Game Seven is dead. Long live Game One.

Ohmigod, it's so good to have one of these to pore over again. Three new Mets (lifetime count: 802). Four not yet overworked relievers (to paraphrase Madeline Albright, what's the point of having this superb bullpen that you're always talking about if we can't use it?). Four double plays (Valentin's middle name must be Flynn). Three RBI for the once and again No. 2 hitter (Lo Duca doesn't look a ballplayer but he sure does play like one). Two ribeyes for Cleanup Daddy Delgado (who needs Spring Training?). And 291 for the Met we call Glavo (without a second thought).

One and oh. One and oh and it's all good. A fabulous throw from Beltran (or Bel-TRAH!n as Jon Miller reinvented him). A sliding catch from allegedly ancient Alou (I've got to turn the sound down on ESPN next time). Even two hits from the allegedly decrepit Shawn Green. So far, so crepit.

Listening to Mets Extra beforehand, I heard nothing but roars and cheers which led to nothing but bile and disgust. But then 8:10 or thereabouts rolled around and I didn't care about the 2006 Cardinals anymore. The 2007 Cardinals I will care about for two more games and not again 'til June. The 2007 Mets have my attention. They don't suck. Not yet anyway.

The long night of winter is over. Nothing sucks.

I love Opening Day. Time begins on it, dontcha know? We get to start reading the latest chapter of our favorite story, thrilled we'll have reading material until October (and hopefully through it) and eager to know how it'll all come out. Our lives go on during the winter, but today they once again are lived to the fullest, with our biological clocks resetting to 1:10 and 7:10 and other times that mean everything now and are significant only in their tragic lack of significance in the winter. (That thought swiped from Greg's marvelous "Happy New Year," which you should go read right now. Only the details have changed.)

Are Emily and I excited? Do you have to ask? Joshua is away in California with his grandmother and his cousins, and we've got a whole week of eating, drinking, socializing and spring-cleaning our overstuffed apartment planned out. (Along with missing our boy. We're not monsters.) But even as we planned the festivities for the Week of Temporary Childlessness, tonight was sacrosanct -- set aside for three hours in front of the TV, for the ritual of welcoming back our sport and our team and the right and proper rhythm of our evenings.

That said, there's a little worm in this apple. And it's that I know come 11:10 or 11:45 or whenever the opening act of the 2007 season ends, I will be bitter.

Why? It's not the Cardinals' celebration, though it certainly sounds like a Roman-level orgy of self-congratulation, what with the multiple first pitches and the players' motorcade and REO Speedwagon (yes really) and Keith being asked to play turncoat. I'm a bit surprised to hear the Clydesdales will not, in fact, draw and quarter manacled slaves wearing Mets colors just to make things clearer. I can live with this Midwestern take on Triumph of the Will. As discussed before -- and most recently by David Wright -- it's useful motivation. They won and we didn't, and if our positions were reversed, I'm sure our celebration plans would be equally low-key and dignified.

Nor is it the fact that ESPN will show Adam Wainwright striking out Carlos Beltran approximately 35,000 times before the night is over. It happened. I wish it hadn't, but it did, and I'm over it. (OK, mostly.) Same goes for Yadier Fucking Molina taking Heilman deep -- I know it's coming, I'm not happy about it, but I'll survive it.

Nor is it the fact that, well, we might lose. I've seen Opening Days ruined by Joe Randa and a billion Chicago Cubs and Dante Bichette and a really fucking horrible sixth inning. Gut-punch losses all, but I endured.

It's that today, of all days, we have to play the team that ended our season before what we regarded as its just and due course. Oh, let's not be fancy: the team that beat us. We've been beaten in the postseason before. Much as I don't like to think about it, we'll be beaten in the postseason again. But on Opening Day of 1974 we didn't play the Oakland A's. (Lost to the Phillies, if you're curious.) Opening Day 1989 didn't pit us against the Dodgers. (We beat these same Cardinals. Or rather, we beat an entirely different set of Cardinals.) In 2000 we didn't begin by having to confront the Braves. (We lost to the Cubs on the other side of the world in a game that started in the middle of the night.) In 2001 we did not, thank Christ, start off against the Yankees. (We beat the Braves.)

If the Cardinals win, their fans will be ecstatic. If the Cardinals lose, their fans will still be pretty happy. Having just won the World Series, Cardinals fans aren't entitled to be unhappy about anything until at least the All-Star break. It's the reverse for us. If we lose (preferably not with another called strike on Beltran), we'll be miserable and if we win, it'll be bittersweet. A game too late. Where was that last year? You can already imagine the back-page headlines, can't you?

Opening Day is a symbolic turning of the page. It's the new chapter talked about at the beginning. But starting off against the Cardinals won't make it feel that way. It'll feel like a postscript to the previous story. And that's what I'm bitter about.

And while we're on the subject of bitterness, if we get beaten by Braden Looper Wednesday night, I'm going to leave Varsity Letters, and lie down in the middle of the Bowery.

I think we just won the pennant last year.

What else is there to glean from the story that the Cardinals have been caught Redhanded having indulged in a variety of banned substances prior to last year's National League Championship Series? I would be happy if it weren't so sad.

