Another brutal Mets loss has Joe Benigno rethinking his entire life.
Opening Saturday's show, after New York blew a two-run lead in the eighth inning against the Giants the night before to fall 10 games below .500, Joe looked back on the early years of his baseball fandom, and the crucial mistake he made when he was just nine years old.
"Why did I become a Met fan?" Joe said. "When I first got introduced to baseball in 1960, my first memory of baseball was the 1960 World Series when the Pirates beat the Yankees…the [Bill] Mazeroski walk-off home run…and I remember my father telling me, 'Whoever wins the World Series, I'm gonna get you the hat of that team. Living in the New York area, there's no Mets yet, I'm rooting for the Yankees…so I come home from school, and I ask my father who won the World Series. The Pirates won. The next day, my father brings me this bogus hat with a P on it…I'm like, 'I don't want this stupid hat, I want a Yankee hat.
"So 1961 comes, there's still no Mets, so I'm rooting for the Yankees. Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle, the home run chase…so now, 1962 comes along, and I make one of the most fateful and dumbest decisions that anybody can make. I'm only nine years old, and this new team is coming to New York. The New York Metropolitans. I say 'You know what, I think this is my team, so my whole life, until I die, I will have seen the entire history of this team.' This is what I was thinking at nine years old."
Just over six decades later, Joe seems to be regretting that decision.
"Should have stayed a Yankee fan," Joe said. "And I have paid the price for the last 61 freaking years."
As for the 2023 Mets, Joe didn't have much left to say, beyond the season being over and this team on pace to being one of the biggest disappointments in recent memory.
"I am so disgusted today as a Met fan," Joe said. "We should have known before the year started, when [Edwin] Diaz went down, that we were in for it this year as Mets fans…what are they gonna win, 70 games this year? What a disaster."
Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1
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