Gotta go to Mo's.

If you live anywhere within the Greater New York area, you know the shoot-me-before-I-hear-it-again jingle for Modell's Sporting Goods:

"Gotta go to Mo's, gotta go to Mo-dell's, gotta go to Mo's, oh yeah!"

Oh, no.

Now that the Yankees, who gotta go to Mo to close out the 9th, are playing the Mets, who gotta go Ti-Mo to spark the offense, you gotta go to Mo's to buy all the appropriate tchotchkes and apparel to display your heart. You also gotta go to Mo's to take the pulse of the city.

At the Modell's on 42nd Street, across Madison Avenue from Grand Central Station -- the demilitarized zone for Yankees fans who take the No. 4 train and Mets fans who ride the No. 7 -- the lines at the five registers are a dozen deep. The Mets have Bobby V., the Yankees have Joe T., and this Modell's has manager Neville Lalaram.

"Volume is more than twice as much," Neville says the afternoon before Game 6 of the ALCS and after the Mets beat the Cardinals in Game 5 of the NLCS. "Right now, we sell more Mets merchandise, but if the Yankees win tonight, we sell a lot more Yankee stuff. Things even out if we get Timo Perez shirts. I love this Subway Series."

Me, too. But for reasons that have nothing to do with making money. There's the historic angle, the callback to '56, when there was an Italian catcher like Piazza (Yogi), a headhunter like Clemens (Sal "The Barber" Maglie) and two little sparkplugs like Timo and Knoblauch (Scooter and PeeWee.) There's the entertainment factor: WFAN, Sportsradio 66, has become a hysterical, hysteric town hall between fanatics of what Mike Francesa calls the Varsity (Yankees) and Junior Varsity (Mets). There's the anthropological element. Mets fans wave those white towels MasterCard handed out before Game 3 of the NLCS. Yankees fans would blow their noses into them.

The best part, though, is that the Subway Series is like a Presidential election, only fun. And you have to vote. That's easy enough for those who were born under the sign of either Frank Crosetti or Eddie Yost, or for those who davened with Ron Blomberg and Art Shamsky. For the rest of you, there's no way to avoid choosing sides. If you claim to love both the Mets and Yankees, you will be labeled a wuss. If you wait to see who takes the lead in the Series, you are condemned to lie under the wheels of hell's bandwagon. If you say you are a Red Sox fan, you will be excused ... and laughed at for the rest of your days.

The biggest mistake John Halama made during the ALCS was not the fat pitch he threw to Jorge Posada in the fourth inning of Game 6. No, his biggest mistake was answering the question, "Where in Brooklyn are you from?" with "That's irrelevant." Halama, who went to Bishop Ford High (Windsor Terrace) and St. Francis College (Brooklyn Heights) should know better. You can love New York, you can hate New York, but you can never, ever consider anything about New York irrelevant.

"This is gonna break up a lot of families," Torre said after the Yankees finally put down the Mariners. But you gotta choose. Yankees or Mets?

Alright, we'll make it easier for you. Do you love the heartwarming story of an immigrant whose odyssey ends with the embrace of a grateful city, namely Timo Perez? Do you think Derek Jeter is overrated as both a hunk and a player? Do you think Bobby Valentine is a genius? Do you drive an SUV and put ketchup on your hot dog? Gotta go to Mets.

Haven't you already heard that heartwarming story of an immigrant whose odyssey ends with the embrace of a grateful city, namely El Duque? Do you think Mike Piazza is overrated as both a hunk and a player? Do you think Bobby Valentine is a jerk? Do you drive a cab and put sauerkraut on your hot dog? Gotta go to Yanks.

Me? I'm an objective journalist who will watch the Series from my seat in the Shea Stadium auxiliary press box and feel the electricity -- in part because my view is obstructed by a bank of outlets hanging from an extension cord. But I know I must choose because I am a New Yorker, a former teenager who snuck into Yankee Stadium in the middle of winter and took the mound, an ex-college student who skipped Social Psych to watch Cleon Jones make the last catch off Davey Johnson, a grownup who hates the way the Yankees have bought a dynasty, a husband married to a Red Sox fan and a father who has raised four Mets fans under the age of 14.

I can't help it, though. Just when I think I can't take any more whining from Knoblauch, just when I find the superiority of Yankee fans so insufferable, just when I think I'm ready to throw in the white towel and go over to Mr. Met, I see this face. It's a face like a baseball glove: old and new, homely and appealing, resolute and kind. It's the face of a Giants fan who grew up in Brooklyn. It's the face of Joe Torre. It's the face of New York.

Which team? Gotta go to Joe's.