Meet Joe Suozzi, son of congressman Tom, a Mets minor-leaguer with major heart

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — Joe Suozzi, a Mets minor-leaguer and the son of a congressman, has never been much of a prospect. That hasn’t stopped him, though.

After being cut from the baseball team at Chaminade High School as a junior, he managed to make it as a senior. He earned the team’s title of “Most Improved Player.”

After falling short in a tryout for the Boston College squad as a freshman, he was successful in his second try as a sophomore. He became a captain as a senior.

After going unselected in the 2020 MLB Draft, he giddily accepted the first professional contract offer he received — from the Mets, his favorite team as a kid growing up in Glen Cove. He reached Triple-A last season.

So now Suozzi is 26, entering his fourth season in pro ball, still not much of a prospect and still not too worried about it.

“It’s been an advantage because I’ve been in these spots my whole career, dating back from high school, so I kind of understand what I need to do and how I need to learn at every level,” Suozzi, who was unrecruited out of high school, said recently after a Mets spring training game. “It’s tough not being a prospect. But I’ve been here twice already, so it makes it a lot easier. I’ve been lucky to have those things happen.”

In service of that mindset, Suozzi has accepted the reality of baseball and life that all this is awfully unpredictable.

Underscoring that lesson, in his eyes, is the political career of his father, Tom Suozzi, who recently won a special election and became — again — the representative for New York’s 3rd Congressional District.

A former Glen Cove mayor and Nassau County Executive, the elder Suozzi held that House seat from 2017-22. Along the way, he ran for governor twice but never came close. After the latter instance, in 2022, he figured his political career was over.

Then the George Santos saga yielded an open seat, representing part of Nassau and Queens, for the rest of the term that runs through this year. Suozzi, a Democrat, was sworn in Wednesday.

“There’s a lot of parallels in both our lives, both of our different careers,” Joe Suozzi said. “You never know what’s going to happen. He’s lost a couple of elections, I’ve been cut a couple of times. He’s been a role model to me to keep on going after your dreams and what you believe in.”

The reverse is true, too. Tom Suozzi said his son has been an inspiration to him.

“Joe will put in the work and he will never give up,” Tom Suozzi told Newsday in a phone interview. “He’ll have doubts like anybody else has doubts, he’ll have concerns, but he’ll plow through that and just keep going to achieve the dream that he has.”

So committed is Joe Suozzi to his career that he remained in Port St. Lucie — even before minor-league camp officially started — and skipped the major family events of recent weeks.

On Feb. 13, the day of the election, Joe’s night featured FaceTime and FOMO. When Tom was sworn in — coincidentally on Joe’s birthday — it was more of the same.

“There’s no question that [staying at Mets camp] is what he was doing,” Tom said. “Joe will always try to do the right thing.”

On the field, last season was Suozzi’s best, with his OPS improving each time the Mets bumped him up a level: .683 with High-A Brooklyn to .739 with Double-A Binghamton to .767 with Triple-A Syracuse.

He wasn’t a full-timer, totaling 99 games, but he played first base, rightfield and leftfield.

“It was my third year and you start to learn a little bit about how the game works, how to slow down and how to just enjoy it,” he said. “This has been my dream my whole life, so I really just try to enjoy it every day, and that helps me play better, too.”

Tom said: “I believe that if he gets the opportunity to play consistently, as opposed to a little here and a little there, and he gets in a groove, he’s going to have that breakout performance that he hopes to have.”

Suozzi has appeared in two Grapefruit League games for the major-league Mets in spring training, a minor-league call-over for the day who entered the game late.

During one of those, he was struck by the dugout presence of Carlos Beltran, a star on the Mets teams of Suozzi’s childhood and now a front-office special assistant.

For a few hours, Joe Suozzi had a taste of the majors.

“He’s always underestimated. He always comes through,” Tom Suozzi said. “This is a great honor for him, to have come as far as he’s come. What I say to him all the time is you’ve won already. He’s just going to keep on going. He’s going to stick with it.”

By Tim Healey

timothy.healey@newsday.com@timbhealey

Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.