I Don't Get It, But I'll Take It

He might not get it, either.

At this moment, Aaron Judge has a .423 batting average, a .510 on-base percentage, a .777 slugging percentage, a 263 OPS+, 11 home runs and 33 RBIs.

He has played in 34 games. At his current rate, he would end the season with 52 home runs and 157 RBIs.

That's insane. That's Babe Ruth numbers, or Barry Bonds on steroids numbers, plus a batting average that even Ted Williams would bug out at.

Judge is 6-foot-7 and 280 pounds of muscle, playing with short fences that the Babe, Mickey Mantle and Reggie Jackson would have given a tooth to hit toward, and not just at his home park -- on any given day, the Yankees can turn any ballpark into "a little league field" -- against pitchers who, when they find the plate at all, are throwing 100 miles per hour but they're mostly meatballs, and not as good as the best pitchers of previous generations.

Yes, he's special. But don't act so surprised at the results. Eventually, a player like Aaron Judge was going to happen. It's not like with Shohei Ohtani, who's big, but not that big: 6-foot-3 and 210, and shouldn't be putting up shocking numbers. (That doesn't make Ohtani better, but, even without the pitching, it might make him harder to believe.)

Anyway, do the Yankees miss Juan Soto? No. He's batting .256, with 5 homers and 14 RBIs. All by himself, Judge is making up his production.

*

But it's not just Judge: The rest of the team has to produce, too.

On Friday night, they started a home series against the Tampa Bay Rays, and produced just enough. Max Fried hit a batter in the 1st inning, walked one in the 2nd, walked another in the 3rd, allowed a single in the 5th, and had a batter reach base due to an error in the 7th. Paul Goldschmidt hit a 3-run home run in the 5th, and that was all the scoring in the game: Yankees 3, Rays 0.

The rest of the series was rainy and depressing. On Saturday, one of those hole-in-the-rotation days, Judge and Austin Wells each hit a home run. Ryan Yarbrough threw 64 pitches over 4 innings, allowing 1 run on 1 hit and 3 walks. He should have been left in for the 5th.

Instead, Aaron Boone brought Ian Hamilton in. He pitched a scoreless 5th. He should have been left in for the 6th.

Instead, Boone brought Fernando Cruz in. He pitched a scoreless 6th and 7th. He should have been left in for the 7th.

Instead, Boone brought Mark Leiter Jr. in. He blew it, allowing single and a walk, getting a strikeout, then allowing a single and a fielder's choice, and turning a 2-1 Yankee lead into a 3-2 Yankee loss.

Injuries to the starting rotation. Cashman instructing Boone not to trust the starters who take their place. Boone's total inability to handle a bullpen. Giancarlo Stanton, DJ LeMahieu, Jazz Chisholm and now, in this game, Anthony Volpe being injured. Put it all together, and it was Rays 3, Yankees 2.

Yesterday was another hole-in-the-rotation day. Will Warren didn't get out of the 5th inning, and it was 5-0 Rays. It was miserable.

How miserable was it? You know how Yankee broadcasters, going back at least as far as Phil Rizzuto, will sometimes talk about anything but the game they're actually getting paid to describe? Well, when it was 5-0 Rays, Michael Kay and former reliever Jeff Nelson were doing the game on YES, and they were talking about not a game at Yankee Stadium, but another New York Sunday institution: The New York Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle.

I occasionally do crossword puzzles. My mother loves them. So did hers. But the real crossword whiz in the family was Mom's Aunt Catherine, who died late last year at the age of 96. Until her eyesight started going at 93, she did the puzzle every day. All 4 of us (me, Mom, Grandma and Aunt Catherine) were in agreement that the Times puzzle starts easy on Monday, then gets progressively harder during the week, until Sunday when it's the hardest. The Times plans it that way, so it's not an opinion, and not an accident. Kay was trying, without success, to convince Nellie that the puzzle is actually at its hardest on Saturdays.

Good thing The Sopranos isn't still on the air, or Kay might have been talking about that.

Cody Bellinger hit a home run in the bottom of the 6th, getting the Yankees to within 5-2. That was given right back in the top of the 7th, by Carlos Carrasco: Single, single, walk, strikeout, 2-run single. 7-2.

As comedian and Yankee Fan Vic Dibitetto would say, "You know what ticks me off?" One thing that ticks me off is when a comeback falls short. In the bottom of the 8th, the Yankees got to within 7-5, and brought the go-ahead run to the plate. But they could get no closer, and the side was struck out in the 9th, ending the game at 7-5.

*

So, 34 games into the season, a little over 1/5th of the way into the season, the Yankees are 19-15, a percentage of .559, or a pace of 90-72. But they lead the American League Eastern Division, by 2 games over the Boston Red Sox, 3 each over the Tampa Bay Rays and the Toronto Blue Jays, and 5 1/2 over the Baltimore Orioles. In the all-important loss column, they lead the O's by 5, and each of the others by 3.

