On New York Baseball

I have been a lifelong Yankee fan. For this I have never made any apology, nor do I have any plans to. In the sense that fandom is an unquestioning instinctive knowledge instilled from an early age, I can only be a Yankee fan. My relationship with the Mets was never acrimonious; in fact, it was downright cordial. My gloves and hats were signed by Mets greats at baseball camp. Bobby Bonilla was the first big leaguer I ever met, and I shagged flies delivered by the bat of Ed Kranepool. But if I had to click on a radio button, I have always been a Yankee fan.

Typically, allegiances shift away from the floundering and towards the prosperous. In my youth, many of my peers, few of which had ever been to Chicago, proudly pulled for Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls as they overpowered the competition, leaving a generation of basketball greats without championship rings. Few of my peers expressed a sudden yearning to share in the struggles of the middling Sacramento Kings, or Minnesota Timberwolves.

For these reasons, I have been caught unawares by a shift in my own sentiment towards the struggling Mets, and perhaps, dare I admit it, away from the first-place Yankees I cheered for in person at the 1998 World Series. Overall, I know much more about the Yankees' players and have watched many more of their games. But a visit to the new Yankee Stadium, two recent trips to the new Citi Field, and changes that have altered and strained my life have contributed towards a substantial shift in my baseball allegiances.

I first visited the new Yankee stadium with my father last Spring. It is immaculate, a virginal monument to a superhuman legacy of domination in professional sports. It is prohibitively expensive, offers overpriced and underwhelming beverages and victuals, and houses a culture that views success in binary terms. A World Series has been won or failure has transpired. In this conception, there is no such thing as progress, and the metaphor, which all but the most earnest meatheads seek from sports, is trite.

Comparatively, the Mets are in the throes of one their most disappointing seasons. After generating a fair degree of anticipation during the off-season, they have lost three of their most relied on offensive players, putting tremendous pressure on a pitching rotation that lacks depth beyond their ace, Johan Santana. My first visit to Citi Field came when a friend generously offered me a ticket, accompanied by several apologies for the Mets performance this year and several warnings that the Mets could be relied upon to lose.

Nevertheless, despite my tempered expectations, I found in my first trip to Citi Field a baseball experience unique to me. So far from the cusp of a championship, Mets fans could view a long road ahead, with progress coming in many ways. The fans did not expect an immediate payout from each plate appearance, and didn’t even boo when it failed to come. To be a Mets fan, one is necessarily slapped around by disappointment. Attending my second Mets game at the new stadium this evening, I encountered an audience that neither grimaced nor booed when the Diamondbacks’ Justin Upton launched a first inning home run into the left field bleachers. They bore it, as I have borne each predictable ounce of blood drawn, each cc of spinal fluid removed, and each relapse.

For the fan looking for baseball excellence, recognizable stars, and instant gratification, the Yankees provide a product that neither the Mets nor any other team in baseball will ever be able to equal. But for a more pensive sort, the experience of being a Mets fan provides a richer metaphor. Obviously this change in my sentiment can be attributed wholesale to recent changes in my circumstances.

To a child with a somewhat enchanted existence, the Yankees closely mirrored my experience on this planet. A second-place finish was at best a barely tolerable aberration that occurred in spite of a conspicuous advantage in talent and well-founded expectations of more. To the adult I almost am, the Mets embody a struggle with a reasonable expectation of long run success but the sober reality of a long road ahead. And if that success is realized, it will be unlike that of expectation, the spoiled conceit that domination is inevitable. A Mets fan could never entertain those thoughts, just as I can never again enjoy the youthful delusion of invincibility. While my strong nostalgic impulse might continue to hold fast to the Yankees, I believe myself to have found a more compelling storyline in Queens.