Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing #88 : Stanley Jefferson : The Man Who Wore All Three New York Uniforms: Mets, Yankees and NYPD
Last week, in Forgotten Faces of Flushing, we turned the clock back and remembered Josh Edgin, a left-handed reliever whose Mets career may have been brief, but whose story deserved another look.
That’s really the point of this series.
There are the Mets whose names immediately roll off our tongues—and then there are the guys who wore the uniform, shared the same clubhouse and became part of Mets history, even if time has pushed them a little further into the background.
And that brings us to this week’s Forgotten Face.
Stanley Jefferson.
If you remember Jefferson, you probably remember the speed.
The Mets certainly did.
But Jefferson's story is about much more than baseball.
It begins in Co-op City in the Bronx, where Jefferson grew up and played Co-op City Little League before graduating from Harry S. Truman High School in 1980. He went on to Bethune-Cookman College and eventually completed his degree at Mercy College.
Baseball was his first dream.
And the Mets helped make that dream a reality.
On June 6, 1983, New York selected Jefferson with the 20th overall pick in the first round of the MLB Draft. The organization saw an athletic outfielder with the speed to change a game, and Jefferson spent the next several years climbing the minor-league ladder.
By 1986, he was knocking on the door.
On September 7, 1986, Jefferson finally got the call to the major leagues, making his Mets debut at Shea Stadium against the San Diego Padres.
It was quite a moment.
The 23-year-old kid from the Bronx was now wearing a Mets uniform in front of thousands of New Yorkers. And he was doing it for a team that was putting together what would become one of the greatest seasons in franchise history.
Jefferson appeared in 14 games for the Mets that September.
But there was an unfortunate twist to his timing.
Although he had joined the club during its championship season, Jefferson was not eligible for the postseason roster. He watched from the outside as his teammates went on to win the National League pennant and the World Series.
He had finally reached the major leagues.
He just wasn't around to experience the finish.
And then, before he could establish himself in Flushing, his Mets career was over.
On December 11, 1986, the Mets traded Jefferson, Kevin Mitchell, Shawn Abner, Kevin Armstrong and Kevin Brown to the San Diego Padres for Kevin McReynolds, Gene Walter and Adam Ging. McReynolds was the centerpiece of the deal, and the Mets believed they needed more right-handed power in their outfield.
For Jefferson, it meant leaving the organization that had drafted him.
It also meant getting an opportunity to play regularly.
In 1987, Jefferson appeared in 121 games for San Diego and stole 33 bases, showing the speed that had made him such an intriguing prospect in the first place.
But the major-league career that scouts had envisioned never quite materialized.
Jefferson battled injuries, struggled offensively and eventually moved through several organizations. He would play for six major-league teams—the Mets, Padres, Yankees, Orioles, Indians and Reds—before his playing career ended in 1991.
For most baseball players, that might have been the end of the story.
For Stanley Jefferson, it was only the end of the first chapter.
Jefferson had spent his childhood dreaming about playing professional baseball.
But there was another dream that had been there all along.
He wanted to become a detective.
After baseball, Jefferson tried to figure out what came next. He worked as a warehouse manager, returned to school to finish his degree and began pursuing the career he had once imagined for himself as a kid.
He passed the New York City Police Department civil-service exam and interviews in 1994.
Then, on December 8, 1997, he entered the NYPD Police Academy.
The following spring, he graduated and was assigned to the Midtown South Precinct.
The former first-round Mets draft pick had exchanged his baseball uniform for a police uniform.
And according to those who knew him, Jefferson loved the work.
He had, in a sense, managed to live two dreams.
First, professional baseball.
Now, the NYPD.
Then came September 11, 2001.
Jefferson was on duty that Tuesday morning when the attacks began.
He and his partner were directed toward Union Square to help manage the crowds of people fleeing Lower Manhattan. He saw the second plane strike the South Tower.
And then the towers came down.
Jefferson would spend the days and weeks that followed working at Ground Zero.
The work wasn't simply about digging through an enormous pile of debris.
It was about confronting the individual lives hidden within it.
A photograph.
A pair of boots.
A personal belonging.
A reminder that behind every piece of debris was a person who had gone to work that morning expecting to come home.
Jefferson worked at the site until late on September 11 and returned for long shifts in the days that followed. He continued working at Ground Zero in the weeks afterward.
