Belatedly Posting "The Newest Breed, Pt. 2"

Over a year ago, I released a documentary titled, "The Newest Breed: A History and Guide to the Mets Fan" in two parts.

I find the Mets fan to be a unique breed. I believe through Sharon Chapman, Kevin Chapman, Ross Chapman, and Greg Prince of Faith and Fear in Flushing, I was able to cinematically detail why and how the fan came to be and what drives them to have such a passion for this New York National League baseball team.

I posted the first part on the blog, but for some reason, I never posted the second part here. Why that is does not matter anymore, the only thing that matters is that I follow through with presenting it on here finally.

If you haven't seen the first part yet, please do so at the blog post link above, or directly here.

Thank you for watching, and

KEEP. ON. PUSHIN'.

LET'S. GO. METS.

Author/Blogger Greg Prince and The Chapman Family reminisce and opine on the Mets, the team's history and their personal fandom.

Produced, Edited and Directed by Sam Maxwell​
Original Score by Adam Spiegel​
Filmed on Location in New York City, San Francisco, Central New Jersey and at the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse​ at Broadway and 11th Street in Manhattan

LIVE at 9pm ET, A Metsian Podcast, Ep. 22 - The First 18 w Metsian Theme Composer Adam Spiegel

We’re back with the first regular A Metsian Podcast of the season, LIVE at 9pm ET! Today, we are thrilled to welcome the composer of our theme song, Mets fan Adam Spiegel!

On top of his passion for the Mets, Adam is also a musician, composer, music director & actor. He's the lead singer & keyboard player for the band Brain Salt & also sings and plays keys for the bands Hide & Seek & Comic Tales of Tragic Heartbreak. He has written music, lyrics & book material for the musicals Cloned!, Camp Rolling Hills & The Whole Megillah. You can find more info on his website.

Well, as usual, there have been ups, downs, & everything inbetween in the first 18 games of the season. Both the bullpen and the starting pitching have struggled so far. What are certain solutions Brodie Van Wagenen can take to immediately address the issues? Yes, signing both Dallas Keutchel & Craig Kimbrel can be thrown out there as answers. The offense was on fire to begin the season but has since cooled down. Both Robinson Cano and Brandon Nimmo have struggled so far. How concerned are we about either of them and can you keep running Nimmo out there in the leadoff as the strikeouts keep piling on?

This plus much more! And we’ll explore the Mets to wear 22 in their history as well as the 1922 NY National League campaign.

So, join us at 9pm ET for the latest edition of A Metsian Podcast! You can listen down below or go directly to the Blog Talk website.

LISTEN. IN. NOW.

LET'S. GO. METS.

The Newest Breed: A History & Guide to the Mets Fan, Pt. 1

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you....

Author/Blogger Greg Prince and The Chapman Family reminisce and opine on the Mets, the team's history and their personal fandom.

Produced, Edited and Directed by Sam Maxwell​
Original Score by Adam Spiegel​
Filmed on Location in New York City, San Francisco, Central New Jersey and at the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse​ at Broadway and 11th Street in Manhattan

Stay tuned for Part 2 on 3/30/18!

Searching for Carolyn After Another Mets Loss

I hadn't been planning to go to last night's Mets game. I actually made a "responsible" decision after earlier having deciding to go. I said, "At some point, I really can't afford all this, can I?" Then, a friend of mine whose company was selling tickets for groups of children to go asked if I wanted to buy 3 for $40. I told him I would only go for free right now, unfortunately. He said, "Fine then, for free," and we figured out when to meet.

Well, I really can never pass up free Mets tickets. If I were able to afford every game, I'd attempt to work around going to every game :D 

Oh, jeez. I've been texting too much...

Anyway, I went to the game ready to be an Upper Deck Roamer with my 525 section. Tip for those that buy an upper deck seat: Just go sit in sections 512-518 until the Mets are good again and people start crowding the place up. Right behind home plate, arguably, outside of it being really cool being really close, the best seats in the house. You can see the whole field, and they made the place so intimate that there's never "too far away" and you just watch baseball from the angle of the whole diamond. It's beautiful.

That doesn't mean that when my former boss asked if I wanted to meet and he gave me a ticket to get into the Delta Club and we went and sat in section 12 that I would turn down being field level.

It's just a different way of viewing things. Neither are necessarily better than the other, but it's loads of fun seeing the players actually look human-size for a change.

