With my incurring a 49th birthday today, I received a number of touching messages from Mets who can truly relate to being 49 ^[1]. Thought I’d share them with you.

“Let me be the FIRST to wish you happy birthday.”
—Don Aase ^[2]

“I’ll see to it that your birthday’s perfect even if it falls to me to ensure that perfection.”
—John Stephenson ^[3]

“Too banged up — again — to write much.”
—Jon Niese ^[4]

“Wanna meet for lunch? I could really go for Howard Johnson.”
—Walt Terrell ^[5]

“How about dessert? I could really go for a cone.”
—Ed Hearn ^[6]

“We should get together for a drink. You pick the place this time.”
—Dyar Miller ^[7]

“TODAY’S the big day? Cripes, I’m not ready yet.”
—Phil Humber ^[8]

“I didn’t have time to get you anything while I was in town, but next year I promise I’ll have something memorable for you.”
—Brad Clontz ^[9]

“Let me know what you think of the book. It’s ‘Meditations In An Emergency’. It really got me through some challenging times one summer.”
—Don Schulze ^[10]

“MEOW!”
—Felix Heredia ^[11]

“Happy…WAIT! I DIDN’T EVEN GET A CHANCE!”
—Ruddy Lugo ^[12]

“Listen, I feel terrible about blowing out all those candles when you were looking forward to the big finish. Just my instinct for blowing kicking in at the absolutely biggest moments, I guess. But I did save you some cake. No, not the really important pieces, but here’s some I saved like back in June. Those are important, too, if you think about it. I mean, c’mon, we wouldn’t even have made it to end of the year in position to have some of the tastier portions of this cake if not for what I did earlier. Right? Right?”
—Armando Benitez ^[13]