One, Two, Skip-a-Few: 23,000 Mets Fans

"The Mets used a four-run fourth inning as a springboard to forge past the Marlins, 6-4, before 23,622 mostly Mets supporters." - Charlie Nobles

Apparently, when you cover a team with a mere 17 losses on the season, you need more than a win to keep the interest of your readers. So while most journalists were busy taking notes at Sunday’s Mets-Marlins contest, MLB reporter Charlie Nobles had bigger fish to fry. He had the daunting task of making another ho-hum Mets sweep a little more interesting.

Always an entertaining subject, Chuck hoped to touch on the Marlins attendance issues at least once during the series. Unfortunately, it had only been a few days since John Kruk employed the standard joke on Baseball Tonight (“What a great play! Of course, nobody was there to see it...”). Another blow was the second-largest attendance of the season at Saturday’s game, which would take some of the bite out of those clever jabs at Marlins fans. Despite these obstacles, Nobles was determined to make the joke work. And so, on a windy South Florida Sunday afternoon, the writer took on a task that has never before been attempted by a reporter. Chuck decided to count the Mets fans in Dolphin stadium.

Since the Marlins no longer require attendees to present fan registration cards at the gate, counting Mets supporters wasn’t going to be easy. But Nobles refused to let that get in his way. He enlisted the help of injured outfielders Carlos Gomez and Shawn Green, who were getting really bored watching hit after hit from the bench, and welcomed a way to kill time.

Section by section, Charlie and his hobbling assistants hand-counted fans. Attendees wearing any form of Mets garb received a count for New York, as did two of every three people in plain clothes (the guys figured they were “giving” a few to the Fish here). Additionally, every third fan in teal & black was counted for the Mets, since Chuck reasoned they were simply in denial of their true feelings.

A small issue arose about halfway through the count, when Gomez made the mistake of asking Alfredo Amezaga’s mother if she was really rooting for the 23-27 Fish. Shawn had to help Carlos back to the clubhouse to ice his black eye, but Chuck continued on without them, undaunted.

In the end, as Mr. Nobles mentioned in Sunday’s Mets.com article, the 23,622 fans at the game were “mostly” Mets supporters.

He would know. He counted them himself.