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ABOUT US
Faith and Fear in Flushing made its debut on Feb. 16, 2005, the brainchild of two longtime friends and lifelong Met fans.
Greg Prince discovered the Mets when he was 6, during the magical summer of 1969. He is a Long Island-based writer, editor and communications consultant. Contact him here.
Jason Fry is a Brooklyn writer whose first memories include his mom leaping up and down cheering for Rusty Staub. Check out his other writing here.
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by Greg Prince on 9 July 2026 5:26 pm Every now and then, the Mets fall apart. Take Sean Manaea. Thursday afternoon under cloudy skies against the visiting Royals, he was totally blitzed at the start by Lane Thomas’s leadoff home run. Did we get a little terrified? At the very least, everything looked dim to us, but then our Comeback Lefty of the Year beseeched the fates to turn around. Soon we could lay bright eyes on what we were watching.
Holding out for some heroes? Start with starter Manaea. He had to be strong, and he lasted seven innings, giving up only two earned runs. He had to be fast, and his velocity’s well up since the season began. He sure looked fresh from the fight as he made himself available for postgame high-fives.
It’s a heartache when good pitching goes unsupported by ample hitting. Truly, it’s a fool’s game, nothing but a fool’s game, when your team loses by an incomprehensible score like 16-12. Nothing of the sort was enveloping Flushing during this Manaea matinee. Baseball heroics on the offensive side were contributed by Tyrone Taylor, who didn’t start, but sure contributed by leading off the home fifth with the home run that tied the game at two; Jared Young, celebrating his 31st birthday with a pair of doubles, including one that drove home the game’s first run; Juan Soto, who launched a larger-than-life cake-icer 435 feet in the seventh; and A.J. Ewing, who spent the middle portion of the contest playing second base, because that’s where he was needed.
Ewing became a major league second baseman for the first time Thursday after Mark Vientos suffered a fracture to his right hand while batting. Vientos had started at third. You love this team ’til your arms break? Then extend a virtual hug to Mark as he deals with his own breakage. Brett Baty — who extended his hitting streak to nine games — had to move from second to third to replace Mark, thus Ewing traveled from center to second for a spell, and Taylor came off to bench to patrol center and, oh yeah, go deep.
 The Mets beat the Royals and the rain in a tidy 2:24. When it was all over, the Mets, rather than leaving us standing in a cold rain feeling like a clown, eclipsed Kansas City, 7-3. They didn’t need to live in a powder keg and give off sparks. For a second day in a row at Citi Field, they pitched very solidly and benefited from one very productive inning (in this case a five-run fifth) at the plate. They also kept Old Friends™ Michael Wacha and Starling Marte from getting the best of us and letting us get a little bit nervous that the best of all the years have gone by. They didn’t even leave us wondering who the next bullpen callup will be (as if one would sweep us off our feet).
The Scots might call a game of this nature bonnie. The Welsh gave us a voice to provide its soundtrack. Also Bonnie.
by Jason Fry on 9 July 2026 1:21 am Perhaps Tuesday night’s Calvinball exhibition stunned the Mets and Royals into dizziness. Maybe it left them feeling abashed. Possibly it was a bit of both.
Whatever the reason, the two teams played a baseball game that was relatively quiet and normal for most of Wednesday night. Christian Scott was good albeit not in a particularly efficient manner, turning in five scoreless innings before Tobias Myers yielded a game-tying run in the sixth. (I’ll cut Myers a little slack: It was driven in by Salvador Perez, who does that, and Myers wiggled out of further trouble in the seventh.) Meanwhile A.J. Ewing led off the bottom of the first with a line-drive home run off opener Steven Cruz but the Mets then did nothing against bulk guy Randy Dobnak, leaving the game tied 1-1 with two outs and nobody on in the bottom of the eighth.
Which was when Calvinball re-entered the story: Alex Lange allowed a single to Francisco Lindor, walked Carson Benge, and surrendered a little bouncer to Jorge Polanco that Lange and Jac Caglianone played into an infield hit. That brought Jared Young to the plate with the bases loaded, and on 2-2 Lange clipped him in the elbow with a slider to give the Mets the lead. Up came Brett Baty, who spanked a changeup over the infield for two more runs. Enter Jose Cuas, whose first pitch went to the backstop for another run and whose sixth pitch becamse a little parachute that brought in yet one more.
The Mets led 6-1, and turned the ball over to newcomer Xzavion Curry, who replaced Met for a Day Matt Seelinger, who replaced Met for a Day Guillo Zuniga. Curry gave up a run but struck out Bobby Witt Jr. to end it; the Mets are apparently recalling Dan Hammer for Thursday’s matinee, so Curry may well be the fourth straight mayfly Met middle reliever.
My advice for Hammer: Don’t unpack.
* * *
You may recall that I’ve started playing a game I call Cap Bingo. The rules are simple: During each month of baseball season, you try to spot caps (or other gear) from all 30 MLB teams in the wild.
Medical stuff and travel has meant a slow start to July’s game, but boy did Citi Field help out on Wednesday night. There were Royals fans, of course, which was welcome as the Royals are a moderately hard spot in NYC Cap Bingo. But there were also caps and jerseys and shirts for plenty of teams that had nothing to do with the game.
