FLUSHING, NY — For baseball fans around the country, Thursday was a day full of promise: Opening Day, where 162 games lay ahead of them and everyone was still in contention.

The atmosphere was no different at Citi Field, where the hope of a new season was in the air as fans flocked off the 7 train and out toward the ballpark, greeted by the old Shea Stadium apple and a “block party” that the Mets had put on along the side of the stadium.

(Tom Gambardella/Patch)

On the opposite side of the ballpark stands the bus lot, where throngs of fans parked buses, vans and cars before firing up charcoal grills and tailgating the first Mets game of the season. For one group of fans in the bus lot, Thursday was as much a chance to look back as a chance to look forward.

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These fans have been coming to the Mets’ opening day since at least 1994, although some of them said they’d been coming since earlier. Most of them grew up in Queens Village, practically in the shadow of Shea Stadium. Some of them went to high school together, others went to church together or became drinking buddies long ago. Some did all three.

Regardless of how this busload of fans knew each other, they all knew they were a man short this year: It was the first opening day since their dear friend, Roger McGovern, died in January while on his way to shovel snow during a blizzard.

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The tailgating setup was decorated with a banner and matching t-shirts that described Roger as “A Floral Park Legend,” with a shamrock on the back covered by the words, “He was better than all of us,” a phrase that had been uttered back in January when Roger’s friends met at the Floral Park Knights of Columbus Council 2345 to share a Budweiser in his honor.

(Tom Gambardella/Patch)

As the smell of cigar smoke mingled with the fumes emanating from the charcoal grills, Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along The Watchtower” blared out of a speaker a couple of parking bays away. It was a sunny, 70-degree day, and the people who knew Roger were sharing burgers, hot dogs and beers in fond memory of a guy who, as his brother, Kevin, put it, “never had a bad word to say about anybody.”

Initially, the trips to opening day started with some of the guys who used to meet up at The Pitz Stop, a bar owned by Dean and Steve Pitz, in the mid-1990s. The brothers grew up with Roger in Queens Village, and said he was always someone who brought people together, even after they sold the bar in about 2012.

“We sold the bar, and I thought it was over,” Dean Pitz said of the annual opening day outing.

Perhaps thanks to Roger’s gift for bringing people together, they continued for another 13 years and counting.

Dean said the opening day games at Shea Stadium and later Citi Field were hardly the only group outings Roger organized — Jets games at the Meadowlands and trips up to West Point were also a frequent trip for Roger and his friends — but they were the ones that had been a tradition the longest. Every year, in the days before opening day, Pitz said Roger would be poring over his list of who had what seat, who was on the bus, and making sure everything matched up.

“This was a guy who would do anything for anyone,” Roger’s friend Adam Cohen said. “Without any fanfare or anything, he’d be there. He basically did everything.”

Cohen said he grew up with Roger, and called him “One of God’s own angels,” recalling how Roger used to pick up their friend, Jimmy, who had been in a tragic accident that left him in a wheelchair. After the accident, Cohen said Roger used to take Jimmy out to a bar or to a friend’s place to watch football on fall Sundays.

Tom Mansfield, who’d met Roger a dozen years ago and been coming to Opening Day games for about as long, said he was “one of the most genuine people” you’d ever meet. Tom and his wife, he said, were planning to travel to Ireland with Roger and his wife, Finola, later this year.

As for how it felt being out in the bus lot, tailgating, without the man who had organized it for so many years, Mansfield said, simply, “it’s different.”

As for how they thought the Mets might fare this season, there was a cautious optimism among the Floral Park crowd Thursday.

“I’m optimistic, with reservations,” Mansfield said. The Mets, some of the members of the crowd noted, are usually a pretty good team on opening day. Since 1994, they’re 20-12 on opening day, regardless of what happens later on in the season.

“You always feel good on opening day,” Matt Troy said. “And they play well.”

Troy is a member of the Parish Board at Our Lady of Victory in Floral Park, where McGovern was part of the Knights of Columbus. He pointed out that the shirts the McGovern crowd were wearing actually used a photo of Roger from Opening Day in 2022, when he’d met a fan in an Orange morph suit outside the stadium and couldn’t contain his joy at the outlandish outfit.

(Courtesy of Matt Troy)

For another friend of Roger’s, being at the game without him was like being at the game without a second father.

“He was like my father,” the man said. “When I used to bartend, he’d ask me to text or call him when I got home from work at the end of the night. I miss my ‘second father’ today.”

For Dean Pitz, it wasn’t that simple. While Roger wasn’t going to be in the stands Thursday, he wasn’t exactly gone, either.

“He’s still here in spirit, because he got us this good weather,” Dean said.

As the Mets took the field for a 1:15 p.m. first pitch Thursday, there was hardly a cloud in the sky.

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