Subway Series
On Saturday, I saw the Mets play the Yankees at the ballpark for the very first time in my life. I have always avoided Mets-Yankees games. They’ve always been sold out and I’ve never felt such a need to be there that I’d shell out the extra money it would cost. Part of me didn’t want to see Shea with a lot of Yankees fans in it. I didn’t want to see fights. I didn’t want to risk seeing enemies exulting on our turf.
For some reason, though, the Mets-Yankees thing is not what it was. I got tickets on Friday on StubHub for only $13 more than face value. And so, 45 years after I exulted in the Mets’ 6-2 triumph over the Yankees in the first Mayor’s Trophy game, I finally saw the Yankees play the Mets at Shea.
I have to tell you that I enjoyed the experience more than I thought I would, even though we lost the game. It was very interesting, and a little surprising.
The first surprise came when I was trying to find a parking space. They had let me into the lot, but tailgaters were filling up so many spots that there weren’t any spaces visible. I drove up and down a few aisles until finally some tailgaters motioned to me that I could come right into the space where they were tailgating. They were very nice and accommodating and although it was perfectly obvious to anyone paying attention, I didn’t realize until I got out of the car that these nice people who looked like ordinary Mets fans were festooned with Yankee regalia. Okay, I thought. Whatever.
Then I walked to the stadium and was shocked to see something I was going to see all day. I saw guy in a Posada jersey with his arm around a girl in a Reyes jersey. I saw family groups where brothers with nearly identical faces were wearing shirts with antithetical logos. This was totally bizarre. How did this happen? How could it happen so frequently? I know that Cro-Magnon Man co-existed with Neanderthals for a few tens of thousands of years and we still don’t know if they interbred or if the Neanderthals just died out or were killed off by the Cro-Magnons. This reminded me of that. Seriously. I felt as if I was witnessing an ancient and impenetrable mystery. It didn’t look like normal New York diversity. It looked like the strangely intimate co-existence of irreconciliable opposites. The completely obvious fact that there were no distinguishing differences between Mets and Yankees fans except for the caps and jerseys they were wearing somehow bothered and amazed me. I mean, shouldn’t there at least be physiognomical differences? Shouldn’t we be able to see the arrogance on the faces of the Yankee fans? Shouldn’t we be able to see the eager philosophical hope and sweetness on the faces of the Mets fans? If I used some sort of selective imagination, I could see these things. If I was honest with myself, I couldn’t.
One thing I enjoyed was the way in which the opposing fan groups gave each other an audience to cheer and boo for and at. This made me realize what a lazy experience it is, normally, to watch a game in your home stadium. You cheer and boo, but if you’re busy talking or putting mustard on your hot dog, it doesn’t matter if you don’t make any noise because everyone else is making the requisite obvious noise. But when Shea has all these Yankees fans, you feel you have to make a lot of noise when something good happens for the Mets because the Yankees fans are making a lot of noise when something good happens for the Yankees. You want them to hear you because they are trying so hard to make you hear them. It takes a lot of extra energy to go to a Subway Series game.
And everybody seems to love the theatricality of the whole deal. There is much generally good-natured striking of violently hostile Kabuki poses. People even take pictures of staged scowling face-offs. People whip themselves up into a frenzy, holding onto $8 bottles of bad beer. One hand is always full and the other hand is waving around. And it always funny that the lout in the Jeter shirt has in his hand a cobalt blue bottle with a Mets logo commemorating the last year of Shea.
The afternoon continued as the Yankees fans would chant “Lets Go Yan-kees!” a chant that seemed to create a natural space for an answering chant of “Yankees Suck!” The Yankees fans were only able to muster a weak “No” after “Lets Go Mets!” in the space in which younger fans like to put the “Woooo!” We definitely had a more effective and persuasive counter-cheering situation, even if it did not exactly reflect well on us.
It began to rain and everybody took shelter, just like Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals, in the cave-like promenade behind the stands. There were endless lines for the bathrooms. People streamed by, slapping the hands of those who had the same colors and logos, ignoring those who didn’t. It was hot, steamy, and close, and there were claps of thunder that rattled the long echoing space filled with sweating bodies and the sounds of talking and laughing and shouting into cellphones. Right next to me was a group of three mothers, two in Mets and one in Yankees outfits, and a big mixed-loyalty brood of their young. One of the men associated with this group, a guy with a Mets jersey who was apparently the husband of the woman in the Yankees jersey, showed up with two blue bottles in his hand, drinking from both of them in a way that would only have made sense if he had had two mouths. A domestic quarrel ensued, a foot and a half from my head. “I called you four fucking times!” “I didn’t fucking hear the phone! It’s too fucking loud!” “You should have been listening for the fucking phone!” “I can’t take any more of this fucking bullshit!” As all this was going on, my daughter was beside me texting on her phone. And people kept up the chants and the silliness. I had worried that a quarrel between a Mets fan and a Yankees fan might have led to something unpleasant but no one was paying attention and this was obviously a couple having an intimate fight in each other’s face. So I just stood in wonder at the scene which eventually floated away at some point. And gradually things grew lighter and you could see the bay and Manhattan off in a hazy orange distance, everything looking indescribably serene and calm beyond the streaming crowd on the promenade and the people smoking illegally off at the last edge of the stadium.
When it was light enough for the game to resume, we walked up into the bright bowl and saw that the lights were turned on and that they were beautiful reflected on the white tarp covering the infield. Wiping off our seats with tissues, we heard “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on the stadium sound system and excitedly turned to see a big fuzzy rainbow over Flushing. The symbol of the season! When reality starts pulling this kind of thing, I become full of cynical fear. That’s not really the rainbow that I can take a picture of and say is a sign of the revivification of the Mets. It’s just a rainbow and if the Mets were going to win this game, Jose Reyes wouldn’t have been picked off at second with David Wright at the plate.
