This lack of Mets baseball has got us reflecting here at MMO. So, we wanted to share that reflection with all of you and tell our little stories as to how we became Mets fans.

We all have our own stories. We’ve shared fan stories, such as how these international baseball fans have become Mets fans. And now, here’s a glimpse at ours.

Laney 

Since my father is a Yankee fan and my mother is a Mets fan, my loyalty was up in the air until I came out of the womb. Born a girl on April 8th, I was instantly a Mets fan. My dad likes to say that I was simply keeping the girl Mets fan train going, but I like to think that I was destined to be a Mets fan. Hours before my mother gave birth to me she was laying in her hospital bed watching the Mets take on the Braves in a Sunday matinee. For the rest of my family, me being a Mets fan was just me evening the score between my mom’s Mets and my dad and my oldest brother’s Yankees, but I like to think that being a Mets fan was simply my destiny.

Matt

My Mets fandom originated from my grandpa, who lived in Flushing for the majority of his life. He passed along that fandom to his daughter (my mom), who then brought me up as a Mets fan. She faced no opposition from my dad, who, to this day, claims he cheers for both the Red Sox and Yankees, although the only player he can name on either team is Derek Jeter. Throughout my childhood, my mom would take me to Shea Stadium, and later Citi Field, several times a year.

There, I watched the Amazin’s lose early and often. My first memory at any Mets game: Felix Hernandez going yard against Johan Santana. I was mesmerized by the Mets the second I went to go. Throughout the years, my fandom has expanded while my family’s has seemingly plateaued. To this day, I do not know how I have become so infatuated with Queen’s team over the last decade to the point where I write about them on the daily, but I guess everything happens for a reason.

Lindsay

I’ve been a Mets fan for as long as I can remember, thanks to my dad. He spent a lot of his childhood in Brooklyn, and he always tells me stories about listening to games on the radio with his aunt as a child and how those memories shaped his lifelong fandom. Despite living in central New York my whole life, we always found ways to make the trip to Shea Stadium with gloves in hand, and often took bus trips with his friends from work. He bought me my first jersey at around 9 years old, and I wore it until the second-to-last game at Shea Stadium in 2008 when Johan Santana threw a complete game shutout. My dad and I still talk about the way the stadium rumbled that day and the deafening cheers that you had to be there to believe. Even though I was always a fan, it was that day that I knew I’d be a lifelong Mets fan.

Mojo

I’m a Mets fan because my dad is a lifelong Mets fan who was raised in New York. Even though I was born and raised in L.A., my dad never shied away from his Mets fandom, and even when I was young and didn’t have a ton of interest in baseball, he would still constantly have the Mets on TV and talk about them all the time. Being an L.A. kid, at first I was conflicted and tried to just be a Dodgers fan, but I was simply surrounded by the Mets so much that in some ways, I almost didn’t really have a choice but to just accept my fate as a Mets fan.

I think the main turning point though was when I started to attend Las Vegas 51’s games with my dad, which opened me up to the beauty of minor league baseball and got me to really start following the team and the system closely. So now I’m a weird mix of a Dodgers and Mets fan, but now that I’m through a few years of closely following the Mets and contributing to Metsmerized, I’m way more knowledgeable about the Mets than I am the Dodgers.

Sal

Probably like many Mets fans, I was born into this crazy life. Although I didn’t really have a choice in which baseball team to route for, I’m grateful that I was born into a family of die-hard Mets fans. My first real Mets memory, though, came when I was at Shea to see Mike Piazza’s first game as a Met. The atmosphere, the packed stadium, and even as a 7-year-old kid not knowing much of what was going on, I fell in love with it all. There were MANY lean years to follow come the new millennium (to put it nicely) but I was already hooked by then. Now I’m pushing 30, and I still feel those same butterflies and excitement anytime I watch them play… here’s hoping we can do that again soon.

Ryan

My Dad always says the greatest year in his life was 1986 because that was the year he met my Mom. It also happened to be the year the Mets won the World Series and his New York Giants won the Super Bowl. Fast forward 15 years later and you would find his six-year-old son crying his eyes out after learning that Robin Ventura had been traded to the Yankees. Needless to say I was a die-hard Mets fan before I could know any better.

Michelle 

I did not have a choice in the matter and would not have it any other way. Both my parents grew up in Queens, just about ten minutes away from Shea Stadium. Before I was born, they then moved ten minutes away from Shea Stadium the other way! My Mets fandom was set in stone from the beginning. When your entire family (your Greek immigrant grandfather included!) were at the 1986 World Series, your aunt worked in promotions for WFAN in the ’80s, and your parents used to cut high school classes to go see games at Shea, how could it be any other way?