The only thing better than watching the Mets choke and then flail their way toward the bottom of the NL East the last four years is seeing the lowlife owners scramble to find money to settle a pending lawsuit against them in connection with Bernie Madoff.

Who would have thought that America’s biggest swindler used helped the Mets afford that lethal injection of a lineup that has caused more tears than cheers.

Today’s rumor has the Mets asking Donald Trump if he’d like to buy 25 percent of the team. Trump basically told his boys the Wilpons to pound sand. He did say he’d buy a majority of the team. But, like everyone else, who wants to be used by the Wilpons so they can keep and continue to ruin the franchise? Seriously, these clowns are looking for a handout from someone who will settle for a free box to every home game.

Well, Philly, that sounds good to us. Let’s say we can get one million of us together and each contribute $300. That would be $300 million.

While we couldn’t make any real decisions, the fact is we’d have a say in the team’s operating budget. That could tie the Mets executives’ hands behind their backs. Plus, we’d make money at the same time.

Plus, and this is the fun part, we could wear Phillies gear in the Mets owners box. We could openly root for the Phour Aces as “Mets owners.” Talk about a smack in the face to our northern cousins.

Heck, I’d burn David Wright jerseys in the parking lot before the game. Jerseys we bought with the profits, aka the Mets fans’ money. Find me a better way to crush the hearts of New Yorkers. There isn’t one.

Philly, let’s get together and buy part of the Mets.

The surprising Braves sit in first, a half game ahead of the Mets and 2.5 games ahead of the Phillies. The return of Jimmy Rollins has sparked the Phils to win five of six, and the Fightins have made up some ground on the Braves. yet, it’s the Mets who sit in position to make a run and steal first place.

With easier schedules than the Phillies, the Mets and Braves could be battling for first place before the All-Star break in two weeks.

Here’s a rundown of who each team plays the last two weeks.

BRAVES
Atlanta has the next six games at home, before finishing with six on the road. The Nationals (33-43) visit Atlanta the next three days, followed by Florida (35-40) on July 2-4. The Braves then come to Citizens bank Park to battle the Phils (40-33) before heading to CitiField to take on the Mets (43-32).

METS
The Mets go on the road for seven and finish with six games at home. They start with three games against the Marlins (35-40) in Puerto Rico. They then head to Washington (33-43) for four before heading home. The Reds (42-34) come to town for three, followed by the Braves (44-32).

PHILLIES
The Phillies have seven on the road and seven at home to finish the first half of the year. They travel to Cincinnati (42-34) for three and then Pittsburgh (25-50) for four games. The Braves (44-32) then come to Philly, followed by the Reds.

ANALYSIS
The Phils have the toughest road, but if they continue playing well, they have a chance to make a statement. Besides the Pirates, they play 11 games against first place teams from now until the break. If they stay within striking distance of the Braves, they have a chance to go head-to-head with Atlanta and take first before the Midsummer Classic.

The Braves and Mets both have series against the struggling Nationals and Marlins. They will face tough pitchers in Josh Johnson and Stephen Strasburg, so it’s not like they have a completely easy road. The Mets get the Reds and Braves at home, while the Braves play the Phils and Mets on the road.

At the end of the day, the Mets have the best shot to end the first half in first if they can take care of business at home. The Braves need to win their home games and hope to split their road games.

Not to be outdone, the Phils NL East rival New York Mets made a an offseason splash on Friday, as well.

The Metropolitans shipped Brian Stokes to the Angels for Gary Matthews, Jr., and $21.5 million of the $23 million guaranteed over the remainder of his contract, which runs out in 2012.

The Mets added Sarge's son to the lineup on Friday.

While the risk is low from the Mets perspective, the fact is this is the type of move that will keep the Mets kissing our asses for years to come. With all respect to Sarge, his son hasn’t exactly lit the baseball world on fire since reports surfaced that connected him to receiving shipments of HGH.

Last year, the 35-year-old hit a whopping .250 with four homers and 50 RBI in 316 at bats. Other than hitting .313 in 2006 — a contract year — he has never hit higher than .276 in a season.

