Mets’ Alonso, Rojas reach out to booster battling cancer
Lifelong Mets fan Kathleen Selig is quite possibly the biggest booster the Amazin’s have.
Selig, 82, can always be found donning some kind of Mets apparel. Her nails are painted orange and blue. While growing up, her daughter Liz Henglein even thought the Mets were her cousins.
That’s how entwined she made them in her life.
“They’re just the best,” Selig told the Daily News.
On Tuesday, two weeks after Selig was diagnosed with small cell lung cancer, doctors told her she had only “a few weeks” to live.
With the time she has left, all she wants to do is see the Mets play. But with the novel coronavirus pandemic delaying Major League Baseball’s season at least until the middle of May, there’s no guarantee she’ll get to see another live game played by her hometown team, and that’s what’s most unsettling to her.
That’s when her granddaughter, 18-year-old Ally Henglein, stepped in. She sounded a call on Twitter that evening, asking for the Mets to send her Gammy any kind of greeting to help “brighten her spirits.”
“When live games aren’t streaming, she sits for countless hours in front of the TV watching re-runs,” Ally wrote in the post. “The Mets have helped her through her loneliest of times, so much so that she has asked us to spread her ashes at Citi Field when the time comes.”
Ally thought the post would only make its way through her hometown friend group, but then something amazin’ happened. The post had reached about 100 retweets when Mets slugger Pete Alonso got wind of it, Ally told the News on Wednesday.
“Sending my love to your grandma,” Alonso wrote. “It’s stories like these that make me extra proud to be a Met. Check your DM, I’d love to send her something special.”
The reigning National League Rookie of the Year coordinated with Ally to send Selig a special video message, which Selig watched through tears of joy.
“I wish baseball was going on right now, it’s tough,” Alonso said in a video the family shared with the News. “Life’s not the same without Mets baseball. Hopefully this coronavirus thing passes very soon and we can get back to playing and everything is all good in the world when Mets baseball is back. I appreciate your lifelong support and as always, let’s go
Mets.”
Alonso is not Selig’s all-time favorite Met; that’s Mookie Wilson. Her response to Alonso’s debut was about the same as everyone else, though: “I mean did you see what he did last year?!”
New Mets manager Luis Rojas also took the time to reach out to Selig in a phone call.
“I can’t even begin to tell you,” Selig started before getting choked up. “I’m crying thinking about our conversation.” Selig was still a little shaken up, but she explained Rojas had asked her how she was doing.
Selig, who grew up in Brooklyn, remembers when the Dodgers were shipped out of the Big Apple, and recalls the very first day the Mets made their debut: April 11, 1962 in St. Louis against the Cardinals. But that’s not the Mets memory she holds most dear. After all, the Mets were terrible their first few years in the majors.
Oct. 27, 1986, Game 7 of the World Series. Selig sat with her brother in the second level behind third base in the former Shea Stadium, two of the 55,032 fans who packed the stadium that evening. Mets lefty Jesse Orosco struck out Red Sox’s second baseman Marty Barrett to win the team’s second World Series title.
“I jumped up and screamed! It was unbelievable,” Selig said. She also recalled beer spilling on her during the crowd’s celebration in the stands.
The following year, Selig traveled to San Francisco to watch the Mets play the Giants. She went to dinner at the St. Francis Hotel near Candlestick Park, and to her surprise, there were her Mets, at a table including Sid Fernandez, Rick Aguilera and Davey Johnson. She even chased down Gary Carter after the players at the restaurant tipped her off on his location, which was not far away, to meet him too.
“I almost had a heart attack,” Selig recalled of the moment.
Selig lives in an apartment in Rockaway Beach, but between her condition and the coronavirus, is staying with her daughter and granddaughter in their home in Saratoga Springs.
“Ally brought the Mets to her,” Liz said, her voice starting to crack. “It’s so surreal.”