MLB

OWE, WHAT A FEELING!

PORT ST. LUCIE – You can’t hide when you’re David Wright, no matter how big New York City may be, no matter how sprawling the urban playpen may seem. There is no such thing as blending into the background when you possess the most famous face on the Mets, no morphing into the wallpaper.

“I love how deeply the fans care,” Wright says, fresh from a session at the Tradition Field batting cages. “It’s what makes playing in New York so incredible. They not only want us to win, they know why we win. And why we lose.”

They wanted answers this winter. They wanted explanations.

What happened, they would ask.

“I wish I could tell you,” he would tell them.

How could it happen, they would inquire.

“It made no sense,” he would agree.

How are you dealing with this, they would implore.

“We owe you one,” he would respond. “And we owe ourselves one, too.”

If people could be reasonable about baseball and rational about the Mets, then it would be simple to remember that David Wright still has only three full seasons in the big leagues on his baseball card.

They are three outstanding seasons, easily the three greatest all-around seasons anyone has ever had to start a their career as a Met, a .311 average and 97 homers and 365 RBIs just two months past his 26th birthday. Because of that, because of how he has helped transform the Mets, because he finally solved the team’s endless revolving door at third base, you can forget how old he is – or, more properly, how young he is.

“I don’t mind that,” he says. “That doesn’t bother me a bit. I want to have that responsibility that goes not only with being a successful player, but playing on a great team in a great baseball city. The biggest thing I’ve learned from the veterans I’ve played with is one word: accountability. I want to be accountable every day of my career, in the good and the bad.”

He pauses, smiles, recalls the winter and all those informal inquisitions.

“I’ve had my fill talking about bad things,” he says. “It’s time to be able to start talking about something new, something else, and something better. That’s what this year is all about, starting right now.”

For most of 2007, Wright did his part, despite a stunningly slow start that left him without a home run for the entire month of April. With a week to go in the season, he was still right there with Jimmy Rollins and Matt Holiday and Prince Fielder in the conversation for National League MVP; if not for the collapse, his 30 homers and 109 RBIs and 42 doubles and 37 steals would have offered up a compelling argument.

If not for the collapse …

“That seems to preface everything everyone talks about this spring,” Wright says. “That’s tough. But I think we understand that’s how it’s going to be.”

He remembers the worst moment of the whole fall, which stands now (and, he hopes, forever) as the worst moment of his career: Sitting in the dugout on Sept. 30 in the bottom of the first inning. There were 54,453 people in the stands and there were already seven runs on the scoreboard for the Florida Marlins.

“That’s when it hit me, really hit me, for the first time,” he says. “As bad as we’d been playing, I always felt we’d get it turned around in time. I always figured we’d be OK. And then we’re sitting in the dugout, we haven’t even hit yet, and we’re looking at each other, and you could tell what everyone was thinking: We really might not make the playoffs.”

The smile is gone now.

“That,” he says, “was the worst feeling of all.”

So he was the face, and the voice, that Mets fans sought out this winter, not only because he is the team’s unanointed captain but because he is the unmistakable heart of the team’s present, and its future. Wright understood. He embraced it.

“I just wish I had better answers,” he says, but the fact is he had the right answer all along. The Mets owe. They owe you one. And they owe themselves one. At least one.

michael.vaccaro@nypost.com