Considering the total attendance at Citi Field for this year’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game reached 45,000-plus, you figure a small percentage of that had to be Sachem residents and alums. It was bound to happen.
But an alum popping up on the scoreboard for a contest in the middle of the Midsummer Classic? Too good to be true, right? Wrong! Brian Ford, who graduated from Sachem North in 2011, made it happen.
Ford, who played basketball at Sachem and is currently on the team at Drew University, played “Mets Lets Make a Deal” between innings and was featured on the scoreboard. Choosing a box with an unknown prize over a Mets hat, he eventually walked away with a commemorative David Wright plaque.
A day earlier, Brian and his older brother John, also a Sachem alum who plays hoops at Drew, were featured on BuzzFeed.com in a photo gallery about Mets ace Matt Harvey. Holding a giant Harvey head, the Ford brothers look at home in the friendly confines of Citi Field, which in many ways is a second home for the Mets diehards and Sachem area natives.
It was an eventful week for many Mets fans with the Home Run Derby and All-Star Game being played in Queens, N.Y. for the first time since 1964. For many, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
“Such a ridiculously fun couple of days,” Ford wrote on Twitter. “Something I will never forget. So blessed.”
-Words by Chris R. Vaccaro