Rivalries bring out the fans
A game that means everything, no matter when it is played – that
is a rivalry game.
Rivalries bring out the fans
A game that means everything, no matter when it is played – that is a rivalry game.
A game that brings out the best, and sometimes the worst, in players – that is a rivalry game.
A game that brings out the absolute worst in their fans – that is a rivalry game.
There are many great rivalries in sports, it doesn’t matter what sport it is.
In football – the Raiders and Broncos, the Cowboys and Steelers, and the Bears and the Packers are just a few.
In basketball there is the Lakers and Celtics rivalry, and in hockey there is the Ottawa Senators and the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Baseball has many rivalries, but in my opinion there are none greater than that of the Giants and the Dodgers, although the Red Sox and Yankees are a close second.
One rivalry that has gone under the radar is the New York Mets and the New York Yankees rivalry. The reason for this is that the teams only play each other 6 times a year in inter-league play.
This rivalry has increased in intensity, however, since 2000 when the teams battled it out in the World Series.
For years, the New York Yankees have overpowered the Mets in play, media attention, fan base, and everything else; but within the last two years it seems that the tides have been changing towards the Mets favor.
This rivalry is a lot more intense in the stands than it is out on the field itself. I know this because I have experienced it.
It was in 2002 and I was taking a two-week baseball tour with my dad. We went to games all over the U.S. starting in San Diego. We went to Arizona, Colorado, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and one of our final stops was New York.
My dad decided that we were going to Shea Stadium to see the Mets. It just so happened that it was inter-league play and the Mets were playing the Yankees.
I had never seen so much intensity in the stands. Being a baseball fan my whole life I knew that New York was a wild and dangerous place to watch a game so instead of wearing my beat up Giants hat, I bought a Mets hat. Just to be safe.
It was a good thing, too, because there was a lot of danger sitting in that stadium. Yeah, I took a couple of Mets suck comments from drunk Yankees fans, but it didn’t bother me because, not only was I a Giants fan, but I had all the drunk Mets fans to back me up. I just kept my mouth shut.
As the game progressed, fans got drunker and angrier as the Yankees started to pull away.
Soon there were bare-chested Yankees fans holding signs and running up and down the aisles taunting the even drunker Mets fans.
That is when chaos erupted. Fights started breaking out everywhere.
I had never seen so many cops in one place (except at Hollister’s Biker Rally, of course). I can’t even count on two hands the amount of people that got arrested, just in my section alone.
People started throwing things at Yankees fans, then there would be retaliation by Yankees fans, and my dad and I just kept our mouths shut.
We watched in amazement as fans got arrested and hauled away one by one. It must have been a very busy night for the beat cops in New York that night.
On the subway ride back to the hotel, I thought about the riot that almost broke out during that game and I realized that the rivalry between the Mets and the Yankees wasn’t between the teams. The rivalry was created by the fans, and it was between the fans, and it brought out the worst in them.
The Giants-Dodgers rivalry is the same way. Both teams started in New York – the Giants were formerly the New York Giants and the Dodgers were formerly the Brooklyn Dodgers.
The Mets-Yankees rivalry, to New Yorkers, just replaced the classic Dodgers- Giants feud that migrated to California. The Mets and Yankees kept the fire that burns in those fans going.
And that is just what a rivalry needs; the fire and the want and need to win.
