My World Series

When lowering your sights is raising 'em

This is my first post here in almost exactly a year. While I’ll try to get back into the swing of things, most of my time is devoted to music. My band Hit recently put out an album called Bestseller, which you can stream here, here, and here. I’m also in Miracle Sweepstakes, which put out an album last year called Last Licks. I encourage you to subscribe to my record label’s Substack below for new music, live show announcements, and fun odds ‘n ends. It’s free like this one!

I’ve always thought it’s funny when baseball movies end with a team winning the pennant. The subtext is obviously that the heroes go on to get their asses kicked in the World Series, which to me – a spoiled brat who saw my favorite team win four world championships and six pennants in my first eight years of following the sport – always seemed laughably nullifying. Joe Posnanski fanfic’d the Knights getting swept by the Yankees after Roy Hobbs’ pennant clinching homer; we know from Major League II that Cleveland went on to lose the World Series after the conclusion of Major League. Great movies, sure, but compelling as their protagonists are, they all essentially amount to the ‘98 Padres– NPCs whose purpose in the end was to be a whipping post for the real main characters:

During that magical eight year run, the two Yankee pennants that didn’t directly precede Yankee world championships – 2001 and 2003 – were traumatizing and humiliating, respectively. In ‘03 I remember my Uncle Jack joking that the Yankees would sweep the Marlins in three games, not the customary four– that’s how bad an ass whooping it was gonna be. When they wound up losing, I remember everyone in my Yankee orbit being pretty unsentimental about the season that was. This despite Aaron Boone hitting a real-life Roy Hobbs home run to win Game 7 of the ALCS, which I remember being so euphorically happy over, I stayed up all night buzzing about it. My dad told me I could stay home from school the next day; my mom made me go in anyway.

In hindsight, those ‘03 Yankees were emotionally exhausted, best symbolized by Mariano Rivera running out to the pitcher’s mound and collapsing in joy as Boone rounded the bases. There was a hangover effect from winning the ALCS the way they did– going the full seven games, against the hated Red Sox, down to the last pitch, in extra innings. If 14-year-old me was exhausted in class the morning after that exultant finish, that’s how the Yankees felt, and played, against a plucky Marlins team in the series after. In effect, the ALCS had been their World Series. And for a team where the World Series is the World Series, that just doesn’t cut it. We still got the World Series VHS in ‘01 despite the heartbreaking end, but I don’t think we even bothered to get the ‘03 DVD.

The intervening years have pushed me to recalibrate, even if that’s not the case for other Yankee fans. Blame that dumb clip of Derek Jeter at the Steiner Sports panel, where he says that making it to the World Series and losing – for any team – is nothing to celebrate. Second place is just the first place loser, as the saying goes, which says nothing of ALCS losses. 

The clip is from 2007, when the Yankees were hot off of three consecutive first round playoff exits. Maybe missing the playoffs for the first time in his career in 2008 humbled him a bit – he had no issues celebrating the lone playoff berth the Marlins had during his executive tenure – but as a player, Jeter’s “winning or misery” mindset is forever immortalized.

For me as a fan, I’ve come to appreciate the seasons where they fall just short. In hindsight, the 2001 World Series is probably my favorite one of all. I still go back to the clips of Tino and Brosius’s game tying homers, and I still cherish that entire playoff run– the comeback from being down 0-2 against the A’s, and the gentleman’s sweep of a 116-win Mariners team that was so clearly fraudulent, replete with “no Game 6” chants. Pure magic, almost made more poignant by the tragic ending. I have similarly warm memories of the 2017 Yankees, who came one win shy of the Fall Classic– the Didi Wild Card Game homer; Greg Bird’s off Andrew Miller in Game 3 of the ALDS; and those three ALCS wins in the Bronx that prompted cheater George Springer to call Yankee Stadium “a wild place to play.”

I crack up at zoomer Yankee fans who parrot the Jeter binary. To be fair, the Yankees have co-opted World Series or Bust as PR lip service, so I can’t blame the youth for being impressionable. But as a Red Sox fan friend of mine gleefully pointed out, there are now Yankee fans who have lived longer without ever seeing their team win a title than he had to. If I – the kid who sat in disbelief after the final out of the 1997 ALDS, asking my dad, “but they can still win, right?” – appreciate the seasons that don’t end with a world championship, surely some dipshit who was in preschool the last time they won one can get over themselves.

Brother, your Core 4 was Brett Gardner. Relax.

If Yankee fans haven’t evolved on the World Series issue, Mets fans sure have. The first Mets Fan World Series I can remember was the Fourth of July, 2004. I watched at my grandma Ginny’s – a Mets fan – as, for the first time, the Amazin’s swept the Yankees. I can’t find a longer clip, but I remember at one point the players brought their families onto the field to wave to the fans at Shea Stadium. The Mets would go 30-52 the rest of the way that year.

