Yadier Molina added his name to an inglorious roster of enemies for Mets fans last night.

Like Terry Pendleton in 1987, like Mike Scoscia in 1988, names that will live in infamy for as long as Mets fans suffer and bleed for games lost and opportunities squandered, Molina plunged a butcher knife into their soul.

This time, it was a two-run homer off Aaron Heilman with one out in the top of the ninth inning, and the moment the ball collided with his bat it was as if someone had kicked a plug out of the wall at Shea Stadium.

When it finally landed, well over the head of Endy Chavez who’d put off just such an event just three innings earlier with an unspeakably remarkable grab the Cardinals had a 3-1 lead.

Minutes later, they had a 4-3 victory in this best-of-seven National League Championship Series, ending a Mets season that included 97 regular season victories but only six in the postseason, when a seventh would have landed them in the World Series tomorrow night in Detroit.

The Mets knew they were looking at steep odds when they returned to Shea Stadium trailing 3-2 in games to the Cardinals, who won 14 fewer games than they did during the regular season. Still, after winning Game 6 4-2, and after receiving a stunningly splendid six-inning effort from Oliver Perez last night, they had every reason to believe they could somehow survive.

But their offense, which had carried the team all season long, could produce only four hits all night and none between the first inning and the ninth, when they gamely tried to mount a last-ditch rally against Adam Wainwright. Jeff Suppan shut them down for the second time in five days. And then Yadier Molina allegedly the weakest-hitting of three Molina-brother catchers shut out the lights at Shea.

This was everything a seventh game was supposed to be, right from the moment Ron Darling, an old Game 7 veteran, through out the ceremonial first pitch, from the moment Glenn Close, one of the 1986 Mets’ good-luck charms, sang the National Anthem. The Mets scratched out a run against Jeff Suppan in the first inning, and “scratched” was the absolutely appropriate way to describe how they had to do it, since Suppan baffled the Mets across two different games in this series more completely than just about any pitcher had this year.

David Wright, the player around whom so many Mets fans believed the laurels would have to fall, last night since it was clear the Cardinals were committed to not allow Carlos Delgado to hurt them, dunked a runscoring single in front of St. Louis rightfielder Juan Encarnacion, and just as it had one night earlier, Shea began to rock on its foundation.

It was about to blast itself to smithereens a few moments later, when Shawn Green hit a laser beam rocket the other way. But it wound up settling safely in Scott Rolen’s glove, saving a run that the Mets surely could have used after the Cardinals scratched out a run of their own in the top of the second, Ronnie Belliard’s safety squeeze safely plating Jim Edmonds.

But of all the noise that Shea produces, of all the moments that remain forever pressed between the pages of New York’s collective mental scrapbook, there may never have been a more remarkable sound than the one that filled the place in the top of the sixth inning. It was a din so complete, so overwhelming, it nearly altered the flight paths of the planes landing at LaGuardia.

That’s when Endy Chavez delivered the most spectacular defensive play in the history of the postseason.

Yes, that’s what it was. You can nominate any catch you like Willie Mays in 1954, Tommie Agee’s twin delights in 1969, Ron Swoboda’s, Sandy Amoros’. But you won’t find another play that was not only the highest possible degree of difficulty Scott Rolen’s blast would have cleared the left-field fence by two feet, easy but also came at a more critical juncture.

If he doesn’t make that catch and only a few people ever born could reasonably have been expected to even have a shot the Cardinals have a 3-1 lead, and the way the Mets were swinging the bats that would have been your ballgame right there.

Instead, it merely extended the inevitable a few innings.