Well...speaking of the "players", the Josh Satin-for-Eric Campbell move makes loads of sense. Here's a dude who hasn't done a lick for us this year, regardless of whether he needs playing time, compared to a super-utility player in Eric Campbell that is CRUSHING it in the PCL. This was a slight digression, but I bring this up first because Josh Satin looked as horrendous from up close last night as his demotion states he did.

So, the Mets squandered opportunity after opportunity and they clearly deserved to lose. You just feel it in the air on night like last night. It was nice to tie it up...but I'm tired of saying that.

In extras, I started talking to a lady behind me named Carolyn (don't know if that's how we spell it...) but we seem to hit it off in conversation and were both equally as pissed off at the way the Mets go about things these days. And she was even more pissed off because her roommate, who was a Tigers fan and wished he wasn't still at this long and excruciating game had said to her "I hope the Phillies win." (Oh, yeah, forgot to mention...before it went extras, it took a freakin' 4 hours for 9 innings...for a 3-2 extra-inning loss)

Now, let me first say that I've NEVER done anything like this. I've never gone online looking to find someone who I met that I was unable to get contact information of, let alone write about it soliciting contact. She and her dude roommate (made clear...) kept going while myself and the group I was with were still in the Delta Club. I last saw her heading towards the subway, probably 200 feet ahead of us.  The subway can fit a lot of people on one train. Who knows where she may have gone to? But it didn't feel like exchanging information would have proven fruitless.

Again, I would normally be very reserved when it comes to doing stuff like this. But hey, you only live once, there's a side of me that a hopeless romantic (not to make anyone think I think this is going ANYWHERE...) but I felt like conducting a social experiment in the age of devices before fate could potentially have us run into each other again at a future Mets game. So, if you're Carolyn from Brooklyn who's a Mets fan who talked to a Sam and was in Section 12 with her dude roommate at the Mets 3-2 loss to the Phillies last night, or know Carolyn from Brooklyn who's a Mets fan who talked to a Sam and was in Section 12 with her dude roommate at the Mets 3-2 loss to the Phillies last night, I'm easy to get in touch with. My email should be somewhere off that way ------->


Anyway..

Firstly, I am doing a Brooklyn Ballpark Bike Ride Tour on my Bedford & Sullivan podcast at 5pm ET today with the Brooklyn Trolley Blogger and fellow Rising Apple writer Mike Lecolant. He'll be calling in as I go from the Ebbets Field flagpole at Barclays Center to Washington Park to Ebbets Field and some other parts of Brooklyn. It's an extended episode, and we'll go for 2 hours. Make sure to tune in.

And secondly, I filmed this video at the Mets 7-6 extra-inning loss on April 26, where my friend Adam Spiegel shares "False Facts" about random Mets fans. Take a watch.

Enjoy the weekend everyone.

LET'S. GO. METS.

Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter @convertedmetfan. And for the latest on a Brooklyn Baseball TV Series I am developing, Like the Bedford & Sullivan Facebook page, follow on Twitter here, and listen to the research process here.

Big Bad Baseball Voodoo

Earlier this week, I was delighted to hear the Mets had turned back time and offered $2.50 ticket deals, not just on Wednesday afternoon for their 50th birthday, but Tuesday night as well. My awesome girlfriend took the N train from Astoria to the 7 and hopped off the Willets Point stop during Monday's thrilling win over the Nationals. She walked up to the ticket booth and before we knew it, we had just spent $10 on 4 baseball tickets in 2012.

I called my friend Adam Spiegel up, a fellow Tranquillity Camper and writer of music and musicals galore (check out his "Evil Barber Shop Quartet" Music Video here.) From Plainsboro, NJ (a suburb of Princeton) Adam has been a die-hard Mets fan for years, and naturally he is one of my first go-to's when I have extra tickets. Happy to hear he would be joining us, I then called another friend up, whose baseball fandom is hard to put a finger on.

