The folks over at River Ave Blues wrote this:
Simply put, Yankee fans don’t hate the Mets while Mets fans absolutely abhor the Yankees and their fans.
It bugged me. Not in a “ruined my day” way, but enough that I send them over a guest post yesterday morning. I didn’t hear back, maybe they are busy, so I thought I would post it over here.
Ben,
While I get and share the “little brother” mentality, I have news for you guys. We don’t hate you.
Oh sure there are knuckleheads in every fan base, and we have some drunks at Citi Field who will break out a Jeter chant for no reason, but for the most part we just don’t care about what’s happening up there.
We can never catch up. If the Mets run off ten straight rings you’ll just hit us with 27-12.
If the Mets run off 26 straight rings (unlikely) you’ll slam us with your better marketing if your history and tell the tales of Ruth, DiMaggio, Mantle and I guess Jeter.
We both know that this area has about 2 million Mets fans, 2 million Yankees fans and about 2 million frontrunners. Eventually the Yankees will be down while the Mets are up and we’ll see where all the guys with the Joba t-shirts decide to get their baseball fix that summer.
You did cede the stadium war to Queens, and although Citi has some sightline issues there’s nothing like the ridiculousness in your bleachers. We have a ballpark, and you have something resembling a subway station. Sure, if you can pay for the lower deck you can pretend you are at “Yankee Stadium”, but upstairs it’s really easy to pretend you are at a Staten Island game.
On the field, hey we’ll see you in June. Maybe Castillo will catch the third out this time, maybe not. Oh, and when they do play, pop over to 66 and listen to what a game sounds like when it is accurately described.
Love the site, thanks for your time. See you in October?
…
In retrospect I wish I had gotten in some lines about the true Yankees like Clemens, Damon and A-Rod.
Really? Most Mets fans I know, myself included, HATE the Yankees and their fans. That includes most of my friends, my whole family, and many of the random Mets fans that I’ll occasionally strike up a conversation with. Hell even the guys over at FAFIF express a generally disdain for the other New York team. I think you may have missed the pulse on this one Shannon. And as much as Yankees fans say they don’t care about the Mets you know it probably pisses them off to no end when we beat them. I hate the Yankees so much that’ll I’ll root for the Phillies over the Yankees, with the rational being that I’ve only hated the Phillies for the last five years or so and will go back to not caring about them once their current run of success ends, whereas I always have and always will hate the Yankees.
It really stems from the fact that the two franchises are so diametrically opposed. The Yankees are the lawyers, bankers, WASPy Upper East Siders who view a trip to Shea as akin to going to the Port Authority Bus Terminal. They’re the people from towns in Westchester that sound like they should be in England. They come from money and talk with upper class accents with their noses turned up at the rest of us. Whereas the Mets are the construction workers, firefighters, and people scrambling to get by. The people who have had to fight tooth and nail for everything they own and even then it isn’t all that much. They’re the Irish and Italian guys who affix and ‘e’ to the end of every name. The Mets come from Queens and the parts of Brooklyn that haven’t been taken over by yuppies or hipsters. They come from the towns on the Babylon and Hempstead branches. Their idea of a reward after a hard day at work isn’t chardonnay or some fancy overpriced microbrew its an ice cold bud.The Mets are up from the street. And every Yankees fan who claims to that the Yankees are those as well it so overly aspirational loser who has no sense of his own identity and masks their shortcomings in the success of a pro sports team. Mets fans don’t need that ’cause even if we do lose and are always the little brother and the underdog at least we know who we are and aren’t ashamed to admit it. The worst thing the Mets ever did was tear down Shea because that was the perfect manifestation of this divide, but que sera sera, we’ll still always know the truth, and many times (especially when your a Mets fan) knowing is enough. So really Shannon how can you not hate them?
I’m 21 years old. A Yankees fan my age has never had to question why they root for their team. They’ve never had to endure misery and heartbreak. All they’ve ever gotten out of baseball is satisfaction, success, and happiness while all I’ve gotten is emptiness, failure, and depression. Yankees fans don’t lie in bed wondering why they put themselves through rooting for their team. Mets fans do. Its why were better than them, because we actually do care, we have too, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. Yankees fans don’t get it. They don’t get what it means to stick with something. They don’t get that rooting for a team is a two way street. They’re entitled. They’re hopeless. And deep down they know that they get no true joy from being a Yankees fan. When you expect to win every time winning ceases to be enjoyable and instead becomes a relief. When the Mets win the WS again it’ll give me so much joy that it’ll make up for all the years of losing. When the Yankees win another WS does it really mean anything to their fans? I doubt it, and I doubt it makes up for the years that they didn’t win. When the Yankees won in 2010 you didn’t hear their fans talk about how they felt vindicated for sticking with the team for the ten years between championships. They felt more relieved that it was a return to normal for them, and let me ask, where the hell is the fun in that?
I doubt that there are 2 million true Yankees fans. Probably closer to only a million, when they lose 100 games see how many of them will still be wearing Yankees hats.
Shannon, You’re usually spot on, but I think you might be wrong on this one!
I like the possibility that I could be wrong. I’d love to see a lively debate on this one. Why do u hate them?
I also think you are wrong on this one Shannon.
I personally have a lot of respect for the Yankees as an organization. They have a tremendous history with some of the best players in the history of the game. Tradition and all that jazz is great. They have ownership that is dedicated to winning and putting the money they earn back into the team.
However, their FANS are obnoxious a-holes. They have an incredible sense of self-entitlement like no other fans in the world. They gloss over any bad history like it never happened (i.e. the 80s). They are cocky and arrogant. I hate Yankee fans and I root against the Yankees so that they will feel pain.
Am I jealous? Hell yes. Does that make me hate them any less? No.
PS I have tons of Yankee-fan friends. Take my use of the word hate for what it is: harmless and fun baseball hate.