Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing #44 : Gone Too Soon: The Mets’ Lost Superstar, Brian Cole

Welcome back to Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing, our weekly rummage through the Mets’ attic, where we dust off the bubble-gum cards and game-used jerseys of the guys who made you squint and go, “Wait… didn’t he play for us?”

Last week, we looked back at Chuck Hiller and Harvey Haddix , two men who helped shape a young franchise with fundamentals, grit, and good humor. This week, we shift gears to someone who never made it to Shea but whose name still makes longtime Mets fans shake their heads and whisper, “What might have been.”

This is the story of Brian Cole the shooting star who burned bright, fast, and far too briefly.

Brian Cole never played an inning for the Mets, but if you talk to anyone who saw him in the minors, they’ll tell you he was destined to.

A 5’9” outfielder from Meridian, Mississippi, Brian Cole was the kind of athlete who could’ve starred in anything involving a ball, a bat, or a finish line. At Meridian High, he was a two-sport phenom — setting school records in football with 22 touchdowns his senior year while hitting close to .500 on the diamond. Colleges lined up to hand him football scholarships, including powerhouses like Florida State, but Cole followed his heart to the ballfield instead.

That choice turned out to be a good one — at least for as long as fate allowed. Drafted by the Mets in the 18th round in 1998, he tore through the minors as if he were late for a train. In his first full season with Class-A Capital City, he hit .316 with 18 homers, 71 RBIs, and 50 stolen bases the kind of line that makes scouts start rearranging their five-year plans.

By 2000, at age 21, Cole had become the organization’s crown jewel. Splitting time between High-A St. Lucie and Double-A Binghamton, he hit .301/.347/.494 with 19 home runs, 69 stolen bases, and an eye-popping 61 extra-base hits — 35 doubles, 7 triples, and 19 homers. He drove in 86 runs and scored 104. That season, he was named the Mets’ Minor League Player of the Year, and there was genuine buzz he could skip Triple-A and head straight for Queens.

He had all five tools power, speed, glove, arm, instincts — and he used every one of them. Coaches said he never took a pitch off, never stopped smiling, and never showed fear. He’d already turned down a football scholarship to Florida State to chase the dream of playing center field in the big leagues.

Then came the spring of 2001 — a time when it felt like the Mets were perched right on the edge of something great. Piazza, Alfonzo, Ventura, Leiter, Zeile — the core of a contender still intact, the heartbreak of the Subway Series loss fresh but motivating. Into that mix came Brian Cole, invited to Major League camp so Bobby Valentine could get a closer look at the kid everyone was raving about.

And rave they did. Coaches, scouts, even veterans came away impressed. One scout told a reporter, “He’s the rare kind of player who changes a dugout just by walking into it.”

Then, on March 31, 2001 — a day that should’ve been filled with promise — everything stopped.

After being reassigned to Double-A Binghamton, Cole and his cousin began the long drive home to Mississippi from St. Lucie. Somewhere along that Florida highway, while trying to avoid another car, Cole lost control of his Ford Explorer. The vehicle rolled several times. Cole wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and was ejected. He was 22 years old.

His cousin, who was buckled in, survived with minor injuries.

The Mets community was devastated. Jim Duquette, then in the front office, later said: “He was the player we were going to build around. We envisioned Reyes at short, Wright at third, and Cole in the outfield.”

Former teammate Heath Bell remembered telling him he’d have a $100 million career. “I don’t remember him ever swinging and missing,” Bell said. “He was one of those guys you just knew was going to make it.”

Over just three minor league seasons, Cole played 320 games — roughly two full years of baseball — and hit .306 with a .503 slugging percentage, 90 doubles, 19 triples, 42 homers, 193 RBIs, 237 runs scored, and 135 stolen bases. Numbers that, had they continued even halfway at the Major League level, would’ve made him a star in Queens.

Instead, he became something else: a reminder. A reminder of how fragile the dream can be. How even the brightest lights can flicker out before they reach the big stage.

Every spring, when new kids report to camp wearing fresh blue-and-orange gear and chasing the same impossible dream, the old-timers still tell the story of Brian Cole — the can’t-miss kid who, for one shining moment, made it feel like the Mets’ future had already arrived.

He never got to play at Shea. But in the hearts of those who knew him, he was a Met all the same.