That's the spirit! LI family's ghost signs for Mets' Kodai Senga a big hit at Citi Field
New York Mets fans Chris Blumenstetter, with his sons Michael (left), Carter (2nd right) and family friend Ronald Scrimenti, pose for a photograph with Ghost 'K' signs prior to a game against the Washington Nationals at Citi Field on Wednesday, Apr. 26, 2023 in the Queens borough of New York City. The signs are a reference to each strikeout thrown by Mets pitcher Kodai Senga. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Appropriately, the signs seem to have emerged out of thin air.
It was April 8, and Kodai Senga was facing his first batter in his first game at Citi Field — setting up Jazz Chisolm Jr. with his signature ghost fork pitch out of the zone before getting the Marlins outfielder to strike out looking on a fastball at the knees.
In response, a ghost emerged.
In leftfield, Chris Blumenstetter, a teacher from Massapequa armed with a cache of vinyl signs and zip ties, guided his two young sons as they attached one to the party deck railing: a ghost, its bottom half a baseball, with fork tines for a mouth. They did it six times for Senga that day, and a tradition was born.
A bit of a viral celebration, too.
“I got home and I saw myself on TV and it was pretty cool,” said Carter Blumenstetter, 11, named after Gary Carter. “I wanted to give Senga a warm welcome to his new home.”
They were on TV, all right: They were on the SNY broadcast, and the signs were mentioned by sports pundits and in game write-ups. Senga was asked about it postgame, and Blumenstetter, who was there celebrating his 40th birthday, got to be something of a hit with the fans out in left.
Another fan even tried to keep the tradition going during Senga’s start in Oakland (security took them down).
No matter. The Blumenstetters plan to keep this going in Flushing. Carter, his brother Michael, 13, and family friend Ronald Scrimenti, 10, were there again last week for Senga’s second start at Citi Field and are going to try to be at Senga’s every home start. With them will come the signs — a logo designed by Dan Abrams, founder of the popular Athlete Logos, which is based in Commack.
“This is a really big part of our life, a really big part of our family,” said Blumenstetter, a teacher in the Half Hollow Hills district and a season-ticket holder since 2004. “We go see the Mets all over the country . . . It really took off. The players acknowledged it, Senga acknowledged it and it was really cool. We hope he’s feeling at home and supported.”
The design came pretty organically, Abrams said. It’s an homage to Senga’s signature pitch, so-named for the late-breaking life that allows it to “disappear,” and for the fact that . . . well . . . the nickname sounds really, really cool. And cool-sounding things have a way of making their mark on the social media landscape.
“As soon as the Mets signed Kodai and I heard of the pitch, I started thinking about designs,” Abrams said. “I thought of a series of three emojis: a ghost, a fork and a ball — [things] that people would most likely tweet after a strikeout. Then I thought it would look better if they were combined together, which is how I came up with the logo of a ghost with the fork as the mouth and a baseball as the body.”
Abrams’ designs have been worn by a slew of Mets, and the graphic designer gave Blumenstetter the OK when he reached out to him on Twitter, where Abrams has over 30,000 followers. After that, Blumenstetter got the banners made up by a local Massapequa printer; he’s got 15 of them, with two slightly different backups in case Senga is feeling Tom Seaver-esque.
“I love the ghosts,” said Carter, who plays rightfield with his travel ball team. “If they were thrown at me, I wouldn’t want to play against that.”
Added Michael: “I would watch [the Mets] every single night no matter what I was doing. It would be my top priority. When we got here, I didn’t even know about these and when I found out, I was really happy — like hey, we’re going to give him a warm welcome.”
It seems to have worked pretty well. Senga smiled when asked about the signs after that April 8 start.
“I’m obviously very grateful and I feel very warmly welcomed,” he said through an interpreter. “Hopefully next time I can put up more ghosts.”
The Blumenstetters will be ready.
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