This is one of those in-retrospect moments where everything that didn't make sense then completely adds up now. That was an 83-win team, one that sagged in September and nearly blew a formidable divisional lead in the process. And suddenly they can beat the Padres (maybe) and then the Mets (yeah right)? No, that doesn't happen without some help. Maybe we (or their fans) thought it was Divine intervention or just a lousy week on the Mets' part. Turns out sometimes there's a reason stunning upsets are so stunning.

Where to begin? The LaRussa-McGwire connection? Neither of them wants to talk about the past, but they do go back a long way together. There's now more than the good old days in Oakland to bond (or Bonds) them.

And what about our pal Braden Looper? He looms as having been the worst abuser of them all — and I'll resist the temptation to crack where was the HGH when Joe Randa came to bat two years ago? Those of us who thought there weren't enough substances in the world to get him through a tough inning, well, we were wrong. Looper the lifetime reliever suddenly a starting pitcher this year? Payback, obviously, for keeping his mouth shut. (Aaron Heilman may wish he'd thought of that.) Of course the junk doesn't just put a few miles on your fastball. It loosens your lips. Who else thought it strange when Looper led the mocking "Jose! Jose!" bit in the jubilant Cardinal clubhouse? He wasn't a good closer here but at least he kept his mouth shut (like when he should have fessed up to his 2005 injury, but never mind that right now).

Looper, though, is just the tip of the dirty iceberg as the rumblings that leaked out of Roger Dean Stadium reveal. An unproven bullpen became an asset for St. Louis in the NLCS. It wasn't just talent and Dave Duncan after all. Look at those names (because you may never be able to look at them again on a Major League ballfield once disciplinary action is taken): Randy Flores, Tyler Johnson, Josh Kinney. Looper had a lot of baby Birds under his wing.

Uh, you may be wondering, as long as relief pitchers' names are being named, what about...yup. If Adam Wainwright's curve broke unnaturally on oh-and-two to Beltran, there was a reason. Wainwright himself wasn't exactly made from the best stuff on earth.

Nor, it shouldn't surprise you, was his .216-batting catcher, the last man to touch the ball in Game Seven, the last man to drive a run in. Yadier Fucking Molina never could have earned his middle name without Braden's Little Helper. Him and Taguchi — another unlikely power hitter — were reportedly among the biggest non-pitcher users on the club. Aaron Miles and Chris Duncan less so, but they were apparently involved.

It was mostly the scrubs and the rookies who broke the rules. Pujols was clean on this pass. Edmonds, as annoying as he is, was, too. Rolen wasn't implicated. I'm a little unclear on Spiezio (so much for stereotyping the rock 'n' roller). Eckstein is still composed of only piss and vinegar. Also, Carpenter and Weaver were tested and came up negative. Not so Suppan. Like Gary Matthews, Jr., his big free agent contract may ultimately be null and void.

But there's more to this scandal than any given player's career. The whole integrity of the game, which I have to admit I always thought was a little melodramatic as an issue, is in jeopardy. Bud Selig doesn't want any part of nationally telecast 2006 world championship flag-raising. That's not going to happen. Keith (ironic, eh Whitey?) and his ex-mates won't be part of any ceremony after all. The coming suspensions have to go through an appeals process, but this is not a fight Donald Fehr and Gene Orza want right now. You've got the specter of George Mitchell holding press conferences, all those senators who are running for president ready to grandstand at the first hint of opportunity to brandish their moral credentials, the Post-Dispatch at loose ends and — this is almost unthinkable — Anheuser-Busch withdrawing its support of Cardinal baseball. Imagine the Busch Stadium sign down by tonight. (Cry hypocrisy all you want, beer is legal.)

I assume there's still a game scheduled for 8:05. ESPN paid big bucks, the show must go on. Don't know how the St. Louis fans will respond. Will they throw their giveaway replica rings and banners back on the field this week? Will management hand them out? (Come to think of it, will the real rings even fit those Cardinal fingers that have swollen and deflated so drastically since October?)

Will the fans even show up? They love to wear red, but HGH represents scarlet letters. I know I like to poke fun at them, yet in all sincerity these are pretty decent people by nature. How will they feel about their first World Series win in 24 years if it's been permanently tainted? How many Men Out this time?

Meanwhile, are the Tigers awarded the 2006 title by default? They sure as hell didn't earn it (their hands were slippery from plain old sweat and nerves, which is perfectly within the letter of the law), but they were the only other team in the World Series last year. And, in the interest of being completely self-serving, is the National League pennant vacant now or is it ours? Can we now say with objective certainty that we truly deserved to win that LCS? Look how close we came against an illegally stacked deck of Cards. Factor out Guillermo Mota if you want. That's one Met who was taking something he wasn't supposed to. Maybe half the Cardinals meet that description.

You don't have to be Buster Olney to recognize that Selig's whole tenure will be defined by how he handles this. Baseball has for too long turned its back on steroids and human growth hormones and everything else that has disrupted the game. Letting the St. Louis Cardinals masquerade as defending world champions, even National League champions, transforms this whole sordid tale, breaking on this Opening Day of all days, into some kind of unfathomable farce.