After the events of the past few days — the Yankees winning their 27th World Series and being feted for it; the Mets doing no such thing — perhaps you wonder, what's the point? I'd love to tell you what it is, but I have no real clue.
But I do have a correction to offer, specific to previous entries to this blog:
This was not the World Series from hell, at least not in the sense that either outcome would be equally terrible. If the Phillies had won, I can say with a great deal of certainty that their hypothetical victory, however annoying when considered on its own conceivable merits, would not have measured up to the actual victory of the Yankees.
Which isn't annoying. It's atrocious.
The Phillies won in 2008. I didn't care for it. They beat us and then made their way through the playoffs. It felt like the Cardinals winning in 2006, that it had something to do with us. In '06, however, it was a more direct process: Cardinals beat us and they were in the World Series. I hated the Cardinals for the next year or so. The other day I ran across something I wrote in 2007 in which I reflexively spewed nasty things about the Cardinals. I stand by those feelings for then, but they seem quite out of code now. At present, I don't particularly hate the Cardinals as a going concern. I'll restoke my hostility toward them April 16, per the 2010 schedule.
When April 30 rolls around, I'll hate the Phillies plenty. I'll hate them eighteen times next year. I'll hate their players, I'll hate their fans, I'll hate their Phanatic. That's a promise. But right now the Phillies mean nothing in particular to me. If they were parading around in fresh new World Champion t-shirts, they'd mean about as much.
I hate the Yankees. I always have and I always will. That wasn't going to change because the Yankees might have lost the World Series. They could have gone down in four straight and I'd hate them more than I did before for having been exposed to them four more times. I don't like them any better for having doused our division rivals in six games even if the collateral damage of the Phillies losing was fine and dandy. I surely don't like them getting to update their bios with a 27th line. I surely don't like the spate of special sections my Sunday papers have printed in their honor or how blanketed my television was by their parade on Friday or how every time I poke my head outside my house somebody's walking by in their garb or how the cemented media narrative is, as it was more than a decade ago, that all of New York just adores the Yankees.
What is New York right now? A place where Xavier Nady has a key to the city. A place where the guy who gave it to him exhibits no institutional memory. A place where the Dunkin' Donuts on Chambers St. is needlessly overrun with thirsty jugheads.
Tell me how this isn't tangibly more hellish than a Phillies victory. (Residents of New Jersey who live closer to Philadelphia than New York are excused from this exercise.)
Early in the history of Faith and Fear, there was some Yankee contretemps making headlines. It was Spring Training 2005, the beginning of Alex Rodriguez's second year in pinstripes. It probably had something to do with him. I honestly don't recall, but I do remember it was one of those Big Stories all of baseball reportage was consumed by. My initial impulse was to blog about it, but then I stopped myself. No, I thought, this is going to be a Mets blog. We exist in a universe that is Mets-oriented, a universe of our own creation. We didn't start this thing to add to the nonsense that everything about New York baseball is Yankees-this and that Yankees-that. If that was what we were going to produce, we could have just kept reading the papers.
Five seasons went by and where are we? With the Yankee cloud overshadowing everything in its midst, just as it did heading out of 1996, just as it did heading into 2005.
I thought we were past all that. We are not. We are essentially back where we started.
The late '90s/Millennial Yankees were an anvil that kept befalling us, even when it appeared we were enjoying a marvelous postseason stroll. Bop! they went on us. Mets have a nice season in 1997? Nobody noticed because the Yankees were back in the playoffs. Mets take it down to the wire in 1998? Nobody noticed (except for the gruesome ending) because the Yankees were winning 114 regular-season games. Mets do semi-miraculous things in 1999 and 2000? They weren't as tangible as what the Yankees were doing.
The anvil fell lighter starting November 4, 2001, the night when Luis Gonzalez flicked a soft line drive into short centerfield and the pain eased some. The Diamondbacks, then the Angels, then the Marlins and then, most deliciously, the Red Sox all lessened the burden of being a Mets fan. We weren't winning anything from 2001 to 2004, but neither were they, by their standards. We didn't have much, but at least we had Elimination Day.
