On Friday night, the New York Yankees take on the Los Angeles Dodgers in game one of a monumental World Series. The matchup revives a rivalry dating to the Dodgers’ Brooklyn days and showcases a stunning number of future Hall of Famers, including the ethereal Shohei Ohtani, the batting genius Juan Soto, and the Bunyanesque Aaron Judge. The Yankees, though they haven’t had a losing season in over three decades, have been uncharacteristically missing from World Series action since their 2009 triumph. A sort of order has been restored, and New York — the real New York — is thrilled. And yet, if you’d spent any time this fall in the city’s brownstone precincts, or reading the endless calls of “LFGM” on the internet, you’d be forgiven for thinking this is a Mets town.
Bad to mediocre for much of the season, the Mets made a late surge into the playoffs, then rode their feel-good Cinderella identity to the brink of the World Series. The team’s plucky spirit was signified by its unofficial affiliations with Grimace (the Happy Meal character), a song called “OMG,” and a “lucky pumpkin” adopted by slugger Pete Alonso, all of which helped broaden their appeal among people who don’t follow baseball closely. Suddenly, as the playoffs got going, blue-and-orange garb became ubiquitous on the street. “Ya Gotta Believe,” is the Mets’ call to arms, and their faithful came through in droves. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that congregation?
But appearances can be deceiving. The Mets did not capture the heart of the city so much as it did the hearts of the gentrifier class: media elites, political staffers, lawyers for good causes, Brooklyn transplants, Twitter addicts. Even before this season, these types of people tended to adopt the Mets — because, not despite, the fact that they are less decorated than the Yankees. The team from Queens has won two championships to the Bronx Bombers’ record 27. This disparity permits those who aren’t confident of their new status as New Yorkers, or are generally uncomfortable with their good fortune in life, to wear the team’s colors as a mark of grit and authenticity. Though not working class themselves, these fans cultivate a relationship with the team as a way to channel and cheer the city’s underdog spirit.
New York is the richest city in the world, swaggering and unapologetically unequal. It’s not in fact an underdog, but a bully, and it’s the Yankees who embody this spirit. We — Yankees fans — refer to our ballpark as “the Stadium,” just as true New Yorkers call Manhattan “the City,” as though there is just one you could plausibly be referring to at any moment. (The Mets’ homonymic ballpark Citi Field only sounds classic and unadorned and is in fact named after a bank, further complicating the team’s supposed blue-collar identity.)
The Yankees, embodying alpha swagger, attract fans with alpha swagger. Denzel: fan. Jay-Z: fan. It is impossible to imagine Jay-Z in a Mets hat. The roster of celebrity Mets fans is thin and consists mainly of comedians: Jerry Seinfeld, Jon Stewart, Kevin James. We Googled “celebrities in Mets hats” and the best result was Jennifer Lopez in a Yankees cap.
Part of the Yankees’ eternal appeal is aesthetic: the white-on-midnight-blue cap, its unadorned, interlocking N-Y. The look is at once more elegant and more macho than the Mets’ jauntier color scheme and more baroque cap lettering. The Yankees eschew gimmickry, or anything smacking of decadence: no beards, no names on the backs of their jerseys. (The exception that proves the rule: The team’s grounds crew performing the YMCA every sixth inning.) It is hard to imagine a children’s toy, such as Grimace, attaining status among Yankees fans. Back in the old Stadium, demolished after the 2008 season, the best place to sit was Section 39, where the wildest and drunkest “Bleacher Creatures” ruled. Whenever “the Wave” made its way over to our section, we’d refuse to do it, halting its progress and yelling, “Keep the Wave at Shea.” (Shea Stadium, if you’re a new Mets fan, is where your team used to play.)
The Yankees, dressed in their Gordon Gekko pinstripes, are brazen and capitalistic. They have bought themselves a number of championships, unapologetically. In the A-Rod era the team was maligned as the Evil Empire; nobody felt insulted. This brazenness helps explain the support of people like Rudy Giuliani, a fixture in the Bronx during the team’s late-1990s run of titles. Eric Adams recently wore an equivocating Mets-Yankees hat, but it is obvious that on some spiritual level, our criminally charged mayor is a Yankees fan.
But it’s not just scoundrels and fat cats who identify with the team. Last week, a local branch of the Democratic Socialists of America put out a poll on X, asking, “Which team represents the working class?” Of 463 respondents, 16 percent chose the Dodgers, 21 percent chose the Yankees, and a whopping 61 percent selected the Mets. Wrong! Wisely, the socialist magazine publisher Bhaskar Sunkara corrected the record: “The Yankees are both the elite team of capital and team of the working class.” The plutocrat living on Fifth Avenue may root for either team, or some different squad from out of town, or no one at all. But it’s a good bet his doorman who lives in Washington Heights roots for the Yankees. This is because rooting for the Yankees is an aspirational act.
We grudgingly admit that the Mets do have several things going for them. Citi Field provides a better and less expensive experience than Yankee Stadium, including far superior food. Mets fans famously booed Bill de Blasio, a Red Sox fan; good for them! The Mets TV broadcast team — Keith Hernandez, Ron Darling, and Gary Cohen — is not only better than the crew of stuffed shirts who man the Yankees’ booth, but the best in all of baseball. In fact, they’re so good that one of us, Simon, almost exclusively watches the Mets, instead of the Yankees, just for the quality of the broadcast.
None of this makes them New York’s team. And we haven’t mentioned Steve Cohen yet. Even if the Mets once had a claim as the squad of the common man, they defaulted on it after the cartoonishly villainous billionaire — so aggressive and impudent he was temporarily barred from running hedge funds — bought the team. The irony of the Mets’ inspiring run is that their payroll this season was the very highest in baseball. Major League Baseball has even implemented a new fee, dubbed “the Cohen Tax,” to try to stop him from buying whomever he wants on the open market.
It’s not that we begrudge the Mets for being rich now. It’s that they’re not sure what to do with their money. If the Cohen era made the Mets more menacing and ruthless, a Joker team to the Bronx’s Batman, what could be more New York than that? But blowing hundreds of millions of dollars — including $45 million this year to two pitchers no longer on the team — while relying on some hard-luck story is a fairy tale for a lesser city. Boss Steinbrenner, may he rest, squandered his money with more style.
A message to Mets fans, transplanted or homegrown: When you switch on game one of the World Series Friday night, feel no shame cheering for Judge and the Yankees, who represent everything this Leviathan city can be.
Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the timing of the grounds crew’s “Y.M.C.A.” performance.
