TWNMM: The Right Team, The Wrong Place

The Right Team, The Wrong Place Submitted By: Andee Joyce
Created: January 2000

Here we are. Thanks to the magic of Ebay, Chris and I have managed to procure impossible-to-get tickets to see the Giants play the Mets in brand-new, breathtaking Pacific Bell Park. This new yard is, indeed, as lush and lovely as advertised - deep green grass, rich red-brick façade, and of course, a view of the bay from the right field side. There's a capacity crowd, stoked by the smell of the visiting team's blood, drawn first by last night's decisive Giants win. Everything's in its place. Everything's perfect.

There's just one little problem here. I'm a Mets fan.

Mind you, that's not such an unusual thing these days. Thanks to nifty innovations like satellite dishes and Web broadcasts, you don't have to root for your home team - you can follow the team you grew up with, even after you move away. Indeed, I belong to a newsgroup consisting of Mets fans from all over the country. Every day, we post messages about the Mets, argue strategy, remember obscure players only diehard fans would remember. Pumpsie Green! Rod Kanehl! It's our way of speaking in code. To be a true Mets fan requires more patience, dedication and just plain wit than rooting for pretty much any other team, in any other sport. We do, after all, root for a franchise that, despite occasional moments of glory, often seems cursed.

Take this game I'm talking about. In fact, take the whole series and throw it off a barge somewhere, I'd just as soon forget it. Exhibit A: Jeff Kent, formerly a Mets infielder, now the Giants' second baseman and hands-down, four-on-the-floor Met killer. First the guy spends years killing the Mets from the inside, refusing to deliver clutch hits, butchering plays at third base like he was on the take for botching them. Now he kills us from the outside, delivering hit after hit after hit for the Giants - against us. Vengeance is his. Kent is just one in a long line of ex-Mets who couldn't produce for us, but sure could once they were traded. Amos Otis, Nolan Ryan, Ken Singleton, Carl Everett, Bobby Bonilla�^��I have to stop thinking about this, or my $7 shrimp cocktail is going to come back up.

For Giants fans, this series is one big party. Their team can do no wrong, they get every bounce, every break, exactly when they need it. The sold-out crowds roar with delight, chant "New York sucks!" to the beat of their feet pounding down the ramps after the game. My Mets jacket feels like a George McGovern tattoo on Election Eve '72. How can you people be happy? I'm thinking. My boys are bleeding to death, and you're applauding!

My boys. As I'm sitting on the N-Judah heading home after the last of these massacres, I have to ask myself: why do I even care?

This is a spectator sport, for God's sake. It's not life and death. It has nothing to do with me at all. It's no reflection on my worth as a person. Heck, I don't even have to be a Mets fan, do I? After all, I left New York eleven years ago. San Francisco is my home now. I can feel free to change my allegiances, be a Giants fan, even. So why haven't I done it? Why can't I just let it go?

I ask a Southern California friend who is similarly Mets-addicted why I still care, why it even matters to me what any sports team does anymore, let alone this particularly infuriating franchise. After all, I've fashioned a pretty good life for myself - good job, great marriage, blossoming social life, creative fulfillment, all that good stuff. So I used to run around the house when I was two, singing "Meet the Mets," replete with baseball-bat sound effects. So I had a terrible crush on Doug Flynn when I was fourteen. So I've read every single book written about them, ever. So what? That was then, this is now. Why, I ask my friend, does any of this still matter?

"Because it's in your blood," he says. "You bleed blue and orange. You can't help it."

Ding. Of course. That's it.

I can leave New York. But New York refuses to let me go.

And maybe I don't want it to.

Holding on to the Mets is holding on to my roots. In New York, whether you are a Mets or Yankees fan speaks volumes about the kind of person you are. Yankees fans insist that they simply have impeccable taste, and that only a fool wouldn't root for a franchise with their track record of success. Mets fans think it's way too easy to root for the Yankees - after all, the Yankees don't need us. If you love the Mets, you love the underdog, you defend that kid on the playground who keeps getting his lunch money taken away by the bullies.

I am that kid. I was that kid.

And so are (and were) the other blue-and-orange bleeders of my newsgroup, the ones in Chicago, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Lincoln, and yes, New York itself. Maybe we're rooting for each other, and ourselves, as much as we're rooting for a team. Maybe I need that.

In San Francisco, nobody has to be restrained from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge when the Giants lose seven straight. Hardly anyone calls in sick when Barry Bonds goes on the disabled list. Giants fans enjoy their team, but they don't bleed orange and black. They don't commiserate. It doesn't physically affect their beings. So even if I did become a Giants fan, it wouldn't be the same. The involvement would be lighter, more casual. Maybe that's mentally healthier. But that approach would take getting used to, kind of like playing the field after years of monogamy. (Or, as one person on my newsgroup puts it, "Barry Bonds is a hard guy to love.")

I've lived in lots of places, but thanks to the Mets, I haven't forgotten where I come from. I may live in the greatest city in the world, now.. but when I'm watching the Mets, I am New York. I am the orange and blue, I am the underdog, I am passion and emotion and that magical ball hit by Mookie Wilson that squirted between Bill Buckner's legs in the '86 Series. I am miracles. I am the unexpected.

And maybe the world could use a little more of that.

Comments

Post a comment