By Andrew McClure

The cheery crocus is the harbinger of spring in New York. The first flower to poke its head through the cold soil is usually a sign that another long winter has come and gone.

In Port St. Lucie, Florida, spring begins when Mets super fan Pat Lowe, with her Kentucky cow bell and kazoo in hand, takes her seat in the first row along the third base line at Tradition Field. While the players and coaches change from year to year, the 78-year-old Lowe, the mother to seven children, has been a constant at Mets spring training games for the past 28 seasons.

“I just love it,” Lowe said. “It’s such a thrill to see the young kids, and talk to the players and coaches. I’m sure I’m a pain in the butt sometimes, but they all treat me so nicely. I hope I can do it for a lot more years.”

Lowe grew up in Brooklyn, the first of John and Elizabeth Dawson’s eight children. Her love for baseball began when her dad would take her to ball games at Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds. “We loved the Dodgers,” Lowe said. “I think dad thought I was a boy! He’d say, ‘C’mon Patsy, let’s go to the ballgame,’ and off we’d go.”

On school days, her mother would listen to the Dodgers on the radio and give young Pat a full recap when she arrived home from Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in Bay Ridge. “They’d break our hearts each year, but we loved them,” Lowe said. “Dad was a big fan of Roy Campanella, and I liked Pee Wee Reese and Gil Hodges.”

With the Dodgers now in Los Angeles, the Mets became Lowe’s favorite team. Her rooting intensified when she was in attendance for one of the most infamous moments in Mets history: the fight between Bud Harrelson and Pete Rose in Game 3 of the NLCS in 1973. The following spring, she had a weekend package at Shea behind third base.

Though they switched to the first base side the following year, Lowe, who worked at New York Telephone for 31 years, and her husband George had weekend tickets at the big ballpark in Queens until they left Patchogue, Long Island for sunny Florida in 1981.

The fact that they ended up in the shadow of Al Lang Field in St. Petersburg, then the spring training home of the Mets, was a wonderful coincidence. “I called the Chamber of Commerce and told them we wanted a cheap, clean room with a bathroom,” Lowe said. “Little did we know that we would be in the backyard of Al Lang Field. The apartment house cost us $75 a week.”  

For seven years, George and Pat were fixtures at Al Lang. They would commiserate with the likes of Lee Mazzilli, Ron Hodges, Darryl Strawberry and the parents of a young flame-throwing right hander named Dwight Gooden. Lowe says her all-time favorite Mets player, without any doubt, is Howard Michael Johnson. “My husband and I were at a Lady Mets Club Christmas party and Howard had just been traded to the Mets,” she said. “There was just something in him that said he was going to be real good. He’s a wonderful man.”

Mike Piazza is another player who is high on Lowe’s list of favorite Mets. Piazza once gave Lowe an autographed baseball bat. While she was thrilled to receive such a precious gift from one of her heroes, Lowe gave the bat to the Make-A-Wish Foundation for an auction that would raise money to help needy children.

George and Pat Lowe followed the Mets to Port St. Lucie when the team moved for the 1988 season. Pat told George, who passed away in 1996, to get her a place near the ballpark. They called their new mobile home a “poor man’s country club.” Though her son Keith of Westhampton Beach, New York bought her a new mobile home after a hurricane damaged her home in Port St. Lucie, she remains in the same complex.  

Lowe, who has 16 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren, is a recognizable figure in her white sun hat with approximately 120 pins adorning it. Not only does she attend each spring training game, she is a season ticket holder for the Class A St. Lucie Mets of the Florida State League. “I’ve seen so many wonderful young kids come through here,” Lowe said. “(Edgardo) Alfonzo and (Rey) Ordonez could hardly speak English when they were here. I used to give them candy. They called me ‘momma.’”

Baseball seems to change each season. There are new stars, new stadiums and new scandals. It’s wonderful to know that each year, there’s a lovely woman with a white hat, cow bell and kazoo, who, like the crocus, can be counted on to tell us that some special things remain constant.