Back to Baseball and the Random Song of the Day

The Zeal of the Zealot opened last night and I was lucky to not have a baseball game to monitor. I will try as hard as I can to avoid the At Bat, but my phone will certainly be on standby. The game starts around the same time as the performance. I want wins, regardless of the possible turnover of players this offseason. Let's mess with the Brew Crew's chances. Let's get back to some solid baseball. Only 19 games to go. Enjoy it as much as you can, folks.

I'm off to the 2nd performance.

Here's the Random Song of the Day.

LET'S. GO. METS.

Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter @convertedmetfan. And for Rising Apple twitter updates, click here.

The Day Jose Reyes Grew Fins

Jose Reyes will make his Marlins' Citi Field Debut tonight. I will be DVRing the game, going radio silent as I play softball with my Co-workers at 6:30.

With his appearance in mind, I revisit a post I made in the first weeks of this blog's existence.

On the second to last day of the season, I went to Citi Field for what I knew would be my last game of the 2011 campaign. I went by myself and bought a cheap upper decker. I made my way to right behind home plate, the fair-weather fans' avoidance of the Meadows of Flushing making the choice of seating possible. With the field sprawled out in front of me, for one last time before another October without Orange and Blue baseball, I reaffirmed my love for the game.

We were all there not only for baseball, but to see if our shortstop could continue to march towards the first ever batting title in the 50 seasons of the franchise. A three-hit night would be nice. Just dish out some singles, steal some bases, and send us into the winter on a high note. Jose Reyes, however, went above and beyond our expectations, knocking two home runs to right-center and the Pepsi Porch, respectively. After the second home run, we wouldn't let our shortstop sit down without a curtain call, showing him why there was no reason to ever consider leaving the New York Mets.

The fact Manny Acosta blew the save with two strikes on the Reds' batters only meant we'd get at least another inning of Jose Reyes, at least another inning of baseball for the year. As the game marched into the twelfth, with Jose Reyes having provided one more hit in the ninth, us fans who were still there did not want this night to end. With Mets baseball in 2011 hanging in the balance, the longer it went on, the better.

The Reds took the lead in the top of the twelfth. With the bases loaded in the bottom half, like so many times over the last few years, Lady Luck positioned the Reds for a double-play to end the game, and a double-play to end this guy's baseball year.

**********************************************************************************

Fast forward to the night of December 5th. My girlfriend and I are leaving our bar spot in Brooklyn when Ted, the Philly fan, sent me a non-sarcastic text that read, "I'm sorry for your loss." (I swear, he wasn't being sarcastic.) I quickly looked up Metsblog on my phone, and there written across the page, like a dagger in the heart, read, "Jose Reyes signs six-year $106 million deal with the Marlins." An outlandish deal, but a dagger nonetheless.

The next morning at work, the resident Yankee fan of the office turned the corner with the largest, most annoying grin on his face, ready to rub the event of Sunday night in.

My initial reaction was anger. Not at the Mets for screwing their finances up, but at Jose Reyes (and, in a broad sense, the modern athletic landscape) for his disloyalty. Here we are at a crossroads of our franchise's history, and the man can't even help the family out. I'm gonna boo him so hard when he comes back, I thought to myself.

As I took a stroll around the internet, reading eulogy after Jose Reyes' Met career eulogy, I began to feel even more of a sense of pride in the team. I focused on the players we still have, and it made me extremely excited for the upcoming season. While everyone was either laughing at us or taking pity on us, I wanted to show New York how much I love this team, and how much I can't wait for Mets baseball to begin again.

At lunch, I took the 1 train to the Mets Clubhouse on 42nd Street. When I woke up that morning, I had this crazy idea I wanted to buy a Mets tie and wear it to work, much like Sandy Alderson did his first day on the job. If it were professional, I would have worn a Mets T-shirt and my Mets cap, but I needed something "executive." So I bought this:

I got ready to pay when I looked down into the glass counter and saw something that my pocket had been waiting for:

I had lost a wallet that belonged to my grandfather, and this Mets wallet looked exactly like my grandfather's wallet sans the Mets logo. Once I saw it, there was no way I could walk out of that store without it. 

The rest of the day, I just Mets-ed out to the max. I bought a Mets thermal shirt online, and customized a Mets blue 80's jersey with my favorite player on it:

The patches were added by me, and I still have to add "43" to the front. My girlfriend doesn't really like me walking around with a "Dickey" on my back, but I don't care. Robert Alan Dickey is the man.

