If we've been waiting all winter yet have to wait a little longer, then Opening Day must be rushing close on the heels of Flashback Friday at Faith and Fear in Flushing.

Life, despite what Thomas Boswell says, does not begin on Opening Day. But it does peak then.

Is there any day better than Opening Day? Like what? Your birthday? On your birthday, you just get older. On Opening Day, we all get younger.

Opening Day is better than Christmas and Chanukah and Kwanzaa all rolled into one. Whatever their merits, they each occur in December, when it’s nasty outside. Opening Day might carry the chill of late winter, but it’s really early spring — the glass is at least 75% full on Opening Day.

You like getting gifts? How about the gift of baseball, presented in 162 pinkynail-sized boxes on your pocket schedule? And the first box you open is always the best. It has to be. There’s nothing to which you can compare it. You’ve been 0-0 since October. You get to start filling up those columns with W’s and L’s after six months of Z’s. Happy new year!

Several years ago, a friend of Stephanie’s sent her one of those pointless Internet surveys. She forwarded it to me. The only question I answered with any conviction was, “What’s your favorite holiday?” Without irony, I replied, “Opening Day.”

Opening Day is my holiday. Opening Day is an Upper-Case occasion for celebration. For baseball fans, it is our day of jubilee. Life may not begin on Opening Day, but it does leap from mundane to magnificent. And for that I am thankful.

Opening Day is good any way you can get it, and if you have to get it on TV or radio or Internet or smoke signal, well, get it there. But it’s not a fully realized sensation unless you attend its ceremonies, partake in its rituals, surround yourself with its affirmation. I’m not in the habit of telling anybody “ya gotta” do anything. But to observe Opening Day, ya gotta go.

I realize saying so does not make it a done deal. Admission for these sacred rites is, as a rule, hard to come by. We've been subject to an avalanche of ticket-package come-ons and vague lottery promises and demand always outstrips supply. But you’ve got months to strategize if you're bound and determined. What is there to do in December and January except, as Rogers Hornsby suggested, stare out the window and wait for spring? Rogers Hornsby would figure out a way to get to Opening Day, and he’s been dead for more than 40 years.

It has been my great fortune to attend Opening Day services eight times since 1993. Four of those were true season openers, the rest Home Openers, but the spirituality is the same. Just because the Mets played two games in Japan or three in Florida or four in Canada doesn’t make the first appearance on Shea soil any less sacred.

My most recent true Opener was the very first game of the 2002 season, five years ago next week. It was April 1, just like this season's starter in St. Louis will be. It was a win, 6-2 over the Pirates. Of course it was a win. It was Opening Day. We're not supposed to lose on Opening Day. I myself am 8-0, forever skewing my expectations. (Somebody get me a ticket for this Opening Day if you want 2007 to get off on the right foot.)

Entwined with the score was the inherent optimism — this was the sun-drenched Opener of Alomar and Vaughn, Cedeño and Burnitz, the year of the big comeback from the letdown of 2001. There’d be plenty more of these, 53,734 of us assured each other. It didn't turn out to be so, but on Opening Day, who knew? A 1.000 in the Pct. column looks good no matter that it foreshadows nothing.

I came into six tickets that year through the graces of a friend with connections. Immediately surrounded myself with all my favorite Mets people from the earliest part of the century: Jason, Rob, Laurie and Richie, who came with his son, also named Richie. (This business needed an actual hooky-player, I decided.) I’m a big man when I’ve got six tickets on Opening Day. I live to spread the wealth.

Everybody was pumped. Rob met me at home and we took the train in together. We met Jason and the Richies at the gate. Laurie, who worked in the same place as me, already had her ticket and met us at the seats in the right field boxes. She proposed a pre-game toast to the Diamondbacks, who brought all of us so much joy the previous November. We were giddy.

My cell phone, which usually lay quiet in my bag, blew up. That’s hip-hop for rang a lot. I had put the word out that I would be going to Opening Day; if you’re going, give me a call, we’ll hook up. A couple of guys called. They were in the stadium somewhere or on their way. Yes, Shea Stadium was the center of the universe...even more than usual.

