What Makes You a Yankees or Mets Fan?

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. To wrap up the show today, on a lighter note as we often do, we will take your calls for our last few minutes on a certain kind of New York rivalry, Yankees fans versus Mets fans. Tonight, as you know if you're a baseball fan, it kicks off the second round of the Subway Series for this year, two games at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, tomorrow night after the two earlier in the season at City Field in Queens. Listeners, we want to know what makes you a Mets or a Yankees fan or what makes you respect or loathe the other team. 212433 WNYC 212-433-9692. Is there a vibe to being a Mets fan that you can put into words or a vibe to being a Yankee fan? 212-433-9692. Call or text.

Now, we know some of fandom is about the accident of where you grow up or what team your parents may have steeped you in. Did your parents get you a Yankees or a Mets onesie as your first piece of clothing? If it's about where you live, where you grew up, your family history, you can say that, but we're also looking for more than that at 212433 WNYC. We're looking for that Yankee fan vibe or that Mets fan vibe that you can put into words. For example, there are a lot of stereotypes that inform our understanding of the Mets-Yankees rivalry in the popular imagination here in New York.

The Mets are often seen as an underdog team, kind of scrappy and enduring despite the odds in their historical record. The Yankees on the other hand definitely have more of a straight-edge vibe. They've maintained a strict appearance policy dating back to the 1970s where players aren't allowed to have long hair or any kind of beard. I think they're the only team in the majors with that rule. It's a relic of a kind of old-school respectability politics, if you want to call it that, that has gotten some flack these days for limiting player self-expression, but remains in place nevertheless.

Same thing with wearing white shirts with pinstripes, which could be seen as masters of the universe Wall Street attire vibe. The Mets at various times, by contrast, have rolled out black uniform tops, one that feature their orange and blue colors and more. They have different color hats that they'll actually wear on the field. The Yankees have a more dynastic, celebrity-filled history than the Mets as well, and they've won the most World Series titles in Major League history. Being a winner, identifying with greatness is a vibe too, even though the Yankees haven't won anything since 2009, but that's another show.

Listeners, here's your opportunity to tell us how you feel about this competition. What makes you a Mets fan? What makes you a Yankees fan in addition to your family history or just the geography of where you grew up? Is there a Met or Yankees vibe that you identify with? 212433 WNYC on this morning before the two-night Subway Series 212-433-9692. We'll take your calls right after this.

[music]

Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to your calls on what makes you a Yankees fan or a Mets fan, yes, geography, yes, family history, but also any kind of vibe you can put into words. Lacey in Forest Hills. You're on WNYC. Hi, Lacey.

Lacey: Hi, Brian. Thanks so much for taking my call and just have the first and foremost they go Mets. I actually grew up being a Cubs fan. My family's history is all in Chicago but everything changed in 2015. That's the year I met my husband, our first date was on Game 4 of the Mets-Cubs Pennant Race series. Of course, Cubs lost, and the Mets won that year but nonetheless, because I've been married to my husband for the past eight years now or six years, but we've been together for past eight years.

I've been just falling so much deeper in love with the Mets and just watching them grow as a team has been phenomenal, watching the whole culture around the team is phenomenal. The Grimace era this year has just catapulted everything. It's just fantastic. I'm Mets all the way walking around Queens, being able to see everyone with their Mets gear on is fantastic and [unintelligible 00:04:37]-

Brian Lehrer: I think-

Lacey: -generates.

Brian Lehrer: -there's that fun. Grimace this year. One year it was Who Let the Dogs Out. Yankees don't have that kind of thing as more straight-laced. Lacey, thank you very much. Sam in Ridgewood, you're on WNYC. Ridgewood Queens, I presume. Hi, Sam.

Sam: Ridgewood Queens, yes. How's it going, Brian?

Brian Lehrer: Good, [unintelligible 00:05:01]?