There were Yankee fans looking snooty and pleased with themselves, as they generally do. There were scattered Dodgers caps, as Dodgers fans are everywhere now, and Phillies and Red Sox sightings. But then there were the weird ones. I saw at least four fans in Astros garb, which … no idea, actually. I spotted multiple Orioles fans, including one in an ALONSO jersey. (If you were a Mets fan, sir, that’s a lot of money for spite.) There were two different Mariners sightings, a much-loved Expos hat (counts for the Nationals), and an old-school Cardinals top. And, on the trip back from Citi Field, I spotted a guy in a purple and yellow YOUNT jersey, followed in the Times Square subway station by the capper: a Colorado Rockies City Connect 2.0 jersey.
The Rockies and the Texas Rangers are the hardest squares in NYC Cap Bingo; both are basically impossible to spot unless they’re the visiting team. And yet someone attended a midweek Mets-Royals game in a Rockies City Connect jersey — and not even the good design, but its second-rate replacement.
The world is truly full of wonders.
* * *
I was at the game as part of a work outing, so high and far away in section 529 that the Mets were little dots and all the action was below me, smushed into two dimensions. Only the best-struck balls made a detectable sound, giving the game a strange pantomime quality.
This wouldn’t be my choice for regular viewing, but as a one-off it had a certain charm, offering a chance to study the shifting geometries of the fielders. You could tell by the Mets’ and Royals’ positioning and pace when a ground ball was of little concern or a fly ball was ticketed for a glove, and you could see both pattern and routine break down when a ball’s path meant trouble.
The game was sleepy for most of its duration, so the roster of my colleagues kept shrinking, down to two and then one and then none at all — I had the upper reaches of 529 to myself as the Royals did ill-advised things with baseballs and the Xzavion Curry era began. (And, perhaps, ended.)
Again, not the way I’d always like to attend a ballgame, but for one night it felt perfectly nice.
I don’t miss much about Shea Stadium — I often described it as a DMV that happened to have baseball played in it — but one thing I do miss is the ramps between levels, and how we’d form a joyous mob on them after a big win, cutting this way and that while chanting LET’S GO METS!
Citi Field mostly has staircases instead of ramps, with one exception: the switchback ramp that descends from the left-field corner all the way to the street. It isn’t the same as Shea — it’s far more open to the outside than the old yard’s ramps, and if you start descending from the Promenade you’re under open sky. Not as good for chanting, but you do get a gorgeous view: If you move your head from left to right you take in Manhattan in the distance, then Flushing Bay with LaGuardia across the water, and lastly the Whitestone and the Throgs Neck against the sky.
I had that view to myself, with the Mets having won, and as I cut back and forth I may have offered it a quiet little Let’s Go Mets.
by Jason Fry on 8 July 2026 12:05 am When two .410-ish teams get together, one of them has to win, right?
But why is that, exactly?
Imagine if Rob Manfred had marched onto the field in the seventh inning with the score Mets 9, Royals 9, taken the umpires aside and then commandeered one of the mics they use to confirm that they’ve screwed up another call.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we appreciate your coming out to Citi Field tonight — and you certainly have had plenty of excitement. But for the good of us all, this spectacle cannot be allowed to continue. My meteorological experts tell me that the mist that descended an inning or two ago, mercifully obscuring at least some of the horrors before us, was actually composed of the tears of baseball fans who know our great game is not supposed to resemble this farce. Therefore, after consultation with a majority of owners and the players’ union, I am invoking a little-known power I hold as commissioner and declaring this game over. Though the final score is tied, the statistics will be stricken from the record and a loss will be recorded for both teams — and, if we’re being honest, for all of us.”
Would that have been any less ridiculous than what actually happened?
Three runs for the Mets on a first-inning comebacker that somehow sparked a trio of Royals errors.
Horrifying gag job outings by Kodai Senga and Austin Warren to erase a pair of Met three-run leads and then a four-run lead.
The first-base ump ruling a long drive by Jorge Polanco to be a home run when it zipped to the right of the foul pole without changing direction by the slightest angle. (Hey you — no.)
Someone named Tyler Tolbert collecting five hits, meaning he’d gone 12 for 12 and tied a major-league record, with his last three hits on grounders to the infield that Tolbert simply outran. (The streak ended when an overeager Tolbert got under a 2-0 cutter from A.J. Minter and proved unable to outrun a flyout.)
The Mets losing for just the second time in their history — and the first time ever at home — when scoring 12 runs.
And, most cruelly of all, the MLB debut for 31-year-old Matt Seelinger. Called up to the big leagues after toiling in the minors since 2017, Seelinger said before the game that he couldn’t dream it up any better. With the Mets’ bullpen sorely taxed going into the game and having failed spectacularly during it, Seelinger got the call in a 9-9 game that had featured everything except the outfield walls gushing blood like Citi Field had turned into the Overlook Hotel.
Honestly? They should have made David Stearns pitch.
Over the next half hour Seelinger gave up seven runs, alternately walking guys and getting tattooed, as 33,000 people hid behind their giveaway beach towels and Andy Green winced. To his considerable credit, Seelinger then went back out to the mound and gave the Mets another inning, one that went a lot better, though I hate to point out that’s largely because it really couldn’t have gone worse. If A.J. Ewing doesn’t make a nice catch at the top of the wall … oh, let’s not.