I don't get it. But I'll take it.

Tonight, the San Diego Padres come in for a 3-game Interleague series. Then, the Yankees make their 1st-ever trip to Sacramento, to face the temporarily exiled Athletics.

November 21, 1934: The "Business Plot" Is Exposed

Smedley Butler 

November 21, 1934: The New York Post and the Philadelphia Record break the story of what came to be known as "The Business Plot," a rich men's plan to launch a military coup and take over the American government.

The story is broken by Paul Comly French, a reporter who had once been the private secretary of Smedley Butler, a retired Major General (2 stars) in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Smedley Darlington Butler was born on July 30, 1881, in the Philadelphia suburb of West Chester, Chester County, Pennsylvania. His father, Thomas Stalker Butler, was a Republican Congressman. His maternal grandfather, Smedley Darlington, had previously held the same seat in Congress. Three earlier Darlingtons had served in Congress. Smedley's aunt, Isabel Darlington, was the 1st woman to practice law in Chester County.

He enlisted in the Marines, and served with distinction in the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Campaign and the Boxer Rebellion. His participation in the so-called "Banana Wars" in Central America caused him to look at war and its conduct differently.

He received his 1st Congressional Medal of Honor for his service in the American occupation of Veracruz, Mexico in 1914. He offered to return it, saying he had done nothing to earn it. He was ordered to keep it. He received a 2nd Medal of Honor for his role in repelling an ambush during the American occupation of Haiti in 1915.

He received his General's stars during World War I, and was appointed commanding officer of the Marine barracks at Quantico, Virginia, now the "home base" of the Corps (and of the FBI). In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge gave him leave from active duty so that he could become Director of Public Safety for Philadelphia.

He said, "Cleaning up Philadelphia was worse than any battle I was ever in." He brought crime down significantly, but his tactics were a bit heavy-handed. Still, there were many people who liked that, and they remembered it, thinking that Butler was their kind of man. He held the job for 2 years, returned to the Corps, and retired from the service in 1931.

He ran for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania in 1932, but, with the tide turning against Prohibition, which he supported, he lost the Republican Primary. He opposed the Bonus Army in a public statement that year, and there were many people who liked that.

That year, Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York, a Democrat, was elected President of the United States. His "New Deal" lifted millions out of poverty, increasing taxes on rich people in order to do it. America's wealthiest men were furious, and some were not willing to wait until November 3, 1936, the next election, to do something about it.

In November 1934, Butler testified before a special committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. He told them that he was visited by Gerald P. MacGuire, a prominent Connecticut businessman. MacGuire had visited Germany and Italy, and saw how veterans' groups had aided the Fascist movements there, movements that had stopped Communist uprisings. He told Butler that he viewed FDR and his advisors, the so-called "Brain Trust," as Communists, and said they had to be stopped.

He told Butler that a group of businessmen had $50 million to spend, and a private army of 500,000 ex-soldiers, many of them members of the American Legion, ready to march on Washington, to remove Roosevelt from power, and establish a Fascist dictatorship. MacGuire told Butler that the group wanted him to be the dictator.

Butler said that he later met with Robert Sterling Clark, an heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune. Clark told him about some of the other men backing the plan:

* Irénée du Pont, head of the DuPont Corporation, which had recently bought the Remington Arms company, which would produce the weapons and the ammunition for the coup.

* Thomas W. Lamont, running J.P. Morgan & Company on behalf of J.P. Morgan Jr., son of the company's founder, and an adviser to every President since Woodrow Wilson, including FDR, thus giving the group an "inside man." 

* Grayson Murphy, a director of Goodyear Tire, Anaconda Copper, and Bethlehem Steel, all companies capable of supplying the coup effort with necessary materiel.

* And the last 2 Democratic Party nominees for President before FDR: John W. Davis, a former Congressman from West Virginia and U.S. Ambassador to Britain, who was always more conservative than the mainstream of the Party; and Alfred E. Smith, who was also FDR's predecessor as Governor of New York, had lost very badly to Herbert Hoover in 1928, saw FDR beat Hoover even worse in 1932, and was intensely jealous of FDR's early success and popularity as President.

About all of this, Butler told French, whom he trusted due to his service. French did some digging, and found evidence that the plot was real, not just MacGuire and Clark blowing off steam at a President they hated. Armed with this knowledge, Butler met with MacGuire again, and said, "If you get 500,000 soldiers advocating anything smelling of Fascism, I am going to get 500,000 more, and lick the hell out of you, and we will have a real war right at home." And then he went to Congress, and spilled the beans.

French broke the story in the New York Post and the Philadelphia Record on November 21. On November 22, The New York Times wrote about it, calling it a "gigantic hoax." All the parties alleged to be involved publicly said there was no truth in the story, calling it a joke and a fantasy. Roosevelt's reaction to it is not known to have been recorded.

