Mets vs Yanks

New York City in the summer is not exactly paradise and that’s putting it mildly.

Let’s be honest, summer in the city is steaming hot and ripe with odors that are so nasty you’d rather be sniffing damp dogs.

Sure, you can escape to the Rockaway beaches, or to Orchard Beach in the Bronx, or to Coney Island in Brooklyn, but that relief will evaporate as soon as you get back on the fetid, rolling homeless shelters, aka the New York City subways.

But amidst all that is so brutally disgusting in fun city right now, there are two places where you can flee that will bring you happiness and joy; Citifield and Yankee Stadium

For Mets and Yankees fans, New York City’s summer of 2022 is turning out to be pure heaven on Earth.

Forget football, basketball, hockey, whatever.  At its core, New York is a crazy baseball town.

From Babe Ruth in the Bronx to Jackie Robinson in Brooklyn, from Mantle, Seaver, Jeter, Keith, Piazza, baseball history has been written in New York City.  

And now, we have two winning teams with virtually the same won-loss records, at the top of the standings, with guys like Judge, Lindor, Scherzer, deGrom, Diaz and Stanton. 

Before you Yankees fans get too excited about this blog, just let me get one thing out on the table.

I grew up in Queens and I am a lifelong Mets fan.  I’ve long suffered the slings and arrows of their outrageous fortunes and failures.  I don’t really hang out with Yankees fans, (okay maybe one or two) and I bleed orange and blue.

However, I am not a Yankees hater. 

When it comes to the Yankees, I’m an agnostic.  I don’t really pay them much attention. Win or lose, I don’t adjust my blood pressure meds or my dose of Xanax, as I have to do with when the Mets play.

My Mets, oh how I love my Mets.

This summer, the New York Mets have lit up the town, energizing a beaten down, scary and COVID-weary city.

We Mets fans have serious and well-deserved PTSD.  Among other things, seared into our collective Mets memories, is the shame and humiliation of a paralyzed Carlos Beltran, looking at a called third strike with the bases loaded and two outs with the National League championship on the line in 2006.  BTW, Beltran is now a Yankees broadcaster. Ha!

The Mets of 2022 have exorcised decades of demons, of self-inflicted disaster and defeat.  And they’ve done it with team baseball and amazing hustle and heroics.

Mets fans have been liberated from the agony of cheering for a squad of disappointers. Those Mets teams that ripped my guts out and spread them in the gutter for a pizza rat to eat. 

So, thank you Mets owner Steve Cohen for slinging 290-million dollars of your hedge fund cash and assembling this winning group of players. You saved us from the penny-pinching Won’t-pon family, old Fred and young Jeff, and we won’t forget it.

Thank you Mets manager Buck Showalter, for bringing gravitas and professionalism to this team and rescuing Mets fans from depression and defeatism.  Remember Mickey Callaway?

Thank you to our heterochromic star Mets pitcher Max Scherzer, for bringing fearlessness to a team that was once timid and frightened.

Thank you to our lights-out closer Edwin Diaz, whose trumpet-filled walk-on song heralds high heat and huge hopes that a precarious lead won’t be pissed away.

Thank you to the aptly nicknamed polar bear, the barrel-chested slugger Pete Alonso, whose crushing power may win him the MVP award.

And thank you to the 340-million dollar Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor,  who wisely retracted his middle finger salute to the fans and resumed his place as one of the best players in the game.

Hey, I told you I was a diehard Mets fan.

As for the Yankees, I’m sorry, but I am forced to perceive your success this year solely as it relates to my team in Flushing. 

So here it comes, and really, this is the best I can do.

Thank you Aaron Judge and company for being so successful so far this season. You’ve made it possible, dare I say it,  that my Mets will face you in the World Series.  There’s nothing like a subway World Series to help New Yorkers of all team allegiances, to forget our woe and to penetrate the dome of doom that hangs over the five boroughs.

Uh, and thank you to, uh, hmm, thank you to, uh Aaron Judge…oh, did I already thank him?  Sorry.  Yeah well, I guess that’s it.  Thanks Judge.

So Yankees fans, the lords of baseball willing, we’ll see you in October, in our fine black Mets jerseys, with trumpets blaring and hearts beating fast, and won’t that be something special for our two great teams and for our entire city.