Meet Fran

Sometimes I tell my husband, there's three of us in this marriage: you, me and The Mets. It helped draw us together; it drives us crazy and at times, it drives us apart.
Let me explain. My husband Gary and I met in college. One of our first dates was to a Met game. He's Catholic, I'm Jewish but that didn't bother him. One of his first questions to me was, Mets or Yankees? Mets, I said, incredulous. As long as you root for the Mets, he said, we are not a mixed marriage.
Of course I'm a Met fan. My parents are old Brooklyn Dodger fans who like so many refugees from Ebbets Field fell in love with the lovable losers when their team left to play on the other side of the world. Growing up, I can remember getting out of kindergarten early because the Mets were in the World Series and the teachers wanted to go home and see the game. I remember Tug McGraw blowing wads of bubble gum bubbles when the Mets went to the seventh game of the the 1973 World Series. Or the times my brother and I sat in an empty Shea excitedly watching Dave Kingman hit one out of the park.
And then came 1986. Gary and I were dating. We watched the Series at his parent's house and my parent's house. They won. We were in love. Life was good. I was so into the team I read Keith Hernandez's book, "If at First" cover to cover. I went to see him speak in New York with a friend, waiting in a long line to have him sign the book. I wanted to tell him what an intelligent book it was, but instead, face to face with the adorable Keith, all I could utter was: "I just love you." I'm still embarrassed about that.
In 1988, we watched the series again, on our honeymoon in Key West. Secretly, I was glad when they lost. I was tired of having to hang out at Sloppy Joe's every night to watch the game.
I mean, it was our honeymoon. It was the first time I can remember the Mets annoying me for reasons other than their heartbreaking play.
The second time was in 2000, the Subway Series. My first born son, Corey, was seven at the time, my daughter 4. And I was pregnant with our third child. I could hardly stay up through the series but I was writing a nightly column for the daily newspaper I worked for at the time, The Hartford Courant, which ran adjacent to a Yankees series column written by a co-worker. We had fun exchanging barbs and I knew every statistic, pitcher's record and nuance of each game. But the Mets lost that year, and I had to bow to my Yankees colleague. But that was nothing compared to my son's broken heart. Corey told me he didn't want to go to school the next day because of the punky classmate that would brag about the Yankees. I walked him to class, leaned down and told him to the only thing I could think of that would help: "You tell that kid we'll get them next year." It was lame, but it seemed to help my son who shuffled off to class.
But life got very hectic. As hard as I tried to be enmeshed in the team's ups and downs, I was just too busy. But in 2006, we, now a family of five, gathered around the television again during the Cardinal series. We watched Endy Chavez's amazing catch. This would be the year my kids would see them win the series, I thought, only to watch the faces of my children drop in despair when Beltran didn't even attempt to swing at a curve ball for the last out. (It's become a saying in our family, that non-swing. Whenever one of the kids is too tired or scared to try something, "Swing, Beltran, Swing,'' we tell them.)My sister was at the game, and when we called her there, she could barely talk. The stadium was in despair.
And then of course, there was last year, last year! A history making swan dive. The Mets, I told a friend, are like an abusive boyfriend who draws you back into a relationship only to give you a black eye in the end. I'm not going back, I told my friends. But that's just a silly thought. There's no way around them. Mets mania started gearing up around here in January with my son giving daily updates on the Santana trade and grabbing the phone from my hand each day to talk with his dad about their prospects after trolling the Internet for Mets news each day for hours.
But so far, since the season started, my husband has been in a perpetual bad mood. What's wrong, I ask, seriously worried it's his job, his health, the state of our marriage on his mind. "The Mets lost again,'' he says. The Mets? I say incredulous. Oh them.

