If you want to go back to the very beginning, it isn’t as far or as hard a trek as you might think. You walk out of Barclays Center, take a left on Fourth Avenue, then walk about 18 blocks, until you reach the old Gowanus House between 3rd and 4th Streets in Park Slope. The bus will get you there in a snap, too.
If you really want to take your time machine into hyper-drive and go back to August 1776, you will see some especially fierce fighting during the Battle of New York happening here, where the Continental Army tried to dislodge about 2,000 British and Hessian soldiers to no avail, inspiring George Washington — watching all of this from a hillside not far from where Barclays now sits — to abject sadness.
“What brave men I must this day lose!” he despaired.
Things went better for the revolutionaries from there, so much so that 104 years later, on this very spot, they raised a wooden ballpark where the old stone house used to sit and named it after Washington. After playing minor league baseball against the likes of the Camden Merritts and Wilmington Quickteps under the name “Brooklyn Grays,” they upgraded to the major-league American Association in time for the 1884 season, re-christened themselves the “Atlantics” and hatched the borough of Brooklyn’s history as a major league town.
That didn’t really become official until July 29 of that year, the first time the fearsome New York Metropolitans came to town (possibly by way of the Brooklyn Bridge, which opened 14 months earlier). The original Mets resided uptown both literally (they occupied the first iteration of the Polo Grounds) and figuratively (they were well on their way to running away with the AA, going 75-32, 6 1/2 games clear of the Columbus Buckeyes, 33 1/2 games better than the ninth-place Atlantics).
The Metropolitans cleaned the Atlantics’ clocks that day, 6-1, and would win nine of the 10 times they would meet that first season. According to the next day’s Times, the attendance was “fair,” despite the bad weather, and as the (unbylined) write-up noted: “Keefe proved an enigma to the batsmen of the Brooklyn nine … ”
Over time, the Metropolitans would morph into the Giants and the Atlantics into the Trolley Dodgers, they would migrate to the National League and develop one of the fiercest rivalries in the history of American sport.
They would play each other 22 times a year, 11 times in Manhattan, 11 times in Brooklyn. They would inspire passionate debate in saloons and basements and on street corners, would occasionally inspire fisticuffs, and sometimes worse.
On the night of July 12, 1938, a Brooklyn fan named Robert Joyce engaged in an argument with a Giants fan named Paul Krug at Pat Diamond’s Bar & Grill not far from Ebbets Field. Taunted by Krug, egged on by bartender Bill Diamond, Joyce left the bar, returned with two guns, and settled the debate the way the Redcoats had a couple of centuries earlier.
So yes: When Brooklyn and Manhattan get together on the fields of play, it can get rather colorful — and sometimes a little bit more than that. That first time …. and the last time, the Giants won again, 7-5 on the day before Labor Day 1957, capping the all-time series at Giants 722, Dodgers 671. Willie Mays, poetically, hit a home run that day off Johnny Podres, the last homer to clear a Brooklyn fence in that series’ history.
So last night, officially, Manhattan visited Brooklyn, the Knicks traipsed across the Manhattan Bridge to visit the Nets, first place on the line at Barclays Center, borough pride, 65 years of history on one side of the court, a couple of weeks on the other, the home team hoping nobody in the Post would have to write: “Novak proved an enigma to the cagers of the Brooklyn five … ”
And this time, with a 96-89 overtime victory, Brooklyn would get it right.
“Just as important as this game is for us as the new kids on the block, gain some territory,” Nets coach Avery Johnson said, “it’s important for them to try and push back.”
He smiled.
“It’s not Duke and North Carolina,” he said.
(Or the Metropolitans and the Atlantics, for that matter.)
“But it’ll get there.”