The reason youre a Mets fan:

by 2 March 22, 2012 0 Comments

Ok... well she isn't the ONLY reason you're a Mets fan, but if it wasn't for Joan Payson and her group the Mets we love may have never exist. Yesterday to kill some time I started posting different tweets with the hash tag #HowIKnowYoureNotAMetFan that ended up catching on and was trending worldwide. It was just a list of things that would show that you ARE NOT a Mets fan. Like .."You get excited over a Phillies vs. Yankees world series" ... then you wouldn't be a Mets fan. Get it?

To my surprise some of the fans who I thought were very knowledgeable about our teams roots have no idea about how the Mets even began.

I sent the above tweet "Who's Joan Payson?" meaning if you don't know her you're not a fan, and to my surprise people actually replied ... "IDK, who is she?" I won't publicly call you guys out, but here is an excerpt from her Wikipedia page:

Joan Whitney Payson was a sports enthusiast who was a minority shareholder in the old New York Giants Major League Baseball club. She and her husband opposed moving the team to San Francisco in 1957. After the majority of the shareholders approved the move, Ms. Payson sold her stock and began working to get a replacement team for New York City. Along with M. Donald Grant, the only other director who opposed the Giants' move, Payson put together a group that won a New York franchise in the Continental League, a proposed third major league. The National League responded by awarding an expansion team to Payson's group, which became the New York Mets. Payson served as the team's president from 1968-1975. Active in the affairs of the baseball club, she was much admired by the team's personnel and players. She was inducted posthumously into the New York Mets Hall of Fame in 1981. She was also the first woman to buy majority control of a team in a major North American sports league, rather than inheriting it. Payson was instrumental in the return of Willie Mays to New York City baseball in May 1972 by way of trade and cash from the Giants.

I'm no crazy historian and can't name the starting lineup of the 1962 Mets, but you NEED to know who Joan Payson is. Not everyone is a die hard that cares about every little detail of the Mets organization but it's always good to know your roots. LGM!