Introduction to me, Corey

Baseball has been a big part of my life, in fact I can even go so far as to say that I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for baseball, and of course the Mets. You see, my dad asked my mom out and for their first date he took her to a met game and i think baseball really brought them together. But enough about baseball and family let's talk about the team that over it's brief 46 year history has shocked, surprised, given you hope only to let you down, and a rare victory here and there. Yes the New York Mets. I love the Mets because well, I'm simply addicted to them. They are a breath of fresh air compared to the stench of everything else going on in the world like dirty politics, violence, and crime. The Mets have always been cast under the great shadow that is the New York Yankees. However that is the main reason why I love them, they represent the under dogs who nobody expects to win but does anyway due to tough gritty baseball and never giving up with two strikes and two outs in the bottom of the ninth. Another reason I like the Mets is because I love statistics. Yes you can call me whatever you like but I find it very intersting to dissect the information and projecting into probable outcomes for the future. So you can call me the stats guru of the bunch. For instance I would be surprised if anybody else but me in this family knew how many stolen bases Endy Chavez had with the nationals in 2004 (32), or if anybody else knew all of the starting lineups for just about every team. I'm not writing them all down! So to get down to buissness my purpose in this blog is to write the statistical view as well as emotional view of the Mets. I know I didn't show the emotional side here but I have been known to toss some pillows when Aaron Heilman gives up a 8th inning home run, my mom can vouch for me. Ok well then I hope somebody actually read this , and if you did you're in for a helluva ride.

Introduction to me, Corey

Introduction to me: Degen!

Hi everyone. I'm Degen, part of the Silverman-Larkin Mets family. I'm a 12-year-old girl. My favorite player on the Mets is David Wright. I know a lot about him. Like that he won the Golden Glove last year and that he hit 30 homeruns and had 30 stolen bases last year, which is hard to do. I even wrote to him once, but he never wrote back! I even have a poster of him in my room. I also like Jose Reyes. He's cool and really fast. My little brother Ethan likes him too. Sometimes the Mets break my heart though. Like in 2006 when Carlos Beltran struck out, I couldn''t live with myself. Then in 2007 when they didn't make it to the playoffs, I was so angry. This year, I know they won't break my heart, they just can't anymore, especially it being their last year at Shea. It would be so nice to have the Mets win the World Series on their last year at Shea. My dad wasn't able to get tickets to last game at Shea, but if they make the playoffs, than maybe my dad will be able to get tickets to one of those games! I hope so. There are times when I know the Mets are the best team in baseball, but then there are times when all I can do is turn the tv off and not watch them lose, again! A long times ago(two years) I didn't even know that baseball had two different leagues, but something happened that year, that year 2006, I guess we all thought that the Mets were going to win, so I learned a lot that year about baseball. I learned almost every name on the Mets. I remember when Benny Agbayani, my favorite player, moved to Japan I didn't know who to like. Corey, my brother, told me to like david Wright, so I did. I didn't know anything about baseball but I had someone to like. I still have more, a lot more, to learn about baseball but I know enough now to feel sad when the Mets lose, before I could care less, but now I feel as the players feel when they lose and when they win.

Meet the Silverman-Larkins (a blog by a Mets family about the Mets family)

We are a family of New York Mets fans. It all started with Fran Silverman and Gary Larkin, who met as Mets fans back in 1985. In fact their first date was April 19 game against the Cardinals, I believe.

Over the past 23 years, Fran and Gary met, got married, moved to Connecticut and had three children. All our devout Mets fans: Corey, 14, Degen, 12 and Ethan, 6.

We thought it would be a good idea to start sharing our thoughts, experiences, photos, videos and anything else Mets-related.

The idea is to have each of us blog once a week on different topics related to the team from Flushing that has captured our hearts, ripped them out, pounced on them and made us proud. We plan on giving you all types of commentary from the strategy behind Willie Randolph's crazy managing style to what uniform combinations are the luckiest to why and how the Mets wound up with a mechanical Apple beyond centerfield at Shea.

We also decided to add links to other Mets blogger sites and would love to elicit feedback from all you Mets fans out there who have great stories of fandom.

Chief of Met Fandom, Silverman-Larkins
Gary Larkin