It's been an odd six weeks for this Met fan -- derailed by tons of work, disenchanted with Port St. Lucie's injuries and age, and disinclined to a level I hadn't expected to forgive those caught up in the Mets' September disaster. Relations between me and my favorite team had become somewhat chilly, and I was worried -- for the first time in my adult life -- that there might not be a thaw.

Last night I felt that maybe, just maybe, the ice was thinning. The Nationals' park was indeed gorgeous, and left me thinking about our own date with the future, now just a year away. I found myself perking up at the sight of Lastings Milledge and Paul Lo Duca, and enjoyed mocking the Braves' odd black-and-white looking road uniforms and early ineptitude. "Bobby Cox is in midseason form!" I crowed to Emily after the cameras caught him looking, post-error, like he'd just encountered a bad clam. (I was in midseason form, too: I fell asleep, lifted an eyelid to find Ryan Zimmerman striding to the plate with two outs in the ninth, and turned off the game. Oops.)

But even if you don't miss the best part, the opening-night game usually winds up being unsatisfying. It's partially that it's not your team, and encountering your team solely through scheduling notes and announcer chatter and players' resumes makes the last night of winter all the more lonely. It's also the dearth of other baseball storylines, of hearing what touted rookies and relocated veterans and comeback kids are up to in front of various big, bundled-up crowds and walls draped in bunting. Opening night offers only one storyline, for better or worse, and either way it's like wolfing down an appetizer and then not getting a meal.

But I really knew I was OK when I woke up later in the night and couldn't sleep -- because I was worried about Johan's first impression and Big Pelf's prospects and Castillo's knees and Delgado's reflexes and Jose's head and everything else my mind could seize on. And then when I found myself with a certain bounce in my step, scant sleep notwithstanding, while walking Joshua to school. (Attired, of course, in his new, slightly oversized Reyes t-shirt.) And the kid was fired up, too: At five, he's now old enough to be told that Opening Day is a secular holiday. No afterschool today, I told him -- I'll pick you up at 2:45, and yes, that's plenty of time to see the game.

So we got hot dogs and ice cream and I put on my own finery -- black Mets road uni, Faith and Fear shirt (get your own here), stars-and-stripes Met hat -- and we watched Cubs-Brewers until they put the tarp on and Diamondbacks-Reds until it was time for pregame and we cheered the Mets as they were introduced by the Marlins' public-address guy and then finally Jose Reyes tramped up to home plate with his odd side-to-side gait and 2008 had finally begun. And immediately I was locked in, grimacing at Jose striking out and exhorting Castillo to work the count and sparing only an offhand thought for why I'd ever been worried.

Ah, the game. Johan Santana is good -- we knew that, but this was the day of really discovering it, of appraising his arsenal and how coolly he commanded it, rising above brief trouble like that was just the final thing to check off in his preparations for the long haul of 2008. As important was seeing the Mets poke at Mark Hendrickson the first time through the order, then fall on him like wolves the second time. (When Angel Pagan and Ryan Church announced themselves with a double and single, I scrawled "Angel + Church = Heaven!", which isn't particularly clever but made me happy because, hey, it's Opening Day.) After that the only sour note was the random strike zone (random for both sides, at least) and the briefly worrisome sight of David Wright flopping like a gaffed fish around third base.

SNY did a nice job, starting with the addition of HD on the road. (For which I suppose I must grudgingly thank the Yankees.) I liked that they didn't duck the wreckage of last year, beginning with a hide-your-eyes montage of everything that went wrong in the second half of September -- painful, but far better than pretending the whole thing didn't happen, or that time began with Johan signing a contract. (Though that Mohegan Sun ad repurposing "Super Freak" may have me burying an ice pick into my ears by the Kentucky Derby.) Keith, dependably, delivered his first moment to made the SNY suits cringe: After Gary welcomed Hartford to the SNY family, Ronnie gamely said that he loves Hartford, only to have an incredulous Keith ask, "You do?" Joshua and I sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" (and I wondered if I'd jinxed us by unthinkingly singing "the home team") and I tried to explain all the things Hanley Ramirez had failed to do and then Heilman closed the door and Joshua declared "that's a great beginning to the season!" Which it was.

