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New York Observer Mets and Yanks share city, but remain worlds apart
When I was very young -- so young that I still played sandlot games with a beach ball and a plastic bat -- my mother took me to see the Mets play for the first time. She was no sports buff, but on the drive to Shea Stadium she told me the one baseball story that had really mattered in her life. "When I was a little girl living in Queens," she said. "The Brooklyn Dodgers had a player named Jackie Robinson." She told me that he was the first black player who had ever played in the major leagues. None of the other teams, she said, let blacks play. My mother and her parents had loved Jackie Robinson and had loved the Dodgers for what they had done. Growing up she rooted for the Dodgers until the team left New York and moved to California. A few years after that, still long before I was born, a new team had come to take the Dodgers' place. "And that," she explained, "is why we are Mets fans." From an objective, socioeconomic standpoint, there is probably little difference between Mets fans and Yankees fans. The multi-ethnic paradise that is New York yields to each side fans of every conceivable background. Each group includes its share of the young and the old, the rich and the poor, of suburbanites (Westchester County roots mainly for the Yankees; Long Island for the Mets) and of city folk.
Yet choosing to root for either the Mets or the Yankees means assuming a distinct ideological identity. The Yankees own the city. The Mets? "All we are," says Mets owner Fred Wilpon, "is the little guy in Queens trying to emulate the Yankees." Should form hold, prospective New York Senator Hillary Clinton will wear both team hats in public over the next week. She will fool no one into thinking a dual allegiance is possible. David Dinkins, New York City's mayor in the early 1990s, meant well and had a warm smile. He was a likable but bumbling politician who cheered for the Mets. Current mayor Rudy Giuliani is a tough man with a hard, sharp-featured face. The guy gets things done, and he is a Yankees fan. Whomever its mayor is, New York is Yankee country. Nothing that happens in the next week can change that. The Yankees dominate. They beat the Brooklyn Dodgers six times in seven World Series meetings. They've won three of the past four and 25 in all. You expect them to be champions. Of the Mets' two World Series victories, one is regarded as a "miracle." The Yankees are the team of Ruth and DiMaggio and Mantle. The Mets are the team of Tug and Mookie. The Yankees are a corporation that churns out victories, the Mets are a start-up grateful for any win they can get. The Yankees are owned by George Steinbrenner. The Mets are not. As Wilpon says, the Mets are the team of the little guys -- literally. Last season a 5-foot-10, 180-pound previously unknown rookie named Melvin Mora sparked the team into the playoffs. This season rookie Timo Perez, 5-9, 167 pounds and equally obscure, has ignited the team. The Shea crowd loves to call his name, and it was little Timo who, as he settled under the final out of the National League Championship Series, began jumping up and down and flapping his arms with all the great, boyish glee of a Mets fan. When that game ended the stadium broke into a spontaneous chant of, "We want the Yanks!" while the players celebrated en masse in the infield. Then, suddenly, it was another physically improbable Mets hero, the round Hawaiian Benny Agbayani, who broke from his teammates and began sprinting toward the left field stands. Throughout the playoffs, the crowd out there had greeted Agbayani with cries of, "Ben-ny! Ben-ny!" when he took his position in the field. Now he repaid their love. He thrust up his arms in triumph. He waved madly and slapped fans' hands. All over Shea people were holding up homemade signs. One revealed the brashness that a Subway Series can inspire in a Mets fan. It read, in reference to the train conductors' familiar refrain, "Yankee fans: Stand Clear of the Closing Doors." But it was another placard, raised high by a fan behind the Mets dugout, that caught everyone's eyes. "God is a Met Fan," the sign said. It was a ridiculous suggestion, of course, yet those who saw it hollered out in joy, believing beyond any doubt that it was true. Kostya Kennedy is a Sports Illustrated staff writer. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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