Seelinger will undoubtedly now find himself in Syracuse, because that’s the cruel reality of bullpen churn in the modern game. I hope he gets another chance; absent that, I hope the gory details fade while the memory of that first big-league strikeout and putting up a zero the second time around remain sharp.
But at least Seelinger finally got an MLB line for his Baseball Reference entry. The rest of us just got older — and definitely not wiser, if we watched all of whatever that was. To our families and friends, if you haven’t written us off already, please for the love of God schedule our interventions.
by Jason Fry on 7 July 2026 12:29 am Unfortunately, bonkers wins count the same as ho-hum ones.
The Mets’ 7-6 extra-inning win Monday night in Atlanta was certainly bonkers, even certifiably so. Proof: Juan Soto hit a go-ahead home run into the upper reaches of the Chophouse (rudely interrupting its trajectory to the moon) with two outs in the ninth and there was some danger of that getting lost in the shuffle.
But let’s go back, shall we? The game didn’t start swimmingly, as Freddy Peralta was his usual maddening, inefficient self, though an early Jared Young error didn’t help in the pitch-count department. The moment that really had me seething? It was Peralta all but springing off the mound at the conclusion of the fourth. Yes, he’d escaped trouble, but at that point he’d needed more than 90 pitches to complete four lackluster innings. More ace-caliber stuff for David Stearns’ prized offseason acquisition!
The Braves had a 3-1 lead; the Mets would draw within 3-2 but get stymied again and again by exceptional Atlanta defense, whether it was Mauricio Dubon diving to pluck a Francisco Lindor liner off the tips of the grass or Jim Jarvis erasing Bo Bichette on an Ordonez-esque relay home or Ozzie Albies snagging an in-between hop to double A.J. Ewing off second. The Braves were making every conceivable play while the Mets looked unkempt, though at this point I’ve been cudgeled into apathy and can rarely muster more than sighs and muttering at most Met failings.
But despite looking like they’d been thoroughly outplayed, the Mets were within a skinny run when Raisel Iglesias trooped out to the mound to lock down the save, only to be burned by overreliance on his fastball. He gave up a single to Francisco Alvarez on the fastball, eviscerated Brett Baty on three straight changeups, ignored that object lesson and inexplicably threw Ronny Mauricio a fastball for another single, and so wound up facing off with Soto.
Soto wouldn’t bite at the changeup and on 3-1 Iglesias tried to sneak a fastball past him on the inside part of the plate … and, well, the old cliche about trying to throw a lamp chop past a wolf is right there, isn’t it? Soto clubbed it down the right-field line and stood stock still after he connected, watching the ball travel with the detached, analytical look he fixes on pretty much everything a baseball does when he has a bat in his hand. Not to worry — it came down 430 feet away and the Mets were up 5-3.
Or at least they were for a good six or seven minutes.
Devin Williams — the other half of the David Stearns specialty combo — came on with his airbender MIA and it didn’t go well: an Albies leadoff double was followed by a home run from Matt Olson, his second of the game, and the score was tied with the Braves looking for the walkoff. With two outs and doom 90 feet away at third, Andy Green mercifully sent Williams packing and summoned Brooks Raley, who struck out momentary 2025 Met Jose Azocar on three pitches.
(Williams, oh my. Unless the trajectory of his career changes soon — and it can, as Edwin Diaz could tell you — Met fans will be shaking their heads about Williams for decades, the same way the name “Braden Looper” leads to eye-rolling among veteran fans now. And with reason: Pete Alonso broke Devin Williams and so the Mets … acquired him? I will never understand that one.)
With Manfred Ball now in dingbat session, the Mets faced off against Owen Murphy, who was making his big-league debut. It looked like young Murphy might emerge from this unenviable fix intact, as he got two quick outs to start the 10th. But he then hit Young in the foot and hung a slider to Luis Torrens, who pulled it to the left-field wall to put the Mets back up by two.
If you thought it wouldn’t be easy, well, good on you for paying attention. The Mets turned to Luke Weaver, who’s been their best reliever for more than two months (and another Stearns import, to be fair), and Weaver yielded a one-out double to bring the Braves within one before fanning the detestably dangerous Albies. The Mets opted to intentionally walk Olson, which was advisable, but then unintentionally walked Jorge Mateo, which was not. So it would be Dubon vs. Weaver with two out, the bases loaded and another ridiculous game teetering on the tightrope.
Weaver’s second pitch was a fastball with a lot of plate, but Dubon smacked it to Ronny Mauricio, who flipped it to Baty at second for a little Mauricio-on-Mauricio crime and the second Mets escape act in two days. I didn’t hear if Keith Raad called it another damn thing, but it would have been justified, wouldn’t it?
Escaping White Flight Stadium with a split, however harrowing the two Ws were to secure? In this dreary trudge of a season, that feels like a near-miracle.
by Jason Fry on 5 July 2026 10:42 pm July 4’s delightful defeat in Atlanta had me drawing up a declaration of independence from the remainder of my team’s 2026 contests, so I didn’t particularly mind when the Mets and Braves started off late because of rain down in Georgia — hell, it can rain out the rest of this dreary year for all I care.
But when I did report for duty (on time, I’ll have you know), I was baffled by the question of what Peacock was and if I had access to it. Turns out I did, but I didn’t have whatever premium tier was needed to watch the Mets. That was an easy one: The 2026 Mets are not in any way a premium-tier team, so off I went to find Keith Raad and Pat McCarthy on the radio.
