The day he was hired to repair the wreckage that is the New York Mets, Omar Minaya had this to say about the kind of player he was hoping to attract:

“I believe in pitching, athleticism, and defense.”

It sounded like a new era would be dawning in Flushing, where for the past four years, the team has stunk as bad as the river that runs alongside its ballpark.

Now comes word out of Key Biscayne, Fla., where major league baseball’s 30 general managers are holding their annual gossip- and swap-fests known as the Winter Meetings, that for his first act as the Mets’ president of baseball operations, Omar Minaya is seriously pursuing a deal that would bring Sammy Sosa to Shea Stadium.

So much for pitching, athleticism, and defense. So much for “full autonomy.” And so much for a new deal in Flushing.

If Minaya, who scouted Sosa as a 15-year-old out of the Dominican Republic, signs him now as a 36-year-old, then it is the same-old, same-old at Shea, and Minaya, like Jim Duquette and Steve Phillips before him, is no more than an errand boy for Fred and Jeff Wilpon.

Sosa, once considered the closest thing baseball had to a goodwill ambassador, has revealed himself as everything the Mets claim they don’t want, and everything they have come to represent. On the one hand, he is the quintessential “24-and-1 guy,” the epithet that was used by Phillips to justify the Mets’ non-pursuit of Alex Rodriguez back in the winter of 2000. On the other, he is the epitome of the overpaid, under-motivated, rapidly fading superstar the Mets knock themselves out for every single off-season.

In that regard, Sosa would follow in the fine Mets tradition of Bobby Bonilla, Rickey Henderson, Robbie Alomar, Tom Glavine, and of course, the gone but never forgotten Mo Vaughn.

Even if, somehow, Minaya were able to swing a deal that would rid the Mets of the burden of two onerous contracts – Mike Piazza’s and Cliff Floyd’s – the negative addition of Sosa for two years at $18 million per would more than balance the scales.

This is the player who, despite offensive numbers that have plummeted faster than Mo Vaughn falling off a roof – Sosa batted just .223 in August and September as the Cubs chased a playoff spot – sulked that being dropped to sixth in the batting order was “a slap in my face.”

This is a guy who, on the last day of the Cubs’ disappointing season, saw fit to lam out of Wrigley Field after one inning. Then, he lied about it and said he had stuck around until the seventh. Damn those security cameras!

And this is the guy who, two Junes back, had the misfortune to have a bat come apart in his hands while batting against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and lo and behold, what should pop out? No, not Bud Selig’s toupee. Cork. Sammy’s story, of course, was classic. He had inadvertently picked up some random bat, the one he uses for batting practice, and how was he supposed to know someone had loaded it up?

Even if you swallow that story, do you really want a guy with that sort of blasted bad luck on your ball club? That kind of thing can spread throughout an entire organization.

Oh, wait. It already has.

Ever since the Mets passed on A-Rod following their loss to the Yankees in the 2000 Subway World Series, the only luck the Mets have had has been terrible. Eighty years from now, we may look back on that non-move as the beginning of the Mets’ own personal curse, because their sin was not so much in not getting Rodriguez – a quarter of a billion bucks is a bit steep for a shortstop – but in lying about their reasons for same.

Rodriguez may be a lot of things to a lot of people, but selfish he is not. If so, he might have balked about switching positions in order to play for the Yankees. The Mets owe Rodriguez an apology, and their fans a bigger one for the way they mishandled that one.

And they owe another apology for half-stepping in their pursuit of Vladimir Guerrero last winter, another player they chose not to sign, but to malign. Bad back, they claimed, without having examined the guy or even having spoken to the Expos’ team physician. Guerrero went on to play a healthy 156 games for the Anaheim Angles, posting MVP-caliber numbers.

But there are no words that can appease their fans should the Mets whiff on signing Carlos Beltran, the prize of this year’s free-agent crop, and come back with Sammy Sosa instead.

There is no excuse for losing a bidding war to the Yankees; last time I checked, Flushing was also part of the world’s most lucrative sports media market. They better not cry poverty: A couple of months ago, Fred Wilpon found the means to write a check for $54 million to buy his way out of a TV contract with MSG Network, with plans to start his own.

If the Mets come up empty yet again, it will confirm all the worst fears about the organization: That they are not really interested in building a winner, that are merely creating the kind of off-season buzz that sells false hope – and season ticket subscriptions – to suckers. Once again, they will be masters of off-season illusion, not in-season success.

This was all supposed to change the day Omar Minaya took over the operation.

If Omar comes back from Key Biscayne with Sammy Sosa in his shopping bag, you will know that nothing about the Mets has changed. Once again, it will be business as usual.

Bad business.

Mr. Matthews is the host of the “Wally and the Keeg” sports talk show, heard Monday-Friday from 4-7 p.m. on 1050 ESPN radio.