For years, for decades, there was an axiom that bubbled just beneath the surface of baseball New York, no matter how many championships the Yankees piled up, no matter how many stars they signed, no matter how many back pages the principal owner gobbled up along the way. It was the owner himself, in fact, who lent voice to the notion in the very pages of this newspaper shortly after gaining control of the Yankees in January 1973:
“New York, they tell me, is a National League town,” George Steinbrenner said nearly 371/2 years ago. “Well, that might be so, but I have a feeling that’s about to change.”
National League town. Even in times of Yankees ascent and Mets decline, there were still enough people whose baseball fealty was born in the Polo Grounds and at Ebbets Field to declare that their shared devotion of the team in Flushing would keep the town’s soul locked in the Senior Circuit.
Mostly, they were proven correct, too. The Mets outdrew the Yankees every single season from 1964 through 1975. They outdrew the Yankees every single season from 1985 through 1992. If you’re keeping score it means that in the first 31 years the Yankees and Mets shared the town, the Mets drew more fans two-thirds of the time.
And a lot of seasons, it wasn’t even close. Heck, in Steinbrenner’s first season of ‘73, the last chance for Yankees fans to visit the original Stadium — a season the Yankees spent mostly in first place and the Mets spent mostly in last, until the very end — the Mets outdrew the Yankees by more than 650,000 customers. So, yes, even when the Yankees and Mets started going in divergent paths in 1993, the Mets could smugly believe it was only a matter of time before the market corrected itself.
New York was a National League town, after all.
Only, it is 17 years later now. High school seniors were infants the last time the Mets could ever suggest a hint of city dominance. The Yankees have won five championships, the Mets have three postseason appearances. There are more surviving Dodgers fans who live in Boca Raton than Bensonhurst. The Mets’ own skipper, Jerry Manuel, conceded what everyone had long determined two years ago during his first go-round managing a Subway Series.
“We’re kind of like the second team,” Manuel said then, words that may have infuriated Mets fans a lot more if they didn’t happen to be true.
It is a Yankees town and will remain as such until further notice. Tonight, the resumption of intramural hostilities at Citi Field will only serve as a reminder just how true that is. Mets fans have fallen away from their team in droves this year, leaving unsold tickets that were either snapped up by grateful Yankees fans or given away for free, to lapsed season-ticket holders, by the Mets themselves.
Giving away Subway Series tickets?
Even a year ago, you would’ve sooner seen a parade for Bernie Madoff down the Canyon of Heroes.
But these are the realities of the times for the Mets. The Yankees have had a sobering week getting up-close looks at three of the teams most interested in pick-pocketing their championship, they are losing players at a rate that only the 2009 Mets can appreciate . . . and yet they look like a model of tranquility compared to the Mets, who come home in last place, unable to get out of their own way most nights, with a manager/GM combo who are hanging on to their jobs by their fingertips.
So this is where we sit for the 14th year of Subway Series games. This is still a wonderful idea, pitting Mets and Yankees, Queens vs. the Bronx, New York vs. New York. There is still a unique electricity inside the ballparks that surpasses even Yankees/Red Sox or Mets/Phillies. And bragging rights still matter in this town.
It just happens to be a Yankees town right now, and for the foreseeable future, no matter who wins this weekend.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com