Raad and McCarthy have evolved into a pretty good duo, with a nice rhythm of their own. But they had no good news to report early: The Mets staked Nolan McLean to a 1-0 lead in the top of the first against a wild Martin Perez, only to have McLean turn in a rocky bottom of the first, complete with more lousy Mets defense, that made it 3-1 Braves.
I nearly took my leave then and there, but inertia kept me listening for another inning, if only to fume at my team and demonstrate how thoroughly deserved my disdain was. Except Perez wasn’t any better than he’d been in the first and all of a sudden the Mets led 5-3.
Keith and Pat were pretty sure that this one was headed to stratospheric bad-baseball line score, which seemed like a good bet. But then McLean settled down and so did Perez (at least until Juan Soto hit him in the pitching arm with a line drive) and the game ground along for a long middle chapter without further scoring, a good chunk of which burbled out of my iPhone while I slumbered next to it with a book tented on my chest.
I woke up and it was still 5-3, but all hell was about to break loose. Brooks Raley and Luke Weaver (continuing his sublime run of relief work) kept the Mets out of trouble in the seventh and eighth, and in the top of the ninth the Mets ambushed Old Friend Carlos Carrasco: Tyrone Taylor home run, Bo Bichette two-run double, Jared Young two-run single.
The Mets led by seven and Devin Williams sat down. I imagined Andy Green might call on Guillermo Zuñiga, the all-time roster bookend in waiting, but instead he opted for Huascar Brazoban — who got ambushed himself.
Single, single, ball thrown down the line (10-4), single, walk, strikeout, Drake Baldwin grand slam. And it was 10-8.
Exit an understandably shell-shocked Brazoban, enter Williams after all, and it was buckle-up time, because those were the Braves and this was White Flight Stadium and horrors are never far off.
Strikeout (whew it’s all going to be fiiiiine), double, wild pitch, infield single … and it was 10-9. One out to get, but the tying run was on first and the walkoff winning run was at the plate and this was no longer even faintly amusing.
Mauricio Dubon single, with Dubon advancing to second and Willie Harris II on third. That brought another Old Friend, rejuvenated Brave Dom Smith, to the plate, and now a single would beat the Mets. A single, or a double, or another hideous error, or any number of terrible things.
Williams went to 2-0 on Smith, but then got two strikes to even the count — and threw an airbender below the zone that Smith swung over to end the game.
At which point Raad, to my astonishment and delight, announced “and the Mets win the damn thing, 10-9.”
That, of course, was an invocation of the great Bob Murphy in late July 1990, when the Mets somehow escaped a house-of-horrors contest in Philadelphia by that same score. Given that Raad was three years away from entering the world that summer night, and so rather obviously not an earwitness, I’m eager to hear exactly how the tribute came together. Raad is a student of the game and Mets tradition, so did he know of Murph’s long-ago moment and have it in his back pocket? Did (the immortal) Chris Majkowski put it in his ear? Did Howie Rose send him a text?
Whatever the case, it was pitch perfect — and I wound up happy that I’d been confronted with a Peacock broadcast and gone the cheapskate route. The Mets won the damn thing, 10-9, and Raad added a lovely little historical grace note as they did. Even lost seasons will bring a smile to your face every now and again.
by Greg Prince on 5 July 2026 12:12 pm Before the Mets fell — and I do mean fell — in Atlanta on Saturday night, 14-3 (Pete Gogolak connected for a late field goal, but those two Falcon touchdowns were too much to overcome), Juan Soto was named as a starting outfielder to the National League All-Star team. This might be a fact worthy of sustained celebration had the Mets not just lost, 14-3, for their twelfth defeat in their fourteen most recent attempts at not being defeated. But good for Juan being voted in by fans everywhere. It’s nice to know being the most recognizable player on these particular New York Mets hasn’t totally sullied his brand.
During the game in which Mets lost by eleven to the first-place team they now trail by seventeen, there was little to commend, but I’m of a mind to tip a cap to Sean Manaea, starting pitcher. The Mets during their eerie bookend phase (38-55 to end last year, now 36-53 to begin this year) have shown a knack for transforming established starters into staff nomads. I suppose the pitchers have done it to themselves just as much. David Peterson was an All-Star starter midway through 2025. He wandered into an undefined bullpen role, never to fully return to form. Kodai Senga, 2023 All-Star, is currently a man without a routine. Manaea, who earned Cy Young support in 2024 as the closest thing the Mets had to an ace, was stranded in that leaky boat when 2026 started. He wasn’t a reliever, yet there he was, soaking up odd innings in the pen, sometimes making progress, sometimes regressing a tad. Yet here we are, in tatters in general, but with Sean Manaea having taken the ball for five consecutive starts. I mean, sure, that’s why he was re-signed two winters ago, but we’ve watched wayward paths devour all sorts of plans of late. Undermined by what we’ll call his defense, Manaea lasted five innings Saturday. It took him 108 pitches of effort, the epitome of inefficiency, but he could have very well been done after three. Within the context of this game, he held the fort just enough to let the Mets creep back to viability (from 6-0 to 6-3 in the sixth) against a less than stifling Chris Sale, though the Mets’ bats crept back into their hole at the first sign of Sale’s successors. At the very least, Sean Manaea saved wear and tear on the pitching arm of Luis Torrens the catcher who had to face only three batters in the eighth.