And then the joy of finding out everything else that had happened, all the old names and new names and instant heroes. I mean, did you see Kosuke Fukudome hitting the first pitch he saw for a long double, then blasting a three-run homer to (briefly) save the Cubs' bacon? Did you see Lastings Milledge getting to home plate one long stride ahead of Carlos Ruiz? (Break up the Nats!) Or the Indians and White Sox blasting away at each other like 18th-century warships? Or the Royals offering their fans at least one day of wild joy by shocking the Tigers? Or Carlos Gomez whacking the ball all around the Metrodome, giving Twins fans reason to embrace their new center fielder while honoring their old one? Or, to be less charitable, Tom Glavine going a lukewarm five innings and Yankee fans sitting in the rain for a while and going home? (Heh heh.)

Nothing revelatory there -- just the pulse of life resuming its natural rhythms once again. Nothing extraordinary -- except the routine miracles to be found in any day's full slate of baseball games. Happy New Year!

1. Wish someone who will immediately get it a happy new year today.

2. Wish someone who has no idea what you're talking about a happy new year today.

3. Develop amnesia — what 2007?

4. If you still remember 2007, take a shower. Or a pill. Or a good, long look at Johan Santana.

5. Expect No. 1 starter quality from Santana, but don't count on a win every time.

6. Don't ever use a 4-for-4 by Minnesota Twin Carlos Gomez as a reason to bash Omar Minaya.

7. Allow Willie Randolph April before attacking him for past sins and detecting troubling patterns of misjudgment; he may be right and you may be wrong.

8. Applaud Carlos Delgado without qualification for a month.

9. Give Scott Schoeneweis the benefit of the doubt until mid-May. He can't possibly be any worse this year than last.

10. Take a deep breath before reacting to the first big hit or walk allowed by any Met reliever.

11. Present Ryan Church with a clean slate.

12. Jose Reyes gets 10 stolen base attempts to refigure it all out before being subject to reminders that he ran from second and two out with David Wright up against the Phillies last September 15 (if you haven't developed amnesia about all that).

13. Resist the temptation to take cheap shots at perennially lousy N.L. opponents. One of them is your defending champion.

14. Respect the Phillies and Braves. Do not fear them, not even the Mets-killers among them.

15. Don't let the predictable journalistic abominations that will slobber over the demise of the current Yankee Stadium (opened 1976) while dismissing the end of the one and only Shea Stadium (opened 1964) get to you. Seek refuge in blogs like ours and Loge 13 which present a more appropriate worldview of the Metropolitan area's current ballpark transition period.

16. Keep reading Mets blogs.

17. Tell at least one Mets fan you know who doesn't read Mets blogs to read one — ours or any other you enjoy. That Mets fan doesn't know what he or she is missing.

18. Don't wait for a walkoff win to read Mets Walkoffs and Other Minutiae, up and running after a winter's hibernation.

19. If you like deep, deep Mets minutiae of the Mets Walkoff variety, check out the equally detail-oriented Metaforian.

20. If you don't mind being reminded of the most gaping hole in Mets history, go to NoNoHitters.com and revel in the fact that Mets fans come up with stuff like this.

21. If the mood strike you, do what CharlieH did and start your own Metsian blog. No gatekeepers here.

22. Be outraged — send them a pointed e-mail, even — that MLB shortsightedly short-circuited the legendary and beloved jphilips41's YouTube page, the one with otherwise unseen clips from the '73 World Series pregame shows and the '77 and '79 Mets Old Timers Day ceremonies. Neil Best in Newsday broke the bad news, and it's bad news not just for Metsopotamians and for John Philips but for baseball which is lucky it can crawl, so often does it shoot itself in the free-publicity foot.

