We picked a bar for Tommy's birthday, then contacted the evening's entertainment, and settled on a price. The "talent," if you will, showed up in plainclothes, with a couple of handlers in tow, one of them handy with a gun.

	He's suave. He's smooth. He's the perfect companion for a night out. He's Mr. Met.

The belle of the ball, as it were, slinked behind a curtain and into the ladies' room to change, while the handlers laid out the ground rules: Be respectful at all times. Keep your hands to yourself. If any of the rules were broken, the show was over. On the plus side, we were permitted -- even welcomed -- to photograph the goings-on. In costume and poised for action, the guest of honor hid behind the curtains and prepared for a dramatic entrance.

Slowly, seductively, Mr. Met strolled through the curtains and into the bar ...

Six weeks into cultivating their offseason beards and beer guts, the Mets are scattered from here to Hawaii. But not Mr. Met, who suits up for work year-round. For $300, he'll show up at your bar mitzvah, birthday party, wedding or even bachelor party, if you're willing to call that event by a different name. He'll stay all night, but in truth, an hour will do. You'll spend enough time amidst mute creatures with vapid grins come the holidays.

With eyes like Frisbees and a head like an overstuffed Hefty bag, the Mets' mirthful cheerleader is New York's second favorite baseball mascot with a giant cranium, with a tip of the capacious cap to Mayor Giuliani. He looks like a snowman that's traded his bottom two spheres for legs and a torso.

But it's that smile you can't take your eyes off; a good foot across, the perma-grin hints at a man who's broken into a Zoloft factory. Seeing that smile below a Mets cap and above a Mets jersey, something feels vaguely familiar -- you've seen that huge, artificial grin in a Mets uni before. Slowly, it dawns on you: Could Mr. Met and Bobby Valentine be related?

		With eyes like Frisbees and a head like an overstuffed Hefty bag, the Mets' mirthful cheerleader is New York's second favorite baseball mascot with a giant cranium, with a tip of the capacious cap to Mayor Giuliani. He looks like a snowman that's traded his bottom two spheres for legs and a torso.

Mr. Met turns 40 this spring, making him old enough to be John Franco's little brother, but you wouldn't know it by looking at him. He's a picture of youth as he plays air guitar along with the jukebox at Iggy's Bar, offers up a high-five to everyone within arm's reach and spins our wives and girlfriends around on the dance floor. We're on Manhattan's hip Lower East Side, where the bars are more likely to show a Truffaut film than the ballgame, and the locals think Mr. Met is the alternative title given to the curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Nonetheless, the denizens of this tiny, crowded bar are good sports when the giant head inevitably bumps against them.

Some feel compelled to taunt him, but Mr. Met handles it with aplomb. "Look at the stitches on his head," says one hipster wisenheimer. "Must've had a lobotomy." Responds his friend, surely a frustrated Yankee fan, "I'd choke him if he had a neck," causing one of Mr. Met's thugs, who also operates the T-shirt gun at Shea, to grow rigid. Some try out their Scottish accents with quotes from "So I Married An Axe Murderer" -- "It's like an orange on a toothpick!" "That's a virtual planetoid, has its own weather system!" -- but it's all in fun. The mile of smile never leaves his face.

But that's not to say every day (at the park) is a day at the park for Mr. Met. Reports one Mets staffer, "Two days are worse than others, Bat Night and Irish night. That's when everyone feels compelled to hit Mr. Met in the head." The bar might not be free of axe-wielding Scotsmen, but seeing as the Westies hang out in Hell's Kitchen, at least the bat-wielding Irishmen are drinking elsewhere. Nevertheless, it's damn crowded, so we take Mr. Met outside to clear his head.

	Mr. Met not only works hard to entertain during the season -- he works a full offseason, too.

Halloween is 10 days' gone, so passersby look warily at our special friend, and gingerly raise a hand to satisfy his omnipresent high-five requests. We scan the street for a sign of his telltale means of transportation, but the baseball cap bullpen buggy once used to escort mortified relief pitchers to the mound is nowhere to be found. A police van slows to a crawl, as the driver spies the prodigious pate, and the cop spotlight lights up the head like a full moon.

After an hour, Mr. Met's novelty, like that of a sumptuous but slow-witted supermodel, slowly dissipates. No one notices as he stealthily slips back into the ladies room. We later find out the handlers had called ahead before heading over, checking the restroom measurements and learning that the guy's head wouldn't fit in the guys' head. Inside his very own Superman's phone booth, the outfit comes off, the head is placed into a sack (head case, anyone?) and, like seasoned bank robbers, the handlers whisk the costume to the car. He who wears the suit that launched a thousand smiles has blended in with the rest of the revelers. Who was that masked man?

Like us, the Mets have their share of question marks greeting the 2002 season; foremost, Who's on First, and I Don't Know's on third. But if there's any constant at Shea, other than opponents stealing on Piazza, and Benitez putting fans through ninth inning cardiac arrest, it's that our friend with the giant head will be there to get the crowd pumped, same as he's been doing since 1962.

There might not be a flashy new dome coming to Queens any time soon, but there's a pretty cool old one.

Michael Malone has written for New York Magazine, Playboy.com, Gear, Rugby, Stuff and The San Francisco Examiner. He desperately hopes the Mets pick up another big-headed star in the offseason to join Mr. Met.