The story behind the Mets shirt flying from a 9/11 memorial in Ireland

There's something striking about the shirt when you first see a photo of it.

It's not that it's flashy or has some distinctive mark or is really out of the ordinary at all.

It's just that it's there.

Flying in the wind atop a grassy green hillside in Kinsale, Ireland. Slightly tattered from the salt blowing off the nearby Celtic Sea. Wrapped around a tree planted for Michael Cawley, one of 343 firefighters killed on Sept. 11 and honored at this memorial more than 3,000 miles from where the Twin Towers made their final stand 25 years ago.

What's it doing there? What's the story behind it? Who was Michael Cawley?

And exactly how big of a Mets fan was he?

"Mets fans are all fanatical," his brother, Brendan Cawley, told me over the phone. "Dare I say, Michael was on another level."

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Michael Cawley wasn’t supposed to be at 1 World Trade Center the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

Really, no firefighter was supposed to be there, up until that first plane hit the first tower and they rushed in from every corner of every borough.

Cawley, though, really wasn’t supposed to be there.

The 32-year-old Flushing native was covering for another firefighter with Rescue 4 the night before – a specialized Woodside, Queens, unit that responded to major emergencies. His regular firehouse was Ladder 136 – home of the proud Elmhurst Eagles – in Elmhurst, Queens.

• MLB to mark 25th anniversary of 9/11 with tributes, service

As soon as Rescue 4 heard about the plane crash the next morning, they immediately loaded up their gear to head into the Financial District. Cawley was off for the day, but he noticed there was an open spot in the truck. The boy who grew up playing with toy fire engines, who’d always dreamed of fighting the biggest fires for his beloved New York, couldn’t help himself.

“Michael asked the commanding officer if he could take the seat that was empty,” Margaret Cawley, Michael’s mom, told me in a phone call.

“He was off, he was already relieved,” good friend and fellow fireman Joe Loftus said. “It was the difference between a minute or two.”

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Michael Cawley grew up in Flushing, Queens, loving two things: Fire and the New York Mets.

His dad, Jack, was what the department called “a fire buff.” He would tune into the FDNY radio late at night, listening in to where the big fires were taking place. Jack didn’t get his chance to work for the department because of poor eyesight, but he was eventually, officially, made an honorary Fire Chief in 2015.

“I worked as a cancer nurse on weekends,” Margaret said. “My husband watched the kids, and every weekend they would go to his Knights of Columbus in Woodside and then to a couple of firehouses.”

That love for New York’s Bravest passed down to Michael. There was nothing else he ever thought of doing. His entire wardrobe ended up being FDNY.

“When Michael and I would play catch in the backyard, I had it all timed out,” Brendan, a Yankees fan, said. “I knew, with my age, I’d be getting ready to go into the pros right around the time Don Mattingly would be retiring. I’d be taking over first base for Mattingly. I’d say, 'Hey Mike, what position are you gonna play for the Mets?’ He’d say ‘No, I’m gonna be a New York City fireman.’”

But Michael did also love those Mets.

He was born in 1969, the year the Mets won their first World Series.

“Oh, he’d let you know that,” Brendan laughed.

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He worked at Shea Stadium during his teenage years, along with Brendan and their sister, Kristin.

“He sold hot dogs and pretzels,” Brendan said. “Then he moved his way up to suite attendant. He delivered food to the suites.”

“Between you and me, I think he walked up the steps and just watched the game,” Margaret told me.

Michael took a liking to Dave Kingman, that entire 1986 team and stars in the late 1990s like Mike Piazza.

“As soon as he picked up the newspaper, he was reading the sports section,” Brendan said. “Right to the baseball stats, the standings, this and that. He struggled with them, just like every other Met fan does.”

His Elmhurst firehouse was, of course, also basically a rooting section for the team.

Joe Loftus met Michael on Randall’s Island at Probie school (an 18-week FDNY Fire Academy program), and then was placed in the same house in the mid-’90s. The two bonded over their love for the orange and blue.

“Truth is, we were friends since Day 1,” Loftus said. “He was a giant, giant Mets fan. He had a big head, like Mr. Met. So with the freakin’ hat on, he looked like Mr. Met. There was always firehouse trips to [Shea], but we went separately together, too.”

“All the Met fans in the firehouse,” Brendan said. “Forget about it.”

Michael and Brendan also went to a ton of games together – Michael got tickets from sales reps because of his family’s close connection with Shea. Brendan recalls one game, a pretty huge game, when the two were up in a box and Michael’s fandom got a little too fandom-y.

