ATLANTA — If he’s lucky, the innings will speed past in a blur across the next 12 or 15 years, starts and seasons blending into one another except for the important games, the unforgettable outings, the forever milestones.
If he’s lucky, and blessed with good health, Zack Wheeler will pitch, and pitch well, with such frequency that the fickle tricks of memory will incorrectly place him in Pittsburgh instead of Cincinnati when he broke off a killer slider to escape a bases-loaded jam. It’ll be Giancarlo Stanton, not Bryce Harper, who mashed his best heater into the upper tank somewhere.
But there is one thing he will never forget.
He will never forget the first batter he faces as a big leaguer, the first inning he turns in as a major leaguer. He will remember every detail: what he saw, what he felt, how his heart tom-tom-tommed right through his chest and how he knew, regardless of what happened from then: I made it. I got here.
I belong.
“Sometimes,” Ron Darling said with a smile, “a little hubris can be awfully helpful.”
Thirty years ago, Darling was the kid with the big right arm and the big, bright future, joining a horrid Mets team in a lost season, offering his services as a building block, one piece in the puzzle trying to create legitimacy in Flushing.
Darling had heard Wheeler talk about the advice Steve Kline, a former big leaguer who served as his pitching coach for the Augusta Green Jackets three years ago, had given him early in his career.
“Look in at the plate, focus, and whatever you do, don’t look up because the bright stadium lights and the crowd will suddenly get in your head,” Kline told him.
Kline knew, he told Wheeler, because his first time on a big-league mound he’d made the mistake, looked up, turned around, and threw up on the back of the mound. It’s a story Darling listened to with a grain or 10 of salt.
“I think that’s just a good story you tell around the minor leagues,” he said. “Because when you’re that young, that confident, what you’re really thinking — what you should be thinking — is this: ‘OK. Give me the ball and get out of my way. It’s time.’ ”
It was only after the pregame meeting on Sept. 6, 1983, that Darling had to wonder if his own hubris was real. Because it was then that he took a good look at the three Phillies he would be facing in the top of the first inning in front of 8,863 people at Shea Stadium:
Joe Morgan. Pete Rose. Mike Schmidt.
Hall of Famer. Exiled Hall of Famer. Hall of Famer.
Darling? He went strikeout, strikeout, 5-3 groundout. Give me the ball. Get out of the way.
It’s time.
“That first inning, I’ll be a little nervous for him,” Terry Collins admitted. “You don’t want all that hype to go for naught with one bad outing.”
“I just want to throw strikes and pound the strike zone,” Wheeler said, “and not make it more of a big deal than it is.”
But it is a big deal, and not just for the Mets, who have so much of their future attached to that right arm. For him, too. Maybe he won’t have the kind of first inning Darling had, but it will be hard for him to duplicate the first inning Nolan Ryan had in his first start as a Met against the Astros on Sept. 18, 1966, a once-upon-a-time scheduled doubleheader at the Astrodome that began thusly: walk, single, single (to Morgan), double, strikeout, single. Six hitters, four runs.
Ryan recovered. But he never forgot.
“Not what you would call a memorable start to a career,” he said a few years ago, “though I’ve never forgotten it, much as I’d like to.”
Tom Seaver’s first pitch as a big-leaguer was laced for a double by Pittsburgh’s Matty Alou, though he escaped a jam by striking out Donn Clendenon, of all people. Dwight Gooden got two grounders to second and struck out Dickie Thon in his first inning as a Met on April 7, 1984. Matt Harvey struck out Gerardo Parra swinging and Paul Goldschmidt looking as part of a scoreless debut inning last July 26. Every one of them can give you details on demand.
Someday, Wheeler will, too. If he’s lucky, there will be 450 more starts after this one, and 3,000 or so innings, and if he’s especially fortunate, there will be more highlights than he can count along the way, too many to remember perfectly.
What happens tonight, around half past seven?
That he will keep with him. In his brain. In hi-def. Forever.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com