Newsday: Matthews: Mets are legends in their own minds

La La La...Wallace Matthews, I’m not paying attention...La La La...just going to turn Cobra Verde up to 10.

In the Mets-free NL playoffs, several things have become abundantly clear to the objective mind.

First of all, the Mets finished behind the Phillies for a very good reason. They weren’t as good as Philadelphia. Period. Three games ahead after the final regular-season game doesn’t even begin to tell the story of how superior the Phillies are to the Mets.

Secondly, even if the Mets had lucked up and nipped the Brewers for the wild-card spot on the last day of the season, by now they would be out of the playoffs, vowing revenge for next year and making excuses for how, once again, the Best Team in the National League made an early exit.

And that kind of thinking, my friends, would have been a recipe for a fourth straight disaster in 2009.