Any anger I had calmed down over the next few days (and I will probably give Reyes a sizable ovation before rooting hard against him on every pitch.) When I saw Jose interviewed by Kevin Burkhardt in that horrendous Marlins Jersey at the Winter Meetings, I realized how naive the kid still is. First off, he bought into the Marlins "love" and our lack thereof, and secondly, when Kevin said, "There are people crying back in New York," Jose frantically said, "It's not my fault! It's not my fault!" Come on! You signed the dotted line, you had your set price. It's the Metropolitans' fault they lost one of the greatest homegrown players they've ever had and it's Jose's fault he wanted to get paid for it. Don't sit there and say you have no responsibility for the reason you're wearing that ugly jersey.

**********************************************************************************

Jose Reyes is a fantastic player, with a lot of natural baseball instinct. But a lot of his game is physical, and as he gets older, and has to make up for that physical loss, he most certainly will not be worth the back-ended deal he is getting. Ruben Tejada is not Jose Reyes, and that's a good thing. He is not the physical specimen Reyes is and because of it he has to compensate with a very high baseball IQ. I can't tell you how many times Ruben Tejada kept working the count and fouling off pitches in 2011, when he would have struck out or gotten jammed in 2010. He impressed me at the plate, and he was only 21! I am very excited to see this kid grow right before our eyes, and I know he will not let the pressure of replacing Jose Reyes get in the way of performing.

Too many times over the last few years I have heard, "Where Reyes goes, so do the Mets." When he was injured the team would use him as an excuse for why they weren't performing at a high level. This is an exciting time in the history of this team, and the potential for a complete effort by every member of this ball club is something every Mets fan should look forward to. RA Dickey put it best on the day Jose Reyes grew fins:

“The weight left by Jose’s leaving is far lighter when distributed on the backs of the collective body.”

I cannot wait for Jose Reyes to swing through an RA Dickey knuckleball.

LET'S. GO. METS.

Thanks for reading! Converted Mets Fan is now on Twitter. Follow me @convertedmetfan. And for Rising Apple twitter updates, click here.

The Tale of Two Pelfreys and Gee Eats his Beard; Mets and Cards tie 6-6

The least concerning news of yesterday's game to Met fans is that Dillon Gee was caught on camera biting down on his massive goatee. I have not seen it reported yet so I caught the scoop. HA! Take that, Adam Rubin!

Much more important to the future of this franchise is Mike Pelfrey continuing his inconsistencies that have come to define his six-year career. This game (a 6-6 tie with the Cardinals) more than any other in March basically sums up what Pelfrey has become: he is consistantly inconsistent, and in trying to find his identity over the course of 5 full big-league seasons, his identity has become a pitcher who looks lost and bewildered, unable to grasp exactly who he is on the mound.

Pelfrey started out sharply, consistently getting the ball down, having the sink on that sinker that formerly lead to so many ground balls. He even struck out Yadir Molina on a sharp one. I thought to myself for a second that Pelfrey might have turned a corner. Then a runner got on.

The second the opposition starts getting on base, Pelfrey loses all intimidation and composure, as if he completely forgets everything he is working on. This occurred in the 3rd inning, when the Cardinals got their first hit on the day and proceeded to score 4 runs off the Soft Giant. Even in one at-bat, he can look as if he has the best bite in the world on his fastball and the sloppiest, most easily hard hit pitch the game has ever seen. In Bobby Ojeda's words, "At some point he needs a game plan and he needs to stick to it." After the game, Pelfrey talked about his velocity and the strides he's made with his sinker, and how he was pleased with the way he threw, outside of a few moments of letting his guard down. I'm tired, however, of everyone just settling for this mediocrity we get from the man, including Pelfrey himself. It just won't cut it anymore.

There were many positives from this game, however, and none were more positive than the power display shown by the middle of the order. After the Cardinals botched an inning-ending double-play, Ike Davis knocked an opposite-field home run to give the Mets an early 3-0 lead. With no ill effects from the ankle, so far, Ike is beginning to settle in after a slow start to his hitting. His defense continues to be one of the best in the business as he showed us on a great snare of a hard liner down the line in the 6th inning.

