In this week’s Friday Know-It-All, Private Events Manager Greg takes us on a dive into a bit of American mascot lore that runs deeper than you might expect.

Baseball is a sport of storytelling. From every inning, to every game, to every series, and every season, the language of baseball lends itself well to the film medium. It’s a push-and-pull game of tension, pained facial expressions, anguish, and triumph. There isn’t anyone that emphasizes the cinema of baseball better than John DeMarsico, Emmy-winning broadcast director of the New York Mets. DeMarsico, a former college athlete, studied film at North Carolina State and grew up as a Mets fan in North Carolina because his parents are from New York.

Now, DeMarsico works with the highly acclaimed SportsNet New York broadcast team to bring a cinematic experience in watching the game at home. DeMarsico has gained a bit of a cult following among cinema and baseball fans alike for his keen ability to recreate iconic scenes in film within his broadcasts. In an interview, DeMarsico outlines his methodology for crafting compelling shots for SNY:

“In other sports, you stick a camera at the center of the court or the center of the field, you pan left, you pan right. You cover a ball going into an end zone or a basket or a net. Hockey, basketball, football, and baseball, the action is produced. We start on a camera in center field to cover the pitch, and then when the ball is put in play, we cut 180 degrees to the other side of the ballpark to a high home camera to cover the ball in play. If we want to show runners scoring, we have to cut low to the low cameras showing runners rounding third base. It’s one of the only sports where a lot of the points or runs are scored away from the ball. There are a thousand decisions that our group has to make on any given play to produce the action.”

The flexibility in deciding what to broadcast lends itself well to many split-focus diopter shots, à la Brian De Palma. Directors like Edgar Wright have taken notice of the homages to cult classics like “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.” Split screen shots serve as cinematic signatures, and they usually arrive at a high point of tension in the game. Check out this absolutely inspired homage to 1968’s “The Thomas Crown Affair.” Some of my favorite shots involve taking a handheld camera and going into the stands to show the viewer at home what the people at the ballpark are seeing. The cinematography and references truly make Mets games must-see baseball (and I absolutely, 100 percent despise the Mets in ways I can’t even begin to get into right now). I have curated a small selection of Mets games in recent history, and what follows are my own personal “movie reviews” of these games:

August 7, 2022: Atlanta Braves/New York Mets

Mets pitcher Jacob deGrom made his season debut after being sidelined for much of the 2022 season. A rare and intimate sequence of deGrom warming up with Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man” playing on the PA set the stage for deGrom pitching a perfect game into the sixth inning, striking out 12 batters along the way. I forgot who won but it doesn’t matter. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

September 30, 2024: New York Mets/Atlanta Braves

Mets and Braves faced off in a doubleheader to determine who will be in the playoffs; winning Game 1 of the doubleheader would get you in. With the game tied at the bottom of the eighth, perennial All Star Francisco Lindor hit a two-run home run to put the Mets ahead. Mets win and punch their ticket into the NL Wild Card series. I think about this game like, once a month. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐♥️

April 14, 2025: New York Mets/Minnesota Twins

Unremarkable. Colors were drab and washed-out because it was freezing and raining at Target Field. Felt like I was watching a boring war drama. Twins lost. ⭐⭐