I spent yesterday fuming that there was no baseball, and I was not to be comforted by sensible talk that these days teams build insurance for Opening Day into the schedule. Insurance, feh: After 180-odd off-days, it seemed cruel to the point of criminality to instantly hit us with another one. And then this morning New York City was turned into a mutant snow globe, with flakes the size of hanging sliders swirling outside the windows of my office building, and even though I knew that April snowstorms almost never stick, I still fought down panic: There had to be a game tonight. There had to be.

And so there was. Goody.

Once upon a time tonight, there was some marvelous baseball played by men wearing orange and blue and white and black and two-toned helmets with Ford Taurusian swoops and little fish gills. In fact, as Brian Bannister hit the pinch-yourself "12 men to go" point, I found myself wondering at the strange storyline unfolding: After nearly half a century of giving up a hit each and every night, it would be just like the Mets to finally enter the no-hit column thanks to a kid pitcher's major-league debut. Then, compounding my insanity, I decided that no, it would be just like the Mets to finally enter the no-hit column with a combined no-no, leaving us grumbling that the jinx wasn't really broken, that all Nolan Ryan had to do was rename his Clubhouse of Curses. Combined no-hitters are lamely spectacular and spectacularly lame -- they're like having the bus to the Promised Land break down in a mildly more upscale suburb than yours, where you take up residence in a slightly bigger house and find out that gosh, the property taxes here sure are high.

Having managed to look a gift horse in the mouth before the nag was even delivered, let alone unwrapped, I of course watched the usual answer emerge to that question forever to be asked by the Met faithful: "Why is tonight exactly like all other nights?" Bannister gave up a hit. Then he gave up a home run. Then he sat in the dugout as Duaner Sanchez and Aaron Heilman acquitted themselves ably, giving way to Billy Wagner. Who promptly gave up an enormous home run to Ryan Zimmerman, then yielded to Jorge Julio, who convinced no one that he is not, in fact, merely Armando Benitez in a half-assed disguise. By the time it was mercifully over, Floyd and Jana Bannister hadn't been on TV in a good hour or so.

Perspective. It's one game at a time of year when you're still happy just to have a game to watch. With conditions what they were, every pitcher who toed the rubber deserved a mulligan -- Bannister, Wagner, Julio, Patterson, Rauch, Cordero and Rodriguez all saw their command evaporate at various times in the cold. That was Ryan Zimmerman's first home run and the first time he's beaten us, but he's going to be the kind of player who'll hit a lot more of them, and beat us a fair number of times over the next decade or two.

And once upon a time, some very good things happened in this game. Bannister showed he's got a truckload of guts -- I'm eager to see what he can do when he can actually feel the ball. Jose Reyes had not one but two terrific at-bats that Rickey Henderson must have appreciated. Anderson Hernandez made up for whatever lumber deficiencies he may have with a catch that looked like a stuntman should have been involved. And Carlos Delgado launched a home run that I feared might knock SNY off the air again.

Good things. But by the time this one was over, they sure seemed like they happened an awfully long time ago.

On at least one meaningful count, I am not 100% well for the baseball season because I have not fully recovered the rhythms of the night. Yankees and Braves each finished their West Coast games long after I conked out on the couch. There was the satisfaction of snapping on WINS early this morning and learning both had been defeated, but I felt as if I'd lost valuable hours of gloating over their respective if temporary humblings. As Tony Soprano said about life Sunday night as he left the hospital, every new Yankee and Brave loss is a gift.

Though we are alone in first place (in the East and in the city), I also don't yet have the rhythms of rooting-against down pat. Sure I know who I want to lose, but I can't quite get it up to follow the necessary action and see it through. A couple of seconds of YES were a couple more than I could take (though I can't wait for another episode of Yankees BP — it comes on right after Yankees FU), while a glimpse of the Dodger-Brave game threatened more responsibility than I was willing to bear on April 4.

Die Yankees. Die Braves. But do it on your own time. I'll join your demise already in progress.

Wouldn't have been trawling for baseball had the Mets not left a winter-sized hole in their schedule on the second day of the new year, but that's regrettably necessary thinking. "Protecting the Opener," Howie Rose calls it. "In case shit," Chris Rock calls it (what he calls insurance, anyway). Of course I'm trying to imagine a scenario in which the Mets would turn away a crowd of 54,371 people holding bought-and-paid-for tickets.

It was a record crowd! It's almost always a record crowd! When did Shea start sprouting extra seats? And when did Opening Day, even the Home Opener, become an event of events attendancewise? I found two references made in the 'sphere to Opening Day 1975, which tickled me since it kicked off one of my favorite years. I was in sixth grade. Mr. Schneider turned the first inning on in class, and I raced home to watch the remainder to completion, skipping Hebrew School in the process (my Hebrew's for bupkis, but I speak fluent Del Unser). I'll bet a lot 12-year-olds and children of all ages were watching on Channel 9 because there were only 18,527 on hand.

This was more the norm than you'd imagine for Mets openers in the '70s, even in 1975 when there was a similar buzz about the reconstituted Mets being locked and loaded and when we still owned New York. The year before, the 1973 pennant running up the flagpole and all, drew 17,154. 1970, post-'69, didn't break 42,000. Attendance wouldn't top 30,000 again at a Shea Opener until 1982, when it edged past 40,000. Since then (which marked the debut of DiamondVision and George Foster, at least one of which might have affected flight patterns into and out of LaGuardia as the season ensued), the numbers have been what we're used to. But before then? It's a bit of a mystery to me. The Yankees, if you're wondering, did no better during the '60s and '70s until Yankee Stadium II opened in '76. Perhaps Opening Day, for all its romance, wasn't as big a deal in New York as it was in smaller Cincy and diminutive Detroit.

