NY Daily News

"Is that them?" the kid asked his father.

The men shook hands with younger men that they consider heroes and nodded somberly at a wall bearing 19 names of firefighters from this single FDNY facility that perished on Sept 11, 2001.

"We wanted to let these guys know that we're in awe of what they do every day," said Tom (Terrific) Seaver, who wore the now retired No. 41 when he hurled the once slapstick Mets to their first Amazin' World Series Championship in 1969.

"Fans cheered people like me and Tom and called us celebrities or stars," said Darryl Strawberry, who used to wallop baseballs with a legendary swing into the cheap seats of Shea. "People throw around the word hero a little too loosely. I'm no hero. These guys are heroes. Those 19 guys on the wall were true heroes."

Strawberry glanced down at the agog boy named Liam wearing a David Wright shirt and a blue Mets hat, and rubbed the kid's head and said, "These firemen are the people you should really look up to, kid. They're real heroes. They respond to fires every day to save lives. Sometimes they even respond to terrorist attacks. We're here to say we don't forget their sacrifice."

Seaver climbed the stairs to the big kitchen on the second floor where fresh coffee percolated and doughnuts were spread on a man-sized table under an overhead TV. "This is where we solve the world," said Lt. Paul Rogers. "We've yelled and screamed over a thousand ball games in here."

Through the thicket of blue shirts charged a human nuclear reactor named Kevin Kubler who grabbed Strawberry's hand and shouted, "Tom Seaver, nice to meet ya!"

The other firefighters broke up laughing. So did Strawberry. But Kubler wasn't laughing on that Tuesday morning in September seven years ago when the calls came in and the men of Squad 288 and Hazmat 1 raced to lower Manhattan just in time for the second tower collapse.

"There's only about three or four of us left in the squad from that day," said Kubler, a Yankee fan who today was rooting for the Mets. "It's really nice that the Mets always remember us. Sometimes it feels like most of America forgets. Sometimes you forget yourself. But then you look at that wall downstairs and you remember the guys who aren't here. . . ."

One of the guys lost that day was Lt. John Crisi, a complete Mets fanatic.

"Oh, man, would he have loved meeting these two guys," said Kubler. "All the Yankee fans used to bust his chops in this room and he'd scream about the Mets that he loved so much. God, this makes you remember him. . . ."

He glanced over at Strawberry and Seaver signing balls for the guys and their kids, chatting about life in their glory days at Shea and since. Seaver talked about the days he lived in Bayside, and said he'd wear their firehouse shirt in his vineyard in Calistoga, Calif., that produces his own mail order wine line called GTS (for George Thomas Seaver.) "Damned good wine, too," he said. "But the reason coming here is so meaningful to me is that we had 1,400 forest fires this year where I live out in California. In Napa Valley, we didn't see the sun for two weeks because of the smoke. We lost five firefighters just the other day. New York sent a crew out to help. They called us the Amazins. But what these guys do for a living is truly amazing."

"A ballplayer like me thinks he's having a tough day when he has to face Nolan Ryan at the plate," said Strawberry, laughing. "But, man, I never faced what these guys face. You have to come to a place like this to put your life in perspective. And, believe me, I know all about doing that."

The slugger who got up off the canvas after repeated knockdowns to finally defeat his own fiery demons nods knowingly.

And no Mets hurler was ever more revered than Tom Terrific, whose legend drips down through the generations to a kid like Liam who walked up to him and said, "I read you won 311 games and had like 3,000 and something strikeouts."

"Three thousand and something?" Seaver said, feigning disappointment. "You mean you don't know exactly?"

The kid shrugged, abashed. Seaver yanked off the kid's Mets hat and autographed the inside of his peak with a Sharpie and wrote "3640 K's!"

The dreamy-eyed kid could never, of course, wear that hat again. But he asked, "How does it feel to win three Cy Young Awards, Mr. Seaver?"

"Better than a sharp stick in the eye, Liam," Seaver said. "But not as important as what these firefighters do for us every day."

Then it was time for these two twin towers of Mets glory who came to honor our 9/11 dead to leave, to meet and greet the men of another firehouse in Queens. But before they departed they paused for photographs with the men of Squad 288 and Hazmat 1 in front of the Wall of Battle bearing the names of 19 of 330 firefighters who died on Sept. 11, 2001:

Lt. Ron Kerwin, Adam Rand, Tim Welty, John Ielpi, Ron Gies, Pete Brennan, Joe Hunter, Brian Sweeney, Kevin Smith, Dennis Carey, John Giordano, Jack Fanning, Capt. Tom Moody, Capt. Oat Waters, Lt. John Crisi, Dennis Scauso, Tom Gardner, John Hohmann and Marty Demeo.

"No one should ever forget," said Darryl Strawberry.

"I know I won't," said Tom Seaver.

Just like an 8-year-old kid named Liam from Queens will never forget the day he met these two Mets legends who came to Maspeth to honor real heroes.