bob and wears a little black dress; her
shoes are wedges with bows. For a “first
dance” showcase, she did the hustle with
an instructor from the Fred Astaire
Dance Studios to “Shut Up and Dance.”
(Mr. Met was off for the night.)
At booths, wedding service providers
made their pitches and suggested ways
of catering to a Mets-obsessed guest list.
Sarah Margaret, an officiant, had a ce-
ramic Mets apple on her table. “This
could be on your altar,” she said. A sand
ceremony—bride and groom pour two
separate vials of sand into a vessel—in
orange and blue could also be arranged.
“I’m interfaith,” she said. “You want faith,
you want spirituality, you want the Mets?
I can do that.”
David Schwartz, a magician, had an
idea for a Mets-themed wedding. “I
would ask people, ‘Who is the best Mets
player of all time?’ And then I would
read their minds.”
Where would Joanna Kuther, who
plans “custom honeymoons,” send Mr.
and Mrs. Met on theirs? “On a cruise,
for sure,” she said. “They need to get out
of New York and see the world.” What
if they roll overboard? “They’ll just float.”
True diehards can get hitched at Citi
Field. “When are you getting married?”
Manny Ortiz, a Mets event-sales coör-
dinator, asked a bride-to-be. He sched-
ules weddings on days when the team
is out of town; there was no seventh-
inning vows package being offered. Nor
can ceremonies be held on the field;
couples stand atop the visitors’ dugout.
“Your guests sit in seats behind the dug-
out,” Ortiz explained. “There’s a static
message that goes up on the screens—
we can customize it for you.” In lieu of
an aisle, the bride descends concrete
steps. Afterward, a reception can be held
in one of the stadium’s dining venues.
It was the first wedding expo Mrs. Met
had hosted, and it seemed like a hit. Some
five hundred people attended—brides
and grooms in Mets outfits, many ac-
companied by patient parents. A pair of
Pete Alonsos (his jersey was blue, hers
white) chatted up a guy in a suit and a
blue-and-orange tie about his combo ser-
vice as an officiant-slash-photographer
(during the ceremony, his teen-age son
takes the pictures). The groom’s dad stood
by holding their swag bags. “My son’s a
Yankees fan,” he said. “But his fiancée,
she loves the Mets. So here we are.”gestured toward the small space. “She’s
dead, yes, but there’s breath, there’s
pneuma, there’s birdsong!” He took a step
back. “Looking at this makes me feel
like it’s O.K. to die, because when I’m
dead that space is still going to be there.”
—Naomi Fry
1
MILESTONEDEPT.
MASCOTLOVE
A
ll the love in the world, as we know,
won’t get the Mets to the playoffs.
But when one season ends another be-
gins. Mrs. Met, for her part, refuses to
frown. (A humanoid with a giant base-
ball for a head, she is stamped with a
permanent toothless smile.) The other
night, she directed her attention to next
spring’s recruits: not ballplayers—brides.
In the Foxwoods Club, upstairs at Citi
Field, she hosted a wedding expo, with
some eighty venders offering “every-
thing you need to plan and prepare for
“There—now I’ve taught you everything I know about splitting rocks.”your perfect day,” including florists,
travel agencies, limo services, personal
trainers, and a light-up robot on stilts.
Mrs. Met has a lot in common with
her spouse, except that she has hair and
eyelashes. Their relationship began in
the mid-sixties, when she was going by
Lady Met. (Her first name is Jan.) In
the seventies, the pair started showing
up at games together; each earned a hun-
dred bucks plus all the hot dogs they
could eat. Pretty soon, Mrs. Met got her
new title (and, no kidding, the woman
inside her married the man in the
Mr. Met head). A few years later, the
team phased them out; then, in 1994,
Mr. Met returned, stag. According to an
official team statement, “Mrs. Met has
been busy taking care of her family at
home in Flushing, Queens, and work-
ing part-time as an event planner.” (Other
reports indicate that fans in the stands
had been grabbing her legs.) When Mrs.
Met rejoined the team, in 2013, she’d gone
from being a redhead to a brunette.
At the expo, she stepped out in party
attire. Whereas at games she suits up in
uniform and wears a ponytail, for eve-
ning she lets her hair down in a perky