This one’s too brilliant not to give over in full, and for that, my apologies to the Times and Mr. Wakefield, whose words are reproduced wholesale, here.

But generally, if you’re not going to the paper’s site every Monday to check out the “Metropolitan Diary,” you’re missing out.  Find the rest of this week’s here.

For those who’ll get to it later, however:

Dear Diary:

Flash back 40 years. The world champion Amazin’ Mets were the toast of the town.

My wife worked on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and I was always assigned a volunteer job of meeting a
limousine early Thanksgiving morning at my Chelsea apartment building,
and then picking up a celebrity for one of the floats.

That year, two limousines were dispatched; we went to Shea Stadium in a convoy, and picked up six Mets for a key float. Three of them were Tug McGraw,
Ron Swoboda and Ed Charles; I can’t remember who the other three were.
After dropping them off at the staging area on Broadway at 79th Street,
I hopped a subway to Herald Square and went to an upper floor, where
coffee and maybe a little Irish whiskey awaited.

When the parade
reached its final destination, some of the Mets joined workers and
Macy’s employees and their families for drinks and snacks. The son of a
Macy’s employee was observing his 9th birthday, and he told the Mets
that.

Without so much as a word, but cackling, Swoboda picked him
up, turned him upside down, and McGraw smacked his bottom nine times. I
have never seen a 9-year-old with bigger eyes.

Dean M. Wakefield

Fan-bloody-tastic.