I grew up in the era of Mike Piazza, Edgardo Alfonzo, Al Leiter, and Robin Ventura. These were the Mets stars I worshiped. And yet there was one more Mets star from slight before my time that I grew up admiring: John Stearns, a catcher who played for the club for all but one game of his major league career from 1975-1984.
Around that same time that I was getting really into baseball, Stearns was the team’s bench coach and, later, the third base coach. As a child, my mom would take me to games fairly frequently—growing up in Fresh Meadows, Queens, a short 15-minute drive from Shea Stadium, helped—in what were the formative years of my Mets fandom.