graves is an Indian, shook our heads to imagine Ty Wigginton as a Devil Ray and grimaced (mildly) to find Kelly Stinnett a Yankee. (Though I'd missed that Roberto Petagine is a Mariner and think there's something ridiculous about Jason Phillips as a Blue Jay.) What really interests me is running a finger down the agate type and finding familiar names on AAA rosters, or even AA squads -- old vets still holding on, fourth outfielders who came in fifth, drinkers of cups of coffee hoping for a refill, and so on. Ex-Mets all, still playing ball, still waiting for one more chance. (Which they may not get: Witness the quietly tragic career of Blaine Beatty.)

Let's call the roll, with a little help from Ultimate Mets Database.

Esix Snead, prover of the truism that you can't steal first base and owner of one unexpected, excellent home run, now toils for the Ottawa Lynx, earning a Baltimore Orioles paycheck.

Matt Ginter, whose departure paved the way for the arrival of Kaz Ishii, is now a Pawtucket Red Sock.

Hideo Nomo yet lives, toiling for the Charlotte Knights in the White Sox' organization. And one of his teammates is Jorge Velandia.

Brian Buchanan, one of the more-pointless Met pickups of recent years, is still around, playing for the Louisville Bats and dreaming of being a Cincinnati Red. (Which is somehow a nice dream so far this year.)

Brace yourself for this one: Someone is paying Felix Heredia. Fortunately, it's the Cleveland Indians, who assigned him to the Buffalo Bisons.

Jaime Cerda, who broke in as an unlikely Yankee slayer, is now getting used to breaking stuff that doesn't break as a Colorado Springs Sky Sock. Send him $5 and maybe he'll drill teammate J.D. Closser during BP.

This one is not a typo: Bobby M. Jones is in Double-A, pitching for the Erie Seawolves. That's the Tigers' system. And that's incredible.

Sure, the Florida Marlins have a bunch of our young players. But they also have some not-so-young ex-Mets: Momentary third-string catcher Tom Wilson, anonymous outfielder Mark Little and Mike Kinkade, he of the not-proud-to-a-fault home-run sprints, are all at AAA. (For some reason the Marlins' AAA team is now the Albuquerque Isotopes. That's convenient.)

Joe McEwing's grit and guts and other intangibles are now on display in east Texas: Super Joe is making his latest stopover on the way to a long career as a beloved coach and manager with the Round Rock Express, the Astros' AAA squad.

The Mets once took a gamble on speedy Jeff Duncan. Now it's the Dodgers' turn: He's a Las Vegas Sun. Craig Brazell, meanwhile, is back in AA. Ouch. I doubt that being told that the Jacksonville Suns have a link to Met history would be much comfort.

Jason Tyner is now a Rochester Red Wing. The Red Wings are now the Twins' AAA team, which is ludicrous. Shouldn't they be renamed the Triplets or something?

You'd think the Yankees had a crush on us: The Columbus Clippers' roster includes pot-averse Mark Corey, human action figure Scott Erickson and first-Cyclone-in-the-Show Danny Garcia.

Matt Watson, who was only a Cyclone because we were cheating and only a Met because we were desperate, is a Sacramento River Cat (that's the Athletics' AAA team), alongside Moneyball star Jeremy Brown.

Watch out, Clippers! Here come the Indianapolis Indians, whose roster of proto-Pirates includes C.J. Nitkowski, Scott Strickland and Raul Gonzalez -- yeah, that Raul Gonzalez. And clinging to baseball life with the AA Altoona Curve is Met-for-a-minute Jason Roach.

Stuck behind some fella named Pujols on the Cardinals' depth chart is Memphis Redbird Brian Daubach. He's now a teammate of Prentice Redman, whose extended family hates us twice as much as they used to.

Whatever happened to Ricky Gutierrez? He's a Portland Beaver, which means he's already tired of opposing fans' funny comments. One of his teammates in Portland is the plucky, ultimately luckless Eric Valent.

Sticking with the Northwest, Kevin Appier apparently isn't done: He's listed as a member of the 2006 Tacoma Rainiers. Wonder if their scoreboard displays an INSANE APE graphic when he strikes somebody out.

