Tom Glavine: Insert Gushing Superlative Here

(Note: For those of you who missed it, there was an early evening post yesterday about Matt Yallof's blog over at SNY.tv. You can check it out immediately following today's recap of Glavine's gem last night.)

With the look of a man who's just been informed that his AIDS test came back negative, Tom Glavine could finally exhale.

Xavier Nady had just clubbed a 430-foot shot over the wall in dead centerfield, and the Mets were on their way to staking Glavine to a 6-0 lead, or 2.6 times the average amount of runs he had enjoyed in his previous 6 starts (2.3 entering the game).

From there, Duaner Sanchez and New Jorge Julio would breeze through the final 6 outs of the ball game (setting aside the final 4 via strikeouts), and just like that, the Mets were 10 games over .500.

Back when he was a struggling Old Goat, Glavine was roundly criticized for his preoccupation with reaching 300 career wins. Just focus on finishing a season over .500, why don't you? New York fans would ask.

But throughout his first three seasons in New York, Glavine insisted that his dream of reaching 300 wins wasn't nearly as self-centered as it seemed.

After all, he reasoned, if he was drawing closer to 300 career wins, that would mean the Mets were winning games.

By this point, it's a safe bet that the knuckleheads out there who ever argued with that logic have started to come around.

Indeed, whether you count last night's victory as No. 4 (of his season), No. 19 (for the team), or No. 279 (of his career), you can't argue with what Glavine's late-career renaissance means for this club.

Yes, there's a long season to go. Yes, the risk of injury always looms. Yes, they're both pretty (Pedro) and very (Glavine) old.

But through the first month of the season, that's seven starts and counting, between Pedro Martinez and Tom Glavine, the Mets have something they haven't had since Mike Hampton and Al Leiter toed the rubber at Shea in 2000.

The Mets have a playoff-caliber front of the rotation.

That's important, so let that sink in. It's important for the health of the club today because Glavine and Pedro make the Mets fearsome at least twice a week.

And it's important for the health of the club tomorrow because it eliminates the need for a Barry Zito, which eliminates the threat to Lastings Milledge.

Now that doesn't mean the Mets are set for the season, or even for the playoffs should we be so lucky. You need a quality third starter, and thus far Steve Trachsel has been too schizophrenic to qualify.

But it does mean that the Mets have two guys you feel confident going to battle with. Two guys who you can pencil in every fourth and fith day and feel that you've got a good chance to win.

They said last year that Pedro made the Mets matter again every fifth day. Glavine will never be as sexy a personality and as irresistable a draw as Pedro is, but over his last 22 starts now he has made the Mets almost as imposing as on the days Pedro pitches (statistically even more so).

And you know what, for all the shit Rick Peterson takes (and will always take) for wanting to spend 15 minutes in heaven with Victor Zambrano, he sure has helped the Mets discover the talent they thought they had signed in that winter before the 2003 season.

It was Peterson, after all, who encouraged Glavine to throw more breaking balls, and to work both sides of the plate with more confidence.

He likened it to Tiger Woods toying with his swing: sometimes even the best need to make adjustments (he probably didn't emphasize then that Glavine wasn't the best, that in fact he was pitching like shit, but that's beside the point).

"Once they went back to the 17-inch strike zone, the transition was imperative," Peterson was quoted by the New York Post's Jay Greenberg. "Some games now, it's almost 50-50 working both sides of the plate. Tommy has a third-degree black belt in his pitching delivery. He has mastered it. He has a doctorate degree in glove hitting."

Although Peterson failed to mention it, Glavine also owns a Booker Prize in bat missing, not that anyone's counting.

And as dumb as Steve Phillips looked for including a bunch of easy-to-reach benchmarks that would immediately mean a fourth year of a 40-year-old Tommy Ballgame, we're all lucky to have the guy right now.

That's because he's winning ballgames and shifting the Mets' needs. We won't need to mortgage the future to bring in a No. 1 or a No. 2 at the deadline this year. We've already got those.

I would take a No. 3 (Where have you gone, Rick Reed?), especially when you're staring down a weekend like this one against the Braves with Trachsel, Zambrano, and John Maine.

It's a big test for the back of the rotation, but no matter how they perform, it's good to know that they'll have Pedro and Glavine backing them up when we head into Philadelphia next week.

Because between those two guys, we've got one of the best 1-2 punches in baseball. The way they've been pitching this first month, it may be the best.

19-9. You know the feeling of being 10 games over .500? You haven't felt it since 2000.

Let's go!

- A.F.O.M.G.