I have a confession to make. I don’t really hate the Braves. I’ve said and I’ve written that I hate the Braves. Every Mets fan says this. But I don’t really. I’ve tried, but I can’t.
Sure I hated John Rocker, but he’s been gone a very long time and you could just tell from looking at Bobby Cox’s face when he was asked about him what Bobby thought about John Rocker. I hated the Chief Knock-a-Homah thing and I still hate the Tomahawk chop. I do the “Larrr-rryyy” thing when Chipper comes up, but I can’t get all that riled up because long ago he suggested, probably out of ignorance, that Mets fans switch to rooting for the Yankees once the Mets are out of it. All that stuff is stupid, but it’s not enough of a reason to hate the franchise.
I hate the Yankees. That’s not hard. I hate them because I hate the idea of expecting rather than hoping to win. I hate the impoverished baseball mentality they have come to stand for in the Steinbrenner epoch and in the past twelve years in particular. I found it easy to hate the Cardinals again last year. They didn’t deserve to be there, or to do what they did. They were an ugly-looking team and all of those hefty folks in red waving white hankies got to me.
But I just can’t bring myself to hate Atlanta. They won our division for fifteen years in a row, but they didn’t do it in a Yankee way, all puff-chested and explaining that the people of Atlanta expect a winner no matter how much it cost. They did it with an organization that was run the way a baseball franchise should be run: with intelligence and resourcefulness. They did it with the kind of qualities that Mets management has lacked for most of Mets history. They won every year but they surprised you by winning in plenty of those years. I can’t help but applaud them. And then, they only won one World Series. That makes them feel human. It gives them a nice tragic character.
Another reason I find it hard to hate the Braves is that their fan base isn’t as passionate as the Braves team deserves. The Braves have a decent fan base, but they can’t reliably fill their stadium for big games, and there isn’t exactly a madhouse atmosphere in Atlanta when the Braves are in it. I don’t think this is just because they’ve won so much. I think it’s the old regional thing. People in that area breathe, eat, and drink college football. They watch baseball, but to them baseball is what college football is to us. It’s pretty peripheral.
I was in New Orleans once when when what they call “them Dawgs!,” about which they like to ask “How about?” were playing Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl and let me tell you, Georgians really can get passionate about athletic contests. But they just don’t feel about the Braves in Atlanta what the people in St. Louis feel about the Cards, or people in Boston feel about the Red Sox, or we feel about the Mets. It’s just not the same. And I feel bad for the Braves. A team that has been this good for this long deserves a little more passionate appreciation.
Who expected the Braves to be in it this year? I didn’t. You didn’t. I look at them and I’m not sure why they’re as close to us as they are in the standings. I give them credit. They are the underdog this year. We’re the favorites. That makes it even harder for me to hate them or to get back into the state of mind I was in in 1999 or 2000 when they were the Evil Empire, when they humiliated us whenever our boys had to play in Turner Field.
Maybe if they get a lead, or maybe if one of their players says something stupid, I’ll find some way to hate the Braves again. But I don’t think either of those things is going to happen. I am still hoping that somebody will slap the Phillies in the face and point them in the direction of the finish line. A New York-Phillies rivalry would have a lot of passion. Given the physical proximity of the two cities, you could have all kinds of fun with a rivalry like that. I’ll keep hoping. And I guess that no matter what I or any other Mets fan says, I’m just going to keep respecting the Atlanta Braves.
You and I obviously agree on the Phillies thing. As one who lived in Philadelphia for a few years and travels there usually monthly, there is a lot of low-hanging fruit for an “I hate the Phillies and Phillies fans” platform.
As for Atlanta, I’ve never attended a game there (whereas I’ve been to more than I can count in Philadephia) so its all in the abstract. My sum total of experience in Atlanta was spending one night there in connection with an incredibly dull document review. All of it is brand spanking new (General Sherman was quite thorough) and pretty much everyone I met was originally from elsewhere (big Minnesota contingent). I’ve seen a smattering of Braves fans at games I’ve seen against them in NY, Philly, and one interleague game in Baltimore, but they have been pretty meek and quiet.
