Mets Fan in Los Angeles: Rooting for the Amazins on the West Coast

A look at the baseball life of a New York Mets fan living in Los Angeles, California.

The last few years have been lean for New York Mets fans as the team tries to recreate the magic that led to an exciting – if not improbable – run to the National League pennant in 2015. It has been particularly difficult on us living in the City of Angels, with the World Series being played miles down the road in 2017 and 2018 and nothing for us to celebrate.

When I was starting to plan out this post, I asked my wife to describe what it’s like being married to a Mets fan in Los Angeles. She simply replied, “It’s rough, babe.” I’d go with “challenging.”

Being a Mets fan in Los Angeles is not so different from following the club from any other baseball city. It’s just that we’ve also had a front-row seat as the local team competes year after year while ours hasn’t.

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What is different, however, is our strategy for keeping up with the Mets on a daily basis.

From the final out of the Fall Classic until mid-February, each day is pretty much like any other, for me at least. Wake up. Drink coffee. Go to work. But the day pitchers and catchers report, that routine goes out the window.

Instead of turning on SNY before work or listening to sports radio on the drive to the office, everything we absorb comes through Twitter. Although it’s great that pregame press conferences and player signing announcements are put on social media, we do not see any of the one-on-one interviews or analysis that come after.

While I would love to have the TV tuned to SNY 24/7 to get my content fix, there is one part of being a fan in Los Angeles that can never be taken for granted – the time change.

During the season, the balance of power shifts from those living in the Eastern Time Zone to those of us on the west coast. And with improvements being made to MLB.TV and the MLB At Bat app each year, the out-of-market fan is finally back in the loop.

It is due to these two factors – time and technology – that I’ve been able to see or listen to 140+ games per year over the last decade. With first pitch at 4:10 p.m. most nights, I can start with the radio call until I get home from the office to catch Gary, Keith, and Ron on the video broadcast.

Throw in the occasional getaway day and rarely is there a time when a game is still being played when I go to bed.

Going to a Mets game on the road is not half bad either because there are pockets of fans everywhere. That’s why “Let’s Go Mets” chants can be heard so loudly when you watch road games on TV, especially when they’re in the middle of the week.

There are at least three games at Dodger Stadium each year and every so often the team will head to Anaheim to take on the Los Angeles Angels. Petco Park in San Diego can be done as a day trip, and even getting to Chase Field in Phoenix or Oracle Park in San Francisco is not out of the question.

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If I can’t be fully immersed in Mets news and living in New York, at least I’ve found a way to stay close to the team from thousands of miles away. I guess at the end of the day, it may actually be easier to be a Mets fan in Los Angeles than a Dodgers fan.