So says the Internet, at least. I’m hoping he gets eliminated real quick when he fails a truck-washing immunity contest, or they do some sort of phone-a-friend thing to call in outside help and one of the other contestants brings in Barry Bonds.

The most important thing is that Jeff Kent loses at Survivor. Man I hate that Jeff Kent.

It was Edgardo Alfonzo that got me.

During the Mets’ All-Time Team event Sunday night –- the one that airs tonight at 7 p.m. on SNY, I should say -– Gary Cohen called Alfonzo the team’s “shadow hero,” the guy who always seemed to draw the walk that set up the big hit or drive in the tying run that led to the winning run in the comeback.

And in fact, at the preceding reception and all others I’ve attended like it, most Mets heroes of yesteryear hold court among gleeful fans, smile for photos, point at each other fraternally and generally carry on with the type of understandable bravado developed from a post-baseball life spent encircled by admirers harping on their every word. But Alfonzo, the best second baseman in Mets’ history and an important part of what Sports Illustrated deemed “The Best Infield Ever” — he of over 1,500 hits and an .891 career postseason OPS and countless great games and big moments in orange and blue — seems content to stand or sit in some corner, nursing a drink and picking from the passed hors d’oeuvres like my wife and I do at work-friend weddings where we hardly know anyone.

Thinking about that — and thinking about Alfonzo — got me choked up on my short walk home from the event. I even shed a couple of tears on 89th St., my first since Shea Stadium closed in 2008.

Alfonzo’s only the medium, of course. Most memories don’t come neatly packaged or sharply edited like the baseball highlights shown at Sunday’s event, and there’s no archive we can rely on to summon them when we need them — no play or pause or rewind buttons on our consciousness. And considering Alfonzo, trying to recall his playing days and wondering what it was (and is) about him that pushes him to the margins at these things, inevitably brought back a flood of mostly indistinct memories of my late brother.

Somewhere in my head there’s Chris looking at the roster sometime in the summer of 1995, noticing for the first time that there’s a player on the Mets younger than him and lamenting his fading chances of ever making the Majors. And there’s his voice on the phone from someplace in Texas, providing a recap in exhaustive detail of the dizzy-bat race that won him the broken bat with which Edgardo’s brother Edgar struck his 999th career Minor League hit -– Chris delighting at once in his dizzy-bat victory, the coincidental nature of the prize, and the remarkable fact that Edgardo Alfonzo had a brother named Edgar. And then for just a moment I can see, in crystal-clear high definition, my brother’s grinning face under a Mets hat and backed by the blue seats at Shea, saying, “Fonzie!”

It’s the fleeting feeling of what he was like, and what it was like to hang out with him and b.s. about baseball with him, and it’s the best feeling. And then, when I can’t get it back, it’s the worst.

People say the holidays are the toughest time for missing lost loved ones, but that’s not the case for me. For me it’s right around now, in the crushing New York summer, when school is out and network sitcoms are on hiatus and there’s not much to mark the passing of time besides the steady crawl and awesome enormity of baseball’s regular season. I want to call my brother and talk about it but I can’t.

Then I see Fonzie in the corner and I feel compelled to grab him, hug him, pull him to the center of the room and say, “this guy, here! Does no one here remember how awesome he was? He was our favorite!”

But it would be weird, and it wouldn’t change a damn thing. It thrills me to see Alfonzo in the spotlight at events like Sunday’s because he deserves it, and because it seems like some odd form of validation for my brother’s appreciation of Alfonzo from his rookie year. Then I cry on the walk home because of the awful irony, because no recognition or highlight reel or ceremony can draw my own hero from the shadow for more than a moment.

The Mets, you know, annually seek meaningful games in September. The phrase gets bandied about a bunch, in seriousness and silliness. Naturally, it refers on face to games that impact the pennant race. But really, is any baseball game meaningful? Or is every baseball game meaningful, in May of ’95 and September of ’99 and August of ’03 and in the sticky summer heat at Citi Field last night?

What is any baseball player or baseball itself but a shadow hero behind our appreciation of beauty and greatness and chance, our understanding of joy and community and brotherhood and love? And why would anyone aspire to more?

I can’t think of a better way to spend 20 minutes than reading Patrick Flood’s lengthy and excellent post on R.A. Dickey and the knuckleball. So, you know, do that.

Around 3:30 p.m. on June 1st — a few hours before Johan Santana threw the first no-hitter in Mets’ history — I stood on the warning track in foul ground at Citi Field, just toward the right-field side of the first base, milling about. I knew Carlos Beltran, in his first trip back to Flushing since his departure last July, would address the media at some point, and because the producer who usually keeps me in the loop on these things had that day off, I didn’t know when. So I took that and the lack of other pressing responsibilities as an excuse to stand near the Mets’ dugout and see what I could see.

There was Josh Thole, returning to the club after a stint on the disabled list for a concussion, assuring a couple of stray media that he felt great. There was Elvin Ramirez, visiting the stadium for the first time as a member of a Major League club, introducing himself to teammates, getting acclimated. There was Ruben Tejada, running and skipping and hopping on the outfield grass for Terry Collins and Ray Ramirez.

And there was Dickey.

At some point, R.A. Dickey and Mike Nickeas took to deep right field where Dickey long-tossed knuckleballs to the enthusiastic catcher. In front of a cadre of smiling coaches, Dickey’s throws fluttered and danced and darted and dove and cut and sliced, sometimes all on one toss. Some appeared to freeze in mid-air before plummeting — Wile E. Coyote off the cliff. Some looked like they somehow actually shot upwards in flight, as if propelled by some second force after Dickey’s fingertips.

From a distance, all except the reserved Dickey appeared delighted. It was delightful. Even knowing what I do about knuckleballs, I found myself subconsciously searching the air for strings, evidence of fraud. How could this possibly just be air currents? How could a baseball move that way? How could anything?

For a lifelong baseball fan like myself, the best thing among many great things about this job is the up-close appreciation it gives me of just how phenomenally good Major League Baseball players are at playing baseball. And now R.A. Dickey, the league’s only knuckleballer, is performing as its very best pitcher. Even his off-day workouts are something spectacular to watch.

This guy, Dickey, who endured sexual abuse as a child, who starred with his fastball in college despite his lack of an ulnar collateral ligament, who lost his first-round signing bonus but made a go of it anyway, who once considered suicide, who abandoned conventional pitching in 2005, who loves Star Wars and Hemingway and appreciates Havarti cheese, now leads the Majors in wins, ERA, strikeouts, WHIP, and complete games.

It’s a series of odd angles and seemingly impossible turns crazy enough to make his knuckleball look mundane. What’s happening now, every fifth day in 2012, is something special. Enjoy this.