From left to right: Keith Hernandez, Edgardo Alfonzo, David Wright, Hank McGraw, Mark McGraw, Cleon Jones, Darryl Strawberry, Jerry Koosman and Tom Seaver. (Photo: Andrew F. Johnston)

The Mets conflict The Observer. We want to love them, but they are forever out of reach, the real provenance of the beaten-down souls in blue and orange we joined Sunday night at the 92nd Street Y to unveil the Mets’ all-time team, position by position, for their 50th anniversary.

Mets fans do not radiate positivity, so our guard was up . These weren’t just fans. They were distinguished members of a social club from Flushing’s ash heaps, who aren’t going to smile for just anything. This team had two no-hitters in a week and sat a surprising three games above .500, yet were clearly on down-low gloom alert. They had gotten swept that very afternoon. But they still believe, and that is why they were here, to watch the presentation that will also air Thursday on SNY.

The format went like this: emcee Kevin Burkhardt would cue a video introducing the four “nominees” before TV man Gary Cohen and radio king Howie Rose would clumsily give away who they chose. The honoree would then be announced and slide onto the stage to answer some questions. The things that came up most in their answers: former manager Gil Hodges, the late Gary Carter and the Mets’ amazing fans, without whom we couldn’t have done it, no we couldn’t have, not at all.

The Cardinals came up quite often, too. All-time right fielder Darryl Strawberry said that before the Mets got all-time first baseman Keith Hernandez, “The Cardinals fans thought we were a bunch of pond scum, which we probably were at the time. But we were the good kind of pond scum.” (Kombucha, then?)

All-time left fielder Cleon Jones kneeled when he came to the stage, an homage to his impromptu kneeldown after catching the last out of the 1969 World Series. He escaped the ensuing sixties madness by hopping the Baltimore bullpen fence, then scurrying off to take his wife to a birthday party.

Tom Seaver’s wife told him not to cry on stage, but it didn’t work. “If there’s any person that should be right here, it’s Gil Hodges,” Seaver said, wet-eyed. Jones noted that Mets baseball in the pre-Hodges, pre-talent era was grim business. “I hated coming to the ballpark,” he said. “All we did was say, who’s gonna be the goat? Who’s going to lose the game today?”

For David Wright, that wasn’t rhetorical. Fresh off a 1-4 performance in an afternoon loss to the Cincinnati Reds, Wright showed up with his .355 batting average and perfect dimply smile and said pleasant things, until he revealed that he washed John Franco’s back as a rookie, which was less pleasant.

Hank and Mark McGraw, respectively the brother and not-Tim son of the late all-time left-handed reliever Tug McGraw, spoke for Tug, and we did not not choke up when Mark talked about how special this was, on Father’s Day. We also leaked tears of hilarity when goats Armando Benitez and Bobby Bonilla were announced as all-time finalists, and so did the hosts.

Then there was the surreal. Mets owner Fred Wilpon was there, and got a warm reception from the crowd, which hates him. That wasn’t even the strangest thing. All-time center fielder Carlos Beltran, who batted .280 in seven seasons for the Mets and is currently batting .301 for the St. Louis Cardinals, apologized to the fans for getting hurt so often, via video.

“I wish all those years I was there I could have stayed healthy,” he said, and the crowd finally had what they were waiting for: explicit remorse for their pain, by the ones that caused it. “I could have done a better job,” he continued.

Next time, kombucha.

The full list of players named to the all-time team:

C: Mike Piazza
1B: Keith Hernandez
2B: Edgardo Alfonzo
SS: Jose Reyes
3B: David Wright
LF: Cleon Jones
CF: Carlos Beltran
RF: Darryl Strawberry
RHP: Tom Seaver
LHP: Jerry Koosman
LHRP: Tug McGraw
RHRP: Roger McDowell
Manager: Davey Johnson

Alex Rodriguez took a full-floor five-bedroom at the Rushmore in February, and he will now have a neighbor in Carmelo Anthony. The Daily News hears that the Russian-baiting Knicks superstar has grabbed four homes in two Extell developments, the recently completed Aldyn next-door to the Rushmore and the nearby Ashley, at 63rd Street and West End Avenue. All that space is for family and assitants, but it may be temporary:

"We looked for apartments with similar qualities as Carmelo's other homes in Denver in Los Angeles," said [Douglas Elliman's Prince] Dockery, whose Prince Group specializes in high-end lower Manhattan properties.

