Yankees fans don’t understand what it’s like to be a Mets fan. Do you know why? Because they’re Yankees fans. For as long as they’ve been around, the Mets have been the second team in a one team city. Ever since the Giants and Dodgers fled New York, the city has belonged to the Yankees. With the possible exception of 1969 and 1986, the Mets have been the adopted little brother, the black sheep of the family. Mets fans have watched helplessly as year after year, October after October, the city is transformed into a Pinstripe Purgatory. This is the root of all the contempt that fills the hearts of Mets fans whenever the topic of the Yankees is brought up. This is why true Mets fans are cheering for the Phillies in the 2009 World Series. True Mets fans who know what it’s like to sit and watch their team get dismantled by the Yankees in the World Series in 2000.
Maybe we won’t admit it at first, but we would rather watch the Phillies celebrate a second world championship in a row then watch the hated Yankees get number 27. This is because up until the last few years the Phillies have been nothing but an afterthought in the National League. For as long as I’ve been alive, the Phillies have been a joke, the team that holds the dubious distinction of having the most all-time loses of any franchise in sports history. Unless you were born in 2006, you don’t recognize the Phillies as anything more than over-achieving cellar dwellers. Of course all of that has changed now, but even so, two years of playing second fiddle in the NL East does not even begin to equal the 40 years that we’ve played second fiddle in our own city.
I haven’t even mentioned the fans yet. For most Mets fans living in New York, or its relative vicinity, Philadelphia fans are few and far between. We’re not exposed to them because they don’t usually venture up to New York City unless they’re lost or they’re visiting family. It’s the Yankees fans that we’re forced to deal with day in and day out, and Yankees fans have had decades of training to learn how to become the most obnoxious fans on the planet. There are no hate crimes going on here though, I happen to be very close with a number of Yankees fans and I love them dearly. Here, this does my job for me (this is taken from a blog post titled “Top Ten Worst Fans in Sports“; the Yankees were #4): “New York Yankees fans: Speaking of entitled, let’s talk about Yankees fans. Yes, we understand that you have the most storied and decorated team in North American sports history; you don’t have to keep rubbing it in our faces. Getting a Yankees fan to shut up about their team is like stopping a train with your bare hands.” These are fans who will resurrect a 6-year old chant for a pitcher who has pretty much handled them for most of his career (in 32 starts against the Yankees, Pedro has a 3.20 ERA, 261 strikeouts and the Yankees have a batting average of .211 against him). 
These are fans who own t-shirts that say “Got rings?” and whenever you mention the fact that they haven’t won a damn thing in 9 years, they’ll thrown their 27 world titles at you like a scared skunk lifting up its tail to spray. Sports, by its nature, is a “what have you done for me lately?” kind of thing. Unfortunately, most fans only care about what their team is doing right now, not from 1998-2000. On Sunday night, I watched 78,000 fans boo the Giants for stinking up the field for 3 quarters, the same Giants that won the Super Bowl 2 years ago and went 12-4 last year. When the Yankees win their 27th title next week, it will open the door to another 6 insufferable months of the New York media making the Yankees winning the title sound like a bigger event than Jesus Christ stepping off of an American Airlines flight at LaGuardia and performing miracles at the Starbucks by Gate 92. Until then, they are just another team looking for a ring.
Phillies fans, on the other hand, still have their training wheels on. They still burn cars when their team clinches something, and they aren’t the wily veterans of braggadocio that Yankees fans are. They can still smell the stink coming off the most recent era of losing and don’t want to jinx anything just yet. For Mets fans, this World Series is a battle between two evils in our world, we are simply choosing the lesser of those two evils. Hatred for the Yankees is something that lives deep down inside of my soul. It’s ugly, I picture it looking like something along the lines of Grendel from Beowulf, and it’s a pitiful monster, but it’s been growing for years and years and every October it comes out and rears its head and there will never be a way for me to stop it.
But anyway, here are your Week 8 NFL Picks, home team in CAPS!
Denver (+3.5) over BALTIMORE
Cleveland (+13.5) over CHICAGO
Houston (-3.5) over BUFFALO
Minnesota (+3) over GREEN BAY
INDIANAPOLIS (-12.5) over San Francisco
NY JETS (-3) over Miami
DETROIT (-4) over St. Louis
DALLAS (-9.5) over Seattle
Oakland (+16.5) over SAN DIEGO
TENNESSEE (-3) over Jacksonville
ARIZONA (-10) over Carolina
PHILADELPHIA (PK) over NY Giants
Atlanta (+10.5) over NEW ORLEANS
Last Week: 8-5
Season Total: 62-41