I can go on and on about Lucas Duda. Besides absolutely destroying the baseball in the 4th inning for a home run just to the right of center field, he's got a great eye and does what he needs to do to get his barrel on the ball. I love his swing and The Duda has quickly turned into one of my favorite players on this team. I look forward to his continuing progress.

The Duda.

Other takeaways from this game:

• While it was a sloppy one, it was a fun game to watch, with lots of opportunities to practice situations. Neither team, however, could take full advantage of the sloppiness for the win.
• Gary Cohen made the point that Matt Den Dekker has great speed but does not yet have a great first step on the base paths. Another reason (on top of the points I made yesterday) why Den Dekker should start the year in the minor leagues, regardless of his defense and the center field injury situation.
• All the emphasis on pitchers getting the bunt down seems to be working. Pelf executed a perfect one in the 3rd inning. Soooooo....he's got that going for him...
• I used to dread The Bobby Parnell Show, but even though it's spring, I actually have been looking forward to watching him pitch when I see him warming up. He has much better poise than we're familiar with, mixing in his other pitches and not overthrowing his fastball. He looks more mature in his demeanor, making the kind of strides we wish Pelf would make. Maybe Parnell did some soul searching this winter.
• Jon Rauch's fastball isn't quite there yet, but his slider is. He did a good job practicing getting out of trouble.
• Frank Francisco's fastball isn't quite there yet as well, and he didn't get any help from the defense in his first opportunity to practice the save (and practice how NOT to blow a save.) His splitter is there, however, and it looks great. If the fastball comes around, we should be alright. If not, maybe Parnell is indeed the closer of the future. (Maybe? I know this is only spring training, but wishful thinking never hurt anyone.)
• Nickeas is a hard worker, and has fantastic ability for self-analysis. He was interviewed in the latter part of the game, and he said the following in regards to his swing: "I'm trying to shorten everything up...focus on a downward plane towards the ball. I was getting a little loopy towards the end of last year...I'd lose my barrel throughout my swing. Now I feel my direction is in front, the barrel is coming through the zone a little tighter." You can tell why the front office and coaching staff like this guy so much. Hopefully the self-analysis leads to great execution.
• Josh Edgin continues to impress. He keeps the ball down and has great confidence in who he is at this stage of his career. I look forward to his growth, regardless of him making the team or not.
• The crowd was practicing fandom in the 9th and 10th innings, with extreme passion and loudness for a spring training game. Met fans and Cardinal fans kept exchanging "Let's go" chants, getting real feisty. Nice job.

The future of the National League East will be on full display today when Matt Harvey and the Mets take on Stephen Strausberg and the Nats. Don't you wish this game was on TV?

11 more days, folks.

It's Baseball!

I’ve got boxes that need unpacking. I’ve got shirts that need some hanging.

But tonight at 6, there’s nothing but baseball in my eyes.

There’s been an entire offseason focused on what the Mets DON’T have.

Whether it be bills of green.

Or Talent.

And how they each have to do with the other.

But tonight at six, there’s nothing but baseball on my mind.

Tonight at six, there’ll be slurves and curves.

Fastballs and change-ups.

The pop of the catcher’s mitt.

The crack of the Hillerich & Bradsby’s.

An outfielder graciously running down a long drive.

An infielder snagging that up-the-middle-sure-to-be-single.

It’s all back tonight.

The ever-fluid motions of baseball will play out in front of us in the form of Mets vs. Nationals tonight. It’s nice to sit back and watch a game for nothing but the over-analysis of each player, prospect or veteran, and when/how they will help the Orange and Blue.

Soon, we will all care about the outcome of each game.

But for now…

Let’s sit back and relax.

And watch baseball take its place.

Dumping the Navy Pinstripes for the Orange and Blue

Thank you for your first visit to this new blog. Blog posts in the future will not be nearly this long, but this first one is an exception. Enjoy.

