Why are you a Mets fan? I know for me, personally, I’m a Mets fan because my parents probably would have kicked me out of the house if I wasn’t. Growing up in Queens, just ten minutes away from the ballpark, being a Mets fan came easy to them. That was instilled in my brother and I too, also being raised just ten minutes away from the ballpark. Our father would’ve raised us in Shea Stadium if he could’ve — in all honesty, he practically did just that. I am lucky in that sense, I know.

I was literally born a Mets fan, so it’s extremely interesting to me to hear from Mets fans who not only don’t live in New York, but live outside of the states altogether. They love this team just as much as the rest of us — well duh they do, they are Mets fans, too.

But, how did they come around to being Mets fans?

Tracey, Sheffield, England
I’ve been a Mets fan since 2006. My then boyfriend (we’re now married) and I were planning a trip to NYC, so decided that we would learn a bit about baseball so that if we were able to catch a game, we would know a bit about it. So, that season we watched a few games and kind of understood bits. At that point we didn’t really have a team, we would just watch whatever was on, and decided we would pick a New York team, as we had fallen in love with the city on vacation the year previously.

When we arrived in NYC, we (thankfully!) couldn’t get Yankees tickets, so ended up getting some for the Mets and fell in love with Shea, the team, the fans, the atmosphere….everything! As soon as we left, we booked for tickets for the following day.

My love affair with the Mets hasn’t dwindled, and we’re fortunate to be in a position where we can afford to go a couple of times a year, and we’ve been doing that for the last 4 years. We try and see as many games as we can on each trip, and have seen a few games on the road.

We’ve seen some amazing games – the first game we saw Nick Johnson (then of the Nationals) broke his thigh bone in the outfield and the reaction from the Mets fans was amazin’, they all got up and gave him a round of applause (not something you would see in sports over here!). We were there when Eric Young Jr. broke the ankle of Tim Hudson making a play at first (another amazin’ reaction from the Mets fans). We were also at Citi for the Wilmer No Crying In Baseball game, and were close to the dugout so heard the interaction between Wilmer and the fans (I admit to shedding a tear for him – he looked absolutely heartbroken!)

I’ve made some fantastic friendships, both in the UK and the US, through my love of the Mets, and I wouldn’t change a thing (except for maybe a few more wins Grinning face).

David, London, England
I stumbled on live late night baseball on terrestrial TV whilst up with a cough. All I remember about that game was that I ended up cheering on the team called the Mets. To this day I can’t tell you who pitched or even if they won. I remember searching for baseball again a short while later once I had recovered but it had already disappeared from terrestrial TV. Then in 2012, I switched from Sky TV to Virgin and there was baseball again on the BTESPN channel. I was hooked immediately. I remembered the team I cheered on a few years back and started following them seriously.

As you can probably see from my Twitter profile and feed I’m pretty much all in on baseball and out of Soccer. Finding a new sport to dive into in your 50’s is pretty cool. I get the chance to visit my first ballgame at Citi Field like a kid does. I had my first trip booked this June but have just had to cancel it due to the Coronavirus, so hopefully next year a (by then) 59-year-old will get to feel like a kid again.

I tried to spread the love about British Baseball by talking my daughter Emily into making a short on Baseball. It’s only 4 minutes long so if you have a chance, check it out.


Tracey and David are members of the group UKMets. David shared this great photo with me of some of the members last year at the London game — repping the Mets, of course!

Alex, United Kingdom
Hi there, my name is Alex, and I am a 17-year-old Mets fan from the United Kingdom. If I were to keep it simple, the story of how I became a Mets fan was through my dad. But I’ll tell you how he became a Mets fan, which ultimately resulted in me following the sport I love dearly.

At the ripe age of 18 my dad visited New York for the first time as he had some friends that lived in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. While in New York, my dad and his friends watched baseball on TV, and at this time, the Mets were having another rough season, and the Yankees were winning every game. My dad describes it as “everyone I met was a Yankee fan, so I thought that the Mets needed me more.” My dad got into the Mets via the help of the internet. My dad used to follow game day until he bought the MLB.tv subscription package, not expecting it to work in the UK. However, it did, and the rest is history.

