FIELD OF DREAMS
Perfect way to honor late Mets PR exec
In the small borough of Little Ferry, N.J., at a municipal event Friday to formally open a new baseball/softball field, the few hundred people on site surely all could agree on two points:
1. The field was absolutely gorgeous.
2. The person whose name is on the field would have wanted no part of this event.
“She wouldn’t have liked it,” David Wright said of Shannon Dalton Forde, the late public relations executive for the Mets.
Mets COO Jeff Wilpon, asked how Shannon would have reacted to seeing such hullabaloo over her, smiled and said, “Poorly. She’d be hiding somewhere.”
But Forde, who died in March 2016 at age 44 after a long battle with breast cancer, would have loved the scene itself: Her family, borough officials and myriad dignitaries from the Mets and around Major League Baseball gathered together, all for the cause of enhancing opportunities for the youth of Little Ferry and surrounding areas.
Forde was born in Little Ferry, grew up here and raised her own family here. She organized her own softball team, which her father coached. Even while working crazy hours for the Mets over 22 years, and forming an impressive network of relationships in the baseball world, she maintained close touch with her hometown.
So this day served as the perfect tribute to the life Forde led.
Upon her passing last year, Mets vice president of media relations Jay Horwitz — Forde’s professional mentor — set the wheels in motion for this to happen. He made a personal donation, and he kept in constant touch with the Little Ferry officials who ran the project.
“We all know that [when] Jay gets something that he wants to do, there’s nobody more dogged about the process and wanting to see it through,” Wilpon said. “And when it hits home like this did for him with Shannon, there was nothing stopping him. He just blocked his way for all of us to walk through.”
Major League Baseball’s annual “PLAY BALL Charity Auction,” launched last December, was targeted for this endeavor. Little Ferry Detective Mike Hinchcliffe said he received $139,000 from MLB … and the entire field project cost $137,000. MLB also promised a $25,000 stipend over three years, with the first payment coming in May 2018, which will go toward the creation of youth leagues in the area.
“The consistency of her approach and her attitude and her empathy for people, I think, were important,” general manager Sandy Alderson said. “Hopefully, the longevity of this field will reflect that.”
It started off with a bang, for sure. Among the attendees were three Mets general managers (Alderson, Omar Minaya and Jim Duquette), two managers (Willie Randolph and Bobby Valentine) and, let’s double-count guys when it’s technically accurate, seven players (Ron Darling, John Franco, Al Leiter, Randolph, Valentine, Wright and Todd Zeile). And SNY broadcaster Gary Cohen emceed the program.
After speeches by Little Ferry mayor Mauro Raguseo, Hinchcliffe, Wilpon and Forde’s niece, Felicia Spinella, Forde’s children, Nick and Kendall, took the mound to throw out the ceremonial first pitches to Wright and Franco.
“Seeing her kids smile is what she’d be most proud of today,” Wilpon said.