(Great story on the Baltimore game. I attended that one not that far removed from Rocker’s infamous SI interview. I wore a tshirt I picked up from the NYC Transit Museum that said “#7 Willets Point-Shea Stadium” and as it turned out my seats at OPACY were right atop the bleacher. When I made my way over when Rocker was warming up in the pen, the packed crowd parted the way for me like God opening the Red Sea for Moses. The Braves bullpen coach looked up and gave me a Clint Eastwood stare. Given that Rocker was built like a mack truck and could throw 98 miles an hour, I figured actions speak louder than words and just remained in place until I slipped back into my seat to the applause of the Os fans.)
So, as far as Atlanta is concerned, setting Rocker and Chipper Jones to one side, my hatred there is pure. That team was the principal obstacle to the Mets getting to the post-season. The stupid tomahawk chop brings about a quart of bile into my mouth on site. To me, Atlanta is a first class example of the strip mall big box store mentality that has invaded too much of the USA. I’d sooner see the Yankees win 26 more WS than suffer through one more by Atlanta.
I have to strongly disagree with you claim that Braves players don’t have a sense of entitlement. I have heard and read intereviews with many players and personell in the Braves organization. They have all – - to a man – - consistently said that they took the position that the NL East title was theirs as of right. One player even said that in the clubhouse, the players often said to each other that it didn’t matter how badly they were playing at any given point, they just took it as a given that they were going to storm back and take the NL East title. Much much more arrogant, sense of entitlement than anything I’ve ever heard emanate from the Bronx. (I mean, Derek Jeter has pretty much patented saying “Well, the [insert opponent here] has a good team and you have to take it one game at a time.”
Don’t get me wrong – a smug swaggering attitude among the Braves is to be complimented and was probably a huge factor in their run of success all these years. But from a fan perspective, Atlanta is the height of arrogance. The fans may be more low key, but I think that stems more from cultural differences between East Coast cities and the New South (plus the fact that football holds supreme in the South) than the feelings. At least if you go by message boards, Braves fans tie up their loathing of the Mets far more in general disdain for NY than Yankees fans do (and it would be pretty ridiculous of Yankee fans to do that for obvious reasons.)
Also, its that very lack of passion and fire among the Braves fan base that makes me hate them even more. Why as a Mets fan am I stuck with this ticky-tack Wal-Mart franchise as a principal rival? Give me the mental patients that sit in the Yankee Stadium bleachers any day over a crowd that can’t sell out playoff games and treats a baseball game like a performance of Mahler’s 9th Symphony.
I mean, they are a bunch of animals, but when the loony tunes in Yankee Stadium scream at the other team’s outfielders “YOU EVEN SUCK IN VIDEO GAMES” or learn how to shriek insults about Ichiro’s mother in Japanese, that is some funny stuff. I respect that. If the Phillies ever get decent we’ll see something more like that. (Although things at the new park are not nearly as rude and raucous as they were at the Vet. This is a constant problem at the new amusement park generation of ballparks. Sadly, same problem at Camden Yards vs. Memorial Stadium.)
Finally, I have to ask you this. Did you like or loathe the 1986-1988 Mets? I mean, if there was ever a team that strutted around with an outsized and inappropriate sense of entitlement, it was that era. And the fans were seen the same way. I recall it very distinctly. The players admit it. (As one said “at least the Chicago Bears waited until AFTER they won the Super Bowl before they releaed their awful rap record.”) I think the sense of “expecting rather than hoping to win” was far more prevalent on the Mets of the 1980s than any Yankee team from 1995 forward. They certainly pay lip service to the 26 WS, but at least as the players on the team are concerned (or Brian Cashman for that matter) the comments seem pretty low-key.
