One of the October rituals of a New York Mets fan is taking a break from leaf-raking and planning Halloween costumes in order to decide who you’re going to root for in the World Series. Some years, there will be a team you can convince yourself to like and you root for them. Other years, there will be a team you don’t like and you can root against them. In many years, you are indifferent to both teams and so you remain indifferent to the outcome of the Series.
Only rarely do two teams you strongly dislike make it to the World Series. When this happens, you face a peculiar problem. As much as you’d like to remain indifferent, you can’t. There is no conceivable way in which a Mets fan can be indifferent to a Yankees-Phillies World Series. We are so used to responding positively to the failure of these teams, and so used to responding negatively to their successes, that we can’t just suddenly pull the plug on our emotions. The problem, obviously, is what are you supposed to do if a single event (say Howard hitting a homer off of Rivera) would simultaneously flood your neurons with happy chemicals and unhappy chemicals? You don’t want to explode and you can’t neutralize your emotions. To keep from exploding, you have to pick one of these two teams and root for it.
In the upcoming World Series, I am rooting for the Philadelphia Phillies to defeat the New York Yankees. Here is why.
Yankees fans right now are very happy about facing the arch-nemesis of the Mets. They see an opportunity to get us on their side, to unite the city behind their team. They think we will join them in celebrating the exploits of Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez. They think that when we see what this is like, we will realize that it is actually not so bad. Our hearts will melt, and since our own team has given us so much heartache lately, we might even consider, on the very edge of our consciousness, the possibility, dare one say it, of a change in loyalty, or a dividing of loyalty, in order to enjoy this sweet ambrosia of frequent winning. It’s not so bad to win, is it? Feels kind of nice, doesn’t it? There are some good players on that team in the Bronx …..
WAKE UP! Throw a pail of cold water over your head! Don’t fall asleep! Don’t ever do it! Don’t be replaced by the pods in the basement and always resist the seductive but specious arguments of the Dark One.
Mets fans! Remember that no matter how successful the Yankees become, the one thing we can always deprive them of is the right to claim that they have unified this city, that they are “New York’s team.” To this day, you will hear Yankees fans, their eyes misting with tears, remembering how the city came together behind the Yankees’ noble, doomed quest for a fifth consecutive World Championship in 2001. Mets fans know that this didn’t really happen. We weren’t very demonstrative about this, out of respect for what many Yankees fans had suffered in the attacks, but I am willing to tell the world that I know that in the New York metropolitan area, it wasn’t just my chips and dip table that got knocked over in exhilaration when Luis Gonzalez singled off of Mariano Rivera to drive Jay Bell home with the run that gave the Arizona Diamondbacks the 2001 World Championship.
Mets fans cannot root for the Yankees under any circumstances. It is as simple as that. I understand that Yankees fans feel morally superior to us because they can, on occasion, root for the Mets. The chutzpah is amazing but I’ve actually met Yankees fans who think they deserve credit for having rooted for the Mets in the 1986 Series. Still, everyone needs to understand that Mets fans can’t ever root for the Yankees because for us, the dynamic is so much more complicated. The Mets mean nothing to the Yankees. The Yankees mean a great deal to the Mets. We are the slighted younger brother. We are Cain and they are Abel. Hating them is central to who and what we are. Think of it, Mets fan. What will it feel like to you to hear them celebrating their 27th World Championship in this year of all years in Mets history? Would you rather hear them gloat or would you rather hear their anguish at being denied that to which they are so certain they are entitled?
The Phillies are just our division rivals. They are not wrapped around the tree trunk of our very existence as Mets fans. If we root for the Yankees, we may cease to exist. If we root for the Phillies, for this one series, it doesn’t make any difference. It’s not as if there is any chance of us becoming Phillies fans, in the way that there is always a chance that a Mets fan might become a Yankees fan. Sure, if the Phillies win, they will have bragging rights. But what do they have now, please? Are you worried that a second World Championship in a row will make the Phillies fans more obnoxious? Who would you rather see get more obnoxious, Phillies fans or Yankees fans? And hey, why shouldn’t these people be obnoxious? They’ve earned it. We just wish we could be this obnoxious to them. We’re resentful that we can’t be. When Phillies fans show up at Citi Field with their banners and their Championship shirts, I wish I could say something cutting and witty to them, but I can’t. I hang my head. I can’t find a good reason to hate the Phillies. I’m just mad because they beat us, dramatically, three times in a row. And I’m not going to start hating them because they treat the Mets with so much contempt and disdain. Why do Mets fans feel that they are the only ones allowed to treat the Mets with contempt and disdain?
It might even be fun for the Phillies to have won two World Championships in a row. There will certainly be no question, when the season starts, about the team to beat in the National League East. Even if the Phillies lose in four to the Yankees, there will still be no question about this. They are the team to beat. We are the underdogs. That will make victory more fun if we can beat them. Look, there’s nothing that can happen now that can hurt the Phillies in terms of their standing relative to the Mets. As we all know, there is nothing shameful about losing a World Series, unless of course you lose it, when you have a better team, to a hated crosstown rival to whom you are often compared. That can’t happen in this Series. One of these teams will emerge as the 2009 World Champion and the other will be a respected pennant winner.
Do it. Root for the Phillies. Sweeten the pot of our eventual triumph over them. Deny the Yankees. As much as we would like to, we can’t sit on the sidelines for this one. There is too much at stake and too much going on. Yes, this is a nightmare for Mets fans. But face it, some nightmares are worse than others. Oh, and if against everyone’s expectations, the Angels pull it out, and we have a Phillies-Angels World Series, root for the Angels.
For an excellent treatment of this same topic, check out the ever-reliable Faith and Fear in Flushing.
And if you haven’t submitted an entry yet in my Last Days of Shea mystery article contest, please see the post below.
