Do It! Do It! Do It! Again? The Untold Story Behind 'Let’s Go Mets Go!'—and Why It’s Time for a 2025 Reboot

There are a few things every Mets fan of a certain age remembers about 1986: the fist pumps, the curtain calls, the champagne and the synth-pop earworm that somehow became the soundtrack to it all. “Let’s Go Mets Go!” wasn’t just a rally song it was a time capsule wrapped in keyboard riffs, and unfiltered Queens swagger.

Long before social media teams and dugout TikToks, the Mets went full pop culture. Not just with a song, but with a full-blown music video that actually debuted on DiamondVision at Shea Stadium on a steamy August night nearly 39 years ago. The result? A thunderous fan reaction, a VHS that went triple platinum, and a bizarrely glorious entry into baseball folklore.

But the story behind this glorious slice of Mets history is how it was dreamed up, who wrote it, how they got the players to go along with it , is just as fascinating as the song itself. So I tracked down the man behind the music, Shelly Palmer, and a couple of Mets who lived through it, Howard Johnson and Ed Hearn to pull back the curtain on the making of a moment that could only have happened in 1986… and only with this team.

The plan was as wild as the ’86 Mets themselves: make a pop song, shoot a music video, and turn a baseball team into a boy band before they even existed and before the playoffs started. Because why not?

According to composer and producer Shelly Palmer, the project came together at warp speed during the summer of ’86 back when the Mets weren’t just winning games, they were bulldozing the rest of the National League. The brainchild of famed ad man Jerry Della Femina and his crew at Della Femina Travisano & Partners, the idea was to produce a song and a behind-the-scenes VHS documentary in a matter of weeks. The model? A baseball version of “The Making of Thriller.”

“They had already called every other composer in town,” Palmer said, “By the time they got to me, it was basically, ‘Can you do this fast, can you make it great, and oh yeah, we kinda needed it yesterday.’” Della Femina’s creative brief? “It better be f-ing great!”

Palmer brought in a team of pros: Gregg Smith, Hal Hackady, and studio vocalist Tom Bernfeld, whose gravelly voice gave the track its working-class punch. The final product—complete with thumping drums, Queen-style guitar licks, and a shoutable chorus—was designed to be catchy, loud, and very, very Mets.

“It had to be something fans could scream along with,” Palmer explained. “That’s where ‘Do it! Do it! Do it!’ came from. You don’t sing it—you yell it into the upper deck.”

Recording the song was fast. Filming the video? Chaos.

“The first day of the shoot was canceled at 11 p.m. the night before,” Palmer recalled, “because Mets management forgot to get clearance from the Players’ Union.” Then came torrential rain. “It rained cats and dogs. It was crazy, but we got through it.”

The video’s director, Donna Miller, whom Palmer credits as “the unsung hero,” had to wrangle players, fans, and a hilariously random cast of New York personalities. Palmer got the idea from the “Ghostbusters” music video, which closed with a string of celebrity cameos. He pitched the concept of “famous New Yorkers” belting out “Let’s Go Mets!” and Della Femina’s team was all in. So in came the celebs, Joe Piscopo, Howard Stern, Gene Shalit, Twisted Sister, Tony Bennett, and Mayor Ed Koch all shot against a baseball card motif, faces split-screened like they were in a Topps All-Star set., the final product was part fever dream, part love letter to Queens.

Even the opening—three kids flipping through Mets cards on a stoop—was cast through an agency. Those kids are probably in their late 40s now, still wondering why people recognize them in Queens bodegas.

Getting a clubhouse full of ballplayers to dance around on camera might seem like a stretch. But these weren’t just any players. These were the ’86 Mets—equal parts talented, wild, and completely up for anything if it involved a camera and a crowd.

“Roger McDowell and Gary Carter were amazing,” said Palmer. “Keith was... Keith. He put up with us. But secretly? I think he was into it. And Lenny Dykstra? He thought this was his ticket to MTV.”

Ask two members of the ’86 Mets about filming the “Let’s Go Mets Go!” video and you’ll get two very different answers—kind of like asking Keith Hernandez and Lenny Dykstra to agree on a playlist.