Like I said, the game was a success on field and off. The best line belonged to Richie the Elder. On a grounder to first in the ninth, Mo Vaughn went after the ball and Armando Benitez covered the bag. “Geez,” Richie said. “I think the whole stadium is tilting toward us.” Ha!

The great part about Opening Day is that it is a whole day. The excitement swells in the small hours’ sleeplessness, crests as one grabs one’s LIRR schedules and Walkman and water bottle (how did my father go places without a bag?) and then, of course, the game. The yearbook, the media guide, the first program. I get weighed down. The first pretzel or chicken sandwich or, if I’m gastronomically daring, hot dog. The first win. And the first happy recap and enthusiastic exit of the year.

And then? Then, the thrill continues. On the train back to Long Island, Rob and I stick out among the work-weary. We went to the game. We went to Opening Day. The day is still in progress, ours a lot better than that of everybody who wasn't there. Somebody at Jamaica asks who won. Somebody at Jamaica always asks who won on Opening Day. This is no obscure affair in August against the Expos (it's 2002, there are still Expos). Everybody knows this is Opening Day. The Mets won, I volunteer to anybody who even looks curious, 6-2.

I say bye to Rob at my place and the day continues. Stephanie is home and I fill her in on all the fun, on Richie's stadium-shifting remark, on Laurie's Diamondbacks toast, how exciting it was to see all the new players and old pals. I pass along my publications for inspection.

But it’s still not over! We go to dinner at the East Bay Diner. I’m wearing my Mets sweatshirt and my Mets jacket. People can figure out where I’ve been. I’ve been doing something important. Important to me, noteworthy to them. Then, because this is a Monday and we didn’t do it Sunday, we go grocery shopping. In the Waldbaum’s lot, we run into Officer Tom, a Nassau County cop with whom I went to high school and ran into at our reunion the previous summer. He’s one of the Yankees fans who stuck it to me but good back in the day. But now, like Rupert Pupkin’s fantasy in The King of Comedy, I’m getting even everywhere. That’s right, Tom, I was at the game today. The Mets won. Get used to it. Go arrest somebody.

We do our shopping and then we land on Sydra, our favorite cashier, the only cashier who asks after us, asks if we found everything we were looking for (we realize in later years that this is kind of robotic-friendly, but at the time, it’s refreshing). I’ve worn enough apparel to Waldbaum’s so she remembers my allegiances, reinforced tonight. “Today was Opening Day, wasn’t it? Did you go to the game?” she asks. Did I go to the game? Why yes I did! Let me tell you about it.

It’s one more chance to extend Opening Day. I never want it to end.

Next Friday: Not quite a quarter-century since the No. 8 song of all-time came along.

No losers reach the Rick Sweet 16. You get this far in March Metness, you can stake a serious claim to being a quintessential element of the overall Mets experience. While there are no losers, only half of the entries in any given matchup will get to walk away a winner.

Here's how that inevitable winnowing process unfolded Thursday night.

MIRACLE REGION SEMIFINALS
Let's Go Mets (1) vs Jane Jarvis (5)
Ms. Jarvis gets this party started by tickling the Thomas Organ as she did so expertly at Shea Stadium from 1964 to 1979. Whether it's a simple "CHARGE!" or a trademark rendition of "Meet The Mets," the crowd is suitably moved. Moved? How about revved? Shea has heard the Beatles, the Stones, Grand Funk and Bruce Springsteen, but no live musical act has ever owned the old ballpark like its organist of record. There's been more to this accomplished pianist's career than the Shea gig — she recorded several well-received jazz albums and helped run the Muzak company. As recently as 2006, having passed 90, she was playing dates in Manhattan. Recorded music has been the rule since Frank Cashen imported it from Baltimore in 1980, but Jane Jarvis will forever remain a singular name recalled for producing a singular sound as long as Shea Stadium is remembered. If anybody could give Let's Go Mets an aural run for its money, it's her. She did, but Let's Go Mets is a 1-seed for a reason. Truth be told, the Shea crowd doesn't need much revving beyond the promise of the next pitch. Jane plays her best — she always has — but Let's Go Mets takes another round.

