Rude Awakening

I think it was plainly clear to everyone that R.A. Dickey's hot streak wasn't going to last forever. There was going to be a game sometime soon where he just didn't have good control of the Knuckleball, it was going to flutter a little too much, and he was going to get hit around a little bit. That's just Baseball.

It's rather unfortunate, however, that that particular outing had to come against the Yankees.

So, after a week of hearing "That Dickey's a Cheat! He's loadin' the Baseball (drool slobber slobber)!!!" Now, I have to hear, "See, that Dickey ain't so great! He beats all the lousy teams but he fell apart against a REAL TEAM (duh slobber drool)!!!" Always a great time to be a Mets fan.

Watching the Mets lose 5 of 6 to the Yankees this season definitely reaffirmed my belief that I'm over the Subway Series. And I don't think it's fair for people to say "You're just being bitter," or "If you don't like the Subway Series, you don't like Baseball." I was into all the games, or at least all the games I was able to watch. But I'm tired of the Mets breaking their asses against this team only to have something stupid happen like a pitcher suddenly lose it, or a errant throw or a booted ball, or a barrage of Home Runs, and then losing, and having to deal with the aftermath. I realize that over time, the Mets fan has come to identify with the Phillies or the Braves as more of a true enemy, since those are the teams we have to play 18 times a season, for supremacy in our own Division. And it's true. We should care more about these teams than we do about the Yankees. But we can't. And it's probably the same on the Yankee fan side. The Yankee fan, in general, is insecure enough that any mention crediting the Mets is usually enough to set off a firestorm. In fact, even their players (or, at least, their mouthier players) are even chiming in. Ultimately, I feel as though the Yankees and their fans take pride in beating us and laughing in our faces. And that's what's going on right now. They're laughing at us. They Homered us out of their ballpark, and now they Homered us out of our own. And there's not much we can do about it except dust ourselves off and go back to worrying about our own division.

But we can't worry about our own division when we've got all this crap going on right in our backyard. It's the perils of being in a Baseball-centric town that has two teams. And yes, I'm aware that things can change once again, and New York can become a Mets town like it was in the Late 80s (of course, the revisionist history of Yankee fans have just about erased this from anyone's memory, if you mention it, you're likely to be spit on and called a liar). But every time it seems like we might be close to reversing things, something like this year's Subway Series comes along to remind us just how wide that gulf really is.