If the coup ever got beyond the talking stage, it was doomed without a leader -- or, more likely, a figurehead. It has been alleged that Hugh S. Johnson, a retired Army Brigadier General who had been running the National Recovery Administration for FDR, and had been named Man of the Year for 1933 by Time magazine, had also turned the plotters down.

In 1935, Butler published a book titled War Is a Racket, comparing what Dwight D. Eisenhower would later call "the military-industrial complex" to organized crime. He wrote, "I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business... a gangster for capitalism" who "might have given Al Capone a few hints." That book, all by itself, showed that the big business boys were looking to the wrong man for their goal.

Plaque honoring Butler, Philadelphia City Hall:

"He enforced the law impartially,

he defended it courageously, he proved incorruptible."

MacGuire died of pneumonia shortly before Butler published his book. Grayson Murphy died in 1937, Smedley Butler in 1940, Hugh Johnson in 1942, Al Smith in 1944, Thomas Lamont in 1948, John W. Davis in 1955, Robert S. Clark in 1956, Paul French in 1960, and Irénée du Pont in 1963.

In 2018 and 2022, Thomas Lamont's great-grandson, Edward Miner Lamont Jr., a.k.a. Ned Lamont, was elected Governor of Connecticut -- as a liberal Democrat. He has conducted the office very differently from what his ancestor would have hoped.

This month, Donald Trump won -- or, perhaps, "won" -- the Presidential election, needing only business lords like Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk to re-shape public opinion for him. He won't need a respected General to be a figurehead for him. After all, he still believes what he said in 2015: "I know more than the generals do."

March 13, 1964: The Murder of Kitty Genovese

March 13, 1964, 60 years ago: A murder is committed, symbolizing the rising crime wave in New York City, and American cities in general. What's worse wasn't the number of people who cared, but the number of people who seemed not to care.

Catherine Susan Genovese was born on July 7, 1935 in Brooklyn, and grew up in the neighborhood of Prospect Heights. As far as has been determined, she was not related to New York's Genovese organized crime family. In 1954, her mother witnessed a murder, and her parents left, moving to New Canaan, Connecticut. But Catherine, known as Kitty, decided to stay in Brooklyn, as she was about to get married. But the marriage was quickly annulled.

She took clerical jobs, but found bartending more to her liking. In 1961, she was arrested for bookmaking, for taking horse racing bets from bar patrons. She pleaded guilty, paid a $50 fine, and was fired from her job.

She soon got another bartending job, at Ev's Eleventh Hour Bar, on Jamaica Avenue and 193rd Street in Hollis, Queens. Soon, she began managing the bar on behalf of its absentee owner. This enabled her to make enough money to get an apartment in the Kew Gardens section of Queens, at 82-70 Austin Street. She shared it with Mary Ann Zielonko. As comedian Bill Maher once said of this period, "Lesbians were called 'roommates.'"

She went to work on March 12, 1964, and left at 2:30 AM on March 13 -- a Friday the 13th. At 3:15, she parked her red Fiat in the Kew Gardens station of the Long Island Rail Road, about 100 feet from her apartment's door, in an alleyway at the back of the building.

She and her Fiat had been seen by Winston Moseley, who was driving a Chevrolet Corvair. He followed, parked his car in a bus stop on Austin Street, and got out, taking a hunting knife with him. He ran after her, caught her, and stabbed her twice in the back.

She yelled out, "Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me!" Some neighbors heard the sound, but only a few of them recognized it as a cry for help. One, Robert Mozer, shouted out, "Let that girl alone!" but did nothing else. Moseley ran away, and Kitty got to the entrance of her apartment.

But she only got as far as a hallway at the back of the building before falling, barely conscious. Moseley went back, found her, stabbed her again, raped her, and stole $49 from her (about $448 in 2022 money), before finally leaving.

Sophia Farrar, a neighbor and friend, found her, called an ambulance, and held her until the ambulance arrived. One witness said his father had called the police after the initial stabbing, saying, a woman was "beat up, but got up and was staggering around." Another witness called friends for advice on what to do, before finally calling the cops. At 4:15 AM, the ambulance got to the scene, but it was no use: Kitty died on route to the hospital, just 28 years old.

The first suspect the police questioned was Zielonko, thinking the gay relationship might have soured and turned violent. She denied knowing anything about it. The neighbors also denied that Zielonko had anything to do with it.

Six days later, on March 19, Moseley was arrested in Ozone Park, Queens, after a stolen television set was found in the trunk of his Corvair. During questioning, Moseley admitted that he killed Kitty. He also confessed to killing Annie Mae Johnson, shot in her apartment in South Ozone Park a few weeks earlier; and Barbara Kralik, only 15, and killed in her family's house in Springfield Gardens in July 1963. He said he preyed on women because "they were easier, and didn't fight back." On June 11, he was convicted, and remained in prison until his death in 2016, at age 82.

