Long Suffering Fans: Cleveland, Seattle, Buffalo and….NYC????
CJScalazettiI am a lifelong New Yorker who now finds himself residing in a suburb north of Philadelphia. Up until October, 2008, the professional sports' scene in Philadelphia lent itself to having the most tortured fans in the country. With their last Pro Sports title being the 1983 76ers, they had gone a cumulative 100 seasons of not having one of their major professional teams win a title. There were the few near misses that rose the hopes of the faithful in the 1993 Phillies, 2001 76ers and 2004 Eagles. Hell, the city was getting so desperate they were ready to throw a parade for a Philly-bred horse by the name of Smarty Jones who was 50 yards away from winning the first Triple Crown in 30 years. But to the relief of millions, Brad Lidge recorded the last out against the Tampa Bay Rays in October 2008 bringing a World Series championship to the city and eliminating the fog of misery that cloaked the typical South Philly fan for the better part of 25 years. (Now the misery you find on these people is just from living here everyday.)
With Philly engorged on championship glory like a tic, the title of “Most Tortured Fans” is left to cities like Cleveland, Buffalo and Seattle…none of whom had their residents taste professional championship success in 30 years, 40 years or ever. Even worse, these cities have had some of the worst gut-punch losses on the cusp of getting to a championship. Cleveland has the “Drive”; and the “LeBrons” who had the best record in the league before losing in 5 games to an inferior team. Buffalo had 4 straight trips to the Super Bowl with nothing to show. The Seattle Mariners had a 120 win season and still could not advance to a World Series. All three cities have loyal, crazed fans who have stood by their teams no matter how inept the players and/or management have been without being rewarded. However, there is another city that deserves to have its fans counted alongside those downtrodden, beaten fans. One that many people would not think to include with this list but may actually suffer even greater heartache than the three above. That city, my hometown, is New York City.
“What?!?!” you may proclaim. “The Giants won the Super Bowl 2 years ago and the Yankees are the reigning World Series Champions! How the hell can you compare yourself to some of these other cities that have not sniffed a title in 40 years??” Easy, let me explain.
The metro-NYC area is the only city left that has 2 MLB and 2 NFL franchises. By the time you were 5 or 6 your allegiances to either the Yankees or the Mets for baseball and Giants or Jets for football were cemented into you by your father, family and neighborhood crew. Normally the pairings were Yankees/Giants and Jets/Mets. Probably 95% of NY Sports fans went into that pairing without fail. You rarely see Mets/Giants fans or Jets/Yankees fans. Geographically it normally is Manhattan/Bronx/Staten Island/Northern NJ is mainly Yankees/Giants while half of Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island go Mets/Jets. And by the time you are in first grade, your allegiance for better or worse to one of those combos is ingrained like your first language.
If you were lucky, one combo has given you much joy the past 35 years. The Yankees have been to 10 World Series winning 7 of them and save for a brief period in the early 1990’s, they have never been a team out of contention for long. The Giants starting around 1983 when George Young took over and hired an unknown coordinator named Bill Parcells who proceeded to make 4 Super Bowls in the next 25 years, winning 3 of them. But for those who aligned themselves with the other combination…woof.
The Mets have won one World Series and been to another in the past 35 years. There was a period in the mid-1980’s when they looked to be the next dynasty with Doc Gooden, Strawberry, Keith Hernandez and Jim Cramer’s best friend, Lenny Dykstra leading the way. But save for that one title in 1986, infighting, poor trades and enough cocaine to make Tony Montana go to rehab doomed them before they really got started. That then led to a period of poor signings, mismanagement and backpage scandals. There was a brief moment of near-glory in 2000 when the Mike Piazza led team made it all the way to a World Series…only to lose in 5 games to the Yankees. Sigh.
