Atlanta ? It had to end sometime.

How about 1992? The Atlanta Braves were coming off their worst-to-first season, surely a fluke if there ever was one. They were perennially one of baseball’s worst teams, the guys who passed for programming fodder on Ted Turner’s superstation between reruns of “The Andy Griffith Show,” popping up every now and then to win a division title, then quickly wilting away like a dozen roses delivered on Mother’s Day. Hardly anyone expected the Braves to win two straight division titles.

But they did.

What about ’93? The Braves trailed a much thinner Barry Bonds and the San Francisco Giants by 10 games with July winding down. Then, a press box blaze at old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium seemed to ignite the team, and it didn’t hurt that Fred McGriff was acquired in one of baseball’s classic one-sided trades to put a little fire in the offense. Atlanta won 49 of its last 65 games, finished with 104 victories and beat the Giants by a single game in the last great pennant race of the pre-wild card era.

And on it went.

A strike that wiped out the end of the ’94 season ensured The Streak’s survival. The Braves took it from there, winning division title after division title no matter what obstacles were thrown in the way. John Smoltz misses an entire season after needing elbow surgery? No problem. A change in ownership brings an end to Turner’s free-spending ways? Not to worry. Eighteen rookies have their coming-out in 2005? That’s OK.

About the only things that remained the same were the two guys running things: John Schuerholz crafting the roster in the general manager’s chair, while Bobby Cox deftly managed the team from the dugout.

And on it went.

Fourteen straight division titles, a model of consistency that has never been matched. And we’re not just talking baseball here. Even if you throw football, basketball and hockey into the mix, the Braves are still in a league of their own – a glaring lack of postseason success notwithstanding.

“It’s kind of remarkable to think,” said New York Mets pitcher Tom Glavine, who was there for so many of those titles and is now on the other side helping bring it to an end, “that there are a lot of guys in that clubhouse who have never been anywhere other than first place in their big-league career.”

From Sid Bream to Andres Galarraga to Adam LaRoche, from Lonnie Smith to Gary Sheffield to Jeff Francoeur, from Steve Avery to Greg Maddux to Tim Hudson, the Braves always found a way to finish on top at the end of the regular season. They were the team that had the dash beside its name when the final standings were posted. Leave the numbers – as in games behind – to the other guys.

And now it’s over.

The Braves won’t finish first this season. That’s been a given for several months now, ever since they went 6-21 in June while the Mets were pulling away in the NL East. It only took this long to officially bury The Streak. Atlanta was mathematically eliminated from the division race Tuesday night when New York beat Florida.

Unless the Braves put together another ’93-like run over the final three weeks, there won’t be any wild card, either. As amazing as it may seem, there could actually be an October that doesn’t include the dynasty down in Dixie.

“It does feel as bad as I thought it would,” said Smoltz, who pitched the clincher for the first division title in 1991, was still around for No. 14 last season and now gets saddled with being part of the team that broke up the amazing run. “Not the fact that we’re not in. It’s the fact that we’re not even close.”

The Braves haven’t been at .500 since the third day of June. A week after that was the last time they were closer than 10 games to the Mets. It’s been a double-figure runaway, the kind of dominating display that Atlanta put on in 1995 (winning the NL East by 21 games), 1998 (an 18-game laugher) and 2002 (19 games ahead of everyone else in the division).

“It’s bitter in the sense that we knew the streak was going to come to an end sooner or later,” Smoltz moaned. “But I never thought it would be the way that we have played this year. That’s been really frustrating.”