Mike Celizic

There’s a buzz in the air around clunky old Shea Stadium these days, a sense of anticipation that hasn’t been felt since the second half of the 1980s when for a brief shining moment the Mets were New York’s darlings.

You can insert here the usual caveat about it being too early to declare a pennant race over when it’s barely one week into a six-month schedule. But after you do, take a good look at New York’s other team, the one that is 20 years removed from its last World Series victory. Tell me this isn’t the team that’s finally going to break Atlanta’s 14-season stranglehold on the NL East.

I don’t think you can. The Mets have spent a lot of time rebuilding, retooling, tinkering and doing everything they can think of to field a champion without getting it right. But last year, they started to put something together. This year, it looks as if it’s ready to come of age.

They did big things in the market during the winter, adding Carlos Delgado’s big bat at first base, Paul Lo Duca behind the plate and Billy Wagner’s 100-mph heat in the bullpen. Gone is Mike Piazza, the face of the franchise when it got back to the World Series — losing to the Yankees — in 2000. Gone, too, are all the bad hires that characterized the team while it was struggling to get out of its own way.

What’s left is a powerful lineup studded with talent: Jose Reyes, a potential superstar shortstop at the top of the order, Delgado, Carlos Beltran and David Wright, a third baseman destined for greatness.

The Mets have pitching, they have defense, they have offense, and they have a New York kind of guy pulling the strings, former Yankee great Willie Randolph, who’s looking very comfortable in his second year as manager.

The Mets are leading the National League in pitching with a 3.33 team ERA, nearly three runs a game less than the offense is producing. And if getting out of the blocks is essential to a good season, they’re doing that, winning five of their first six games.

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It shouldn’t take long to find out just how good they are. On April 17, they play a three-game series against the Braves, who are to the Mets what Boston is to the Yankees. By May 7, they Mets will have finished a third series with Atlanta — nine games in all.

In other years during Atlanta’s run, the Mets often thought they had that breakthrough team. Then they actually play the Braves and learn they have another thing coming.

So these nine upcoming games are crucial. Win six of them, and the season is theirs. Win five and the prospects of a happy October get much brighter.

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And it’s about time. From a Mets’ standpoint, it’s been too many years that they’ve played on the margins of New York’s sports consciousness, the city’s redheaded stepchild, desperate to be noticed and to merit a pat on the head in one of those rare moments when the city isn’t talking about the most written-about team in American sports, the Yankees. It’s easy to assume it’s always been that way throughout the team’s 44-year history.

But, although the Yankees are the team of legend and literature, owned by the Mad Shipbuilder and drowning in riches, the Mets have had their moments. And because they have been so rare, the Mets’ triumphs shine more brightly.

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