That's a lightsaber, by the way

A theatrical gentlemen, Tim Bungeroth is somewhat of a baseball gypsy, with the only sports team he's truly married to being the Chicago Bears. He experienced the 90's Bulls team while on the North Side of the town, along with Kerry Wood and Sammy Sosa of the late '90's Cubs. Then, as he entered his teen years, his family moved to the woods outside Philadelphia and he became somewhat lost when it came to sports (outside of Da Bears.) He wasn't too thrilled with Philly, hated his high school and never latched onto any sports team within city limits, let alone a baseball team. He loves the game, however, and after meeting me in college he explored the sport like never before. He bought a Cubs hat when they were in the playoffs in 2003, screaming at the TV as the 8th inning of game 6 unraveled against the Marlins. He just couldn't seem to latch onto a team, never having truly embraced his new identity as a Philadelphian. In March of 2005, during college, I swear he bought around 5 different baseball caps, including the Red Sox, the White Sox and the Mets. All of a sudden, after a solo road trip in the White Sox cap back to Chicago, he had an epiphany, left his old world behind and finally embraced his Philadelphia home, buying a Phillies hat and enjoying himself some David Bell, Todd Pratt and Jason Michaels.

But die-hard he was not. Three years later, he moved to New York and subsequently to Brooklyn. He was thrilled when the Phillies won in 2008 but could care less when they lost in 2009. So, off he roamed in the valley of baseball, searching for the Major League team that would thrill his heart and soul.

He then came across a little place called Coney Island. Brooklyn, and Park Slope in particular, was the first place in his adult life where he felt at home, and if the Dodgers were still in the borough he would be a full-out Bum fan. He was thrilled, however, to find minor league baseball and the Cyclones in the place that he had taken to his bosom. He loved the theatrics and gimmickry of the minor leagues, and with the Mets in Queens and his heart in Brooklyn, The Brooklyn Cyclones were to be his baseball team.  When I tried to sell him on the fact that the Cyclones were the baby Mets and he should see that as a sign, he didn't take the bait. Tim loves the idea of the lower levels, and has turned that love into a comic book called Minor League Comics, about a farm system of super-villians fronting as an Outlaw Baseball League, of which I am a "baseball consultant."

Color and full issue coming Summer 2012

He has since moved to Sunnyside, Queens, off the 7 train, and looking for baseball inspiration, he decided he would be going to some Mets games this year (but not necessarily become a Mets fan. I tried, showing him some Mets Yearbooks from the 60's, 70's and 80's, which he thoroughly enjoyed even if I overdid the screenings, but it's not like he ran off and started a Converted Mets Fan Blog, if you know what I mean.) I found the $2.50 seat game a perfect opportunity to get Tim out to the Citi for the first time this year. Excited throughout the day to be venturing out for my 4th game in 5 played, my enthusiasm was tempered when I heard from Eddie Coleman on WFAN that David Wright had slightly fractured his right pinky. With Ike Davis getting the night off to collect himself after beginning the year with an O-fer, I rolled my eyes at the concept that Tim's first game of the year would have a less than regular line-up.

The four of us met at the Apple (with Tim wearing this Cyclones hat, without the New Era logo) and ventured inside for the second night game of the year, entering, as many do, through the Rotunda. We had some time to kill so we strolled around, taking in the baseball scenery that is the modern-day baseball park. I kept looking back at Tim, checking to see if this was it; if, regardless of his Chicago and Philadelphia roots, I had finally found a Major League home for the gypsy to settle. As he looked around, however, he uttered the words, "I think I'll root for the Nationals." Ugh.

We made our way to the top level with many empty seats for our choosing. Sitting in the lower upper deck a little to the right of home plate, Adam and I left Tim and my girlfriend to go get some beverages and food. As I was collecting my beer, I heard the crack of the bat and looked up to the big screen in the food area on top of the Rotunda to see Ian Desmond's home run fly over Jason Bay's head. I shook my own head, grabbed my beer and went back to the seats.

"You're bad baseball voodoo, Tim."

"That was hysterical."

"Bad baseball voodoo."

"Hey, I like that. That could be a great character."

On a cold, windy night, pieces of peanut shells from the walkway above flew onto us as if it were part of the weather.

"Tonight will be cold and windy with a chance of peanut shells."

In the bottom of the inning, the Mets got two on with none out, the run producers coming to the plate. Maybe Wright's absence wouldn't be felt so hard after all.

"How many outs are there?" Tim asked.

"None."

"Perfect. The Mets still have plenty of time to blow this one," he said, laughing.

Bad. Baseball. Voodoo.

With our hero from the night before up, we were all sure The Mets would at least tie this game. Daniel Murphy, however, uncharacteristically struck out. Up came the listless Jason Bay.

Could Jason come through, finally breaking out of his 2-year slump?

To the left of us, a Mets fan proclaimed, with no malice involved:

"Let's go, Bay. You suck, Bay."

