During Terry Collins' tenure as Mets manager (2011-2017), when they did the 8th inning "Piano Man" singalong and they got to the line "and the manager gives me a smile," they'd have Collins' smiling face pop up over the crowd shots if the Mets were winning at the time. I don't remember when they started doing it, but I got a kick out of it.
The manager giving us a smile didn't continue with Collins' next two successors (Mickey Callaway 2018-2019, Luis Rojas 2020-2021), as well as when Buck Showalter took over in 2022 - until one day, when to my surprise, it did! This was the final season of the original Citi Vision, which had ads surrounding the video board. Beginning in 2023, Citi Vision was replaced with the mighty Citi Field scoreboard (officially it's still Citi Vision, but *I* call it the mighty Citi Field scoreboard), which is so much better than what we had between 2009 and 2022.
They also made a change in the singalong, and instead of "Piano Man" every game, it's now 8th Inning Karaoke, and fans vote on the song to be played. Sometimes "Piano Man" is one of the choices; sometimes it isn't. And on the days when "Piano Man" is one of the choices, it doesn't always win. But in the context of the manager's smile, it's all irrelevant because when they do play "Piano Man," there's no manager's smile - even if the Mets are winning. That, unfortunately, is a trait that's continued into 2024 and the Carlos Mendoza era.
As far as this video is concerned, we have:
1. A playing from 2022 where Buck pops up to give us a smile. I wish I had a better version to show, because this one has a fan in white passing in front of the camera, which really messes up the shot, but it's the only one I have. I wasn't shooting much video in 2002, and I didn't make a note of what game this was from.
2. A playing from August 17, 2024. This one includes the right field scoreboard, which in between innings had the current score, so you can see that the Mets had a 4-0 lead over Miami... yet no smile. (And this would be a game where the manager had plenty to smile about; not only did the Mets win, but starting pitcher Luis Severino pitched a complete game shutout.)
3. Some stills of Terry Collins giving us a smile. These were taken by me from section 538 and are of the auxiliary video board in right field. Back in those days, my thing was taking photographs at ballgames with a real camera, not video from a smartphone. (I didn't even have a smartphone until 2018.) Taking ballpark pictures was more than a passion - it was a calling. I thought it would be appropriate to include some of those images here, to complete the circle. There is no audio for this portion of the video.