During the decisive fourth inning of the Yankees-A’s tilt last night, Mark Teixeira unloaded a massive moonshot towards our seats, Bob Iracane calmly stood up, pointed his glove towards the heavens, and easily snagged Teixeira’s thirtieth tater tot of the year.

- Rob Iracane, Walkoff Walk.

Funny recap from Rob at Walkoff Walk of how his father caught Teixeira’s home run last night.

My own father caught a moonshot in his very first game at Citi Field last year, except by “moonshot” I mean “softly hit Ramon Castro foul ball” and by “caught” I mean “had it land right in his damn nachos.” But hey, at the time we had no idea that Ramon Castro foul balls would be in such short supply at Citi Field.

The nachos, miraculously, were mostly OK.

According to a source, the Mets are willing to engage in extension talks with Dickey this offseason, in lieu of salary arbitration or a one-year deal. Dickey is arbitration-eligible for one more season, meaning he will be under team control in 2011 regardless of whether he agrees to a new contract. Because of that, the Mets could wait to see if the 35-year-old knuckleballer can duplicate his 2010 success.

But according to people familiar with the Mets’ thinking, the team has determined that Dickey’s performance this year (9-5, 2.57 ERA) is not a fluke. Therefore, the Mets are open to a contract extension that would keep the pitcher from becoming a free agent after next year.

- Andy Martino, N.Y. Daily News.

Let me start by saying I love R.A. Dickey as much as the next guy. He’s a knuckleballer, for one, and who doesn’t appreciate a knuckleballer? The world needs knuckleballers. They allow 29-year-olds who can’t throw harder than 65 miles an hour to maintain some small hope of a Major League career. That’s important.

Plus he reads literature, philosophizes, and would be a ballboy at the U.S. Open but won’t part ways with his beard. Oh and he makes a hilarious face when he pitches. Plus he’s got a 157 ERA+. The guy is a hero any way you slice it.

And so I won’t immediately say talk of an extension is a bad idea, especially since Dickey has been unbelievable this year. But I’ll say a couple of things about the discussions worry me, even if I don’t put too much stock in any anonymously sourced stories. Remember that last year at this time we were hearing lots of talk of a Jeff Francoeur extension.

First of all, I was under the impression — or at least under the rampant speculation — that the Mets would have a new GM by November. Word of an extension for Dickey shouldn’t help dispel rumors of a muddied organizational structure or that the new hire will come from within. So there’s that.

The second thing is that, though there’s evidence that Dickey has been getting better for a while now, and though I don’t want to be the person to stomp all over an awesome thing, 20 starts is not nearly enough of a sample to call something “not a fluke.”

I hope and want for Dickey to be great, and since I don’t know the terms of the rumored extension there’s no real point in fretting about it too much. I can’t imagine the Mets would actually pay him like he’s going to be one of the 10 best pitchers in the National League. Which is good, because that would be ridiculous.

Dickey is a different pitcher from Tim Wakefield because he throws harder and throws his knuckleball at two different speeds, but Wakefield’s the best comparison we have in recent vintage since he’s pretty much the only other successful knuckleballer. And look what Wake did to the National League when he broke in with the Pirates in 1992 and the American League when he resurfaced in 1995. Kind of looks a lot like what Dickey’s doing this year.

Wakefield was a decent and valuable pitcher for the Sox for a very long time, but outside of a blip year in 2002 he was never again what he was in his first time around the league in 1995. And so I fear the same might be true for Dickey.

The Mets will always need effective innings, and it seems like guys who can control knuckleballs will be able to provide those. And so Dickey should be that. I just don’t know that it’s reasonable to expect him to continue dominating National League hitters once they’ve seen his signature pitch a few more times. I wouldn’t necessarily say this is a fluke, I’d say it’s the perfectly natural progression of a deceptive pitch.

Mass transit menace Darius McCollum racked up his 27th arrest in three decades Tuesday by taking a Trailways coach on a cross-state joyride.

The 45-year-old transportation-obsessed oddball went from the driver’s seat to a holding cell after cops caught him with the hot wheels in Queens.

“I’ll bet they won’t leave the keys in the ignition,” McCollum told the arresting officer. “I’ll bet they’ll be more careful now.”…

No one was hurt and the bus was in tiptop condition. That’s how it’s been in every McCollum escapade since he commandeered an E train and drove to the World Trade Center in 1981 when he was just 15.

- New York Daily News.

