Does New York City Really Favor Mets Over Yanks? (I Stopped Believing Polls Last November)

4/2/2017

Thank you, New York Daily News

Here is yet another poll I don’t want to hear. According to the highly-respected Quinnipiac Poll, residents of New York City prefer the Mets to the Yankees by 45-43 percent.

I’m a Met fan, totally out of the closet since retirement as a thoroughly impartial, you-never-could-tell sports columnist.

I come by my National League/Long Island bias honestly as a boyhood Brooklyn Dodger fan who suffered terribly at the hands of the Yankees (to say nothing of, periodically, the New York Giants.)

Quinnipiac is undoubtedly more correct when it says residents of New York State favor the Yankees by 48-34 percent.

Those are the kind of odds I would have expected, what with all those World Series plus icons from Ruth and Gehrig to Jeter and Rivera.

I have come to assume a lot of perfectly nice people have been swayed by the echoes in the “Big Ball Park in the Bronx” (Red Barber’s alliteration, not Mel Allen’s) and all those championships.

Mets fans see their team as an occasional delightful surprise -- that World Series every decade or so, plus gallant efforts foiled by the 1987 Pendleton home run and the 1988 Scioscia home run and the 2006 Molina home run and the 2016 Inciarte catch – plus, the 2000 World Series when rich Yankee fans bought up huge swaths of Shea Stadium tickets. The gloomy words of George Orwell, personified.

Now some New Yorkers may be swayed by all those fine young arms and the power of Céspedes and the dash of the prodigal son Reyes and the professionalism of Cabrera. Mets fans have expectations? Dangerous.

I still want the Mets to be a minority taste which makes the Swoboda catch and the Mookie grounder all the more special.

Then there is this: I don’t want my life guided by polls. Not anymore.
Last autumn I was reassured by within-the-margin-of-error polls: the rational would squeak past the raging id.

No more polls.
* * *
Play ball. Which the Yankees did, indoors, at Tampa Bay, on Sunday. By the second inning, I was immediately delighted with the fine details of baseball:

-- Rays' LF Mallex Smith took a circular route but caught a fly in foul territory.
-- Then, Smith (new to that team) took a piece of paper out of his pocket to scan the defensive scouting on the Yankees. Don't know that I've ever seen that.
-- Between innings, the immortal voice of Bob Sheppard urged us -- stylishly, of course -- to follow the Yankees on the YES network. Nice touch.
-- As starter Masahiro Tanaka faltered, he was watched intensely by three people in the Yankee dugout -- manager Joe Girardi, pitching coach Larry Rothschild and trainer Steve Donohue. Their faces told me: the real season has begun.

Altenir Silva

4/2/2017 07:29:54 pm

Dear George,
Out of poll. I have begun to root for the Yankees because of two movies: "The Babe” (written by John Fusco and directed by Arthur Hiller. It’s about Babe Ruth) and “*61" (written by Hank Steinberg and directed by Billy Crystal. About Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle). These two movies made me know a bit about baseball and love the Yankees.

We had a good Spring Training. In the last good year for the team, we had lost the first two games to the Baltimore Orioles. I hope that it could be the same as 2009. And of course, I wish a good season to Mets, too.

Best - Altenir

George Vecsey

4/3/2017 07:51:28 am

Dear Altenir: You know more from Rio about the Yankees than I do from Long Island.
I saw the 61 movie -- thought it was a bit sentimental. The conversation between Mantle and Maris in their apartment about why the fans were now for Mantle and against Maris. I know Mantle said it....he could be hilarious and realistic, sometimes -- but the dialogue was a little too milk-and-cookies at bedtime for me, knowing about that hectic apartment. (In Queens, near JFK airport.)
Hope all is well, G

Altenir Silva

4/3/2017 09:39:26 am

Dear George,
Thanks.
I loved the expression "milk-and-cookies at bedtime”.
I forgot to say "The Pride of the Yankees” (1942. It's about Lou Gehrig). These movies have opened the curtains for me about a fantastic world, the baseball.
All good for you and your family.
Best - Altenir

George Vecsey

4/3/2017 10:11:08 am

That is the classic. Gary Cooper didn't look like a powerful slugger...but he was the perfect strong silent type to portray Gehrig. My friend Ray Robinson wrote the biography about Gehrig and interviewed Teresa Wright, who played Mrs. G. She became friendly with Ray and his wife.
I was born on the day Gehrig made his "luckiest man" speech. But became a Brooklyn fan, not a Yankee fan.
best
GV

Altenir Silva

4/3/2017 11:04:37 am

Very cool. In this same year (1942), Mrs. Wright made "Mrs. Miniver", directed by William Wyler. One of the first movies to show what was happening in the war in Europe. I think Mrs. Wright and Mr. Cooper did a great job on the The Pride of the Yankees.

By the way, at this moment, there’s a documentary FIVE CAME BACK. It’s about the 5 greatest directors of cinema that were sent to Europe to make films about the war. "Mrs. Miniver” is cited in the documentary.

This film is available on Netflix and is showing in NYC at IFC Center, in the West Village - http://www.ifccenter.com/films/five-came-back/

I already saved your article on http://streeteasy.com/blog/baseballs-opening-day-nycs-boroughs-influenced-its-pro-teams/

Have a good week.

