In the final days of one of the most painful seasons of his career, Red Sox Manager Bobby Valentine on Tuesday lay entangled with his bicycle at the bottom of a ditch next to the Central Park Reservoir.

On the wet, slippery path, Valentine was reading a text on his phone from Dustin Pedroia, the Red Sox second baseman, and riding his bicycle. When he looked up, he had to swerve to avoid the umbrellas of two French tourists walking in front of him. The bike skidded, and he lost his balance and went careening head over pedals down the side of the hill by the road.

– David Waldstein, N.Y. Times.

OK, there’s a lot here so we’ll start with the local stuff. Regular readers know I’ve been riding my bike around the city lately, including somewhat regular morning laps of the same Central Park loop that felled Mr. Bobby Valentine. On a personal note, I’m a little bummed I missed this as a) I would have been happy to come to Bobby V’s aid and share with him my feelings on Steve Phillips and b) I typically try to distract myself from the fact that I’m exercising by looking for celebrities on the path, so this would have been a banner day. (I always think I see Alan Arkin jogging but it turns out a lot of old New York guys just look like Alan Arkin.)

Anyway, to Bobby V’s credit, it’s easy to assume you’re safe to fumble with your iPhone while riding your bike around the park, especially during the hours when the path is free of auto traffic. But pedestrians, I’ve found, present far more troubling — if ultimately less dangerous — obstacles to bicyclists than cars, which behave way more predictably. Pedestrians will turn around and make eye contact with you then step right into your path as if they didn’t see you. And pedestrians with umbrellas, we know, are the very worst type. You really can’t ever lose focus.

As for Bobby V, it’s just a pie-in-the-face punchline to an absurdist play of a season. Remember, Mets fans, your opinions of Bobby Valentine a couple years ago? I can’t speak for you, but I loved Valentine in his tenure as the Mets’ manager and felt sure he was unfairly fired for Phillips’ shortcomings. Before his recent stint in Boston, he had all the makings of aTedQuarters hero: Sandwich innovator, fake mustache enthusiast, champion of Melvin Mora, relentless self-aggrandizer, baseball ambassador, manager of the only Mets team in my conscious lifetime to make the World Series.

What happened? Just a few weeks into his tenure with the Red Sox, Valentine appeared out of touch with his players and started throwing some under the bus — the exact opposite of the qualities we always credited him for while he was with the Mets. Did Valentine change, or did he not change enough? Or were the situations just so tremendously different that he was well-suited for one and utterly wrong for the other? Or is he just the fake-mustached face of the Mets’ success in the late 90s and the smirking image of the Sox’ futility now when in both cases it had way more to do with the guys on the field than the man on the bench?

I suspect it’s some combination. But at least he’s survived this latest fall, and it is good to hear he’s communicating with his star players.

You know the cliche about how every baseball game brings something you’ve never seen before? Check this out — click the picture to play it:

Of note: Curtis Granderson realizes it’s hilarious but Chad Jenkins acts like it’s no big deal and walks toward the dugout. That’s got to be adrenaline, right? There was just a baseball rocketing in the general direction of his head, so you can excuse him for maintaining a straight face. Otherwise, Chad Jenkins just has no appreciation at all for the absurd.

For what it’s worth, I saw the aforementioned Edgardo Alfonzo do something vaguely similar in 2000 while I was working at Shea. They made vendors show up a few hours before game time to get assignments, then we had nothing to do until about a half hour the first pitch. So I’d always sit somewhere in the Field Level seats and read while the Mets took batting practice and the women of Queens held up signs with their phone numbers on them proclaiming themselves “The Future Mrs. Piazza.” (That actually happened.)

Anyway, one time Alfonzo was at second base while some lefty hitter hit a sinking line drive about five feet to his left and a little over his head. Alfonzo took a step and sort of lazily tossed his glove at it, and the glove somehow actually caught the ball in flight and held it in the webbing until they hit the ground.

The best part about it, to me, was that Alfonzo — by then already a five-year Major League veteran — expressed about as much excitement as I would have if I did the same thing. He shot his arms up in the air, yelled out, and started looking around to see if anyone else had seen. When none of his teammates acknowledged it (there’s a lot going on during BP, and it was entirely possible no one had seen), I applauded as loudly as I could from 10 rows deep behind the Mets’ dugout. Then, playing it cool, he sort of nodded in my direction and collected his glove like it was no big deal.

Edgardo Alfonzo rules.

No one wants to hear it, and I get that. It’s the time of the year and the type of the year when we’re so fed up and worn down that we just want to worry about which guys the Mets should get rid of without concerning ourselves with why the Mets are getting rid of them.

Sure, if pushed any rational human would allow that no trades happen in vacuums and that all this-guy or that-guy talk in early October is merely a means of passing time between the last remaining regular-season baseball games, and no one really needs to be reminded so frequently that whether this-guy or that-guy should be traded always depends on the deal. And frankly, at this point, it’s getting obnoxious.

But it’s still true every time.

Should the Mets trade David Wright? I don’t know. Should they trade him for Mike Trout? Yes. Should they trade him for Greg Dobbs? No.

The Mets should trade Wright if they believe the players they receive will be worth more to them than Wright and their ability to sign Wright to a contract extension — a difficult thing to evaluate. Wright is a world-class player, the best in franchise history. He endured a few rough seasons by his standards from 2009-2011, but even then was still excellent. In 2012, he returned to form with an MVP-caliber season.

Or maybe 2009-2011 is the form and this is the fluke.

The Mets will finish with 75 or fewer wins this season and don’t appear primed to contend next year, even if it’d be silly to write off any team for 2013 in October, 2012.

Wright will eventually decline, as all players do. But when, and how severely? How much will it cost to extend his contract, and how much more than that price tag will he have to be worth to them to merit keeping him around? If the Mets know they can get multiple cost-controlled everyday players in return for Wright, maybe they can maximize their resources by trading him now and signing someone else with the money they (hopefully) had earmarked for his extension.

But then, how often do players as good and as young as Wright hit the open market these days? Can the Mets really hope to find a better fit in free agency?

Neither a sleazy, pencil-thin effort like those that caught on in the 1950s and again in contemporary times among a slew of Brooklyn hipsters, nor one of the bushy horseshoe numbers befitting Harley Davidson owners, Keith’s mustache at once defines its breed while resisting more specific characterization. Wider than the toothbrush of Charlie Chaplin and cleaner than Wilford Brimley’s walrus-style ‘stache, it’s not a Rollie Fingers or a Salvador Dali or even a Fu Manchu; it’s the mustache your father kept for a couple of years during your childhood. It’s a mustache that announces, without pretense or irony:

I am man.

– Me, SNY.tv, Sept. 14, 2007.

Don’t mistake this for false modesty because it’s actually the exact opposite: I’m rarely satisfied with the things I write. Sometimes I think they’re OK and sometimes I look back and enjoy them more than I did when I published them, but they seldom live up to the lofty goals I set for myself when I sit down to write them. But the post I wrote about Keith Hernandez’s mustache in 2007 was one I was pretty happy with upon its completion. I think I’ve grown as a writer since then and I’m not sure it entirely withstands the test of time, but it is for me a fun way to look back on the way I wanted to be writing five years ago, typos notwithstanding.

Sorry, sausage factory. I link it now not for that, but on this strangest of days as a loving tribute to a suddenly fleeting institution.