In New York minute, longtime fan awaits Mets’ arrival
At first, I was mostly indifferent about the 51s switching major league affiliations from the Toronto Blue Jays to the New York Mets. That was before I heard from a Las Vegas man named Owen Messinger, after it was first reported the Jays might be moving their Triple-A base to Buffalo, N.Y., a lot closer to home.
The distance from Coca-Cola Field in downtown Buffalo to the Toronto clubhouse at Rogers Centre at 1 Blue Jays Way is 102 miles. Google says you can drive it in 1 hour, 53 minutes.
From Cashman Field to the intersection of 126th and Roosevelt in Flushing, N.Y., home of Citi Field, it's 2,531 miles. It's a 41-hour drive, via Interstate 80 East. United Airlines has a nonstop from McCarran that'll get you there in 5 hours, 10 minutes. The cab ride from LaGuardia to Citi Field is $10; the earful from the driver about what's wrong with the Mets is free.
I would advise any Ed Kranepool heirs apparent who are called up for the big weekend series against the Nationals to use the latter mode of transportation, even if they do have cousins in Omaha and even if New York cabbies tend to be on the chatty side.
Regardless of what the Mets' farm club director or roving minor league instructor will say during the official news conference when the 51s' new nickname and colors are revealed, this is a marriage of inconvenience.
But then I heard from Owen Messinger. Now I'm sort of glad it's the Mets.
"Bring on the affiliation," he wrote in an email. "Give New Yorkers a place to get together and you get the best conversation ("I got your !@#$% River Cat right here, pal," etc.) and most of all, the most dedicated sports fans. We have New Yorkers in town who were Mets fans when they were at the Polo Grounds. Let's start off with Casey Stengel Bobblehead Night. It can be a winner, the fan base is here "
He signed it Owen Messinger, "Mets fan since '63."
The aforementioned Ed Kranepool reference was for him. In 1963, the year Owen Messinger became a Mets fan (slightly better than becoming a patron of the Metropolitans in 1962, when they were 40-120), Ed Kranepool, who was only 18, split time with Marvelous Marv Throneberry at first base and Edwin Donald "Duke" Snider in right field.
(Two years later, after Stengel broke his hip and resigned as Mets manager, he was watching Kranepool and fellow 20-year-old Greg Goossen - one of the gooses in Ten Goose Boxing until his death last year - take batting practice during spring training. This is when The Old Perfessor said: "There's Kranepool, 20 years old. In 10 years, he's got a chance to be a star. And there's Goossen. He's 20, too. In 10 years he's got a chance to be 30.")
Ed Kranepool, who spent his entire 18-year major league career with the Mets, will be 68 in November; Owen Messinger is 69. But Owen Messinger had trouble with the curve, as well as some of those other pitches, so he became a gardener. In the concrete jungle that is New York City.
"If Bloomingdales needed 1,000 white azaleas, we'd have 1,000 white azaleas for their windows the next day," he said. Messinger said there are a lot of gardens in Greenwich Village and a lot of penthouse terraces uptown that require flowers, but no, Oliver and Lisa Douglas weren't among his clients before they moved to "Green Acres."
Messinger lived in The Rockaways in Queens, on Long Island. One of his fondest childhood memories, as it was for a lot of us, was going to ballgames with his father.
Nate Messinger was a basketball referee who called the very first game in NBA history, Nov. 1, 1946, between the New York Knickerbockers and the Toronto Huskies. The Knicks won, 68-66. I found a box score that said a fellow named Gottlieb, identified as "rg" (for right guard), led New York with 6 goals and 2 foul shots for 14 points. And that the referees were Pat Kennedy, New York, and Nate Messinger, Chicago.
Owen Messinger said the family would spend summers in New York, where he and his dad would sit in the bleachers at the Polo Grounds amid members of the Harlem Rens and Globetrotters, and old Negro League ballplayers and other black athletes of the day. He now remembers it being a social affair. Then, he just thought of it as great fun, sitting there in the sun with his father, in the bleachers, watching the old Giants - and years later, the young Mets, when Marvelous Marv Throneberry would drop pop flies and Duke Snider, who was old by then, had trouble with the curve.
"You'd put on a T-shirt, shorts, you'd put on your Mets hat, and you'd go," Messinger said.
His dad is long gone now, and so is The Old Perfessor and the Polo Grounds. But if Owen Messinger can find his faded Mets hat, he plans to wear it to Cashman Field, during springtime, when the azaleas are in bloom and the weather's nice.
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.