After the game that put a damper on the Fourth of July, assuming you could hear anything over your friendly, local unsanctioned fireworks shows (technically the morning after), we learned Joey Gerber was optioned to Triple-A. Joey Gerber had to be rescued amid mop-up duty by Luis Torrens, so his demotion wasn’t a surprise. The absolute shock greeting us this Fifth of July was the Mets calling up a righthanded reliever named Guillermo Zuñiga. Despite this gentleman (listed as Guillo Zuñiga by Baseball-Reference) having thrown an inning for the Cardinals against the Mets in 2023, I hadn’t tracked his career much. I didn’t know he had been pitching for us in 2026 at Binghamton and Syracuse. I didn’t know he was considered Next Man Up on our depth chart. Most of all, I didn’t think Tyler Zuber’s hard-earned place at the end of the all-time Mets alphabet would be vulnerable to a nudge so soon. Zuber, as you have surely retained, was acquired at the trade deadline in 2024, but didn’t make his Met debut until last June. When he did, he supplanted Don Zimmer as the last of the Z’s in Mets history. Pat Zachry couldn’t do it. Todd Zeile couldn’t do it. But Tyler Zuber did it, with one appearance in 2025. One appearance was all it took. It’s barely a year later. Guillermo Zuñiga is on the scene. Like so much of the 2026 Met season, I did not see a new ‘Z’ coming to town. Most of what we’ve seen of the 2026 Met season we wish to unsee. Zuñiga? We’ll zee…
by Greg Prince on 4 July 2026 1:25 pm For America’s 250th birthday, the New York Mets have presented us with a pair of slightly misshapen bookends they’ve been crafting for over a year. The club begs our indulgence regarding the way they don’t quite match. While the Mets realize the Semiquincentennial is an occasion worthy of the bookends’ unveiling, they ask if we can give them just five more days, and there’s a chance they will get the pair to match exactly.
We, of course, give them our indulgence on the Fourth of July. And on the Third of July. And on just about every day, inherently celebratory or not. Our indulgence is our gift to them. I was out and about and sweltering on the Third of July in 2026, thinking not, “Isn’t it something that our country has reached a notable round number since its founding?” but “Hey, the Mets are on tonight!” Few Mets teams have been less worthy of an anticipatory exclamation point than the 2026 Mets. Awareness of their itinerary at this point is becoming surprising.
But we are their fans, and this is how we are, at least until they come on the air and remind us how rarely they contribute to a celebratory mood. On Friday night, the Third of July, the Mets took the field in Atlanta, and lost to the Braves, 5-3. Juan Soto’s opposite-field, third-inning, two-run homer, caught in the left field bullpen by Cionel Perez in the role of Tom House, put the Mets on the board. The Braves had beaten the Mets there via Michael Harris II’s own two-run shot a half-inning earlier.
Ozzie Albies took back Atlanta’s edge in the bottom of the third with a solo blast. In the fifth, Matt Olson went very deep with nobody on. The Braves were up, 4-2. Christian Scott, who gave up the first two Atlanta longballs, and A.J. Minter, who gave up the next, didn’t allow anything else in terms of singles, doubles, or triples. Nor did reliever Kodai Senga, until Olson invited him on a lunar exploration mission in the eighth. All the hits for the home team were home runs until two outs in the eighth, when Harris snuck a single through the infield to negate the curiosity factor of what loomed as yet another dull Met loss you wouldn’t think to detail for public consumption unless you and your friend got in the habit of detailing every Mets game for public consumption in April of 2005 and you two never broke yourselves of it.
The Mets’ ninth tantalized the fan who looked forward to all this during the afternoon. God, that fan is silly. Essentially asleep since Soto’s 262nd career homer in the third (Juan is 493 behind Henry Aaron and exactly 500 from Barry Bonds), the Met offense stirred just enough to make keeping one’s eyes open an almost worthwhile endeavor. Luis Torrens singled off closer Raisel Iglesias with one out, and took second on defensive indifference with two out. God, the Mets inspire so much indifference these days. Soto singled Torrens to third. Bo Bichette, fresh from feeling the love in Toronto, made himself useful to New Yorkers in Atlanta with an RBI single that scored Luis. Juan went to third. Francisco Lindor came up as the potential go-ahead run à la September 30, 2024. Or he could just keep the first sustained Met rally of the night going. Alas, Linsanity was not in evidence. Francisco grounded to second (score it 4-3) to end the game (score: 5-3).
None of this spoke well for the Semiquincentennial spirit. Or maybe it spoke precisely to the Semiquincentennial spirit, as that’s a word you haven’t heard all that much and will likely hear very little after this weekend. Still, as we inveterate daily viewers of New York Mets baseball and dedicated annual viewers of 1776 will affirm, the eve of the Fourth of July is the eve of the Fourth of July. Every ten years on July 3 in years ending in 6, the Mets are at least modestly interesting.