Nevertheless, even when The Yankees had stopped automatically winning World Series after 2000, they still had the cloud. It still obscured everything, not that the Mets were difficult to obscure in those particularly dark days. Yet the moment was at hand there in the spring of '05 for change to take hold. Not right away, maybe, but we were getting back in the game. We were improving. They weren't. They were making the playoffs, but weren't a sure thing anymore. By 2006, we were a better bet. We even went further in our quest for No. 3 than they did in their quest for No. 27. The Cardinals tripped us up, but we had the momentum. This team, this town…it was all there for us.
And it never happened. The Yankees experienced a rough October of 2007, but they got an October. We pulled up short on September 30. The Yankees bowed out altogether in 2008, but so did we, in far more humiliating circumstances. They were all but eliminated when they closed their stadium but they looked sharp and stood tall on the way out. We simply went “thud!” for a second year in a row.
Then 2009, which might as well be 1996. They're World Champions and we're trying to figure out to dig our way out from 90+ losses. It's like the promise of '05 and the reasonable satisfaction of '06 and even the excruciating teases of '07 and '08 never happened. It's like the two good years of '99 and '00 and the two decent years of '97 and '98 never happened. It's like 1996 all over again. The Yankees are champions of baseball and New York and we are…who are we again? And are we going to throw four years and $20.4 million at Bernard Gilkey?
I don't know if I ever learn anything, but I'm going to try to learn not to care about them all over again. This blog was a big step in that direction. Except for the annual Subway Series sets and a little peripheral schadenfreude, we've stuck to our New York team pretty exclusively since February 2005, at least until developments warranted otherwise in October 2009. (Stupid developments.) I'd have preferred we hadn't become a sidebar to what just transpired. I'd have preferred the World Series From Hell Scenario not grown legs. Though I annually write about the World Series no matter who's in it, I'd have preferred staying out of it altogether.
We'll deal with the Phillies when the National League East demands it. We'll ignore the Yankees as best we can until May 21 at Citi Field. Our mission is the Mets. They're hell enough these days. Even so, I take comfort from what the first Mets blogger to put down roots here in the Metsosphere, Steve Keane of Eddie Kranepool Society, had to say in the wake of the inevitably unavoidable outcome of the final six baseball games of 2009.
[T]he big difference between Mets fans and Highlander fans is that we have a passion and love for our team, the Highlander fan has a love and a passion for Championships.
It's the sort of thing we told each other in other autumns of our discontent, particularly the autumn of 1996. If it sounds like the last refuge of an also-ran and an excuse for rooting for a certifiable loser when everybody else is riding high from winning, that's because it does.
Which doesn't mean what Steve wrote isn't true. Because it is — the part about us, for sure. I'm willing to go along with his diagnosis of them, but the confetti's cleaned up and the special sections are bundled for recycling, so I'm not worried about them going forward.
They're going to be how they are, just more so for a while.
We have, as Steve put it, Mackey Sasser and Mike Vail and Glendon Rusch to give us an “ah yeah” smile. We cherish our champions. We relish our reserves, too. We take it all in, no matter how distasteful, and we keep coming back. Right now we feel like roadkill from somebody else's parade route, but we're already up and marching to our own drummer. I don't know that that's a good or healthy thing, but it's what we do, and we're already doing it in ways we don't even realize.
We're done rooting against the Yankees. We're done rooting against the Phillies. We're rooting for the Mets.
God help us.
The New York Review of Books' November 19 issue was the first one I ever picked up, and I was not sorry once I got to page 22. Printed there was a story by Michael Kimmelman about the no longer so new ballparks in New York. What made it worth reading was the generous helpings of quotations it contained from The Last Days of Shea by our friend Dana Brand. We're very happy for Dana since he's been reading TNYROB a lot longer than we have and he says it was a thrill to find himself excerpted in there. You'll be happy (and, because of the subject matter, a little sad) if you pick up a copy of The Last Days of Shea, a book that brings you back to the old ballpark both psychically and physically one more time.
Tell me how this isn't tangibly more hellish than a Phillies victory. (Residents of New Jersey who live closer to Philadelphia than New York are excused from this exercise.)
I appreciate the excuse from the exercise. Down here in the phucking vortex, life would have been intolerable whoever won this series….
Hi Greg,
This hurts much more than it ever did in 1996.