The murder of Kitty Genovese would have been a footnote in the history of crime in New York City, if not for Police Commissioner Michael J. Murphy meeting A.M. "Abe" Rosenthal, then the metropolitan editor of The New York Times, for lunch and telling him, "That Queens story is one for the books." Rosenthal launched an investigation, and on March 27, 2 weeks after the murder, the Times published a story titled "37 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police."

The text of the article raised the number to 38, and subsequent editions printed the number 38 in the headline, but it entered the public consciousness as "37 people saw a murder and did nothing about it." The article quoted one witness as saying, "I didn't want to get involved."

Crime had been on the rise in New York since the end of World War II, and with the Baby Boomers, the largest generation America has ever produced, now beginning to reach adulthood, and illegal drugs becoming more available and more widespread than ever, it was starting to get out of control. The Genovese murder didn't start the crime wave that continued to plague New York until the mid-1990s, but it was a convenient symbol. And the reaction to it was a convenient symbol for the callousness of New Yorkers, making the City look very bad to the rest of the country.

In the years to come, the facts of the case began to emerge. In 2014, on the 50th Anniversary of the murder, a book was published suggesting that the number of 38 witnesses who "did nothing" was misinterpreted. Some witnesses thought they saw, or heard, a minor argument, and had no idea a that murder was taking place until the next morning. She was attacked 3 separate times, and in each of the 1st 2, only 1 witness saw her get stabbed. And the 1st stabbing punctured a lung, rendering her incapable of screaming.

What's more, there was no real way to get in touch with emergency services: The best that could be done at the time was to dial zero for a telephone operator, say, "Get me the police," and go through the NYPD's calling system of the time, and hope that it led to an ambulance getting there in time. This was considered unacceptable, and in 1968, 4 years later, the 911 emergency-call system was put into effect.

Episodes of the CBS legal drama Perry Mason, like the novels that inspired it, were usually titled "The Case of the... " followed by an alliteration. On November 21, 1965, the show aired "The Case of the Silent Six," with 6 residents of a small apartment building failing to help a murder victim. The 1975 ABC film Death Scream was also based on the murder. So were 2 episodes in the NBC Law & Order franchise, one of them titled "41 Witnesses."

In the 1986 comic book miniseries Watchmen, the character of Walter Kovacs recalled reading about the Genovese murder, saying that it inspired him to become the vigilante Rorschach. This was also mentioned in the 2009 film version. What the film version did not include, but the original graphic novel did, was that his mask was made from a dress that Kitty had worn.

Dave Anderson, 1929-2018

You know the old saying, "Will the last one to leave, please turn out the lights?" Dave Anderson was proud to say that, at the last Brooklyn Dodger home game, on September 24, 1957, he was the last sportswriter out of the press box, and he turned out the lights.

David Poole Anderson was born on May 6, 1929 in Troy, New York, across the Hudson River from the State capital of Albany. His father was the advertising director of The Troy Times, and his grandfather was its publisher. So, as the saying goes, he had "printer's ink in his blood."

But his father moved the family to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and got an advertising sales job with The New York Sun. Dave graduated from Xavier High School in 1947, by which point he was a messenger for The Sun. Like basketball star George Kaftan, who graduated from Xavier 2 years earlier, he went to the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, graduating in 1951.

By that point, The Sun had merged with The New York World-Telegram. In 1953, Dave became the Brooklyn Dodgers' beat reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle. In early 1955 -- timing is everything -- the paper whose giant 1941 headline introduced the phrase "WAIT TILL NEXT YEAR" to the Brooklyn lexicon went out of business, just 9 months before the Dodgers finally won the World Series. (Today, only one daily paper specifically covers one Borough alone: The Staten Island Advance.) Dave was still able to cover the '55 Dodgers, as he'd been hired by the New York Journal-American. It was while covering the Dodgers for them that he turned out the lights in the Ebbets Field press box.

In 1966, the Journal-American, the aforementioned World-Telegram & Sun, and the New York Herald Tribune all went out of business, following the New York Mirror in 1963. All of these papers were pretty much done in by the New York newspaper strike of 1962-63. As with many other New York newspaper writers, including sportswriters, Dave Anderson was hired by one of the surviving big three: The Daily News, the New York Post, or, in his case, The New York Times.

The Times gave him a regular column in 1971. The writers' associations for pro football and boxing gave him their achievement awards, the Dick McCann Memorial Award and the Nat Fleischer Award, respectively. In 1981, he became only the 2nd sportswriter to win the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, after fellow Times writer Red Smith. In 1990, he was elected to the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame, joining fellow Times writers Smith, Arthur Daley and John Kieran.

He retired in 2007, but still contributed an occasional column, the last being on the U.S. Open in August 2017.

