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Tim Rohan finds yet another heretofore unknown Mets angle for the Times. Meet their mailman:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/sport ... ilman.html
September 28, 2013
Neither Snow Nor a Losing Streak Will Stop the Mets’ Mailman
By TIM ROHAN
In a hallway beside the Mets’ clubhouse, two sets of large wooden cubbies hold the players’ fan mail. Some cubbies are larger than others. David Wright and Matt Harvey have entire shelves to themselves. But for many players, mail has piled up throughout the season.
When the season ends Sunday, the Mets will presumably clean out their cubbies, take home the envelopes and small packages, and sift through them. They will read the handwritten notes, the words of encouragement and of scorn. They will sign the baseball cards and return them. Some will read six months’ worth of mail.
The mailroom is a nondescript area in the recesses of Citi Field, beyond the wall in left-center field. It is the office of Tod Tillotson, the Mets’ mailman.
His official title is special services clerk, but he sorts the mail for everyone at Citi Field. He is believed to be the Mets’ longest-tenured employee. He is an institution. But not all of the Mets’ staff knows him or his story.
As an infant, Tillotson climbed out of his crib, fell and smacked his head on a radiator. He was bruised but otherwise considered fine until he lost his hearing at age 5.
Tillotson started working for the Mets in 1964, when he was 15.
His father, Gerald, then a manager at the Regency Whist Club in Manhattan, a social organization known for its contract bridge games, had befriended M. Donald Grant, a member who was an owner of the Mets. Gerald Tillotson asked Grant for a favor, and his son went to work in the Shea Stadium mailroom that summer, and for the next few summers.
After he graduated from the New York School for the Deaf in 1968, Tillotson worked full time in the Mets’ ticket office for about 10 years, then returned to the mailroom, where he has been ever since.
Early on, he delivered the players’ mail and sometimes slipped into the clubhouse.
He fondly recalled conversations with Bob Taylor, who first played for the Mets in 1964. Taylor, known as Hawk, was very good at reading Tillotson’s lips, Tillotson said, and he understood Taylor, too. But the Mets traded Taylor in 1967.
A lot has changed since Tillotson’s first summer with the team.
“Everybody’s gone,” he said through a sign-language interpreter.
“I’m the only one left.”
And these days, he has less mail to sort.
Some current Mets, like Travis d’Arnaud and Daisuke Matsuzaka, check their cubbies every so often. Matsuzaka said his fan mail followed him wherever he pitched, even at Class AAA Columbus in the Cleveland Indians’ system this season. Fans sent kind words, inspirational notes and Bible verses. He said reading the mail had helped him get through that tough period as he tried to rebuild his career.
D’Arnaud, a 24-year-old catcher, said he received similar messages from people who root for him.
“I’m still, like, so honored to be looked at like a hero,” he said.
Others, like pitchers Jon Niese and Dillon Gee, will wait until the season ends to go through their mail. The correspondents, they said, include youngsters asking for autographs on baseball cards, people wishing them luck and those telling them how to pitch.
“Everybody tries to put their two cents in,” Niese said. “You get old men who think they know everything about the game and tell you what to do.”
Tillotson, 64, stopped delivering the players’ mail when the Mets moved to Citi Field in 2009. Because of stricter clubhouse rules, he said, he does not visit the players anymore. But he has worked for the Mets from Tom Seaver to Harvey, from Keith Hernandez to Wright, through their best times and their worst, through the good letters and the bad.
Tillotson’s workday routine begins at 9:30 a.m., after he drives from his home in Fresh Meadows, Queens, to Citi Field. Then he sorts the mail and makes his rounds, pushing his large metal cart. He takes about six trips around the park, delivering mail and picking it up, walking on average, he said, about eight miles each day.
Although he is not familiar to the players, his co-workers know him for his smile, which creases his whole face, and the photographs he shows them of his ski trips to the French Alps.
Sometimes, Tillotson will watch the Mets on television at home. But their final game is Sunday.
Then winter will come, and he might go skiing. But next spring, the Mets will return to Citi Field, and so will their mail. And Tillotson plans to be there too, in the mailroom, for his 51st season with the team. |
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