"The key thing is the family wanted to be in New York and didn't opt for a 10,000-square-foot home in Westchester or New Jersey."

So even athletes are into gentrification! How long before Eli Manning abandons Hoboken for the Flatiron?

Speaking of, Curbed reports that Mets third baseman David Wright is selling his bachelor pad at Infinite Flats. The reason is--what else--Barnett threw him uptown into a $12,000-a-month rental at the Upper East Side's Lucida.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Everyone seems to have a Joe Girardi story this morning. And it makes sense, since the Yankees' manager has the team poised to clinch the A.L. East after missing the playoffs last year. The Daily News tells us that Mr. Girardi has managed to put on a "happy face" this year, while the Times leads with the manager's haircut ("the haircut, it seems, has always informed the narrative"), and goes on to tell us that he slept with a tube sock over his elbow until he met his wife. Between the two papers, we also learn some interesting things about the clubhouse: the morning playlist includes T.I., Rihanna, and someone named Kevin Rudolf, and Girardi has a take-your-daughter-to-work day every month, where the players have to dress in back rooms so their daughters can roam the clubhouse just like their brothers do.

Joba Chamberlain starts the first game of a weekend series against the Red Sox, and the Daily News and the Post go with the counter-intuitive, but maybe reasonable, story that limiting the young pitcher's innings is actually hurting him. The Daily News said theirs was an expert opinion.

On Sunday, we'll find out whether the Yankees are more popular than the Giants or Jets. The three teams were supposed to have been staggered throughout the day, but everyone hurried to re-schedule around Yom Kippur, so now they're all at 1 p.m. As we mentioned yesterday, the Jets didn't fare so well against the Giants in the television ratings last week, but the Daily News thinks Rex Ryan's team will not only beat the Giants in the ratings, but they'll also beat Yanks-Red Sox, a game that could seal the division title.

The Knicks get a couple of stories this morning, after all the Nets talk of late (more on that later). David Lee and Nate Robinson re-signing, and the Post tells us to credit Knicks general manager Donnie Walsh for bringing them back. No doubt they're an upgrade over whoever might have replaced them, but both of these guys are coming back because no one else was beating down the Garden's doors to get them. Lee's case is particularly bizarre. As a restricted free agent, the Knicks could have paid him $2.6 million dollars this season and he would have had to take it or sit out. Instead, Walsh is giving him a one-year deal worth $7 million. Robinson, who decided to tweet last month during an arrest for driving without a license, has yet to officially sign.

The Mets' David Wright wishes his season was over. The Giants' Kenny Phillips wishes his wasn't. “"Our concerns are about Kenny from an emotional standpoint, because this morning he looked like he'd lost his best friend," said Giants coach Tom Coughlin. 

The new annex, opening in November, will include such priceless artifacts as Johnny Ramone's Mosrite guitar and the graffiti-clad phone booth from defunct legendary rock club CBGB.

"We're in a landmarked area of great cast-iron buildings," Joel Peresman, president and CEO of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, said of the location, which was picked "for a variety of reasons," he added. "One, for the size; two, just as importantly, the location. You know, the location in this area is fantastic. There's plenty of people that live in this area. There's tourists who feel free to come. It's easily accessible by mass transportation."

Mr. Peresman added, however, that the facility is "too small" to conduct induction ceremonies. This year's inductions will take place in Cleveland. When the inductions return to New York the following year, he said, the ceremonies will take place at the Waldorf Astoria.

The "Piano Man," Mr. Joel, said he would donating a bunch of "stuff" to the new facility: "I'm supposed to give the annex here the jersey I was given at Shea Stadium ... but actually, that jersey is in a road case on its way to Hong Kong. So, this morning I went around my house looking for chotzkes that I could give you. And I was pulling stuff off the wall, so I've got some stuff that people are probably going to be ticked off because they gave them to me and now I'm giving them to [the annex].

"The first item here," Mr. Joel said, brandishing a wooden baseball bat, "was given to me by New York Mets player David Wright. So, David, sorry, but it's going in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame."

Mayor Bloomberg then added, "For those of you that don't come from New York, I'll translate chotzkes later on."