I agree with you that as a general matter, hardcore Mets fans have more fond memories over bad years than hardcore Yankee fans. But we are talking about a pretty small cultish subset. The fact that Shea and Yankee Stadium now get north of 50,000 per game means that lots of casual fans are in attendance. And I also think many self-professed diehard Mets fans waxing rhapsodic about the Grant’s Tomb era have rose colored glasses. The place was a ghost town – - far worse than the Mattingly era Yankees.
My point here is that in my view, the attitude you (correctly) find repellent among Yankee fans or the organization lurks just under the surface for the Mets as well. When people were howling and screaming that Minaya was an idiot for sticking with Jose Valentin or not signing Zito, it wasn’t much better than the Yankee fan attitude that there oughta be an All-Star at every position (though these days no small portion of their fan base seems longing for youth and Stick Michael’s return). And this is fundamentally an East Coast thing. (Let me put it this way – - Phillies fans aren’t nearly as good humored about their team’s collapses as Cubs fans are). And it is at its zenith in NYC because of the massive size of the region, the media focus, etc.
Notwithstanding my prior comments on rooting for Penn, I don’t like the sense of entitlement regardless of who the team is. (Was always a problem for me when I rooted for the Knicks. Strutting around like kings of the world when they hadn’t won squat since 1973). It is one of the things that makes me glad I also root for the Orioles, because while its a passionate baseball town with some East Coast attitude, there seems to be a better sense of perspective and reality. However, I also recognize that its that same sense of outsized entitlement and chest-puffing that makes pro sports in NYC so unlike anywhere else, including Baltimore.
(To return to the basketball analogy, for a variety of reasons [actually having zero to do with the Knicks' current plight] I root for the Nets now. And while I love the team and enjoy the games, the level of intensity and insanity doesn’t approach what its like at MSG when the Knicks are playing well. Hopefully the move to Brooklyn will improve that problem.)
Therefore (and hopefully in connection with your observations in your piece) I would suggest that at some level, you actually like the Yankees a great deal more than the Braves, and at another level you respect them and their fans more. I suggest this is the case because you are (understandably) able to summon up considerably more passion and fire for the Yankees’ ups and down than the Braves, and recognize (as I do as well) that something incalculable is lost when you don’t have a rivalrly that is rooted in real fire, passion, and outsized expectations.
JD, yes you are right in the sense that a lot of what I meant to say in this post is that it is hard to hate Atlanta a) because I admire what they’ve done as an organization; and b) I don’t have a sense of a fired-up passionate fan base on their side that would help me to enjoy a rivalry.
I loved the 1986-8 Mets and I think that other teams and other fan bases were wrong to condemn them for being cocky. I think cockiness is good and it is something entirely different from a sense of entitlement. The 1986 Mets in particular needed to exhibit their exuberances because they were playing without any competition at all and they needed to do something to keep themselves from dying of boredom. They were suprised and amazed at how good they were, they had been through the hardships of 1984 and 1985, when they were really good but didn’t win it, they were somewhat insecure because of falling short in ‘84 and ‘85, and I enjoyed their pride in their magnificence. They never lost sight of the fact that winning 108 games and winning the World Series was a very big deal. What I hate is losing sight of such things because of the obligation of winning.
Great story about Rocker and your #7 train shirt.
I agree that if Braves fans were more passionate, it probably wouldn’t bolster the rivalry because its too far away from NYC so (unlike Philly or Boston) you probably wouldn’t have lots of Braves fans at Mets games or vice-versa.
I certainly admire what they did as an organization. I didn’t know until last year that John Scheurholz came out of the legendary Lou Gorman days of the Orioles, which also spawned Frank Cashen.
Regarding your comment on “the obligation of winning”, you might enjoy reading Buster Olney’s book “The Last Night Of The Yankee Dynasty”. I’ve only read excerpts, but he basically surmises that Steinbrenner made a Faustian bargain with his players, namely that he would always pay top $ but that in exchance he expected them to at least get to the Series every year.
