You could say the New York Mets gave WFAN drive time host Craig Carton a pitch right down the middle on this one.
The sports talk host got his digs in at the Mets during Tuesday’s edition of Carton and Roberts after it was reported that the organization made an embarrassing blunder on the statue of Tom Seaver that sits outside the ballclub’s home. Sports website Uni Watch discovered that the “4” in Seaver’s famed No. 41 was the incorrect font in the back of the statue.
It opened the door for Carton to chide both Mets fans and his co-host Evan Roberts.
“How did you guys all miss it?” Carton asked during the show. “All of you die-hard Mets fans? ‘Oh, the statue is great, it’s finally a representation of our greatest player.’ You got the jersey wrong! How did you make that mistake?!”
The Tom Seaver statue has a MAJOR flaw according to @craigcartonlive! 🙄
@CartonRoberts @EvanRobertsWFAN pic.twitter.com/KhVeVIvQIv
— WFAN Sports Radio (@WFAN660) May 10, 2022
The blunder went unnoticed since the team unveiled it outside of Citi Field before the home opener last month during a ceremony that included team ownership and Seaver’s widow, Nancy. It wasn’t until the report by the well-known sports uniform news website that anyone seemed to notice the blunder, which has become hard for Mets fans to unsee now.
“It is not a historical representation of a jersey that man ever wore as a member of the New York Mets,” Carton said. “The Yankees don’t get those kinds of things wrong.”
The famed and sometimes controversial sports pontificator did show some mercy when it came to statue designer William Behrends.
“I feel terrible for the guy that did the sculpture. Innocent mistake,” he said.
Behrends was shocked by the error when he was reached by Uni Watch earlier this week. He told the publication that he had been sending weekly updates to the New York Mets, but he took full responsibility for the blunder.
“I thought, “How the heck did that happen?” So I went back and looked at my original clay model to see if the number mistake had happened in the foundry,” Behrends said. “But no — the clay model has it that way too. It’s not like me to miss something like that, but that’s what happened. It’s something I missed.”
For more coverage of the New York Mets, head to amNY.com.
For all of the things to go wrong this season for the Mets, this seems to be the best-case scenario. New York’s National League baseball team currently leads their division by seven games going into Wednesday’s meeting with the Washington Nationals and they have won three of their last five games.
Still, the Seaver blunder won’t be one that Carton will let Mets fans live down.
