Lisa Lee, left, and Martha Pluchino, who work together at the Liberty N.Y.C. bar in Midtown.
Credit...Graham Dickie/The New York Times

Mets and Yankees Fans Actually Getting Along? Say It Ain’t So.

Bitter rivals are suddenly paying each other compliments, at least until there’s a Subway Series, if that happens. “It’s weird,” said the longtime Yankees announcer.

by · NY Times

It started gradually, as the Mets became the most compelling story in baseball over the last couple of weeks.

And now Michael Kay has been hearing it on his daily show on ESPN Radio, where passionate sports fans bark their opinions all afternoon. A strange but undeniable fact: Mets and Yankees fans are actually being civil toward one another.

Rarely in the 62 years since the Mets were born has the rivalry been anything but vitriolic. For decades, boroughs and homes were divided over allegiances. The owners of the teams even disliked one another, and the organizations battled for the city’s fans and attention. (The Yankees usually won, as they did on the field.) But for now, much of that old venom has dissipated, and the rants and rancor that once characterized this great, if lopsided, intracity rivalry, have cooled significantly.

“It’s weird,” said Mr. Kay, who was raised in the Bronx as a devoted Yankee fan. He is also the longtime announcer for the Yankees’ YES network. “When I was growing up, and even in 2000, everyone hated the other team. Now Yankee fans call in and say they are happy for Mets fans. I don’t get it.”

Perhaps it is driven by younger fans who do not remember the old malice, or maybe it is the sheer captivating joy and drama that the Mets have produced, almost on a nightly basis, from Grimace and OMG to stunning grand slams and improbable comeback victories. They did lose to the Dodgers on Thursday and trail in that series by three games to one, but perhaps there is one more miracle in store.

The Yankees, meanwhile, plod their way through the playoffs like a road grader, methodically advancing with far less drama, at least until Thursday, when they lost in 10 innings to the Cleveland Guardians. But they still lead the series, two games to one.

Even as the possibility of a Subway Series between the Mets and the Yankees remains, the fierce animosity that once divided New York’s fans like Montagues and Capulets is noticeably absent.

Catalina Cruz, the New York state assemblywoman whose Queens district abuts Citi Field, has also noticed the thaw. She emigrated from Colombia to Queens as a girl in 1992 and soon after became a devoted Mets fan. At that time, a healthy dislike for the Yankees was woven into the fabric of the Mets own light blue pinstripes.

“It is not as contentious now as in years past,” Ms. Cruz said. “Now, it’s more like a New York-made dream for everyone.”

Whatever the reason for the cooling hostilities, Ms. Cruz said this autumnal celebration of baseball is particularly welcome in her community, coming just four years after the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“These are the two boroughs that were hit the hardest,” she said of Queens and the Bronx. “This is now a moment of joy for people. Instead of a feeling of dread, people are having fun and generating a lot of excitement.”

At the same time, Ms. Cruz could not find it within her Mets fandom to endorse the Mets-Yankees hat that Mayor Eric Adams wore at the Columbus Day Parade. Fans on both sides agreed: Mr. Adams’s hat was an abomination. But as shallow and politically motivated as the hat appeared, perhaps the mayor was on to something deeper — a municipal baseball détente.

Lavon Sealy, a security guard from Queens, wore a Mets hat as he waited for a train in Grand Central Terminal on Wednesday.

“I don’t mind the Yankees,” Mr. Sealy said. “If the Mets don’t make it, I’ll root for them. It’s the Dodgers I don’t like.”

This “bizarre Kumbaya” moment, as Mr. Kay called it, probably would change dramatically if both teams do advance. Nothing refuels old hatreds like a Subway Series.

It would be only the second time the teams faced each other in the World Series and the first time since 2000, when the Yankees dismissed the Mets in five games in a highly intense and quarrelsome series.

That Subway Series nearly went off the 4 train rails when Roger Clemens, the bullish Yankees starting pitcher with a bitter dislike for Mike Piazza, the Mets superstar catcher, bizarrely fielded Piazza’s broken bat and then threw it back at him in Game 2, igniting a blast furnace of howling commentary and rebuke.

Paul O’Neill, a Yankee outfielder at the time, has said he felt more pressure to win that series than any other. Derek Jeter, the legendary Yankees shortstop, joked that he would have had to move out of New York if the Yankees had let the Mets win.

Those old Yankees spit out championships like sunflower seeds, winning four from 1996 to 2000. That success made Mets fans boil with envy, but they held onto their dogged pride, insisting they would rather be the plucky underdogs than the soulless, executive bullies in the Bronx.

Today, conditions are different.

The Yankees last won the World Series in 2009 and have not been back since. They did not even make the playoffs last year. What is there to resent? Even with all their high-priced hulking superstars — Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Juan Soto and Gerrit Cole, to whom the club has committed more than $1 billion in salary collectively — the hero of the postseason has been Luke Weaver, a skinny, baby-faced relief pitcher earning $2 million, even though he gave up the game-tying home run in Game 3.

“Without Weaver, the Yankees would not be where they are right now,” Mr. Kay said on Wednesday.

The Mets, conversely, have become everyone’s favorite pet, somehow managing the deft image acrobatics of playing the underdog while still carrying the largest player payroll in baseball.

They started the season miserably, falling 11 games under .500 at the end of May as expectations plummeted. Then, thanks in part to a luck-inducing appearance at Citi Field by Grimace, the purple McDonald’s mascot, they have gone on an improbable run through the end of the season and then the playoffs, full of dramatic comebacks.

“Good for them,” said Dennis Johnson, a retired Yankees fan who was in Upper Manhattan for an appointment on Wednesday. Mr. Johnson, who wore a traditional midnight-blue Yankees cap, said he grew up in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, and he hated the Mets in his youth. But many of his family members were Mets fans, especially during the 1980s, when the Mets were the local powerhouse.

“Of course I want the Yankees to win,” he said. “But you’ve got to give the Mets credit. They’ve got some kind of magic going on.”

Around the New York Region

A look at life, culture, politics and more in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.