Best - Altenir

Alan Rubin link

4/3/2017 06:32:19 pm

Alterir--Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest by Lynne Olson Is a fantastic book about wartime London.

There is a section on the Hollywood directors who risked their lives making important documentaries for American audiences. These were in contrast to the soapy propaganda that were produced.

Altenir Silva

4/3/2017 06:45:01 pm

Dear Alan,

Thank you very much for the book. I think it should be great.

Best - Altenir

Hansen Alexander

4/4/2017 02:07:34 pm

George,

Your musings about who roots for your Mets and who roots for my Yankees leads me to the more relevant question: who does not?

By this I mean that the sports loyalties of New Yorkers once meant something nationally and now they do not. And it probably does not mean all that much in New York either. The mass migration from Metropolitan New York to the sunbelt stripped New York of both its teams (Dodgers and Giants for example) and the fans who supported them. Particularly because fans of the the two National League teams did not necessarily move to the sunbelt in California.

In the same way that "National League loyalty" or "American League loyalty" means absolutely nothing to baseball fans under say, 60, I suspect that rooting for the Mets or Yankees in Metropolitan New York has more to to with who is more successful recently than any borough loyalty. Obviously, there is "some" borough loyalty, but like nostalgia, "it ain't what it used to me."

I did not read the polls you cite, so I can not speak of the upstate break down where I grew up. I would only guess that Yankee fans dominate from Buffalo to Albany. But having grown up in the Capitol District, I would think the Red Sox strong hold is till there, and may be the most popular team in the Adirondack region after the Yankees.

When I was growing up the Yankees were in the middle of the 50s dynasty and held the majority of fans. I would say the Red Sox were a close second with still many Dodger and Giants fans in those days. When the Mets came along fans not so much rooted for them as treated them as the accidental, unplanned, youngest child. There was some mild Montreal Expos support with their arrival in the late 60s.

From what I can tell, the Red Sox are still a big draw up there. Partly because Boston is almost the same distance to Manhattan and folks go to Boston for entertainment. And almost everybody in the Adirondacks has been to Cape Cod once in the summertime.

Obviously the decline of baseball in its relative share of the sports pie and interest has something to do with New York's decline in influence. Yet also New York-centered sports as well, such as basketball, boxing, track and field. Remember when the Friday night fights from the Garden were watched in prime time by everybody? I don't think I have heard a water cooler discussion about the Millrose Games or Penn Relays in 30 to 40 years, once huge events on the sports calendar. And the only boxing discussions these days is a highly hyped heavy weight spectacular of some kind, and even that is a rare discussion. Of course, I hear Knicks talk in New York but not a lot of basketball in general, and these days it is more about the Final Four among guys who went to a particular basketball school.

The folks who listened to the Dodgers and Giants and Yankees on radio in small southern towns 80 years, have been replaced by men who take their families water skiing in southern lakes and go to NASCAR, from what I can gather.

George Vecsey

4/4/2017 10:44:26 pm

Hansen. good point. Mets hard to get some places upstate. My kid brother who teaches at Colgate is talking about driving back from Syracuse Wed evening, and will he be able to keep the digital radio on some Mets channel? Yankees are big. Where did you grow up in Adirondaks? It is a more national game now. I once heard Harry Reid talk about Game of the Week on TV in Searchlight, NV, and that's how he grew up to be a Jackie Robinson fan. Even in NYC you were not obligated. Joe Torre of Brooklyn was a Giants fan. My pal Vic Ziegel grew up near Grand Concourse (Bronx) and was a Giants fan. (Taught his freaking parrot to say, "The Giants win the pennant!") And of course, Yankees' recent morass would create a bulge of new Met fans. I'm still waiting for Newk and Preacher to come back. GV

Hansen Alexander

4/8/2017 02:44:50 pm

George, I was reared on a goat farm in small rural hamlet called Quaker Springs, between the old mill towns of Schuylerville and Stillwater on the Hudson River, and some 10 miles from Saratoga, where we sold hay to the racetrack in the summer. As I alluded to, Dodgers and Giants were still big, but Red Sox right up there with the Yankees, perhaps because the Sox Double A team was not too far away in Pittsfield, Mass, and we could get Red Sox games very clearly on WEEI radio out of Boston. In fact, because of the odd hills and valleys in the foothills of the Adirondacks, it was easier to get KDK? Pittsburgh with Bob Prince, Pirates, and WHAS, Louisville, with Harry Carry doing the Cardinals.

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QUOTES
“I don’t think people understand how Covid affects older Americans,” Mr. Caretti said with frustration. “In 2020, there was this all-in-this-together vibe, and it’s been annihilated. People just need to care about other people, man. That’s my soapbox.”
---Vic Caretti, 47, whose father recently died of Covid at 85.
---From an article by Paula Span, who covers old age for the NYT, which currently has 2646 comments, the majority criticizing the American public – and public officials – for acting as if the pandemic is “over.”
Classic wishful thinking, at a lethal level.
Please see:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/11/health/covid-pandemic-seniors.html

Does New York City Really Favor Mets Over Yanks? (I Stopped Believing Polls Last November)

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