TWO-SIDED:There’s no questioning who Emily Kaye and boyfriend Jason Gallo were rooting for during this week’s Subway Series. (Matthew McDermott)
This happens a lot: I will be driving to baseball games involving the Mets and the Yankees — or the occasional Jets-Giants football game, or a Nets-Knicks basketball game — and I will be on the telephone with my mother and she will ask me, again, who I’ll root for. And I invariably give the same time-honored sportswriter cliché.
“I’m rooting for me,” I will say. “I’m rooting for a good story and a made deadline.”
And then, knowing the answer, I will ask, “Who are you rooting for?”
And give or take a word here and there, this is always the answer: “I’m rooting for New York.”
And, honestly, that really was the law of the living room back in the day, established by my father, adhered to by my mother and I: There was no citizenry requirement that forced you to pick a subset within the local teams. My father was partial to the Yankees, but in those pre-interleague days he had zero problem rooting for the Mets, too. He was a Knicks fan. But he also took me to dozens of Nets games when they called Nassau Coliseum home.
He was a Giants fan. But he was right there next to me when we watched the Jets play the Bills in a playoff game at Shea Stadium in December 1981, and his were two of the legs that helped shake the lower grandstand, and I’m pretty sure Richard Todd was the first athlete who ever inspired him to curse in front of me.
OK, I get it: That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. It wasn’t until later, in high school, when I trotted out the “I root for New York” explanation that I realized neutrality wasn’t an option in these matters. You had to declare. Maybe my father, raised in Queens at a time when there were baseball teams in Manhattan, Brooklyn and The Bronx, figured he was allowed, by geography, to enjoy the success of all three.
Maybe he just had a hard time working up a lot of fake outrage and pretend hate in his heart.
But you know something? I don’t think he missed out on anything. Look, I enjoy the Mets-Yankees wars of words among their fans as much as anyone. That Jets-Giants game a few years ago, when the Giants went on to the Super Bowl and the Jets began their inexorable march south? Part of the fun — most of the fun, really — was watching Jets and Giants fans engage each other. And the rebirth of the Islanders has given us back the old city-suburb carnival of contempt that was really the first time I broke away from the home rules (I figured “I root for Long Island” superseded “I root for New York,” a credo that wasn’t especially helpful in 1979 but soon enough became very, very useful).
Still, I remember 2000. The folks were living in Florida by then, and the World Series was staying within the city limits of New York for the first time since 1956, and my father couldn’t have been happier. Even in Florida (the sixth borough, as we know), everyone around him was breaking into splinter groups that October, some for the Yankees, some for the Mets.
My pops? Put it this way: It didn’t bother him that the Yankees had won. But he was rooting for something else.
“Seven games,” he said, “and extra innings in game seven.”
Clearly it was New York he was rooting for, and not his son, the sportswriter on deadline.
Whack Back at Vac
Mark Donohue: I think John Tortorella will be missed now that he is gone. His teams mostly reflected the city they represented — tough, hard working, overachievers. I never enjoyed watching hockey so much. My fear is that we will now return to the Ice Capades-type teams of the past.
Vac: The pity is Tortorella allowed his personality and his stubbornness to obscure the fact he was a hell of a hockey coach. He should’ve had more staying power here.
Rich Nutile: Heard Rutgers is looking for a new head of their psychology/behavioral department, and the name at the top of the list is Anthony Soprano.
Vac: At least he never called the people who worked for him “whores.” Unless they were, you know, whores.
@avventualy24: I can’t believe I actually used to think Ruben Tejada reminded me of Edgardo Alfonzo in that he plays like a seven-year vet! What the heck happened over the winter?
@MikeVacc: It does make you wonder if there is a Reverse Joe Hardy Effect at work here, doesn’t it?
Steven Schafler: Strange dream last night. The 2013 Mets came back in the bottom of the ninth to beat the great Mariano Rivera, who couldn’t even record out. Even in my dream, though, Ike Davis keeps striking out.
Vac: Ladies and gentlemen, your 2013 New York Mets!
Vac’s Whacks
If you’ve waited this long to buy or download “The Bite Fight,” my friend and colleague George Willis’ excellent book about the infamous Mike Tyson–Evander Holyfield 1997 match — and it was only released yesterday — you already have waited too long. It’s a fabulous read.
* Joe Namath certainly is entitled to his say. But talk to some of the folks who were around Namath when he was a player, one who used to bristle at the slightest whiff of criticism, and ask them how he would have reacted to having someone like Namath critique and criticize his every move, movement and misstep.
* Last week’s “Mad Men” was the Adrian Peterson of comeback TV episodes.
* My caution with the Rangers hiring Mark Messier is the same one I had when the Yankees were pondering Don Mattingly. At some point, unless he turns out to be Scotty Bowman, the franchise will have to fire its brightest icon. And as Yogi can tell you, that rarely goes smoothly.