His youth, affability and seemingly boundless enthusiasm are, by themselves, sufficient to draw a sharp contrast to the gaggle of older, often listless imports that surround him. Add the fact that he’s not only the best player on the Mets but also one of a scant few whose career remains on the ascent, and you begin to understand that by nearly every metric, Wright is the anti-Met.

For seasoned Mets fans, it’s a maddening situation, mostly for the question it invariably provokes: Why must David Wright be the exception rather than the rule on a Mets team desperate for more of the youth, energy and performance that he has injected into the organization?

To best understand the answer, you must first appreciate that Wright is a Met largely by accident of fate; a wonderful aberration in a long and continuing series of missteps by an organization obsessed with buying its stars from other teams. Wright’s highly improbable journey to Flushing began after the 2000 season, by which time he had yet to graduate from high school.

The Mets, fresh off a demoralizing World Series defeat at the hands of their crosstown rivals, were preparing a contract offer for pitcher Mike Hampton, who had just completed a solid if unspectacular 15-10 season as the supposed ace of the pitching staff. The Mets, as is their wont, were jumping at the chance of signing him to one of those highly lucrative, seemingly interminable, utterly suffocating contracts that would have kept him in Queens for as many as seven years. But as fate would have it, Hampton’s last pitch for the Mets was a curveball: He turned down their money and went off to the Colorado Rockies for a contract in excess of $120 million.

When the news broke, Hampton became a near-universal target of scorn and derision in Mets fandom. Little did the fans realize that in leaving, Hampton had saved the Mets from themselves. Although few suspected it, least of all the Mets, Hampton was done—done as a Met, yes, but more importantly, done as a premier pitcher. He would go on to stage a mile-high meltdown in Colorado, posting ERAs of 5.41 and 6.15 before being unceremoniously dumped after just two seasons. Nevertheless, it was said that the Mets had let Hampton go for “nothing” after paying a handsome price to acquire him in 1999. What few knew—and even fewer cared about—was that the Mets did, in fact, get something for Hampton. They got a compensatory draft choice of the kind that Major League Baseball hands out to teams who lose players via free agency. With that choice, the Mets selected David Wright, and the future of the franchise underwent a seismic, albeit quiet, shift.

Wright joined the organization in 2001, working steadily through the minor-league system and arriving at AAA by middle of 2004 after scorching AA pitching to the tune of a .363 batting average. His performance had made him one of the premier prospects in baseball. In prior and future years, that distinction may have disposed him to being traded for the brand of old, overpaid mercenary upon whom the organization has traditionally lavished millions. But it would be different this time. If Hampton’s departure was the Mets’ first saving grace, then their futility in the following years was their second. Luckily for the Mets and their fans, Wright came of age at a time when the Mets were hopelessly removed from the playoff hunt and so escaped the desperate, win-now purges that would later claim the Met careers of Scott Kazmir, Carlos Gomez and Lastings Milledge.

Now, at the tender age of 25, Wright already stakes a legitimate claim to being the best homegrown position player in Mets history. Among native Mets, he ranks first in career batting average; first in slugging percentage; and first in OPS. He trails Dave Magadan by just four one-hundredths of one point for first place in on-base percentage and seems a good bet to stand alone atop that list before he’s done. Consider also that he runs uncommonly well and plays gold-glove defense at a premium position, and it’s easy to see why Wright has become not only a Shea favorite but also a fixture on all-star ballots across the league.

Had Wright debuted in the midst of a playoff race rather than amid the dying embers of the Art Howe experiment, he may well have ended up like Kazmir: condemned to flourish in relative anonymity so that the Mets could land the latest soldier of fortune. And as dire as the Mets’ lot seems now, one can only imagine how much worse matters would be had Wright followed Kazmir and others to another team.

It is perhaps too obvious to say that the Mets need more players like David Wright; every team in baseball needs another David Wright. But on a team rife with so many uninspired and apparently disinterested players whose time in the spotlight is moving ever closer to its inevitable end, Wright is more than a refreshing counterpoint; he’s a reason to watch the game. And if this Mets’ season continues along its current bent, he may soon be the only reason. That alone should underscore the Mets’ desperate need for another Wright-esque infusion of youth, energy, and excitement. The problem is that it can’t be bought. It will come only from within and as a result of a concerted, organization-wide effort to create—rather than buy—its stars.