Back then we had a lousy team. For six years we finished below .500 and sunk so low as to lose 103 in 1993.
The past few years have been different. For the first time since 1985 we were both competitive at the same time. We were favorites to win the national league title. We were by far the best team around in 2006. And even though 2007 and 2008 blew up in our faces, we were in first place until the last, devestating weekend.
In 1996 we were so bad that we were merely ignored — now we're unmercifully being taunted instead.
What frustrates me so much about the Yankee dominance is how impatient it makes the Mets fanbase. Maybe all we need is 3 or 4 years of lousy, rebuilding baseball to put a seriously good core of players together that are one or two free agents away from a serious run. But if the Yankees won't stop winning next door, is Wilpon really going to have the patience for that? Will we?
I admit, when they tried it in 2004 I was a little upset at first, but I accepted it by mid-season. If we're going to lose, it's at least comforting to know we're losing for a cause. Of course the Mets fucked all that up at the trade deadline with delusions of grandeur, and since then, with the exception of 2006, we've been botching the win-now mentality, as we always do.
Win-now works for the Yankees. It doesn't work for us. Building a strong, young pitching staff works for us. Can't we just give it another try?
If our guys stayed healthy(trainers fault) worked out correctly so they could(trainers fault) we could've had a magical season in our new park. Instead we got broken players, broken line-ups, broken finishes and went broke trying to experience everything at Citi Field. I anticipate them not changing a thing and hoping noone gets hurt. God I love this team. I will always be the first to start a Lets Go Mets chant and always go home hoarse but I do not expect anything greater than what I have seen.
Prior to this injury-filled mess that no one could have salvaged, a decent manager might also have helped.
“Win-now works for the Yankees”
Not for nine previous post-seasons seasons had it and I don't know if it exactly worked during this one, either.
Although the attitude still prevailes, I believe the absence of the Boss and the pressure of a gullitine hanging over their heads had a lot more to do with the Yankee success. No amount of money can off-set the negative affect on one's psyche having an intolerant boss who won't support you during the rough times. Even when winning, being bullied by your boss takes some of the fun out of the game and creates stress that affects performances, as proved by ARod in past post-seasons. Joe Torre also admitted the “win-now” attitude took the fun out of managing and that he's now enjoying it again because he's away from that stuff in Los Angeles.
This year management remained silent during the so-so first half instead of scorning them with public ridicule and I think it paid off.
I don't see how anyone can hate the Phillie Phanatic.
I'd trade Mr. Met for him any day of the week.
“T]he big difference between Mets fans and Highlander fans is that we have a passion and love for our team, the Highlander fan has a love and a passion for Championships.”
This is almost complete BS, and you have the sense to acknowledge as much. I have been a Yankees fan since the late 70s and endured that lost decade of the 80s when the Yankees outspent everyone and won nothing, while the Mets owned this town — and, yes, many of their rooters developed a pretty palpable passion for Championships. I went to more games in the Bronx in 90-91 (40+ games/year), the two worst seasons in Yankee history, sat out in the Bleachers, and never had more fun. I love this team no mattter what, and sure, I have loved and savored this dynastic run.
The quote above is sour grapes, but, again, you are to be credited for acknowledging as much.
By the way, I have found that there will always be a cohort of bandwagon-jumpers in this town. They are the baseball equivalent of swing voters or “independents.” They filled Shea and brought their girlfriends in the 80s and early 90s, then could be found getting off the 4 or D trains in the Bronx in the mid to late 90s. Same people, same mentality.
Anyway, you guys had the second highest payroll in baseball last season, and you'll probably have a very productive offseason, with the proceeds from your Federal taxpayer-funded ballpark. And if the Mets are in the hunt late in the season, I am sure your fans will develop anew a passion for a championship.
Wow. Seriously? Mr Met is a genial fellow fan who bobs around taking pictures with us, launching t-shirts, and leading the 7th-inning stretch singalong. The Phanatic is a desperate-for-attention d-bag with all of his intrusive antics. I hate it nearly as much as Phillie fans and Sphincterino.
Mr Met is Frank Sinatra. The Phanatic is Kanye West.
