NEW YORK -- The message flashed quickly in the sixth inning on the Citi Field video board during the first game of a doubleheader between the Mets and Rockies.
If you went for a bathroom break, if you were staring down at your phone, if you blinked, you probably missed it.
“Congrats on MLB game 10K, King Mike Casiano!”
But nobody, not any of the superfans in Section 515 – up in the King’s Court – missed it. They all had their cameras up to capture the honor for their great friend.
Ballpark hawks from Pittsburgh all the way up to Ottawa, whom Casiano has met and impressed and kept in touch with along the way.
Ed “Tike” Narry, the official 10,000-game tracker from the Bay Area, who has meticulously scoured through the King’s handwritten game logs to calculate his impossible accomplishment.
Twenty-somethings from Queens who gravitated toward the high-and tight area way above home plate. A spot they found community and, most importantly, a home.
They all cheered and shouted and pointed excitedly in the King’s direction.
Casiano, himself, is pretty quiet, seemingly going through the decades and decades of baseball games he’s seen in his 73 years. Almost like he can hardly believe it himself.
“I’ve been overwhelmed by the support I’ve gotten from so many,” Casiano said, leaning back in his seat. “I’ve been totally overwhelmed.”
A Slow Debut
Ten thousand professional baseball games. When you hear someone say they’ve been to that many, it’s hard to imagine it.
It would take about 62 years if you did 162 MLB games every season. A much more manageable 81 home games, for your hometown team, would take 123 years. The oldest verified person to ever live only made it to age 122, and I don’t think Jeanne Calment, the French socialite, was attending many baseball games.
And if you hear about Mike Casiano's first foray into the pro baseball world, it probably doesn't sound too dissimilar to many other ballpark experiences from early childhood. It's pretty innocent.
"My father took me to Yankee Stadium on May 26, 1963. I was 10 1/2 years old," Casiano told me. "The Yankees won the first game, the Senators won the second game."
Casiano went to 17 more games that decade, some at the Polo Grounds and some more at the new Shea Stadium. A place where the Queens native fell in love with the Mets. Still, not a totally unusual number of games for a fan of his age.
The first half of the 1970s was a slow one for Casiano as well. Money was tight for his father, and, like many wartime players of the past, he served in the military.
"I was drafted and served two years from 1972-74 at Fort Dix, Fort Jackson and Fort Monmouth," Casiano said. "After basic training, I did clerical work."
He managed to get to 46 games from 1970-75.
Just 64 games in 12 years? At 23 years old? 10,000 already didn't seem very reachable.
But then, in the late '70s, Casiano made a decision that would catapult him into an entirely different fan stratosphere.
"I decided I wanted to see every Mets home game," he said.
Hitting His Stride
Some people who are single, in their mid-20s and living in New York City might spend their summers in the Hamptons, taking in the Manhattan nightlife or galavanting around Europe.
Casiano spent his summers in the place that captured his heart most: Section 1, at the top of Shea Stadium behind home plate. And by spent, I mean he pretty much lived there. It's where he got his royal nickname.
When famed NY sports fan Donald "Fuzzy" Cohen attended his final ballgame, he reportedly told Casiano, "You're now the King."
In 1977, the King went to 68 games. In '78, 79. In '79, 98. In '80, 99. He began going to every Mets home game during that era, and contests in Montreal and Baltimore, but, at that time, because of the intense New York rivalry, never to Yankee Stadium.
"When I was a kid, I would get made fun of for being a Mets fan," Casiano told me.
"This guy would've already been to 10,000 if he went to Yankees games earlier," Tike Narry laughed.
Casiano's goal was to get to 100 games in a season without going to Yankee Stadium. He was on pace for that in 1981, then the labor strike happened. But that gave him the opportunity to add another area of pro baseball toward his pursuit of 10,000.
"Me and a couple of friends went to a bunch of Minor League games, did some Minor League road trips," Casiano said.
Casiano and his friends did 11 that year to get to 89 total games, and have since visited 132 Minor League stadiums and seen 1,135 games. Everywhere from Zebulon, N.C., to Waterbury, Conn., to Vancouver.
Casiano finally hit 100 games in 1982 and, now finally allowing himself to go to Yankee games, made it to 100-plus each year through 1988. He would catch doubleheaders at Shea and Yankee stadiums and do three games in one day 20 different times -- an early day game in Philly, and then a night-time doubleheader in New York. An afternoon game in Chicago, and then two in Milwaukee.
"I would do a Mets game at Shea Stadium and then go down to Philadelphia to see the Phillies that night. Or vice versa," Casiano said. "A few times, we would take a 3:30 a.m. Peter Pan or Greyhound bus to Boston, see the Red Sox, and then fly back on the People's Express to New York, and have a doubleheader that way."
Casiano's job during the week as a mail handler at the post office helped his game-watching obsession. He worked overnights, first from midnight to 8:30 a.m.
"That was easy, I'd go to a ballgame and go to work from there," he said. "What became tough was the afternoon games. I would get home a little after 9 a.m., try to lay down for 2 1/2 hours and then get up and go to the game."
Eventually, the post office changed his hours to 2 a.m. to 10 a.m. He wouldn't be able to get too much sleep post-work before day games. So, Casiano still went straight to work after night games, but made sure he was able to squeeze in some shut-eye before starting up.
"After a game, I would go to work and put out a folding chair and sleep until like five minutes to 2," the 73-year-old said. "Then clock in and do what I had to do."
