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| Squawker Jon and I just before the NLDS started. Jon looks cautiously optimistic, as my brother said. |
And even Red Sox fan BFF/frenemy Nick at Monstah Mash is rooting for the Mets. The fact we are all on the same side is a sure sign of something very strange afoot!
It has been an exciting postseason so far. I have watched more October baseball this year than I ever have in any year that the Yankees weren't really involved.
Especially the Mets. I have seen almost every pitch of every one of their nine playoff games to date. More than some Mets fans I know who have more of a life than me!
I wrote a few weeks ago why I wanted the Mets to win it all. (Click here to read why.) Not only would it be good for the Squawkers and my plans for world domination, but it would give my blogging partner and his fellow Mets fans something to talk about besides 1986. (Mets coach Tim Teufel recently said that even his fellow 1986 Mets are sick of hearing about the 1986 Mets!)
And it might also light a fire under Yankee brass. We all know that Hal Steinbrenner doesn't really care about baseball. But he does care about money. And if this town starts to become a Mets town, and his bottom line is threatened, he might actually wake up and shake things up in Yankeeland. Once rich people start entertaining their clients at Citi Field instead of Yankee Stadium, you'll see some real change.
John Scimeca, one of our longtime readers, shared this quote with me the other day: "Somehow I go back to 1969 when the Mets won the pennant and Yankees President Michael Burke sent the following telegram to M. Donald Grant of the Mets: 'Congratulations on being Number One - am rooting for you to hang in there and take all the marbles. As a New Yorker, I am ecstatic, as a baseball person, I am immensely pleased, and as a Yankee, I consider suicide the easy option.'" Heh.
The Mets winning has also given me a chance to be an altruist for once in my miserable life. I have been genuinely happy for Jon and my Met fan friends (and strangely enough, I have more Met fan friends than Yankee fan friends. Go figure.) They have waited 15 long years for this moment. And they haven't become completely insufferable yet. So let them enjoy this October. Let's go Mets, I say.
However, some of my Yankee fan brethren disagree, and are rooting against the Mets. They are also claiming that so-called "true" or "real" Yankee fans would not cheer for the folks from Flushing.
First of all, I hate the idea of "true" Yankee fans just as much as I do the self-appointed Yankee experts who deem players like A-Rod not a "true" Yankee.
And contrary to their opinion, there is nothing wrong with wanting the other New York team to win. Maybe it's because I lived in Texas for 15 years. But the rest of the country hates/envies New York. So what's wrong with wanting the fellow New York team to succeed? (Incidentally, they think of *all* of us New York transplants as "damn Yankees," for what it's worth!)
Look. If you are a Yankee fan and can't root for the Mets, knock yourself out. But don't tell me what I can do. I don't react well to that!
Plus, the Mets haven't won for 30 years, they need this one anyway. More importantly, they're still a New York team.
ReplyDeleteIt'll be good for them to pull this one off though it won't be easy since the Royals have the motivation from last year's narrow defeat to win. With that said, I'd say the series will go at least 6 games with 7 being a strong possibility.