The blog for Mets fans
who like to read

ABOUT US

Greg Prince and Jason Fry
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.

Got something to say? Leave a comment, or email us at faithandfear@gmail.com. (Sorry, but we have no interest in ads, sponsored content or guest posts.)

Need our RSS feed? It's here.

Visit our Facebook page, or drop by the personal pages for Greg and Jason.

Or follow us on Twitter: Here's Greg, and here's Jason.

Revenge is a Dish Best Served to Pirates

There are 15 teams who are National League opponents of the Mets. If you're trying to list them, I'll bet I know which one you tend to forget.
The Pirates have faded so far from their glories of the '70s and early '90s, become such a non-factor in the competitive scheme of things and, most relevantly, been scheduled at such odd intervals against us that they're pre-eminently mind-slippable.
But remember a few things as if you need motivation beyond that “1” that just sits there and sits there and sits there.
The Mets have been clinched against five times in their regular-season history, twice at the hands of the Pirates. They won their first and last division titles in our faces in 1970 and 1992 at Three Rivers Stadium. Worse yet, the '70 loss eliminated us (and the Cubs) simultaneously.
(The other three? Expos mini-division in '81, the Braves' 10th consecutive division in '00 and the Marlins' Wild Card in '03.)
PNC Park, the most beauteous of any in the senior circuit, has produced little of value to the citizens of Metsopotamia. We opened the joint in an exhibition series in '01, where the Mets learned of the death of Brian Cole. They were there on 9/11 and returned there a week later to play the first games that followed a national tragedy. The Mets swept but, honestly, who cared that much?
In September 2004, we were introduced to Jason Bay as we were saying goodbye to Art Howe. A nice confluence of everything that had gone wrong for the Mets in the previous couple of years: a budding superstar frittered away in a dopey trade was sticking it to his old team while a manager who never should have been hired and who had just been quasi-fired was sticking around essentially for the free trip to his hometown.
And of course July 8, 2005, probably the most injurious loss, mentally speaking, of the Faith and Fear era.
We need a new memory, a good memory from this place. Tonight.

Comments are closed.