Mr. Met, "Meet The Mets" And The Home Run Apple

By Dana Brand
Posted Thursday, August 9, 2007

ESPN recently re-ran a rant by someone named Colin Cowherd (no relation to Cow-Bell man apparently) who had made fun of “Meet the Mets” and dissed the Mets' media presentation. He said: “Give me a break. Step up Mets. This is the most bush-league stuff I have ever heard in my life. I mean, honestly, you turn on the Yankees and it’s regal – maybe it’s pompous, but it sounds New York…You turn on the Mets, it’s horrible – and as good as the Mets are, get rid of dorky Mr. Met, get rid of that stupid apple in center field after the home runs, your nine tacky uniforms…You sound bush league, and you’re not. You’ve got Disney Land players and you sound like the traveling carnival.”

I only know about this because I read about it on Mets Blog, where 100 people leaving comments pointed out, with sufficient thoroughness, that this is stupid. It is stupid. The superiority of Mets broadcasting to Yankees broadcasting is self-evident and it is the only thing about the Mets that has been superior to the comparable component of the Yankees for all 45 years of the Mets’ existence. I don’t want to write about what is self-evident. What I want to write about is what this stupid comment makes me think of.

At the center of Mets-ness are three things: “Meet the Mets,” Mr. Met, and the Home-Run Apple. These three things share an essence. They establish an atmosphere that is the permanent atmosphere of our team. Yes, Mr. Cow-whatever, it is a traveling carnival atmosphere. It has none of the pre-packaged corporate sterility one might associate with Disney Land (or the New York Yankees, for that matter). It is tacky, corny, and sweet. It is actually very New York, as Jerry Seinfeld, the quintessential Mets fan, has demonstrated to the world. The holy silliness, the happy sixties-retro tackiness of Mets-ness is the same quality of loving irony that so many New Yorkers have, New Yorkers who love what is familiar to them even when they know it is ridiculous: things like Pez dispensers, Superman comics, or the ordinary diner where you always hang out. We love what we love because it is familiar, because it is what we have always had and always will have. We don’t love it because it wins championships and prances around in pinstriped self-importance.

We are the other side of New York, Mr. Cowchip, the side that doesn’t take itself quite so seriously, the side that has given the world some of its greatest humorists, and some of its finest recorders of simple, ordinary, humble, and ridiculous detail. When “Meet the Mets” was written, and when Mr. Met was conceived, the new franchise struggling to climb out of last place would have looked stupid with dignified, triumphant theme music. It would have seemed humorless without a silly mascot. It had no choice but to try to charm fans with good-natured nuttiness. We grew to love that nuttiness. It has become indispensable. It is what defines Mets fandom more than anything else. We Mets fans can’t live without it. We won’t live without it, however good the team becomes.

If they don’t want to bring that apple from Shea to Citi Field, I will offer to bring it over myself. I’ll get some of my buddies from Flushing University and we’ll get a lot of rope and station wagons. I love the thing. Nowhere else is there an apple that comes out of a hat. I love its bigness, its creakiness, its goofiness when it climbs out and flashes the Mets logo on its proud red chest. I don’t want some clean, fancy, animatronic new one. I want the old apple, like a kid wants his old Teddy bear. I want the people of the new century to see that part of being a Mets fan is being loyal. It’s loving the old neighborhood, for all of its drawbacks. It’s wanting to win but being able to cheer for spirited losers from time to time. It’s loving your parents even when they’re being neurotic and falling apart. This is what New York really means, Mr. Cow-poke, not the regal pompous stuff you think it means. New York Mets fans will want to have the Home Run apple forever. Because it is what makes us us, and it is what distinguishes us from them.

Dana Brand is the author of the book Mets Fan, a book which has just been published by McFarland. Please check out his book site at http://metsfanbook.com and his blog at http://metsfanbook.com/blog/ You can contact Dana Brand at danaabrand@yahoo.com.