So Sad :Mets owner Shockingly dies on The traffic Major Deegan Expressway after..

The traffic on the Major Deegan Expressway was at a standstill in both directions; it had been for close to 30 minutes. It was about 8:30 p.m. The Yankees were playing at the Stadium, and they were playing the Mets. It was June 1997, the first year of Interleague Play in the big leagues. And for the first time since the Giants played the Dodgers in 1957, two New York teams were playing in a regular-season game.

 

Those stuck outside on the paralyzed highway couldn’t help but hear the raucous reactions of the 56,000 who had gathered to witness history. Hearing the crowd noise and the distinctive public-address introductions of Bob Sheppard wasn’t enough for the robust and happy man who walked between the frozen lanes of traffic. He needed more, he needed to know what was happening.

 

So, as he moved down the Deegan on foot, Nelson Doubleday Jr. stopped at cars with windows open and radios audible and asked for updates. “I stopped only at the cars that had our guys doing the game,” the former Mets owner would say by telephone after he had found his seat inside the enemy’s fort. “If they had [Mets radio announcer Bob Murphy] on the radio, I’d stop and ask, and maybe listen to an at-bat.”

 

That was Nelson Doubleday, a regular guy. Just your everyday, pedestrian multi-millionaire hoofin’ it down a major thoroughfare on an early summer evening in the Bronx, giving up his ride about a mile from the Stadium and enjoying every step of the everyman experience.

 

“We’d scored a couple when I got out of the car,” Doubleday said, “and I didn’t want to miss too much.”

 

Such was the telling snapshot of the man who financed the renaissance of the Mets in the 1980s. Doubleday was wealthy by any measure. And he was fun-loving by every measure. He was as generous with his money as he was with his smiles. It was his practice to buy more than one round.

 

And now the smile, that hearty laugh and vigorous personality are gone. Nelson Doubleday Jr. died on Wednesday at his home in Locust Valley, N.Y. After 81 years of living the good life, he succumbed to pneumonia, 13 years after he excused himself from the business of baseball.

 

The Mets released this statement after receiving word of Doubleday’s death: “We were saddened to hear the news of the passing of Nelson Doubleday, Jr. Nelson had a love of baseball and the Mets. On behalf of everyone at the organization, we send our condolences and sympathies to his family.”

 

“Where would we be without Mr. D?” Mets third baseman Hubie Brooks said late in the 1984 season when the guidance of general manager Frank Cashen, Doubleday’s first hire with the Mets; the emergence of Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry; and the Doubleday treasury turned the Mets from an annual 90-loss also-ran into a 90-victory team that, two years later, won the World Series and took over the New York baseball market.