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If you haven't enhanced your baseball library with The Happiest Recap: First Base (1962-1973) yet, here's your chance to make up for that shameful void. Contest to win a copy here.

Collin McHugh shares (via Twitter today) his bride's sappy love story.

Excellent work. And Ruben looks like he plays for at least the second-funnest team in the North Valley League. Bears are probably still the funnest.

Legend-on-legend crime: Mike claims Vin Scully had it in for him. And takes on the briefest of Met teammates. Mike Piazza has not set foot in Dodger Stadium since his retirement. When the Dodgers offered to honor him with a bobblehead night last season, Piazza declined. "He doesn't want to come back because he thinks the fans will boo," former Dodgers Manager Tom Lasorda, the godfather to Piazza's brother, told The Times last month. Piazza did himself no favors on that score in his new book, "Long Shot." In the book, he blames iconic Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully for turning fans against him during the contract stalemate that preceded his trade to the Florida Marlins in 1998. Piazza, who was eligible for free agency after the 1998 season, said he hoped to stay with the Dodgers but set a deadline of Feb. 15 to reach a new contract. In the book, Piazza wrote that Scully asked him about the deadline in a spring interview. "He wasn't happy about it," Piazza wrote. "And Scully's voice carried a great deal of authority in Los Angeles." Piazza wanted $105 million over seven years. In the book, he said the Dodgers made a take-it-or-leave-it offer of $76 million over six years, said he would have signed at $79 million, and suggested the team leaked that it had offered $80 million. At $80 million -- or even at $76 million -- Piazza would have been the highest-paid player in the game. Dodgers fans took notice that spring, as Piazza wrote. "The way the whole contract drama looked to them -- many of whom were taking their cue from Scully -- was that, by setting a deadline and insisting on so much money, I was demonstrating a conspicuous lack of loyalty to the ball club," Piazza wrote. "I understood that." Piazza ripped the Dodgers in a 1998 opening day interview with The Times. In the book, he said that interview did not play well with the L.A. fans, and neither did the fact that he failed to drive in a run as the Dodgers opened the season with a four-game losing streak. "On top of that, Vin Scully was crushing me," Piazza wrote. Scully flatly denied he maligned Piazza. "That's not true at all," Scully told The Times in a telephone interview Wednesday. Scully said he could not recall the interview in which Piazza said the contract deadline was discussed. However, Scully said, he never would criticize a player about contractual negotiations. "As God is my judge, I don't get involved in these things," Scully said. "I can't imagine I would ever put my toe in the water as far as a player and his negotiations. "I have no idea where he is coming from. I really have no idea. I can't imagine saying something about a player and his contract. I just don't do that, ever. I'm really flabbergasted by that reference." Piazza retired via email on May 20, 2008. No team had signed him for the 2008 season, although he heard from Lasorda that the Dodgers might be interested. Ultimately, the Dodgers signed Gary Bennett to back up Russell Martin. "Even to the end, ten years after they'd traded me, the Dodgers were still jerking me around," Piazza wrote. "If they'd brought in Pudge Rodriguez, sure, I could understand that. But Gary Bennett?"

One of my first two or three specific memories of any kind is sitting on the floor of our dining room at the age of approximately 2 3/4 reading this magazine and being fascinated by how the trademark character was reading a magazine of himself/herself/itself reading a magazine of himself/herself/itself...and so on. When I made the Mr. Met cap suggestion, I was thinking of that some 47 1/2 years later. Infinite regression indeed.

Terry Collins proves Jason's point. No harm in the players wearing these for Spring Training games. They're delightful. They're whimsical. But leave the manager his dignity. And shouldn't Mr. Met be wearing a tiny version of the Mr. Met logo on his cap?

I would've guessed he was "our Pee Wee Reese," per Fred.

Cam and Jose 4-evah!

John Lackey was the pitcher from "Black Monday". Halladay had gone to the Phils, Lackey had gone to the Sox and that damp dishrag who writes under the name John Harper took the controversial stand that the Mets sucked. I would've liked Bourn at the terms that were out there, 11th pick and all (which I can't believe the great and powerful Alderson couldn't have gotten a handle on resolving as negotiations moved along). It's not the end of the world that they didn't get him, but it's not the beginning of anything auspicious for 2013.