JULY 3, 1966: The nation turns 190 years old. The Mets split a doubleheader with the Pirates, losing the opener, 8-7, taking the nightcap, 9-8. It was as if Wes Westrum had gathered his charges between games and informed them, “Boys, I know you’re all fond of letting Pittsburgh score eight runs, but if you’re gonna do that, you fells simply gotta score nine.” Lesson learned, especially in the bottom of the sixth, when the Mets erased a 6-3 deficit with six runs built on five singles and two doubles, all enough to withstand Willie Stargell’s inevitable ninth-inning two-run homer. (Willie Stargell hit more home runs at Shea Stadium than any opponent; somewhere, I believe, Willie is still hitting them.) South of Shea that very day, in Atlanta, future Met Moises Alou was born. Moises’s dad Felipe was employed by the Braves then, thus explaining why when Immaculate Grid asks for a player born outside the fifty states and District of Columbia, you shouldn’t pick Moises Alou, even though Moises Alou — onetime Pirate, Expos, Marlin, Astro, Cub, Giant, and Met — is otherwise a most versatile Immaculate Grid answer.
JULY 3, 1976: It was Medallion Day at Shea Stadium. Promotions were rare enough in those days that the promise of a coinish object commemorating the 200th anniversary of America and the 100th anniversary of the National League could draw more than 47,000 paying customers. Maybe those medallions have appreciated in value in the succeeding half-century. I wasn’t there. I had a gloriously gaudy Bar Mitzvah gala to attend in the evening. It was in one of those places, in Jamaica, where multiple affairs are going on at once. I vaguely recall a rumble nearly breaking out between guys from my friend’s Bar Mitzvah and guys from somebody else’s Bar Mitzvah. Maybe a floral centerpiece was up for grabs. The Bar Mitzvah boy on our side of the divide was my Yankees fan friend Todd Feltman, who wasn’t necessarily kvelling that earlier in the day, the Mets had won their ninth in a row by besting the Cubs, 3-2, in ten. Tom Seaver and Rick Reuschel each pitched into the tenth, suggesting that in terms of how pitching is managed, 1976 was closer to 1776 than it would be to 2026. The winning run was set up by a Buddy Harrelson triple to deep right to lead off the tenth. Harrelson was asked if he thought the ball he hit uncharacteristically far looked like a home run as it traveled toward its destination. “Frankly,” he responded, “I don’t know what a home run looks like.” Cubs manager Jim Marshall, an Original Met, ordered two intentional walks — to Joe Torre and Mike Phillips — in the wake of Buddy’s three-bagger. Set up to get an out at any base is something they teach you from the Torah. It was a desperate ploy to escape the jam that had just materialized, but Marshall didn’t live to 94 years old without a few hunches paying off. A strikeout of Bruce Boisclair indicated the strategy had a chance of succeeding. But then Darold Knowles, he who appeared in all seven games of the 1973 World Series, thought he’d get cute and try to pick Phillips off first base. As Phillips — who had cycled in Chicago eight days prior — dove back into the bag, the ball got away from first baseman Pete LaCock, and Harrelson scored the winner. It didn’t negate the World Series result from three Octobers earlier, but it did yield this Bicentennial-appropriate quote from Joe Frazier: “That’s baseball and that’s what makes this country great.”
JULY 3, 1986: Of the 108 regular-season wins the Mets amassed in the Year to Remember, this one rates as unforgettable. Back and forth between the first-place Mets from the East and the (entering the evening) first-place Astros from the West before a Fireworks Night crowd of better than 48,000 at Shea, perhaps proving fireworks are a slightly more popular attraction than medallions. The Astros scored two in the first. Ed Hearn homered in the second. Houston plated another run in the fourth. Darryl Strawberry tied it with a two-run blast in the fifth. The game went to extras. The frigging Astros took an apparently definitive 5-3 lead when Phil Garner homered with a man on in the tenth. But the 1986 Mets were all about defining things on their own terms. Lenny Dykstra walks to lead off the home tenth. Darryl lets loose with his second home run of the night. Tie game. Two outs later, Ray Knight is up. This is how Tim McCarver described the swing of Frank DiPino that ensured a 6-5 final on Channel 9: “This ball is outta here, and this ballgame is over, and I don’t believe it! Ray Knight hits a game-winning home run, and the Mets have won seven in a row. They’re spreading the news that they are right now the DOMINANT team in this game — in either league.” Indeed, the Mets had raised their record to 53-21, 4½ games better than anybody else anywhere. Their next-closest competitor — in either league — was the Red Sox. Like the Astros, we’d see them in October. So much foreshadowing. So many fireworks. Meanwhile, somewhere in Indianapolis, an infant his parents, the Hunters, would name Tommy was born. Tommy would grow up to pitch for many teams, including the Mets in 2021. It was as a Met that year that Tommy Hunter recorded his only major league base hit of a career that would span sixteen seasons. Though he would pitch in 2022 and 2023, Hunter never batted again, meaning he remains 29 games shy of the Mets’ franchise mark for consecutive games with at least one base hit. That record, of 30, is held by his fellow July 3 baby, Moises Alou.
