This Week in Mets Quotes: The Mets played baseball this week

…but when my father was 7 years old, a new team came to Queens…

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…being a typical 7 year old and a typical younger brother; my father decided to ditch the Yankees and root for the new team in Queens. He also decided to ditch the Giants and become a fan of the New York Jets when they began playing at Shea Stadium…

“That has to be the most iconic shot in the history of New York basketball.” -Knicks coach Mike Brown [ESPN]

…I was born in 1985 and because my father was a fan of the Mets, Jets, Rangers, and Knicks. I never considered not rooting for the Mets, Jets, Rangers, and Knicks……

“Right hand from God.” -Karl-Anthony Towns [ESPN]

…these 4 teams have played over 300 combined seasons; winning a combined 9 championships with 3 of them being before World War II though, though to be fair, I was alive for two of those titles when I was a 1 year old and 9 years old which was before I liked hockey…

“That’s a game where you sit there and you say you had the type of personnel that you had, you shot the ball decent, played a pretty clean game. Then kind of didn’t finish the job.” -San Antonio coach Mitch Johnson [The Athletic]

…as a kid my family had an annual tradition of tailgating a Mets game in the parking lot of Shea Stadium with ton of family and friends of my parents who’ve been in my families life for so long, I never conceived that addressing them as Aunt and Uncle and their kids as my cousins was technically not accurate…

“We’re a resilient group. We’ve been through a lot. We’ve come back plenty of times when we’re behind. Just staying with it, weathering the storm, not being too down or angry or frustrated.” -OG Anunoby [ESPN]

…and the Mets lost literally every game I personally attended until I was 16 years old…

“You look at it when you’re down 29 of, ‘OK, let’s get it to 20.’ There’s three minutes left in the third quarter, we’re down 18, you’re thinking, ‘Let’s get it to 10.” -Josh Hart [ESPN]

…and when I was a young child, I legit would cry that they lost some insignificant game in July in a more likely than not lost season…

“In the fourth quarter, you’re like, this is winning time. Anything can happen.” -Josh Hart [ESPN]

“I think [The Spurs collapse] began before (the fourth quarter). I can’t really explain it right now. I don’t know. We clearly weren’t the most hungry in the second half.” -Victor Wembanyama [ESPN]

…I remember once they lost the second game of a day night doubleheader and, of course, we had tickets for the night game. And I cried on the drive home and my mother tried to cheer me up by saying at least they won the first game but that wasn’t the point for me at the age…

“Just to be part of the journey is amazing. I appreciate Coach and everybody giving me my flowers, but this is what I worked hard for, to be in moments like this and shine with it. -Former Queens High School Basketball Player Jose Alvarado [NBA]

…but my father, a man of few words, tried to console me in his own way. He can be a man of few words and said to ‘“the most important part isn’t that your team wins, it’s that you stick with them no matter what.” That was it. He didn’t add something along the lines of ‘then that makes it so much sweeter when they do finally win’ because what he said was exactly what he wanted to say to me. To him, the most important aspect of being a fan is stay loyal even if your team stinks and for most of my life my teams have been awful…

“I’m glad it went our way today, and I’ll definitely remember this for the rest of my life. But you know, next game. We’ve got to worry about when we play over there.” -Former Queens High School Basketball Player Jose Alvarado [NBA]

…being older I now see the irony that myself, my siblings, my wife, my 8 and 6 year old sons are Mets fans is because my father’s ‘importance of staying loyal’-rule wasn’t in effect for himself as a 7 year old…

“Basically, I went in there at halftime and said, ‘Regardless of the outcome, these next 24 minutes, we better bring it and show them how we really play basketball’ and that’s what we did.” -Former Queens High School Basketball Player Jose Alvarado [NBA]

…my father retired from being a MTA subway driver over 10 years ago and moved down south for warmer weather with my mother but we always talk sports and watch whatever game is on when we’re together…

…for the past two weeks, my wife has been traveling for business trips and my parents drove up to sleep on our couch bed so they could see their grandkids and help their son with childcare. This was planned months ago and I never considered one of MY teams would be in the middle of a championship run…

“I told OG as big, as strong, as athletic as he is, he’s got to be a monster on the offensive glass tonight,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said. “I don’t know if there was a play bigger than any other play in the history of Knicks basketball.” -Mike Brown [NBA]

…my father and I were watching Game 4 in the living room but, living in a typical Queens co-op, we had to be quiet because my boys were asleep in the room next to us. At halftime, my father said we could turn the game off because my mother was falling asleep at that point but my mother said “you never know, you should watch” before she fell asleep…

…my father and I kept watching and kept watching and in the fourth quarter I started quietly repeating whenever the Knicks made a stop or made a shot that “my teams don’t do this.” I started getting louder as the Knicks were really making a comeback. “My Teams Don’t Do This.” Toward the end of the game after a big shot, I loudly said “MY TEAMS DON’T FUCKIN’ DO THIS” which clearly irritated my father because he hates hearing anyone, let alone his son who should know better, curse plus he put his finger to his lips pointing to my son’s room and my mom indicating I needed to be quieter to avoid waking someone up. I apologized and I promise I’m not going to curse or even say a word till after the game kind of hoping “the universe” would somehow help my team through vibes if I kept my end of the bargain [weird irrational behavior is part of being a fan.]

When OG made that tip in, my stoic father didn’t say a word per se but jumped to his feet and let a kind of celebratory grunt or yell sound that I’ve never heard him make and it was so loud it woke I’m pretty sure it woke up the entire apartment building.