This guy pops up every few years and every time it’s something like this: He impersonates a mass-transit employee, gets on some mode of mass transportation (or, once, in a control tower), operates some piece of machinery safely and effectively for a while until someone finds him out, then cooperates with the arresting officers. It’s a whimsical story, but he’s hardly a menace.

McCollum has Asperger Syndrome, which explains the fixation with mass transit — not that trains aren’t sweet and all. I worked with a few kids with the disorder when I was TAing in the high school. I’m hardly an expert on the subject, but I think it’s a hard one for even the experts to figure out.

Anyway, if I ever make a ton of money, I’d like to start a charity called the Awesome Fund. Basically, it would raise money to benefit people who do awesome things then need money to cover their legal fees because their awesome actions were illegal, like the JetBlue flight attendant beer bailout guy for example. Plus it would benefit other awesome people who hadn’t done anything illegal but were down on their luck. Also, it would work to raise awareness of general awesomeness.

I’m not sure that Darius McCollum needs money, but I think the ability to effectively impersonate mass-transit employees and safely operate complicated 15-ton machinery for no other reason than that you like trains and buses and you think it seems like fun is pretty damn awesome. And you know what? I don’t even think that makes you an “oddball,” just a guy with a dream and a series of well-thought-out plans.

So generally, nerdy baseball fans like me put Rangers GM Jon Daniels on the type of pedestal reserved for gentlemen like Theo Epstein and Billy Beane and Brian Cashman. One of us, we say, and we defend even his questionable moves.

His acquisition of Jeff Francoeur, even, is defensible. Through Frenchy was the worst regular right fielder in baseball, Daniels doesn’t intend to use him as an everyday right fielder, which cuts to the core of the difference between the Rangers and Mets. I’m not convinced Frenchy is the absolute best right-handed bench bat out there, but he’s got some value in that role. Just like Alex Cora’s got some value as a scrap-heap middle infield contingency plan, and decidedly not as a multi-million dollar free-agent signing.

But I will also allow another possibility: Daniels grew up a Mets fan in Queens. So I’m open to the slim chance that he manages his Rangers like a business but still secretly roots for the Mets like a WFAN-calling, David Wright-booing fan who worships Cora’s leadership and thinks Frenchy’s got all the potential in the world and is finally going to turn it around soon now that he’s got a new approach.

So when he is faced with the opportunity to acquire one of those players, he is unable to suppress the Mets fan inside. He saddles his team with Alex Cora and Jeff Francoeur because he has spent the last two years convincing himself that they’re winning players, gritty hustlers who will lead the Mets to greatness.

One of us!

Just a theory.

Hooray for everybody involved.

The funny thing is the Mets somehow brought in a player that makes Frenchy look like Nick Johnson, but at least he’s a middle infielder.

They also called up Lucas Duda and Jenrry Mejia today, so that means there’s more roster shuffling to come. I imagine the Luis Hernandez Era in Flushing is over (note: see update), but some pitcher’s got to go. Pat Misch is losing his spot in the rotation so he seems a likely candidate. Obviously it should be Oliver Perez, but that would be too much happy news in one day. Got to space it out so Twitter doesn’t erupt.

Hopefully Jerry Manuel gives Duda a chance to show what his ridiculous Triple-A performance was all about. Apparently he’s not much of an outfielder, but if he can put up the .880 OPS his Major League equivalency suggests, then he’s a massive improvement over Frenchy even if he’s Benny Agbayani out there. I assume Angel Pagan will play right field mostly the rest of the way with Duda and Chris Carter splitting time in left, but then guessing how Jerry Manuel is going to divvy up playing time is a fool’s errand.

As for Frenchy, well, I wish I could say he will be missed. Like I said earlier, the whole thing was just growing tiresome in every way. It wasn’t even fun to troll Francoeur fans anymore. Here’s hoping he comes to accept his role as a righty bench bat and fourth outfielder. And hey, maybe if he keeps working on his plate discipline every single offseason, it will click one of these years.

He does seem like a damn decent dude, for what it’s worth, and there’s obviously a reason the beat writers are so enamored of him. Of course, the whole “team guy” thing doesn’t really hold up when you start making play-me-or-trade-me demands despite being the worst regular right fielder in baseball. But I imagine I will find him much more entertaining to watch now that he’s not playing for the team I want to win.

UPDATE: I didn’t realize it’s September already. Good call by garik16 below — Luis Hernandez doesn’t have to go anywhere, nor do any pitchers.