Excerpt, excerpt, read all about it! Conked Catcher Crushes Clemens! Mike's interview with Jon Stewart was pleasant, with Jon asking the only question that matters: When you eventually go into the Hall of Fame, Mets or Dodgers? "Mets, I would think," Piazza said, though he allowed what a boost it was to be coached coming up by Roy Campanella, Johnny Roseboro, Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax. Stewart said if you'd come up with the Mets, you could've been coached by Choo Choo Coleman. Piazza laughed good-naturedly (at a funny name he sort of recognized, I think, not because Choo Choo was Choo Choo) and tried to think of nice old Mets he'd met along the way and amiably came up with three: Mookie Wilson, Ed Kranepool and Felix Millan, while Stewart was realizing Piazza wasn't getting or going along with the "no, I mean catchers who weren't Roy Campanella-caliber" thread he was trying to unspool and threw in J.C. Martin. Jon also congratulated Mike on coming to the Mets and not suffering a broken femur.

As long as Parnell spots his strikes in low places, he can trot out to any genre he likes.

If Piazza played on the '62 Mets... MIKE TO CHACON: YO NO LA TENGO! Catcher demands SS learn to say 'I got it'; Mets swept in twinbill

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: I have heard he's prone to Constant Craving. Even world champion Giants get the blues.

Marchman called the Late 1990s Mets "beloved". Hear, hear!

Ironic, given Henderson's generosity, that the one 2000 Met Steve Phillips refused to grant an N.L. Championship ring to was Rickey, who took the money and loafed. Phillips came up with some half-assed rationale that Henderson went to the playoffs with the Mariners, so he was ineligible. Upon questioning, he admitted he made up that policy because he was pissed at Rickey.

Everybody knows 15 should be retired for Val Pascucci.

LIRR projects as extra annoying that morning. As for vying for attention, WTF? The Mets will have a big crowd (minus a few fuck-them-anyway politicians/celebrities, perhaps) and then their season will proceed per usual. At worst they miss a back page that they might not have gotten anyway if the MFYs were opening on the road at Fenway or on Mars. In 1997, the two teams were scheduled to have their Home Openers coincide after each began on a nine-game road trip on the West Coast. But because the MFYs were raising their first championship flag in 18 years, the Mets, in grand Wilpon style, didn't want to compete with that, so they bumped their HO to the next day, a Saturday...and it got rained out. Mets opened their Shea schedule with a lightly attended doubleheader on Sunday, figuring the big deal would be the following Tuesday, the first (and most significant) Jackie Robinson Night. That they sold out.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: TransMonk wrote: Tim Lincecum got a haircut. God, I'm glad ST starts tomorrow. "Just give me the Joseph Gordon-Levitt, take a few mph off the back, and a little precision off the sides." Now pitching for the San Francisco Giants, number fifty-five, t.l. lincecum.

Jay was trying to sell various players as colorful. "Craig Swan loves to garden" sticks out. I thought he was a Marvin Kaplan impersonator.

Pat Zachry, Doug Flynn, Steve Henderson and Dan Norman were in exactly one Mets starting lineup together, a rain-shortened 5-1 victory over the Pirates at Three Rivers Stadium, May 30, 1980. During that game's rain delay, Ralph Kiner and Steve Albert invited into the booth the Mets' new public relations director, Jay Horwitz.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: He was a great player, and I loved having him on the Mets, but there was and is so much about him to laugh at. Like this, for example.

Rough translation from the Hispanic Conspiracy's anti-Piazza meeting: "We are in luck. The one they call 'Catcher' will not bother to learn our language. We are free to conspire against him in the openness of the clubhouse."

"The only defensive catcher in baseball that can't catch." Casey Stengel never met Defensive WAR...and vice-versa. Then again, maybe Casey really was talking about "Canzoneri," not Cannizzaro. �The pitcher throws. Wild pitch. Throws again. Passed ball. Throws again. The ball drops out of the glove. And all the time I am dizzy on account of these runners running around in circles on me and so forth.�

Defensive WARlords, per B-B Ref, contains some overlap, but looks very different: 1. Bud Harrelson 13.6 2. Jerry Grote 11.2 3. Rey Ordonez 10.0 4. John Stearns 7.9 5. Edgardo Alfonzo 6.1 6. Jose Reyes 4.9 7. Carlos Beltran 4.3 8. Robin Ventura 4.2 9. Kevin Elster 4.0 10. Chris Cannizzaro 3.4 Four shortstops, three catchers, a center fielder, a second/third baseman and a third baseman. Traditional "strength up the middle" positions account for 8.5 of the 10 slots, if we distribute roughly half of Alfonzo to second and half to third. Anyone have Chris Cannizzaro in the defensive WAR Top 10 pool?

"It's just a little Cervelli Champagne," said one player who wished to remain anonymous. "It's not like it helps." Quotes we'd like to see.