He lived in Tenafly, Bergen County, New Jersey with his wife Maureen, with whom he had 3 children. After her death in 2014, he moved into an assisted living facility in nearby Cresskill. He died there yesterday, October 4, 2018, apparently of a heart attack, at age 89.

His lights have now been turned out, but his light still shines brightly.

UPDATE: His final resting place is not publicly known.

Top 5 Reasons Yankee Fans Should NOT Root for the Mets In the 2015 World Series

In the 2015 World Series, I will be holding my nose -- for 7 games, if that's what it takes -- and rooting for the Kansas City Royals.

Not the New York Mets.

Let me show you the top 5 reasons people are saying that we should root for the Mets, and the 5 counter-reasons why they're wrong.

The first one is, easily, the most bogus:

1. You're a fan of a New York team. The Mets are a New York team. Therefore, you should root for the Mets.

Any Yankee Fan who is rooting for the Mets to win the 2015 World Series simply because they're a New York team, you need to get slapped.

On the back of the head. Not in the face. For the moment.

I was born in North Jersey. I grew up in Central Jersey. Those regions are aligned with New York City, but not in it.

If there had been a New Jersey-based team in Major League Baseball when I was growing up, I probably would have become a fan of theirs, and not of the Yankees. As long as they chose to name themselves "New Jersey," not playing in New Jersey but keeping the "New York" name, which is why I never rooted for the Giants or the Jets. (I've since gotten over it.)

Did any New Jersey Devils fan root for the New York Rangers in the 2014 Stanley Cup Finals? Oh, hell, no. We were under no obligation to do so, even though they were playing the same team that beat us in our last Finals, the Los Angeles Kings.

I got into an argument with a person I had previously regarded as an unimpeachable Yankee Fan. This person (who shall remain anonymous here, to spare embarrassment) is rooting for the Mets, with the idea that, "Whatever is good for New York baseball is good for my blog."

Which would have been fine -- if your blog was about New York baseball. But it isn't. The blog in question is written by one Yankee Fan and one Met fan, each writing from the perspective of a fan of their chosen team.

And now that the Mets are in the World Series for the 1st time in 15 years, the Yankee Fan is using that blog to write harder in their favor than the Met fan is.

With freedom of expression -- of speech, the press, whatever -- comes responsibility. If you say or write something, you have to face the consequences. You can't write something defamatory without being sued. And if you write something insulting, you have to be ready to accept a response. Some people can dish it out, but can't take it. If the person you're writing about can't take it, that's their problem. But if it turns out that you can't take it, that's your problem.

If you're rooting for the Mets because they're a New York team, you are not a Yankee Fan. You are a New York fan.

Which is fine, as long as you admit it. The person in question still claims to be a Yankee Fan.

This person attended the University of Texas, which has a very nasty rivalry with Texas A&M University. Both schools claim to represent the State of Texas. I asked this person, "If A&M were playing for the National Championship, would you root for them?"

This person said it wasn't the same thing at all. Of course it is.

Florida and Florida State fans? Georgia and Georgia Tech fans? Arizona and Arizona State fans? USC and UCLA fans? Do they root for each other's teams? They most certainly do not.

Restrict it to baseball. During the 1989 World Series, the cameramen for the official highlight film -- not knowing of the earthquake that was going to happen -- showed a few people with half & half caps or jackets. One guy had such a jacket, and held up a sign saying, "IF I GOTTA PICK, GO A'S."

The quake led to special circumstances, with the entire Bay Area coming together. Aside from something like that, or 9/11 bringing New York together, yes: You gotta pick.

Could you imagine an Angels fan rooting for the Dodgers? A White Sox fan rooting for the Cubs?
You could, but you'd be wrong.

Put it another way: Giant fans weren't rooting for the Jets in Super Bowl III, and Jet fans weren't rooting for the Giants in Super Bowls XXI, XXV or XXXV. Super Bowls XLII and XLVI, that was different: The Giants were playing the New England Patriots, not just the Jets' arch-rivals (having replaced the Miami Dolphins in that regard), but bald-faced cheaters. Everybody who wasn't taking the Patriot happy pills was rooting against them. Even Dallas Cowboy fans were calling them evil and cheaters.

When the Rangers were in the Finals in 1979, 1994 and 2014, were Islander fans rooting for them? No. When the Islanders were in the Finals in 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983 and 1984, were Ranger fans rooting for them? No.

More to the point: Did Met fans root for the Yankees in 1998 against San Diego, in 2001 against Arizona, in 2003 against Miami? No. Indeed, as much as Met fans claim to hate Atlanta and Philadelphia, in 1996 and 1999, Met fans were rooting for the Braves -- even in 1999, after the first salvos from John Rocker. And in 2009, Met fans were rooting for the Phillies.

