NEW YORK -- Billy Wagner moved toward the first-base line with the ball in his glove. Kelly Johnson moved toward first base with a base hit in mind. Contact was a certainty, collision was a possibility and catastrophe was out there, too. Shea Stadium crossed its fingers.

The Mets needed a 27th out; more than that though, they needed Wagner returning to the dugout or the mound -- which one hardly mattered -- in one piece. No one wanted to see 34 saves scattered all over the field and a postseason compromised.

There was potential peril and, in the general manager's box, instant concern. "Scary, very scary," Omar Minaya would say later. "You don't know when it gets bang-bang like that. A knee? A shoulder?"

In the end, it was neither. Just an out, just what the Mets needed. And in that regard, the final play of their 4-3 victory over the Braves on Wednesday was consistent with almost everything else that has happened this month.

September has been kind, prosperous and free of bad karma for these Mets. "We've done what we need to do the last few weeks," manager Willie Randolph said.

Of course, it helped that Wagner has fire hydrant in his DNA and Steinway legs. "He told me he was a free safety in college," Randolph said. "I wasn't too worried."

The Mets are mostly carefree these days. Beating the Braves on Wednesday night, while the Phillies were in collapse mode, pushed the Mets' lead in the National League East to seven games, as it was with six days left in August. And it essentially eliminated the Braves, who are now closer to fourth place than they are to first in the division.

The Mets' clinching number is 11, and any victory this weekend vs. the Phils will reduce it by two.

"It's good to be in the driver's seat," was Shawn Green's take on it. Loosely translated, it means, "It's good be the king."

Green had provided the lead that Wagner's fifth save in five September opportunities protected. Green's well-struck single to right-center field with one out in the eighth inning drove in Carlos Beltran and put the Mets in position to win a game that had been theirs to win before reliever Guillermo Mota allowed a two-run single to Jeff Francoeur in the top of the inning.

When Wagner tagged Johnson, the Mets had won for the ninth time in 11 games this month, and it squared the now-complete 18-game season series with the Braves, while also salving some of that early-season sting.

"Everyone was tripping when we lost those games to the Braves early," Randolph said. "But we won the ones that counted."

The Mets won five of the final six engagements with their erstwhile nemeses.

They had been in position to win without the late heroics largely because of John Maine, who pitched well for six innings, while the Mets picked on John Smoltz. Maine allowed three hits, three walks -- they came in succession and created a run -- and struck out five.

Maine would have shut out the Braves if not for a tainted two-out base hit by Mark Teixeira that extended the fourth inning. Teixeira launched a high pop that seemingly could have been handled by Beltran, but the center fielder started deep, and when he and Jose Reyes converged in shallow center, he deferred to his shortstop who had a far more difficult play to make. The ball fell.

Maine lost the strike zone at that point and walked the next three batters. The walk that forced in the run was to Andruw Jones (see Kenny Rogers, Turner Field and October 1999).

But the Mets afforded Maine a 2-1 lead in the fifth inning, when the remarkable Marlon Anderson hit his third home run against Smoltz. And the lead was padded in the seventh by a leadoff pinch-hit triple by Lastings Milledge and the second of Reyes' two hits.

By then, Jorge Sosa had pitched one clean inning in relief of Maine. And when Aaron Heilman retired the first two batters in the eighth, the game was going as Randolph had planned. But Heilman walked Edgar Renteria and surrendered a single to Teixeira before he was replaced by Pedro Feliciano. A walk to Brian McCann prompted Randolph to change pitchers again, and his choice of pitchers prompted another Shea Stadium crowd of more than 50,000 to boo loudly.

It was Mota coming in with a rap sheet of bullpen black eyes trailing behind him. "I wasn't going to let Feliciano face Francoeur. And I wasn't going to bring in [Aaron] Sele or Philip Humber," Randolph said. Nor Wagner.

Mota nearly pulled it off. Francoeur topped one pitch down the third-base line. David Wright handled it and stepped on third. But home-plate umpire Bruce Froemming called it foul. Mota seemingly had struck out Francoeur, but Paul Lo Duca couldn't handle the foul.

"Mota's had buzzard luck all year," Randolph said. "He was so close to getting out of it. But his luck will change, and he'll be a good pitcher for us. ... I'm going to keep going to him."

Mota's luck didn't change in time, though. Francoeur pulled a 3-2 changeup through the left side for two runs, and Shea reacted as if Doug Sisk, Armando Benitez and Chipper Jones were on the mound making faces. "It's tough, but I have to get outs," Mota said. "I just have to focus."

Without the runs Mota allowed, the contribution of Beltran and Green wouldn't have been superfluous. Beltran, who drove in Reyes with a sacrifice fly in the third, led off the eighth with a single to right against reliever Manny Acosta. He stole second and advanced to third after third baseman Yunel Escobar handled Moises Alou's ground ball and threw to first.

"The ball was hit perfectly for me to go to third," Beltran said. "He didn't fake me back to second, so I could go." And from third, he trotted home when Green delivered his third single of the night.

Smoltz is Green's personal piñata. The two hits in three at-bats on Wednesday gave Green 12 in 18 at-bats against Smoltz this season. He had a key hit against Smoltz in the Sept. 2 game that completed the Mets' improbable three-game sweep in Atlanta.

"Things turned around for us in Atlanta," Green said. "And now we're in great shape. Things seem to be going our way."

Green had shifted to first base when the ninth inning began so he had a close-up view of the game's final play. He saw the danger. It was Wagner's play. He held his breath just a tad. "It's always scary when a pitcher and a baserunner collide," he said. "Hitters are athletic. But Billy's built more like a hitter than a lot of hitters. Johnson might have gotten the worst of it if they really collided."