ONE-SIDED AFFAIR
Two fan bases — and teams — headed in opposite directions set to collide
ISUPPOSE that, in history, it’s possible that two fan bases might have arrived at the same place and at the same time expecting the kind of vastly different things that Mets fans and Yankees fans will be anticipating this weekend at Citi Field.
Fifty-one years ago, for instance, the Monkees were as hot a band as there was in rock and roll, and that June they headed out on the road and filled stadiums around the country, and for their opening act they rolled out … the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Yes. You could say with certainty that Monkees fans and Hendrix fans brought different sets of assumptions with them on those glorious nights during the Summer of Love.
(Oh, the possibilities if they’d chosen to merge the shows just once. Say a mash-up of “Daydream Believer” and “Hey Joe?” “Cheer up Sleepy Jean … I’m goin’ down to shoot my old lady …”)
It is actually a quirk of history that this grand musical experiment died not 5 miles from where this oncegrand baseball experiment will be contested this weekend. It’s true. They were scheduled to do 29 dates together, but during the eighth one, on July 16, 1967, at Forest Hills Stadium, Hendrix apparently had his fill of having his hooks drowned out by squealing Davy Jones fans. Midway through he threw down his Fender, flipped off the crowd and left Monkeemania forever.
So, speaking of how Mets fans are feeling right about now …
Yes, it’s true, there have been plenty of years when the Mets and the Yankees seemed to be filling different parts of the baseball universe, both locally and globally. Heck, in 2003 and 2004, the Mets were barely even the secondmost interesting team for most New Yorkers because that was the height of the last Yankees-Red Sox feud.
Subway Series games in those years paled in comparison to the Mass Pike Series games, when just about anything could happen and usually did, often with a little blood spilled. But even then, the Art Howe Mets were such a yawning afterthought there was a different dynamic attached. So when, say, the ’03 Yankees swept all six games from the Mets by a combined total of 39-19 … well, that wasn’t fun for Mets fans. But it was just another layer of dirt.
And when, a year later, the 91loss Mets actually took four out of six from the 101-win Yankees — including their first-ever series sweep, at Shea, over Fourth of July weekend — the Yankees could shrug it off because between those encounters with the Mets they’d swept the Sox, capped by the game eternally frozen on Yankees Classics when Derek Jeter nearly broke his face diving into the stands after a pop fly and John Flaherty had his signature Yankees moment in the bottom of the 13th. This, though? This is different. This was a Mets team that — all together now — started the season 11-1. This was a Yankees team that started the season 9-9. If nobody ever believed that those stretches represented who the teams were, it certainly was fair to believe that, by the time they squared off for the first time on the second weekend of June, they would both be in reasonably good places.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Friday night at 7:10.
(Mets fans might react to the word “funny” in that context the way Joe Pesci did once upon a time.)
In even the best seasons, it’s the folks in the stands who carry this rivalry and make it what it is. That’s true even when there are real stakes on the table. The players don’t know, can’t know, the history involved. They can pay respect to it. They can salute how important it remains that these teams intertangle a couple of times a year. But it’s the fans who have lived it.
And this weekend, it feels like the fans will carry the day again, because of the sheer, sharp contrast between where they will arrive from.
The past few weeks have taken their toll on even loyalist Mets fans, first tearing at their hearts with disappointment and lately simply blinding their eyes with awful baseball. And those weeks have heartened Yankees fans, whose least favorite days of the week are off days like Thursday, because that’s the only time they don’t believe, with absolute certainty, that their team will win a baseball game.
Mets fans and Yankees fans. Monkees fans and Hendrix fans.
Yankees fans: “Not a trace … of doubt in my mind …” Mets fans: “There must be some kind of way out of here … said the joker to the thief …”