4 Years at Citi Field
Danae had never been to Citi Field.
On Aug. 1, she walked in with her family and took in the sheer size of the place, the sound coming from every direction, the green of the field suddenly visible at its heart. The game came at her in flashes — a pitch, a swing, a throw, the crowd answering in waves — each moment pulling her a little further into an afternoon that was entirely new.
"I'm glad I came," she said, beaming with her son beside her.
The invitation had come from a home team already in her son's corner: The City Tutors.
The City Tutors' fourth annual Mets game, made possible through tickets from the Amazin' Mets Foundation, brought together people who usually encounter the organization in very different ways. Some came through tutoring, others through mentorship or a career event; some brought children, relatives, friends or colleagues. At Citi Field, those paths crossed in the same rows, and a longer relationship with The City Tutors became easier to imagine. A parent who arrived through a son's tutor might one day find a mentor for someone else in the family. A learner might return as a mentor. A volunteer might bring a colleague who becomes a new volunteer. None of it had to happen that afternoon. The possibility was suddenly visible.
Rachel had spent years knowing The City Tutors mostly through a screen. She lives outside New York City and joined in 2020 after IBM invited her onto an early mentoring panel. She stayed, working with people one at a time through résumés, career questions and the decisions that follow.
"I've always loved mentorship," she said.
At Citi Field, the people she jokingly knew only from the “collarbones up” suddenly came with voices carrying across the rows, friends and family beside them, and whole lives extending far beyond the edge of a screen.
Rachel had brought a guest. Before first pitch, he fell into conversation with a mentee. A few hours later, he had signed up to mentor.
He was not the only one. A longtime mentee decided he was ready to become a mentor himself. Another tutor, after years away while finishing school, found their way back too — this time wanting to mentor around the work they now did, rather than the subject they had once studied.
For Danae, the surprise of Citi Field had been finding that green at the heart of all its size and sound.
For everyone else, there was another discovery in the rows around it: the reason you first come to The City Tutors does not have to be the reason you stay, return, bring someone else or one day become the person on the other side of the relationship.