Brian McRae said over and over he didn’t care if the Mets had put him on waivers. There was nothing he could do but go out and play baseball. McRae did that last night, and he did it very well.

Shrugging off the potential distraction of being placed on irrevocable waivers and having to answer many questions about it before Game 1 of the Subway Series started last night, McRae went out and had the best game of any Met. He went 3-for-4 with a solo home run and a pair of singles before being pinch-run for in the eighth inning.

McRae’s home run came on a 2-2 pitch from David Cone and gave the Mets a 1-0 lead, and it seemed as if he took his time rounding the bases. One of the first people to greet him in the dugout after he came back was Bobby Valentine, the manager whom McRae has criticized more than once in the past few seasons.

If McRae was playing with any extra enthusiasm to show the Mets they were making a mistake for placing him on the waiver wire, he didn’t show it beforehand.

“It really doesn’t matter,” he kept saying. “There’s nothing I can do about it, so why should I worry about it? I just want to play ball. That’s all I want to do. When I was younger, this might have upset me. But I know the way it goes now. This is a business. This type of stuff happens and there’s nothing you can do about it.

“My job is to go out and play and not to worry about all those things.”

McRae certainly didn’t seem worried when he took Cone deep in the second, or when he singled up the middle in sixth, or through the hole in the eighth.