Who ya gonna root for, ya Bum?
Dodgers the obvious choice for Met and Yankee fans alike
Neither the Yankees nor the Mets are playing baseball anymore this year, but that doesn’t mean there’s no one to root for when the World Series begins in Boston tonight. Quite the contrary, in fact.
This year’s matchup between the Red Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers offers New York baseball fans a very clear choice. In fact, it offers just one choice. Go Dodgers! The reasons are simple. If you’re a Yankees fan, you simply cannot under any circumstances root for the Red Sox. That would be sleeping with the enemy. Sure, the Yankees and Dodgers have a history, but let’s be honest, the Dodgers were the Yankees’ annual punching bag.
And if you’re a Mets fan, there’s absolutely no reason to root against the Dodgers. It would be like rooting against your grandfather.
Rarely has an out-of-market World Series offered such a clear and obvious rooting interest.
Understand, I’m not telling anyone what they should or should not do over the next 10 days, or the next 10 years. You are free to root for or against whomever you choose.
It’s possible that a Yankees fan could justify rooting for the Red Sox, if only to be able to come to grips with the harsh reality of being trounced in the AL East race and then managing to win just one game in the ALDS. A Boston victory, in a way, would re-affirm the belief that the Yankees weren’t a bad team this year, just not quite as good as the Red Sox, sort of like Frazier to Ali or Alydar to Affirmed.
You could root for Nathan Eovaldi, who gave his UCL in service to the Yankees a couple of seasons back. You could root for Manny Machado to trip over first base and break his neck so you won’t have to twist yourself into a pretzel pretending to like him when he becomes a Yankee next year. You could feel good for Steve Pearce, who never really got a chance in the Bronx. Or you could go full Zim, as in Don Zimmer, and absolutely hate on the Red Sox, which as a Yankees fan is your nature anyway.
In that case, you will have to embrace the Dodgers, who may have been your hated rivals and preferred foils 60 years ago but face it, this isn’t 1955 anymore. Ebbets Field is a housing project in Flatbush. These Dodgers offered a home to Joe Torre and Don Mattingly after the Yankees had no further use for them. And they were the party of the second part in the 1977 World Series that gave Reggie Jackson his nickname. Really, it’s a no-brainer.
As for our long-suffering Mets fans, the thing to remember is that if the Dodgers had not moved to L.A., there likely would be no Mets.
Had Walter O’Malley, Robert Moses and Mayor Robert Wagner not used Brooklyn’s beloved ballclub as a political football in 1957, we might be on the brink of the first-ever Red Sox - Brooklyn Dodgers World Series (They were the Brooklyn Robins when they met in the 1916 Series). Games 3, 4 and 5 might be being played in downtown Brooklyn, where the Barclays Center stands now, or in Flushing, on the site of Citi Field.
Face it, Mets Nation, had the City of Los Angeles not made O’Malley an offer he would have had to have been an absolute idiot to refuse, you’d probably all be Dodgers fans right now.
And Chase Utley is no longer on the roster and can’t kick Ruben Tejada around anymore.
And you could always pull for Justin Turner, this year’s One Who Got Away.
The truth is, it might seem easy for New York baseball fans to relegate a Red Sox-Dodgers World Series to the Pay No Mind List. But in fact, this is one that could be a bonding experience for two fan bases that have about as much in common as Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren.
If there is one thing that could bond Yankees and Mets fans, it might not be mutual scorn for the Red Sox. After all, how much could Mets fans really hate the Red Sox? I mean, Billy Buckner really should have his own exhibit in the Mets Hall of Fame.
But it could be mutual admiration for the Los Angeles Dodgers, who over the course of seven games could accomplish what was previously thought to be impossible: uniting two historically antagonistic fans bases into rooting for the same team in a World Series. A World Series neither of their teams is playing in.