Whether the players really took that to heart is anyone’s guess; I find it extremely difficult to believe that the players didn’t see winning 4 titles in a row as an extraordinary achievement, particularly given expansion generally, and the high risk factor of the 5 game division series.
It seems to me that if anything, the Yankees current problem is, other than perhaps Jeter, Posada, and Riveria, losing is acceptable to them. Its been a long time since they had a guy like O’Neill, who walked out on the field every night expecting to win, and would trash the dugout or clubhouse if it didn’t happen.
I’d only leave you with the idea that if Jeff Pearlman’s to be taken at his word from his book “THE BAD GUYS WON” about 1986, I don’t think the Mets were simply cocky. They had a tremendous sense of entitlement. Truth is, the fact that the Red Sox, who came in as big underdogs especially after the ferocious ALCS with the Angels, were somewhat remarkable for making it a seven game series at all.
Disagree ferociously with you, JD, about the 86 Mets. I never felt a sense of entitlement. Excitement, agitation, furious will to win, yes, but I never, ever felt that our team had a right to victory. We earned our victory, against a superb Houston team and an excellent band of Red Sox. One hundred and eight victories in the regular season meant nothing at that point, and all 14 wins in the post season were great achievements.
Re: the Red Sox pennant victory. Marvelous, stirring, and wonderful. The stuff of legend. Hey, though, Jerry Izenberg wrote a book about Game Six of the NLCS that year called “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” He makes a good case for it, too. I saw that game at a Capitol Hill bar from the 3rd inning on through the 16th. After we took a lead in extra innings, I stupidly told the bartender to put a bottle of cheap champagne on ice for me and the 3 or 4 Mets fans in the place. When Houston rapidly tied, I told him, “Put it away till we win. If we don’t throw it away.”
Fact is, given our history, our juxtaposition, geographically as well as historically, to the Yankees, we can never feel “entitled.” I sure don’t this year, and I think we have the best team in ages.
Regarding the Braves, well, I DO hate them, for many reasons, perhaps most of which is that I know many of their smug, pompous fans. Back in 1999, when our opening post-season game was an 11PM east coast start against Randy Johnson’s Diamondbacks, I mentioned to a Braves fan colleague at work that I’d have to have a drink after dinner, then nap till opening pitch. He laughed and said, “You’d get up at 11 for a first round playoff game???”
Kind of solidified my disgust with the whole Braves entitlement mentality.
Although I usually agree with you on your blogs Dana, this is one that I respectfully disagree about. I hate Atlanta for being smug and self righteous. When they kept winning in the ’90’s, it drove me crazy. Bobby Cox and Leo Mazzone were so cocky. It was as if they expected to win, and lorded over everyone else. Of course, that was when the Mets were not very good and it made it even worse. I can’t tell you how much pleasure I got that every year they lost the World Series. I was so hoping Cleveland would win in 1995, but I guess Atlanta had to win one. Thank goodness it was only one. I always rooted for whoever Atlanta played in the World Series, and last year I loved it that the Braves were not good.
I was so disappointed that they lost tonight. Every time they came close, Atlanta somehow managed to thwart them. I thought with last year they would get over the Atlanta jinx, but apparently it has returned. Glavine did not pitch a bad game and deserved better. I was cursing at the television and all the players.
I feel about Atlanta the way the Yankees fans feel about the Red Sox and the Red Sox feel about the Yankees. If it came down to the Cardinals and Atlanta, I would pick the Cardinals. I could never in good conscience root for the Braves. I do find it ironic that when the Mets won in ‘69, they played the Braves in the National League playoff!
Chris:
You wrote:
“Disagree ferociously with you, JD, about the 86 Mets. I never felt a sense of entitlement. Excitement, agitation, furious will to win, yes, but I never, ever felt that our team had a right to victory. We earned our victory, against a superb Houston team and an excellent band of Red Sox. One hundred and eight victories in the regular season meant nothing at that point, and all 14 wins in the post season were great achievements.”
