PITY the knuckleheads sitting on the bridge, squeezed in among the other knuckleheads who left a one-run ballgame even though the Mets had John Olerud, Mike Piazza and Robin Ventura due up against top-shelf Padres closer Trevor Hoffman in the ninth.

You buy your ticket and are asked to take your chances for that sort of drama. You say yes in a minute.

Olerud reached base with one out when the ball he hit shot past confused shortstop Damian Jackson.

Time for Piazza to make the fickle crowd of 22,581 glad he was activated from the disabled list.

”If he gives you a pitch early on, you better take your swing because if he gets ahead of you he can pick you to death,” Piazza said of Hoffman. ”He has so many options to choose from. He’s got a good curve. He’s got a great changeup and he can buzz you with a fastball.”

Piazza didn’t let it come to that. Hoffman started him off with a fastball and Piazza put it into the Mets’ bullpen beyond the right field fence. Mets win, 4-3. Losing streak ends at three games.

He’s back.

A $91 million contract does a lot for a man, but one thing it doesn’t do is kill the little boy in him. A ninth-inning home run to win a game your team was losing still generates goose bumps for more than the crowd.

”You go deaf from the crowd,” Piazza said. ”You can’t beat it. The crowd goes electric. It’s a thrill.

”Obviously, it’s a thrill. The way your adrenaline gets pumping. Everyone’s excited.”

Everyone except the regret-filled motorists on the bridge. Those would be the guys who slammed on the brakes when their radio told them the Mets’ fortunes had just done a 180.

Piazza’s timing was impeccable. It was more than just the length of the losing streak that created cause for doubt about the team that was having so much trouble beating up on a succession of lousy teams.

It was the way the rotation was springing leaks during Rick Reed’s absence. The way Masato Yoshii was creating more doubts with each trip to the mound. The way the outfielders kept getting hurt. The way Rey Ordonez was hitting again, still.

Piazza came up with seven runners on base the previous night and failed to drive in any of them. He knew that would happen. He knew that after 15 days on the disabled list the smoke would escape from his bat.

Piazza was placed on the DL after suffering a sprained medial collateral ligament in his right knee, an injury he suffered on the bases April 9. He didn’t want to go on the DL, but the Mets, looking at the long haul, took the cautious route.

”I didn’t expect to do too much too soon after coming off the disabled list,” Piazza said. ”No timing. No real way of avoiding that. Your timing is off. You’re jumping at the ball. Trying to do too much with it. Jamming yourself. It takes time. Just because I hit that one tonight doesn’t mean I’ve got it all back.”

It did mean he was greeted at home plate by a flock of Mets busting loose from the blues all at once.

”A lot of tension kind of was relaxed,” Piazza said. ”We were all a little frustrated. We needed a win. I just wish we had more time to enjoy it.”

Piazza was just telling Rickey Henderson, one inning before winning the game, about how all it would take to get the Mets kick-started would be for one guy to deliver a big hit. It was as if he talked himself into it.

But there would be no celebrating this hit deep into the morning.

Catchers like to sleep in. Foul balls to the throat and home-plate collisions they can deal with, but alarm clocks are another matter. The Mets and Padres will be right back at it this afternoon at Shea in the series finale.

”Day game on a week day,” Piazza said. ”I’m still trying to figure that one out. Can’t even sleep in. That stinks. I’ll be sitting on the bridge, trying to fight through all the traffic. Where do they have to fly to, Montreal? What’s that, a one-hour flight?”

Thanks to Piazza, the Padres won’t be flying on the wings of a sweep.

Thanks to the Mets’ conservative approach to the catcher’s injury, Piazza is on his way to a full recovery.

”It was four or five days too long,” Piazza said of his time of inactivity. ”But this way it won’t linger. Better safe than sorry.”

And better to stay seated than head for the parking lot when Olerud, Piazza and Ventura are due up in the ninth in a one-run ballgame.