Mets fans can win the World Series even when the Mets aren’t playing, so long as the Yankees are. This one dork on YouTube makes an annual “Yankees lose” video to commemorate the Bombers season coming to a close, which oddly seems to happen about 1-2 weeks after the Mets season comes to a close.

And look, if Mets fans can’t see their team win, they should at least get to have a little fun at the Yankees’ expense. It’s like jester’s privilege for the little brothers of New York sports. But where they’ve run afoul is in recent years, as the Steve Cohen era has given rise to Veruca Salt-esque entitlement, and an ill advised main character syndrome over what amounts to pop cultural detritus.

The Mets of now are culture vultures, the “when the bodega got the chomped cheese!” of sports teams. On the menu at Citi Field? Why, the rainbow cookie egg roll of course. Dat’s New York for ya! Need a hat? How about this positively epic Mets x Metropolitan Museum of Art mashup. Da big apple baby! Or if that’s not New York enough, what about this cap that doubles as Neil Young merch who is… Canadian?

This is what happens when New York gets gentrified into oblivion by swarms of yuppie transplants who predicate rooting interests on which team isn’t the cops. This Intelligencer piece didn’t quite stick the landing – the grounds crew does the “YMCA” during the sixth inning, and wait, one of the guys who wrote it watches the Mets instead of the Yanks just for Gary, Keith and Ron? The fuck? – but it was a genius troll. Correctly asserting that, compared to real, blue collar New Yorkers who root for the Yankees, Mets fans are the terminally online professional-managerial class, the article incited backlash from the terminally online professional-managerial class.

The Mets, who famously already have an actual mascot, adopted the Grimace as their totem midway through the year, reappropriating a corporate marketing character as a kind of late capitalist spin on the Rally Monkey. They had Hawk Tuah Girl throw out a first pitch, which was worthy of ridicule not for any bogus moral grandstanding, but because it’s the kind of cloying shit the Savannah Bananas would resort to. And when the dust settled on this feel good story for the ages, the Mets finished 17th in MLB in ballpark attendance. But hey, that’s just because there’s too many other fun things to do in da greatest city in the world! It’s a dilettante’s oyster.

I’m actually shocked we never got a “Mets ARE Brat” cross branding, but I could go on and on. My one addendum to the Intelligencer piece would be that I think the Mets are partially to blame for the breakdown of the traditional nuclear family that you always hear conservatives droning on about– what kind of loving parent would make their kid a Mets fan? But in all seriousness, I’ve never seen a fanbase launder bad karma into goodwill more shamelessly than Mets fans have these last couple years, and it starts with the lionization of the guy at the top.

I don’t know or care about the stock market, but I’ll put full trust in this Redditor who says Steve Cohen belongs in jail. Sure seems like Martha Stewart served time for less! Instead, Mets fans treat Uncle Stevie like George Steinbrenner reincarnate. For all of the Boss’s faults, he took his punishment, and at least played the part of campy blowhard instead of just being some anonymous Wall Street villain. Just look at these acting chops:

Cohen, by contrast, is just kind of a sickly looking, uncharismatic scumbag with weird teeth. His smile haunts me, and were George still with us, I think I know how’d he describe his crosstown counterpart’s appearance.

With Juan Soto’s free agency in full swing, Mets fans are hyping up Cohen the way libs hyped up Robert Mueller. Did you know Cohen has exquisite taste in art? He owns the stupid Damien Hirst shark, and just knows, “purely from the gut,” when he wants something. This story about a rich guy pissing contest he got into over a real estate property – excerpted from a book about what a white collar crook Cohen is – has made the rounds to illustrate the lengths he’ll go to when he does want something. Stevie Ain’t Walking Away. To him, Soto is just the latest Le Rêve– one he will fully realize… 

If this all sounds familiar, it’s because we did this same song and dance two years ago with Aaron Judge, who Mets faithful crudely outfitted in blue and orange. When that didn’t work out, all we heard about was how Uncle Stevie was actually just biding his time for Shohei Ohtani. That didn’t work out either. But Mets fans did get to gloat over the signings of Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander, and when having a rotation helmed by two pitchers with a combined age of 79 didn’t go as smoothly as planned, the club flipped both at the 2023 trade deadline for some pretty good prospects. It only cost Cohen a cool $63 million to pull that off. Masterful gambit, sir!

None of this is to say that I’m confident Soto won’t wind up in Flushing. After all, Cohen reportedly stayed out of the Judge sweepstakes as a show of intra-market sportsmanship that bordered on collusion, and Ohtani was simply never interested in playing in New York. This time, by all accounts, the Mets are going “full blast” in courting Soto, and many are speculating that they will be the highest bidder– an ominous notion given who Soto’s agent is.