The year is 2004, and I am sitting on my couch in Hell’s Kitchen, the Red Sox and the Yankees battling in the 12th Inning of Game Four. Before the night started, I had thrown my team allegiances out the window and said to myself, “Alright, Red Sox. Let’s see what you’re made of.” I am watching as a baseball fan, not the Die-hard Yankee fan I supposedly was and the Die-hard Yankee Fan so many people knew me to be. I am on the phone with my freshman roommate Ted, a Die-hard Phillies fan and one of the biggest baseball fans I know. We had been on the phone since the 9th inning, talking baseball and who knows what else. His Fox Baseball is eight seconds behind my Fox Baseball, and it has been established that I should not emote too much and let him find out what has happened on his own. The game is going deep into the night and we both would rather be sleeping, but sleep is not an option when you are a Die-hard Baseball Fan. I am rambling about something, when I come to a sudden halt. About two seconds later I say, “Alright, man, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” He says, “Wait, what?” Then about 5 seconds later he goes, “Oh. Yeah. Yeah, we’ll talk tomorrow.” Ortiz had delivered Boston their first win of the series, and had delivered both Ted and I a sleep that was a couple hours coming.

 

The next night, as I was watching, something happened to me. The baseball event was so great and so grand that the idea of Boston actually doing what nobody in the history of sports had done sans Hockey, all the while taking down their arch-rival and taking the first step towards breaking the curse, was a much more exciting scenario to me than watching my Yankee team win their 27th championship. So, I traveled back to my college in Allentown, PA, decked out in a backwards Yankee hat and a navy blue Yankee T-Shirt with “Soriano #12” on my back. When I got there, I wrote on a post-it “A-ROD is a BITCH!!!” and taped it over the #12. While walking around campus, people passing me yelled, “Hey, you got something on your back!” and I would yell back with a smile, “I know!!” You can imagine people’s confusion at a house party during Game 6. This kid decked out in Yankee gear rooting hardcore for the Red Sox. I wanted to put a hex on the team I had rooted so hard for, for baseball’s sake. My heightened state of emotions were eminent when in the 7th or 8th inning, A-rod slapped the ball out of Bronson Arroyo’s glove, perpetuating my point of his bitchdom.

 

The next evening, still decked out in my Yankee gear (which I had worn for three days straight) the Red Sox finally got past the Yankees, literally at the stroke of Midnight.

 

Meanwhile, there was a crazy series going on in the National League as well. In the end, it was only fitting that to finally break the curse, the Red Sox would have to get past the Cardinals, the team to whom they had lost twice to in seven games. After they duked it out in Game One, the Red Sox owned the rest of the series. On the night of Game Four with a red harvest moon above St. Louis (you can’t make this stuff up, folks), NUMBER 3 Edgar Rentaria grounded out to second base, and the Red Sox had finally broken the curse of the NUMBER 3 Bambino after 86 seasons.

***********************************************************

My baseball history is all over the map, or more specifically, up and down the east coast. The first baseball game I ever went to was at The Diamond in Richmond, VA, to watch the AAA Richmond Braves take on....I have no idea. I was three years old and according to my father, we got there in the second inning and the kid diagnosed with ADD a year later only lasted till the seventh inning. Luckily, the time I spent at this baseball stadium with an American Indian sculpture on its outside was not remotely enough time to turn me into a Braves fan.  Thank God.

 

In 1991, when I was six years old, we moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, and two years later the South Florida area got a Major League Baseball team, the first ever to wear the color Teal. Sometime in the summer of 1993, a place that I will never call anything but Joe Robbie Stadium hosted my inaugural Major League game.

 

Now, I had many obsessions in my first ten years of life, but baseball wasn’t really one of them. Although my dad had gotten Inaugural year Florida Marlins Memorabilia, I didn’t latch on to baseball the way other kids did. Of all the sports, it was the one I was most interested in, but with my dad being an actor I was much more interested in films and television (and Superman comics). I loved the classic baseball movies from the early nineties like The Sandlot, Rookie of the Year and Angels in the Outfield, but they didn’t open me up to investigating the sport. That changed when I moved to New York in 1995.

 

The city was the first time I truly felt at home somewhere. I fell in love with this place. I was a very hyperactive kid, and the city felt like the perfect playground. A year into my New York life, I was in sixth grade and my teacher was a huge Yankees fan. In the fall of 1996, she had a smile on her face every single day. She was the closest I had come to following the sport on a daily basis, with updates every one of those October days. I had yet to turn on a game, when one night my family and I came across what turned out to be the ninth inning of Game 6 of the World Series. I remember a pop-up to the third base dugout that Charlie Hayes couldn’t quite get. The next pitch was a pop-up that went to the exact same place, but this one stayed in just enough for Hayes to catch it. That’s when I got confused, for there was supposed to be another half-inning, but the pinstriped men were all celebrating, jumping on each other in jubilation. My mom explained that if the home team had a lead in the top half, there was no point for them to come to bat. This is the first memory I have of a baseball championship celebration, let alone in my hometown, and I was excited. Up until that moment, I hadn’t followed it outside of my teacher, so call it bandwagoning, but it was the first time sports had truly gotten me excited. We stuck our heads out of our second-floor, 12th Street and Seventh Avenue corner apartment, and started yelling, “The Yankees just won the World Series!!!” Cars were honking, people in the streets celebrated; I had never seen anything like it.