Sam: Thanks for taking my call. I came to my Mets fandom in an interesting way through the back door in a way. My grandfather, Irving Kestin, great lifelong New Yorker, was a massive Yankees fan. He raised his whole family, my mom in Flushing but as Yankees fans. My mom married a Red Sox fan who indoctrinated me against the Yankees very thoroughly. I grew up in Manhasset so fandom of the Yankees was just completely a non-starter. Despite this big Yankees Lord, my family, I'm a huge Mets fan, and there's friendly competition there.

Brian Lehrer: Sam, thank you. Thank you very much. Listeners, it's really interesting. Our board is just teaming with Mets fans and I have a theory just like when we do political call-ins, and of course it's not a scientific survey. I think the economics of the two teams, their attendance at the ballpark would tell you there are more Yankees fans than Mets fans, probably by the numbers but I think it's the Mets fans perhaps, who feel more of the vibe, who feel more emotionally moved by their team, and that there's some kind of culture there. That's my off-the-back-of-the-envelope theory here, but Stewart in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Stewart.

Stewart: Hi, Brian. I inherited my love for the Mets from my late dad, and he rooted for them when they were the laughingstock of the league and lived long enough to see them win their first world championship. That was very satisfying. I think I carried the torch for him. The thing is, I always, I'm optimistic, I'm always hopeful. They have these great streaks and they do well, and this unfortunately includes the Yankees lately, is that they get to the home stretch and then they collapse. They've broken my heart so many times. I'm going to hang in there. I'm cautiously optimistic, but I've already seen the reality. It's not those golden days of '69 and '84 or '87, whatever that was.

Brian Lehrer: '86, yes.

Stewart: I actually passed on my brother's birthday party because I was so into the game [laughs].

Brian Lehrer: I believe it. Stewart, thank you very much. I'm going to leave it there. Get some other people on. Oh, Alan in Hoboken is a fan of both. Hi, Alan. You're on WNYC.

Alan: Hi. Hello. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: I can hear you.

Alan: Brian, first of all, you're in the New York Hall of Fame. You're an anchor for all of us.

Brian Lehrer: You're too nice.

Alan: I hope you're inducted formally at some point. I like them both, and you are one of the few people I've admitted that to. Of course, anybody listening who knows me is going to give me grief. I was a kid in Brooklyn when the Dodgers left. All of a sudden one night they were gone and my heart was broken. The only team left there was a fantastic Yankee team.

Really you could say the golden age of the Yankees Mickey Mantle, Barrow, all of that. It was a tremendous ride and a big, big, big help to me as a kid to have them as friends of mine. Now, I like them for different reasons. The Mets, because of the underdog stuff, all the wonderful dramatic stories, and the Yankees, because they're the Yankees. I'm lucky enough to live in the New York area.

Brian Lehrer: I agree with you, Alan. I have a little bit of a similar story. My parents are from the Bronx. My first games with my dad were Yankee games, but I grew up in Queens so I went to a lot of Mets games on my own with my friends once I was old enough and I grew up liking both teams. When they play each other, sometimes, especially in a season like this, where they're both-- they've got stories to tell, they've both got their good parts and they're troubles and they're both striving toward the playoffs, it's hard for me to know who to root for tonight, but Alan, thank you very much. Nina in Manhattan is going to be our last caller, I think. Nina, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Nina: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking the call. The rivalry runs deep in my family. My mom is a born and raised New Yorker from Manhattan. I think for her, the Yankees fan vibe was just the history and the stateliness of the team. My dad is a Mets fan from upstate New York who just really, I think, likes the color Orange and the Mets were founded around his birth year.

I'm a middle child of three so growing up my brother decided to side with my mom and the Yankees, my younger sister, my dad trained her to say "let's go Mets" when she was about two years old. In 2000, the rivalry got picked up as a local feature and we were on the front cover of the Rochester New York newspaper with our family rivalry, the Subway World.

Brian Lehrer: That was the Subway Series year when they played each other in the World Series. I still have a hat from that year with both logos that I got at the World Series that year. Thanks for all your calls. Well we'll end it with a Yankees fan. I said the Mets fans were generally calling in because maybe they have more of a story to tell. A Yankee fan writes, "We don't have to call in and explain why we're fans."

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.

Produced by WNYC