On Sept. 13, 1987, with two outs and Darryl Strawberry on second in the top of the fourth of a tight game in St. Louis between the first-place Cardinals and the second-place Mets, Kevin McReynolds lashed a triple past Willie McGee to tie the score at one run apiece.

Gary Carter came up next. Carter was 33 then, a veteran of 13 seasons of Major League catching and a massively diminished offensive player. Even at six years old, in my first year of actually watching baseball, I knew Carter’s knees were shot. Everyone did.

Terry Pendleton, at third base for the Cardinals, must have been playing Carter back. At six years old I wasn’t nearly savvy enough to pick up on particulars like that. But Gary Carter laid down a bunt toward third base and beat it out for an infield single, scoring McReynolds and giving the Mets the lead.

(Sound a little familiar? Hobbled veteran catcher lays down a bunt base hit in a clutch situation? Carter should have gotten a writing credit on Major League.)

I ran up two flights of stairs to my brother’s room in the attic to tell him about it. We had been watching the game together, but he had to bail after a couple of innings to work on a school project. He told me to keep him updated.

“Chris, Chris!” I said. “Kevin McReynolds tripled then Gary Carter bunted and the Mets are winning!”

This is one of my earliest vivid memories of my brother. He was laying on his twin bed, tucked into the weird little nook in the corner of our attic formed by where the chimney juts into the house, wearing a bright green t-shirt, blue shorts and Avia high top sneakers. And the look on his face suggested he was trying to be patient with his six-year-old kid brother but that he had absolutely no doubt I botched the details.

“Ted,” he said. “Gary Carter doesn’t bunt.”

“No, but he did!” I insisted. “He bunted for a single.” And I guess Chris either believed me or was too busy to fight, because he relented pretty quickly.

The Mets scored two more runs after that and held on to win. Presumably Chris finished his project and got an A or a 100 or an Outstanding. 15 years later he died from tumors in his brain. 10 years after that, so did Gary Carter.

I don’t know why I’m relaying this particular memory about Carter now except that I know I’ve looked for the box score to that game before (I knew the details — McReynolds triple, Carter bunt) and never found it until today. It is one of my first specific baseball memories, and I think it says a hell of a lot about the type of player Carter was. I never really saw him when he was great.

And I guess when I hear about someone dying, especially dying young and of cancer, I always get to thinking of my brother dying. And that’s a selfish thing to post about and it’s not something you care much about right now, as a Met fan justifiably broken up about Gary Carter.

Dying… well, it sucks. It’s awful for Carter that he had to go through what he did, and awful for his family that they have to trudge on without him now. He was by all accounts an awesome guy who did awesome things and treated people awesomely, and losing him must be a heartbreaking thing to suffer.

Those of us who didn’t know Carter personally can celebrate what we remember of his playing days, all of it now presented in the fuzzy standard-definition VHS player in our memories. For me, unfortunately, it’s impossible to divorce any of that from the guy who introduced me to Gary Carter that I miss the s@#$ out of and still sometimes feel moved to call to talk about this stuff when it happens. For you- well, I can’t speak for you.

The original chain-link fence at Field 6 in Port St. Lucie, like the original wall in Citi Field, remains. But the grounds crew in Florida has erected new fencing, topped with orange plastic, to correspond with the home stadium in New York.

Hudgens played down the effect that the new fences would have on his preparations with the Mets’ hitters in Florida and said he would not look to adjust any player’s swing.

But for the Mets’ most important hitters, that is the point. Going through spring training without the burden of adjustments would be a luxury in itself.

– Andrew Keh, N.Y. Times.

I’d been curious if the Mets were going to adjust the fences at Field 6 to match the new dimensions at Citi Field or if they’d leave them there to serve as a weighted donut on every hitter’s bat. Click through for a lot more on the fences.

I’m going to go with adequately rated, but note that I rate it very highly. There are better lunchmeats out there but they also tend to be more expensive, and no brand offers a better variety than Boar’s Head — the area standard. Also, there’s such a huge drop-off between their stuff and both the pre-packaged nonsense that turns my stomach just to think about and the non-Boar’s Head generic brands they slice for you behind the counter. I have been burned way too many times by knock-off ham.

I bring a sandwich to work almost daily, and about 95 percent of the time that sandwich is filled entirely with Boar’s Head products. To keep things interesting, I usually use two types of meat and one cheese. Usually it’s a variety of ham and a variety of turkey and some cheese I’ve decided should complement them well, but once in a while I buy the chicken breast and roast beef to prevent myself from getting sick of ham and turkey sandwiches all the time.

This week’s selection: Buffalo roast chicken, Londonport roast beef and Vermont cheddar. It’s geographically diverse, but it works. I had it today with some leftover green sauce from Pio Pio, which would make pretty much anything delicious.