However, the Jets could look at the above resume of their baseball counterpart and actually be envious. Another thing that the Mets and Jets share besides an area code is that both of them have been to the same number of Super Bowls in the past 35 years. A great summary of why the Jets have never achieved even respectability can be seen by the following youtube classic that chronicles every blatantly bad Jet draft pick the past few decades:
[I could take this one step further and add that the vast majority of New Yorkers do share a common team…the New York Knicks. While they had a very competitive run in the 1990’s with Patrick Ewing leading them to two Finals, the fact remains that their last title was back in 1973. So for those keeping score at home in the last 105 cumulative seasons of the Knicks, Mets and Jets…there has been one lone title to show for it and it was 23 years ago. ]
Getting back to my earlier statement, just because these teams share the same area code as their more successful neighbors does not mean there is a united NY whenever the other is in a championship series. Ask any Met fan who their most hated team is, you will undoubtedly get “the F’n Yankees!” as an answer. Jet fans do not have quite the hatred towards Giants fans; they more or less are indifferent towards them, much like if it was the Seattle Seahawks. Met fans are clearly second class citizens in their own city and it has given them a bit of an inferiority complex.
What makes matters worse, is that whenever the Giants or Yankees win a title, the Mets/Jets fans have to suffer the indignity of a ticker tape parade in their own city of teams they either hate or are completely indifferent to and it reminds them pretty explicitly of their own teams history of ineptitude. I still have a few friends from NYC who are still Mets/Jets fans and not a year goes by without them saying at least once, “Why did God punish me by becoming a Mets and Jets fan?!?!? I could have made my life so much easier had I been a Yankee or Giants fan!”
Whenever I hear those cries I think of the scene from No Country for Old Men when Javier Bardem’s character forces the shopkeeper to chose heads or tails.
“Well, what do I win?”
“Everything.”
Except in this case, instead of winning the right to breathe again or taking a cattle bolt to the skull, it is the choice between being a happy well-adjusted sports fan or a miserable, heartbroken puddle of perennial disappointment. If my friend Rob knew what was ahead of him back in 1979 on a stoop in Brooklyn when he donned a Jets cap to go with his George Foster jersey…I think he would have taken the cattle bolt.
Reader Comments (4)
The video was great; the outfits, highlighted by the groans of disappointment and disaster, outstanding! It makes all the controversy of the Donovan booing seem completely unwarranted. You guys boo your draft picks almost every year. Granted, Donovan wasn't an absolute disaster.
I've always felt a cosmic connection to Jets fans. We are both star-crossed. And while I've always seen the Jets fans as far more pathetic than the average Eagles patron, often lost in a hazy malaise of failure and tragic dress (just rewatch the video- there's not much change in attire over 3 decades), there was certainly still an empathy for my brothers to the north.
However, this is as far as my concern extends. While your championship woes are sincerely sad, you fail to see the reality that these other cities of failure are not New York, and therefore are second class citizens to all New Yorkers, at least from a larger national and international perspective. For instance, you mention the Knicks. While abysmal today, and still championship starved since 1973, you fail to see the that while they never won a championship during the 90s, they were the center of basketball, simply because they played at Madison Square Garden in NYC. I always resented this fact, because, as you point out, they never succeeded, even after Jordan took a hiatus. Patrick Ewing, John Stockton, Charles Oakley, Anthony Mason and the rest of the goon squad were always a perennial power house, but really they were just a symbol of the superiority myth that is synonymous with New York.
I see this now in recent years with the Mets, who every year are considered to be a top team in the NL, yet they persistently come up short. But, this doesn't stop people, Phils fans as well, from perpetuating this lie of dominance.
And while I understand that this isn't necessarily you or your peers' fault, you have to understand how absurd it is for anyone to feel genuine sympathy for your plight. At the end of the day, after all the failure has been forgotten, and the whining has persisted, the reality is you are still a New Yorker, and therefore, inherently obnoxious. I'm sorry, it's just in your blood, much like my debilitating inferiority complex is in mine.
We are not the same. We can not relate. And no, we can not get along. At least not when it comes to this.
