Terry Collins called R.A. Dickey “one of the game’s great family men” this morning and told a funny story. Collins said the Mets had a facial-hair policy in the Minors last year. Dickey, when sent to Minor League camp, realized his kids had never seen him without a beard, so he let his kids shave him. I would ask Dickey about how that went down and how badly cut up his face was, but it’s bad form to talk to the starting pitcher before the game.

It’s hard to remember now, but when Dickey made his first start for the Mets last May 18, his face was pathetically beardless. Check out the photo.

Anyway, in honor of Dickey’s start today, I compiled an exhaustive list of Mets that currently have facial hair. Nine of the team’s 25 players, 36-percent, can boast beards, defined here as facial hair extending from ear-to-ear, i.e. not a goatee. Two guys have goatees.

Here are the bearded guys, listed in descending order of beard awesomeness:

Mets with beards

R.A. Dickey
Blaine Boyer
Angel Pagan
Ike Davis
Taylor Buchholz
Jose Reyes
Pedro Beato
Bobby Parnell
Mike Pelfrey

Parnell and Pelfrey fall to the bottom because neither seems fully committed to beardedness.

Mets with goatees

Jon Niese
Willie Harris

This site does not endorse goatees without other facial adornment. Go hard or go home, that’s what I say.

Mets coaches with fine mustaches

Mookie Wilson

Mets coaches with ridiculously awesome baseball-guy mustaches

Ken Oberkfell

No current Met has a beardless mustache. I wholeheartedly support the work done by the folks at “The Wright Stache” website, lobbying David Wright to grow a mustache since 2009.

I talk a good game, but why don’t I have a beard? Because I can’t grow a mustache, or at least not a good one. Every other part of my face and neck grows thick black hair but directly above my lip I get nothing but wispy, thin hairs, like an eighth grader who needs to start shaving but hasn’t yet. This is the great irony of my biography. No disrespect to Abe Lincoln, but I have no interest in growing a mustacheless beard. I do have a pretty sweet collection of fake mustaches, though.