When it comes to news about MLB star sons, Ron Nimmo has the inside scoop.
Mets outfielder Brandon Nimmo’s father Googles the slugger’s name every day.
“I didn’t know he was doing this until maybe a few years ago, but he wakes up in the morning and types my name into the news,” Brandon, 31, told The Post ahead of Father’s Day.
Brandon said his father usually knows what’s being reported about him before he does.
“I’ll be up at 12 or 1 for a 7 o’clock game and he’s already up, he’s got his laptop out and he’s already checked out all the coverage, so it’s really funny.”
Ron, 64, a retired CPA who lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and has three children, said he didn’t share the search results with Brandon.
“I’ve learned that it’s probably best for me to let him look into it himself, rather than me interfering,” he said. “I mean, he has a lot of people with a lot of opinions about what to do, when to do it, how to do it.”
Ron also learned not to take what he read about his youngest son too seriously, a lesson he learned from Brandon himself during his time playing for the Mets’ minor league team in Coney Island.
“Now I know what the grace period is for New York fans,” Brandon told his father while playing for the Brooklyn Cyclones. “It’s one day.”
His father recalled his son saying, “The first day I got here, everybody was my friend. But the second day, everybody was just telling me how useless I was and how the Mets wasted their money.”
The Mets drafted Brandon out of high school in 2011, and the following year, while he was playing for the Cyclones, Ron and his wife, Patty, visited New York for the first time.
“Brandon told me about this hotel nearby that had a lot of barbed wire on its grounds and bars on the windows,” Ron recalled.
Ron and Patty decided to take the train to Coney Island in time for the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest on the Fourth of July, but he said that was a “bad idea.”
“Obviously, we’d never been on the subway,” he says, “and we came out of the subway station and there seemed to be like 150,000 people lined up in front of us on the street.”
Brandon recalled growing up in Wyoming, where the long winters were not ideal for baseball and organized leagues were sometimes hours away, his father built a 40-by-60-foot insulated barn in the yard with heaters, a batting cage, hitting nets and a pitching machine for him and his older brother, Bryce, 39, who played baseball at the University of Nebraska.
“We spent so much time in that barn that when I got drafted, it became famous,” Brandon explained.
“We had a bunch of kids on Brandon and Bryce’s various teams and they all used the barn to stay warm,” Ron recalled.
Brandon, the highest-ever MLB drafted player from Wyoming, played on road teams coached by his parents, including Ron, until he was 14. Since he couldn’t play baseball in high school, Brandon joined the local American Legion road team. Most of the games were played around Colorado, two hours away, but some games involved a 14-hour drive to Spokane, Washington.
“My parents sacrificed a lot to make this trip possible. I have two other siblings, and with two parents you can only take two kids, so we had to find a third person to go with us,” said Brandon. His sister, Kristen, 37, was a soccer player.
Ron, who was busy during tax season from January to April, said he was grateful for his wife’s sacrifices.
“I was a partner in a CPA firm here in town, so I had everything I needed except time,” he says. “Thankfully, my wife was primarily in charge of getting the kids where they needed to be, and she did a great job.”
Growing up in La Junta, Colorado, Ron played football in high school and wrestled in college, but a knee injury ended his career during his freshman year.
“I know it wouldn’t have been my dad’s first choice to work a desk job 12 hours a day and do all of this so that I could have the opportunity to do more of what I wanted to do,” Brandon said, “so I’m really grateful for everything he’s done for me.”
Brandon also attributes his deep faith to his parents.
“My parents have always supported me in this sport, but first and foremost, they always wanted me to be firmly rooted in my relationship with God,” he said.
“I tell people, ‘Take your kids to church and it will work out in the end,’ because I was that kind of kid who resisted at first but still went to church.”
Known as “the happiest man in baseball” for his always upbeat attitude, Brandon has also been known to stay late after games to sign autographs for fans in the Citi Field parking lot.
“I think the guards sometimes wish he’d come home,” Ron said.
“By the time he leaves the field, it’s often midnight or later and the fans are still waiting. He stops his car and signs autographs for everyone, and then they can all go home.”
