Trying (and failing) not to hate the Yankees

We’ve all seen the maps of Connecticut dividing us into two camps — Red Sox fans to the north and east, Yankees fans to the south and west. The line tends to wander a bit based on who has a better record at that moment, but there’s rarely any orange to be found. Mets fans are used to being ignored. We’re also used to being wrong. What’s the worst opinion you’ve ever had? Try to top this: In 1996, I thought Rey Ordoñez would be better than Derek Jeter.

Who?

Non-Mets fans could be forgiven for not remembering the non-hitting, flashy fielding Ordoñez, who had about one good month at the plate while Jeter became one of the most celebrated athletes of the past half-century. Both were rookie New York City shortstops in the spring of ’96, and there was something of a rivalry between the two of them, for a while.

It didn’t last.

Is that why I still can’t stand Jeter all these years later? It’s probably time to get over it. Mostly I’d like my team to enjoy a fraction of his team’s success. Is that too much to ask?

It doesn’t make it easier that the former Yankee remains, years after his retirement, all but inescapable. Did we need a seven-part documentary from ESPN this summer on his exploits? Are there that many people eager to hear him continue to say basically nothing of interest about his time in the spotlight?

This has been Jeter’s strategy all along — give the media no material that could trip him up with distractions. It certainly worked for him. Even today, he’s keeping his mouth shut.

That’s his right. It’d be even better if he went away for a bit.

The current context is that the Mets have their best team in years and a legitimate shot — one would think — of breaking an extended championship drought, one that my nephew/godson is happy to remind me dates back 16 years before he was born, and he’s entering his third year of college. My retort — that the Yankees themselves are 0-formy-12-year-old-son’s-life — only holds so much weight.

Still, thanks to my nephew I don’t hate the Yankees the way I did back in the ’90s. I can be happy on his behalf when they win, which they were doing a lot of until they started a mostly terrible August. Yankees fans had been acting as if the sky is falling, though they’re still comfortably in first place, and as history shows, once the playoffs start, everyone is on the same level. You don’t get extra points for finishing well.

This is the NFL-ization of baseball. The regular season used to mean everything. Now, because playoff games bring in a lot of revenue, the postseason has been extended to the point that making it is all that matters.

This was proven the one time the Yankees and Mets met in the World Series, in 2000. The Yankees were at the tail end of their last dynasty, winning it all for the fourth time in five years. But they backed into the playoffs, losing 15 of their last 18 games. None of that mattered once the postseason started, and they ended up flying yet another flag. The same could easily happen this year.

But while my disdain for the Yankees has faded over the years, they still find ways to rankle, and not just in unnecessary documentaries. The Hall of Fame voting in recent years gives new opportunities to rekindle old grievances.

The baseball Hall of Fame is a seriously flawed institution. There’s no universe, for instance, where Barry Bonds is not among the best ever to do what he did. Still, Cooperstown does a reasonably good job of separating the best from everyone else.

And let’s be clear — Jeter and Mariano Rivera, the great closer on that last Yankees dynasty, are no-doubt Hall of Famers. They were rightly elected on the first ballot.

But the Hall of Fame, flawed as it is, had never had a unanimous selection. Not Babe Ruth, not Ted Williams, not Joe DiMaggio. Until recently the player to receive the highest vote percentage was Tom Seaver, the greatest Met ever, who received 98.8 percent of votes in 1992. (Some people voted against Tom Seaver? Why?)

But suddenly some modern-day Yankees became eligible and all that went out the window. Rivera was elected unanimously, and Jeter received all but one vote.

The Hall of Fame has dumb standards, but they should at least be consistently dumb.

How was Mariano Rivera a unanimous choice but not, say, Hank Aaron? To the people outraged that Jeter didn’t receive every vote, did they forget that Willie Mays (95 percent) also didn’t? Make it make sense.

It doesn’t. It’s the Yankees, so it doesn’t have to.

I take it back. I still hate them.