First game I went to this season, wasn't expecting much. Sat in left field lower level, with Quintana pitching joked I need a batting helmet in these seats. Sure enough first batter hits a homer into the seats about 15' from me and actually hits a fan in the head. Ouch. Usual 2024 outcome, they rally, go ahead then blow the lead in the 9th. Looked like a repeat of the 2023 season from here.

One of the most exciting finishes I’ve ever seen. I had a great view of the improbable double play ending. It was worth the trip all the way to London.

This is when the 2024 season tuned from disaster to OMG. The great Grimace threw out the first ball. Mets win seven in a row and roll from there.

Jose Iglesias set a new Mets record in this win over the Rockies. He hit two home runs for a grand total of three as a member of the team. This made Iglesias the Mets' all-time leader in homers by a player whose last name begins with the letter I. Jason Isringhausen (yes, a pitcher!) held the previous mark with two.

On this day, my cat Kitty passed away. She was a beautiful all-white cat with blue eyes, and looked like a Turkish Angora cat but I found her hungry and dirty on the street on January 30, 2006. That year, the Mets went to game 7 of the NLCS and it was a magical year although it ended in disappointment. I always thought of Kitty as my good luck charm since all-white cats are traditional symbols of good luck. In 2006, the vet said Kitty was about three, would have made her about 21 in August 2024.

She stayed beautiful and acted like a kitten until about her last month alive, when she started to decline very quickly. It was an emotional roller coaster for me all July with anticipatory grief, and then on August 6 the day before this game, and she had a seizure or a stroke in the backyard and I found her barely alive when I got back from the beach, gasping for breath, and I picked her up and gave her CPR, but eventually she died in my arms around midnight of August 7, and I’m in LA, so it was about 3 am in New York when she left us.

I loved Kitty so much. She was like my mom. I lost my mom when I was 9, but when I hugged Kitty, I felt that same feeling of love that I felt when I hugged my mom.

The thing is, during 1986, my mom was sick and in and out of doctor’s offices and eventually the hospital. She passed away on December 7. She was a Mets fan, so I have always have felt that in a way my mom’s illness and passing was a sacrifice for the Mets to win the World Series.

And then I lost Kitty on August 6, 2024. Kitty was a baseball cat and she watched and listened to many Mets games with me over the years. I remember being devastated, in a state of shock-grief, and a co-worker who is a big Mets fan told me that Kitty was “in a better place”. And later that day (on August 10) I texted him, “you’re right. She’s in a better place. Just like the Mets.”

Since August 7, which is the date of the first game that the Mets played with Kitty in heaven, the Mets have gone 30-19 and played with a never-give-up, magical spirit that I haven’t seen since for a sustained period since 1986.

I believe Kitty is helping the Mets, along with Grimace and many other elements including Brandon Nimmo’s grandmother and Sean Manaea’s aunt.

On September 6th 2024, the Mets won their 8th game in a row, improving their record to 77-64 , and on that day I told my housemate (a Tigers fan) that I thought the Mets were going to win the World Series because of Kitty. He laughed and said, “let’s hope it’s Mets-Tigers and it goes 7 games.”

I do believe Kitty is also behind the Tigers’ run (because they are also cats) but more so, I sincerely believe with all my broken heart that the Mets will win the 2024 World Series.

It all goes back to this game, a come-behind win against the Rockies, the first with my soulcat (and angelcat) in heaven.

I picked a great game to attend this day!

Pete Alonso hit a dramatic home run for a Mets win that clinched the National League Wild Card Series on this night in Milwaukee. It came right on the 73rd anniversary of Bobby Thomson's famous "Shot Heard 'Round the World." Alonso and Thomson are the only players in major league history to hit go-ahead homers with their teams trailing in the ninth inning of a winner-take-all game of a playoff series. In Thomson's case, the series in 1951 was a first place tie-breaker and officially an extension of the regular season. Pete's clutch blast was the first such homer to come in the post-season.

A lifeless performance for 8 innings until an all-time rally in the 9th.

