NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City man is on a mission to flush the cremated remains of his lifelong friend — a plumber — down ballpark toilets around the country. 
 
 Tom McDonald tells The New York Times (http://nyti.ms/2qodwCS ) that it's a fitting tribute for Roy Riegel. 
 
 The two baseball fans were childhood friends in Queens, not far from — wait for it — Flushing Meadows, where the Mets play. 
 
 Like baseball, this endeavor has rules. The game has to be in progress when McDonald sprinkles the ashes into the toilet from a little plastic bottle. 
 
 So far, he's done the deed at 16 stadiums. 
 
 Riegel also was a music fan: In Cleveland, McDonald flushed ashes at both Progressive Field and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. 
 
 In Chicago, McDonald did his duty at a White Sox game, skipping Wrigley Field because the Cubs are longtime rivals of the Mets. 
 
 "I know people might think it's weird, and if it were anyone else's ashes, I'd agree," McDonald said. "But for Roy, this is the perfect tribute to a plumber and a baseball fan and just a brilliant, wild guy." 
 
 Riegel's family agreed to share a portion of the ashes after his death in 2008. McDonald spoons out a little each time, from an old peanut can, wrapped in Mets ticket stubs, that he keeps next to World Series highlight videos and his collection of 149 baseball Hall of Fame autographs. 
 
 Hank Riegel, of Waterloo, New York, said his brother would appreciate the offbeat gesture. 
 
 "He'd be like, 'Oh, yeah, do that,'" Riegel said. "He would definitely approve of it. Never once did Roy follow the rules." 
 
 McDonald has enough ashes left for one more tribute. He hopes to do it at Durham Athletic Park in North Carolina, where the 1988 movie "Bull Durham" was filmed. ||||| The Mets fan is flushing away everything but the memories of his childhood friend. 
 
 Queens native Thomas McDonald has decided to pay tribute to his Mets-loving buddy and master plumber Roy Riegel with a novel burial: flushing his ashes down baseball stadium toilets. 
 
 McDonald, 58, has dropped some of the cremated remains of his friend in 16 Major League Baseball parks to date — and he’s got one more pilgrimage to go before his strange journey ends. 
 
 “I’ve been doing this for seven or eight years,�? said McDonald, a retired NYC Transit worker. 
 
 Noah Syndergaard tweets statement about injury, love for Mets 
 
 When Riegel, his best friend since childhood died April 8, 2008, McDonald was at the last home opener at Shea Stadium. 
 
 As boys, he and Riegel grew up in its shadow and spent one particularly memorable season there in 1973. 
 
 McDonald’s mother called him at the game to say that Riegel, 48, had passed away. 
 
 “One saving grace to me was he didn’t have to see Shea torn down,�? McDonald said. 
 
 Sandy Alderson calls criticism of Mets’ medical staff ‘unfair’ 
 
 “We grew up since I was in the Cub Scouts when I was a little kid, known him since I was about 8. Was as big a Mets fan as I know.�? 
 
 One Mets fan is honoring his friend by spreading his ashes at different MLB ballparks. (Al Bello/Getty Images) 
 
 McDonald, a poet in his spare time, started taking small containers of Riegel’s ashes with him on his regular trips to ballparks around the country. 
 
 At first he found discreet places outside to sprinkle Riegel’s ashes. But then, during one night at an Irish bar in Minnesota, a better idea came to him. 
 
 “I went to the bathroom and I was like, I know what to do, because he was ... the best plumber you ever saw,�? McDonald told the Daily News. “He was a master.�? 
 
 He also carried some of the ashes with him to the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland — one of McDonald’s favorite haunts. 
 
 So far, McDonald has made it to Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Detroit and Baltimore, among others. He even flushed Riegel’s ashes in the toilet of his hotel room inside the Rogers Center in Toronto. 
 
 McDonald has also established strict rules, such as that a game must be in progress when he puts a bit of the ashes into the toilet from a small plastic bottle, which he’s wrapped in old Mets ticket stubs. 
 
 Now, there’s only enough ashes for McDonald’s final stop: Durham Athletic Park in North Carolina, where the movie “Bull Durham�? was filmed. 
 