JULY 3, 1996: We, which is to say sentient Mets fans, demanded the promotion of Alex Ochoa from Norfolk. The Mets were in their extended mid-1990s doldrums. Ochoa was batting .339 versus Triple-A pitching. Hell yes, get him up here. Through nine games, he was scorching National League hurlers for a .344 average. In his tenth game, he took an ohfer, to fall to .306. In his eleventh game, this game, Alex went 5-for-5, including one of every kind of hit, which is to say Alex Ochoa made like Mike Phillips at Wrigley Field in 1976 and hit for the cycle at Veterans Stadium, leading the Mets past the Phillies, 10-6, and pushing us to the brink of a brighter day, we, which is to again say sentient Mets fans, were certain. Of course he was. Alex Ochoa was batting .390 after going 5-for-5 with a single, two doubles, a triple, and a home run. Bless those small sample sizes. By year’s end, Alex’s average would drop (it was going to rise?), but it settled in at a respectable .294 for roughly a half-season’s work. The five hits he totaled on July 3 matched the five tools we, which is to say sentient Mets fans prone to believe any positive scouting report, were told Ochoa possessed. The Mets lost 91 games in 1996 despite his presence. They won 88 in ’97, though Alex’s contributions were muted. He batted .244, without a ton of excellence displayed in any facet of the game. He’d be traded to Minnesota shortly thereafter. We, which is to say sentient Mets fans, moved on, but we’d always have that cycle.
JULY 3, 2006: Gotta be honest. This wasn’t an interesting game the way its July 3 in years ending in 6 predecessors were. No Met offensive explosions or Met walkoff triumphs. We — which is to say the Mets — lost to the Pirates at Shea, 11-1. But I did sort of, kind of, almost catch a foul ball. Well, not really, but the foul ball caught my left thumb. Upon reflection, I’m surprised the foul ball didn’t take my left thumb with it. Because my aforementioned habit for detailing for public consumption every Mets game was in full effect by July of 2006, your left thumb can vicariously experience the same buzz my did twenty years after the fact.
JULY 3, 2016: WILMER! WILMER FLORES! WILMER FLORES WENT SIX-FOR-SIX, TYING EDGARDO ALFONZO’S METS RECORD FOR MOST BASE HITS IN A SINGLE GAME! WE SMASHED THE CUBS, 14-3! WE SWEPT FOUR FROM THE EVENTUAL WORLD CHAMPIONS! WHY AM I YELLING? BECAUSE IT WAS JUST THAT WONDERFUL!
Compared to all that, July 3, 2026, comes up a little bit shy. Yet the Mets continued to work on that pair of bookends they appear so anxious to give us.
Over the final 93 games of 2025, the Mets put together a record of 38-55.
Over the first 88 games of 2026, the Mets put together a record of 36-52.
If we — which is to say sentient Mets fans who are tempted to nod off during their games, despite looking reflexively looking forward to them (but we can’t, thanks to whoever in the neighborhood insists on making every night this time of year Fireworks Night) — can show a bit of patience, and wait for the Mets lose to three of their next five games, the bookends will be perfectly matched. What are the odds the Mets won’t go 2-3 in their next five to get to the 93-game mark at 38-55? I’m confident that some MLB sponsor would happily post those odds if asked. I’m not confident that the Mets will get to 93 games at 38-55, however, because those mathematical goals that get close tend to turn elusive at the last minute. Witness the Braves hitting only home runs and nothing else on Friday night while scoring as many runs as they did. As mentioned on the telecast, that had never happened for the Braves before in their 151 seasons of operation. That single they got in the eighth foiled a neat statistical note.
Is this is to say I’m rooting for the Mets to go 2-3 in their next five games just so I can point to the team going 38-55 to end last year (which triggered the roster transformation that followed) and the team going the exact same 38-55 (with a tangibly different cast, indicating the inefficacy of said roster transformation) rather than rooting for the Mets to win every game they can?
That’s a trick question. It doesn’t matter what I root for. The Mets go 38-55 to end one year and 36-52 to start the next without seeking my consent. And how did not seeking consent work out for the British 250 years ago?
by Greg Prince on 1 July 2026 7:46 pm On Canada Day 2026, let us remember that since 1962, our neighbors to the north have given (or at least loaned) the New York Mets a dozen of their countrymen, sending them south from their home and native land to play baseball for the likes of us. Therefore, we salute:
Ray Daviault — who pitched in the Mets’ very first home game at the Polo Grounds;
Ken MacKenzie — who posted the only winning record for the Original Mets;
Tim Harkness — who belted a 14th-inning walkoff grand slam to defeat the Cubs in 1963;
Ron Taylor — who saved 13 games for the 1969 World Champion Mets;
Brian Ostrosser — who briefly filled in at shortstop for Buddy Harrelson during the prelude to the Mets’ pennant run of 1973;
Jason Bay — who ran into walls as a Met left fielder, only because he couldn’t run through them
Mike Nickeas — who used the custom R.A. Dickey knuckleball mitt behind the plate when Josh Thole needed a breather;
Jim Henderson — who followed in the no-relation tradition of Met Hendersons Steve, Ken, and Rickey;
Rob Zastryzny — who waited patiently through roster roll call for a spell during 2022;
Zach Pop — who is better known to us in the northeastern United States as Zach Soda;
Jonah Tong — who remains talented and eager to show it again soon;
and Jared Young — who is the Mets’ incumbent first baseman, partly on merit, partly because there’s not really anybody else on hand to be that.
Canada, in the form of its lone existing Major League Baseball team, also gave the New York Mets a whuppin’ on Canada Day 2026, a 9-3 decision in favor of the Toronto Blue Jays at Rogers Centre. The Jays gave it to Freddy Peralta in particular, but in the spirit of North American brotherhood, they gave it to us all.
