The team, the time

LOS ANGELES – Ladies and gentlemen, introducing your 2006 world champions, the New York Mets.

Fit them for the rings. Order the confetti. Schedule the ticker-tape parade.

What about the National League Championship Series and the World Series, you ask? Mere formalities.

On Saturday night, the Mets not only completed a three-game sweep of the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Division Series but also showed why they’re on their way to winning their first world championship since 1986.

So much for that Subway Series. The New York Yankees collapsed. And the Minnesota Twins crumpled. And now the Mets can motor on.

Fans of the Oakland A’s, Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Cardinals and San Diego Padres, go ahead and fire away with the vicious emails. I’m just trying to save you the pain and anguish that will come with thinking your teams have a chance to derail the Mets.

Their lineup might not be a Murderer’s Row, but it’s capable of manslaughter. Carlos Delgado, Paul Lo Duca, David Wright and Carlos Beltran – watch them pound out hits and soon enough you’ll forget about the team’s suspect starting pitching.

The Mets were everybody’s darling when they were running away with the National League East. But just before the playoffs, when Pedro Martinez and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez went down with injuries, and the panic began. Forget about the World Series, naysayers said, the Mets are going to have trouble getting past the streaking Dodgers.

But more than exposing anything about the Mets, the loss of Martinez and El Duque revealed something. This team has heart, and it was on display again Saturday night.

Oh, sure. New York’s 9-5 victory over the Dodgers was no Picasso. At times it looked downright ugly. Chris Berman in drag ugly. But world champs win ugly. They win pretty. They win in every way imaginable. What they do is win, and in a three-game sweep the Mets showed why they’re not about to stop.

Game 1. Delgado, the team’s star first baseman, makes his postseason debut. It’s the kind of pressure that has rattled even the most skilled players, including Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds. But Delgado pounds out four hits, including a home run, and leads the Mets to a 6-5 victory. Oh, and that's with rookie pitcher John Maine starting on the mound.

Game 2. With Martinez and El Duque on the shelf, the Mets still need an ace. They look no further than Tom Glavine, who pitches six innings of shutout ball in a 4-1 victory.

But it was Game 3 that told us all we need to know about the Mets.

They were facing Greg Maddux, the future Hall of Farmer who in six starts this season at Dodger Stadium had a 1.76 ERA. He entered the game with a lifetime record of 35-18 against the Mets. And contemplating retirement at age 40, Maddux looked like a man determined to burnish his Cooperstown credentials with a playoff gem.

"Greg's the kind of guy you’ve got to get to early," said catcher Lo Duca. And that's exactly what New York did.

The Mets ambushed Maddux for three runs in the top of the first, stringing together five consecutive hits and showing the discipline needed to beat the four-time Cy Young Award winner.

Noted for his efficiency, Maddux needed 23 pitches and two sterling defensive plays to get out of the inning. He made it only four innings – his second shortest outing of the year – before being lifted for a pinch hitter with the Dodgers down 4-0.

Then came the big Dodgers rally.

With Tommy Lasorda pumping his fists. With a sellout crowd of 56,293 stomping its feet. With James Loney delivering a two-run single in the fourth, with Jeff Kent belting a two-run homer in the fifth, with the Dodgers taking a 5-4 lead in that same inning on a bases-loaded walk.

"When we got ahead of them, it looked like we had a chance." Lasorda said.

Fat chance.

It would’ve been easy for a visiting team to succumb to the momentum, get sucked up in the vortex of a sellout crowd, ease up and regroup for Game 4 Sunday and, if necessary, close out the series with Game 5 in New York.

Not these Mets.

"Put them away," Mets manager Willie Randolph said. "No mercy. You know all the clichés. But we really believe it."

We do, too. The Mets scored three runs in the sixth and began to pound the Dodgers' bullpen into submission and its sellout crowd into silence. After the Dodgers had crept out of their coffin, the Mets bullpen shoved them back in and nailed it shut.

"I think it’s just a microcosm of our year," Wright, the Mets' third baseman, said of the victory. "We fell behind in the middle of the game, and to be able to claw back and to be able to fight the way that we did, it just shows the heart and the character of this team. We’ve been doing it all year. It doesn’t matter how many we’re down. It doesn’t matter what’s the situation in the game. We’re confident that we’re going to win."

With Guillermo Mota and Aaron Heilman setting up closer Billy Wagner like picadors and banderillos set up a matador, it’s no wonder the Mets are now 75-4 when leading after six innings.

The key for the Mets is getting to the seventh inning, and Saturday they did it with the likes of journeyman starter Steve Trachsel and Darren Oliver, Chad Bradford and Pedro Feliciano. Who are they? Beats me, but by the time Mota took over in the sixth it was almost easy to forget that neither Martinez nor El Duque was available to pitch.

"There’s a lot of guys that want to prove something," said Lo Duca. "We were the second best pitching team in the National League, and they keep hearing about [the injured pitchers]. I think the guys on the pitching staff take it personally, and they’ve gone out all year and showed they can do it."

After the game, Randolph said he was starting to feel something – and it had nothing to do with the champagne spraying overhead.

"All year long, we’ve been pushing and battling and preaching to these kids what it takes to play winning baseball," the manager said. "We’re starting to feel it right now."

I’m starting to feel something, too. So here’s my prediction: The St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit Tigers.

Those are the next two victims as the Mets march and mug their way toward baseball’s crown.