Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing #58 : Please Rise and Remove your Caps.

Welcome back to Sunday School: Forgotten Faces of Flushing, our weekly rummage through the Mets’ attic, where we brush off the dust, squint at old photos, and rediscover the people, places, and moments that once made Mets baseball feel new, hopeful, and occasionally sunburned.

Last week, we were in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Mets’ original spring home. Before Shea. Before Port St. Lucie. Before winning seasons were anything more than a rumor. Back when baseballs occasionally vanished into Tampa Bay, local kids chased them like Olympic divers, and Bob Murphy’s voice practically floated on the breeze: “Live from beautiful St. Petersburg, Florida, it’s Mets spring training baseball.”

The last couple of lessons have taken us slightly off the usual path. We’ve done people. We’ve done places. We’ve even wandered into animals, beer royalty, and radio pioneers. Forgotten Faces has never promised to stay neatly between the baselines.

So this week, we’re switching it up again.

Because before the players, before the parks, before the first bad bullpen decision of the year, there’s one thing that officially starts everything.

This week’s Forgotten Face isn’t a face at all.

It’s a thing.

A ritual.

A song.

The National Anthem — and the voices that once carried it across the Polo Grounds, Shea Stadium, and early spring training fields. Voices you may not remember, but voices that told you, without question, that baseball was back and hope was once again a perfectly reasonable emotion.

Class is in session.

Please rise.

Let’s start where miracles begin.

Game 5 of the 1969 World Series.

Shea Stadium. October air. A city on pause.

Before the Mets put the final touches on the Miracle, Pearl Bailey took the microphone and set the mood. Her National Anthem stretched a measured one minute and forty-two seconds just long enough for Mets fans to think, This might actually happen.

Bailey wasn’t there for show. She was Pearl Bailey Broadway star, recording artist, Tony winner, future Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree, and a real Mets fan. No theatrics. No overreach. Just confidence, timing, and respect for the moment. (Joe D, Bowie Kuhn and the Serval Zippers Tower all make cameos in the video.)

By the last note, Shea was ready.

The Mets handled the rest.

The Miracle started there.

Fast-forward seventeen years.

Same city. Same stakes. Different kind of moment.

Game 7 of the 1986 World Series. The Mets chasing their second championship, Shea Stadium buzzing. And before a pitch was thrown, the anthem schedule alone looked like it had been assembled by spinning a roulette wheel.

That postseason featured an absurdly stacked anthem lineup: Glenn Close for Game 1. Billy Joel for Game 2. Paul Simon for Game 6. And then—somehow—for the biggest game in franchise history, the honors went to Kenneth Mack Jr., a 13-year-old singing prodigy from Natchitoches, Louisiana.

Which strongly suggests that somewhere inside Shea Stadium, a very important piece of paper was stapled in the wrong order.

On paper, it made no sense. When your options include the Piano Man and the unofficial poet laureate of Queens, you don’t usually hand the microphone to a kid who still needed a hall pass. This wasn’t a knock on Mack—just a reminder that the moment was enormous, and the choice… curious.

To be fair, this wasn’t amateur hour. Mack had already performed for Pope John Paul II in Rome and President Ronald Reagan at the White House. His roots were gospel—church choirs, patriotic standards, a voice shaped from singing since age four. He handled the moment professionally, if not memorably, and then got out of the way so the real drama could begin.

Which, in true 1986 Mets fashion, turned chaos, confusion, and a few questionable decisions into a World Championship.

Fast-forward to the new millennium. Shea Stadium, October 24, 2000, Game 3 of the Subway Series. Mets vs. Yankees. The fans? Ready to erupt. The stakes? Only slightly less than the end of the world. The anthem? Delivered by a group of five very famous, very groomed and styled boys from NSYNC.

Cue mixed reactions. As the PA crackled, “Performing tonight’s anthem is one of the most popular musical groups in the world today: multi-platinum recording artists NSYNC,” the crowd…well, it was complicated. Somewhere between cheers, jeers, and “what the heck is going on?” faces. Chris Kirkpatrick and Joey Fatone looked amused, like someone had cast them a live-action prank show. Justin Timberlake, frosted tips and all, looked somewhere between bored and slightly offended.

And then they sang.

A cappella, harmonies that made you sit up and actually notice the word “Star-Spangled,” JC Chasez belting the lead, Lance Bass holding down the low end like gravity itself depended on it. The crowd, initially skeptical, slowly surrendered—cheers and claps swelling like the tide.

Maybe it was the rivalry. Maybe it was the Yankee looking jackets NSYNC had accidentally been given. Maybe some fans just couldn’t forgive frosted hair in October. Whatever the cause, by the final note, Shea was singing along—or at least clapping politely enough to avoid eternal shame.

