By Kim J. Harmon

There was a time when the New York Mets were known as the worst team in modern baseball history after going 40-120 in 1962.

There was also a time when the New York Mets were known as the worst team money could buy after a 1992 season that saw them finish in fifth place, at 72-90, despite having the largest payroll in the major leagues.

But, of course, there was also a time when the New York Mets were known as the Miracle Mets after their first World Series championship in 1969, just seven years after their inception.

Oh, it probably could be said that being a fan of the New York Mets is like riding a rickety old wooden roller coaster that offers dizzying highs and stomach-clenching lows with the fear that at any moment the whole thing could simply jump off the tracks and every moment of it is, well, the best.

Dana Brand of Newtown captures that feeling with his new book, Mets Fan, a 212-page softcover retrospective of what it’s like to be a fan of the New York Mets.

Mr Brand is a professor of English and American literature at Hofstra University and received his Ph.D. from Yale, back when A. Bartlett Giamatti, the former Major League Baseball commissioner, was simply an English professor.

Mr Brand has written numerous articles about English and American literature, philosophy and film and now takes a crack at another one of his true loves – baseball.

Becoming A Fan

Mr Brand became a New York Mets fan for the simple reason that his parents forbade him from following the New York Yankees.

It was the summer of 1961 and Mr Brand – only six – was getting excited about Roger Maris and the home run that broke Babe Ruth’s single season record.

“I was so excited about the home run,” he remembered, “but my parents sat me down and said I was not allowed to be excited about that. They were Brooklyn Dodger fans (who had left for Los Angeles four years before) and they said, next year there will be a team for you.”

The New York Mets.

“It was the right time,” said Mr Brand.

He was just 14 when the Mets – the Miracle Mets – won the World Series in 1969 with guys like Tommy Agee, Ed Kranepool, Tom Seaver, Jerry Koosman and Tug McGraw … and a very young Nolan Ryan.

“There has never been anything like it,” Mr Brand remembers. “It was epic. It was something I will always treasure – to see what everyone said was the worst team in baseball rise up and win the World Series. It was indescribable.”

He was just 18 when the Mets won the World Series in 1973 with, arguably, the weakest offensive team to ever win the series (Rusty Staub led the team with 76 RBI while Felix Milan batted a team-high .290).

And he was 31 and married – to a Boston Red Sox fan – when the New York Mets won one of the most legendary World Series ever in 1986.

That was the year the Mets – down two runs in the bottom of the 10th, with two outs in Game 6 – crawled back from the dead on the shattered dreams of the Boston faithful (like Sheila Brand) and the creaky knees of first baseman Bill Buckner.

“I always had hope,” said Mr Brand.

What I hear at this moment is the immense and glorious thunder of voices united in triumph. Hoboken erupts. People open their windows and scream into the night air. I hear voices on the street, the sounds of people running and laughing and cheering. My parents had always said that when Brooklyn won the pennant, there was dancing in the streets. I always liked the idea of dancing in the streets, of the city becoming a big family celebration, all because of baseball. People outside our Venetian blinds were, I guess, dancing in the streets. I was shaking with excitement, pressing my lips together to prevent any sound from escaping. Sheila had dropped to her knees in front of the television and it looked as if she was praying. But she wasn’t, she was weeping, and mourning, and keening. I put my hands on the shoulders of the woman I loved more than the whole world combined. I was amazed that she let me touch her. There was nothing I could say to console her. I just moved with her rhythm of rocking back and forth. Of course I was not sad. But I felt in her shoulders and sobs the bottomless sadness of the Red Sox fan. I knew she was right when she said through her tears that neither of her grandfathers would live to see the Red Sox win the World Series. There was no point in saying that maybe they would. Sure it was possible that the Red Sox could win the Series next year, or the year after. The grandfathers might live for quite a few more years. They did, in fact. But of course they never saw the Red Sox win the World Series. I knew they wouldn’t. I knew she was right. Just as she and I and everyone else knew that the Mets would win the 1986 World Series, even though there was still one more game to play.

Memories On Paper

The book started innocuously enough. Back in 2005, Mr Brand was engaged in some personal writing and sent an essay to Newsday about what it was like being a New York Mets fan. The response was overwhelming.

“So I said,” he remembers, “Why not write about this?”

It took about a year and it contains more than 80 short essays on just about everything – Mr. Met, the Mets logo, hating the Yankees, Jerry Koosman, Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, the Mets and Jerry Seinfeld, going to the game with his daughter, the apple in the outfield, Bob Murphy, Ralph Kiner and listening to Mike and the Mad Dog.

Mr. Met is the right host for the ballpark because he makes you feel goofy. He convinces you that an undiscriminating silliness is a precious state of being. He follows the people who shoot the t-shirts into the crowd and yes! you want a t-shirt.

When he dances on the dugouts, you bounce your head from side to side. He is happy when the Mets do well and you are happy when the Mets do well. He raises his arms and you cheer.

 He doesn’t seem to be around when the Mets screw up. Where does he go? Do they hide him? What’s the story with this? Is there a policy that requires him to stay in the clubhouse when things aren’t going well? Is he in there? Smiling, happy, surrounded by glum and foul-mouthed players? That would be something to see.

How does he make the players feel? Maybe he actually stays on the field but you just don’t notice him.

 You forget that someone is inside, someone who probably doesn’t have that smile on his face. You forget that someone is paid to dance and to manage the big bobbly head. You don’t think of Mr. Met as a guy in a suit. He seems real. He is as real as anything else at the stadium.

 I see a part of myself in Mr. Met. I see a part that I need in order to be a baseball fan. I see the part that doesn’t get upset, that keeps coming back for more and more, that is happy with everything he sees at the park from the moment he comes in to the moment he leaves. I see the part that lives with the lousy trades and bad decisions and disappointments and never once thinks of rooting for a different team. The part that stays happy as I wait in the line to leave the big lot through the space in the fence that puts you out on the road with the little shack shops that sell parts for cars and hubcaps.

“They are all the little pieces and what role being a Mets fan has played in my life,” said Mr Brand. “The book turned into a general expression of what the Mets mean to me – in a way, I hope, other people can identify with.”

Mr Brand is a regular contributor to Mike’s Mets (mikesmets.com), New York Baseball online, and New York Baseball talk with Mike Silva and keeps up his own blog that attracts many faithful posters. The New York Mets are a part of his heart and soul and you can get a sense of that by grabbing a copy of Mets Fan.