Ultimately, whether the current Met mess resolves itself favorably or in another lost season will be decided by the players already on the roster; very little can change that. The Mets have made their old, overpriced, ill-conceived bed and are now facing the unenviable prospect of laying in it for what threatens to be a very long summer.

But whatever becomes of this season, the ticket to better days should be no mystery. In fact, you can see it from the dugout, the press box, and, yes, even from the owner’s booth. He’s playing third base for the Mets.

Ironically, of all the questions now facing this organization, the largest of all has nothing to do with Willie Randolph, with players who leave the locker room to avoid interviews, or even with the fate of this season. The weightiest question of all is whether the Mets will learn anything from the serendipity that brought them David Wright or choose instead to continue along the same bankrupt path, paved with fading stars and quick fixes, that led them to a historic collapse and now an existential crisis before the first of June.

Wang’s Increased Use of Slider is Double-Edged Sword

As Chien-Ming Wang rocketed to a 6-0 start, it was his strikeout rate that was particularly encouraging. At just over 4 per nine innings through 2007, he’d posted a rate of 6.4 strikeouts per nine innings, which, combined with his ability to generate ground balls, would have created a monstrously effective, and far less fielding-reliant pitcher.

But over his past three starts, Wang has begun to leave the slider, the pitch that seemed to create more swings and misses, up in the strike zone. Not only is it far easier to get extra-base hits against Wang when he does so, but each slider Wang throws is one fewer sinker that are likely to pound into the ground. Thus, a consistent increase in his use of the slider will allow him to strikeout more hitters, yes—but the pitch, which he clearly doesn’t yet command as well as his sinker, makes him more like other pitchers. And after his past three starts, Wang’s strikeout rate now stands at an ordinary 5.2 per nine innings.

Oliver Perez May Not Need Fixing After All

While various media reports (and Billy Wagner, the teammate who cried traitor) had Oliver Perez headed to the scrap heap after a poor April 30 performance, Perez has gone at least six innings in each of his last three starts, posting a 3.66 ERA, walking 8 and striking out 15 in 19 2/3 innings, with each start better than the last. Sunday night, his start was cut short not by ineffectiveness, but merely to save him with an 11-2 lead, after he’d retired six in a row.

Derek Jeter is Still the Ultimate Met Killer

After putting up a 4-for-7 weekend against the Mets, Derek Jeter has posted a .386/.436/.602 line against them in 254 career at-bats. Jeter hit a two-run home run as the keynote address for Saturday’s game, and singled ahead of the Yankees’ two-run blast from Hideki Matsui Sunday.

By contrast, Chipper Jones, who has a much better established Met-killing reputation, has posted a line of just .328/.417/.569, a good 52 points of OPS below Jeter’s. The Phillies have a pair of Met-bedevilers, Pat Burrell (.251/.364/.546) and Jimmy Rollins (.269/.327/.450). None of them measures up to Jeter.

Certainly, four World Series titles in Jeter’s first five seasons helped to create his legend. And it’s easy to see how his performances against the Mets, as strange as it may seem, have been an afterthought.

Wright May Be the Mets’ Jeter

David Wright terrorizes the Yankees at a greater clip than Jeter kills the Mets. Wright entered Sunday’s game with a career mark of .343/.425/.671, good for a 1096 OPS. He added a single and a double to his totals Sunday night.

How differently might Wright be perceived if the Mets had held on to win the 2007 NL East title? Well, he hit .394/.516/.657 in August 2007, .352/.432/.602 in September 2007, and likely would have cruised to his first MVP award. Make no mistake about it: Wright didn’t collapse last year, and certainly doesn’t seem to have a problem shining on New York’s biggest stage.

There Is Life In Carlos Delgado’s Bat

Leave aside that Delgado was robbed of a home run last night by a terrible call from the umpires, or that Delgado is now hitting .281/.321/.453 in May, which is well within the realm of acceptable for the first baseman. Delgado managed a ninth-inning RBI single Saturday against Joba Chamberlain, fighting off pitches and pulling an inside fastball into right field.

Delgado pulling a 98-MPH offering from Chamberlain is the surest sign yet that he can provide the Mets with the decent bat they need at first base—he seemed chronically unable to reach such pitches for nearly all of 2007, but has done so repeatedly over the past several weeks. To pull Chamberlain makes a statement—Delgado isn’t likely to get inside fastballs much quicker than Joba’s.