Banner Day (3) vs Rheingold The Dry Beer (2)
Miracle proved a musical region because you simply cannot think of Rheingold The Dry Beer without wanting to break out into jingle. That's RTDB's not-so-secret weapon in taking on one of the great Met traditions. My beer is Rheingold the dry beer/Think of Rheingold whenever you buy beer/It's refreshing not sweet/It's the extra treat/Won't you try extra dry Rheingold beer? If you grew up hearing those commercials, you can't forget the melody or the lyrics. If you didn't, you wish you had. Rheingold wasn't just a beer either. It was the sponsor of Mets baseball, the one with approval on who would announce the games. If a man named Norm Varney, account executive from J. Walter Thompson, had balked, there might have been no Murph, no Ralph, no Lindsey. Fortunately, Varney — and George Weiss — had good taste, at least as good as Rheingold's. "To Err Is Human, To Forgive, A Mets Fan" went one famous fan-drawn banner. It left out the thought that to beer is divine. Banner Day made for some great parades. Rheingold provided an even better backbeat. The Dry Beer douses Banner Day's championship dream and proceeds to the Larry Elliot Eight against Let's Go Mets, a classic 1-vs-2 matchup.

MAGIC REGION SEMIFINALS
The 7 Train (1) vs Outta Here! (5)
The 7 Train will eventually get you to Shea Stadium, but it's been known to slow down at most inopportune stations. If you and it were running late in tandem between 1989 and 2005, you could depend on the voice of Gary Cohen to whisk you to the Willets Point stop in your ear if not in person. As long as you stood near a window, you had as good a seat as whatever the ticket burning a hole in your wallet entitled you to...eventually. Listening to Gary Cohen on whatever radio you had handy was one of the privileges of being a Mets fan during his 18-year stint on WFAN, whether he was calling home runs Outta Here! or merely reading the lineups at Junction Boulevard. Gary's won greater exposure on television, as fans who would never think to bother with something as hopelessly retro as a radio have discovered him. But for those who relied on him in a pinch, it just isn't the same. As the 7 Train gets in gear and begins to rumble toward 103rd Street, we listen for Gary. And he just isn't there. Alas, neither is Outta Here! in this tournament. The 7 Train grinds, squeaks, sputters but, in the end, rolls on.

Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? (3) vs Jose! Jose! Jose! Jose! (7)
Talk about old school against new school. Can't Anybody Here Play This Game encompasses everything about this beloved team's beloved roots: Casey, Marv, Whitey Ashburn, Hot Rod Kanehl, Roger Craig, the Polo Grounds — the whole tragicomic bit. Jimmy Breslin's volume describing their downs and further downs is as physically thin as the portfolio of 1962 Met wins but as rich as any baseball book for sheer color. And it's been said you can't be too rich or too thin. Just ask Jose Reyes. He's lithe, he's well-compensated and he's writing a new chapter for another generation of fans. They love him every bit as much as the gang from Gilmore's Tavern in Breslin's book loved his shortstop predecessor Elio Chacon. (We used to think Pee Wee Reese was pretty good. That was until Elio Chacon came along.) There's not much irony to the loyalty Jose inspires, just joy. "The New York Mets are in existence," Breslin wrote, "for a simple reason: New York City needed them." New York needed Reyes in its own way when he came into our lives in 2003. By 2006, the need had grown in intensity. The legend of the '62 Mets will not diminish (an odd thing to say about a 40-win unjuggernaut). Yet the legend of Jose! Jose! Jose! Jose! is poised to only grow. Thus, new tops old in an upset. It will be the 7 Train versus the 7-seed on Saturday.

The Believe and Amazin' regional semis get underway Friday night.