Know Your Blogosphere: Y2K Interviews the Brooklyn Met Fan

(Note: The second installment of our Section 423 series on the Knicks appears immediately below this interview.)

Yankees 2000 recently had the chance to speak with fellow Mets blogger, the Brooklyn Met Fan. I'd like to thank BMF for taking the time to speak with Y2K.

Y2K: How did your blog begin? How did you decide to become a Mets blogger?

Brooklyn Met Fan (BMF): Well, I’m an indie filmmaker at heart, but I bartend at the sports bar Blondies. Through Blondies connections I was offered the chance to cover the Mets for a small paper in Harlem, the Beacon, and I jumped at the chance.

Through my work at the Beacon I got a press pass, and my life as a blogger kind of evolved from there. I was looking at the Mets blogs, just being a Mets dork basically, and though I liked a lot of what I saw, many of the sites out there were a little heavy for me in terms of number crunching – I was looking for something a little bit more like shooting the shit about the Mets. So that’s where the idea for my site came from.

Y2K: Do you have a background in journalism?

BMF: Not formally. I was a Psych major at Syracuse, I’m a writer as far as movies go, but until I joined the Beacon I didn’t have any formal journalism background.

I still write for the Beacon; I occasionally do a little Jets coverage but I’m much more of a baseball guy. The big thing about the job at the Beacon was that it gave me access to Shea Stadium.

Y2K: How did you settle on ‘Brooklyn Met Fan’ as your name? Were there any other names in the running?

BMF: There weren’t any other options for the name, no. As for where it came from, I actually grew up in Manhattan, my dad in Brooklyn, and my mother’s from the Bronx. So I’m not a native of Brooklyn, but I do have the family ties, and what’s more is that I’ve always had this kind of romantic conception of Brooklyn and the Dodgers.

I was always fascinated with anything Dodgers related, so between that, the family ties, and the fact that the Mets are the descendents of the Dodgers and the Giants as well, I thought it was a cool hook.

I also looked at it this way: the Bronx belongs to the Yankees; Manhattan, for better or worse, is more the Yankees’ because it’s more corporate; Queens, definitely, is Mets territory; Brooklyn though, I wanted to stake the flag for the Mets, I wanted to plant the flag in Brooklyn and establish it as a Mets borough, which is what it rightfully should be given its National League history.

Y2K: What compels you to blog? What drives you to update every day?

BMF: There’s just something about baseball – it’s such a beautiful sport and I think it’s unique in that people want to talk about baseball 365 days a year.

So I think what compelled me to blog originally, and what continues to compel now in the offseason, is wanting to tap into that desire and providing that outlet for people so they can just go somewhere and talk about the Mets.

Y2K: When you think of people who would enjoy your blog, what kind of people do you have in mind?

BMF: Beyond just appealing to Mets fans, obviously, and Brooklyn Mets fans more specifically, the readers I’m looking for are passionate fans, but they have a sense of humor about the whole thing.

Whether it’s wisecracking about SNY’s crappy mistakes or Jose Valentin’s porn mustache or any of that, I appreciate the comedic element to a season’s worth of baseball, and I think my readers do too.

We appreciate a home run by Beltran or a triple by Reyes as much as anyone else, but we also appreciate the randomness of a season, and we try to keep things lighthearted even as we live and die with the team’s ups and downs.

Baseball is fun and it’s entertainment, and people who can appreciate the entertainment value of the whole thing, they’re the ones who make up our audience.

The essence of BMF hopefully is opinion, attitude and fun. We give the nuts and bolts and statistics, but what I’m trying to do is complement that with attitude, opinion and fun.

Y2K: What do you think makes your site unique? Or put another way, what do you hope to contribute to the Mets blogosphere or offer to Mets fans via your blog?

BMF: Without disrespecting any other bloggers, I've noticed that many other sites are news-based sites, or they’re numbers-crunching sites. What I hope to provide is something a little beyond that, I hope to provide the full service fansite.

What I think makes my site unique is that I give people a whole bunch of stuff, and that’s why I call it an “Authentic Fansite” right in the banner.

So what do I mean by that? It means I ask people to submit pictures of their pets dressed up in Mets gear. I have the Yankee Hater Page, and there’s the BMF tattoo parlor where fans who have crazy tattoos can show them off.

I have one fan who photoshops pictures of her parrot in Mets chains and hats – she even taught the parrot to say “Let’s go Mets!” and I want to provide audio on that. The point is, I want to provide a site that’s not just a blog, and something that gives you more than just news.

Y2K: When was BMF started?

BMF: April 3, 2006

Y2K: How many hits a day does your site get?

BMF: It’s a little sketchy, but this month I’m up to about 1500 hits a day.

Y2K: Explain the relationship between Brooklyn Met Fan and Brooklyn Jet/Giant Fan?

BMF: Well, I’m nowhere near as big a football guy as I am a baseball guy, but there was enough success with the Mets site that I figured I’d give a chance to the football teams as well. It was just a matter of saying why not? Why not try to keep building the product and get better? I also figured it was natural that if I was going to do the Jets, I might as well do Giants as well even though I’m not a Giants fan at all.

Y2K: Yankees 2000 not included, what sites do you read on a daily basis (mainstream media and blogs)?