Sleeping on a lawn chair at work, flying and bussing back and forth between states, and seeing 100-plus games a season? That may seem like bit of an overkill to a typical fan. But that's nothing: Starting in 1989, Casiano stepped up his fandom even more, hitting 200 games per year for the next four decades.
In His Prime
"It's just something I like to do," Casiano said. "I love going to baseball games."
Casiano hit 209 games in 1989 and, besides the COVID-shortened 2020 and the strike-shortened 1994 seasons, he's been to 200-plus ever since. Don't believe me? His friend, and fellow ballpark fanatic, Tike Narry has organized the King's game-attendance sheet into a readable one-sheeter.
Narry and his wife linked up with the King via the message board on an online group called Ballpark Chasers. The Narrys met him at Yankee Stadium in 2012, and then, the King, along with his longtime roommate and trusted ballpark companion, Gary Herman, connected with the Narrys during a West Coast trip a year later. They've remained close ever since.
"And then, yeah, winter of 2015, 2016, I thought, 'Man, someone's gotta document some of this,'" Narry told me. "He has everything, I mean, everything written on paper. I started talking to Gary about this, and Gary was like, 'Yeah, we gotta get this done.' In January of 2016, I went back [to New York] to see some basketball and some hockey games (Casiano has somehow also been to over 4,000 hockey games), and I stayed with them. And I got to see the library. There was just bookshelves. For years, his scorebooks were just these 200-page college-ruled notebooks. And he would just make scorebooks out of it. There were just boxes and boxes and I took pictures of every single one. It took a couple of winters to get things kind of completely done and in a format that is nice and neat. It's a labor of love, the smile I see on his face every time I send a new one sheet is worth its weight in gold."
Casiano said his first 100 games on the sheet are mostly by memory, and he even didn't count some games he remembered because he can't totally verify them with another source. But his notes go back to the early 70s.
"I started buying a book in 1972 to log all the Met games," the King said. "I tried to score every single Met game. I would even do my own Met stats."
"Oh yeah, he's as old school as you can get," Herman said. "All hand-written stuff."
The one-sheet is a treasure trove of data, from which Narry has calculated stats and figures for each game attended. Casiano has been to close to 3,000 Yankees games, more than 1,000 Phillies games, more than 600 Baltimore games and more than 500 Atlanta games. Casiano, maybe the world's greatest Mets fan, has also been to close to 4,300 Mets games. That's nearly 42 percent of all Mets games ever played. His streak of seeing games at Citi is around 500 straight, but it could've been more. Way more.
"I've only missed three games at Citi," Casiano told me. "I'm still crying about it. Deep wounds. It would've been well over 1,000. I missed one in 2009 and I fractured my kneecap in 2019. I missed two 1-0 games."
The games in 2019 were May 1 and May 2, the latter being the game Noah Syndergaard threw a shutout and homered.
Casiano's seen 13 no-hitters: the first by the Cardinals' Bob Forsch in 1983, the most recent by a combined Astros staff in 2022. He's seen 17-K games by Pedro Martinez and Max Scherzer. He's been in the ballpark for six-hit feats by Wilmer Flores, Johnny Damon and Skip Schumaker.
He's seen games in Tokyo, London, Puerto Rico and Mexico. He saw Bob Uecker hit one of his 14 homers. He was at the 2014 MLB opener at the Sydney Cricket Grounds.
"Someone knew who Mike was and yelled out his name," Herman laughed. "In Australia!"
Casiano lists the old Tiger Stadium, PNC Park, Oracle Park, and the old Comiskey Park as some of his favorite stadiums over the years. But Wrigley and Fenway are at the top of his rankings.
"They're just old-time ballparks," he said. "They were built for baseball. I love the ivy. I don't like how the pitchers now warm up under the stands."
You might think it'd be hard to narrow down someone's favorite games among 10,000 (now 10,000-plus) across 60-something years, but Casiano has an answer right away.
"That's easy," he said. "Games 6 and 7 in '86. They had 'Congrats Red Sox' on the Shea scoreboard. And I'm gonna throw another one in there. Doc Holliday's Division Series no-hitter. And I'm also gonna say Johnny Damon's grand slam home run off Javy Vazquez. I was sitting there in the aisle, thinking, 'First pitch. Hit the first pitch.' First-pitch grand slam and that was the end of the Yankees. I'm a Met fan, I can't help myself."
It's windy and cold up where Casiano sits -- the cold bites even more on this special 10,000 day, with the Mets fresh off a 12-game losing streak. But the closeness and "we're all in this" togetherness of Section 515 provides more than enough warmth. That's what's kept the King coming to the park day after day after day.
"After trying all the normal stuff and realizing I ain't getting married, and everyone I ever liked, or whatever, went somewhere else and another way, I just kept coming," Casiano said. "I made baseball and the people at the ballpark my family."
"This is his life," Narry said. "Some people go to the movies, some people sit around on Netflix, the King goes to games."
"I have told people, there's only one thing that's gonna stop me from coming," Casiano smiled. "D-E-A-T-H."
Suddenly, there's a strikeout by a Mets pitcher that interrupts our interview.
The King quickly grabs his cane, hops out of his seat and yells his "Hhhhheee struck him out!" call he's been yelling since 1980 (and has since been adopted by the 7 Line Army fan group). His Section 515 family joins him as they have for thousands of games before.
After the moment is over, Casiano sits back down, letting out a big exhale as his body hits the back of the seat. He carefully scrawls the strikeout into his college-ruled notebook.
His gaze moves back to the field. He's ready for the next pitch.