We don't have James Baldwin to kick around anymore, but International League hitters do: He's a member of the Syracuse Skychiefs, Toronto's AAA team.

Alberto Castillo remains in the game, donning the tools of ignorance for the New Orleans Zephyrs, the Nationals' AAA club. I hope he still daydreams about beating the Phillies late one 80-degree afternoon in March, because we were there and it was nice. Laissez les bons temps roulez, Bambi!

Oh, and Jose Valentin is now toiling for the Single-A Lake Elsinore...oh, wait. No, he's right where we left him. Rats.

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.

On the 17th day, they rested.

After sweeping three straight series, vanquishing their archrivals, taking command of their division by five games, overshadowing all of baseball, tying the franchise record of eleven consecutive wins and piling up a record of 13-3, the Mets did something on May 1 that they hadn't done since April 14.

They lost.

It was the finale of a three-game set in Atlanta. They romped (10-5, 8-1) in the first two at Fulton County Stadium following their march through Missouri, but dang it if Rick Aguilera couldn't maintain absolute invincibility. The Braves slapped him around for six runs in 3-1/3 innings. Zane Smith threw a complete game five-hitter. Hey! What's this red stuff coming out of my skin from where it got cut?

Before I had a chance to digest the rumor that all good things must come to an end, the Mets indicated that they would never stop. Having dropped to an unsightly 13-4, they began a new streak. For anyone who thought the surge that pulled them out of the 2-3 doldrums was the aberration, the next week and change reinforced what the rest of us knew:

That this was the year.

Retellings of the 1986 regular season usually focus on the April 24-27 crush of the Cardinals and then pause briefly at a few bizarre games that contain novelty appeal — unorthodox double plays, rollicking brawls, pitchers playing right and catchers playing third — until the division is clinched and the playoffs roll around. As a storyline, it works for me, but it's worth reliving what happened after the Mets actually l-l-l-l...lost a baseball game.

They won seven more. Just like that. I mean really just like that. (Snap your fingers to reinforce the point.) There was no doubt. They not only didn't lose any of those seven games, they didn't trail in any of them except for a span of nine outs in the middle of the sixth game. But they won that one too, so we'll let it slide.

They won 8-7, 4-1 and 7-2 at Cincy, then came home to beat Houston 4-0 and 3-2 and the Reds 2-1 and 5-1. The starting pitcher collected the win in each game. The cumulative record of Gooden, Darling, Fernandez and Ojeda would reach 17-0. Orosco and McDowell had recorded nine saves already, five during Streak II. In those seven wins, Davey Johnson relied on only those six pitchers to face every batter the Reds and Astros sent up minus two (Randy Niemann gave up an RBI single to Dave Parker and walked Eddie Milner in Cincinnati).

Darryl had a two-homer, three-RBI day at Riverfront but otherwise, nobody drove in more than two runs in any one game. The team hit seven out in seven games — not bad, but not an onslaught. Keith had two three-hit games, Ray Knight had one and Wally Backman collected four hits in one of the Reds games, but no offensive stampede was necessary. The Mets were efficient-plus. They did enough to win and won enough to eliminate doubt and most of the National League East from contention.

The seventh win in the streak capped an 18-1 stretch. Before their next loss, they were 20-4 overall. Only Montreal's mere-mortal record of 16-10 kept them within shouting distance of us in first place, five back. Nobody else was closer than nine out.

It was so over. We thought it would be our year and now we had proof. If it wasn't the 35-5 Detroit start of 1984 that was still fresh in memory, it was convincing enough. Even when Pete Rose lined that unfortunate single off Tim Teufel's glove on Mother's Day and three runs scored and Doc began to morph into Dwight and we fell to 20-5, I didn't panic. Even when that became the first of five losses in seven games, I didn't fret. Even when the Expos beat the Giants on Saturday afternoon May 24 to pull within an uncomfortable 2-1/2 games of the lead, I didn't worry. OK, maybe just a smidge. But the Mets beat the Padres that night in San Diego, kicking off a 19-5 span that culminated in a presumably impenetrable 44-16 mark.