In 1977, 1978 and 1981, the Yankees played the Dodgers in the World Series. This was less than a quarter of a century after the Dodgers were taken out of Brooklyn. There were still young people who had been Brooklyn Dodger fans. Most of the people who became Dodger fans in their "Boys of Summer" years, 1947 to 1957, were then in their 30s. These people had good reasons to root for whoever was playing the Dodgers. It happened to be the Yankees.

About 99 percent of Met fans were rooting for the Dodgers.

They may tell you that it's a National League thing. That's stupid. Yankee Fans don't automatically root for the American League Champions in the World Series. Especially if it's the Boston Red Sox.

Many of us -- I can't say it was a majority, but it definitely included me -- made an exception in 1986, because the Red Sox were playing the Mets. Even after a generation of chavvy Sox fans replacing the old tweedy kind, and over a decade of blatant steroid cheating, if another Hobson's choice (Met fans, being stupid, may have to look that reference up) happened, I would again take the Red Sox over the Mets.

Besides, if it's about "What's best for New York," why take the team that has embarrassed New York time and time again? The early "Can't anybody here play this game?" years, the "Grant's Tomb" years, the juvenile delinquency of 1993, the Art Howe years, the Bernie Madoff years, not to mention the pathetic chokes of 1988, 1998, 1999, 2006, 2007 and 2008?

A Yankee Fan rooting for the Mets because they represent New York is like a Chicago cop rooting for Al Capone because he represents Chicago.

Then again, a lot of Chicago cops were actually on Capone's payroll. (One of many reasons why "The Night Chicago Died" is such a horrible song: There was no need for Capone to "call his troops to war against the forces of the law.")

So here's a question for Yankee Fans supporting the Mets in this Series: Are you on the Mets' payroll?

I am not. I would never get on the Mets' payroll. And I would never get on the Mets' bandwagon.

2. Politics over sports. New York is a liberal city, and the Mets represent the underdog. They're a poor & middle class team. They're a multiethnic, multiracial team. They're a labor-union team.

The Royals? They're owned by David Glass, who married into the Walton family of Walmart infamy. They're supported by Tea Partiers from Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska. They're "Christian" fundamentalists. They're tax cuts uber alles, and they don't care about services being cut ("But we didn't mean for us!").

They're anti-black, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-labor gun nuts who think President Obama (whose mother was from Kansas, by the way) is a foreign-born Muslim who's coming to take your guns and put you in a FEMA concentration camp and install Sharia law under the New Black Panther Party. And he's also a Marxist, which makes him an atheist, not a Muslim.

These people are idiots. Still, they really, really hate New York, and you may think that New York must be defended against them.

Well, guess what: If it were almost any other National League team, I would root for them against David Glass and his team.

But it's the Mets. We're not choosing a President, a Senator, a Congressman, a Governor, or a Mayor here. We're choosing a World Series winner. With no more guarantee that our choice will win the Series than that our choice would win an election.

The winner of this Series won't determine who is elected President next year, or Mayor of New York or Governor of New Jersey the year after that, or Governor of New York the year after that. All it will determine is who gets to call themselves baseball's 2015 World Champions.

For this, politics gets put aside.

3. The Mets are fun. This has been an argument for the Mets and against the Yankees from Day One, April 11, 1962: The Mets are "fun," the Yankees are "not fun," "too businesslike," "corporate."

This was actually the 1st of 5 reasons that Brandon Kuty of nj.com gave for rooting for the Mets in this Series. He also said, "They have leadership" (he cited Wright; see #4 for why he's no leader), "They have guts" (because they "went for it" at the trade deadline, but their reaction to the Chase Utley thing showed just how gutless they really are), "The young arms" (as if a single Met pitcher could crack a fully-healthy Yankee rotation of Severino, Tanaka, Eovaldi, Pineda and a fat and sober Sabathia), and "Sympathy" (bitch, please).

For most of their history, the Mets have not been fun. Funny, sometimes; but losing, looking like a bunch of damn fools, is not fun.

Of course, when a team is in the World Series, that argument goes by the boards. Winning is fun.

But how much "fun" were the Mets when their "inevitable" World Championship looked very evitable in Houston in October 1986? How much fun were they when the Red Sox took Games 1 and 2 at Shea Stadium in the 1986 World Series? How much fun were they when a noticeably weaker Dodger team beat them for the Pennant in 1988? How much fun were they in the 9th inning of Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS?

And how much fun were they when the Yankees humiliated them -- with considerable help from baserunning blunders and bonehead pitching decisions by manager Bobby Valentine -- in the 2000 World Series, clinching at Shea? And how much fun were the Mets in their Interleague games with the Yankees this very season, when the Yankees took 4 out of 6, including 2 out of 3 at Citi Field?

If the Royals win this Series, will Met fans be like Red Sox fans in 1967 and 1975, thinking, "Well, our drought continues, but didn't we have fun along the way?" Maybe, if the defeats aren't terribly shocking.