Baseball Needs Instant Replay for Home Runs

No one is calling for an end to umpires. But when the vast majority of regular season games involve four umpires, none closer to the outfield wall than second base, calls that often involve multiple-run swings need to be addressed, quickly and forcefully, by using the video technology available to anyone with a laptop. And as anyone with that laptop could see, the umpires got Carlos Delgado’s fourth-inning drive off the left-field foul pole wrong.

And no, this will not slow the game down. Taking 60 seconds to make a final ruling is in no way slower than taking five minutes to discuss, followed by an argument by one manager, after which the call is overturned, which then leads to a second manager discussion, followed by an ejection, and another five minutes of said manager “getting his money’s worth.”

Notice how managers don’t argue balls and strikes, because they are ejected automatically when they do. Apply the same rule to instant replay home run calls, which are likely to pop up once a month per team at most, anyway. The failure to do so actually slows down the game—and someday soon, a team is going to win or lose a pennant over it.

By far the move with the highest upside and the best chance of both short and long-term success is to move David Wright to second base.

The other choices are far less attractive.

The most obvious alternative would be to move Reyes to second base, a position swap the Mets tried to terrible effect after acquiring Kazuo Matsui. Injuries plagued Reyes, while Matsui was an unmitigated disaster both at bat and in the field. More important than the past, though, is Reyes’ plus fielding at shortstop, which is likely to get better as he enters his prime, and Rodriguez’s likely fielding at the shortstop position after four years away, which is likely to get worse as he exits his prime.

Let’s look at the benefits of shifting Wright to second to make room for Rodriguez, producing an infield of Rodriguez, Reyes, Wright and Carlos Delgado. 2007’s edition had Wright, Reyes, Delgado and Luis Castillo at second base. Castillo is a good player, but his 2007 on base plus slugging percentage (OPS) was 743. Rodriguez’s 2007 OPS? 1067. And Castillo is unlikely to top his 2007 numbers—they represented a higher on base and slugging percentage than his career norms.

As far as Wright’s ability to play second base, there’s no direct evidence either way, since he’s never tried the position. But there’s precedent.

One of the best second basemen of the 1980s, Ryne Sandberg, came up as a third baseman. So did Rogers Hornsby, one of the finest second basemen of all time.

More recently, the Mets had Edgardo Alfonzo move from third base to second base at the same age Wright is now. Chase Utley of the Phillies moved from third base to second base between his age 23 and 24 seasons—one year younger than Wright would be as he made the change. Alfonzo became the part of one of the best defensive infields in recent years on the 1999 Mets, while Utley just completed another season as the best second baseman in the major leagues. Wright is arguably quicker than either of them.

According to nearly every reputable fielding metric, Wright’s range at his position is the best in baseball—that is, he reaches the most balls out of his immediate fielding zone. His erratic throwing across the diamond, however, drags down his overall fielding numbers. Putting him at second base, where his range can be on display without the challenging throws, might actually be a better use of his overall athletic talents.

By contrast, Luis Castillo, the second baseman the Mets would likely re-sign in the event that A-Rod went elsewhere, is likely to continue losing range as he ages. And he is entering his age-32 season: players peak and decline earlier defensively than they do offensively.

It’s up to the Mets now to decide whether to accede to Boras’ unprecedented demands for his client.

But if they decide to go for it, then the sooner it happens the better. Let Wright come to spring training with an infielders’ glove, and the Mets will greatly increase their chances of going home for the winter as champions.

But this isn’t to say there aren’t some potential blockbusters out there that would improve the Mets significantly for 2008. There are three in particular that may or may not not be possible, but would certainly be spectacular.

Move One: trade for Johan Santana.

He is unquestionably the best pitcher of the past four seasons. He doesn’t turn 29 until March of 2008. His contract is up following the 2008 season, and it is highly unlikely that Minnesota can afford him. The Twins might well take their chances on one more run with Santana before he hits the free agent market.

If they don’t, the Mets would be in position to trade for him. Few teams could offer the major league-ready talent of Lastings Milledge, who could take over for free agent Torii Hunter in center field, Ruben Gotay, who could play second for the Twins, Mike Pelfrey and Philip Humber, who would both challenge for rotation spots. If those four aren’t enough, include Carlos Gomez.