I’m not suggesting that the Mets didn’t earn their stripes – the Stros and Red Sox were fine teams. But it isn’t telling any tales out of school to say that the Mets were seen as arrogant by pretty much every other team around the league, and no small number of players from that year have freely admitted such was the case.
In terms of whether the fans had a sense of entitlement akin to the more loathsome elements of the Yankee fan base, it is hard to tell, partially because the means of evaluating such things is incredibly different today. In 1986 we didn’t have message boards, blogs, cable networks devoted to the teams, and sports talk radio wasn’t nearly the monster that it is today. So (and Gary Cohen once pointed this out) the way fans express themselves and interact with each other has changed enormously.
I guess the best way I can express it is that in the 1980s, I don’t recall a large number of conversations about which team’s fans acted like bigger jerks, or even whether a given team had an arrogant attitude. I mainly recall debates on how Hernandez and Mattingly stacked up against each other.
You also wrote:
“Fact is, given our history, our juxtaposition, geographically as well as historically, to the Yankees, we can never feel “entitled.” I sure don’t this year, and I think we have the best team in ages.”
I respectfully disagree. You and I probably feel that way, but there are a lot of Mets fans (esp. no small number of know-nothing younger ones) who demonstrate the same degree of inappropriate anger and sense of entitlement that I find irritating in a certain genus of Yankee fans. New York has never really had a love of loserdom the way Chicago does (and even there its changed). Here, its OK not to win the WS, but the expectation is that the teams should get to the post-season regularly, and that was the case for the Dodgers, Giants as well. You see it today with the Knicks and Rangers as well. Close but no cigar is acceptable, even cherished, but cellar dwelling is treated very harshly and angrily.
Happy Memorial Day weekend to all.
A couple of things.
I expected that most fans reading this blog would disagree with what I said about Atlanta. I may not hate Atlanta, but I acknowledge that most Mets fans do. And I acknowledge that there are reasons to hate them, in a relatively friendly baseball way. But somehow, I’ve never really gotten into it.
With respect to hating other teams, and the 1986 Mets, it really is hard to say where spirit and exuberance ends and arrogance and a sense of entitlement begins. Personally, I think that there’s too much emphasis on keeping enthusiasm hidden so as not to show up the other team. I thought that Lastings Milledge slapping the fans’ hands was delightful. I resented, in 1986, the way that other teams hated the Mets because they delighted so much in being so good. I love curtain calls. I love the direct expression of emotion in baseball. The stiff-upper-lip-don’t-show-up-the-other-guy stuff strikes me as boring and inauthentic.
Having said that, I will assert once again that I think that exuberance is good and a sense of entitlement is bad. And by a sense of entitlement, I don’t mean a 1986 or a 2007 sense that this is our year. I mean the sense that we are the Yankees, we win lots of championships, we deserve to have another one. I think that only winning one WS recently has kept the Braves from developing a real sense of entitlement and I think that the Mets have never had a sense of entitlement. They just haven’t won enough and they’ve only won it all twice in 45 years.
Dana:
You wrote:
” I mean the sense that we are the Yankees, we win lots of championships, we deserve to have another one. I think that only winning one WS recently has kept the Braves from developing a real sense of entitlement and I think that the Mets have never had a sense of entitlement. They just haven’t won enough and they’ve only won it all twice in 45 years.”
I’m still not sure who is the “we” being referred to there? The players? Steinbrenner? The fans? I seriously doubt the Yankee players believed they had some sense of entitlment – its pretty hard to get 4 WS rings in a row no matter who plays for the team. I assume you mean the fans or possibly ownership. I don’t seriously think that Derek Jeter has ever expressed anything remotely suggesting that his team was entitled to a WS ring as a birthright or legacy, nor have I ever heard him or anyone (other than maybe Sheffield) disrespect other teams.
Its been a long time since 1986 (or 1988) but my recollection is that other teams (not fans) despised the Mets because they thought they did act as if everyone else in the NL oughta forfeit the game rather than play ‘em. Which, don’t get me wrong, I loved. I have no problem with ballplayers acting with swagger and arrogance as long as its my team. Double standards are terrific.
