NEW YORK — This is far too good to ignore:

Yeah, a lot of those are coincidences — no one is crediting longtime Mets radioman Bob Murphy for eliminating the Cubs in the 1969 NLCS. But the fact that the billy goat itself was apparently named Murphy, just like hot-hitting Mets infielder Daniel Murphy, is so rich with possibilities that someone actually asked Murphy — the current baseball player who hit a big Game 1 homer, not the long-dead goat — about the Cubs’ Murphy connection:

Is that the name of the goat? Is that what it is? Somebody told me that today…. What do I make of that? A unique coincidence.

Oh, c’mon, Daniel Murphy: Who needs a reasonable perspective at a time like this? Next time you’re asked, be all, “Heck yeah, the goat was named Murphy. All the world’s Murphys actually hold triannual secret meetings so we can plot to destroy the Cubs, ever since they cut my great-great-granduncle Cornelius Heathcote Murphy in favor of that scrub Irv Higginbotham in 1909.

“And my mission, since the day I first picked up a baseball bat, has been to hit only as well as necessary to remain a capable big-leaguer but never all the way up to my extraordinary ability until I finally face the Cubs in a postseason series. This has all been a long con to convince them to throw me pitches I can hit… OH NO I BLEW THE WHOLE PLAN!”

Also, believe it or not: The Cubs never won a World Series in any of the ten years Murphy Brown was on the air, nor in the 79 years before that or the 17 years since.