‘Let’s Go Mets!’ Inside the Baseball Anthem That Won’t Die

If there is a God, and the New York Mets somehow defeat the Kansas City Royals to capture their first World Series title in nearly 30 years (Game 1 is tonight in K.C.), there’s a pretty good chance their celebration will be scored by “Let’s Go Mets!” the undeniably epic theme song that’s become a cornerstone of Metropolitans lore.

Created as the official anthem to the 1986 Mets – a team that won 108 games en route to the championship, and featured a once-in-a-generation lineup of swaggering stars and good-time guys – “Let’s Go Mets!” (also known as “Let’s Go Mets Go”) has become a standard, and its chorus is still chanted at Citi Field to this day. And since all of this went down in the Eighties, the accompanying music video is equally awesome, an over-the-top mélange of Mets players, fans in half shirts and era-defining stars (Twisted Sister! Joe Piscopo! Dr. Joyce Brothers!)

So, with the first pitch of the 2015 World Series just hours away, Rolling Stone spoke to the folks behind the song and the video, to learn the stories that led to the creation of a true classic. Like the chorus says, “Let’s go Mets” (sorry, Royals fans).

Drew Sheinman, former Mets V.P. of Marketing: So much of my job and focus was to build and maximize the brand of Mets baseball. Beyond the success of the team in ’86, we were trying to figure out how to build a fanbase that could create the next generation of fans. We realized we had an opportunity at the time to capture many Yankees fans who were younger and more impressionable.

Shelly Palmer, “Let’s Go Mets” composer: In July of ’86 the Mets were like 27 games ahead. They were so far ahead that, numerically, they already got the pennant. Everybody thought this was a team of destiny, but it was still a big risk, no question about it. The thought process was, “Even if this doesn’t work out, we could still get this song out by the end of the season.”

Sheinman: Based on the team winning, we thought it was an opportunity to capitalize on their success. We wanted to build a rallying cry in New York City, which isn’t easy to do. But [the song] was constructed in a way that win, lose or draw, it’d still have the same impact. The fact that the team took off and continued to dominate just made the whole idea work that much better and create a groundswell of momentum.

Palmer: You have to put yourself in the 1986 mindset…VHS tapes were big. They had a $19.95 retail price on them and sometimes they came with two bottles of Diet Pepsi or candy if you bought them at Blockbuster. So there was precedent for music videos and “Making Of” videos. The ad agency came to me in July of 1986 and they had the most outlandish idea. They knew that there was Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video and a “Making Of” documentary. They thought it’d be cool to have a Mets video and a half-hour “Making Of” documentary, too. They had all kinds of ideas for the song, and apparently they went through all kinds of famous people to write it, but everyone either came up short, turned them down or did a really bad job. I think I was the last guy they called.