#Essential workers sing national anthem for Mets home opener

Patrick Connolly, a Bus Operator based at the Yukon Depot on Staten Island, left, and Troy McCullen, a Train Service Supervisor, right, participated in a video of MTA employees singing the national anthem.
Stephen Yang

“My mother was watching it. That’s my number one fan,” said MTA train service supervisor Troy McCullen, laughing from the agency’s headquarters when his part flashed across the screen. 

McCullen, along with bus operator Patrick Connolly, are among other essential workers and first responders who were invited to film themselves singing the national anthem for the Mets home opener Friday afternoon.

A montage of the clips were played before the game and the two workers were elated for the chance to have their voices heard on the big screen on such a momentous day for the New York baseball season, which has been delayed for months due to the coronavirus pandemic. 

“I had to contact someone and the first thing they asked was am I a Mets fan?” recalled Connolly. 

“For today I’m a Mets fan,” he insisted, but he’s actually “a die hard Yankee fan.” 

“But I’m not a Met hater. They are like the willful little brother. It’s like ‘another mistake, what are you doing?’”

Before the pandemic, Connolly would perform as a mariachi singer in New Jersey and has been singing since he was a little kid. 

“I didn’t do it ’til deep in my 30s, I just had a lot of insecurities about it. I was always self conscious about people staring at me while I was singing,” the bus man, who lives on Staten Island, said. 

McCullen wasn’t so shy — he said he “got the bug” for singing when he was in school and started performing in plays as a teenager. 

“I sing at some of the ceremonies so it was a referral,” McCullen, who lives in Queens, said. 

“Almost every day I wake up singing.”