Seasoned fan
Gran, 93, has held Mets tix since '62
Long Island’s Antoinette Cristina bleeds orange and blue — and she’s shelled out the green to prove it.
The 93-year-old from New Hyde Park is the Mets’ longest-running season-ticket holder, dating back to the Amazin’s’ inaugural 1962 season at the Polo Grounds, when her nosebleed seats cost about $2.60 each per game, or about $800 total for the year.
Today, her family pays $45,657 for four tickets in the ninth row at Citi Field.
“I’m still with them!” said the feisty nonagenarian, who says Gil Hodges was her favorite player from the band of lovable losers who lost a major-league record 120 games that first year.
“I didn’t care for Casey,” she said of famed manager Casey Stengel. “He didn’t do a very good job.”
Her five-decade love affair with the team had unlikely beginnings.
Her husband, Rocco, who died in 2016, was a lifelong Yankee fan who idolized fellow Italian-American Joe DiMaggio. But he bought the four Mets season tickets in 1962 so he could entertain clients of his Queens carting business.
When the Mets finished 51-111 in their second season, Antoinette wondered, “Why buy all these tickets? They are expensive and they’re losing!” But her husband “never wanted to give up those seats.”
When the Mets moved to Shea Stadium in 1964, the Cristina family moved with them.
“I was disappointed when they moved,” she said. And the new stadium didn’t change the losing.
“There’s always next year,” she would tell herself.
The family’s seats got better through the years. In 1969 they sat in field-level boxes to witness Jerry Koosman pitch the “Miracle Mets” to a 5-3 victory over the Baltimore Orioles to win the World Series.
“Everybody went nuts. The explosion and pure joy. We stayed to watch the celebration!” she recalled. “We loved [catcher] Jerry Grote, and Tom Seaver was so good.”
She had to cut down on her attendance with the birth of her four children and 11 grandchildren. But she and Rocco were sitting in the stands for the Mets’ historic comeback victories in Games 6 and 7 of the 1986 World Series.
After the 2000 Mets lost the Subway Series to their hated crosstown rivals, her sons said she “was cursing the Yankees.”
Just mention the name of inconsistent relief pitcher Armando Benitez and Antoinette buries her head in her hands. “He wasn’t very good,” she said.
She loves today’s team, especially David Wright, Jacob DeGrom and Noah Syndergaard, but not some of their hairdos.
“I’m old-fashioned,” she said. “I like the clean cut look.”
Antoinette’s two sons, Michael and Robert, and their two brothers-in-law, will be at Citi Field for Thursday’s opener against the St. Louis Cardinals. Her only regret is that she doesn’t have more ducats.
“I wish we had six,” she said. “We do have 11 grandchildren and they will be fighting over them!”