Soto is nearly a decade younger than me, and I’m way past the age of idolizing ballplayers anyway, but when the Yankees traded for him last winter, I couldn’t help but think about just how obviously he would’ve been my favorite player if I were a kid. As a left-handed 14-year-old who excitedly read Moneyball, the Yankees landing a superstar, lefty-all-the-way OBP machine would’ve rocked my world. And while the Yankees have had a litany of superstars during my tenure as a fan, none have had Soto’s swag– the closest comp I can imagine is Rickey Henderson, but that’s well before my time.

Everyone loves the Soto shuffle, a move Soto supposedly developed in the low minors to hype himself up after laying off of close pitches. But I’m partial to the Soto head nod, which he generally does after fouling off a pitch, and which often foreshadows a base hit. Early in the year, I heard some speculate that it’s Soto conceding “alright, good pitch,” but I always saw it as Soto informing the pitcher that he’d figured him out, like the Geoguessr kid saying “nice, we’ll take it.” Breaking down his home run in the tenth inning of Game 5 of this year’s ALCS, Soto confirmed my interpretation– “I’m all over it.”

@espn“I’m all over it.” 🗣️ Jaun Soto was ready for the moment 🔥 @MLB #baseball #mlb #newyork #sports

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It’s a homer that, should Soto remain in the Bronx, will live on like Chris Chambliss’s shot that sent the Yanks to the 1976 World Series. At the very least, if he stays, I’ll reach for that clip the way I still do for Didi’s, Bird’s, Boone’s, and so forth. But like the Chambliss’ homer, Soto’s blast to effectively win the pennant was followed by a tough World Series. Frankly, it started painfully and ended humiliatingly, for reasons I don’t think I need to revisit if you’ve already read this far.

Defending the Yankees’ postseason run is honestly exhausting. Yes, thanks to the dumb new playoff format, they dodged two bullets by not having to play the Astros or Orioles. But the Royals and Guardians boasted two of the best pitching staffs in baseball, and the Bombers rattled Emmanuel Clase, who just had arguably the greatest single season by a closer in MLB history, much like the Bombers of yore did to Mark Wohlers and Trevor Hoffman.

Without re-litigating the Dodgers series too much, the Yankees were outscored in the series by only a single run, and they out hit, out walked, out stole, and out pitched LA. They were one pitch away from winning Game 1, a matter of millimeters on the barrel of Jose Trevino’s bat from at least tying Game 2, and it took the flukiest collapse in the entire history of baseball for them to lose Game 5. But there’s no way of pointing that out to dumb Dodgers fans – let alone, dumb Dodgers players – without sounding like a loser. And forget telling Mets fans that no, the Mets didn’t play the Dodgers tougher– you guys set a National League record for most runs allowed in a playoff series. At least I think we know why Joe Kelly was so chirpy…

I don’t wanna look a gift horse in the mouth, but even the road to the World Series was fraught– at least as fraught as a stretch where the Yankees went 7-2 can be. The games were so close, I superstitiously insisted on wearing the same unwashed Joba Chamberlain “Joba Rules” shirsey during every game. My dad gave it to me as a gift shortly after my Uncle Jack passed away, and it’s always held sentimental value to me, in addition to being a funny piece of Jobamania ephemera. The Yankees won every game leading up to the Fall Classic that I wore it for, except for Game 3 of the ALCS, when I wore a sweater over it. And we know how that one went.

Despite contributing literally nothing to the cause, I felt drained at the end of it all. There’s virtually nothing from the World Series that I won’t memory hole, and so, paradoxically, it can’t be my World Series.

My World Series is sticking it to the dastardly Mets fans who see Juan Soto – a player even the most ardent Yankee haters conceded just seems like he was born to be a Yankee – and petulantly say “mine.” To send them all back to brunch. To see Hal Steinbrenner step up and be a proper steward of the most prestigious sports franchise on planet earth, by realizing how imperative it is to keep the modern day Ruth and Gehrig together. To justify me spending over $60 on two hot dogs, two beers and an order of fries to split with my girlfriend at Game 1 of the ALDS. To justify my dad having to listen on the radio during the games that were broadcast on Apple TV+, because apparently the revenue from having their own cable channel isn’t enough for the Yankees. My World Series now is to just not be embarrassed.

If that doesn’t happen, I’ll have to recalibrate again, maybe even divest a bit. But if the Yankees win this World Series, I’ll exhale. Following baseball is such a day in, day out ritual, I think it’s hard to cast the diehards in any fanbase as unsympathetic, however blessed they may be. I’ve already seen my team win more than most fans do in their entire lifetimes, and I’ve experienced some of the most bitter losses in baseball history. I’ve come to appreciate all the shades between, I just ask that the daily soap I watch keeps the characters I like.