“We were at the Todd Pratt home run game,” Brendan recalled. “He was so intense. I couldn’t even sit in the same [box] as him. I went two suites down to another friend’s. When Pratt hit that home run, he was just banging on the glass wall, looking at me like, ‘Did you see that?’

“Did I see it?” Brendan remembered thinking. “Of course I saw it.”

That’s the kind of lust for the here and now, the type of banging-on-the-glass earnestness, that Michael showed that fateful September morning. That moment when he asked if he could go with Rescue 4 to the ever-intensifying emergency happening downtown.

“It was a combination -- he loved to help everyone, but he also wanted to be part of it,” Loftus said. “Anything that happened with the FDNY, he wanted to be there.”

The lieutenant on duty approved Michael’s request and he hopped on the back of the truck – zooming southwest on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, cutting under the East River through the midtown tunnel and reaching the bottom edge of Manhattan by way of the FDR Drive.

The beautiful, late-summer sky had, just during that short ride, turned black. Cars and buses, the entire city, had stopped to watch in horror what was taking place.

Cawley, with seven other members of Rescue 4, paid no attention to any of it. There was no time.

The crew leapt off the truck before it could even come to a full stop at 1 World Trade.

Chaos and fire were all around them, but that’s why they were there. That’s what Michael had signed up for.

“If Mike had one fault, it was that,” Loftus said. “He loved fires so much. … It would’ve crushed him to not be there to help.”

The South Tower had now been hit, and smoke and screams were filling the air. The eight men hoisted their supplies and hustled into the lobby, totally unaware, like the rest of the world, as to what would happen next.

Minutes after they entered through the doors, the South Tower collapsed. Killing all eight men there from Rescue 4.

“Unfortunately, none of those guys survived,” his brother told me. “They were found around the marble on the lobby floor.”

“Michael was the only one from his [Elmhurst] firehouse that died in 9/11,” his mom said.

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Loftus still remembers going to the game and hearing the cheers for Mike Piazza. He remembers feeling for his lost friend Michael Cawley.

“Everyone was just going berserk,” Loftus recalled. “Most of us had spent every day down at 9/11. At night, during the day. When that home run was hit, there were guys still digging for people. It was just a break, a break and we went to the game. I do remember afterwards being so incredibly happy, knowing that Mike loved Mike Piazza.”

“Michael was a mush, do you know what a mush is?” his mom said. “When my husband’s mother died, the 16 grandchildren were around her bed saying prayers and there was one fella there that was crying. That was my Michael. My Michael was a sweetheart.”

“The fire department was always something I was interested in,” Brendan, who barely survived a 2005 Bronx fire, said. “My brother would always break my chops about it, saying ‘it’s the greatest job, you gotta get on this job.’ The events of September 11th definitely pushed me to get on it and want this job. Seeing the response and reaction of these guys and what they did.”

Kathleen Murphy apparently felt the same way about these brave first responders.

A nurse at Lenox Hill Hospital for 40 years, she treated many of the firefighters who came in that day. She was so touched by their courage that in 2002, she built a memorial on land she owned in Kinsale, Ireland – planting 343 trees for all 343 who died that day. And another one for FDNY Chaplain Father Mychal Judge, who prayed over bodies that morning and was the first certified death when the south tower fell.

It’s a distinctly jarring sight that tourists, from both America and everywhere else around the world, find difficult to take in.

“All the other memorials are steel or stone or glass, but this is a living memorial of trees that continue to grow and flourish and blossom in the Irish countryside,” former FDNY and now memorial board member Danny Manning told me. “It’s unique in that sense.”

Still, nobody knows who exactly tied the Mets shirt to Michael’s tree.

His mom wasn’t sure; his brother thought it could’ve been a group of firehouse friends who made the trip across the Atlantic; Manning was scrolling through footage to see when it first appeared, Loftus sent a mass text to everyone who knew Mike.

None of those friends on the text said they did it, but they all quickly hearted Loftus’ message.

“Hey, maybe someone writes back to the article saying, ‘That was me,’” Loftus laughed. “There’s a lot of different mysteries, that’s just another one.”

Even if nobody ever does write back, if nobody ever finds out – that Mets shirt likely did the job the person wanted it to do: Bringing life back to Michael. A man who loved his friends and family and city and his hometown team but sacrificed it all, without hesitation, because that’s just who he was.

Revealing the story of a regular guy who did superhuman things.