While a Santana would draw intense interest from every team in baseball, the Mets should do what it takes to top these offers. Santana is as sure a bet as there is. He is on the right side of 30, he has been dominant for years, his peripheral statistics are steady and spectacular, and he even pitched out of the bullpen during his early twenties, saving his arm from the abuse that often ends a career early (think Steve Avery). And he’s put up these numbers in the American League—he’d likely improve statistically in the NL.

One caveat—to give up this much talent, the Mets will need to make certain that they get a 72-hour window to sign Santana to a long-term deal. Once they do, price must be no object. Paying a premium for the best pitcher in baseball will not come back to harm you. Just ask the Red Sox if they regret trading their two best pitching prospects for Pedro Martinez, then holding onto him for seven years.

The deal likely will clean the Mets out of trading chips for any other improvement, and Milledge is poised to become a star as soon as next season. With Gomez either in the deal or needing another season at AAA, the Mets would need to sign Jose Guillen or Bobby Abreu to patch right field for 2008. Ideally, Gomez would take over in left for 2009, while Guillen (the preferred choice) could last in right until 18-year-old prospect Fernando Martinez could take the reins.

Such contingencies are worth dealing with if Santana comes to the Mets. A dominating presence with Pedro Martinez would make the Mets formidable in the regular season and nearly unbeatable in a short series. And Santana would match with Oliver Perez and John Maine to provide the Mets with a fantastic starting pitching foundation to pair with Jose Reyes and David Wright for years to come.

Move Two: sign Alex Rodriguez, move David Wright to second base.

Rodriguez is unquestionably the best player in baseball this season. And he is a 3-for-20 ALDS away from being run out of the Bronx. He was raised a Mets fan, and the Mets have more money than virtually anyone else besides the Yankees. David Wright is even on record saying he’d change positions to accommodate A-Rod.

If it calls for $30 million a year for eight years, take that extra revenue from the playoff appearances it all but guarantees and put that towards his salary. The revenue generated as Rodriguez chases Bonds won’t hurt the Mets, either.

Wright, meanwhile, who has shown fantastic range at third base, would easily make the move to second. And his major defensive flaw, the throw across the diamond, would be eliminated. He’s turning 25—there’s no reason to think he can’t learn a new position at this point. Any defensive hit taken relative to Luis Castillo would be made up by the improvement at 3B offensively (Rodriguez had an OPS 105 points higher than Wright) and at 2B (Wright was 219 points ahead of Castillo).

Move three: Sign Jorge Posada.

How much better has Jorge Posada been than Paul Lo Duca this season? His on base percentage is 115 points higher. His slugging percentage is 165 points higher. The distance between Posada and Lo Duca offensively is roughly the same as the distance between Lo Duca and Orlando Hernandez.

Posada was unhappy with the Yankees’ decision to try and negotiate with Alex Rodriguez in-season, but not with him. None of the typical “I want to be a Yankee” statements from Jorge—he’s ready to test the market.

And you say the Yankees won’t let him go? Well, 99 percent of players, loyalties or not, go to the highest bidder. And it simply isn’t set in stone that the Yankees will be on top. If the Mets go three years, will the Yankees? Will they want to go four? $10 million per? $15 million? At a certain point, just as with Pedro Martinez and the Red Sox, the Yankees will say “We’re out.” The Mets have to find that point.

These expenditures will likely put the Mets in the $150-$160 million range, salary-wise for next season. But unlike previous, ill-advised spending sprees by this franchise, they’d have added the best pitcher and hitter in the game, along with the best offensive catcher in the game. And they’d have done so without touching the core of a team that won 97 and 88 games over two seasons. Picture this lineup on Opening Day, 2007:

Think anyone will be talking collapse then?

Let us hope, even if the Mets do this, they’ll still have the wisdom to sign David Riske. Even an offense this good, and a one-two punch of Santana and Pedro, might not be enough to overcome another year of Guillermo Mota.

The Observer’s Max Abelson broke the news back in December that Mr. Wright had gone to contract on the 4,100-square-foot penthouse at Infinity Flats, a condo development at 21st Street and Broadway. The listing price for the apartment was $6.5 million, but a source told Abelson that the third baseman was getting a slight discount.

That discount now looks to be about $500,000. Oh, the cachet that comes with being a baseball player in New York City these days.

The two men, who had slugged for five of the Mets’ six runs in a playoff-opening win against the Dodgers, were, after all, bona fide stars.