 “They give tours of the old park that they were still using when they filmed the movie in the 1980s still there, (so I’m) going to try and do that one there,�? he said. ||||| He rubbed the ashes tenderly into the asphalt of the schoolyard at Public School 70 in Astoria, where the two had played pickup baseball, football and roller hockey. He smudged them proudly onto a marker on Lower Broadway commemorating the city’s ticker-tape parade for the Mets after their 1969 World Series victory. He dusted them onto Shea’s original home plate location, which is designated by a marker in Citi Field’s parking lot. 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 But scattering the ashes at some stadiums posed problems. Mr. McDonald’s first attempt, at a Pittsburgh Pirates game in 2009 at PNC Park, was met with a gust of wind, recalled Adam Boneker, 46, a friend who has accompanied Mr. McDonald on many of his trips to ballparks to dump the ashes. 
 
 “It was awkward,” Mr. Boneker recalled, adding that they resolved to try it at a Minnesota Twins game at the Metrodome in Minneapolis but, once there, realized that an indoor stadium was not an appropriate setting. 
 
 Afterward, at a nearby Irish pub, a frustrated Mr. McDonald excused himself to use the bathroom. He returned smiling and declared triumphantly, “‘I just took care of Roy,’” Mr. Boneker recalled. 
 
 Mr. McDonald had flushed the ashes in the bathroom. 
 
 “Right there, it hit me,” Mr. McDonald said. “After that, it just took on a life of its own.” 
 
 In the years that followed, he — often with Mr. Boneker — flushed ashes in stadiums in Arizona, Atlanta, St. Louis, Kansas City, Mo., Toronto, Detroit, Cincinnati, Baltimore and elsewhere. 
 
 Photo 
 
 In Cleveland, Mr. Riegel’s ashes were flushed at both Progressive Field and at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, because Mr. Riegel was a devout rocker. In Chicago, Mr. McDonald flushed them at a White Sox game but not at a game of the Cubs, the Mets’ old National League nemesis. 
 
 “It’s funny — not in a joke way — but funny that it was exactly like Roy would have wanted it,’’ Mr. McDonald said. 
 
 Advertisement Continue reading the main story 
 
 Over the years, a wide circle of Mr. McDonald’s friends have gotten updates on the latest disposals. 
 
 Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. 
 
 “It became kind of an inside joke: What’s the best place for Roy’s ashes?” said Mr. McDonald, whose friendship with Mr. Riegel stretched back to Pack 65 of the Cub Scouts and through adulthood as the fun moved into local bars. 
 
 Mr. Riegel was “a major partyer,” Mr. McDonald said, and “walked that tightrope between genius and insanity.” 
 
 The fast life caught up with him, and he died at age 48 on April 8, 2008, the day of the home opener of the Mets’ final season at Shea. Mr. McDonald attended the game without Mr. Riegel and returned home to find out his friend had died.
– "I went to the bathroom, and I was like, I know what to do," Tom McDonald tells the New York Daily News. Roy Riegel, McDonald's childhood friend and fellow New York Mets superfan, died in 2008 at the age of 48. McDonald kept Riegel's ashes in a peanut can wrapped in Mets ticket stubs next to his collection of baseball autographs and World Series highlights, but he wasn't sure exactly what to do with them, the AP reports. According to the New York Times, the answer presented itself after a trip to a bar's men's room: flush his friend's ashes down the toilet. Since McDonald's stroke of genius, he's flushed scoops of Riegel's ashes at 16 Major League stadiums around the country. McDonald calls it the "perfect tribute" to his friend, "the best plumber you ever saw" who "walked that tightrope between genius and insanity." Hank Riegel agrees, saying his brother "would definitely approve of it." There are rules to McDonald's tribute to Riegel: a baseball game must be in progress when the ashes are flushed, and if McDonald also has to use the facilities, "I always flush in between." McDonald has flushed Riegel's ashes in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Detroit, Baltimore, and Chicago (though not at Wrigley Field due to the Cubs' rival status), to name a few. McDonald says he has enough ashes left for one final flush, which he plans to do at North Carolina's Durham Athletic Park, where the movie Bull Durham was filmed.