NEW YORK (AP) — Move over, Baha Men, and step aside, Timmy Trumpet. Here comes Candelita — aka, New York Mets infielder Jose Iglesias.
The tradition of musicians appearing at Mets games and performing songs associated with the team took a unique turn on Friday night when Iglesias sang his song “OMG” following a 7-2 win over the Houston Astros in front of 32,465 fans at Citi Field.
“New York City!” Iglesias shouted as he walked toward shortstop, a position he’s manned 1,016 times in a 12-year big league career. “Let’s keep the party gooooooing!”
Iglesias was accompanied by dancers for more than a minute before teammates — many sporting “OMG” shirts — spilled onto the infield and surrounded him, raising their arms at the “Oh my God!” chorus. Sean Manaea held aloft an “OMG” sign while Harrison Bader, Starling Marte and Mark Vientos captured the performance on their cellphones.
“It’s hard to say how I feel,” Iglesias said afterward in the locker room, where Jeff McNeil and Francisco Lindor were still singing the song. “That was a big deal. Singing in front of great fans and seeing my teammates running up there is just a dream come true.”
Iglesias is a lifelong music fan who wrote “OMG” — which he described to SNY earlier this week as trying to “…maximize the possibility of enjoyment” — and used it as his walkup song upon being called up from Triple-A Syracuse on May 31.
His new teammates immediately took a liking to the 34-year-old Iglesias as well as his song, which is played following every Mets homer at Citi Field and after every win. New York is 17-6 since he joined the team and moved over .500 on Friday for the first time since May 2.
“It’s amazing — I think it’s going to be huge for him,” Mets starting pitcher Jose Quintana said. “That’s pretty cool, being part of this.”
“And the way we keep playing, I’ll expect to listen to that song at least once or twice every game.”
The song was released on all streaming platforms Friday, a week ahead of schedule.
“I think it’s a special occasion,” said Mets manager Carlos Mendoza, who wore an “OMG” shirt to his pregame news conference. “You’ve got an active player that is also releasing a song that is becoming very popular.”
Now the Mets will hope for better post-concert luck for Iglesias and the rest of his teammates.
The Baha Men performed “Who Let The Dogs Out?” — the anthem for the NL champion Mets — prior to Game 4 of the 2000 World Series, but Derek Jeter homered on Bobby Jones’ first pitch just minutes later and the Yankees won the next two games to clinch their third straight title.
On Aug. 31, 2022, the saxophonist Timmy Trumpet played “Narco,” the entrance song for closer Edwin Díaz, as Díaz jogged in for a save opportunity against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Díaz tossed a perfect ninth inning to close out a 2-1 win, but the Mets squandered a three-game NL East lead in September, lost the division title to the Atlanta Braves and were eliminated in a Wild Card Series.
Iglesias, who is hitting .389 in 36 at-bats, said he would not have performed the song Friday if the Mets lost.
“How many emotions were there? A lot,” Iglesias said. “The way my teammates reacted and the fans and everything that’s going on — it’s just a perfect storm and I’m just glad to be in it.”
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
New York Mets' Jose Iglesias performs after a baseball game between the Mets and the Houston Astros, Friday, June 28, 2024, in New York. The Mets won 7-2. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
New York Mets' Jose Iglesias performs after a baseball game between the Mets and the Houston Astros, Friday, June 28, 2024, in New York. The Mets won 7-2. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are drifting higher Monday, following the French market as elections continue to drive swings in financial markets worldwide.
The S&P 500 was 0.2% higher as it kicked off a short, four-day week that includes the Fourth of July holiday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 227 points, or 0.6%, as of 9:40 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% higher.
Some of the world’s strongest action was across the Atlantic, where the CAC 40 index in Paris jumped as much as 2.8% before settling to a gain of 1.9%. Results from France suggested that a far-right political party may not win a decisive majority in the country’s legislative elections. That could mean the country may avoid one of the worst-case scenarios for financial markets, where such a victory could lead to policies that would greatly increase the French government’s debt and other challenges.
This is a big year for elections worldwide, with voters heading to the polls in the United Kingdom later this week and soon elsewhere. In the United States, pollsters are measuring the fallout from last week’s debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. It all underscores “political polarisation and how elections are determining economics, rather than vice versa,” according to Nick Gentle and other members of the product management group at Barclays.
Treasury yields rose in the U.S. bond market, a signal that investors were feeling less pressure to own the safest U.S. investments. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.43% from 4.39% late Friday.
Yields have been generally trending lower since the 10-year yield topped 4.70% in late April. Hopes are rising that inflation will slow enough to convince the Federal Reserve to cut its main interest rate later this year, down from the highest level in more than two decades. High rates are slowing the U.S. economy by making it more expensive to borrow for a house, car or anything else.
On Wall Street, Chewy rose 5.7% after a widely followed trader named Keith Gill revealed that he owns just over 9 million shares of the pet supply company. That’s about 6.6% of the entire company, according to a filing made Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Gill came to fame during the original meme-stock craze of 2020 that saw GameStop rally to market-bending heights. Through it all, Gill became the face of fans pushing GameStop ever upward. Gill had returned to talking about GameStop again recently, which helped its stock rally. But it fell 6.4% Monday following his disclosure about Chewy.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, Spirit AeroSystems rose 4.4% after Boeing said it would buy the maker of fuselages and other airplane parts for $4.7 billion in stock and assume about $3.6 billion of its debt.
Boeing, which rose 3.3%, has been facing tougher scrutiny from the government and the airlines who buy its planes over worries about safety and quality. Boeing previously owned Spirit, and the purchase reverses a longtime company strategy of outsourcing key work on its passenger planes.
Meta Platforms dipped 0.3% after European Union regulators accused it of breaching the bloc’s new digital competition rulebook by forcing Facebook and Instagram users to choose between seeing ads or paying to avoid them.
In stock markets abroad, Japan’s Nikkei 225 added 0.1% after a quarterly survey by the Bank of Japan, called the “tankan,” showed a modest improvement in confidence among the country’s largest manufacturers in April-June.
However the government downgraded its estimate for growth in the first quarter of the year, to a minus 2.9% annual rate from the earlier figure of minus 1.8%.
Stocks in Shanghai rose 0.9% following some mixed data on the world’s second-largest economy. A survey of factory purchasing managers, reported over the weekend, showed conditions remained in contraction for a second straight month.
But a similar private-sector survey of manufacturing activity released Monday showed an improvement in business conditions.
AP Writers Matt Ott and Zimo Zhong contributed.
FILE - A man walking on Wall Street approaches the New York Stock Exchange, right, on June 26, 2024, in New York. Shares advanced in Europe on July 1, 2024, with the benchmark in Paris up 2.8% briefly after the far-right National Rally gained a strong lead in first-round legislative elections. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)
File - People pass the New York Stock Exchange on May 28, 2024, in New York. Global shares have advanced on Friday, June 28, 2024, as traders look ahead to a key report on inflation that could influence the Federal Reserve's next move on interest rates. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)
Currency traders watch their computer monitors near the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), right, and the foreign exchange rates at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, July 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A currency trader walks by the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, July 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Currency traders walk by the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a foreign exchange dealing room in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, July 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
