Before moving ahead to the Pirates, a look back -- and a question.

So we're done with the Yankees. Three games at Shea, three games at Yankee Stadium, huge gates everywhere. Same as it's been since Lance Johnson stepped in against Andy Pettitte on June 16, 1997. Same as it'll be as long as they play baseball in this town.

While I don't like interleague play, never have and likely never will, I've discovered something I dislike even more: Interleague play that doesn't settle anything, at least where the Yankees are concerned. Last night's public undressing of Alay Soler let the Yankees emerge with a split: three games for them, three games for us. Same as it was in 2005. (We won the series, 4-2, in 2004; 2003's Subway Series, starring such notables as Jason Phillips and Jeremy Griffiths, is not discussed in polite orange-and-blue company.)

Three games each. A tie! And ties, as a wise baseball man once said, are like kissing your sister.

So here's a modest proposal to avoid future sister-kissing: Give us one more Mets-Yankees tilt. Make the Subway Series a seven-game affair. And bring back the Mayor's Trophy.

We used to play a Mayor's Trophy Game in this town: It was a Yankees-Dodgers affair in the 1950s, though if you want to get super-historical it first reared its head with the City Series, a seven-game set played by the Giants and the Highlanders after both finished second in 1910. (The Giants won, 4-2: Take that, MF-ing Highlanders!) The Mets took over the Dodgers' role in 1963, and for years the Mayor's Trophy Game was the exhibition that wasn't an exhibition. George Steinbrenner hated it: The Yankees would bring up minor-leaguers for cover and still be threatened with torture and pain if they didn't win. The managers hated the distraction and fuss of it -- there's a famous tale about Billy Martin and Joe Torre exchanging secret messages negotiating who was going to end an extra-inning Mayor's Trophy Game with a squeeze -- just like they hate the distraction and fuss of intracity games that count. The players hated it too -- until they got out into the bowl of Shea or Yankee Stadium and saw the place had been packed with rabid fans. (And then they still sort of hated it.)

In other words, except for the minor-leaguers and the secret messages, it was pretty much the way it is now. Only then there had to be a winner, and that winner got a trophy. So what happened to the Mayor's Trophy? Was it in Giuliani's bunker? Did Steinbrenner melt it down to pay Howard Spira? Did we trade it to the Devil Rays for a painted plastic one that our on-staff trophy experts didn't notice had been Superglued? Whatever the case, can't we get it back or get a new one?

Play one more game, and subtract one game from a truly pointless interleague series. (Was there a Met or Blue Jay fan who really needed a third meeting this year?) Home-field advantage alternates, the way the World Series used to. Winner takes home the Mayor's Trophy, to be displayed proudly until the next go-round: The Yankees could do what they like with it (not limited to taking it and shoving it straight up their collective ass, to plagiarize Tanner Boyle). We could built it a nice shrine in the new stadium, and until then keep it on a dais made out of escalator parts and Pepsi Party Patrol t-shirts.

Yes, there's a baseball world outside of New York, and no, not every team has a natural rival. But there are a fair number of good or at least natural matchups that could support seven-game showdowns with attendant hype and some kind of shiny award: Cubs/White Sox, Giants/A's, Dodgers/Angels, Nationals/Orioles, Cardinals/Royals, Astros/Rangers (they already play for the Silver Boot, in fact), Brewers/Twins, Marlins/Devil Rays, Reds/Indians. Elsewhere the pickings are slimmer, but gin up something historical-minded out of Braves/Red Sox, then fill out the spread with Phillies/Blue Jays (heck, have the Phillies wear Blue Jays throwback unis) and Pirates/Tigers, and let the Padres and Rockies and D'Backs take turns against the Mariners. Those teams don't have perfect rivalries anyway (though there has been some agitation for Pirates/Indians instead of Reds/Indians), so what do they care if two three-game series become a two-gamer and a four-gamer?

We had a Mayor's Trophy back when the games didn't count. Now that they do, where has it gone?

