Dear Mr. Niese,

Dear Mr. Niese,

I am not writing this letter to chastise you.  To the contrary, I'd like to set your mind at ease.  I am a Mets fan.  I've been one for as long as I can remember.  I'm just old enough to recall the final out of the 1986 World Series, on the day of your birth, joyfully jumping up and down with my parents in our Long Island home.  I stuck it out during 1992's "worst team money could buy" and through all 103 losses in 1993.  I continued to support the Mets when I left New York in 2000, eventually relocating to Washington, DC.  Even after DC acquired a team of its own, I stayed true to the orange and blue.

Fans in Diaspora

It was several years ago and a good season to be a Phillies fan.  Baseball's most losing team of all time had just decisively beaten the Nationals in their new DC ballpark. Almost everyone transferring through Metro Center at that time had been at the stadium 30 minutes earlier.  Now hundreds of people squeezed onto the platforms, silently thinking about how little sleep they would get before waking up for work the next morning.