Robert F. Kennedy and Mickey Mantle, 1965
People have asked me how I can be both a Yankee Fan and a Democrat.
The pairing doesn't seem to make sense. The New York Yankees, more than any other sports team in the Western Hemisphere, represent money and entitlement, just like the Republicans. And, just as the Republicans decided in 1964 that, if the Democrats don't want racists in their party anymore, we'll be happy to take them, the Yankees were slow to integrate: Of the "original" 16 Major League Baseball teams, the only ones that took longer than the Yankees (in 1955) were the Philadelphia Phillies (in 1957), the Detroit Tigers (in 1958), and the Boston Red Sox (in 1959).
In contrast, the Democratic Party has long stood for the underdogs, the poor, the victims of various forms of bigotry. If I'm going to be a Democrat, in a metropolitan area with 2 different teams, then I should support the team with the perennial underdog status: The New York Mets.
So... Why am I a Democrat? It was partly because of my family. My parents were both Kennedy New Frontier Democrats. My mother's parents were FDR New Deal Democrats. A teenager in the 1980s, I could have rebelled, gone with the "cool kids," and become a Reagan Republican. But too many of those kids had bullied me for my physical disability that made walking difficult. This gave me an affinity for the underdog groups, and for the Party that has stood up for them.
And so, given that... Why am I a Yankee Fan? I can't credit most of my family this time: Both of my parents were Met fans while growing up in Newark, New Jersey. My father's parents, both from Newark, were fans of one of the previous New York teams that moved to California after the 1957 season, the now-San Francisco Giants. My mother's mother, from Queens, was a fan of the other New York team that moved away, the now-Los Angeles Dodgers, the team the Yankees are about to play in the World Series for the 12th time.
But my grandfather, who grew up first in Manhattan and then in The Bronx, was a Yankee Fan. He was old enough to walk down the street and watch the original Yankee Stadium being built. He sat in the Bleachers, and watched Babe Ruth, even before Lou Gehrig.
In 1977, my parents wanted to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary without, you know, the kid. And since my father's parents were not an option -- Grandpa was already dead, and Grandma was taking years to die -- they dropped me off with my mother's parents. While I was there, Grandpa watched the Yankee game. He got to me before Grandma did, before she could hook me onto the Mets. Thank God he did!
And how do I reconcile the two? How can I be a Democrat with the most "Republican" of baseball teams?
Actually, it's not that simple. Yes, the Yankees have had, as fans, Republicans such as Mayors Fiorello La Guardia and Rudy Giuliani. While the Mets have had Democrats such as Governors Hugh Carey and George Pataki; Mayors Robert Wagner, Abe Beame, Ed Koch and Bill de Blasio. (Michael Bloomberg, from Boston, is a Red Sox fan.)
On the other hand, the Yankees have had Democrats such as President Franklin D. Roosevelt; Governors Mario and Andrew Cuomo; Mayors David Dinkins and Eric Adams; and Senator Chuck Schumer. While the Mets have had Republicans such as Mayor John Lindsay.
It's worth noting that the 2 most corrupt Presidents ever, both Republicans, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump, have been known to show up at both teams' ballparks, depending on which one seemed to be better at the time. Front-runners, both of them.
My last live game at the old Yankee Stadium came shortly before the 2008 Republican Convention. In his private box, Giuliani had the Presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of Arizona, who famously won a bet with Giuliani when the Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Yankees in the 2001 World Series. When the DiamondVision camera focused on McCain, a war hero who was admired even among people who didn't like Republicans, the near-sellout crowd cheered. When the camera moved over to show Giuliani, who had also run for President that year, but won no Delegates, and was no longer "America's Mayor," he got the hell booed out of him. Both McCain and Giuliani laughed.
Although the late Yankee owner George Steinbrenner made a lot of appeals to patriotism, and got busted for illegal campaign contributions to Nixon (the men did reconcile), he also tried to cultivate friendships with the Mayors and the Governors. It worked better with some (Carey, the Cuomos, Dinkins, Giuliani) than others.
So the Yankees don't officially or openly represent either ideology. They know they need to fill the luxury boxes with America's wealthiest, people who can actually afford those insanely priced tickets. But they also know their fan base is working people, in the City, people who ride the Subway to get to the game; and in the suburbs, people who ride New Jersey Transit, the Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Commuter Railroad, and various bus lines just to get into the City.
"But," you may ask, "don't the Yankees represent the rich, and the Mets the poor?" Not really: There is plenty of crossover. As New York teams, both tap into both the rich and the poor aspects of the City. How could they not?
The Mets' original owner was Joan Whitney Payson. She was a member of the Whitney family, old-money Republicans. Her brother, John Hay "Jock" Whitney, was a breeder of champion racehorses (horse racing, "the sport of kings"), a polo champion (talk about a rich person's sport), and owned the city's leading pro-Republican newspaper, the New York Herald Tribune, before it folded in 1966.
The Paysons and the Whitneys are the kind of old-money people who look down on nouveau riche people like Trump, people who have the same kind of money without the same kind of history or "class," much more than they do on nonrich people -- which helped to fuel Trump's massive jealousy.
Everybody who's not from the New York Tri-State Area seems to hate New York. That's over 300 million people trying to gang up on about 40 million. Despite New York's size, there is an underdog mentality.
It's not the Donald Trumps and the Michael Bloombergs who make New York go. It's the taxi drivers, the bus drivers, the Subway motormen, the tollbooth workers, the pushcart vendors, the waitstaff, the shopkeepers, the repairmen (including auto mechanics), the cops (a.k.a. New York's Finest), the firefighters (New York's Bravest), the garbagemen (New York's Strongest), the Con Edison workers.
The blue collar guys and gals. The people who work. The underdogs. The people who deal with crap similar to the crap you deal with. I get it: It's understandable that some of these people identify with the Mets.
But why should we root for a team that's as bedraggled as we are? We want someone who's gonna lift us up, and let us win along with them, and make us feel like New York really is "the greatest city in the world." The Yankees do that.
The great sportswriter Roger Angell was right: There is more losing than winning in life. He used that to justify rooting for the Mets. But he was also wrong: Why not go with a team that gives you a better chance to end your rotten day with a good result?
To paraphrase Nick Hornby, from his screenplay for the original, British soccer, version of Fever Pitch, You don't get many Bucky Dent or Mookie Wilson moments in real life; and you don't get very many of them in baseball, either. So when they do come, you cherish them. And what team, in any sport, has offered you more to cherish than the New York Yankees?
Given the nature of the New York Tri-State Area, and the nature of New England, it so happens that a solid majority of Met fans, and a solid majority of Boston Red Sox fans, the two teams that Yankee Fans hate the most, also tend to be liberal, and Democratic Voters. I appreciate that. I'd rather talk politics with a Met fan or a Red Sox fan than talk baseball with a Republican.
