Here is an excerpt from my eBook Send The Beer Guy. It’s just $3.99 (Kindle edition) via Amazon.com. If you don’t have a Kindle or have never bought an eBook it’s very easy. Just download the Kindle App for your iPhone or iTunes or just google Kindle for Windows or Kindle for Mac. If you are reading this then you already have the technology to get an eBook.
As today is the 5th anniversary of the blog I thought I’d excerpt from the book.
The Mets Police
April 15, 2008
I’m watching the Mets game and it is Jackie Robinson Night. The Mets, who look better with no names on the back but most seasons do have names on the back have taken the field. Every player is wearing #42 to honor Jackie Robinson.
There were no names on the back. The Mets Police were born and I started MetsPolice.com.
I had been thinking about starting a blog of some kind to keep my “new media” skills sharp. Folks really weren’t on Twitter yet and I don’t think Facebook was that big of a deal then, so I just started a blog.
The path of least resistance (aka free and easy) was to use the Blogger program. Blogger required a gmail account.
I have been a Yahoo Mail guy since 1995 when I got a job that involved me getting a free Toshiba laptop. Remember that year when Windows 95 was a BIG DEAL (cue Start Me Up, which now is Ike Davis’ walk-up song). Since then I have used Yahoo mail as my main address. Some friends of mine have gone through like 17 addresses but not me. Same one for nearly 20 years. At that same time I got a 917 cellphone number which I also still have. 917 has gone from what is 917 to the 212 of cellphones pretty quickly. I recently tried to get my daughter a 917 number and none were available.
I had a gmail but it was my disposable one that I would use for things like contests or entering Mets Opening Day lotteries from 17 different email addresses.
So I logged in as Shannon Shark and created a blog.
The blog needed a name.
In 1983 my dad was a bartender in Jackson Heights and worked days. That same summer my favorite band The Police played Shea Stadium. Since I was 13 I didn’t have the slightest idea how to get tickets, and didn’t even know about the concert until days before. Remember this is pre-internet, pre-anything, so unless someone took out a full-page ad in the Daily News there was no way I would even know a concert existed. I missed a lot of Springsteen in the 80’s for those same reasons.
Also keep in mind that getting concert tickets in those days meant lining up at some record store for hours on a Saturday morning. For The Police in 1983 none of that was happening for me. By 1992 I was older and craftier and we figured which neighborhoods were unlikely to have Springsteen fans so we headed up to the Bronx to wait on short lines.
My dad would get off work at 6 and be home like 6:15. We would watch the Channel 2 news with Jim Jensen. Now you might be wondering why I was watching the 6 o’clock news as a child. Again, it was 1983. There were seven TV channels and channel 13 was useless to a 13 year old and channel 9 was always useless except when sports was on.
There was no DVR, no VCR, no DVDs, no Internet, no cell-phone, and barely video-games. And for most video-games you needed a second player, and I was an only child. I joked earlier today with my wife that if they had had Madden ‘84 I would have just played the computer and never left my house.
So my dad comes home from work and the 6 o’clock news shows people at Shea Stadium getting ready for the big Police concert.
I say “I would have liked to go to that.”
He says, “I wish I knew, someone gave me two tickets, I gave them away.”
That haunted me for years. The Police broke up and I never saw them play live and thought I never would.
But like many things, including Mets championships, you just have to live long enough.
Although I thought it would never happen, like Mets championships, The Police reunited and went on tour in 2007 and 2008. I went on a major Police kick.
That’s where the Police part of the name comes from, and you can figure out from there how we get to Mets Police. If you can’t figure it out then you are pretty deep into the wrong book.
Mets Police didn’t mean anything. An accidental genius name. Mets. Police. Two things I like. It really could be Mets Dogs or Ice Cream Police or Mets Boss (hmmm) or Brunettes Police (another hmmm) or Police Mets.
I started typing. The initial readers were my friends and cousin Keith (now @mediagoon), and basically those who became senior writing staff of MetsPolice.com.
And I typed and typed. Post here, link there, but daily. Always something.
The first year the site got like 8000 page views.
Then 2009 came and we all went to Citi Field for the first time. I went to the exhibition game vs. the Red Sox with Dan and we walked around our new home. It was very very strange. I felt like I was in another city. Was this really ours? This will take some getting used to.
We headed up to our seats after struggling to figure out where the escalators were. We sat down in the fancy named Promenade and were greeted by (an obstructed) view.
We were floored. How the hell did this get approved?
We sat in those seats for about 5 seconds before moving…but boy was this worth blogging about.
Others had the same experience and through the magic of Google we connected. People began sending pictures in to MetsPolice.com. I ran off a series of Obstructed View posts.
That was when I started to do my fun dance with David Howard. Dave got questioned about the views from the uppers and gave a quote that I believe to be, “The way we characterize obstructed is if you have an obstruction, something in front of you a beam, a pillar, something that’s blocking your view. That’s not the case here. It is a function of the geometry of the building.”
I suppose he was talking about not being able to see the outfield from the far out 500’s…but I got annoyed that I was being told that the big plexiglass thing was not an obstruction.
Plexiglass would be a word I would come to love.
The other problem with Citi Field Year One was that lots of us felt the Mets didn’t decorate it properly. There clearly was an homage to Jackie Robinson. The outside sure reminded folks of Ebbets Field. But there was nothing Mets about the new place. Even the old Apple, now prominently placed out front, was hidden in the back under the stairs. I remarked that the Mariners could move to Queens and they wouldn’t have to change a thing.
MetsPolice.com had two great topics, and an angry fan-base responded. Blog traffic went up. Links came in.
One small problem. Shannon Shark had become popular and I had become Shannon Shark.
Being Shannon Shark had one major advantage. It allowed me to blog without having my job all up in my business. I never blog about my industry or my expertise. Daytime-me goes to work and has been promoted several times since the blog started and does a great job. Then I come home to the basement and Shannon starts typing.
Somewhere along the way I reached out to Matt Cerrone from MetsBlog.com for some blogging advice. I introduced myself with my real name and explained the above. (To this day I find it convenient that Shannon is able to rip-off a post at 11am when news breaks, although the majority of what you read is written at night. You’ll notice Media Goon usually grabs the daytime breaking news on MetsPolice.com)
As I explained the blog to Matt and how it wasn’t complaining for complaining’s sake and that it was actually about Something, he said‚ ”So you’re Batman.”
Thanks or the five years. I remember your crusade with the “obstructions” and your unending distain for for the horrid black on Met uniforms !!
Congrats on the 5 years and fun excerpt; regarding the pic of the vendor on the ebook, is that a teenage Shannon Shark?