 

This did not immediately propel me to follow baseball on a daily basis the next season. Looking back, my brain jumps to Game Five of the ALDS between the Yanks and the Indians as my first baseball memory of that year. My dad and I watched, rooting for the Yanks, both disappointed when the Indians won the game to advance. My dad then told me, however, that the Marlins were still in it. Being two years removed from Florida, this intrigued me.

The 1997 World Series seems to be the most underrated Seven-game World Series in baseball history. This was the first time I had followed any playoff series game by game. Through Game 6, the Marlins had won the odd games, the Indians the even games, and with that pattern, it did not bode well for the team who had not won since 1948.

What a game that seventh game was. The Indians led most of the way 2-0, with the Marlins scoring 1 in the seventh to pull within 2-1. They tied it up in the ninth inning and in the eleventh Edgar Renteria won it with a single up the middle for the five-year-old team. My dad and I were delirious, sharing our first truly ecstatic baseball moment together. This series, and especially that game, was the first time I saw how ridiculously awesome baseball can be. The next day, I proudly wore my “Inaugural year 1993” Marlins cap to school. (Funny how the first two teams I rooted for in my life I now loath.)

The slow climb to full-fledged baseball fandom shifted into fifth gear in 1998. The Yankees were kicking ass, David Wells pitched a perfect game, the Mets got Mike Piazza, and the home run record was being chased. I was extremely caught up with what Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa were doing just like the rest of America, but this was the year I discovered the history of the game and it became a full-out obsession, one that has not left me since. As a thirteen year old, I went to the library and picked up Ken Burns’ Baseball book companion, and if any of you have ever seen it, it is basically baseball’s text book, and I read the whole thing. I was hooked. For a kid who was told he can’t focus without a pill, paying attention to nothing but the intricate details of the game for three hours or more was very appealing.

 

I am a lucky human being for many reasons, one of them being that I have had parents that were and are very supportive of anything I set my mind on. And while my dad likes to say he has been a Yankee fan his whole life, because back in the Fifties the teachers in Fairfax, Virginia, would wheel in a television during the World Series, and Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra are some of his earliest memories of the game (notice how he doesn’t mention the Brooklyn Dodgers), baseball has never been his passion. His passion, among other things, was and is spending time with me, and when I showed interest in the Yankees and the game, he showed interest and bought season tickets, even if it was not financially prudent to a man whose main career at the time was acting (which meant Temping as well.) But regardless, some of my greatest baseball memories are with my Dad at Yankee Stadium in the upper deck right behind home plate. I saw Roger Clemens make his Pinstripe debut, a 8-inning 1-run gem before he stunk it up the rest of the ‘99 season. I saw center fielder Bernie Williams win it in the 12th with a single the day the Yankees celebrated another of their center fielders, Joe Dimaggio, who had recently died. I was at the first ever Mets-Yankees World Series Game (which is actually a very weird memory to have in my current state). When Scott Brosius had an 0-2 count in the ninth inning of Game Five (in 2001) with the Yankees down 2-0 with one on, I put my arms over my eyes ‘cause I couldn’t bear to watch. What sounded like 55,000 people silent as the pitch came in turned into a joyous exclamation, and I opened my eyes and saw Brosius with his arms up and the ball heading to that short left field porch. These are memories I hold very dear, but as I grew up something changed.

