With Yankees Away, We See the Mets Play… Kind Of

A good night for the Mets is when they lose a game by a smaller margin then what the Yankees lose by. That’s the high point. “Yeah, we lost, but the Yankees lost tonight too, and they lost worse than we did! Woo Hoo!”

I’m getting ahead of myself. As regular readers of “The Chad News Bears” may remember, I kinda sorta trashed the Mets not long ago. To be fair, they deserved it, but still I drew the ire of the dozens and dozens of Mets fans in the New York City area.

One Met-head provoked feelings of sympathy. I was challenged via Twitter to judge not, lest I be judged. How could I know the pain of a Mets fan unless I were to walk a mile in a Met-head’s shoes? This guy had a point, and not just on the top of his head. I agreed to live the life of a Mets fan for one night. With the Yankees away, I would see the Mets play. I respectfully dedicate this column to Twitter user @IWouldBeADouchebagEvenIfIWasNotAMetsFan. Thank you for your inspiration.

So anyway I found a Mike Piazza jersey for 8 bucks in the local thrift store. Okay, the jersey was thrown in for free, I paid 8 bucks for some Nikes. But I had my pick of Mets jerseys, current and classic, all styles. The owner of the store told me he had reduced his stock by setting fire to a half ton of Mets stuff because people kept throwing rocks at him when he tried to give them away. Also, he gave me a free Mets hat. An entire Met-head outfit for 8 bucks. I would fit right in.

It was a beautiful night for a ballgame, that was for sure. The 7 Train to Shi-, uh, excuse me, Citifield is still a nice trip. You know, except for all the Met-heads. Honestly, would it kill you folks to shower? The cop on the train kept eyeing me suspiciously because I didn’t reek of body odor. He knew I wasn’t a legit Mets fan.

I met up with my buddy Pinstripe (not his real name) and his girlfriend and her daughter. Neither of the ladies wanted their picture taken. The thought of their attendance at a Mets game was a shame too great for them to bear. If you look at the headline picture, you will notice all the empty seats behind us to bear witness to the fact that this shameful feeling ran rampant.

The Atlanta Braves were in town this night, which was a bonus. Anytime I can hate-watch those boneheads live is a twisted pleasure. It didn’t take them long to pounce on the helpless Mets. We were sitting next to some young guys in Braves shirts and I gotta give it to them, they were classy. They were polite, knowledgeable, and possessed tremendous baseball etiquette.

So when a Met-head beerily turned around and began bellowing at them how much their team sucked, something clearly not evident to anyone in attendance that night, intervention was called for. I called upon my Masterful Heckling skills to appear supportive of Drunky McLoudmouth while actually admonishing him for boorishness;

“Dude!” I called out, “Just saying ‘Braves suck’ is so pedestrian! B.J. Upton is at the plate, why don’t you work out something with that?”

Too much to ask of the Met-head. He just gaped at me, slack-jawed, while folks snickered behind their hands, regardless of the jersey they wore. It brought me great joy a few minutes later to see his friends trying to explain the correlation to him. At least we don’t have to worry about that one reproducing. I hope.

All in all it wasn’t a terrible experience. We’d been there before, although this was the first time we tried to look the part. The ballpark isn’t that bad, but it’s no Stadium, and expensive concessions seem even more offensive when you don’t particularly care for either team. Also, it’s been 24 hours since I had that hot dog and I am still tasting it.

It felt weird to wear a grey jersey, look down, and see “New York” in orange and royal blue. Dressed like a Met-head was a surreal feeling, and it wasn’t particularly pleasant. Let’s just say I understood why Mets fans drink so much.

Pinstripe went even loopier than me in his Mets jersey and lost it enough to pose for a picture wearing it along with a giant orange wig. Why he would then pass this picture over to me, a complete jerk, and somehow expect it not to be made public is a complete mystery. I thought he knew who he was dealing with. Here’s Stripes, an apparent life long Yankee fan, dressed as a Met-head clown:

Photo credit:

You’re welcome.

The King of our section was an unabashed Yankee fan. He was an older man wearing a Yankee hat and a beautiful jacket with all 27 Championships emblazoned proudly. It mattered to him not at all what anyone else thought. He was there for a ballgame, wore his colors proudly, and nobody dared said “boo” to him. It was like watching a shark swim casually through a school of goldfish.

King Yankee turned out to be my takeaway of the whole experience. That one man in a Yankees’ jacket quietly commanded all the respect in the stadium. He didn’t brag because he didn’t have to. He didn’t explain himself because he didn’t need to. He came, he watched, he represented.

I now get why the sad sack Mets fans wanted me to try and understand them. All of them together couldn’t equal this one guy. They want us to walk a mile in their shoes, so I did, and all I learned was we don’t have to. We can pity the Met-heads, but we don’t need to lower our standards to live like they do. I mean we can, but who needs to be that drunk? Your liver would give out in three days.

But I do want to thank you nameless Met-heads for inviting me to look at the game through your eyes. It gave me a brand new appreciation of my love for the Yankees.

Play ball!