The Mets Vs Yankees Game on Friday will come with a pregame tribute built around the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Yankees will host the Mets in the Bronx, and fans are being asked to be in their seats by 6:30 p.m. for ceremonies that will honor the NYPD and FDNY before the game begins.
Brielle Saracini and Sean McGuire will throw the ceremonial first pitches, turning a baseball night into a remembrance for families still carrying the loss from that day. Saracini was 10 years old when her father, Victor, the captain of United Flight 175, died when the plane was directed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. McGuire was also 10 when his father, Patrick, was working on the 84th floor of the World Trade Center and was killed in the attacks. The two met two years later at Camp Better Days, which was created to support children who lost a parent in the tragedy, and they were married on Sept. 9, 2017.
The pregame ceremony will also bring in players from the Yankees' 2001 team, while current Yankees players are scheduled to place a wreath beside the 9/11 monument in Monument Park in the afternoon. The anthem will be sung by opera tenor James Valenti, Lee Greenwood will perform God Bless the USA, and FDNY Lieutenant William Arce will sing God Bless America in the middle of the seventh inning.
That mix of tribute and routine is what gives the night its weight. The game is still a Mets-Yankees meeting, but the day carries memories that go far beyond baseball, and the club is using one of its biggest dates of the year to honor the NYPD, FDNY, the Port Authority Police Department, Tunnel to Towers Foundation and Tuesday’s Promise. Tuesday’s Promise was formerly known as Tuesday’s Children.
The matchup also echoes an earlier moment in New York baseball after 9/11. The Mets hosted the Atlanta Braves at Shea Stadium on Sept. 21, 2001, and Mike Piazza hit a dramatic home run in the first game played in New York after the attacks. The Yankees later reached the 2001 World Series, where George W. Bush threw out the first pitch before Game 3 and the team lost in seven games to the Arizona Diamonndbacks. Friday’s ceremonies do not recreate that history, but they place the game squarely inside it.
For Saracini, the first pitch is the day’s most personal act, and for the Yankees and Mets it is the clearest sign that this game is being staged as more than a regular entry on the schedule. The ballpark will still fill for baseball, but the first voices and gestures of the night will belong to remembrance.
