On May 25, 2007, I watched the best local baseball team of the year play from the pressbox at NYSEG Stadium, home of the Binghamton Mets.

But that team was nowhere near Broome County.

A little over 200 miles away, in Farmingdale, N.Y., the Binghamton University Bearcats led the Albany Great Danes, 7-3, in the ninth inning of an America East winner’s bracket playoff game. A win for the Bearcats, the conference’s regular-season champion, would have put them just one victory away — in two tries, if they needed — from an AE Tournament title and a chance at Omaha.

The B-Mets, too, were in the ninth inning, so I checked the Bearcats’ progress on my laptop one more time, as I had been doing all game, and headed down to the clubhouse for interviews. There I found Matt Lane, one of the hardest working men behind the scenes of BU athletics, who sets up the Bearcats’ diamond by day and manages the B-Mets’ clubhouse by night.

“How about those Bearcats?” I asked.

“They winning?” Lane replied, gathering up uniforms.

“Up five in the ninth. It’s in the bag.”

He nodded and ran off. Busy guy. But it was in the bag, we both knew that. It was BU’s season, wire to wire. Destiny.

Had Yogi Berra been dead, he’d have been spinning in his grave. “It ain’t over till … oh, for crying out loud, you’re just an idiot.”

For one inning, with no baserunners and two out, the 2007 Great Danes invoked the spirit of the 1986 Mets. A solo home run started it, followed by a Binghamton throwing error, four hits and an intentional walk — a total of five runs. Albany had done it: a walkoff, 8-7 win. I didn’t find out until I left the ballpark.

Ya Gotta Disbelieve.

Binghamton didn’t roll over in the loser’s bracket the next day, bashing Maine 13-4, but that was its last stand. The Great Danes, seeded third in the tournament, dispatched an emotionally and physically drained BU team, 1-0, later that afternoon to take the championship. Binghamton would have needed to beat Albany two straight, anyway.

This spring, the Bearcats embark on a new season, maybe one of redemption. Not that they did anything wrong, really; that, simply, was baseball. The best team doesn’t always win.

“It’s just one of those freak things that you hope you only see once during your career,” says BU head coach Tim Sinicki. “It was a blur, it happened. It is what is and we just kind of move forward.”

But losses like last year’s aren’t easily undone.

“No one forgot about that, no one’s forgot about what happened,” says senior ace Zach Groh, who’s coming off a team-high seven wins in 2007. “We let down in one inning.”

And opportunities like last year’s aren’t easily regained, especially when last season marked the end to the collegiate careers of nine Bearcats — some of whom are irreplaceable.

Highlighting the crop of graduated players are Brendon Hitchcock, who leaves as the team’s Division I career leader in five offensive categories, including batting average (.360); and shortstop Justin Smucker, from Bird-in-Hand, Pa., the Bearcats’ leader at shortstop.

One southpaw, Scott Diamond, left before he graduated for bigger, and, for him, better things: a contract with the Braves.

“It’s impossible, you can’t replace those guys man-for-man,” Sinicki says. “I think that what we have to do is replace them collectively as a group, whether it’s with new players or guys that we have developed within our program.”

There are 12 new faces on the Bearcats this season, including nine freshmen. Some were in the stands in Farmingdale, but most won’t carry the same chip on their shoulders that the veterans will. With so many vacancies, the kids will be too focused on winning — and keeping — their jobs.

“We haven’t talked about last year at all with the new guys,” Sinicki says. “For me personally as we deal with the new guys, it has not been a topic of discussion.”

Maybe it’s for the better. Even the austere Sinicki, with 16 seasons at the helm after this spring and already 300 wins, lets on that it wasn’t easy to deal with.

“You thought about it every now and then and you replay it in your head, and you always try to learn if there was a mistake that you made,” he says. “We probably would have played the same hand out there and done everything exactly the same.”

But according to Sinicki, little about the Bearcats will be the same in 2008.

“We’re just different, we’re very different,” he says. “The names are different and I think that the way we’re going to play is going to be a little bit different. Different doesn’t have to be bad, different can be good.”

Different can be great, maybe even championship-caliber. But if the Bearcats fall short again this May — could you blame them with the names they’ve lost? It will be hard not to think back to a year before, and what could have been.

All I’ll remember was my laptop screen, and a nod from Matt Lane. Maybe that’s for the better, too.

“You weren’t there, you weren’t in the dugout,” said BU assistant coach Ryan Hurba over the summer. “You didn’t see the look on their faces.”