I went to New York�s largest dance club tonight: 55,695 people dancing and clapping to the techno beat. It was kind of like that commercial in which the two guys are dancing with a girl and one of them yells above the music, �Cool place!� She replies, �It used to be a warehouse!�

Well this place used to be a ballpark. But it changed over in the fourth inning, when the Mets� Todd Zeile ripped a double off the right-field wall, opening the Mets� lead to 6-0 and all but closing out the game, putting the Mets into the World Series.

It was like nothing I had ever experienced before. Zeile�s two-out, two-base hit forced the Cardinals to change pitchers, and throughout the pitching change, the reinforced Shea Stadium sound system (stacks of speakers had been added beyond the outfield wall) continued to pump "We Like to Party" by the Venga Men, or Boys, or whatever they�re called. I looked around at the upper deck, down at the field level, out into the left-field bleachers, into the Mets dugout, and I saw jumping and clapping -- celebrations everywhere. I was up there, above it all with perhaps the best view, jumping and clapping myself, forgetting that this was a baseball game that brought us here and got us to party. And when I stopped jumping for a moment, to really take it in, to turn around and look up at the rows of reserved seats higher than the box I was in, I felt the stadium rocking. Literally. The 36-year-old concrete beneath my feet bounced and undulated the way solid ground feels when you step off a boat or a trampoline. It started then and carried on through the final five innings, the tension mounting until the final out fell into the glove of Mets centerfielder Timo Perez, who waved his arms and hopped in the air even as the ball arced towards him.

It was nearly as much fun as I�ve had at any sporting event. It topped the 1995 Notre Dame football games against USC and Texas, may have edged the 1997 game against West Virginia. It matched the 1994 overtime basketball win against Indiana. It far surpassed those exciting Red Bank basketball victories -- even over CBA -- which at the time were wonderful moments in my sports world. But since high school, since college, my world has grown, while this country around me has shrunk, and a Mets win on the national stage, to get to the ultimate baseball showcase, provided more excitement and enthusiasm than I�ve ever experienced at a professional sporting event. There�s no way the Super Bowl -- played at a random, neutral site, usually far from the home cities of the participants -- can come close. Basketball�s and hockey�s championships compress the excitement into downtown arenas, but those cannot hold half the spectators that Shea Stadium hosted Monday night. And even though they've had some success in Atlanta, I am convinced Braves fans do not and cannot party the way New Yorkers do.

It may be hard to go to another regular-season game again (but I certainly will). From the moment I walked into Shea Monday night, I could feel the excitement and anticipation of victory. There were more cars in the parking lot and more people roaming the concourses than I�d ever seen at the park more than 90 minutes before the first pitch. There was an overwhelming sense of optimism, a feeling not easily displayed so unanimously in New York, at any arena. New Yorkers were ready for a party; Mets fans wanted a head start on what became a city-wide celebration the next night, when the Yankees fulfilled their end of the bargain to create the first Subway Series since 1956. The next 11 days -- if it takes that long -- will be unbelievable, unbearable for some, a five-borough block party. Just imagine if the corporation of Major League Baseball wasn�t so greedy at getting every possible advertising dollar: This would be the perfect setting for afternoon baseball, for 4 p.m. World Series starts on Saturday and Sunday, perhaps even Wednesday.

But that won�t happen, and the best we can do as far as reliving golden Octobers of baseball�s past is to know that just a few miles and a bridge are all that separates the best of the National and American leagues.