OK, I’ll bite. Tons of caveats here, though. Mostly that I don’t really know what I’m talking about when it comes to prospects, except that I believe my general skepticism is justified. Also that 2014 is a hell of a long way away, and any number of things could change for the Mets, these players, or hell, planet Earth between now and then.

But I’ll go with Lucas Duda in left, Kirk Nieuwenhuis in right and some to be determined free agent in center. I’m holding out hope for Matt den Dekker because he’s pretty funny on Twitter, but expecting two relatively unheralded (at least in the national sense) current Minor Leaguers to emerge as starters by 2014 seems a bit too bullish for my tastes.

I’m picking Nieuwenhuis over den Dekker because he has hit more and done it at higher levels, and I’m putting him in right field instead of center because I’m hoping it starts happening this year and displaces Jason Bay. Also, since Duda, Nieuwenhuis and den Dekker all hit left-handed, there’s a role for righty-hitting Juan Lagares in there too if he shows his breakout 2011 was more than a BABIP fantasy.

Brandon Nimmo will have just turned 21 on Opening Day 2014, so expecting him to be ready by then seems pretty optimistic. A lot of people seem to love Cesar Puello, but it seems troublesome that he got hit by pitch more than he walked in 2011.

Well if every current Met was a single sandwich, they’d be a pretty huge sandwich with a ton of ingredients of varying deliciousness. If you mean you’re looking for sandwich comps for each individual player on the team, well… I usually get off before six and even though my wife and I agreed we wouldn’t do anything for Valentine’s Day I should probably get home at some reasonable hour. Here are a few that I can’t remember covering in the past:

Lucas Duda is a sandwich I discussed here a long time ago, The Full Bird from the old Busco’s Deli in Rockville Centre: A chicken-cutlet hero with bacon, american cheese and mayo. The Full Bird is good, tremendous and unsubtle. I very much enjoy the Full Bird, but the Full Bird is not a sandwich built for speed.

Dillon Gee is a tuna-salad sandwich. Coincidentally, that’s Dillon Gee’s favorite sandwich.

You ever see a sandwich that looks delicious on the menu and features all the elements of a great sandwich, and then you eat the sandwich and it’s underwhelming and you can’t figure out why? That’s the Jon Niese of sandwiches. It’s still not bad and you’re willing to try it again, but you feel like it should be so much better.

Mike Pelfrey is a sandwich from the lunch place nearest your office. You wind up going there all the time and sometimes you get so sick of it you swear you’re never going to get one ever again, but then inevitably you get busy or it’s raining or you just don’t feel like thinking of someplace else to go and you wind up with the same old thing. And truth be told, it’s not as bad as you think it is; you just get tired of eating it sometimes.

Jose Reyes is someone took my sandwich.

It is possible that both Wheeler and Harvey become important parts of the 2014 Mets, although it may not be probable. If you imagine the two are a pair of dice, the odds both become quality starting pitchers are similar to the odds of rolling an 11 or higher, while the odds they both fail is similar to the odds of rolling a four or below. Roll a five or six, you end up with one Pelfrey and one bust; roll a seven, you get two Pelfreys; roll an eight, you get a quality pitcher and a bust; a roll of a nine or 10 gets you one Pelfrey and one quality pitcher.

That is to say that half the time, you end up with a single Pelfrey or worse.

– Patrick Flood, PatrickFloodBlog.com.

Flood posts his power rankings of the players most likely to be valuable to the 2014 Mets. This bit about Zack Wheeler and Matt Harvey is important to remember.

Is SNY.tv ever going to have the investigative chops and journalism integrity to discuss the fact that retired Mets stars George Theodore, Rod Gaspar, Hank Webb, etc aren’t getting MLB pensions? And that GM Sandy Anderson, who is still on the Board of Directors of the MLB Players Alumni Association, has never commented about this matter?

– Doug Gladstone, via email.

Hey guys: Did you know that retired Mets stars George Theodore, Rod Gaspar and Hank Webb aren’t getting MLB pensions? It’s true. They played before 1980, and before 1980, players needed to accrue four years of service time to secure the Major League pension.

In April, 2011, an agreement was reached to award the 874 living former players not eligible for pension with up to $10,000 in annual payment, depending on service time, for two years. The new collective bargaining agreement signed in November extended those payments through 2016, though it does not include medical or survivor’s benefits and does not come close to matching the full pension earned by all players on active rosters for as few as 43 days after 1980.

Much more on the plight of the pre-1980 players with less than the required service time for pension can be found in the 2010 book A Bitter Cup of Coffee by… Doug Gladstone.