The Yankees and the Mets have performed 142 occasions because the introduction of interleague play in 1997, 147 if you happen to embrace the 2000 World Collection (and you need to all the time embrace the 2000 World Collection).
There have been occasions when each groups have entered on excessive highs (see 2000). There have been occasions after they’ve each been scuffling, like final July, when the Mets had already parted with a bit of the group and the Yankees have been just a few weeks away from the nine-game dropping streak that submarined their season for good.
There have been occasions when one of many groups — and when this has occurred, it’s virtually all the time been the Yankees — is considerably higher. And there have additionally been occasions when the rivalry brings out the most effective within the overmatched group, such because the time in Could 2013 when the Mets (already 11 video games underneath .500) received 4 video games in 4 days in opposition to the Yankees (already 10 video games over .500) in each The Bronx and Queens.
This one’s somewhat completely different.
This time, the Yankees are coming in ice chilly after spending a lot of the season in a baseball sauna, they have been so scorching — the Yankees have misplaced three straight sequence, and 4 of their final 5, 3-7 of their final 10 video games. And this time the Mets are coming in pink scorching in June after spending most of April and Could in a baseball igloo, winners of 4 straight sequence and 13 of their final 17 video games.
The Yankees are banged up: no Giancarlo Stanton, no Anthony Rizzo, no Clarke Schmidt, no Ian Hamilton. The Mets are coming in shorthanded, too: Starling Marte is iffy with a knee that was getting an additional look Monday, Brooks Raley is gone for the season and Edwin Diaz is doubtless gone for 10 video games because of his ejection for having an excessive amount of sticky stuff on his hand in Chicago on Sunday night time.
And, curiously, the Mets have already been buoyed of their makes an attempt to get again into the season because of a trio of ex-Yankees (Luis Severino, Harrison Bader, Luis Torrens) whereas the Yankees have gotten some fantastic work out of ex-Met reliever Michael Tonkin and hope to get the identical as soon as ex-Met J.D. Davis arrives to beef up their infield depth.
It’s a distinct type of Subway Collection, for positive.
But it surely’ll take about an inning, possibly two, earlier than the following two video games throughout the following two nights remind us that this stays among the many most pleasurable touchdown spots on New York’s sporting calendar yearly. Possibly the brand new is lengthy gone, so it’ll by no means be prefer it was within the days and hours earlier than June 16, 1997, the primary time these groups ever performed a recreation that counted, or within the days and hours earlier than Oct. 21, 2000, Sport 1 of the 2000 World Collection.
However there may be nonetheless one thing stirring within the acoustics of listening to pockets of “Let’s Go Yankees!” inside Citi Area when the visiting group is rallying, identical because the segments of “Let’s Go Mets!” inside Yankee Stadium when the Mets return the favor in The Bronx.
Ours is essentially the most civil type of civil warfare, in any case. We’ve been doing this for 27 years now, and whereas we stay a metropolis divided alongside baseball traces, and whereas these disputes can typically develop heated alongside water coolers, inside saloons, on textual content threads, it’s by no means turned ugly. There may be a lot good-natured trash speak within the aisle, some fiery back-and-forth on speak radio.
That wasn’t all the time the case. Again within the day, the Dodgers/Giants rivalry generally acquired violent, and one time ended with the homicide of a Giants fan named Frank Krug after he’d engaged in somewhat salty banter with a Dodgers fan named Robert Joyce at a Brooklyn bar referred to as Pat Diamond’s. Joyce, possibly the primary and most excessive first-time-long-time, determined to get the final phrase with a gunshot.
So, no, Mets/Yankees has by no means fairly gone there.
(Thank goodness.)
(Knock wooden.)
And so we’ll embrace this most civil civil warfare once more this week, and once more in a month when the ultimate two video games of this 12 months’s Subway Collection return to Yankee Stadium. Mets followers and Yankees followers will care largely in regards to the essential stuff — the Yankees specializing in preserving just a few yards forward of the Orioles for the No. 1 seed within the AL, the Mets making an attempt to maintain inside shouting distance of the NL wild card.
And as a bonus, they’ll get to yammer with their associates, siblings and neighbors who occur to root for the opposite uniform colours. Civilly, after all.