We all found this "cheer" absolutely hysterical, quoting the fan the rest of the night.

Bay did what he has been doing best, getting under one and popping up to third. Duda then continued his cold start, striking out to leave two runners on.

Tim did a little voodoo dance and muttered some voodoo-verse underneath his breath, with a smile on his face the whole time (he is prone, in general, to mutter a little verse under his breath.) I'm a good sport, though, and I, having coined the "baseball voodoo" phrase, found this quite amusing.

In-between innings, with some pop music playing, Tim made an observation:

"The Mets should embrace their 60's roots."

"They are. They got rid of the shadow across their chest."

"I mean, they should be-"

"What? You mean play only 60's music?"

"Yeah, exactly."

"They can't only play that music. I love that music as much as you, but they're trying to bring in young fans as well. They can't do that only playing music from 1960-1970. Plus, the players are the ones who pick their walk-up music."

"True.....I'd root for the Mets if they always played that song."

"What? 'Meet the Mets?'"

"Yeah."

"Maybe that can be arranged."

Dillon Gee settled down and pitched fairly well, while Ross Detwiler kept setting the Mets down in order.

Feeling cold, Tim recommended we take a trip to Dunkin' Donuts to grab some coffee. We took that suggestion and headed downstairs for a warm beverage. After collecting our tasty, flavorful cups a' joe, we headed to the left field stands where we hoped having our backs towards the wind we would be warmer. We tried to sit on the lower upper deck in an almost completely empty section, but a Met employee in a green jacket stopped us as we walked down through the emptiness:

"-Op, you guys got tickets?"

"Are you serious?"

"Of course I'm serious."

We went back to the corridor, and as we walked away, I ranted to the gentleman, "The place is completely empty. You'd think with how miserable the Mets have been the last few years they'd take care of us on an empty night!"

We found another empty section and with the man in the green jacket staring at us from across the way, we tipped our cups towards him. I understand they have a job to do and they have pressure from their supervisor to follow the rules, but on an empty night like that, kicking us out of a completely empty section is completely irrational, by their supervisors as well.

Ironically after that rant, the section we found was still rather chilly with the wind blowing in from the water, so we decided to venture to the seats we paid for in the first place. As we settled in to the rather warm section on the 3rd base side of the outfield, Dillon Gee lost his form, Daniel Murphy and Lucas Duda couldn't make plays, and Bobby Parnell reverted back to his old self, throwing the ball rather than pitching it. By the time the sixth inning was over, the Nationals had taken a 5-0 lead.

Tim was doing his voodoo dance.

In the bottom of the inning, for fandom purposes and to keep warm, I decided to be as loud as I could for the rest of the game, getting our entire section, though rather miniscule, to join in my "Let's Go Mets!" chant and, as far as I'm concerned, willing the Mets to 2 runs. If you were watching the game in the 7th, 8th and 9th inning, you could hear one man using his mega-phone lungs cheering, "Let's! Go! Mets!" That man was me. My girlfriend has gotten used to my loudness (to an extent), but Adam and Tim stood in the middle of us acting as a buffer between her ears and my volume. In the eighth inning, Adam and I began chanting, "Da-Da-Da-Da-Da-Da Daaaa.... DUDA!!!! DUDA!!!!!!" when he came to the plate, which you could also hear behind Gary and Ron. Fun times during a miserable Mets showing.

"We're staying the whole time, aren't we?" Tim asked.

"Of course we are."

I was yelling "LETS GO METS!!!" up until the last out, sure I could will the Mets to tie the game. The night was dragging on way past 10:00, and by now, Tim is chanting, "Let's. Get. Out."

Much to the chagrin of the Fool, Mike Baxter fouled a bunch of pitches off with Josh Thole on first, but alas, he eventually missed the final strike, throwing a "1" up into the loss column.

I decided to invite Tim to the Mets/Giants game next Friday, and, enjoying the match-up, he is taking me up on the invitation. His dad has always rooted for the team in whatever city he is currently living in, and the Giants are that team after he moved to San Francisco last year. The match-up, for Tim, is a chance to back his dad's squad and continue his gypsy identity as well. You might think I'm crazy for encouraging this voodoo, but Tim came with me to Mets/Phillies last year where we destroyed them 11-2. So, maybe there isn't anything to Tim being "Dr. Facilier."

Otherwise... 

That's so big, bad, baseball voodoo right there.

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