The Never-ending Downward Spiral of the Mets

Will I be able to rouse myself to root for my traditional favorite ball team this year? Circumstances are lining up against it.

We can begin with a called third strike in 2007's NLCS when a hit would have put us in the World Series.

Then we can move forward to two consecutive historic season-ending collapses in 2008 and 2009. And 2010 was, by the end of July, a lost season.

Then of course there is CitiField, named after an ignominious bank implicated in another historic collapse. And the way the stadium is painted all black and funereal as if black had any history with the Mets. And the way they named the entry rotunda after a guy who never played for the Mets but for a competitor team now in Los Angeles. And how the ticket prices went up as if we were getting such an upgrade as the team was flopping around like a fish on the dock.

Now we can add the muck of Madoff bucks to the unclean stew that has become the New York Metropolitans. The Wilpons, who own the team in Flushing, are being sued in a clawback exercise by a special trustee trying to get fake profit back from those who took money from Madoff even as Madoff was simply handing over to them the deposits of other investors. And there will be a trial, and it will be a cloud over the team for some time to come; and indeed the finances of the team are rocked already, else why would the Wilpons be looking to sell part of the team? Oh yes, there's that too. They are trying to sell part of the team. Really they should sell all of it. If they can. It is possible the entire team could be liquidated to satisfy Madoff-related judgments.

Also, I think Reyes and Wright are significantly overrated and we have no pitching beyond Johann Santana to speak of.

The Mets have become synonymous not just with failure but now with smarmy dealings.

I don't think I can muster any support.

Across town, there are the Yankees, who seem to carry themselves with so much more professionalism and pride (I am loathe to admit).

Hm.

A Terrifying Realization

Yankee fans are people too.

That was what I finally understood in the late innings of the game where the Yanks took out the Halos at the new Stadium in the Bronx. Watching the mass of excited faces, some praying, some hiding their faces (the team from Orange County was a hit away from tying it up), some on the verge of tears and some hooting like soccer hooligans, I realized much to my horror and surprise that Yankee fans are just a bunch of New York schlubs and no different than anyone else in this enormous small town.

Traditionally I am a Met fan. Which means I have watched the team crumble four years running; and that includes watching the most recent season become classifiable into that worst of all classes for a sporting event: boring. They have a new stadium--I liked Shea (Shake Shack? I came to watch a ballgame). They decked it out with stuff about some Dodger player--stupid. They have a formerly dynamic shortstop who can't run anymore. They have a young "superstar" who forgot how to hit homers this season and who for several seasons has not gotten many clutch hits of any kind though he has "good numbers". How dull.

You might say I have stopped really caring about the baseball team I've long rooted for. And during this window of sanity I have seen that the notion of "rooting", especially in a two-team city, is a painful, unnecessary distraction (perhaps I would feel different if my team had won 26 World Series); and that it falsely creates a disputatious relationship with one's fellow townsfolk.

I am a lover of the game of baseball--nothing will take away from the beauty of a well-hit line drive nor from the symmetry of men circling the bases trying to beat the throw home--but I think my rooting days are drawing to an end. I remember suffering greatly as the Mets failed in three successive seasons (not including this year when I tuned out very early). I have promised myself I will never allow myself to suffer that way again over anything as trifling as a ballteam.

And one of the happy outcomes of this is I have seen the humanity in the formerly hated Yankee fan. Arrogant and foolish and full of false pride (and an even more false sense of superiority and accomplishment), they are not so different than the run of humanity. Really, they are just typically bumbling New Yorkers trying to feel good about themselves for one night.

I will be watching the World Series. I have in the past of course also hated the Phillies. I don't now. May the best team win.