Was at The Playwright Pub on 35th street with over a hundred other die-hards who came to watch the do-or-die game. The 7-Line Army hosted the event and posted that there would be free beer for an hour before first pitch (sold).

Quintana left it all on the field for 6 scoreless innings but the Mets made the baby faced Tobias Myers look like a Cy-Young candidate. When the Brewers inexplicably took him out after 5 innings, there was great buzz in the bar, thinking we would now finally come alive against their bullpen. They went 1-2-3 in the 6th, and 1-2-3 in the 7th. Two body blows.

And then in the 7th, the Brewers pinch hit for Met killer Rhys Hoskins with the immortal Jake Bauers, and Bauers launched one over the wall in deep right to put the Brewers on the board. Sal Frelick jumped on the very next pitch and hit one out of sight to double the lead. I got up from the now stunned silent bar and yelled profanities outside alongside others who couldn't bear to watch the Mets break our hearts again. In our misery, the small group outside shared a smoke and headed back in, because it's baseball and we had 6 outs to cling to.

They went 1-2-3 in 8th, and the mood in the bar was getting dark. How did they do this to us AGAIN?

But then Lindor came up and worked a brilliant walk, followed by a Vientos strikeout. Nimmo refused to go quietly and singled to put runners on the corners and the camera panned to Alonso. Rally caps on, we all knew this could be his last at-bat as Met, but that his struggles this year could be forgiven with one swing. And then he swung.

Beer flew everywhere and the roar was deafening. People were crying, hugging, kissing, screaming; its was pure pandemonium. HE DID IT! HE DID IT! as the great Howie Rose would go on to say in his now-famous call. He nailed that call.

They tacked on another and Lindor got the double play in the bottom of the 9th to end it, and we partied at the Playwright until the early hours of what was now a Friday morning.

A moment I'll never forget until my dying day. Special thanks to the gentlemen outside on the street who talked us all off the ledge in the 7th and provided the smoke.

This game marks the first clinching celebration in Citi Field history and the very important distinction of beating the Phillies in the Mets' first playoff meeting with them. It's a landmark game in franchise history and one that was incredibly frustrating to watch.

The Mets had owned Philly pitching in the first three games of the series and down the season's stretch (save for Zack Wheeler) until the Phillies started Ranger Suarez in this game. Suarez kept getting into trouble and somehow kept getting out of his jams with killer strikeouts. With Philly's one run this felt like the Mets weren't going to be able to capitalize and we were going back down I-95.

Suarez comes out of the game after throwing about 200 pitches and the Phillies load the bases again in the bottom of the sixth. The Mets needing the big hit in the worst way, who else but Francisco Lindor hits a grand slam to punctuate his MVP-caliber year and send Flushing into a frenzy. The bullpen gets through the rest of the game without incident and the Mets conquer their hated rivals.

The Mets' title dreams ended in this sixth and final game of the NLCS. The defeat came one-half hour after the Liberty won Game 5 of the WNBA finals for their first ever league championship. It was a night of the highest and the lowest of emotions for New York sports fans.

Mark Vientos slugged a two-run homer in the fourth inning. This was the 100th postseason home run in Mets history.

As this game fades into the recesses of my memory, I wanted to note one thought I had while listening to this game. The Mets almost broke the Dodgers and forced a Game 7 when Jesse Winker was at bat with the bases loaded and 2 out.

At that moment, I thought that this whole Mets-Dodgers NLCS was like a slugfest between heavyweights. It was like Ali vs. Frazier in the ‘70s, with the Dodgers as Ali and the Mets as Frazier. The Mets were the underdogs, smaller, unorthodox, but dangerous.

Then Winker popped out just like Frazier couldn’t knock Ali down when he had him on the ropes in final minute of the 8th round of the Thrilla in Manila.

The best team won this game, but it was closer than the final score indicated. The Mets could have knocked the Dodgers down with a haymaker in the Winker at bat. It was not meant to be. The Dodgers were able to get off the ropes and it was never close again.