The lights at Maimonides Park may have faded, but for the Brooklyn Cyclones and their fans, the glow of a championship lingers. For the first time since 2019, the High-A affiliate of the New York Mets captured the High-A South Atlantic League Championship with a Sept. 16 victory over the Hub City Spartanburgers.
For Justin Rocke, the team’s play-by-play broadcaster and media relations manager, the win was deeply personal.
“It was incredible. It was the first championship for the team in six years — their last year as a short-season affiliate in the New York-Penn League — so it’s been a while since they had won.”
Rocke was referring to the 2020 restructuring of Minor League Baseball, when the Cyclones moved to High-A. Other Mets affiliates include the Syracuse Mets (Triple-A), Binghamton Rumbleponies (Double-A) and St. Lucie Mets (Single-A).
Rocke has spent more than a decade in the minor leagues.
“Before this year, I had not worked for a team that made the playoffs, let alone won a championship. So this is a very cool experience for me,” he said. “It was just a special group, and a great collection of people on Coney Island this summer.”
The fan known as “Wolf”
The story of this championship isn’t just about the team on the field — it’s about the community in the stands. Few embody that spirit better than David Pecoraro, a 65-year-old superfan known to everyone at the ballpark by his nickname: “Wolf.”
He’s been a fixture at the park since the team’s early days. “I attended games in 2001 and I’ve been to games every season,” he told Brooklyn Paper. “And I’ve been a season ticket holder since 2013, right behind the dugout.”
Pecoraro’s booming voice — what he calls his “cafeteria voice” — has made him a part of the game itself. When Mets pitcher Sean Manaea did rehab starts at Maimonides Park, he told Pecoraro he could hear him from the mound.
“On a good night, they could hear me in the visitors’ dugout. So yeah, I’m loud,” Pecoraro laughed.
His game-day routine is as meticulous as any player’s.
“The first stop is stopping at the designated driver’s booth to pick up my soda coupon. Then I get into my seat. I set up my lineups with my scorecard, because I score every game I go to,” he said.
“I record the first pitch, and then I always yell at the four innings, ‘three up, three down, let’s go Cyclones!”
Section 10, where Pecoraro sits, is as much family as it is a cheering section. “We’re the most fun section. I don’t care what anyone tells you,” he said. “We’re right by the manager and the coaches. They know us, and we know them.”
Two paths to one celebration
Rocke said winning meant watching the team evolve through constant roster changes.
“The team that won the first half [of the season] looked a bit different than the team that won the championship,” he said. “But it’s very cool seeing all the hard work that everyone puts in on a day-to-day basis be rewarded with a championship at the end of the season.”
Pecoraro noticed the same. “Before the playoffs, it was almost unexpected since we had changed our roster so dramatically,” he said. “If you pull out a roster sheet from the first half to what we clinched against Hub City, it’s virtually two different rosters.”
And yet, both saw something remarkable about how the players came together under Cyclones’ manager Gilbert Gómez.
“He should get some sort of reward or something,” Pecoraro said. “God bless with that, he’s wonderful.”
The big picture
Rocke and Pecoraro agreed that the win was about more than the game itself — it was about moments that might never come again.
“It was very cool seeing how many players’ and coaches’ families came down to South Carolina for the clinching game,” Rocke said. “Especially getting to see them have those kinds of moments with them.”
Pecoraro said he cherishes watching the players grow up. “Not everyone’s going to make the majors, I know that, but those that do, I get to say I knew them then.”
“Wolf” remembers when former Cyclone and Mets third baseman Brett Baty hit his first major league home run. “They announced it at the ballpark, and I wiped away a tear,” he said.
Next season, new players will take the field in Coney Island, and both Rocke and Pecoraro will be there — one in the broadcast booth, the other in Section 10. The excitement from the championship, however, will linger, a reminder of why minor league baseball continues to matter.
“It was, as they say, an amazing summer here in Brooklyn,” Pecoraro said.
