Marc Levine, late Mets photographer, was 'one of the guys' in the team clubhouse

Darryl Strawberry will forever cherish the embrace he had with his wife as the Mets retired his No. 18 on June 1.

David Wright appreciates the significance of the moments he shared with his family on the field before his last game in 2018.

Dwight Gooden vividly remembers having a catch with his son on a Family Day during his Mets tenure.

And John Franco rattled off some of the peaks of his career – his 300th save in 1996, his 400th save in 1999 and striking out Barry Bonds to end Game 2 of the 2000 NLDS – that he will never forget.

Each memory represents the favorite baseball-related photos for these four Mets greats, they told Newsday. None would have been captured and remembered today as timeless masterpieces without the brilliance of Marc Levine.

Levine, who had been the Mets' chief photographer since 1989, died following a heart attack on July 4. He was 65.

“A lot of times people say all these wonderful things when the person is gone,” Gooden said. “But with Marc, there were wonderful things said about him even when he was here. I would just like people to know that he was a caring person, and he cared about everyone. It didn’t matter if you were the star on the team or you were the 25th guy on the roster or a guy that [got] called up – he treated everybody the same. He’s just a special guy, and he will be missed.”

Said Strawberry: “You just don’t lose a guy like that and you replace him and say, ‘Well, let’s just have somebody else that can be that creative like he was.’ It takes a skill. It’s a talent to do that. Just like us as a player to have a talent to run out there and play, he had the talent to be able to do what he did. It was very special.”

Levine also was part of the mold of the Mets' clubhouse.  He was “one of the guys,” as Gooden, Franco and Wright each said.

Gooden and Levine bonded over their love of cars, with the latter joking about getting Gooden to give him his Ferrari around 1990. Franco would tease Levine about not having film in his camera, sometimes sneaking off with it himself to fill it up with photos. Wright and Strawberry both quipped about the year-plus turnaround to get certain pictures, always invoking laughs from Levine.

“I tell people that aren’t familiar with being inside of a baseball clubhouse that it’s like elementary school, where you kind of make fun of and you get on and you joke around with the people that you like,” Wright said. “You know you’re in trouble if you’re in a major league clubhouse and people aren’t ribbing you or kind of giving you a hard time.”

The relationships with Levine grew beyond baseball.

Strawberry had dealt with his own recent health issues, suffering from a heart attack in March and undergoing a stent procedure. Levine was right there in his corner.

“He was like, ‘Man, I just saw you in spring training,’” Strawberry recalled. “He was just really concerned about my health and everything and my heart, and he was telling me about his heart. He had several stents in his heart. It’s so weird when you see people and you see us as being healthy, and then [the] next minute it just takes a turn and turns for the worst.”

Levine worked up until his death, traveling to the London Series with the team in June. His funeral took place on July 8 in Brooklyn, the borough of his birth. (He lived in Whitestone for many years while working for the Mets.) Hundreds of Mets personnel – from back-office workers to former stars to Alex Cohen, the team owner – were in attendance.

“Everlasting relationship,” Strawberry said. “That’s exactly what it was. He’s a part of the Mets organization. He’s family. It’s like we lost a family member, all of us who have been a part of this organization and know Marc. We know him well. You just don’t know him as, ‘Oh, he’s the photographer guy.’

“He’s the main guy that you can count on, and that’s a big loss. It’s a big loss for all of us."

By Ben Dickson

benjamin.dickson@newsday.com@bendickson__

Ben Dickson joined Newsday’s high school sports staff in 2023 after graduating from Maryland, where he covered several of the Terrapins' teams.