So now, here’s how I became a Mets fan: On April 6 2015, I was out, playing football (no not American Football, soccer) with some friends from the neighborhood. I had heard my dad and brother talking all day about how excited they were for the upcoming baseball season. Before that day, I had always turned down the opportunity to watch baseball, simply because I wasn’t interested, and there was always something “better” for me to do like play XBOX 360 with friends or watch YouTube. On this specific day, however, my dad had bought some classic New York cheesecake and made his homemade chili. My love for cheesecake and chili was too strong, so I thought I would sit down and eat quickly, so I wouldn’t have to sit through the baseball game, and so I could meet my friends on XBOX for the 47th consecutive night.

Fortunately for me, I didn’t eat quick enough, meaning I had to watch the first inning of the Mets vs Nationals, Bartolo Colon on the mound against Max Scherzer. Trust me. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else but Bartolo Colon to introduce me to the Mets. As the game progressed my dad and brother began introducing me to the fundamentals of the game, they introduced me to all the divisions, the American and National League, and put up with silly questions I had such as “why do they run to first base when they hit the ball in play, why can’t they run to third?” As Buddy Carlyle locked down the save for the Mets, I turned to my dad and said, “what time is the game tomorrow?” From this point forward, I began following the Mets religiously, watching every early game until I had to go to bed for school the next day and checking the box score every morning when I woke up.

So, I guess you could say I have my dad to thank for being a Mets fan, if it were not for him choosing the Mets over the Yankees when he visited New York I could have turned out as just another Yankee fan. I am forever grateful that my dad bought cheesecake and made chili on April 6 2015, because if he didn’t, I wouldn’t have been introduced to this fantastic sport.

 

Killian, Almere, the Neatherlands
I’m Killian Melis, 26 years old and I’m living in Almere, the Netherlands. I’m a huge Mets fan, but how did I became one?

It all started when I began to play the game of baseball at the age of eight. I played for the club almere’90, in the “Flevoleague “. In this league the teams are named after big league team’s and of course mine was named “The Almere Mets” (and by the way, we won the competition that year).

When I was around the age of 12, I began to follow the MLB on the internet. Because my team was named “the Almere Mets”, I knew of the New York Mets. As I started to watch the MLB, my irritation of the Yankees began to grow. The reason is that baseball is not a big sport in the Netherlands. Every time I told people I played baseball, plus being a Mets fan, people thought they knew the game because they knew the Yankees. That’s why my love for the New York Mets grew.

Nowadays, I follow the Mets every day. The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is give my wife a kiss, the second thing is getting my phone as quickly as possible and going to the At-Bat app to watch what my Metsies did during the night. This is also my ritual in the off season or nowadays with the COVID-19 delay. It shows my dedication.

The last thing I want to tell is that I met another Mets fan in the Netherlands, and he is the reason I can tell you this story. He is also the reason I started to collect game used memorabilia as bats, caps, jerseys and a base, plus one tattoo of the Mets.

Going to a game at Citi Field is the number 1 thing on my bucket list, but the only thing is I’m afraid to fly. One day I will overcome that and I will enjoy the best sport of the world, at the best stadium in the world, together with the best fans of the world, watching the best team: our Mets! So LETS GO METS!!

Corné, the Netherlands
I have to thank my uncle that I became a Mets fan around 14 years ago. As a 15 year old, I visited my uncle in Stamford, CT with my family. Coming from a sports-oriented family, we had to visit a US sport game, and it was the Mets at Shea Stadium. I immediately loved the atmosphere and the more I started to learn, the more I loved the game. The Mets lost the game in 2006, but gained a die-hard lifetime fan.

I have been lucky enough to visit the Mets numerous times. I went to five games in 2010, attending back-to-back complete game shutouts by Johan Santana and R.A. Dickey (Dickey’s was a one-hitter). In 2015, I went back for six more. I saw a Mets 10-run inning, Noah Syndergaard‘s first win and Matt Harvey going eight scoreless innings. In 2016, I went to a road game for the first time, attending three games in Miami. The Mets won 2 of 3 and I went to a St. Lucie Mets game too. In 2018, I went back for seven games at Citi and in 2019, I attended three. Best game I attended was the J.D. Davis walk off game. Overall my record is now: 14-11, not to shabby right?

Trying to go to games as much as possible is a small part of showing my fandom. I own a solid collection of Mets memorabilia, including a Jon Niese NLDS & NLCS game used jersey and a Wilmer Flores home run bat, among many other items. Over a season, I watch about 140 games live or later without knowing the final score. Sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes when I wake up. You can read about it in “Diary of a Dutch Mets Fan“, that I wrote during the 2019 season. It shows the daily life of a Dutch fan and shows how much our beloved team can be viewed across the ocean. I’m a Mets nut like a lot others, just happen to be in another location! LGM