For the first time since the second Clinton Administration (talk about halcyon days), more New Yorkers root for the Mets than their dreaded, cash roll-rich, cross-borough nemesis, the Yankees.
Make no mistake, this is a very big deal.
The Mets seldom win anything, much less a popularity contest but, says a recent Quinnipiac College survey, the Mets won this game in a laugher. (Note: DeGrom must have been on the mound and I’m guessing Cespedes went yard in the late innings to seal the deal).
I could sense the reversal of fortune just by spying the percentage of drunk and disorderly passengers on New Jersey Transit trains. In recent years, a far higher number of Mets uniform-clad fans would race up and down the hallways, tell conductors to “F-off” and pound, kick and scream at locked rest room doors, before heaving their stomach contents onto the head and shoulders of an unsuspecting commuter.
The news must really get stuck in craw of Peppercomm’s Adam Giambattista, who brazenly adorns his cube with distasteful Yankees memorabilia.
It should also give pause to Deb Brown, who notoriously dumped her lifelong allegiance to the Mets after the Strawberry, Gooden, Hernandez team aged and the Jeter-led Yankees Renaissance began in the mid-1990s.
She simply woke up one day and decided it was time for a change and said “I’m now a Yankees fan.”
When pressed for her Benedict Arnold-like stunt, Brown shrugged her shoulders and said she wanted to root for winners. Makes one wonder why she’s stayed at Peppercomm for so long.
True Mets fans don’t disappear; we simply go into hibernation for 10 or 20 year stretches until the franchise once again re-captures the Big Apple’s imagination.
My all-time favorite Mets announcer was Bob Murphy who, along with Lindsey Nelson and the indecipherable Ralph Kiner, started calling Mets games in their inaugural season of 1962.
On the rare occasions during his career when the Mets actually won pennants and the World Series (1969, 1973 and, of course, 1986) Murph would wear his partiality on his sleeve and unabashedly root for the Metropolitans.
And, at the end of each Mets win, and before taking a commercial break, Murph would urge listeners to stay tuned for the post-game summary by ecstatically stating, “I’ll be back with the happy, happy recap after these messages.”
I’ll bet wherever they are at moment, Lindsey, Ralph and Murph are lifting their mugs of Rhinegold to toast the Mets, the most popular baseball team in New York.
Put that in your Tom Paine pipe, Deb, and smoke it. And, Adam, keep dreaming about once was. The king is dead. Long live the king. For now.
And a tip o’ RepMan’s Met’s cap to Carmen Ferrigno for suggesting this post.
Thanks, Paul. I feel your pain. Not.
As tough as it is for this Yankee fan to say this, it doesn’t surprise me. The Mets have an exciting group of young star pitchers and they’re poised to once again finish with a better record than the Yankees. And that ballpark of theirs is superior to Yankee Stadium. The old one was hallowed ground; the new one reeks of corporate America with a ton of bells and whistles aimed at diverting fan attention away from the field. The Yankee fan has devolved as well. Whereas before we were a die-hard bunch, the typical Yankee fan is now a casual follower. As for me and my house, though, we will always bleed pinstripes!
Love the Murphy reflection, Ernie. Thanks for sharing and hope you’re well.
During televised Spring Training games, Murph would sometimes quote Dixon Lanier Merritt’s limerick:
A wonderful bird is the pelican,
His bill will hold more than his belican.
It’s good the Mets don’t win every year. Makes the years they do win all the more sweet. LGM!
My fav players are Benny Agbayani and Jay Payton … The Amazin’s!!