On Baseball

I just ordered a pair of tickets for a Brooklyn Cyclones game at the end of June. I'm quite excited about the presence of a minor-league team in my new hometown, and I'm thrilled silly that the park is on the edge of Coney Island. You can see the Cyclone from the stands.

I've also adopted the Mets as my major-league team to follow now that I live here. So far, they're not a very good team, but it's amazing how much more attention is given the Yankees. Word is that the people living in New York fall roughly 50/50 in terms of which teams they root for, but looking at the TV and newspaper coverage, the balance is decidedly in the Yanks' favor. Every day, the pinstripe players rate several pages of coverage and commentary, while the Mets are relegated to sidebars and smaller items.

It's easy to be a Yankees fan. And it's easy to become a Yankees fan. It's almost an assumption. The Yankees, even though they've been recently trounced by the Red Sox, don't need my help as much as the Mets do. A colleague just walked by, saw that I was scoping out Mets tickets for early June, and said, "Don't look at that sorry team!" The Yankees-Mets rivalry is strong here, and I'm often surprised that Yankees fans aren't more comfortable in their fandom. It's one of the biggest, best, and most bought team around; why the need to be defensive?

I don't have anything against the Yankees -- I don't root against them -- but they don't need my attention, backing, or faith as much as the Mets do. So I turn my eyes and mind to the Mets. And their minor-league feeder team, the Cyclones.

Go, teams.