Saturday yielded one regional championship that clicked true to form — 1-seed Let's Go Mets dominating the Miracle bracket — and another in which Cinderella raced around the bases when 7-seed Jose! Jose! Jose! Jose! stole the Magic bracket. We know they will meet in six days to decide who will play in the March Metness Metropolitan Championship game. And there to meet that winner? That's what we learned earlier Sunday.

BELIEVE REGION FINAL
The Happy Recap (1) vs The Franchise (3)
Bob Murphy never tried to pitch, but Tom Seaver did attempt to broadcast. Let's just say The Franchise's forte wasn't found away from the mound. But Seaver, whatever his disagreements with management in retirement and forced estrangements from the team during his playing career, represented the Mets like no player before, no player since, no player ever. Tom Seaver earned a place in the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame, won his 300th game in a Chicago White Sox uniform and threw his final strike for the Boston Red Sox, but he was never The Franchise for any of them. Bob Murphy announced games for the Orioles and Red Sox, yet no fan of those teams could possibly connect the words Happy and Recap the way we can. Seaver and Murphy were two professionals at the tops of their respective professions when Tom wore the blue and orange and Bob voiced fables, foibles and fierceness that shaded those colors. The Franchise provided the direct foundation for 198 Happy Recaps in 11 different regular seasons, all but nine of those coming before the dreaded Wednesday Night Massacre of 1977. Seaver was out. The recaps grew less frequently happy in his absence. But those that occurred felt every bit as special as any that Murph summed up in 1969 or 1973. Bob Murphy was sunshine when darkness descended on Shea, not just between Seaver's two Met tenures but long afterwards. He is remembered for 1986, yes, but also for 1993, clear through to 2003. Bad years, good years, all years. Murph made each recap and every pitch that preceded them happy affairs just by communicating them. The Franchise comes away with a no-decision from this intense battle of Met quintessence. The Happy Recap gets the win.

AMAZIN' REGION FINAL
Mr. Met (1) vs Buckner (2)
It's easy to make jokes about the size of Mr. Met's head because, let's face it, it's hard not to notice it. But Mr. Met has heart. Miles and miles of heart, extending all the way back to his first appearance as a logo in the Polo Grounds. A man named Dan Reilly put on a papier-mâché noggin and made Mr. Met come to life at Shea in the mid-'60s. We didn't see much of the personification of MM immediately thereafter, but he never left the Metscape completely. Got a Shea raincheck from the '70s handy? Look whose picture is there, holding an umbrella and seeming distressed that there will be No Game Today. Mr. Met lives for the game, so of course he's sad it's raining. On the other hand, he was delighted when the Mets brought him out of storage and made him three-dimensional in 1994. At the time he may have been the Mets' best player (him or Rico Brogna), certainly its most popular personality. Mr. Met's stature has only grown over the past 13 years. He went to ESPN, he went to Japan, he even went into the army reserves (well, one of the guys who wore the head did). Mr. Met is all over New York, all over Shea. He himself is impossible to ignore and why would you want to? The same could be said for the legacy of the moment we need refer to only as Buckner. This isn't about the first basemen who amassed 2,715 base hits, a batting title and loads of admiration for the way he played. Bill Buckner, too, had miles and miles of heart. His existence, however, remains of interest to Mets fans because of one silly little baseball that changed the course of human events. It wasn't just Buckner that defined the Tenth Inning. There were three base hits and a wild pitch (passed ball if we're scoring with our eyes open). There was a tie in place when Mookie Wilson connected. There was a prospective eleventh inning if Buckner didn't happen. But it did. It's the most famous play in the history of the Mets, the best moment in the history of the Mets, the signature event in the history of the Mets. Mr. Met is an icon, but Buckner is as iconic as it gets. Twenty-one years after an honorable career went askew, Mr. Met becomes one silly big baseball Bill can handle.

Believe champion The Happy Recap and Amazin' winner Buckner will face off in the Tom Filer Four on Saturday, March 31, approximately 40 minutes after the conclusion of the Let's Go Mets-Jose! Jose! Jose! Jose! matchup.

So, barring an expansion of the dog-and-cat trade awaiting out-of-options Jon Adkins, the roster appears set. And Moises Alou, David Newhan, Damion Easley, Chan Ho Park, Aaron Sele, Joe Smith and Scott Schoeneweis are ready to join the exalted ranks of The Holy Books.

Last season Philip Humber was the final addition to the orange and blue, bringing the all-time Mets count to a close-but-no-cigar 799. Barring something startling, Alou should claim the 800th spot, hopefully in the top of the first a week from tonight. (Because then the Mets would have baserunners and possibly an early lead, y'see?) THB Occupants 801 through 806 should follow within the first week's patchwork schedule. (I know the off-days are there for rain, but if the weather's nice Monday April 2 is going to be agony, and Thursday April 5 will be worse.) Humber's pal Mike Pelfrey (THB #792) will start the year in New Orleans or in extended spring training, a brief furlough that should end when the fifth-starter slot comes around for the first time right before Tax Day.

So, some early-season storylines already.

* The Shawn Green Watch? It's already on. Lastings Milledge will keep Pelfrey's roster spot warm and get some starts. If Lastings hits and acts like he has in St. Lucie, and Green stays cold, how long can right field really stay Green's? If Lastings is sent to New Orleans, can he keep his head?

* Is Pelfrey ready? Lots of guys have found April's rather different than March.

