By James Barron
Tuesday, Nicholas Giampietro said, “it’s ‘man the battle stations.’”
His battle station was Seat 9 in Row 4 of Section 201 at Madison Square Garden.
It was an unusual place for a Mets fan to be during the first of three unmissable games against the Atlanta Braves — especially for Giampietro. He is one of the most recognizable Mets fans, the one known as Pinman who parades around Citi Field in a jersey weighed down with souvenir pins celebrating Mets past and present. He is a collar-to-hem tribute to Tom Seaver, Pete Alonso and Mr. Met.
But Tuesday night? “I have tickets for the Rangers,” Giampietro said, adding that he had promised to take his nephew.
So while the rest of the crowd focused on the Rangers and the Islanders on the ice in a preseason game, Giampietro was keeping tabs on the Mets.
“I’ll be watching on my phone,” he said earlier in the day.
For him, it was an off-the-field twist in a season that has had hope and heartbreak, the two emotions that are never far apart for those who love the Mets. Mets fans are inured to coming so close and remaining so far — so close to the World Series or, at the moment, to the National League playoffs.
The Mets announced Monday that single-game tickets for postseason games at Citi Field would go on sale at 10 a.m. Thursday. “Fans should log on early,” the Mets said, because only a “limited number of tickets for potential Mets home games in the Wild Card Series and National League division series will be available.”
Giampietro said Monday was a “catch your breath” day after the Mets beat the Phillies, 2-1, in what he called “the biggest game of the season.” He said the win had given the Mets a little breathing room in the race for a wild-card spot. “If they had lost, they’d have to win two out of three” in Atlanta, he said. “Now they can get away with winning one out of three” and still clinch a place in the playoffs.
That one win did not come Tuesday night, when the Braves beat the Mets 5-1 in the series opener.
“I have confidence,” said Giampietro, who earned his nickname in Mets fandom after spending $1.88 on a flea-market find, a set of 25 pins.
That was 18 years ago. Edwin Boison, the Mets fan known as Cowbell Man, has been a celebrity around Citi Field — and, before it, Shea Stadium — for far longer. He took his cowbell to a Mets game in 1981. From his seat in the upper deck, he decided to practice rhythms he had been playing with friends who were musicians.
He found himself in sync with the “Let’s go, Mets!” chant and became a Mets fixture, so he has ridden the emotional roller coaster so familiar to Mets fans, especially in this improbable season. The Mets were 11 games under .500 at the end of May. As of early Wednesday, following the previous night’s loss in Atlanta, the team had notched 87 wins and 70 losses for a .554 winning percentage. Going into Wednesday’s games the Mets led Atlanta by a game in the NL East and trailed division leader Philadelphia by 5.5 games. The regular season ends Sunday.
“Emotionally, it was a team that you wouldn’t think would be fighting for a wild card,” he said of the beginning of this season. “It was a team with not many expectations.”
The Mets’ record so far is considerably better than Bruce Bukiet had predicted. He is a professor and associate dean at the New Jersey Institute of Technology — and a Mets fan — who predicts at the beginning of the season what the standings will be at the end. He relies on a statistical model he developed.
His projection for 2024 was that the Mets would win 78 games this season and finish third in the National League East, behind Atlanta and Philadelphia.
“I take what the so-called experts say are going to be the players on each team,” he said. “There’s no way to know who’s going to get traded and who’s going to get injured. I can only go by what they say and how they’re going to do.”
Bukiet did choose the right three teams at the top of the NL East, though in the wrong order. He said he had picked only five of the 12 teams that stand to make the playoffs.
“Ouch,” he said.
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