Nothing gets the blood boiling in baseball quite like a Yankees spending spree, after all.

And for the rest of baseball, that can remain simply an infuriating nugget of trivia, followed by a back-at-ya reminder that in the eight years when the Yankees started building teams with a fiscal foundation, rather than one steeped in character, they have yet to add another championship flag.

But there is one team that is not permitted to act that way, or to talk that way, and it is the team that shares New York with the Yankees (at least in name), the other team in town opening the kind of cash-cow ballpark that so easily allows the Yankees to explain away their newfound burst of buying.

The Mets have some explaining to do now, and some work left in front of them.

If they aren't required by law to officially enter the Manny Sweepstakes, just because he's the fattest cat remaining in play, they should at least start acting like they belong in the varsity league by addressing their lingering need — starting pitching — with most tried-and-true method possible.

By spending their money. By acting like they belong in the same sentence — or the same city — as the Yankees. By not conceding and meekly accepting their place as afterthought, also-ran, and permanent bridesmaid.

Unless, of course, the Mets and the Wilpon family don't have as much money as they say they do, and unless they want to ensure that questions about just how much they lost at the hands of Bernie Madoff will never, ever go away.

Right now, immediately, the Mets need to revisit their interest in Derek Lowe. Right now, immediately, they need to reinvestigate their negotiations with Oliver Perez. Unless the team is drowning and dying in red ink — which it insists it is not — the Mets need to prove with their checkbooks that they really are in the same category as the Yankees.