* Can Chan Ho succeed in the Darren Oliver role? Can he accept that? What's Aaron Sele's role on the team? Can they and Aaron Heilman get a discount on t-shirts that say PELFREY WENT TO THE ROTATION AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY BULLPEN SPOT?

* Who'll wind up playing second? Is there anything left in Jose Valentin's tank? Has there ever been anything in Damion Easley's tank? Anderson Hernandez's got the glove -- can he make things interesting by hitting in New Orleans the way he never has on U.S. soil?

* When will I learn to spell Schoeneweis without cribbing? (I had Mientkiewicz down by May, but I was younger then.)

* Will Joe Smith step up as the third legitimate Brooklyn Cyclone to play a real role on the Mets roster? For the trivia-minded, Mike Jacobs and Brian Bannister are the others so far. Danny Garcia and Joe Hietpas didn't do enough to merit discussion as Mets, Matt Watson was moved down to Brooklyn to pack a postseason roster (shameful Yankee move, that), and rehab cameos like those of Tsuyoshi Shinjo, Mike Stanton and Cliff Floyd don't count. Certainly nobody's ever made the leap quite so quickly as Smith seems poised to do.

A month from now some of these questions will be answered. They'll have gone from storylines to stories, just like the story of 2007 will have started to emerge, pieced together from Ws and Ls on the now-blank schedule. Can't wait.

The excitement over March Metness reaches a fever pitch this weekend as the Tom Filer Four gets filled out. All the regional 1-seeds entered these two days of play still alive. Will they leave the same way? Let's find out what happened Saturday.

MIRACLE REGION FINAL
Let's Go Mets (1) vs Rheingold The Dry Beer (2)
Rheingold is to be congratulated for maintaining such enduring brand equity as the Mets sponsor of all time despite an almost unbroken absence that dates to the last years of the reserve clause. Liebmann Breweries closed down in 1974 and the brand drifted to that great Beverage Barn in the sky, but the label was reborn in 1998 when a new owner dipped into its frothy and glorious heritage. Rheingold II was brewed in Utica but it would still be The Dry Beer, sponsoring Mets radiocasts, pouring in limited quantities at Shea (there was a Rheingold Beach Towel Day — take that, Budweiser) and, for its introductory press luncheon, trotting out Ed Kranepool and Tommie Agee to share golden malt and barley memories. Alas, Rheingold couldn't go home again. Within a year, the Mets connection was deemed too brittle to sell to a later generation's thirst and a more modern, less baseball tack was attempted by its caretakers. Rheingold The Dry Beer returned mostly to memory, and that's not a bad keg to tap. Meanwhile, Let's Go Mets, which started with Rheingold at the Polo Grounds in 1962, is still foaming strong. Let's Go Mets chants its way to the Miracle Region championship.

MAGIC REGION FINAL
The 7 Train (1) vs Jose! Jose! Jose! Jose! (7)
For anybody who has ever peered left toward Flushing-Main Street or anxiously fixed on first base with Paul Lo Duca in the batter's box, this shapes up as a long-awaited showdown between endurance and speed, between conveyance of people and conveyance of hope, between two truly Metsian entities proudly bearing the number 7 and operating on an elevated track. The 7 Train has shuttled Sheagoers since the '60s, but its profile was raised to dizzying heights in late 1999 when John Rocker identified it by numeral as the carrier of everything that was wrong with New York and New Yorkers. Like we cared what he had to say (though it is bizarrely admirable that he knew what it was called). The 7 Train's moment in the sun may have come in the Subway Series season of 2000 when a DiamondVision public service announcement reminded the crowd of all the public transportation options available to get you to Shea. Ferries and buses and LIRR elicited not a peck of acknowledgment. But upon announcement of The 7 Train, a roar went up. Hey, that's OUR train! Thanks partly to Rocker (if you can stomach thanking him for anything), partly to the international cachet of those who have Discovered Queens and made it their home but, it's fair to say, mostly because of the Mets, The 7 Train is probably the most famous subway line in the world. It's jammed, it's late, it's often unpleasant, but yes, it's ours and it runs. But does it run like Jose Reyes? Express? Always? Fans some seven years ago may have cheered the 7, but the other 7 moved to pre-eminence in 2006. It wasn't the smoothest of rides. He had gone into the shop a little too much for comfort in 2003 and 2004 and then had some stops and starts in 2005. But from hamstring patient and sabermetric whipping boy, Reyes rose through the ranks in the magical '06 season to emerge as the quintessential contemporary Met. Pedro may have been Pedro and Wright the early choice for MVP, but only Jose was utterly singled out by the fans in Hey, he's OUR player! fashion. The cry of Jose! Jose! Jose! Jose!, borrowed and altered from another sport but ingeniously mass-crafted to one man's specifications, was unprecedented in Met annals. There may have been Mooooo for Mookie and Ed-DEE for Kranepool, but this unique, modern homegrown expression of devotion and enthusiasm proved something else altogether. Is it too soon for it to be iconic? Not at all. Is it loud enough to derail the noisy 7 Train? By at least six stations. After all, not everybody takes the subway to Shea, but everybody's on board with Jose Reyes. Jose! Jose! Jose! Jose! pulls off the upset of the Larry Elliot Eight and pulls into the Tom Filer Four for a veritable chantoff versus Let's Go Mets.

Sunday will reveal the champions of the Believe and Amazin' regions.