***********************************************************

The Yankees are an anomaly. The fact they’ve won close to a quarter of the championships there have ever been is mind-boggling, and if you know anything about sports, outside of the Montreal Canadiens, it is a very rare statistic. Most teams don’t do what the Yankees have done, and as I grew older I felt more detached from the rest of baseball. What really was the red flag for me, however, was the lack of emotion I would have when the Yankees lost, especially when they lost big games. I want to feel disappointed when my team loses, I want to have an emotional reaction when they lose, and I just didn't anymore. While I used to feel this when I was younger and my fandom was in its infancy, it waned, and that is something you don't want going away as you grow older. There is that emotional reaction you should only have in sports that connects you to your childhood. And while you must be more professional and keep your emotional reactions to a minimum in basically all other facets of your grown up life, sports, and for me baseball in particular, should still be an outlet for that kind of happiness and frustration.

I hadn’t seriously considered switching allegiances until I had the reaction I did during the ALCS in 2004. My favorite team had been the Yankees, but my second favorite team was the Mets. There was no point to hating the Mets, because the baseball fan in me just viewed it as that much more awesome that I had that much more baseball to root for in my city. I would root for the Yankees over the Mets, but outside of those games, I wanted the Mets to win just as much as I wanted the Yankees to win. One of the greatest baseball memories I have is watching the 15-inning classic against the Mets and the Braves, the game everybody now knows as Robin Ventura’s Grand Slam Single. I remember being extremely pissed off at Kenny Rogers (a f%&in walk?) two nights later. In my study of baseball, I am extremely fascinated with the National League side of New York, even when I was a Die-hard Yankee fan. My cousin and uncle are Met fans, my grandfather was a Giants fan in Brooklyn, so when the transformation in 2004 happened in me, it only felt natural to join the die-hard Mets fandom mid-stream.

Nobody thought I was genuine. The Met fans I had grown up with said, “You can’t be a flip-flopper, so don’t think you can go back.” And I said, “Of course not.” I had stopped identifying with the Yankees, and while the Yankees are a large part of baseball history and my personal baseball history, I feel much more a part of baseball being a Mets fan than I did as a Yankee fan in the latter years of that fandom. At first, my dad thought it was about him, and while he called me a traitor at the beginning, he eventually realized it wasn’t about him and only calls me a traitor jokingly now. He says he’s just happy that I love baseball and that he was a part of building up that passion.

I jumped on the Mets train at what looked to be the right time. They were pretty good and nearly great in those first two years of my all-out Mets fandom. It looked like where ever I went I would bring the winning. HA!! Who was I kidding? The baseball Gods were not going to let me join just when the Mets had found the dynasty they’ve been searching for in their 50 years of existence. I had to know what it was like to be a Mets fan, and not only what it was like to be a Mets fan, but arguably in the most devastating era of Mets fandom. So, Met fans, don’t blame Minaya, don’t blame the Wilpons, don’t blame Madoff, and certainly don’t #BlameBeltran. Blame me. If it wasn’t for me, maybe Aaron Heilman’s slider actually slides; maybe Minaya makes astute day-to-day baseball operating decisions; maybe Madoff confesses and gives all the money back before it disappears into virtual thin-air; maybe the team-wide injuries aren’t used as an excuse for inept baseball play. We have to find somebody other than the collective to blame. Why not #BlameSamMaxwell?

I don’t understand the Met fans who say, “Boycott!! It’s the only way to force the Wilpons out!” “This team won’t do anything, so what’s the point of me showing up to watch?” I know that last year they were actually a lot of fun to watch outside of the bullpen, and what’s the point of fandom if you only want the good stuff? That’s not exactly how life works, and that sure isn’t how baseball works, with the Mets or with any team, even the Yankees. Some of the most memorable games I’ve been to have been losses. Losing is part of the baseball fan experience, especially since they play the most games out of any sport, and it only makes the wins that much sweeter. When Jose Reyes left, it only reaffirmed the passion I have for this team, and it sent me on a crazy Mets spending spree. (Was I trying to bail the Wilpons out in one fell swoop? No. But I understand how it could be perceived that way.)

I feel bad for all the Met fans who are waiting for the Mets to be “great” again, because the ecstasy I will feel when they finally win what I will consider my first true championship will be a million times greater for me and all of you who have never stopped watching, who have never jumped out mid-stream. For all of you fans who want nothing to do with the Mets right now, just remember when you first fell in love with the team. Remember there are 162 games in a season. 

And never forget what got you watching in the first place.


 

LET'S. GO. METS.

Thanks for reading! Converted Mets Fan is now on Twitter. Follow me @convertedmetfan. And for Rising Apple twitter updates, click here.