23. Should you ever meet John Philips, his next beer is on you.

24. Seeking a substitute for the treasure trove that was jphilips 41's collection won't be wholly satisfying, but you could do worse than the warts & all Shea Stadium slide show presented by Ballparks, Arenas and Stadiums. Other great ballpark, arena and stadium slide shows included.

25. Ignore the Carvel lines at Shea and go for Dippin' Dots instead. That's the ice cream of the future anyway...literally.

26. Somebody go to one of those "watch parties" bars hold when a season starts and tell me what the appeal is. I don't want to watch the Mets with a bunch of drunken strangers, except at Shea.

27. Be amazed by the gall of the ESPN Zone to hold a "watch party" at its Times Square location this Tuesday night for the Mets and Braves when reliable sources inform me that the very same ESPN Zone initially refused to change one of their myriad televisions on a recent Sunday to a Mets exhibition game even though a table full of Mets fans made the request, even though just about everything else being shown on every screen was spectacularly irrelevant to a New York audience.

28. If a nosy child asks you, as one did me last week, if you like the Mets because you're wearing a Mets sweatshirt and then volunteers, "I like the Yankees," don't be shy about responding, "Good for you," loudly in a room full of bored adults, such as a doctor's waiting room. It will make you and everyone in the room feel better.

29. If you are fortunate enough to find a good, old-fashioned stationery store that actually sells baseball cards by the pack and the store owner, moving and talking slowly after decades in the same location, asks you to confirm that "kids still like these, right?" be quick to reassure him that kids definitely still like these.

30. Don't feel compelled to tell him the kid in your focus group is 45.

31. If you turn on your car radio and hear David Coverdale crow, "Here I go again" moments after fulfilling your annual obligation to buy several packs of baseball cards before a new season starts, read into it anything you like.

32. If the first 2008 baseball card you find upon opening that first pack is an American Leaguer with whose work you are only vaguely familiar, it is appropriate to channel Whitesnake once more and think, "Here I go again," because the first baseball card of any year is almost never a Met.

33. Should you gaze upon the midtown sky on the evening of April 8, pay attention to the colors of the tallest building in the vicinity. You will be pleasantly surprised (if you don't click here and ruin the surprise).

34. After Keith Hernandez revealed during a Spring Training game that one of his minor league roommates was Mike Vail and that Neil Allen, for whom he was traded, had the best curveball he ever faced, wonder who or what he doesn't know.

35. Give Wayne Hagin a chance. I cringed during his first Metscast when he said 1986 is a year that will "live in infamy" for Mets fans, but he's got pipes to die for and he's not Tom McCarthy.

36. Stop campaigning for the demotion of whoever's batting .182 after three weeks and insisting Fernando Martinez be promoted at once. Same applies in pitching terms to Jonathon Niese, even if he was born on October 27, 1986, a date that will live in non-infamy for Mets fans.

37. Cheer like hell for Carlos Beltran. Cheer him like he's David Wright.

38. Continue to cheer David Wright as previously cheered.

39. Continue to melt like Dippin' Dots on a hot day at the sight of Pedro Martinez.

40. React to all politicians invading a ballpark with absolute silence. Don't cheer. Don't boo. By your silence, maybe someone will get a clue that we want them concentrating on their government jobs.

41. Line every pocket with pocket schedules. What's the point of pockets otherwise?

42. Make an exception to your "watch party" skepticism when Jon Springer and Matt Silverman host one of their own on Sunday April 6 at Stout NYC, 33rd between Sixth and Seventh. It's to promote the brilliant Mets By The Numbers book that we've mentioned a few times already...and to watch the Mets beat the Braves, if possible.

43. If you haven't bought Mets By The Numbers, you can buy it at Stout.

44. Or buy it sooner. We really like this book around here.

45. We also recommend another selection in the bulging Matt Silverman oeuvre, 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die.

46. We recommend it so heartily that we're borrowing generously the book's premise for this post.

47. As we can barely come up with half as many Knows & Dos as Matt did, we truly admire the way he covers his Mets bases.

48. So secure yourself a copy...

49. And enjoy Opening Day...

50. And happy new year!