If that’s the case, then I have to tell you, Red Sox fans for years have had a far worse sense of entitlement than nearly any fan base I’ve ever seen. Somehow believing that they’ve been robbed of a title, and many acting as if they deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for rooting for that team. Believing that somehow a curse had robbed them of titles when in fact stupid decisions, a hitter friendly park, and years of bigotry were the main culprits. The proof of that is now, many Red Sox fans are almost indistinguishable from Yankee fans in humorlessness and poor sportsmanship. If anything, fear of being labeled a “one and done” makes some of them (and I stress “some”) even more impossible to deal with than Yankee fans.
Interesting, JD, abou the Red Sox…I have for years (1986 excepted, of course) wanted them to just win the damn thing so they can stop being perennially pious and obnoxious martyrs and become just supporters of a baseball team. Thank God I’ve lived to see that day!
Dana, I too love the curtain call, when appropriate. I LOVED when Gary Carter, after a dramatic home run, would bound out of the dugout, pump his fist to the ever-swelling roar, and then duck back in. Great stuff…I never, ever understood the animus so many fans (even Mets fans) had for Carter…it always seemed to me that Carter had never lost his little-boy love of the game, and his joy was a beautiful thing to behold. You just knew that he probably went to bed every night thanking the powers that be that he got paid–a lot of money, at that–as an adult to play a kid’s game, a game he probably would have paid league fees to play as an amateur, had his ability been insufficient to elevate him to the major leagues.
My wife totally agrees. Carter (and Sid, for reasons obscure) was a favorite of hers from that era. One of mine, too.
Chris:
Agree on Carter. Esp. given that he’s a self-confessed geek who (other than the infamous plane ride after the Houston NLCS victory) did not run around on a booze-and-coke fueled mania like other players. Carter is one of my favorite players from the team – when they finally started selling player-t-shirts from 1986 members I raced to buy his.
I agree with the pious martyrs on a certain segment of Red Sox Nation, but I still wanted them to lose for all eternity. Two principal reasons. First, I’m a history buff and I wanted to damn them for all time for how they treated my #1 hero Jackie Robinson. Second, I’m a Jets fan, which should be self-explanatory.
JD, I know about the Yawkey organization’s racism, but can you fill me in on what Red Sox nation might have done to Jackie Robinson? I don’t know what you are referring to (though needless to say no fan base should be condemned for all time for what happened so long ago, weren’t the Cardinals fans pretty rough on Robinson?)
Dana:
Sorry, I didn’t mean Red Sox fans as being harsh to Robinson, I meant Yawkey. In fact, it was some Red Sox fans that made the big push in the 1960s to integrate the team (putting pressure on Yawkey and Pinkey Higgins.)
If I were to blame Red Sox fans (as opposed to the team) in any manner, its putting on blinders and attesting their team’s years of failures to the Curse of the Babe or other such nonsense. In the case of the Red Sox, probably more so than any other team in baseball, racism and its aftereffects played an enormous role in the team’s problems. At a certain level, the Curse of the Babe is sort of offensive, and I’ve always been surprised about how many Red Sox fans want to shrug off an extremely ugly history in these regards, one which arguably did not truly end until John Henry took over (and, to his considerable credit, was quite upfront about owning up to what had been a clear problem).
You are correct that the Cardinals gave Robinson a very rough time, and there are many teams that had problems with integration. (Ask Richie Allen how much fun he had in Philly in 1964). However, if you compare the Cardinals of the 1960s-1980s with the Red Sox, its not even close. Even the Yankees, who were atrocious on integration, had moved well past that by the 1970s. With rare exception, the Red Sox didn’t, and thus I find the romantic charm associated with the franchise lacking. Mythology has its place and purpose, but in this case I’ve generally found it to be a convenient dodge to an otherwise troubling history.
Hi there…I Googled for jackie allen, but found your page about A Confession…and have to say thanks. nice read.