My wife and I drove to Mohegan Sun on Saturday night out of curiosity and boredom. We blew five dollars, ate delicious burgers, and passed time walking around the endless rows of slot machines, mesmerized by the flashing lights and digital clanking and all the people gambling away their money.

They sit, in earnest, pumping cash into the same machine over and over, hitting the same button again and again, hoping they’ll finally hit the jackpot. A precious few actually do. Way more don’t.

But they keep trying because, presumably, they’ve already committed so much money to the damned bandit and believe the only way they’ll recoup their losses is to keep feeding the thing bills until their luck turns around.

And because just about everything makes me think about the Mets, it made me think about the Mets.

It’s not a perfect metaphor, of course, because the outcomes of baseball games — unlike slot machines — are not entirely random. They’re largely affected by randomness, but not wholly dictated by it.

But with the Mets’ pitchers and catchers set to report to Port St. Lucie on Thursday, and the deluge of newspaper stories previewing the team’s season already streaming in, I’m struck by how much the team’s fate is wrapped up in fortune.

This is nothing new, and not even anything atypical. All successful baseball teams benefit from some measure of luck. Look at what the 2009 Yankees got from so many older players, and what the 2008 Phillies got from their bullpen arms. Those squads shouldn’t be faulted for it, either; they were good teams, and good fortune catapulted them to greatness.

These Mets, though, appear to be shooting for something more like slot-machine luck. To win in 2010, they will need healthy performances from several players who were injured last year, rebound performances from several players who underachieved last year, and breakout performances from several players who stunk last year.

The odds are long. And if luck, as Branch Rickey suggested, is the residue of design, then it’s hard to argue there was much in the Mets’ offseason blueprint that significantly improved the Mets’ fortunes for 2010. Jason Bay will add power to the lineup. Beyond that, the Mets, paradoxically, refused to take many gambles while heading into a season that amounts to a massive gamble.

That’s it, really. That’s the official TedQuarters Spring Training-is-starting piece right there. I wish I could offer more, or something different than what I’ve been saying all winter. I can’t, though: For the Mets to compete and win in 2010, they’re going to need a whole lot of things to fall their way.

And it could happen. Jose Reyes could hit 30 triples this year and steal 80 bases and win the MVP, and Oliver Perez could stay in the best shape of his life long enough to be Good Ollie all season long and recapture his 2004 form.

Or maybe Hisanori Takahashi’s screwball will be so baffling that he’ll go all Fernando Valenzuela on the National League and carry the team on his able 35-year-old shoulders.

Or heck, maybe the Mets can just benefit from a whole lot of bad luck to the Phillies and Braves and slip into the playoffs with 83 wins like the Cardinals did in 2006, only to then slip by the far-superior Cardinals in the NLCS when Albert Pujols doesn’t swing at a 3-2 curveball.

It’s all possible now, with Spring Training just getting underway and a full season’s worth of highlights and lowlights yet to be determined. We can project and object like we have all offseason long, but in truth, we have no idea what happens next.

Sure, like all Mets fans, I wish the team I root for seemed more like the guy in the sunglasses behind the big stack of chips at the poker table, or even more like the seedy dude with the cigar scribbling furiously on his pad at the race book, and less like one of the hordes feeding dollars into the slots. That would be cool.

But still, there’s something very entertaining about playing the slot machines. Indeed, the 20 minutes my wife and I spent pushing the button and watching the wheels spin round were well worth the five dollars it cost us.

I guess the thrill is in all the possibilities, and in knowing that, with just the push of that button, and so little skill or foresight or planning on your part, the wheels could all land on sevens and make you much, much richer.

The Mets’ front office spent this offseason in front of the same slot machine it has been playing for a long time now. The cash has been entered and the button pushed, and finally, after four months of winter, the wheels are spinning.

Now, we wait to see where they land.