We keep declaring it dead. We keep yearning for something else, something more — as if wishing hard enough will magically transform the Yankees and the Mets of 2014 into the Bronx Bombers and the Boys of Summer of 1955 — and if we use that sliding scale, the Subway Series will always turn up lacking.
And then, every year, they actually play the games.
And every year, we are reminded there really is something special about the Subway Series. Still. Even after 100 games now, 58 wins for the Yankees and 42 for the Mets, the latest a 9-7 slugfest that went the Amazin’s way at Yankee Stadium Monday evening.
“A’s-Giants was pretty big,” Chris Young said, referring to the other intramural interleague squabble he’s been part of in 7 ½ years as a big-leaguer. “But it’s not this. I don’t know if it’s New York, but it felt like a college football game out there tonight. Like a big party.”
It was Young’s two-run blast into the left-field bleachers that broke a 7-all tie in the eighth inning, capping a pair of Mets rallies from separate three-run deficits. The ball didn’t land all that far from an entire section hard by the left-field foul pole occupied by Mets fans in orange shirts, the 7 Line brigade that helped create the atmosphere Young was talking about.
“It says a lot about the energy this place brings to the game,” Young said. “You never feel like you’re out of it. And you can build a big inning at any time in the game.”
Look, there’s little question the Subway Series has been healthier, and you can take that on several different levels.
The Yankees, for instance, are a team that has been fully engaged by the injury bugaboo now: Mark Teixeira was limited to one pinch-hitting appearance because of a balky groin. Carlos Beltran hyperextended his elbow taking extra swings. Almost as an aside, someone asked why Brendan Ryan pinch ran for Teixeira in the ninth carrying the tying run, instead of Ichiro Suzuki.
“Because he’s hurt, too,” Girardi said, before revealing Ichiro had banged up his back and his knee trying to make a diving catch in Milwaukee Sunday, so he was unavailable as well. And you already know about the M*A*S*H unit the starting rotation has become. Girardi acknowledged that, until now, it felt they were flipping the narrative from 2013, when the hitters were hurting and the pitching was spared.
“Although,” he said, “it seems they caught up in one day today.”
Still, even a sullen Girardi — who went 3-for-4 in that very first Subway Series game, the only Yankee who could figure Dave Mlicki out on June 17, 1997 — believes this series is still relevant, still important, even as his team lost its fifth straight to the Mets.
“The newness has worn off,” he said, “but the excitement has not. There’s still a buzz in this city when these teams play.”
And there was still a tremendous moment of theater there in the ninth, Kyle Farnsworth struggling, the Yankees rallying, the Yankee fans still in the house getting loud, the Mets fans in left field and elsewhere hiding their eyes … until Brian McCann’s hard smash became a game-ending 3-5-3 double play, putting a 9-7 win into the books for the Mets.
“I think this is what inter-league baseball is all about,” Mets manager Terry Collins had said earlier. “There’s a lot of energy here. This is a tremendous stage for baseball in New York.”
Collins had suggested that maybe it would be best to once again play these games in summer, as a way to revitalize the two New York teams at a point where their energy is sapped; it might also help to play the games when baseball alone rules the local calendar, instead of sharing the stage with the Nets and the Rangers.
Either way, this was an invigorating day for the Mets, certainly for their fans, who earlier were provided a ray of hope by a news report Saul Katz, one of the wise men who own the team, might be itching to sell his share; though Katz vehemently denied this, it did allow fans fed up with the team’s grisly ownership a moment to dream.
And when the ballgame ended in Lucas Duda’s glove? Well, yeah: That was sweet, too. That was satisfying. Much as the Mets need wins, it would’ve felt good against anybody. But don’t believe any of them if they tell you it doesn’t taste sweeter in a Subway Series. Against THAT team. In THIS stadium. Still.