• by Les Luchter , March 13, 2023

 

Saturday, March 25, promises to be an “Amazin’ Day” in New York City.

That’s because the New York Mets, nicknamed the “Amazin’ Mets’ for some 60 years now, will mark the 2023 Major League Baseball season with a day of giveaways, events and more.

Billed as a takeover of the Big Apple, ‘Amazin’ Day’ has so much going on that it took three agencies to put the whole thing together: FCB New York, the Mets’ agency of record, in partnership with Giant Spoon and Team Epiphany.

Casey Stengel, the Mets’ very first manager, first dubbed the then-hapless Mets “amazin.” So its perhaps apt that the team, born in 1962 under the auspices of the New York Metropolitan Baseball Club, has teamed up with two other Metropolitans as key players in Amazin‘ Day: the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) and the Metropolitan Opera.

The Met will give free admission to anyone wearing Mets apparel, with the same offer applying to the Met Cloisters, its medieval-themed uptown property.

Tickets to see Richard Wagner’s “Lohengrin” at the Metropolitan Opera or yet-to-be-identified performers at Gotham Comedy Club will go to hundreds of winners of a sweepstakes that launched March 10 and runs through March 21.

An even larger sweepstakes contest, running through the Sunday after Amazin’ Day, has also launched on the website metsamazinday.com. The grand prize winner will receive four “premium” tickets to a Mets game where he/she will throw out an honorary first pitch, attend batting practice, and sit in on the pregame press conference. Five other winners will get two tickets to three Mets games.

Other Amazin’ Day giveaways will go to anyone wearing a Mets hat. These include free admission to the Brooklyn Museum for the first 500 wearers and over 100 free concerts tickets to the first 25 Mets cappers to get on line at four venues run by The Bowery Presents (Webster Hall, Terminal 5, Brooklyn Steel and Racket). Talent will include such performers as Jesse Malin, Lucinda Williams Rubblebucket and Magic Giant..

Fans who don’t have a Mets cap will be able to just go to pop-up merchandise shops in Manhattan and Queens to snag one for free.

Other one-time events, taking place through the Amazin’ Mets Foundation, which gives grants to local nonprofits, will include:

• A little league game at Flushing Meadows Corona Park, with the teams coached by Mets “legends” (aka old-timers). The Mets will donate both gear and a grant to renovate the field, and team mascots Mr. and Mrs. Met will be in attendance..
• A pop-up animal adoption day in conjunction with the North Shore Animal League at Central Park’s Wollman Rink. Anyone who adopts an animal will receive two tickets to a Mets game and a Mets-themed pet toy.

In corporate tie-ins, wearing any kind of Mets gear could also get fans free swag from team reps across the city, free Coke products from participating restaurants, and gift cards from a roving Dunkin’ Jeep.

Wearing Mets gear will also get fans a “VIP shopping and dining pass” at the Hudson Yards mall.

The club says Amazin’ Day will “celebrate the beginning of the season and a new era of Mets baseball.”

In the end, though, we suspect that a truly ‘Amazin’ Day’ for Mets fans would be a ticker tape parade come October.