Queens Kings
The Queens Kings were a cutely-named placeholder franchise operated by the New York Mets in the Class A New York-Penn League during the summer of 2000. The team played at the newly constructed Ballpark at St. John’s on the campus of St. John’s University in Jamaica, New York. The team’s residence in Queens was temporary by design. In September 1999 the ownership of the New York Mets purchased the Toronto Blue Jays’ NY-Penn farm club in St. Catharines, Ontario. The Mets’ intention was to take over as parent club and move the team to a new 6,500-seat ballpark on Coney Island. But the Blue Jays affiliation had one more season to run and KeySpan Park in Brooklyn wouldn’t be ready until 2001. So this created the unusual situation of the New York Mets owning and operating a Toronto Blue Jays farm team in New York City during the summer of 2000.