For catcher Ed Hearn, who’s forever immortalized juggling baseballs and an apple, and air-guitaring on a bat like it’s a Fender Strat, the vibe was less magical and more mechanical—at least at first.

“The atmosphere? Tired,” Hearn told me. “You look at my face and Rick Aguilera’s we’re thinking, ‘Really? This is what we’re doing now?’” He pointed to the difference between the dancing ’85 Bears and the Mets. “We had too many white dudes, man. We’re ballplayers, not entertainers.”

Hearn wasn’t trying to steal the show. He was trying to save it. “Nobody was really into it. I actually went to the director and said, ‘You want something fun? Get me an apple.’” So they did. And that juggling scene? Pure improv.

Later, during an outfield group shoot, he picked up a bat and mimed a guitar solo. “They’re asking us to point to the sky and lip-sync. That wasn’t our style. I’m a Southern boy from Florida—goofy's not really in my blood.”

And yet, in a twist only baseball could write, Hearn, who had no interest in performing became one of the most memorable parts of the video. “Funny how it all worked out. Now I make a living speaking in front of people,” he said, laughing. “Back then? I just wanted to get through the shoot without dropping the apple.”

Contrast that with Howard Johnson, who remembers the day as nothing but fun. HoJo, the first man in the now-famous bobblehead sequence, nailed it on the first try.

“Take one, baby. That’s all we needed,” he said proudly. “Our guys were good on the fly. You told us what you wanted, and boom—we delivered.”

For HoJo, the magic was in the shared experience. “The thing I remember most is that it involved the whole team. It wasn’t just one or two guys. Everyone got their little moment. That’s what made it special.”

There were dugout antics with Backman, Mazzilli, and McDowell. Locker room clips showed HoJo peeking over Keith Hernandez’s shoulder at a crossword puzzle. “That was real,” he said. “Keith was a crossword genius. I was just trying to steal an answer.”

It wasn’t just fluff. Interspersed between lip-syncs and hot-foot tutorials were real highlights: Mookie stealing a base, Doc’s majestic windup, Lenny flying through the outfield. The video captured the duality of the Mets—part rock stars, part wrecking crew.

“You watch it now, and yeah, it’s kitschy,” HoJo admitted. “But it’s also electric. The city was behind us, and we were behind each other. The video showed that.”

When the final cut premiered on DiamondVision on August 27, 1986, the Shea crowd lost its mind. “When fans saw their heroes like that singing, smiling, just being guys it was overwhelming,” Palmer said.

The single went gold. The VHS sold out. Somewhere in a Midtown office, a marketing exec probably pulled a hamstring doing a celebratory fist pump.

Even Hearn came around. “The thing I love is how fans still talk about it. It’s part of Mets history. A goofy little time capsule of a team that, for one incredible year, had it all.”

Could a team pull something like this off today?

HoJo isn’t convinced. “Everything’s so polished now. Guys have their brands to protect. This wasn’t about that. This was us saying, ‘Let’s go. Let’s do this together.’”

Maybe that’s why it still hits. Why fans still hum the tune. Why Mets history doesn’t just live in box scores but in grainy VHS tapes, fog machines, and one unforgettable rally cry.

So cue up the fog machine, crank the synths, and press play on the video below in all its unabashed, neon-soaked, 1980s glory. It’s campy, it’s chaotic, and it’s completely perfect. And here’s a wild idea: imagine a 2025 remix—Let’s Go Mets Go 2.0—with Pete Alonso shredding air guitar, Francisco Lindor breaking out the dance moves, Juan Soto doing the Soto Shuffle, Brandon Nimmo taking on the Mookie role, Edwin Díaz crushing the air trumpets, and Kodai Senga reprising Roger McDowell's part . Bring back Shelly Palmer to score the whole thing, revive the bobblehead dugout with today’s crew, and heck—let’s get Joe Piscopo back too. And here’s the best part: give original cast member and current Mets Bench Coach John Gibbons a cameo, because Mets history deserves that kind of full-circle moment. Want to see it? So do I. Hit play below, take the glorious trip back and then jump into the comments. Should the Mets remake this masterpiece for the next generation? Let’s go, Mets fans. Let’s do it!