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Overcast 15 years in the making
Mets fans relish trip to World Series
That catchy “Let’s Go Mets” chant is rarely heard this late in October. With the Mets making their first World Series in 15 years, local fans are ecstatic, and hoping for the team’s first championship since 1986.
Fans who have rooted for the team since its inception in 1962, and those who have only come of baseball-watching age in recent years, are equally excited. “This is miraculous,” Seaford resident Stephen Bongiovi said on Thursday, the day after the Mets swept the Cubs in the National League Championship Series. “I’m of course elated.
“Nobody would have predicted Mets in four,” he added, noting that the Cubs were favored. Bongiovi, a fan since 1962, said he has watched every inning of Mets’ postseason games to date this year.
At Forest Lake Elementary School in Wantagh, many students were clad in Mets gear the day after the team won the pennant, and Principal Anthony Ciuffo was in a blue and orange shirt-and-tie combination.
“It feels really good because they haven’t won in a really long time,” said fourth-grader Shane Russo.
Stephen Vaiano and Freddy Parola, both 15 and students at Wantagh High School, were just months old the last time the Mets were in the World Series. For them, this is a new experience.
“It’s good to watch them go all the way to the World Series,” Vaiano said. “Year after year they’ve been getting better.”
Parola, who said he has been a Mets fan since he was 9, hasn’t seen much winning since then, until this year. He has already been to three playoff games this year, and said the atmosphere doesn’t come close to that of a regular-season game. As early as the first inning, fans are on their feet cheering every pitch, he observed.
“It’s really exciting to be a Mets fan right now,” Parola said, “and we have a lot of great years ahead of us.”
U.S. Rep. Peter King, who may be the most well-known Mets fan in Seaford, said he always prefers a conversation about his favorite team to one about politics. “I live and die by the Mets,” he said, adding that he has been to three playoff games so far.
King, a fan since the Mets’ inaugural season, went to see them in spring training, and went with players to visit veterans at Walter Reed Hospital when the team was in Washington, D.C. earlier this year for a series against the Nationals.