Good response, though I I probably should mention from a personal standpoint that I am a diehard Giants fan and very indifferent Yankee fan. So this was not written as a personal cry for sympathy. It is something I have heard from alot of friends growing up who became Mets/Jets fans that they pretty much choose wrong. However, the purpose was to state that just because a team from a particular city is successful, it does not mean glory for all of its inhabitants especially those fans of another team in the same city that have not been nearly as successful. If The Knicks, Jets and Mets were based in Las Vegas the past 35 years...then they would be on the same level of ineptitude as those cities.
I can see you have been saving up this blog for awhile. Great topic and brazen after a superbowl two years ago and a world series ring this year. But I have no hatred to the teams up north, except for maybe the Rangers. After living in New York, the fans of all the teams are as knowledgeable and devoted to sports as any city I have been to, including my own. But that is the last complement you will receive from this guy.
If I lived in New York, I would have been a Jets fan. I know it way down deep and when I went to college and spent time there, the fans were as devoted and helpless as the Eagles fans. I would have been a Mets fan, and in fact I remember loving that '86 team. My favorite player was Frank Tanana, the left handed pitcher. I don't even know why. I remember having a Mets hat and throwing left handed with his motion. Doc Gooden was the first pitcher I ever saw dominate a baseball game. My uncle had a shore house near Seaside Heights, and we had to watch the Mets when down there. I can still see the high leg kick and the devasting curve ball that even until today, no right hander comes close to throwing. Strawberry hand a swing of the Gods. And Gary Carter, was in my time, the best catcher ever to play in New York. That team should have won more. My favorite player on the team was Franco. He was a St. John's grad (I think Tanana was also) and pitched until just a few years ago. He was a guy who could have come off any Queens corner and he was dominant for twenty years. When the 93 Phillies did come along, I was ready because they were a carbon copy of this city, as the Mets were of Queens and Brooklyn. You brought back a lot of good memories of the players I emulated when I played little league.
Shea Stadium is another great idea. Unheralded and abandoned at the end of the 7 train, it was like a red headed step child of New York. Bright blue and Orange with planes flying by and trains shaking the concourse, it was like walking into a circus tent. I don't think I ever paid more than ten dollars for seats there. But I went there three times as much as Yankee stadium because they played my Phillies and I just never understood bleeding passion like Yankee fans for baseball. Yankee stadium was a church, a religion while the Mets played baseball.
I could write for days on this topic, but I think the Islanders should be included. I know they were good back in the early eighties. But they have been bad for thirty years, and yet I think Islander fans are some of the best and most devoted sportsmen around. What makes people stick to a team? It is part identity and part faithfulness that will one day we will be paid back. And I can say, Jets fans and all people who believe they suffer under a curse, it feels good to win. I know...
I'm a Phillies fan!
My Dad was the ur-Jets fan - the Giants fan who couldn't get tickets to their games at Yankee Stadium. So, driven by his own working class desire to climb the economic ladder, he hitched his wagon to the AFL club, with all of its own lofty ambition. A first generation Jets fan, I know that I live in a universe where I am cosmically, metaphysically inferior. I think it's funny how the Giants-Jets dislike is much more one-sided than the Yankees-Mets one. The latter possesses much more mutual antipathy. Giants fans, however, seem to resent Jets fans much more than the other way round. I had no problem rooting for them against the Patriots in the Super Bowl. The Giants, however, seem to see us as the people who brought down the neighborhood. And now they must share a stadium with us that doesn't have their name on it. Ha.
I am glad for your ethnography of a New York fandom. I am a native of Queens, originally, which means that I am Jets-Mets by birth. I arrived in Philadelphia the season the Mets first got Bobby Bonilla, and since that time I've had a lot of difficulty staying wholly true to the Mets, especially during the years when the Phillies of the Scott Rolen-Larry Bowa years offered such a tantalizing alternative of self-destructive pathos. By nature, a true Jets-Mets fan needs to love a self-destructive model. However, the current Mets - bloated, corrupt, inept - may just bring me back. As for the Jets,...well, their peculiar gift for implosion is a gift that keeps on giving. Just tune in for the playoffs.