Oh no, the Original Mr. Met went to the great Shea Stadium in the sky...
Mr. Met unmasked: Dan Reilly in a publicity photo, autographed to his son, from his years in the 1960s as the Mets’ first mascot.Credit...via Mathew MacCartney
Dan Reilly, who made mascot history when he bravely donned an unventilated, oversize papier-mâché head, with simulated stitches, to become the New York Mets’ first Mr. Met, died on Dec. 30 in Manhattan. He was 83.
His son, Matt MacCartney, his only immediate survivor, said the cause was a heart attack while he was rehabilitating from pneumonia.
Mr. Reilly was working in the Mets’ ticket office when two team executives asked him to breathe corporeal life into Mr. Met, who had existed until then only as a cartoonish image used on promotional material.
On May 31, 1964, Mr. Reilly officially slipped on his Mets uniform and baseball-shaped head for the first time during a doubleheader at Shea Stadium against the San Francisco Giants.
“They had told me to play it straight, just walk out there and wave, but the kids started swarming down to meet me in the stands,” Mr. Reilly told
The Amazing Shea Stadium Autograph Project, a blog. “I shook hands, posed for pictures, signed autographs. After that, I got cocky and started dancing. It was an instant hit.”
It was a better day for Mr. Reilly than it was for the Mets, who were swept by the Giants (the second game required 23 innings; the Giants won, 8-6) — a typical day for the perennially losing team then in its third season as an expansion franchise.
Later that year, Mr. Met appeared in a Mets event at the World’s Fair in Flushing, near Shea Stadium. Mr. Reilly sat at the edge of the Unisphere, the giant globe that was the centerpiece of the fair, getting splattered by its water display and signing “Mr. Met” for a procession of children.
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