After 60 games, we led the N.L. East by 11-1/2. After 55 games, the back page of Newsday captured the essence of the age, reporting June 11's rather routine 5-3 conquest of the Phillies with a headline I cut out and taped to the back of an envelope I sent to my Met-hating friend Kathy in Florida:

Ho-Hum, Another Win

Talk about a sign of the times. It was a perfect prelude to Banner Day on June 15, a Father's Day doubleheader against the Pirates which we entered with a 10-game lead — the first time any Mets team had led the field by double-digits. I remember watching the placard parade go on and on for what seemed like hours. One bedsheet after another proclaimed our supremacy and for once, none of them seemed delusional. Tim McCarver and Steve Zabriskie just kept chuckling at the championship sentiments, correcting none of them. We were as good as we painted we were. We won the first game of that Banner Day doubleheader. We won the second game. We won every game.

Then we went to Olympic Stadium on Monday June 16 for, at last, our first meeting with the second-place Expos. Surely we clinched the gold with a 4-1, 10-inning victory. That was the 60th game of the year, the one that lifted us to 44-16, 11-1/2 up. How good were we? Doug Sisk earned his first W since September 8, 1985. The Expos should have been administered last rites right then.

Shockingly, Montreal was not clinically dead yet. They won the next two against us and we slipped into another 2-5 rut, the last two losses coming to the Expos at Shea. That meant Montreal, still breathing, had our number, at least temporarily. They were eight behind, having picked up 3-1/2 games in a little over a week. Was it even possible that this could be a race? And if it was a race, was it even possible that it could tighten? And if it could tighten, might it be possible...

It didn't seem practical or plausible to ask any further questions about what was possible, but when the Mets and Expos faced off on Wednesday afternoon June 25 at Shea, there was the slightest bit of tension in the air. Gary Thorne read a promotional message at the beginning of the broadcast reminding listeners that the 1986 Mets were Baseball Like It Oughta Be. Bob Murphy, the most optimistic man in America, joked that it was time for some baseball like it used to be, like back in April and May. Thorne laughed. I didn't. Ohmigod, even Murph thinks the worst could happen.

As the Expos carried a 2-0 lead to the bottom of the fourth, I did something I'm certain I hadn't done in earnest since the 2-3 start. I perspired. Fans of teams buried in fifth place sweat. Fans of teams with eight-game leads perspire. The heat wasn't really on, but I was thinking that if we lost, the lead would be down to seven. Seven is close to five. If we win, the lead is back to nine. Nine is close to ten. Ten is better than five.

And with that unassailable calculation complete, the Mets scored four times in the fourth. That was that. The Mets won 5-2. "They were looking at picking up three games and they ended up picking up one," Davey Johnson said. "That's got to deflate them a little bit." In the visitors clubhouse, Expos shortstop Hubie Brooks actually admitted that seven was close to five but nine was close to ten. Hubie, like me, had hung around the Mets for far too long. Now he, unlike me, hung his head in despair.

Business was taken care of. The top line of the division was 100% safe and secure. The daytime defeat of the Expos started us on an eight-game winning streak that ran through the Fourth of July. We saluted America by building a 12-1/2 game gap over our Canadian competitor. Except to linger in awe, there would be no reason to track the standings until September.

Programming note: SNY's Mets Weekly is scheduled to feature Team FAFIF holding forth on any number of Mets issues this weekend. Tune in and see us there if you can't get enough of us here.

No, they didn't place cameras behind our respective bathroom mirrors while we muttered to ourselves after the 14-inning loss to San Diego (though that would make for quite the reality show). We taped something with them the other day and they say they'll use it unless they have to cut away to the Benny Ayala Windsurfing Pro-Am, live from Waikiki.

Not that we care about being on TV or anything, but Mets Weekly airs at 12:30 pm Saturday; 6:30 pm Saturday; 12:30 am Sunday; 7:00 pm Sunday; 11:30 pm Sunday and intermittently throughout the week. To be on the safe side, just leave your set on SNY, plant yourself on your couch and gaze intently.

I do that most days.