“Don’t shave it, Keith!”

I don’t know if this is just my high school experience or what, but when a pair of cute teen girls tell you to do something, you should probably do it. This video (by way of Jason Against Speed at Sportress Of Blogitude, by way of the MLB Fan Cave) features an organized protest against New York Mets legend Keith Hernandez’s decision to (maybe) shave the iconic mustache that made him the American Mustache Institute’s Top Sports Mustache Of All-Time.

If you’d like to join in the protest, this is what you have to do: find a caterpillar, slaughter it, stick it to the end of a kebob skewer and hold it under your nose. Declare a la Spartacus that you are Keith Hernandez, and explain how stupid it’d be for you to change your grooming habits slightly after circa 40 years. It helps if you’re cute, a child, holding a dog or speaking with a heavy accent.

Check out the video below, and remember: you are Keith Hernandez. Don’t do it.

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The Phillie Phanatic (a person/bird/thing I legitimately love more than most members of my family) is out for revenge. After traveling home to the Galapagos Islands to learn about his heritage and selflessly building homes for the less fortunate, what does he find? That a recent poll from the celebrity Davie-Brown Index ranked him as only the second-best mascot in the game … behind Mr. Met.

And yeah, I’m guessing the poll was 80% New Yorkers naming the only mascot they could remember, but that’s a travesty. A Jim Henson creation who has set the bar for mascot excellence for almost 40 years finishes behind a guy with a baseball head, because “baseball”. A f**king disgrace.

The Phanatic paid a visit to the New York Mets announce booth to address the situation, if we take “address the situation” to mean “polish Gary Cohen’s head” and make people wear cheesesteak hats. At least he got Cohen to say he likes his with whiz. The Phanatic isn’t as aggressive as I’d like him to be.

Video is below.

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Gary Carter died on Thursday.

He was, to most people, The Kid. A Hall of Fame catcher, a coach for Palm Beach Atlantic University, the guy with the most important single in New York Mets history in the 1986 World Series, a man who’d been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor last May. He was an 11-time All-Star, a 21-year veteran, a 3-time Gold Glove award winner, it’s hard to find a picture of him without a smile on his face and he died at a hospice.

I want to extend my condolences to Gary’s friends and family, but who am I to do that? I do wish them well. I wish death didn’t have to happen like this. Hell, I wish death didn’t have to happen. It’s mean. It doesn’t make sense, even when a doctor says “yeah, this is what’s happening to your brain” and you’ve got a year to plan for it.

The goal, I guess, is to be remembered. Gary Carter won’t have trouble with that. 78.02% of his peers made sure of that back in 2003. But right now — in the days immediately following the realization that he’s gone — how should we remember him? A paragraph of stats? Pictures?

It’s not a thing I figured out, but the memories are what matter most. I’ve been reading our goodbyes to him all morning … Marty Noble at MLB.com, Jeff Pearlman talking through Ed Hearn at The Wallstreet Journal, Jason Fry, a guy who loves the Mets more than anyone I’ve ever met, at Faith And Fear In Flushing. I make baseball players pretend to curse at each other for a living, so I found it hard to find my own words. I couldn’t. I looked for a video, because I’m a guy on the Internet.

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