NEW YORK -- Among the most famous Mets employees never to throw a pitch or take a swing is Jay Horwitz, who spent 39 years as the team’s head of media relations before shifting to a role in alumni relations in 2018. Horwitz is set to release his autobiography, “Mr. Met: How a Sports-Mad Kid from Jersey Became Like Family to Generations of Big Leaguers,” on Tuesday. The book features a foreword from Jacob deGrom, as well as pages upon pages of stories from Horwitz’s decades with the team.

MLB.com caught up with Horwitz for a Q&A session about his experience.

MLB.com: What made you want to write a book?

Jay Horwitz: I never thought I would write a book until I finally said to myself, “You know what? How I got through 40 years was because I was always able to laugh at myself, able to be the butt of jokes.” I’ve been able to make people laugh. I never wanted to write a tell-all book. I just wanted to make people laugh and tell some of my funny stories. Johnny Franco told me a long time ago, “If the boys don’t like you, they won’t screw with you.” So I guess they must have liked me a bit, because they screwed with me a lot.

The message of the book is that you don’t have to be an athlete to get into sports. Never lose sight of your dreams. I wasn’t an athletic kid. I had eye problems. Playing Little League baseball, the only way I could hit the ball was by bunting. And when I got to high school, I managed about four different teams. The letterman’s day my senior year, I had more stripes on my sweater than the starting quarterback did. So I just want to let kids know that if you have a dream, you don’t have to be a star player or anything like that. There are other ways to fulfill your passion.

One other thing I’m passionate about is giving credit to Shannon [longtime Mets staffer Shannon Forde, who died of breast cancer in 2016]. I just wanted to make sure her legacy, people didn’t forget about her. When she passed away in 2016, nine Major League teams held a moment of silence for her. That’s a pretty amazing stat. And MLB built a ballpark in her honor, Shannon Dalton Forde Memorial Field in Little Ferry, N.J. I just hope when people read the book, they read a little bit about her and people won’t forget about her legacy.

MLB.com: You mentioned wanting to share the story of your eye problems.

Horwitz: When my mother was carrying me, she caught German measles. I was born with glaucoma, and had a blue eye and a green eye. Naturally, kids in grammar school could be pretty cruel. They made fun of me and I was subject to a lot of ridicule. So in about fifth or sixth grade, I went to a great eye doctor and he said, “Listen, if you don’t take the right eye out, the glaucoma could spread to the left eye.” So I had the surgery and they put in an artificial eye. Up until when I finally decided I was going to write this book, I was always embarrassed to tell people I had an artificial eye. But I said, “You know what? Maybe I can give some hope to one kid going through some medical issues, let him know that you don’t have to be a 6-foot-2, 190-pound Adonis to get ahead in the world.” That was the other message in my book.

MLB.com: How did you enjoy the writing process?

Horwitz: The hardest part was not forgetting all the people who were important to me along the way. I didn’t want to leave anybody out. So I have a chapter on Joe Torre, on Terry Collins, on Bobby Valentine, on Willie Randolph. I just tried to remember the guys who were friends along the way.

MLB.com: What was your favorite memory over 39 years in media relations?

Horwitz: Everybody says 1986, but for me, our response after 9/11 is what I’m most proud of. As a team, from ownership on down, I think we really did a lot of good. We went to the firehouses down in Lower Manhattan. We started Tuesday’s Children [a nonprofit aiding the families of those affected by terrorist attacks]. Everyone talks about the Mike Piazza homer. But all the stuff surrounding the Piazza home run was so tremendous because of everything we did for the community. I think we really did some good as a team.

MLB.com: Anything you would have done differently?

Horwitz: I probably would have done a lot of things differently. When Darryl Strawberry came up in 1983, we said yes to every media request. Everything. We opened him up. When he came up, the Mets were a really bad team. There was no Keith Hernandez yet, no Gary Carter, no Doc Gooden. We just put him out there. I was trying to be so accommodating to everybody and I wish I had known better. We should have curtailed him a little bit, set some rules like we did with Dwight the following year. We said yes more than we said no, and that probably wasn’t great for the beginning of his career. But both he and Gooden are still doing well. I keep in contact with them both, and they’re both good friends.

Such a big thing for me are those friendships I developed through the years, especially with the ’86 team. I was still young; I could relate to those guys a lot more. It was just a great group of guys to be around. You never knew what was going to happen, guys getting in fights … it was a crazy year.

MLB.com: How are you enjoying your new role in alumni relations?

Horwitz: I like it. We never did a whole lot with the alumni before. What I’ve been trying to do is letting these guys know we care. When I recently called Hobie Landrith, who was the first guy the Mets picked in the 1961 expansion draft, he said I was the first person from the organization to call him in 50 years. So it’s just about letting these guys know they’re not forgotten. We generated a little publicity for Ed Kranepool, and got him a new kidney. We publicized Cleon Jones’ work for charities in Mobile, Ala. I do little stuff like calling to say hello, or Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, how you doing? I think that’s an important part of this thing is to let these guys know that they’re still part of the Mets family.