BMF: “Baseball Tonight” is a daily must for me. I hate to admit it but I watch and monitor Mike and the Mad Dog, whether at home on YES or in the car on radio.

Every day I do a morning scan of all the local periodicals, the Post, Newsday, the New York Times, the Daily News, even though I hate them [the Daily News]. I think they’re a Yankee homer newspaper. Their sports editor is an enormous Yankees fan – he’s from Australia so what do you expect – and my modicum of revenge is listing them fourth on my blog roll.

I’m on Metsblog constantly and I wish I had more time to monitor more Mets blogs on a regular basis, but I don’t.

Y2K: What's the hardest part about being a blogger in your opinion?

BMF: Just the daily grind. During the regular season it means being a slave to 162 games, East or West Coast. The offseason is a bit different because I can write something and have it posted by 6:30 at night.

Y2K: What’s the best/most rewarding part of being a blogger?

BMF: Honestly, it’s the fact that you give yourself a voice, the fact that you can get your frustrations off your chest. For me, the exhilarating part is less the celebrating the victories and commenting on that; really, it’s more rewarding when you clear your chest and get the frustration and aggravation out there after a tough loss.

It’s like a cathartic exercise, and it’s rewarding to have people read your stuff and comment back. I have a core of fantastic people who comment on my site, people who are friends of mine and people who came across the site one way or another, and it’s a real pleasure interacting with them.

Y2K: Do you have any goals for the future of Brooklyn Met Fan?

BMF: I want to get bigger. I know it sounds crazy but I want to have a TV show. I don’t want to be on camera, but I want to expand into television somehow. There’s no definitive plan for that, but I have a few concepts for TV show pitches. In a perfect world that’s what Id like to do; a TV show on SNY would be the ideal thing. A book deal in which I could turn the site into a book would be excellent as well.

Y2K: Thoughts on the 2006 season? Do you consider it successful or disappointing?

BMF: I consider it a runaway success. Look, I was devastated watching Beltran take that third strike, but I caught my breath after that and I was able to say to myself, hey, it was a fantastic year.

I thought the Mets took a quantum leap forward as a franchise. In addition to their success, I loved that the Mets proved themselves to be the better team in New York for the first time in god knows how long.

So I have no complaints about the season. It was a beautiful year, a magical season to be a part of, and I feel very lucky that I had it documented.

Y2K: Thoughts on offseason priorities?

BMF: They need pitching. It’s amazing that throughout the postseason their pitching didn’t get exposed. It wasn’t pitching that beat them. I would love to get that Japanese pitcher, Diasuke Matsuzaka.

We need a leftfielder. I love Shawn Green, I wrote a whole thing about the Jewish boy coming back, I was jazzed about getting him, but I hope Omar moves him.

I love Lastings Milledge, I don’t want to trade him. I would love to have Lastings in left and another outfielder in right. What I want to know is why don’t people talk about Carlos Lee?

At second base, I would love to get Julio Lugo. I’m a big fan of his, and he’s from Brooklyn. When he’s healthy he’s fantastic, it’s second base though so, whatever, it’s not a huge priority.

Y2K: Best Mets memory?

BMF: One great memory was last year, 2005, I happened to be in the locker room on my Beacon pass after the Mets had been eliminated, when the Yankees and Red Sox were playing each other in the last weekend of the series.

The Red Sox beat the Yankees that day, and I’m watching the very end as Pedro walks past me. He asked me who won, and I just got such a kick out of being the guy to tell him “Boston won, dude” – Pedro just has an aura about him, it’s hard to explain. That’s less a Mets memory than a Pedro memory, I guess.

I remember my first game ever. I went with my dad. I don’t remember what year it was, but I remember it was the Mets and the Giants, and they beat us and I remember the crowd booing the Giants.

This year, Game 6 of the NLCS was the game to be at; that was the sickest game I’ve been to. I was also there this year when Wright beat Mariano to beat the Yankees, that was the Mets throwing down the gauntlet.

Y2K: Favorite Mets team?

BMF: I have a soft sport for the old late 70s teams with guys like John Stearns and Dough Flynn, even though those teams were terrible. I have romantic notions of those teams just because they were so pathetic and terrible.

Obviously I loved this team in ‘06 and of course ‘86, but I definitely have a special spot in my heart for the Joel Youngblood days.

Y2K: Favorite Mets player?

BMF: I was definitely a huge John Stearns and Doug Flynn, those guys were All-Stars when the Mets were the worst team ever. I loved Ellis Valentine. More recently I absolutely love Oliver Perez, I had him on my fantasy team a couple years ago, I see the potential in that kid.

I was a huge Lenny Dykstra fan, I’m a huge Lo Duca fan, of course. He’s a Brooklyn boy, and as much credit as he got, I still think he’s underrated for what he did to that clubhouse.

I love Delgado and it’s funny thinking back on how much we all hated him two years ago. Pedro’s one of my favorites.

And of course Doc Gooden; he’s one of my all-time favorites. With Doc Gooden there was something so magical about that guy. I have more a special place for him than I do for Straw, and it kills me he couldn’t be there for the reunion this summer.

Y2K: Thank you for speaking with Yankees 2000.

- A.F.O.M.G.