But what if the defeats are controversial, like the Royals' win over the St. Louis Cardinals in 1985? Or have a terrible blunder, like the Mets benefited from against the Red Sox in 1986? What if there's a 1908 Fred Merkle, a 1912 Fred Snodgrass, a 1941 Mickey Owen moment? What if Jeurys Familia, at the worst possible time, turns into 1951 Ralph Branca, 1960 Ralph Terry, 1976 Mark Littell, 1985 Tom Niedenfuer, 1978 Mike Torrez, 1993 Mitch Williams, 1996 Mark Wohlers, or 2003 Pedro Martinez (or Jeff Weaver)? Or, dare I say it, 2000 Armando Benitez or 2006 Aaron Heilman?

Then, how often are you going to look back on 2015, and think it was "fun"? Will you remember the fun? Or will you remember the shocking end that left you broken-hearted again?

Broken hearts are not fun. It's why I can never look back on 2003 Aaron Boone with the same fondness as 1978 Bucky Dent. In 1978, we had Ron Davis to set up Goose Gossage; in 2003, Joe Torre used Jeff Weaver when he should have used, well, anybody else who was available, including a position player.

4. The Mets are a team of good guys. They deserve it.

Which "good guys" would those be? Bartolo Colon, exposed as a steroid cheat? Daniel Murphy, a confessed bigot? Matt Harvey, who threatened to derail the best Mets story of the last 15 years (maybe the last 29 years) over an agent-imposed innings limit? Yoenis Cespedes, who, whatever you think of the Castro regime, didn't abandon his country and his family for freedom, he did it for the money?

Oh, I get it: The "good guy" is David Wright. He of the .194 career postseason batting average. A guy who actually bats worse in October than Stephen Drew bats in the regular season. The most underachieving 3rd baseman currently active in New York. (And that's still true if you still consider Alex Rodriguez a 3rd baseman.)

"Leadership"? As the great New York sportscaster Warner Wolf would say, "Come on, give me a break!" If anything, the Mets carried Wright this year.

Maybe some of the Met players deserve it. But the "good guys" argument doesn't wash. I'm sure there are a couple of players on the Royals who don't deserve it. Hell, they had plenty in their 1976-85 run of success. But we could make the same "Overall, they're good guys, and they deserve it" argument about the Royals.

5. Met fans have suffered enough. They deserve it.

For a moment, let's put aside the "They deserve it" half of that statement, and focus on the "They've suffered enough part."

The Mets last won the World Series 29 years ago.

The Royals? 30 years. Longer.

New York last had a World Championship, in any sport, with the 2011-12 Giants. That's 4 years ago.

Kansas City? Those 1985 Royals. 30 years. Before that, the 1969-70 Chiefs, winning Super Bowl IV. That's 46 years ago.

No titles in 30 years, 1 in 46, 2 ever.

Contrast that with New York. Since Kansas City first (in the modern era) got a major league sports team in 1955 (the A's, before they moved to Oakland for 1968), they've had just the 2 World Championships. Over that same stretch, New York has had 30 titles. Even if you're a hardcore Mets and Jets fan, and refuse to count those won by the Yankees and Giants, it's still 14 -- 9 since the Royals' last title 30 years ago. Even if you're a New Yorker, and refuse to count those won by the Devils, it's 6-0 in 30 years. Even if you're purely a New York City guy, and only count the Mets, the Knicks and the Rangers, it's still 2-0 over the last 30 years!

Even if you count the MLS Cups won by the team now known as Sporting Kansas City in 2000 and 2013, that makes for a more recent title for Kansas City, but, still: KC has had major league sports teams since 1955, and has won just 4 titles; New York, over the same stretch, also counting top-flight soccer, 34 -- an average of 3 per team.

So to say that, "Met fans have suffered enough" is ridiculous.

As for whether Met fans "deserve it": No, they don't.

You may not be old enough to remember when the Mets were last, beyond any question, the best baseball team in New York. It was 1984 to 1990: 7 seasons, every season finishing 2nd or higher, a Division title in 1988, and a World Championship in 1986. The Dynasty That Never Was. Meanwhile, the Yankees had close calls in 1985, '86, '87 and '88, but won nothing. The Mets owned New York, as they never have since -- no, not even now.

And Met fans made us miserable. It was a time when we had to live with all of the drawbacks of being Yankee Fans and none of the perks -- like getting called "frontrunners" and "losers" at the same time. (Logic has never been a Met fan's long suit.)

They acted as though their 1986 title meant more than the 22 World Series that the Yankees had won to that point. Just as they had with their 1969 title.

I don't know if you're using basic math, "New Math" or "Common Core," but in 1969, 20 > 1; in 1986, 22 > 2; and even if the Mets do win this one, 27 > 3.

This was the Mets' 5th Pennant. They are now only 35 behind the Yankees.

Even if you just count from the 1969 season onward: It's 7 World Championships to 2, and 11 Pennants to 5.

