Well now that you know my favorite saying, let me tell you about me. I am Jim Fertitta of Port St. Lucie Florida. The Spring Training Home of the New York Mets, and also home of the Florida State (A), St. Lucie Mets. It is also the hometown of Frank Cashen, Al Jackson, Felix Millan, Bob Apodaca, Randy Niemann, Alberto Castillo and Todd Hundley.

As you can see it is a Mets type of city here. We made several visits to my parents house who had been living here for a year and a half and we decided we loved it and we moved down in October of 1989. Before moving here we lived in Brentwood, New York, which is about 60 miles from Shea Stadium. When people ask me why did we leave New York to come to Florida, I say.......90% METS and 10% weather!! Living here in Port St. Lucie gives me both, beautiful weather and 10 miles from the Mets stadium. During spring training I’m at the stadium every day watching the workouts and taking pictures, which is also a hobby of mine.

My job as a maintenance man for a local school is also good for my Mets type of life. The hours I work are 3:00-11:30 PM, so I have every morning free to go see the team work out. I also save vacation time for the month of March. My Dad and I attend every spring training game and on the weekends my wife also attends the games. The reason my wife doesn’t go during the week is because, somebody in the family has to make the money...LOL. We also attend the road games on the weekends. So as you can see, don’t look for me on line much in the month of March.

Although I love it down here and also wish baseball was year round I do miss going to Shea. When we lived in New York we attended about 30 games a year, sometimes 3 nights in a row. But if your a die hard Mets fan you didn’t mind the traffic going into the city. Some of the great games at Shea that I attended were, Tom Seaver Day, clinching 1st place, the playoffs and the World Series.

I always collected some Mets items, but I never dreamed it would grow into the size of a room. That is what I have now in our home a Mets Room, as friends and family call it. Some of the items I have are 300 8x10 photos of players, signed bats, uniforms, pins, buttons, mugs, ashtray, shot glass, cups, bobbing heads, set of match box cars, gum ball bank, salt & pepper shakers, flags, shoelaces, towels, seat cushions, clock, books, record albums, lunch box, trash can, beach ball, luggage set, pillow, dinner plate, street sign, stop sign, soda cans, music box, serving tray, magazines, book of matches, chewing gum, California raisins box, socks, wrist bands, blowup bat, and no parking signs. These are just some small items in the room.

Some other items in the Mets room that have really grown is my Mets hat collection, I have 130 different ones. I never realized there were so many Mets hats out there. I also have a lot of items that go back to the 1960’s which I have a special place for them. They are in my Mets Dugout, which was at one time a clothes closet. I have also dedicated the dugout to the 1969 Mets where all of my Amazing Mets photos are hanging. As you can see I am running out of room. I keep hinting to my wife to let me put up some shelves in the master bedroom, but she hasn’t answered me yet.

I was also in a Fox TV commercial in the spring of 1997 with about 50 other people in the stands. This was great because Fox used my Mets hat in it, which had about 12 different pins on it. My wife and I have also been on local TV News, and TV-12 Sports in Long Island with Bob Wolf about my collection. I have been in the newspaper about 20 times from local papers to New York Newsday and the New York Daily News. I also love dressing up as Mr. Met on Opening Day of Spring Training.

My wife and I had the pleasure of making another commercial for Fox Sports Net this year.  My room is featured along with me as Mr. Met.  We had a great time... be sure to watch out for it!

As you can see I do love the Mets and I also love collecting Mets memorabilia. If you ever come to see a spring training game at Thomas J. White stadium look me up. I sit in the first row, 7 seats from the Mets dugout or you can come and wait on line with me when spring training tickets go on sale. I’m usually first on line because I stay overnight and wait on line 15 hours before the ticket window opens.

If you just can’t make it to Port St. Lucie, you can always be a....."Mets fan like they oughta be", and E-mail me at metshome@aol.com