There are two baseball teams in New York?

I’m officially (sort of) expressing my outrage that both New York baseball teams are vacating their stadia, but people only care about the Yankees. Of course people only care about the Yankees! This is how it should be; I root for the Mets because I’m from New York and I’m only kind of an asshole, not because they win more than any other team and have the collective personality of a particularly joyless blitzkrieg. (Also, any team that can cause the not-at-all-obnoxious Red Sox fan base to hate a man named “Mookie” should be forever beloved by all others.)

Granted, the afore-referenced last time the Mets won the Series, I was three years old, and considered Ron Darling the greatest pitcher in the history of baseball. However, it was unexpected and like the Miracles before them, they acted like a plucky underdog. Everything about the club is like that. The Mets have the third highest payroll of any MLB team, but they’re ill-regarded, often flailing, and seem at times even star crossed. They are the proud owners of the biggest second half collapse in modern baseball, and the majority of their “golden age” roster had Pablo Escobar on speed dial. Even right now, the Mets have improbably climbed out of laughing stock status, and are a (shaky) first place team in a pretty competitive division, but the big story is still the numbing mediocrity coming out of the Bronx.

I'm not going to comment on the neighborhood the Mets play in, but suffice to say that Flushing Meadows is a very apt description. Furthermore, Shea Stadium is a stone’s throw from LaGuardia Airport, and the “charm” of a 747 flying about twelve feet above your head during a day at the ball park is not to be missed, but at least they're fixing that. Oh, right, they're building Citi-Ebbets Field* in the current parking lot! And during the entire All Star Game proceedings, there was hardly a whisper about how the Mets were also building a new stadium. While there's no denying the fact that Yankee stadium has more history blah, blah, blah... I just found it odd that NO ONE was saying anything about the Mets. It would actually be pretty interesting to look at the dynamic of how both organizations chose to open new parks in the same year. What went into the decisions/competition for money/etc.

Its funny, here in Boston, fans have a real inferiority complex about sports, even during what is already quite possibly the best sports decade for any city, ever. Our boy Scrob, and his bizarre White Sox fanhood, hates the Cubbies for their “favorite sons” status, but I like being a Mets fan, even with all the heart attacks and hopeless seasons. Let the world, from Cuba to Bristol, Connecticut, mourn the loss of The House that Ruth Built. As long as there's an apple in a top hat waiting for a home run swing, I'll know where I belong.

* Note to self: the cult of the Brooklyn Dodgers thing is probably good for another article. No one's ever written anything about the Brooklyn Dodgers, right?