PORT ST. LUCIE PEOPLE
The METS FAN
Dick Pecor stops for a picture during the 2014 spring training game between the New York Mets and Washington Nationals. The 80-year-old baseball fan
had just purchased a pair of tickets for his 28th season of spring training home games at Tradition Field in Port St. Lucie.
He had to play a little hooky when he was a teacher,
but Richard “Dick” Pecor has seen every New York
Mets home spring training game in Port St. Lucie
since opening day in 1988.
As a business and accounting teacher at South Fork High
School, Pecor was usually able to cover a class for a colleague
in return for coverage of his afternoon class. And on a rare
occasion, he would use a sick day. It also helped that he was
on the school district’s calendar committee, which set the
schedule for each school year. Pecor says he resisted every
effort to move spring break to April from March when spring
training home games are almost every other day.
Growing up in Burlington, Vt., which always had a minor
league team, Pecor became a New York Yankees fan early
on while his parents were Boston Red Sox fans. He used to
visit a neighbor who caned chairs while he listened to Yankee
games on the radio. “I’m a New York fan,” Pecor says. “When
the Mets started in 1962, I automatically became a fan. They
GREG GARDNER
are in different leagues so I felt I could support them both.”
Since he was a day late for the first season ticket sales, the
good seats on the Mets side were sold out, but Pecor has
had at least two season tickets since 1988. His wife no longer
comes to games because of advanced glaucoma, but she will
come along as they stop at a minor league park in Scranton,
Pa., for a game on their annual summer sojourn to Vermont.
“She (Marilyn) is a great sport,” he says. “We’re on the road
and she will go to the games.” Married for 50 years, the
couple have seen games at 14 Major League ballparks. Marilyn
taught math in Martin County before finishing her career
at Lincoln Park Academy in Fort Pierce.
“My first job was picking up bottles during and after the
ballgame,” Pecor says. “I had a paper route and I got the opportunity
44 Port St. Lucie Magazine
to go to my first Yankees game. I had an eight-hour
bus ride and my back was killing me, but I wasn’t going to
miss that game. Gene Woodling hit an inside-the-park home
run.” Pecor says he was so sick that after the game he was
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BY GREG GARDNER