Play resumed. Sonia and I left our pleasant seats in the breezy Upper Deck at the end of the eighth inning because the Yankees contingent had become dominant since too many Mets fans had gone home, after a rain delay, and with the Mets behind 3-2. We went down and watched the last inning with my sister Stefanie and her friend Terry in an area of the Mezannine where glum and tired Mets season ticket-holders sweated under the overhang to no purpose. I got to see Mariano Rivera’s cutter in person. There were a few Yankees fans down there but only a few, including a woman in a Williams jersey who did some kind of weird little dance every time one of Rivera’s pitches got by a Mets batter. When the game ended, the Yankees fans gyrated and I felt for the first time all afternoon how much I disliked them and wanted them to go away and not come back. Still, I thought, it was the Mets who lost that game, and all by themselves. The craziness of the season continues. But at least I’ve seen this.
This very strange thing. This unending, century-old family quarrel that will continue as long as there is baseball. This fissure in the city that is not a real division so much as an occasion for enjoying the pleasure of battle and contempt without any real meaning. This exciting excuse to get all worked up and to chant and gyrate and be pleased to see rainbows. Oh what fun it would be for the season to end with a big dramatic New York smash-up, a just-for-fun Armageddon between these two mediocre teams.
June 30th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Dana,
Great post. I had also elected to avoid subway series games until 2006. My sister insisted that we go to a game. We overpaid for a game on May 19, 2006. It was well worth it. The Mets won on a walk off double by Wright. The sheer pleasure of beating Rivera and watching the face of yankee fans disgust was priceless. I will never forget that day in the upper box seats. I have been to 4 subway series games now. It really is the closest thing you get to a playoff atmosphere prior to meaningful games in September.
There is something primal about attending Subway Series games. For some strange reason, you insist on gloating excessively because you know it is just killing the yankee fan to see their team lose. Losing for a yankee fan is so foreign to begin with, but losing to their kid brother from Queens is just unbearable. That’s why the game on Friday at Yankee stadium was so delightful.
I hadn’t been to Yankee Stadium in at least 15 years. My sister had a free ticket and I figured I could go and remain loyal to my personal pledge of “not contributing to the yankee organization in any way”. I even made sure I was well fed and watered prior to the game. Pledges aside, it was a wonderful day. To watch the depressed and tormented look on the face of yankee fans as they endured several innings of “Lets Go Mets” chants was wonderful. Every time you looked up the Mets were scoring runs, it was crazy. I never seem to go to the games where the Mets win big…ever. But this day in the Bronx was different. Finally, the Baseball Gods were smiling on the Mets.
June 30th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
I’ve been going to Subway Series every year since 1997, usually at least one game at each stadium. I’ve always had a great time, and have rarely seen much beyond good natured insult trading or a few drunk idiots of either team’s fanbase. That is in my view precisely because of what you point out - its all a NY thing, unlike Chicago its not as much of a geographic and class divide, and most Mets fans have good friends who are Yankee fans and vice-versa. Night games between the Yankees and Red Sox I’ve been too have been much uglier and nastier, and I’ve been to a few Mets-Phillies games through the years where the upper deck has had frequent visits and expulsions by security.
July 1st, 2008 at 3:04 am
I’ve been going to subway series games for years, this is actually one of the first years that I have not gone. My dad is a die-hard Yankee fan, born & bred in the Bronx. Although he taught my brother and I to root for both NY teams, living in Queens just a few minutes from Shea made us Mets fans. I have taken my dad and my son, who is a die-hard Mets fan, to many subway series games. I think the Mets have won every one we’ve attended, at both stadiums, and usually by at least 5 runs! It has been absolute torture for my father, and my son just loves rubbing in. One year my son carried a sign that says “Not Jeter, A-Rod, or my Poppa can make me like the Yankees,” and John Franco tossed him a baseball. One year I was given great field level seats at Yankee stadium by a colleague and my dad wouldn’t go, as he was convinced that if he didn’t go w/ us he would break his “curse.” The Mets still beat the Yankees by a lot that game! We have promised my dad that if the Yankees and the Mets ever play in a World Series we will make sure that we take him to every game, no matter what the cost.
July 1st, 2008 at 4:14 am
What a difference a few years make! I had only gone to two Yankees/Mets games. One was the infamous Mike Piazza got hit game at Yankee Stadium and the next day game at Shea where the Mets won 2-1.
My son Gary and his friend Bobby, who were 15 at the time, are die hard Yankees fans, so I was outnumbered, and after the horror of seeing Piazza hit and the Mets losing, I was very depressed. Gary & Bobby refrained from yelling Mets suck (since I paid for the tickets) but the rest of the stadium yelled it from the end of the game to the parking lot.
The next day was redemption for me. Gary, my husband Steve, and friends Warren & Roberta, went with me. We sat in the very last row directly behind home plate, as Warren waited for hours and was lucky enough to get those tickets. Steve & Gary were upset at the Yankees lost, but Warren, Roberta and I were thrilled. The difference was in the Mets fans. Whereas the Yankees fans were more interested in yelling Mets suck, the Mets fans had more class. The majority yelled Let’s Go Mets, and Mets Win.
I am glad I had the opportunity to see them play each other, and look forward to one day having a real Subway World Series where the Mets win(preferably a sweep!)