Fever Pitch? Only For The Hypocrisy

Let's face it, Met brethren...your team will never get any credit for anything they do, ever. Get used to it.

In fact, we should give up right now because even if the Mets win the World Series this year, the built-in excuses are in place. We should stop blogging, stop rooting, stop showing up. It doesn't matter if the Mets win every game from here to the World Series, and beyond. Because now that the Mets have been swept by the Red Sox, one of the best baseball teams going right now, we apparently don't deserve to play baseball. "The National League is watered down" they say...never mind that the Omar Minaya did a great job signing everybody else's great players to water them down themselves, their accolades are tempered because they're beating everybody whom they've been assigned...until this week.

Obliterated the National League? Ran away and hid from the rest of the division? Won most of the games that you were supposed to win? It all has apparently unraveled in the span of three days because ooh...we lost to the big bad American League. Let's pack up and go home.

These are the points that certain Yankee fans have made before the third and final game of this set, a 4-2 loss which has been as painful as any this season (aided by a hellacious catch by Coco Crisp which prevented the game from being tied in the eighth.) First, you had Mike Francesa...who on Tuesday, before the series began, made it a point to remind Met fans that even though his highness and the court jester made the trip to Fenway to broadcast their show, that Mets/Red Sox is not Yankees/Red Sox. Then went on to prove that point by spending most of the first part of the show interviewing Steve Nash and Brett Favre (topical). Yet today, from the friendly confines of Astoria, the tone from King Diet Coke was, "well, Mets/Red Sox isn't as big as Yankees/Red Sox...but it's still big." Sure, after the Mets lost two games does the proclamation get the qualifier: "but it's still big". If the Mets had won the two games, do we get that qualifier?

But the hypocrisy was in full force when King Yankee fan mentioned that he was rooting for the Red Sox to win tonight.

Wait a minute now, this from the fan base that accuses Met fans of hating the Yankees more than they love their own team. Now we know that's a bunch of Bravo Sierra (that's code, folks). Because it's easy to be high and mighty when your cross town rivals are irrelevant, but now when they're in the conversation again, you have Yankee fans rooting for the Red Sox, which is practically rooting against themselves. Gee, I thought The Greatest Fans In The History Of Fans were above that!

Francesa should be ashamed of himself. The A.L. East is still a tight race which is starting to slip away a wee bit. But the Hero of The Greatest Fans In The History Of Fans is willing to give away a half a game to hate a team more than he loves his own. I hope that the standings at the end of the year look something like this:

Red Sox 94 68 ---
Yankees 93 69 1

It would serve him, and the people that worship him, right.

And don't resign yourself to the fact that "oh, it's just Francesa tweaking Met fans to make good radio." Because this guy is nowhere near the radio (thank goodness), yet is showing leanings towards feeling the same way.

"But despite the discomfort and agita this Sox Barnstroming (spelling) tour has given me, I'm willing to endure for three reasons. 1) I have no choice 2)We don't have to face them again until August and a lot of things can happen between now and then...and 3)Seeing these Mets fan in A)complete denial about what this series means 2)the ones who were strutting around like Horny Roosters when they were beating on the D-Backs and the Phillies....who now realize that their team isn't nearly as good as they think."

Am I being lectured by a man whose team is out of a playoff spot?

After I stopped and asked for directions to B after driving past A and only seeing another 2, and having to go through a detour through some latin phrases, (those he gets right) and finally getting to the end, I realized that I just stopped off at a Yankee blog and got a dissertation on the Mets. Who's obsessed now?

"The Mets coronation as the NL's best team is complete. Outside of the Yankees this weekend, what other series will the Mets have this season that will compare to these two? The NL East is in shambles. I doubt the Braves, Phils or Marlins will put up much of a fight this summer. Only the Cardinals have a chance to challenge the Mets. But I doubt that they have enough pitching."

So we're going to the World Series, is that what he's trying to say? But then...

"This weekend series is the first time the roles are reversed. The Mets will come in as the team with the most to lose. If they lose this series after the Red Sox series, they take a huge blow to their credilbility (spelling) as a World Series contender. Pennant contenders? They're still the class of the league. But noone's going to take them serious as the ones who can win it all. In the menatime (spelling), what happens to the Yankees? Lose, they're in the race and noone thinks they're done. If they win? Cue the Imperial March."

So wait...the Mets lose their credibility as a World Series contender if we lose the series to the Yankees (and it's conveniently forgotten how the Mets beat the Yanks at Shea earlier in the season...I guess that, like all the wins over National League teams, doesn't matter either). But the Yankees use it as a springboard to dominance? By beating a team that lost their credibility? By beating a team that's not as good as we think?

Yet another Yankee fan who wants it both ways. Gloat when they win, then tell other teams they have no right to complain because of the ten minutes in their history when they had Mel Hall that they've had it soooooooo haaaaaaard.

So the fact it took 78 games for the first three game losing streak of the season...the fact that this happened to a team that won a million games in a row and who's in first place...the fact that the Mets are still eleven games ahead of their division, the division they've been assigned...it all doesn't matter if you listen to the hypocrites. We should just go home, and put away our laptops. Because all our team is going to do is get slaughtered by the entire American League in the World Series. It's all been decided.

Spare me.

"My favorite line of the day? The Red Sox fan who told Mike Francesa after Tuesday night's loss to 'bring on the team from New York who can actually play.' Priceless."

Bring them on indeed.