At Mets game, all a-Twitter over bin Laden

A loss in a baseball game, even to the hated New York Mets, didn't seem that important to some of the Phillies fans sitting in the upper deck behind home plate Sunday night in Philadelphia.

"The game felt like it was more about the world than the game. We lost the game, but we won," Phillies fan Caleb Mezzy, 24 of suburban Huntingdon Valley, Pa., said Monday, just hours after the 14-inning game concluded about 1 a.m., with the Mets winning 2-1.

Mezzy and his buddy, Mike Schaeffer, 29, of suburban Warminster, both used the word "surreal" to describe the hours late Sunday as the fans in the stands learned of the death of Osama bin Laden.

Mets third baseman David Wright said after the game that while he was standing on second base in the ninth inning he and second baseman Peter Orr were talking about why the fans were chanting "U-S-A!" He said it took an another inning or two for the players to find out.

Schaeffer said he was checking Twitter about the seventh or eighth inning when he found the news, and "I started yelling. Nobody was believing me. They were giving me dirty looks. I was yelling for everybody to check their phones. It started spreading around the section we were in about 10 p.m., 10:30 p.m."

Mezzy said the bin Laden news spread gradually as others checked Twitter or other websites on their devices. "Nobody was focused on the game for two or three innings. I think it was like the 12th inning before we really got back to the game," he said.

"Mike was on Twitter and he says, 'Obama is going to make a huge announcement.' Then we found out bin Laden was killed or captured. . . . By the eighth inning, by then, he's standing up and telling them 'We got him! We got bin Laden.' People are giving him the weird eye."

"Mike, people were looking at him like he was a crazy person," Mezzy said. "But then they were looking at their phones. Twitter was crashing because there was so much activity on it."

There were only a handful of Mets fans in their sections, Mezzy said, but it was fitting that the Mets were involved.

"It's cool that New York was involved because that was where it happened," he said.

With Ken Davidoff