ATLANTA – Each baseball game is a vacuum, to be played and analyzed on its own merit. Or so Mets manager Bobby Valentine would have us believe. Never mind that the Braves had won 18 of the past 20 games played in Atlanta, heading into last night’s opener of a three-game series at Turner Field between the Mets and the team they forever chase, the Braves.

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“We had beaten the Cardinals six games in a row,” Valentine said. “Then they beat us three games in a row. The first six didn’t have anything to do with the last three and the last three won’t have anything to do with the next six.”

The only added value to winning this series from the Braves, Valentine said, would lie in the players being able to “stop answering unanswerable questions.”

Questions about why the Braves own the Mets. Why are they unanswerable?

“Cuz it doesn’t mean anything,” Valentine said. “You don’t answer questions in here. You answer them on the field.”

Or in the case of the Mets, fail to answer them repeatedly.

Still, Valentine maintains the series should be judged only in the context of one series.

“There is no trophy, no glory, no after-effect that can be gotten from winning these games,” Valentine said.

Denial is more than a river in Egypt. It’s a state of mind for the Mets when they face the Braves. Can’t cure a problem until you acknowledge you have one.

The Mets have a problem. Their history at the House of Horrors, otherwise known as The Ted, is such that as soon as something starts to go wrong, they get the feeling that it won’t stop until the Braves have won and the Mets have lost again.

As if the three-game September sweep in which Chipper Jones homered four times wasn’t bad enough, the Braves had to rub it in by winning all three games of the National League Championship Series played in Atlanta.

Al Leiter, who had been such a clutch performer throughout the pennant stretch and postseason, succumbed to the Turner Field hex and didn’t retire a batter in his brief eternity of a Game 6 start.

Slumping Mike Piazza, who could use the sort of bust-out series against the Braves that Chipper Jones had against the Mets a year ago in order to boost his sagging MVP candidacy, was able to see a benefit that stretches beyond wins and losses to winning a series at The Ted.

“If we can win this series, that could be the first step toward knowing as a team we can play better here than we have,” Piazza said.

There you have it. Winning this series makes the questions vanish. Questions asked by reporters and questions the Mets ask of themselves every time they head to Atlanta.

“For whatever reason, we’ve never played well here,” Piazza said. “I don’t know if we catch them on an up note, they catch us on a down note or what. You can look at it as we’ve had some problems, or you can look at it as we can only get better. I think we choose to look at it as we can only get better.”

Despite the one-sided-

ness of the outcomes, the intensity of the games suggest the Mets are closer to the Braves than the numbers indicate.

“No question they want to beat us and we want to beat them and it’s a rivalry,” Piazza said. “Meaning no disrespect at all, but I think they get more excited about playing us than playing, say, Pittsburgh. I don’t know what’s so bad about admitting there’s a rivalry. I think it’s kind of cool.”

Piazza led the MVP race through the end of August, but has faded, probably into third place behind Giants Barry Bonds and Jeff Kent, but still ahead of Jim Edmonds of the Cardinals.

He came into the series with a .163 September batting average. He said the MVP race gives him no extra incentive, but facing the Braves does.

“I’m definitely way up for this series,” Piazza said.

It’s time to kill the curse and Piazza knows it.

“It’s not even that we look at it as is this the year we can get over the top,” he said. “It’s more like let’s wind up and take another shot because they always set the standard. They’re the ones we have to beat to try to prove we’re the best team in the division and the best team in the league.”

The only way to do that is to win at least two games of the three-game series.