East Meadow has Mets fever

Shane Pallotta, a Mets fan since the late 1970s, said that his favorite Mets moment was watching his daughter, Alyssa, sing “God Bless America” at Citi Field, which she has done three times.

Courtesy Shane Pallotta

Jordan Silver, pictured at Shea Stadium in September 2008 with his children, Jenna and Adam, called the Mets team a fun and galvanizing squad.

Courtesy Jordan Silver

• 
• 

New York Mets baseball in late October. It’s something that fans of the team haven’t experienced in nearly a decade, and it was the reason why people of all ages could be seen sporting Mets apparel around town this week in support of the boys in blue and orange as they prepared to take on the Kansas City Royals in the World Series, which began on Tuesday.

Most fans agree that this year’s Mets season is extra-special because it was so unexpected. The Mets were little more than an afterthought in the minds of baseball analysts at the start of the season, when they made their World Series predictions. And even the most diehard supporters agreed that a wild-card appearance in the playoffs would be an acceptable step in the right direction for a franchise that hasn’t had a winning record in seven years.

“It’s always better when it’s unexpected,” said Shane Pallotta, of East Meadow, a fan since the late 1970s whose oldest daughter, Alyssa, has sung “God Bless America” at Citi Field three times.

The 2015 season has also featured moments that have made the Mets a sympathetic and attractive bunch not only to their fans, but to baseball enthusiasts around the nation. Most notable was Wilmer Flores’s public, in-game display of emotion in late July, when he thought he had been traded to the Milwaukee Brewers.

More recently, the fans have united around shortstop Ruben Tejada, who suffered a broken leg in Game 2 of the National League Division Series, the result of a late slide by Los Angeles Dodgers second baseman Chase Utley that was later ruled an illegal play by Major League Baseball.

“Everything changed when Wilmer Flores cried,” said Jordan Silver, a longtime congregant of the East Meadow Jewish Center who worked as an emergency medical technician at Shea Stadium for a dozen games in 1991. “And now I’m kind of glad he’s the shortstop” for the remainder of the playoffs. “There is crying in baseball, apparently.”

Even the highly charged Mets-Yankees intra-city rivalry appears to have been put on hold, Silver said, noting that many of his Yankee-fan friends have been texting him congratulatory messages throughout the playoffs.