Wow. According to US Weekly, citing a former lover, A-Rod had paintings of himself as a centaur over his bed.

Wow.

Wow.

I don’t even know what to say. I didn’t think it could get funnier than the Details photoshoot, but I think it just did. A-Rod is the comedy gift that keeps on giving.

A centaur. Half-horse half-man.

You know, I’ve been brainstorming for years trying to come up with some idea for my father to follow his Awesomeist classic, Vin Diesel and Usher Riding Into Battle on a Chariot Pulled by White Tigers. Years. I just couldn’t come up with anything that could match that.

But A-Rod did: A-Rod as a centaur.

What’s most amazing, I guess, is that no one had the cojones to stop him.

Which is more damning about the nature of celebrity: That the guy thought it would be a good idea to commission a painting of himself as a centaur, or that no one tried hard enough to talk the guy out of it?

I absolutely must see it. I have to. The A-Rod as a Centaur masterpiece should be in MoMA. It reflects the human condition. It is massurrealism at its finest.

OK, there are two things you should read before continuing here. First, this from Jon Heyman, who suggests that “Omar Minaya is on thin ice” and “some Mets people believe the biggest reason Minaya is being kept for now is the three years and $3.5 million remaining on his contract.”

Second, this from Jeff Sackmann at the Hardball Times, which evaluates how teams fare in earning value from the draft, international free agency, trades, waivers and plain-old free agency.

By his system, the Mets ranked second from last in the Majors in 2009 in getting value from the draft, received no value from international free agents, were  near the middle in trade and waiver-wire pickups, and dead last in value spent versus value returned in free agency.

Sackmann’s system is admittedly limited, plus he’s only working from 2009, when the Mets didn’t really get much value out of anybody. Still, it underscores something many Mets fans — this one included — have been saying for years: Omar Minaya does not spend his resources efficiently.

I always take offseason rumors from anonymous sources with several grains of salt, but what Heyman suggests does seem to jive with everything that has happened in the Mets’ front office and every rumor we’ve heard.

And if it’s really true, the Mets should fire Omar Minaya right now.

Look: Either you have confidence in a GM to build your team for the upcoming season and the future or you don’t. “Putting the heat on him,” as has been suggested, is about the worst possible approach. That only further pushes Minaya toward moves of desperation, the type made to save his job but not necessarily to forward the franchise.

That’s a bad thing. That’s the opposite of progress. That’s regress.

What’s worse, keeping the guy around just because he’s owed more money is not only a pitiful misunderstanding of sunk-cost economics, but a massively ironic one. If — as Sackmann shows — Omar Minaya does not spend money efficiently, then why continue paying him to waste your money just because you owe him a tiny fraction of your overall budget?

If the Mets think Minaya is the guy to run the Mets for the long haul, they should make that abundantly clear to everyone and make sure no one in their front office is leaking out any suspicions to the contrary.

After all, Minaya — maybe as much as any GM in baseball — is conscious of public perception. Remember, this is the guy who couldn’t go out for bagels without hearing about how he should fix the bullpen.

And if the Mets are unwilling to make a long-term commitment to Minaya as a general manager, there’s no sense in making a short-term commitment.

There might be some advantage to having a manager know he’s on the hot seat, because it might compel him to shake things up and think of new and better ways to get the team to win. It’s the manager’s job to try to win immediately.

But that’s not the case with the GM. The GM must be held responsible for the present and the future. He needs to focus on building a sustainable winner, not a patchwork club wearing thin on resources.

Putting the GM on the hot seat will only force him to make myopic decisions, precisely the type that got the Mets into this mess in the first place.

I was just discussing autographs with two co-workers. I don’t really understand the point of autographs and I never have, because I don’t understand why I should want an example of someone’s handwriting just because they are famous.

Cerrone pointed out that, in a lot of cases, people just use autographs to prove that they met someone, and he’s probably right. But I don’t understand why I should have to prove that one time I sat next to Bill Murray at a Mets game (I did, hilarious experience) or saw Heather Graham in a restaurant (quite pleasant). You can feel free to not believe me; what do I care? I know it happened.

The conversation meandered and eventually became a discussion of what living current or former Met we would most like to have lunch with.

I said Kevin Mitchell. Say what you will about the guy, it sounds as though he’s had a pretty interesting life, in baseball and otherwise. Plus he seems like a guy who’d give it to you straight, so maybe I could finally find out the truth about the cat story.

Also, he’s got to be the only guy to ever injure himself eating a donut. That sort of makes him my hero by default.

And furthermore, he’s the subject of my single favorite baseball card of all-time, the 1987 Topps one showed here. There are still about 30 of those — no exaggeration — in a binder in my parents’ basement.

Anyone have any better ideas? Is there a Met that would make for a more interesting lunch date than Kevin Mitchell?

At NorthJersey.com, Bob Klapisch relates the story of how a young Jay-Z once indirectly bought him a car.

I’m hoping Jay-Z can very directly buy me a car.

My current ride is a 1999 white Infiniti G20 that belonged to my grandmother until she was no longer capable of driving. A couple of weeks ago, it started making all sorts of funky noises, and not like the James Brown kind.

It’s in the shop as we speak and I’m waiting on an estimate from the mechanic. Until it’s fixed, life in Westchester will suck hardcore, because there’s basically nothing to do within walking distance of my house except stay inside my house and watch TV. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’d be nice to be able to get out to the batting cage and Taco Bell once in a while.

Things would be a whole lot better if the jiggaman could pony up to buy me a car. He obviously owes me one, since I own the Black Album and all. And I don’t need anything fancy. If money really ain’t a thang, I just fail to see why it’d be such a big deal for him to buy me a car. After all, he sort of bought one for Klapisch.

If you happen to know Jay-Z, please tell him he should buy me a car.

I haven’t been scouring, but I haven’t seen anyone note how cool it was that Pedro Martinez and Mariano Rivera, the all-time No. 1 and No. 2 pitchers in ERA+ and two total studs in the twilight of their careers, pitched in the same World Series game last night. They’ve pitched in the same game many times before, of course, but there’s a solid chance it’ll never happen again.

For what it’s worth, the two career ERA+ leaders before them, Walter Johnson and Lefty Grove, had a three-year overlap in their careers while pitching in an eight-team American League from 1925-1927, so without doing the research I’d guess they faced each other a few times.

A-Rod is super unclutch again. It’s almost as if players have random hot streaks and cold streaks that are simply amplified by small sample sizes in the playoffs and A-Rod’s lifetime postseason numbers are almost identical to his lifetime regular season numbers. But that can’t be the case, because he was so tight in previous years in the postseason and so loose and relaxed in the first two rounds this year. I’m so confused. (Note: Sarcasm)

One of the many great things about Halloween is that “Monster Mash” gets heavy radio rotation. What a hilarious song. One of my college roommates used to listen to it year-round. Weird dude.

One of the silliest things about Halloween, for what it’s worth, is the ridiculous prevalence of “sexy” costumes. One time at a Halloween party I met a girl dressed as — no joke — a “sexy chicken.” I mean, I’m certainly not going to argue with people’s right to show off their bodies, but at least find a clever way to do so. A sexy chicken? Really?