My first baseball hat was a Mets cap. The team was the toast of New York City after their 1986 World Series victory, and I was a five-year-old kid in Buffalo who loved his backyard baseball but for whom the major league goings-on were in another place, time, and dimension. Still though, it was hard to be oblivious to the exploits of the New York Mets while living in New York state at the time, especially when your folks are Mets boosters themselves. Although the local loyalty to the Yankees made … more