Advice columnist duped by Keith Hernandez 'Seinfeld' plot

Here's one advice columnist who definitely isn't a master of her domain — or at least of pop TV culture.

One sneaky reader wanted counsel from syndicated advice columnist Amy Dickinson and used a well known Seinfeld episode — the one when Jerry meets former MLB star Keith Hernandez and gets taken advantage of — as a real-life dilemma for the Dear Amy writer to offer some urgent guidance.

 And "Feeling Foolish" actually received a serious response back from the duped columnist:

Here's a snippet from the two-part Hernandez episode, which was first shown in 1993 — and rerun thousands of times since.

Now on to my own personal issues:

Dear Amy: I've recently run into problems with a pesky upstairs neighbor. He's a mailman ...

Mets add rally parakeet to Citi Field menagerie (VIDEO)

The Mets already have gotten a visit at Citi Field by a rally raccoon this season, and in previous years a rally chicken named "Little Jerry Seinfeld" was seen clucking around their home ballpark. 

But since the Mets are flying pretty high these days, it seems only fitting that a bright yellow rally parakeet should appear at the ballpark and cause quite a stir during the Mets' 3-0 win over the Colorado Rockies Wednesday night.

As the colorful bird perched on the screen behind home plate, SNY announcer Keith Hernandez said, "To heck with the field. Put the camera on the parakeet."

And it wasn't long before the bird quickly had its own #rallyparakeet account on Twitter.

The announcers also noticed that newly-acquired leftfielder Yoenis Cespedes was wearing a bright yellow elbow sleeve on his left arm  — the same color with of the parakeet.

"I knew there was a bird on the field," Cespedes said after hitting his first home run as a Met. "I wanted to look like the bird."

A Mets spokesman later said he was unaware of what happened to the parakeet. But, just the same,  the Mets can still do some chirping of their own.

Jerry Seinfeld joins Mets broadcast booth (VIDEO)

If you don't already get enough of "Seinfeld " reruns airing non-stop on television these days, maybe you were lucky enough to catch real-life Jerry calling the Mets game at Citi Field Tuesday night.

The star of the iconic TV sitcom and die-hard Mets fan joined old friend Keith "Pretty Boy" Hernandez, Ron Darling and Gary Cohen in the SNY broadcast booth during the game against the Giants.

The comedian brought his usual sense of of the absurd to the quartet and offered a few What's the deal with takes on things bothering Mets fans (maybe not) these days. Seinfeld suggested padding the outfield walls with sofa cushions to make them safer and getting complimentary surgery for mentioning Dr. James Andrews on the air. He even touched on Hernandez's make-out scene with Julia Louis-Dreyfus on the classic hour-long 1992 episode "The Boyfriend." Hernandez sounded joyful recalling they did the scene in "eight takes."

As hopefully expected, it was a broadcast segment about nothing. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Yonder Alonso misses bag in strange play at first base (VIDEO)

Padres first baseman Yonder Alonso has trouble finding the bag after receiving the throw from Eric Stults, allowing Mets batter Juan Lagares to reach safely on Sunday.

The odd-looking play came after Alonso had already been called for being off the bag earlier in this series when he wasn't, but this time the first baseman looked like he was purposely stepping away from making the tag.

Mets announcer Keith Hernandez — a pretty good first baseman during his playing days — couldn't believe Alonso's sluggish gaffe.

"[His teammates should] have a cup of black coffee for him when he comes back [to the dugout]," he suggested. "It's ninety feet, not ninety-three."

Citi Field muscleman unable to open water bottle sets record straight

The Citi Field muscleman —who was hilariously unable to open a water bottle — is now flexing more than his biceps and wants to set the record straight on the full story of the stubborn bottle cap.

After becoming the target of ridicule by Mets announcers — and a YouTube video with over two million hits — for his inability to open a water bottle during last weekend’s game against the Kansas City Royals, the muscleman whose battle was captured for posterity has come forward to give his side to the embarrassing incident.

“First of all, it was not my water bottle,” Christopher, a 38-year-old lawyer in White Plains, N.Y., told The New York Daily News.

“It was handed to me by a security guard in the dugout area who was having trouble with it. The guy was much bigger than me, by the way.”

Chris, who did not want to share his last name out of privacy concerns expressed by his fiancée, told the Daily News that neither he, nor the security guard, managed to make the cap so much as budge.

Chris said cameras only captured a portion of the tag-team effort to open the bottle, making him the butt of jokes by announcers Keith Hernandez and Gary Cohen.

“All that working out and you can’t open a water bottle?” Cohen said of his rather bulging physique.

But Chris says that the camera may have made him look larger than his 5’8” and 190-pound frame.

“I tried as hard as I could,” Chris said.

After his turn with the water bottle, Chris tossed it back to the security guard, and only later realized that the episode had been captured forever.

“It wasn’t played on the Jumbotron,” Chris said. “I had no idea it was being filmed.”

Still, despite becoming the butt of more than a few jokes, Chris has maintained his sense of humor about the incident.

“I don’t blame anybody. It is pretty funny,” Chris said. “But a lot of things were presented incorrectly.”

So glad he cleared that up. Still wondering though, who opens his Muscle Milk?

