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It Is a Yankees town. Let’s be clear on that point, at the top. It has been an undisputed Yankees town since 1993, and but for a feint here, a jab there, it has been solidly Yankees ever since.
There once was a popular notion that New York, at heart, was a National League town, its original soul belonging to the old Giants of McGraw and Mathewson, so much of its baseball heart occupied by memories of the Dodgers. That may have been true in the ’60s, when the Mets were rising, and even in the ’70s, as they lay in state.
But the truth is, the notion of identifying New York’s baseball bloodlines by league affiliations is as quaint and outdated as the Automat and the Third Avenue El. New York is a winner’s town now, and it really doesn’t matter what sport we’re talking about. You win, the people come; you stop, only the crickets do.
The Mets won again yesterday, beat the Rockies 2-1 at Citi Field, closed out a winning homestand, left a Camp Day crowd of 26,618 feeling happy and satisfied as it headed back to the buses and back to the burbs. That’s three in a row, and it puts them in position to skip ahead of the Nationals this weekend if they keep winning, and …
And it still sometimes feels like the team is in that forest, surrounded by the trees that fall and aren’t heard by anybody because nobody’s there to hear them. Such is life when you haven’t had a winning season since 2008, when your owners are still every bit as popular among their fans as mosquitoes in a sleeping bag, and when you share a city with the Yankees. Even now.
Especially now. Alex Rodriguez is …
Well, that’s all you need at this point, right? “Alex Rodriguez is.” He is playing. He is appealing. He is making some loud outs. He is scratching out singles. He is playing third base. He is DHing. He is, he is, he is. And tonight he is making his return to Yankee Stadium, and everyone is making book as to what his reception will be. He sells tickets. He sells newspapers. He draws eyeballs to TV screens and fannies to seats.
But we may also look back, someday very soon, and discover he was the line of delineation where our baseball market started making a market correction. There are a lot of Yankees fans who support A-Rod. There seem to be more, many more, who are disgusted, appalled and altogether disillusioned this is where the Yankees are with 49 games left in their season:
A bearded lady of a baseball team.
Now it is right and it’s fair Yankees fans want to believe in the magic of the uniform and the length of the season, believe all it will take to get from where they are to where they want to be is two weeks of terrific baseball. Look at the Braves, look at the Tigers, look at the Dodgers, none of whom ever lose. Look at the Royals! A few weeks ago their (apparently) doomed general manager, Dayton Moore, said anything was possible even winning 15 out of 20. They’ve won 15 out of 19.
It can happen.
But so can this: the baseball deed to the town isn’t forever, and is even less stable than the permit Manhattan just approved for Madison Square Garden. Anyone who thinks otherwise wasn’t living here in the ’70s, when the Yankees were as big as they’ve ever been and the Mets were barely a New York-Penn League team. In five years, they were upside-down. Winning does that.
Which is what brings us back to Citi, to these Mets, who are winning — even in David Wright’s absence — more than they were expected to and are getting a sense of what could be if they convert this positive momentum into something bigger, and better.
Emphasis on the “if,” of course.
“It took a little time coming to shape but I think right now there’s a very positive attitude in that clubhouse,” Terry Collins said. “Even if David’s not there.”
It’s a Yankees town in 2013, yes. But it was a Yankees town in 1963, too, and then it wasn’t. It was a Yankees town in 1983, and then it wasn’t. Nothing is forever in our town except for this: we do love ourselves some winners. Neither side qualifies right now. Soon enough, one of them will.
Which one?