At the risk of being irritatingly positive when raging negativity is richly deserved, we are, somehow, the foundation of the National League All-Star Team. Before 10:00 last night, that seemed really great.

Usually I feel like a chump for paying attention to the All-Star process. It seems like something I should have gotten over 30 years ago as should have baseball. Begun as sort of a midway attraction (in conjunction with the Chicago World's Fair of 1933), it's a gimmick that doesn't really have any place in the modern world. The NL and AL play different games but otherwise have gone MLB on us. You're a lifelong National Leaguer until you get a better offer. Thanks to the magic of satellite, cable and broadband, there's no novelty in the chance, for a midsummer's night, to get a load of the guy from the team in the other league whom we've only read about in the Daily Mirror or World-Telegram. It's just more reality-show programming, and its defining stunt — home field advantage for the championship round three months later — isn't particularly appreciated by aficionados.

Yet when ESPN unveiled the starting lineups as voted by Us The Fans and four of eight spots in the National League went to Mets, I was bursting with the pride of the validated. Like I need total strangers to tell me David Wright, Jose Reyes, Paul Lo Duca and Carlos Beltran are the best at their positions.

I do. I want it, anyway. It never happens. Never. I could go down the litany of Julys when we were so screwed over by All-Star politics, when anti-New York bias and a surge in St. Louis or Cincinnati or some other rube outpost cost some deserving Met his start or slot. I'm still annoyed that Walt Alston didn't pick Del Unser in 1975 and Bobby Cox skipped John Olerud in 1997 and Bruce Bochy left out Robin Ventura in 1999 and I still wonder "what part of exhibition game don't you people get?" as regards the failure to ever elect Rey Ordoñez, the shortstop capable of putting on the greatest fielding exhibition in the history of ground balls into the hole.

It was all evidence, I was convinced, of the worldwide anti-Met conspiracy. How could guys for whom we rooted, whom we told each other were awesome...how could those guys not be certified stars? Felix Millan never made the All-Star team as a Met. Rusty Staub never made the All-Star team as a Met. But for a few plate appearances short of qualifying, Lenny Dykstra would have been leading the NL in batting at the mid-point in 1986 but didn't make the All-Star team. Even in Nineteen Frigging Eighty Six we couldn't get everybody who should have been picked!

This year, there is no anti-Met conspiracy, save perhaps for one aimed at lulling us into complacency, but I'll sit on that theory until another day. This year we got ours. Wright is the best third baseman around and he was recognized. Nobody changes a game as soon as it starts as does Reyes and somebody besides us noticed. Nobody's as whisper-quiet wonderful as Carlos B. and his soft-speak/big-stick policy paid off. I imagine somebody has better numbers from behind the plate than Paul Lo Duca, but as demonstrated last night when he told A-Rod what to do with his post-grand slam heavy-petting display, is there anybody else right now who defines Catcher as he does?

It was with familial warmth and a silly amount of pride that I greeted the news of their election. Eight spots. Four Mets. Wow.

Then they announce the pitchers and we get two more! Glavine probably won't throw and we're unfortunately hip to why Pedro probably won't go (this year I won't argue with his recusal), but both are extraordinarily deserving and not just as lifetime-achievement recipients. Shoot, we even got Billy Wagner on the ballot as a you-make-the-call finalist for the last berth. I assume he's there on reputation and because the NL is sending mostly unproven/unimpressive closers, but you've really arrived when they start considering guys from your team who don't particularly deserve consideration.

Six All-Stars with a one-in-five shot at a seventh. Carlos Delgado's on pace for 40-100 and didn't emerge from the competitive first base mélange, yet there's no gripe from this quarter. In how many seasons would have Delgado's output made him the sole Met rep and in how many of those years would his selection been singled out as "oh, they had to take a Met, which meant leaving out so many worthy candidates"?

It's great to have a team full of All-Stars. If they can get back to playing like their private jets aren't fueled for a fifth-inning trip to the ESPYs, that will be even better. For the next eight games, it really counts.