That's all behind us now. Opening Day is jam-packed and when the Mets win, people act so happy you'd think they lost.

I don't know if I have my rhythms in sync where reactions are concerned, either. I try to strike a balance between the Polyanna, my team right or wrong view and the sky is falling, anvils are dropping, we are doomed crowd. Particularly when I haven't had enough sleep (a couch conkout is never restful), neither of them is appealing.

Sorting through the litany I've picked up on here and there from both extremes since the last out Monday:

• The Mets didn't look good winning. Sure as hell beats looking great losing. When they issue style points, I'll worry. Until then, it's 1-0 with 161 chances to improve on the more worrisome facets of Monday's performance.

• Things went our way that we didn't deserve. What's the difference between selling a drop as a tag and injecting your ass full of hormones? I don't know, but the first one is fully acceptable, no matter our innate Met guilt at accepting it.

• There was no production from the Carloses. Good thing they have teammates who produced. Most days will feature some guys doing good things, others not. It's called a team for a reason.

• Booooooooo! It's stupid and self-defeating enough to get on Beltran, but Jorge Julio? He's what — 0-0, 0.00, 0.0 IP? Unless that was Juuuuuuuuulio, in which case never mind. But that doesn't explain Beltran. Does Carlos Beltran look like the kind of guy who's going to get all fired up if you abuse him? And if he doesn't, will you feel better that you were prescient enough to show your displeasure with his Opening Day ohfer come October when you're home watching others compete on TV? Then will it occur to you, gee, maybe I shouldn't have contributed to the mental breakdown of one of our most important regulars, but I sure showed some guy who makes a lot of money how displeased I was with him six months ago?

• Delgado wasn't seen during "God Bless America". As long as he wasn't on the clubhouse phone giving away troop positions to the enemy (or signals to Frank Robinson), his whereabouts for those 75 or so seconds are none of my concern.

• Billy Wagner's song is the same as Marian... Sorry, I can't get through this sentence without breaking up into fits of hysterical laughter. It's pretty obvious, however, that the Yankees co-opted the whole idea of not winning the World Series after they saw us do it 2000 and you don't hear us complaining. Is not winning the World Series a Mets thing because we've been doing it longer or is it a Yankees thing because they seem to have trademarked it on a bigger stage more recently? Either way, it's made for a rousing chorus of Enter Also-Ran.

• This looks like the best-balanced lineup since 1986. The memory hole is a despicable place. Don't tell me 1999 — Rickey-Fonzie-Oly-Mike-Robin generating tons of runs — has tumbled down there already.

• Traffic was beyond the usual Opening Day horrible. Yeah, that'll happen when 54,370 of your close, personal friends join you at the game. Too bad there's not a mass transit line or two that run parallel to the ballpark.

• SNY struck out not looking. Hard to argue on behalf of a network that takes off the third inning; they would have helped their cause had they not kept running promos telling us how amazing (if not Amazin') they are while the contest they were supposed to be airing went on without them. A baseball telecast is not a Mars probe — just show us the whole game and don't insult our intelligence (not employing Fran Healy remains an excellent start) and you'll be fine. Subcomplaint that there wasn't enough post-game coverage is another growing-pains symptom. If you can remember the early WFAN, you'll recall it sounded more concerned with adhering to a format than reflecting the mission at hand. Now the FAN is an indispensable part of the New York sportscape, except between 1:00 and 6:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, when it's dumber than dirt and proud of it. (All apologies to dirt, which isn't dumb let alone pretentious enough to whine that "Yankee fans will have an issue" with which reliever uses which METallica song.)

No complaints for KingmanFan who alertly notes the strong shoutout in this week's Sopranos to his namesake. For those of you not immersed, Tony, Paulie Walnuts, the now-late Dick Barone and his then-tiny son Jason all attended the 1981 Home Opener.

That's at least the sixth Mets reference, direct or implied, that I can remember in six seasons of paying close attention. Previously on the The Sopranos...

• Tony (Tony Uncle Johnny) and cousin Tony (Tony Uncle Al) watch a Mets game on television (well before Tony Uncle Johnny takes out Tony Uncle Al, and not to the ballgame).

• Junior and Livia plot against Tony, with Junior arguing, "Yeah, and I'm playing shortstop for the Mets."

• A.J. objects to being told by Grandpa Hugh that you're not Italian if you don't eat your vegetables: "Mike Piazza eats nothing but artichokes? I mean, that's dicked up."

• Svetlana tells Tony that her boyfriend Bill is not around because he is in Port St. Lucie "watching his Mets".

• Tony and Johnny Sack rendezvous in a deserted Shea parking lot, Tony joking that they could be "getting in line early for Opening Day."

Which is certainly one way to get around the traffic, even if you're coming from Jersey.

The mention in this week's episode filled my heart since it would have had to have taken place in 1981 ("the year Kingman was back from the Cubs"), meaning it was the makeup of the rainout Joel and I experienced in high school. There's your reason they don't schedule anything the day after the Home Opener, as lame as it is to go without so soon after one stinkin' game.

Paid attendance for the 1981 Home Opener: 15,205. I doubt anybody needed Barone Sanitation-type connections to get a box seat.

Finally, in a dream sequence worthy of comatose Tony, I dreamt last night, sleeping with the television on, that I was dining in a Manhattan deli owned by Jon Stewart. Though I complained to him about the food and the service, he delighted in telling me the best part about running a restaurant is that he doesn't have to let Mike DeJean hit a double off the wall. "I just tell him to get out," Jon said.

Good policy.

How did the New York Giants do in their opener Monday at the Polo Grounds? According to Gotham Baseball, things were quiet...again.