New York Mets in Venice tickets

Few teams are woven into a borough's identity like the Mets are woven into Queens. Since 2009, the Mets have played at Citi Field, the ballpark that rose next to the site of Shea Stadium, and the ride out to Queens on the 7 train has become one of the signature gameday rituals in New York sports. As the city's National League club, the Mets share New York with the New York Yankees of the American League, and that crosstown split shapes the whole baseball calendar. Mets tickets at Citi Field put you among a vocal, knowledgeable crowd that has ridden every peak and valley in franchise history and shows up loud for rivalry series and summer night games alike.

The New York Mets were born in 1962 as one of baseball's first expansion teams, created to bring National League baseball back to a city that had lost the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants to California in 1957. The franchise wore that inheritance openly, taking the blue of the Dodgers and the orange of the Giants, both colors of the New York City flag, and shortening the corporate name, New York Metropolitan Baseball Club, to a headline-friendly "Mets." The early years were famously rough, starting with a 40-120 inaugural season that still stands as the second-most losses by any major league team since 1900. Then came 1969, when the "Miracle Mets" won 100 games and stunned the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles in the World Series, an upset still ranked among the biggest in World Series history. A second title followed in 1986, when a 108-54 team outlasted the Houston Astros in a sixteen-inning NLCS marathon and beat the Boston Red Sox in a World Series remembered for its Game 6 comeback. Five National League pennants (1969, 1973, 1986, 2000, and 2015), eleven postseason appearances, and a run to the 2024 National League Championship Series round out a history that swings between dormant and dramatic. Tom Seaver, Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, Mike Piazza, and David Wright anchor the all-time roster, and Johan Santana's 2012 no-hitter, the first in franchise history, remains one of the loudest nights this fanbase has ever had.

For a franchise with a history of extremes, the individual honors stack up:

• Cy Young Award winners: Tom Seaver (1969, 1973, and 1975), Dwight Gooden (1985), R.A. Dickey (2012), and Jacob deGrom (2018 and 2019).
• NL Rookie of the Year winners: Tom Seaver (1967), Jon Matlack (1972), Darryl Strawberry (1983), Dwight Gooden (1984), Jacob deGrom (2014), and Pete Alonso (2019).
• World Series MVPs: Donn Clendenon (1969) and Ray Knight (1986).
• Rookie record: Pete Alonso's 53 home runs in 2019 are the most by any rookie in major league history.

Mets fandom is its own culture, shaped by geography and by an underdog identity the 1962 season accidentally made permanent. The fanbase runs deepest through Queens, Brooklyn, and Long Island, and the celebrity-fan roll includes Jerry Seinfeld and Jon Stewart. What sets a Mets game apart is the layer of ritual baked into the night:

• The 7 Line Army: Founded in 2012, this die-hard group occupies the Big Apple Section and sets the tone for the whole ballpark.
• Mr. Met: The mascot appeared on game-program covers in 1963 and came to life in costumed form at Shea Stadium in 1964, believed to be the first costumed mascot in Major League Baseball.
• Meet the Mets: The team song was written in 1961, a full year before the first game, and it still plays at every home game.
• Sing-alongs: The seventh-inning stretch brings out the old Sicilian tune "Lazy Mary," and by the middle of the eighth the crowd is singing Billy Joel's "Piano Man."