One moment in particular remained with him.
Jefferson recalled standing on 14th Street with his partner, Ed, watching the South Tower collapse. People around them looked toward the two police officers for reassurance.
They were looking for answers.
But Jefferson didn't have any.
All he could tell them was:
“Go home.”
The work continued.
And so did the sounds, sights and smells that Jefferson would later struggle to escape.
By the end of 2001, he was dealing with depression, coughing spells and nightmares. By the spring of 2002, panic attacks and difficulty sleeping had become part of his life.
At first, Jefferson didn't fully understand what was happening to him.
He simply knew that something had changed.
The destruction of September 11 was visible to everyone.
The damage it caused inside Stanley Jefferson was not.
In 2002, after being transferred to NYPD Internal Affairs, Jefferson was walking through Lower Manhattan when he suddenly felt as if the buildings around him were closing in.
He had to stop and wait in a doorway until the feeling passed.
The former major-league outfielder—the man who had once stood in front of thousands of screaming baseball fans—was now having trouble being around crowds and confined spaces.
And like many people who don't want others to see them struggling, Jefferson tried to hide it.
He had spent his baseball career learning how to deal with failure, criticism and pressure. He knew how to put on a uniform, walk onto a field and act as though everything was fine.
Now he was using some of those same skills to conceal what was happening inside.
The panic attacks became worse.
His ability to function normally became more difficult.
Eventually, he retired from the NYPD in 2004.
But retirement didn't make the memories disappear.
Jefferson sought disability retirement related to the problems he experienced following his work at Ground Zero. His fight over his disability status became part of a lengthy and emotionally difficult process.
The physical wounds of September 11 were obvious.
The ones Jefferson carried were not.
Perhaps the most powerful illustration of how much Jefferson's life had changed came more than a decade later.
In 2013, the Mets held Mike Piazza Day at Citi Field.
For a former Met, it should have been a perfect afternoon.
Instead, getting through the front door was a struggle.
Jefferson had not been back to a Mets game in New York for years. The walk from his car to Citi Field was difficult. Once inside, the crowd, the noise and the sheer number of people around him became overwhelming.
There were 41,891 people in the ballpark that day.
Jefferson lasted seven innings.
He described it as “the longest game ever.”
Think about the irony.
This was a man who had once roamed a major-league outfield in front of thousands of people without giving the crowd a second thought.
Now the crowd itself had become the opponent.
And that is what makes the Stanley Jefferson story so powerful.
The baseball player who once considered thousands of people in the stands nothing more than background noise now found himself fighting simply to sit among them.
Jefferson summed up what he wanted in remarkably simple terms:
“I want to do what other people do.”
Go to a baseball game.
Go to a concert.
Accept an invitation.
Be around people without having to explain why something that seemed so simple had become so difficult.
Still Trying to Improve
But there is another part of Jefferson's story that feels very much like the baseball player he once was.
He never stopped believing in improvement.
Baseball had taught him that.
You could have a bad game and come back the next day.
You could struggle at the plate and work on your swing.
You could get thrown out trying to steal second and still get back on the bases the next night.
Progress wasn't always obvious.
It wasn't always a straight line.
But you kept working.
Jefferson carried that philosophy into his life after baseball.
Even years after September 11, he deliberately challenged himself to be around crowds. He would go to festivals and farmers markets and stay for an hour or two, even when doing so made him uncomfortable.
He wasn't doing it because crowds had suddenly become enjoyable.
He was doing it because he wanted to prove to himself that he could handle them.
That may be the most important part of the Stanley Jefferson story.
He was the kid from Co-op City who dreamed of playing baseball.
He became a first-round Mets draft pick.
He reached the major leagues during one of the greatest seasons in franchise history.
He never became the star that scouts once imagined, but he kept moving forward.
When baseball ended, he pursued another dream and became a New York City police officer.
Then, on September 11, 2001, he found himself running toward the worst disaster in New York City history.
And afterward, he faced a different kind of opponent—one that couldn't be seen, measured in innings or defeated with a bat or glove.
The hardest battle of Stanley Jefferson's life wasn't fought on a baseball field.
It was fought inside him.
And just like he did as a baseball player, he kept stepping back into the batter's box.
That's why Stanley Jefferson is this week's Forgotten Face of Flushing.
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