Happy Friday to you all (and by you all I mean all three of you) and welcome to another pulse-pounding edition of Friday Baseball here on Raising the Apple! In typical NY fashion, as the Mets and Yankees get ready to play the first of two inter-league series this year, the clouds have parted and the sun has come out for the first time in over a week – just in time for this weekend’s series at the House that George Built in the Bronx.
Though it’s not really a Subway Series, they’ve only played one of those – the World Series in 2000, when fans took the subway to both ballparks. If the series is only at Yankee Stadium, then it’s just a Yankee home-stand, no different than if they were playing the Tigers. But, it’s NYC, and the battle for the city’s baseball heart, so it needs a better name than “inter-league play” and Subway Series sounds cool, so just go with it.
Marketing hype aside, I do always enjoy these match-ups. But I really feel like inter-league should last for one holiday weekend though, maybe Memorial Day or the 4th of July, and be done with it. Cause once your team has played its cross-town or nearest rival, who really cares? I mean, I don’t get too excited about the Mets playing the Orioles, do you?
But playing the Yankees is just good fun. It’s David vs. Goliath, if both David and Goliath were giants and David was just the goofier, and not quite as rich giant. But not this weekend! This weekend it really will be David vs. Goliath as the Mets are back to their 2009 AAA status with Who? and What’sHisName? and Really? playing key infield positions. Of course Mets fans know their names and their stories, but will the Yankee fans who still think it’s the late 1990s? I doubt it.
Last year I got to watch the rubber game of the first Mets-Yankees series (at Citi Field) while on a cruise ship heading down to Florida and the Bahamas. The ship left out of NYC, so a lot of locals were on board. I made it a point to arrive to the ship’s Beer and Whisky themed bar a touch early and plopped myself down in one of two very comfortable leather chairs in front of a decent sized, but not huge, flat-screen TV. I had opted for this particular venue over the main ship’s lounge/atrium area where they were projecting it onto a two story wall. Why, you ask, did I not choose the clearly more opulent, bigger is better option? It’s just not me. I like the darker, closer feel of a bar when watching a game with strangers, especially on a cruise ship.
I had just ordered my first rum and coke (Did I want it in a tall glass, the waiter asked. Why, yes I did.) of the evening when the pre-game broadcast began. As I signed my bill, a rather tall muscular gentleman tapped me on the shoulder if anyone was sitting in the twin leather chair next to mine. “As long as you’re not a Yankee fan,” I said with a good natured – I’m drinking a pilsner glass full of rum and coke on a cruise – sort of smile. “Well, I’ll sit down then,” he said, “as long as you’re not a Mets fan.” We quickly settled into some friendly banter as the lounge filled up around us. By the second inning we were complementing each other on our favorite players on each other’s teams, starting with the Cy Young starting pitchers, CC Sabathia and Johan Santana.
We were two dads who had snuck out to the bar to watch the game, and we got to share a knowing chuckle when a group of college kids got busted for breaking out a backpack full of beer they had clearly smuggled on board, complete with the red plastic cups that come standard with kegs. Both teams played well, but the Mets played better, and I said my good-byes at the seventh inning stretch and stood up to realize I had drank a bit too much. I got one for the road anyway, and one for Kate and walked back to our cabin where she was in bed, watching the game on the little 13″ TV. The kids were fast asleep in the adjoining cabin and we watched the Mets win with the moonlight bouncing off the waves and streaming through our window.
The year before that, Kate and I watched the Friday night game (the first at the new Yankee Stadium) from home – a nearly 4 hour grind through 9 innings that culminated in the soul-crushing dropped pop-up of one Luis Castillo. After watching Jorge Posada trot to the mound to get on the same page with Magilla Gorilla (Joba Chamberlain) for what felt like 1000 times, our assured 1-run victory was sweet indeed. Until the ball hit the grass and our jaws hit the floor and I looked at the clock and said, “Let’s go to bed.”
But my favorite Subway Series moment came in the glorious year of 2006 when a pregnant Kate and I took the 7 train out to an extremely windy Shea Stadium for the Sunday night rubber game. The wind was so strong that I head tears whipped out of my eyes all night and our faces were beet red the next morning. It was one of the more exciting night games I saw at Shea, and we were on our feet and clapping hard with every big situation.The Mets won and I still remember it as one of the more jubilant post-game walks down the ramp I can remember experiencing there.
It was our last summer as a childless couple, and though I can barely go a day without missing my children, our time together before them was special as well and has taken on the mythical quality of all time that you cannot get back does. I’m told that in several years I’ll be feeling the same way about my daughters’ infant years. If so, that will be an amazing trick of the mind.
And so tonight, another year begins, and the mostly AAA Mets (7 out of 10 in the lineup were literally in AAA last year) take on what will soon be the lineup for the Yankees Old Timer’s Day. It’s going to be an odd series, coming at a time when both teams are struggling for different reasons. But I like the Mets’ chances in this one. They’ve proven themselves to be a scrappy team that fights until the final out – and in baseball, as in life, that can make all the difference.
