IT’S IMPOSSIBLE to go anywhere these days, even the golf course, without getting stopped by a Met fan armed with a brilliant idea for how this season can amount to more than a three-aspirin World Series hangover.

They all have the same sinister, shortsighted plot.

“You need to write the Mets should trade Robin Ventura to the Mariners,” Joe offered between slices into the deer-tick-laced woods.

Ray liked the sound of it. He liked his plan even better.

“The Red Sox could use Rick Reed,” Ray said. “They should trade him there now, before it’s too late.”

Too late for the Red Sox, he meant.

“I know you’re going to think I’m crazy for suggesting this,” Eric warned, “but I think they should trade Mike Piazza. To the Red Sox.”

John stopped railing about Rey Ordonez long enough to toss in his two cents.

“They should deal Al Leiter,” he suggested. “To the Indians.”

Detect a pattern here? Driven to desperation by the World Series loss to the hated Yankees and the ensuing debilitating hangover, a growing number of Met fans have embraced the notion the only way for anything positive to come of this whole mess is for the Mets to ruin the Yankees’ chances of a four-peat.

Sweeping the Yankees in The Bronx, besides being nearly impossible, wouldn’t achieve that goal. Gutting the roster to fuel the Mariners, Red Sox and Indians would be more effective.

So there you have it. The Mets should trade Piazza, Leiter, Reed and Ventura in order to knock the haughty Yankees off their pedestal.

“You’re not really writing a story like that, are you?” asked an incredulous Steve Phillips.

Oh, yes, I am.

“You are?” he asked again. “You gotta be kidding me.”

Well, yes, that, too.

“They didn’t want to move Fonzie anywhere?” Phillips asked. “Armando and Fonzie should be packaged to where? They mentioned neither Edgardo Alfonzo nor Armando Benitez.

“Did they say what I should get in return for these players?” Phillips asked.

That good old, vague, catch-all term: “Prospects.”

Phillips is thinking with a cooler head than those among Met fans eager to stick it to their braggart buddies who bleed Pinstriped blood.

He’s not out to get the Yankees. He’s staring at a kitchen full of dirty dishes, spilled milk, cookie crumbs, spaghetti sauce stains, ants and mice droppings, and he’s thinking about how to clean up the mess that is the Mets.

He’s in no mood for a five-year plan. He’s more inclined to embrace a project that makes the Mets as good as they can be in 2002.

“At this stage, it’s hard to justify trading for a player who’s going to be the premium player on the free agent market this offseason,” Phillips said. “We would consider trading prospects for a player we would control beyond this year.”

That will be an awfully tough trick for Phillips to execute.

Mariner GM Pat Gillick has shown it’s possible to make gigantic strides via free agency over the past two winters. He recruited Jeff Nelson, Arthur Rhodes and Kazuhiro Sasaki to the bullpen with free-agent dollars and added the lively left-handed bats of John Olerud and Ichiro Suzuki. Bret Boone, the surprise of the 2001 first half, also was acquired via free agency, and so was ace Aaron Sele.