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Brooklyn fans have great expectations for Mets

Brooklyn fans have great expectations for Mets
Photo by Steven Schnibbe

Brooklynites are feeling Mets magic.

The Mets’s run to the World Series last season had Brooklynites at the team’s April 8 home opener all jazzed about the team potentially going all the way this season.

“There are a lot of expectations for the season, a lot, considering they made it that far last year,” said Bay Ridgite Gabriel Gonzalez, who purchased a Saturday ticket plan for himself and his son after going to a dozen games last season. “Nobody really expected it.”

Now fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ natural successor are hoping for the team’s first world championship since 1986.

“I haven’t been this excited for an opening day since maybe 2006, 2007,” said Marine Park resident Catherine Fiorentino. “It feels really nice to have a young, dominant pitching staff. I really think we can get to the World Series and finish the job this year.”

The 44,099 fans in attendance for the Mets’ 7–2 win over the Phillies got one last reminder of 2015 when former Mets John Franco, Rusty Staub, and Edgardo Alfonzo raised the National League flag in right field’s new Coke Corner.

“Today was really special to me, because I wanted to see them raise the championship banner,” Fiorentino said.

The Mets squad — whose minor-league club, the Cyclones, resides in Coney Island — is off to a slow start on its quest to hang a World Series banner this time next year. The Amazins split two games against the champion Royals on the road, and returned to New York to win — thanks to six strong innings from starter Jacob deGrom and a three-RBI day from left fielder Michael Conforto. Then the team dropped the next two games to the Phillies.

The team’s vaunted pitching rotation is the main reason fans are thinking big. Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Steven Matz, and Bartolo Colon give the team a potential “ace” every time out. Veteran Colon received one of the biggest hands during pregame introductions.

“It all adds up to when you got plus stuff and you learn how to command it, you can be dominant,” said Mets manager Terry Collins of his pitching staff. “Fortunately, that’s what we got [last year] — domination. The nights they don’t have their best stuff, they still compete. They just don’t throw their hands up and say, ‘Woe is me, I don’t have it tonight.’ ”

And Brooklyn loyals will be right there with them, if they win big, Gonzalez said.

“I hope they can win the World Series,” he said. “I would love to see it, a ticker-tape parade up the Canyon of Heros.”

Wright stuff: Mets captain David Wright collects a hit against the Phillies.
Photo by Steven Schnibbe