“I mean, you definitely have the butterflies,” said Wright, 23 years old. “You get anxious, a little nervous.”

“You know, my heart was definitely beating a little faster those first couple innings,” he added.

Delgado, a mountain of a man with a shaved head and goatee, looked away and smiled shyly.

It’s hard to believe that these are the mighty Mets, the team that brushed aside the entire National League during the regular season. And who went on, after that giggly display by Wright and Delgado, to sweep the Los Angeles Dodgers out of the playoffs in three games.

They are not the Yankees, who went into the playoffs expecting to win a World Series and ended up losing to the Detroit Tigers in four games.

But as recently as one week ago, it was the Mets who looked all too vulnerable. They had just lost half of their starting staff—Pedro Martinez to a bum shoulder and legs and Orlando Hernandez to a freak calf injury suffered during warm-ups.

But in the spirit of a franchise whose greatest accomplishments can be chalked up to freak plays (Buckner in ’86) and unthinkable heroes (Al Weis in ’69), the 2006 Mets are succeeding anyway.

Take John Maine, the Mets’ rookie starter in Game 1, who, as heroes go, is both freaky and unthinkable.

He pitched a very solid 4 1¼3 innings and allowed only one run—an impressive feat considering that Maine was only the second rookie to start a playoff game for the Mets. His 90-mile-an-hour fastball was steady and his generally flat change-up and slider were suddenly working.

After the game, which the Mets won 6-5, Maine walked into the pressroom wearing an oversized blue Lacoste polo. The 25-year-old’s cheeks were beet red, and he looked a little dazed with reporters all over the room.

He explained that when he woke up that morning, he didn’t totally believe that he was about to replace the injured Hernandez as the starter.

“I was like, ‘You know what, maybe it was just kind of a cramp or something like that—he might be able to make a start,’” he said.

Then the Mets’ pitching coach, Rick Peterson, told Maine otherwise.

“Once I got here by 11:30, Rick said, ‘You’re starting today.’ I mean, I was prepared anyway. I was like, ‘All right. I’m ready.’”

Seeing Maine in a starting role may end up being the least of the surprises in store for Mets fans. Without Martinez and El Duque, manager Willie Randolph has decided that in addition to Maine, Oliver Perez—a talented, seething mass of potential with a 6.55 E.R.A.—would be his fourth starter.

“I don’t remember anything like this,” Randolph told reporters before the series, by way of explanation.

But the Mets are nothing if not adaptive.

Over the course of the Dodgers series, they got good pitching from their starters, but used their bullpen to throw more than half the total innings.

They won Game 1 on the strength of their hitting power—a monstrous Carlos Delgado homer that bounced off the top of the camera stand in left-centerfield and a David Wright two-run double that sent the Shea crowd into fits so riotous that the press box behind the left-field foul poll literally began to shake.

But in the next two games, it was classic National League small-ball: the two groundball R.B.I.’s for Jose Reyes in Game 2, for example, and the bloop doubles and dying-quail singles from Paul Lo Duca and Shawn Green that broke the back of the Dodgers in Game 3.

It’s worth noting that in such a short series, some of the Mets’ more vulnerable pitchers—namely Perez and the 36-year-old Darren Oliver—didn’t get exposed. The Mets will have a tough time hiding them both against the Cardinals in the best-of-seven National League Championship Series.

But against the Dodgers, everyone around the Mets organization simply seemed happy just to savor the moment.

Ron Darling, the last Met pitcher to start a postseason Game 1 at Shea (in the 1986 World Series), sat in the press box in shirt and tie. He kept score and charted pitches, trying to glean material for his post-game show on the SNY Network.

After a double from Wright, the fans started up with the old chant of “Let’s go, Mets.” Darling tapped a pen against the desk in time to the beat.

“I’m trying to soak it in, to tell you the truth,” he said, screaming to overcome the noise. “When I was playing, I was never able to soak it in. It’s amazing how loud they are.”

“In my pre-game show outside, I never realized how much fun people have before a game. All those things are new to me.”

After the game, former team captain John Franco compared this year’s Mets favorably to the postseason teams he played on in 1999 and 2000.

“I think this batting order is much stronger than we were, and the bullpen is much stronger than we were,” he said. “I think we had a better starting rotation. I think this team and the ’99 team is similar in defense. This team is a little deeper.”