We just don’t see any pop in his bat and wonder how the Mets think Matthews Jr. will help the team compete with the Phillies, Marlins and Braves.

Mets fans are so low these days that they count a Phillies World Series loss as a win for their squad of chokers.

Hug a Mets fan today; they need it.

Little Scotty from the blog More Hardball dubbed the Phillies loss “Christmas in November.” He mentioned how happy and elated he was that the Phillies got to their second straight World Series, but came up a Hideki Matsui bat short of back-to-back titles.

Umm, dude, the Phillies were still playing, something your pathetic team hadn’t done since June. Oh, and the team that won the championship was your cross-city rival. Have fun walking down Times Square among the Yankee faithful.

Seriously, Mets fans rooted for the Yankees? That would be like me rooting for the Patriots to beat the Giants in the Super Bowl two years ago. Didn’t happen. I didn’t give a flying Beltran who won that game. Either way, it hurt, because I am an Eagles fanatic.

As pitiful as it sounds to root for the Yankees, the Mets fans have displayed even lower levels of self worth during the postseason. They rejoiced when they discovered that Kobe Bryant grew up a Mets fan while living in Lower Merion, Penn.

A Flushing, NY, Mets fan site called Kobe being a Mets fan “an added bonus” to the Phillies losing to the Dodgers in Game 2 of the LCS. There are numerous other examples of this in the blogosphere.

That is how pathetic the Mets fandom has become these days. They are lower than Clippers fans these days. I honestly feel sorry for them, having been there myself in the mid 90s.

Do your good deed for the day and hug a Mets fan. They are desperate for attention and affection.

World Phucking Champs, no more. Back to being the bridesmaid. This is Philly. Second place is normalcy.

Being on top of the baseball world was fun while it lasted. All 371 days to be exact. We were champions and the exuberance we felt running through our veins, the effervescence flowing from our bodies was unparalleled.

Being a champion was fun while it lasted.

But, were we ever really comfortable being champs? A generation-plus of sports fans in Philly had no clue what winning felt like. Once we achieved the pinnacle, did we really know what we were supposed to do? Or, did we start to lose our identity?

Following a championship, people were nicer and opened doors for each other. The chip on our collective shoulders was gone.

We didn’t boo our beloved Phillies as much as we did before Uncle Charlie hoisted the championship trophy on a crisp October night in 2008. Even Charlie himself said that early in the season when his team wasn’t playing well. We had gone soft.

For once, the City of Brotherly Love was not an oxymoron. We had a team we loved like brothers and respected like the champions they were.

Sure, there was the occasional discontent among the fans that was aired on talk radio. However, it wasn’t as brazen as it had been during The Drought.

When Brad Lidge struggled early in the year, many fans said to give Lidge more time. You couldn’t expect perfection each year. At about the eighth blown save, those fans eventually came around. In the past, the catcalls would have rained down after the third or fourth blown save. The result of a champsionship was that we had become nicer.

But, wasn’t that just human nature? Or, were we supposed to react the same way we did before the championship? Was it too greedy to rip a championship team apart because you wanted a second title?

The truth is, we didn’t know how to respond. And, we still don’t. As a city, we hadn’t been in this position in 25 years (28 years for the Phillies).

Even as recently as Monday morning, the fans ire wasn’t what it would have, or even should have been. When Brad Lidge and Pedro Feliz bumbled Game 4 and the World Series away late Sunday night, you expected pure outrage. Think Donovan McNabb puking-and-not-calling-timeout-in-the-Super Bowl outrage.

Instead, people were more numb than angered. Fans were upset, but instead of decibel-level breaking boos, the crowd got fairly quiet, fairly quickly. The tone on talk radio the following morning was more laid back in the “I feel like I got kicked in the nutsack” way. The true anger lacked.

In the past, those players would have been lambasted.