Yes we will develop the passion for a championship; however, if it comes to that, we will appreciate it for what it is, rather than holding it as our birthright, or evidence that “the universe is back in order” — ie. the sounds we hear coming from the Bronx.
Spare me the sanctimony, Charlie. Your fans were just as obnoxious when the Mets were riding high in the 80s. I don't remember much of this “loving the Mets for who they are” when Doc, Straw & Co were the team to beat. Your rooters were every bit as unbearable as some of my fellow Yankees fans are now.
As for “order being restored to the Universe”: this sentiment has everything to do with our relationship with Boston since 2004 — when the Universe really did change and our relationship with the Sawx really was inverted, and painfully — and absolutely nothing to do the the Mets or anyone else.
Basically, if the Mets had some recent accomplishment to be obnoxious about, I assure you, many fans would take the opportunity. I don't know how old you are, or if you memory extends back to around 86-88, but if it does, you know exactly what I am talking about,
Sorry, guys, you can turn the Mets' woeful ways of recent years into the stuff of literary prose or hipster bloggarea, but the fact remains yours is a well-heeled team in the biggest media market, and you had the second highest payroll in the game. You're not the tragic Sawx circa 2003, and you're surely not the eternally futile Cubs. Yours is a well-financed team that's a couple of player moves from being a World Series contender.
Dude, your team just won. Go enjoy it.
The Phanatic wouldn't even let Taylor Swift accept a lousy VMA.
I'm a well-balanced Yankees fan — I have a chip on both shoulders.
If someone would invent a device that would render Yankee fans mute and unable to type, I'd buy three of them. So I'd have a back-up after the first two break from over-use.
Talk about sanctimony. “I was there in that one season when we won only 82 games” or whatever. Yeah, boo-bleepin-hoo for you. That's exactly why everyone hates Yankee fans, the way they try to pretend they understand and relate to the suffering of fans of teams that don't win every year. They don't and they never will.
I had to listen to Mets fans crowing obnoxiously throughout the 80s while the Yankees won nuthin'. It was relentless. Deal with it. And sorry your team snorted their way out of a dynasty back then. From all the Mets-fan chest-puffing at the time, you'd think the team was the Oakland A's, rather than a one-Series wonder.
Actually, the most symbolic moment in Mets history was Ventura's Grand Single: Wasn't all it appeared to be, and the (Game 5) celebrating was premature. (You'd think the Mets had actually won something.)
And yet here we are, with the love and passion for our team that our friend Steve described. Go figure.
I've gotta respect that. Whatever crosstown rivalry crap I may give you guys, I always respect the passion of the true fan. It's why I like this blog.
You guys can make fun of this all you want, — and I get it because why would you ever want to claim any similarity to a fan of the hated Yankees? — but I really did have as much fun rooting for the Yankees from the Bleachers (long before my fellow fans became a brand, Bleacher Creatures tm) in 90-91 (when we lost 95 and 91 games respectively) than I did in many of the winning seasons. It sure was a helliuva lot more fun in 90-91 than it was during most of the Sheff/”Giambino”/Mussina era. I'll take Kevin Mass, Oscar Azocar and Hensley “Bam Bam” Muelens over those guys any day. And those years were gloriously Steinbrenner-free (he was serving his lifetime, er, 2-year suspension — and his absence paved the way for all of the good things that eventually followed).
It was just us hard-core, bleed-pinstripes fans in those years, and there was absolutely something pure about that (even amid the relentlessly impure xeonophobic and homophobic chants). We were a real community of die-hards, and many of us, now pudgier and gray, have stayed in touch, often across many time zones. It was like Shea in the late 70s, with Craig Swan, Neil Allen, Hendu,. and the noise of the planes overwhelming the din of the sparse crowds.
True fans of teams havie this much in common.
Hey Munson, flight's leaving.
Piazza hits it deep….did he get enough of it.?…Bernie Williams…..
Typical Yankee fan…wants it both ways…
(Really, just kidding, Munson. You seem pretty cool for one of …y'know…”them.”)
Dave Mlicki. Matt Franco. (Again..I kid…I kid…)
Yo Dave: Buy a vowel.
He threw enough O's at you guys that day…
Well played.
But as I recall, the unAmazin's went 0 for the rest of that series.
Stop clouding the issue with facts…