12 year-old calls plays from Mets broadcast booth like an old pro (VIDEO)

If that voice you heard calling plays the New York Mets broadcast booth Wednesday night didn't sound like SNY regulars Keith Hernandez, Ron Darling or Gary Cohen — you are correct.

The new play-by-play announcer was no veteran but a "kidcaster" who had practiced in front of a basement TV in his Long Island home before his big moment.

Twelve-year-old Johnny Gadamowitz may have sounded like an old pro and knew Mets history, when he took the mic just as pitcher Matt Harvey came up to bat against the Colorado Rockies, but he was just filling in at Citi Field as a contest winner.

"I wish he could get in some more wins," he said of the starter Harvey. "He gets too many no decisions."

For five minutes during the bottom of the second inning, Johnny called the plays with the Mets' regular broadcasters and both Cohen and Hernandez were impressed the boy's memory and joked that he could take over for them.

 Young Johnny won the gig with an essay in the annual kidcaster contest held by SportsNet New York, the TV home of the Mets.

In a 100-word essay on what he most enjoyed about watching the Mets, Johnny said it was being with his grandfather — a Mets fan ever since the Dodgers left Brooklyn. It was in front of the television, many times with his grandfather, that Johnny decided he wanted to get into the sports and media field.

"When I was doing the play by play, it was a really fun experience," he said of his exhilarating stint in the broadcast booth, "but I was at the same time trying to think of stuff to say so there wasn't any dead space."

Ah, dead space — the bane of all broadcasts.

Doc Gooden says downward spiral began minutes after Mets won 1986 World Series

Dwight "Doc" Gooden was so tweaked out on cocaine and booze the night the Mets won the 1986 World Series that he missed the team's ticker-tape parade down New York's Canyon of Heroes the next morning, the former All-Star pitcher writes in a brutally honest new memoir.

In "Doc: A Memoir," Gooden writes that the first person he called as his teammates celebrated their victory over the Boston Red Sox was his dad. The next person was his drug dealer.

"Champagne corks were flying as the TV crews grabbed their postgame sound bites," Gooden says, describing the chaos in the Shea Stadium locker room after the Mets won Game 7 of the Series.

"The players were shouting each other's names. People started pouring champagne on other peoples' heads. All of us agreed how great we were. But in the early craziness of the locker room, two thoughts were crowding all the others out of my head: I gotta call my dealer. And I gotta call my dad."

Gooden describes how his first inclination that night included telling his dealer he would be heading over to pick up a pile of coke. 

"Just make sure you're available, okay? It's gonna be a big party," Gooden told the dealer in a secret call made from a trainer's office.

"I got whatever you need," the dealer responded.

Gooden spent the night in a "sketchy" apartment in a Long Island housing project snorting lines and downing shots of vodka until dawn — when he blearily drove himself home.

While teammates including Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter were being showered with ticker-tape, Gooden recalls how he regretfully spent the next morning alone, not answering the phone and covered in shame. A moment he describes as the loneliest he's ever been.

"As my teammates rode through the Canyon of Heroes, I was alone and in my bed in Roslyn, Long Island, with the curtains closed and the TV on, missing what should have been the greatest moment of my life."

The unflinching memoir also chronicles Gooden's rise as the best pitcher in baseball, his descent into drugs and alcohol, his years with the Yankees and his ultimately successful battle against his inner demons and the substance abuse that derailed what should have been a Hall of Fame career. He goes into vivid details about his numerous rehab attempts and finally getting clean on VH1's "Celebrity Rehab."

The book, written with veteran journalist Ellis Henican, will hit bookstores on June 4, but excerpts are already posted on Amazon.com.

Keith Hernandez shaves off his iconic mustache for charity

There has been two constants hanging around the New York Mets for almost three decades — disappointment and Keith Hernandez's mustache.  Now one of them is gone and — too bad for Mets fans — it's the former first baseman's iconic 'stache.

The same caterpillar that was above the first baseman's lip when he came to Shea Stadium in the mid-80's, charmed both Jerry and Elaine on "Seinfeld" in the '90's and was his trademark while calling games for the Mets in the new millennium is gone.

Hernandez's famous facial hair met its maker Thursday afternoon during a public shaving in front of Citi Field Thursday.

Hundreds of fans came early to see the freshly-shaven Hernandez show off his glistening upper lip and watched as their memories of better times fell onto his lap.

"I feel like I'm on the guillotine here," joked Hernandez as he settled into the makeshift barber's chair.

On a platform surrounded by a barber pole and various shaving accessories, Eliot Chester, the Las Vegas barber to the stars, did the honors.

"Am I nervous?" asked Hernandez from the stage.  "No."

The five-time All-Star said he has only shaved his mustache three times and when his contract for "Just For Men" hair coloring ended, he felt he needed to make a change.

Shick Hydro donated $10,000 to the Jacquelyn Hernandez Health Center in Brooklyn  for the honor of providing the tools that shaved off the facial hair that was named the best mustache in sports history by the American Mustache Institute in 2007.

Hernandez has committed to remaining clean-shaven for the rest of the Mets season.  He will decide in the offseason whether it will reappear.  That lip might get pretty cold come November.

"I want to thank all my fans who supported my mustache over the years," he said in a statement.  "But it's time to take a back seat and give my upper lip some time to shine."

Remember.  He's Keith Hernandez.