The only player to receive some negative feedback was Cole Hamels when his comments about wanting a fresh start were taken out of context. Cole is a laid back Californian, so it was easy to misdirect the frustration solely toward him. However, even then, he didn’t get the same treatment that Ricky Watters did following his infamous “For who? For what?” comments. People will be harder on Cole next year now that we’re no longer champs.

Even today, as we wake up following another championship defeat, the feeling isn’t what it should be. The mood is more of “we lost, but we’re happy with the run and to have been there again.”

Don’t get me wrong. We should be proud of the Phillies and thankful for the three-year run they have given us to date. They did end the championship drought. Uncle Charlie could and should be elected mayor tomorrow.

However, the Yankees weren’t clearly the better team. The Phillies could have won the series with a couple of balls bouncing their way. To be happy to have been there is unacceptable. Where is the sadness and the anger that we’re used to?

It’s not there because we didn’t know how to act as champions. The collective fan base hasn’t been itself.

Today that can and will change. Dig deep down and pull out the brazen, hardcore, chip-on-the-shoulder fanatic. It’s who we are. Honk your horn and flip the finger to a New Yorker. Throw a snowball at a Mets fan this winter. It’ll make everything normal.

Nobody was really surprised when Kobe said he’d “rip the hearts out” of Philly fans when the Sixers faced the Lakers in the 2001 NBA Finals.

OK, he played for the Lakers. What was he supposed to say? He’d like for Philly to have a parade?

Kobe Bryant grew up a Mets fan while living in Philadelphia.

During Friday’s NLCS Game 2 in Los Angeles, TBS reporter Craig “GQ” Sager  approached Kobe during the game to ask him how he felt habing the Dodgers and his hometown Phillies facing each other.

According to Sager, Kobe said, “It’s not weird. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 14 years now.”

Then, he revealed this nugget: “Kobe said he grew up a New York Mets fan; he wanted me to tell Ron (Darling) that he still has your baseball card.”

Kobe was a Mets fan? While growing up in Philly? Seriously, that’s horrible parenting by Joe Bryant. You can’t raise a New York fan no matter where you live.

A week ago today, this weekend’s series against the Mets wasn’t supposed to be even remotely important. Fightins fans were hyped as Pedro Martinez had just outdueled Cy Young Tim Lincecum, and the team had taken two out of three from the San Francisco Giants, a potential postseason opponent. Cole Hamels had pitched two great games in a row, and Brad Lidge was showing signs of turning his season around.

The Phillies need to mark "Return to Sender" on the Mets this weekend.

Uncle Charlie’s troops had won 16 of their previous 22 games since being swept by the Marlins in mid August. The NL East was in the bag and home field advantage was within reach.

Sure, Cliff Lee had just been pounded for the first time in red pinstripes, but the Phils looked poised to return to the World Series. They were peaking at the start of September, the most important month in baseball, just as they have the last two years.

A week later, the team has lost six of their last nine and is coming off a pathetic 2-5 road trip against Eddie Savitz’ Wade’s washed up whack jobs and the Washington Nationals. Also, Cole Hamels, Cliff Lee and Joe Blanton have all been roughed up by putrid line-ups, Brad Lidge pitched his way out of the closer’s role, the injury bug has bitten JA Haap, and even-keel manager Charlie Manuel has blown up twice.

A team with an 8.5-game division lead and just 2.5 games away from home field advantage throughout the NL playoffs has watched the Marlins pull to within five games in the division and the Cardinals jump out four games ahead in the race for the NL’s best record.

The series against the Giants was huge, and the electric atmosphere at Citizens Bank Park was reminiscent of a playoff series. The team rose to the challenge.

Could the trip to Houston and Washington, two teams who were out of the playoff race by Memorial Day, have been a letdown? Sure.

Do championship teams have letdowns in September? No.

All of a sudden, the Phillies must kick into high gear, or risk stripping the Mets of their two-year reign as Choker Champs.

What was a meaningless series is now a chance for the Phils to make a statement. The Phillies need to send the Mets back to Queens like the losers they are.

Thank God the Mets are in town. This is a great chance to kick start their pitching and hitting against a last place Little League team.