And yes, somewhere out there, a few old-school Mets fans are still muttering, “Back in my day, we didn’t need harmonies to feel patriotic.” But for the record, NSYNC did what they came to do: took the boos, flipped them into applause, and reminded everyone that, sometimes, even in baseball, showbiz wins.

Fast forward fifteen years to the 2015 World Series, and the Mets handed the anthem honors to none other than Billy Joel once again for Game 3—because of course, the Piano Man belongs at home plate. But it was Game 4 that truly stole the show. Enter Demi Lovato, who didn’t just sing the national anthem—she owned it. Forget trying to match the legend of Whitney Houston at Super Bowl XXV; Demi put her own spin on it, twisting and soaring through notes like she had a personal vendetta against gravity. By the time she hit that final note, you half expected the crowd to drop the mic themselves. The Mets may have underperformed on the field, but Demi ? Pure mic-drop gold.

Fast forward to 2024, and we’re still in playoff mode—but this time, no boy bands with frosted tips. Enter a group of seasoned Motown legends: The Temptations. Before Game 5 of the NLCS, they not only delivered the national anthem, they kicked it up a notch by performing Francisco Lindor’s walk-up song, My Girl.

The effect was instant. Lindor got on base three times that night, including an RBI triple in a five-run third inning, and the Mets stayed alive with a 12-6 win over the Dodgers. While he couldn’t exactly shake hands with the Hall of Famers mid-game, Lindor was caught on the scoreboard grinning and singing along in the outfield.

Otis Williams, one of the group’s founding members six decades ago, called the gig “an honor” and “thrilling,” adding that it just goes to show music has a way of sneaking into the little corners of life and making them unforgettable. And judging by the crowd, who sang along to a song first topping the charts in 1964, it was pretty clear the anthem—and Motown magic—never goes out of style.

And just when you think we’ve exhausted every possible anthem angle—divas, boy bands, legends with gold records older than Shea Stadium—we arrive at the most Mets version of all: a family affair.

On a September night at Citi Field in 2025, the national anthem wasn’t sung at all. It was played—beautifully—on a violin by Katia Lindor, Francisco’s wife, who happens to be classically trained and casually excellent at this sort of thing. While she played, Francisco stood off to the side with their three kids, holding the youngest like a proud dad at a school recital—except the recital was at a major league ballpark and 40,000 people were quiet for once.

The moment doubled as Hispanic Heritage Night and as a celebration of Lindor being named the Mets’ Roberto Clemente Award nominee, which made the whole thing feel less like pregame ceremony and more like a Hallmark movie that somehow involved double plays. Katia, who studied music seriously (this was not a “learned it on YouTube” situation), turned the anthem into something elegant and intimate—no vocal gymnastics, no dramatic pauses, just clean notes and a lot of heart.

Naturally, because this is how baseball works, Lindor followed it up by hitting a home run later that night. Correlation? Causation? Never question a good superstition. At this point, the Mets may want to list “violinist spouse” right next to “five-tool shortstop” on the roster.

Let’s wrap this up with one more—and a little housekeeping note to future us.

Because if there’s one thing we’ve learned here, it’s this: with 81 home games a year, multiplied by decades, Shea and Citi Field have hosted a small nation’s worth of national anthems. Some were unforgettable. Some were… mercifully forgotten. And a few deserve a second spin.

Which brings us to Opening Day, 1994. Brand new season. Fresh hope. And Cyndi Lauper stepping up to deliver her take on “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Yes, that Cyndi Lauper. The voice, the style, the unmistakable “this is not going to sound like anyone else” energy. It was bold, it was different, and it was very on-brand for the mid-’90s, when individuality still mattered and nobody told Cyndi Lauper how to sing anything—especially not the anthem.

Odds are good you remember her rendition more clearly than the actual game itself, which is kind of the point of this whole exercise.

And this is definitely one we’ll want to revisit again. Because buried in those 81 home dates every year are anthem performances that time just sort of misplaced—like spare change in the couch cushions of Mets history.

If one of those just popped into your head—the anthem you remember better than the box score—drop it in the comments. Chances are, you’re not the only one humming it.

And that’s really the point of all this. The National Anthem doesn’t show up in the standings or the media guide, and most nights it fades the second the leadoff man digs in. But every so often, it freezes a moment—before the chaos, before the rally, before the Mets remind you who they are. In a franchise built on memories that slip through the cracks, these performances didn’t disappear so much as they got misplaced, buried under box scores, bad hops, and time. This was just a reminder that Mets history isn’t only told by the players who took the field, but by the voices that opened the night. And with 81 home games a year, over decades, there are plenty more still hiding in plain sight. Class dismissed—you may be seated, for now.