But Met fans have all the arrogance of New Yorkers, all the entitlement complex of Yankee Fans, and they haven't earned it. It's the same problem Giant fans had with Jet fans from January 12, 1969 to January 25, 1987, when the Jets still had the more recent Super Bowl win. Same with Ranger fans to Islander fans from the 1975 Playoff shocker until the Rangers finally won the Stanley Cup again in 1994.

The greatest arrogance of Met fans, the biggest part of Reason Number 5, goes back to Reason Number 1. We never told Met fans they had to root for the Yankees in the World Series of 1976, 1977, 1978, 1981, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2003 or 2009, just because the Yankees were the New York team. (Obviously, telling them to root for our team against their own in 2000 was a lost cause.) We knew they wouldn't.

But they want us to root for their team in this World Series? When they've never rooted for us a day in their lives? Not even when we held high the torch for New York in October 2001?

Hell, they think their first game back, won by the Mike Piazza home run over the Braves, was more meaningful to the City than the Yankees' postseason run. Same deal as "(1969 + 1986) > 27 titles." No. Not even close enough to see with binoculars.

Met fans' arrogance may actually exceed that of Yankee Fans. You might hear Cardinal fans call St. Louis "the best baseball town in America," and mention that they've won more World Series than any other National League team. But they don't say that their 11 titles mean more than the Yankees' 27. That's because they're not stupid, and they're not that arrogant.

And where was this arrogance in late July, when the Yankees were in 1st place and the Mets were sinking fast, actually making their own players cry on the field? (Well, one of them, anyway.) Nowhere. They'd had some hope early in the season, but after a Yankee team that was hardly at full strength embarrassed them on the field (before doing so again in September), they were, as they usually are, a tremendous joke.

And their fans didn't dare crawl out from under their rocks, wearing their little blue & orange hats, their blue & orange T-shirts, their blue & orange jackets, their blue & orange sweatpants, and, for all I know, their blue & orange Mets Underoos.

But now? They've -- pardon a choice of words that Daniel Murphy would hate -- come out of the closet, with their deviant, unnatural, repulsive lifestyle. At the very least, their blue & orange clothes have, quite literally, come out of the closet.

Daniel Burch, who writes for the Yankee-themed blog The Greedy Pinstripes, may have said it better than anyone else:

This is my personal testimony, this is not entitled “Why Yankees fans should not root for the Mets.” This is why I, Daniel Burch, personally do not root for the Mets. I don’t hate the Mets... It’s the other Mets fans that make it hard to damn near impossible for me to watch and root for the team...

It’s not even the fact that a lot of these fans were wearing Yankees hats six months ago, what bothers me is how cocky and arrogant they are to me on Twitter.

You guys know me, I try to be fair to everyone. Everyone on my team and everyone on everybody else’s team. I have more Toronto Blue Jays followers than I do Mets followers and most of them have told me I have a great account and that I’m fair to both sides.

Mets fans just tell me I suck and I should root for them because they are a New York team, even though none of them rooted for the Yankees a day in their life. A lot of Mets fans want their cake and they want to smash it in my face and THEN eat it too.

There it is. You may not think the Met players, the Met manager Terry Collins, father & son owners Fred & Jeff Wilpon, or any of the other higher-ups in the Met organization are particularly hateable. That's fine.

But Met fans? They may actually hate us more than Red Sox fans do. And, since, unlike Red Sox fans, they actually live around here in large numbers (though not nearly as large as they think they have, and certainly not as large as it seemed a year ago when many of them did not dare show their faces under their little blue & orange hats), we actually have to listen to them, every day, maybe more than once a day.

You know how we Yankee Fans sound to the fans of the 29 other teams? Imagine we sounded that way with only 2 World Championships. Now, imagine that we had that foul orange among our blue. That's what Met fans are like.

Or, if (like me) you're a Devils fan who hates the Rangers, imagine that. After all, if (like me) you were born between October 16, 1969 and June 14, 1994, then the Mets and Rangers have won exactly as many World Championships as each other in your lifetime: One. Ranger fans can be pretty arrogant, even when they're not talking about baseball.

By the way, do you remember Yankee Fans sending death threats to Pedro Martinez after he threw Don Zimmer to the ground in 2003? I don't. Met fans sent death threats to Chase Utley. And Ruben Tejada is not a 72-year-old man whose head was attacked.

The biggest reason for people, regardless of who their favorite team is, to not root for the Mets in this World Series is Met fans. Their team could, possibly, be said to deserve it. Met fans do not.

Met fans deserve to continue to suffer.

I don't care what Met fans, self-professed Yankee Fans rooting for the Mets this time, the TV stations, The New York Times, the Daily News, the New York Post, Newsday, The Star-Ledger, or even my friends who are Met fans, have to say on the matter.

Me? Root for the Mets? Any true Yankee Fan, root for the Mets in this World Series?

Oh, HELL, no!