A handwritten letter that New York Mets manager Terry Collins sent to the widow of a longtime fan is getting tons of Reddit love, even melting the hearts of some hard-core team rivals.
Collins first apologizes in the note for being late with his condolences, saying "mail moves slowly here."
“I know Pete was a big Mets fan and will be missed,” he continues. “Hopefully this finds you doing well and looking forward. My condolences and if I can help in any way let me know.”
The note was posted on Reddit by the widow's son.
“My dad and I watched the Mets together for my whole life,” he wrote in the picture's caption. “He died 9 months ago. Somehow, the team found out, and Terry Collins sent this to my mother.”
The Reddit user, who did not want his real name to be revealed, told TODAY.com that he and his dad watched baseball games constantly.
“He was a psychotic Mets fan, and bred it into me,” he said.
The man’s father passed away last November, and he suspects a friend of his parents reached out to the team. His mother received the note a couple of months later — but he didn’t learn about it until a recent visit to his mother's home, where he saw it posted on her bulletin board.
The son said he was "pretty dumfounded" by the gesture. He also has been surprised by the overwhelmingly positive response the note has received, from both fans and critics of the Mets — and Collins.
He said avid sports fan often have "abusive relationships" with their teams, devoting so much personal time watching and tracking their progress, but usually feeling they get little in return.
“So it was a wild role reversal that somebody who I assumed had no idea who I was out of the multimillions of people who watch baseball games, to take time out of their day to give back,” he said. "This was such a simple thing. It probably took two minutes out of his day, but the impact was great."
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