NEW YORK — Tom Glavine got a cup of coffee Friday and walked around Manhattan.

“I had a few people come up to me and just say, “You know, hey: Sorry about the way that last game went. Appreciate what you brought to the Mets, what you brought to the team.’ And I think that’s, you know, that’s all you can ask for.”

In his final start for New York last September, he got just one out and gave up seven runs in an 8-1 loss to Florida — dropping the Mets out of a first-place tie with Philadelphia on the final day of the season and costing them a chance for the playoffs.

“I don’t expect people to be happy with the way the last game of the year went, because I’m not,” he said. “I was certainly upset about it and embarrassed by it. But, you know, again, you hope that people judge you by your total body of work.”

After spending five years with the Mets, Glavine left as a free agent and returned to the Atlanta Braves, the team he spent his first 15 big league seasons with. He returned to Shea Stadium on the disabled list because of a hamstring injury but is slated to start Tuesday at Washington.

Glavine had never before been on the DL.

“You have that feeling of being worthless, you know, you’re letting your teammates down,” he said.
Mets fans still are stung by what happened on Sept. 30. New York, which led the NL East by seven games with 17 to play, would have forced a tiebreaker playoff with a victory that sunny Sunday afternoon.

Instead, Glavine matched his career high for runs allowed in an inning.

And he bothered some Mets fans with his postgame remarks, when he said: “I’m not devastated. I’m disappointed. Devastation is for much greater things in life.”

“I guess the distinction I was trying to make is that feeling — your favorite team losing a game — is different than a life-or-death situation,” he said before the Braves and Mets played Friday night. “If people interpreted that as me not caring, then I’m sorry about that because that wasn’t my intent, because I did care about it. I was upset about it. Like I’ve said many times, it’s bothered me more than any game I’ve ever pitched.”

Glavine, among the most thoughtful and well-spoken players in baseball, said he “was approaching it more from a life standpoint and not so much from a sports standpoint.”