Let us forget that.
by Jason Fry on 1 July 2026 7:42 am Six solid innings from Nolan McLean, followed by a criticism-free inning each from Brooks Raley, Luke Weaver and Devin Williams.
Home runs from Francisco Alvarez and Luis Torrens — the rare Double Catcher Dinger Combo — with a bit of late insurance from Brett Baty.
Sound defense, with a succession of nifty plays from homecoming kid Bo Bichette front and center.
No notes, one might say, though that’s not really what we do here. So, well, here are some notes.
My first instinct on McLean was to call it a return to form, but that’s accurate without being true, and gets at a misconception that hasn’t been helpful. What McLean’s been going through in his recent uneven stretch has struck me as fairly typical young pitcher stuff, the lumps and bumps taken in learning inevitable lessons. No surprise, except McLean’s first starts were so good that we somehow thought he’d jumped over that part of the learning curve. He hadn’t, and that’s OK — and it’s a storyline to watch in the second half of this lost season.
This week the Athletic is looking at the Mets as sellers and exploring what they could get for their various saleable pieces; they got to the relievers this morning, speculating on potential landing places for Raley, Weaver and others. Which is wise, but depresses me a little too much to engage with: I’ve really enjoyed Weaver for being tiny and fearless as well as a puckish, unpredictable interview, and I find Raley’s quiet implacability soothing. (Williams is different; he’ll always feel miscast as a Met.)
A strong second half from Alvarez would be welcome, of course, but that’s something we’ve said many times before. Alvarez is somewhere around Julio Franco‘s age if measured by the Disappointed Met Fan reckoning but chronologically just 24. That’s far too young to give up on, yet you also feel like Alvarez may be who he is: so aggressive that he looks like he’s swinging for the fences in the next stadium over. Just leave him alone and hope he can stay on the field. I’ve pretty much given up on Baty, as well as on Mark Vientos, neither of whom look like they begin ABs with any semblance of a plan — though Baty, at least, has made himself into a fairly reliable defender, with a shot at growing into McNeil-esque versatility. Maybe one or both of them can find something they’ve been missing without a playoff spotlight. Maybe one or both of them get traded to a new organization offering a new voice. At this point I’m fine either way.
Then there’s Bichette, who’s come a long way from his lackluster start of the season. I always figured Bichette for a one-and-done mercenary, invoking his first of two player options and returning to the free-agent market having proven his legs were sound. (No moral judgment there; it’s the contract the Mets agreed to.) I suppose a solid second half would make that still possible, but Bichette might be better off sticking around for another year.
Gah, this all feels like offseason stuff — and ahead of an offseason that may be irritatingly extended, no less.
Let’s go back to the beginning: The Mets won a 3-0 game in which all aspects of their performance were praiseworthy.
Should’ve left it at that.
by Jason Fry on 29 June 2026 10:10 pm So let’s see. The Mets…
…turned Sean Manaea‘s sixth pitch of the game into a 1-0 deficit, as Juan Soto let what should have been a George Springer single bounce over his head, after which it also eluded A.J. Ewing, allowing Springer to dash pell mell around the bases and score.
…hit about eight zillion balls on the nose, but approximately eight zillion of them found Blue Jay gloves, generating a soundtrack (at least in our house) that was primarily moans of frustration. The lone exception was a bolt into the right-field stands by Francisco Lindor, an eerie echo of his no-hitter-breaking blast in this ballgame from late 2024. That home run kicked off a rally and a feel-good Met win; this one could only get the Mets within spitting distance of an opponent they couldn’t quite reach.
…managed a ringing double against brief Old Friend Tyler Rogers, struck by Francisco Alvarez, but could do nothing else against their former mate. I don’t really have anything against Rogers, generally accorded to be the good acquisition of David Stearns’ otherwise ill-fated 2025 trade deadline, except that I’ve always muttered that Rogers wasn’t so much good as he was “better than Ryan Helsley or Gregory Soto or Cedric Mullins,” which is like winning a high jump competition against a sea urchin and two box turtles, one of which smells funny and might actually be dead.
…saw Ronny Mauricio hit Alvarez with a bat in the on-deck circle, which didn’t hurt either player, unless you count Mauricio getting bodied by Louis Varland on three straight breaking pitches to end the game. Let the jokes about swinging at anything fly, except actually it was Alvarez’s fault for being too close to his teammate when he should still been in the dugout.
Good things? There was Lindor’s homer, and all those hard-hit balls, and Bo Bichette showing some welcome human emotion in trying to assess what it was like to return to Toronto with all the memories it holds for him. And Manaea pitching OK if you ignore the fact that the Blue Jays also hit about eight zillion laser beams right at fielders, and Joey Gerber pitching better than OK by any metric.
Those aren’t enough good things, not when you lose 2-1. The most interesting thing about this year’s Mets might be how many ways they can find to lose: by a ton, by a sliver, in embarrassing fashion, despite their best efforts, because they couldn’t pitch, because they couldn’t hit, because they couldn’t field, because they could do all those things but not quite as well as the other guys could. It’s a little different every night, around a core of essential similarity: another L on the ledger, another day off the calendar. The 2026 Mets find a way, and I suppose that’s remarkable in its own hopefully inimitable fashion.
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