I live to hate the Yankees and consequently I love the midseason Mets-Yankees “subway” series, but I wonder how does the rest of the world outside of New York feel about these games?  Is it an overhyped matchup of two teams you dislike, or do you find the rivalry makes for compelling drama even if you’re not a fan of either team?  Love to hear what you think sports fans.

I can tell you for me personally, the Yankees have always been the arch enemy.  Like a lot of people I developed my baseball loyalties through my father, but oddly enough, I grew up in a household where the most revered team never existed in my lifetime. My Dad was, and in many ways still is, a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. 

Amazingly, between 1947 and 1956 Brooklyn lost a “subway” World Series to the Yankees five times! And of course tucked in there was the magical year of 1955 where “Dem Bums” from Brooklyn actually defeated the hated Yankees, on an epic complete game from Johnny Podres in a Game 7 at Yankee Stadium.  (Podres recently passed away, may he rest in peace as a champion for eternity).  That’s six matchups between the same two teams in one decade of the World Series.  And the Yanks won two more titles against other teams during the span!

Hard to imagine that level of domination by one team in today’s game, with the one-and-done Marlins and others winning the title left and right. And the fact that Brooklyn was just as dominating to the National League, only to lose in the Series over and over, made the rivalry that much deeper, and 1955 that much sweeter.

Only two years removed from the Miracle of 1955, Brooklyn baseball was uprooted forever as owner Walter O’Malley moved the team to Los Angeles in 1957, an unprecedented, sad and utterly shocking development to Dodgers fans who lost their team along with some of their identity as Brooklynites.  Interestingly, historians now point to an impasse between O’Malley and New York City Construction Coordinator Robert Moses, who wanted to build a stadium in Flushing where Shea Stadium now stands, as the major reason the team departed.  “We’re not from Queens we’re from Brooklyn, and if that’s the best you can do I’m moving to LA!”  Or something to that effect.

Fast forward to December 1969; that’s when I entered the world on the heels of an amazin’ world championship by the “Ya Gotta Believe” Mets of Seaver and McGraw. I grew up in Long Island in a house where the Yankees were “the man”, “the establishment”, “the enemy”, the uptown dandies that thumbed their noses at the rest of the world.  There was a lukewarm appreciation for the Mets, but I didn’t truly understand why my Dad wasn’t passionate about any team.  However in 1984 when Doc Gooden and Daryl Strawberry came up as rookies I was 14 and totally enthralled, and became a die hard Mets fan for life. And in 1986 I had my miracle as well, as the Mets won the title in storied fashion over Bill Buckner and the Red Sox. 

But then in 2000, something happened to me that would up the ante on my Yankee hatred for the rest of my life, and forever align me side by side with my father as a sworn enemy of the Bronx Bombers.  You see, I experienced a subway series of my own, and what it was like to have hopes crushed by the Yankees while the rest of your own city seems to mock you in disgrace.  I was there for the final game, Game 5 at Shea, got to see the Yankees pile onto our mound in celebration on our field, got to see Derek Jeter’s name in lights on the jumbotron announced as the MVP.  And I had the horrible, sinking feeling of being on my team’s own home field while thousands upon thousands of the fans of our bitter rival celebrated in drunken glee, leaving me with nothing to do but quietly pick up my things and make my way through the revelry towards the subway packed with more raucous Yankee fans.

I actually started to laugh, thinking the situation was so bad, it’s almost comical.  By my count that would mean we now need to win two subway series from the Yankees to have the upper hand there, plus 23 more championships overall to have a better record than the Yankees.  Although I’m a very hopeful person I think my best chance of seeing that happen is to be cryogenically frozen alongside Ted Williams.

It’s a long, long uphill climb, who’s first small step is at 1:35 PM this afternoon when the two teams square off at Yankee stadium on the first half of a “subway doubleheader”.  I will always be passionate about this fight, as symbolic of good and evil to me as anything in my world.  I will also look to band together with my Dad, our anti-Yankee sentiment linking our two teams across time. 

And finally, I’m hoping that the first time my Dad and I walk into the new Citi Field next year, through the Jackie Robinson rotunda and through the façade designed to look like the old Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, that he will leave his pain over the Dodgers behind and we will walk into the new stadium as true Met fans together.

 

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