Mets Must Add… Meet the Mets Singalong
By Howard Megdal ~ July 30th, 2010. Filed under: Howard Megdal, New York Mets.
Look, Dan Haren would have been nice. And when other Mets fans were clamoring for Manny Ramirez, I was hoping for Adam Dunn, who still looks entirely available. But with a real absence of difference-makers available at this point, I have only one addition to request at the trading deadline.
Please bring back Meet the Mets to Citi Field.
The Mets have a long and unnecessarily tortured history with stadium singalongs. Back in 2008, due to a popular uprising over the use of Sweet Caroline, the Mets held a vote by the fans to determine what song to play between the top and bottom of the eighth inning.
The easy answer, Meet the Mets, wasn’t in the running. I’m a Believer took the crown.
So it was that Mets fans were kept from the finest song in New York Mets history… by The Monkees.
Again in 2009, a contest was held. This time, Meet the Mets was the runaway winner. And so peace reigned in the land, with fans pledging to have the time of their life. And, at least when the song was played, they did.
And here in 2010, during a season which has featured many noble attempts to add Mets history to the Citi Field experience, Meet the Mets has been missing. Oh, don’t get me wrong- the instrumental version as they take the field is fantastic.
But we want to sing.
Tomorrow, I bring my baby daughter to her first Mets game. She’ll get to see some of the heroes I grew up cheering for get inducted into the Hall of Fame. She’ll see Jose Reyes and David Wright for the first time. And maybe, in Jon Niese, she’ll see a pitching mainstay set to stay in Flushing for years to come.
The continuity that every longtime baseball fan experiences, each time a new generation enters the fold, may never be stronger for the thousands of Mets fans.
So I implore you, New York Mets, tomorrow, and every home game from this day forward: give us Meet the Mets. (The original, not the eighties “hotdogsgreengrassallatShea” version.)
You have access to arguably the greatest baseball song ever written (about the Mets, anyway), your fans love it, you play tons of music anyway. Please. Let us teach it to our children, so they can teach it to their children-and so all of us can be a little happier every time we visit Citi Field.
That’s a win-now deadline addition.
July 30th, 2010 at 3:03 pm
The trade deadline is tomorrow, the season is teetering and your worried about a song????
Geeze
July 30th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
@pal88: don’t take everything so seriously…
Howard, I think the problem is that they haven’t come up with new lyrics to replace, “hot dogs, green grass, all out at Shea!” If you listen to the pre- and postgame on WFAN, you hear, “Meet the Mets, meet the Mets, head for the park and greet the Mets,” and then it goes instrumental…they obviously don’t wish to make reference to Shea, and I’m not sure that they should…
Personally, I’ve been wondering since about 2007 what would happen to the song…what they need to do is change it to something like this (I apologize for the lameness, but I’m no lyricist): “Hot dogs, green grass, at Citi Field, guaranteed to be a heck of a deal!”
July 30th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Stu B, I want the original version!
July 30th, 2010 at 6:03 pm
OK, enjoy this link – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z4PZWj7xBQ&feature=PlayList&p=6F36D9CD2AA03BC0&playnext=1&index=37 – we’ll have to come up with something else…
“All the fans are true to the orange and blue, so hurry up and come on down, ’cause we’ve got ourselves a ballclub, the Mets of New York town!”
July 31st, 2010 at 1:43 pm
Finally, a baseball writer tackling the real issues affecting this team.
I’m joking, but Howard’s right. It would be so easy to drop that in somewhere around the third inning. My favorite part of a game in Flushing in dancing around to Lazy Mary—god forbid they ever take that away—why not play Meet The Mets too?
And while they’re at it, why not the Mexican hat dance?