What Mets-Yanks City Rivalry?
Nothing makes a sports fan more secure than to pick a side and stick to it. That's the whole idea, isn't it? You join the community of fanatics that root for one team over the other and then you feel part of something. You belong. In victory or defeat you are less alone.
As a general rule, Mets and Yankees fans dislike each other. Local sports radio talkshows are filled with cries of jihad between the warring factions. You are either one or the other-but you're never both. Never.
Yet a closer look at the current coaching staffs of the two New York teams may reveal a dark secret that a divided city of baseball fans doesn't like to talk about at cocktail parties or with close friends over dinner.
My friends, we are only as sick as our secrets.
The uncomfortable truth about the avuncular men who manage our boys of summer must be seen in the harsh light of day. The history of forbidden relationships between current Mets and Yankees coaches is a startling revelation: They're a lot closer than you might have thought. In fact, taking the proverbial "six degrees of separation," they're more like one-and-a-half.
You can start at the top. Yankees history will hail Joe Torre as one of their greatest managers. But his first managing gig was with the Mets, where he played the last three seasons of his prolific career. Only two years ago, Mets skipper Willie Randolph worked for Torre as the Yankees bench coach replacing Don Zimmer, who was a member of the inaugural 1962 Mets. Randolph, who had a stellar playing career with the Yankees, took his last at-bat, just like Torre, in a Mets uniform in 1992.
The plot thickens: Willie Randolph's Mets bench coach, Sandy Alomar, saw his only post-season action as player in a Yankees uniform filling in Randolph in the 1976 ALCS against the Royals. (Alomar's son, Robbie, was a total bust for the Mets in 2002-03; but we won't visit the sins of the son against the father.)
Still, there is one Mets-Yankees symbiosis that is entering its 40th anniversary, and perhaps has never been more vital than it is now.
In September1976, the Mets, desperate for a sex symbol to compete with the Yankees' Rick Cerone and his "10 Jeans" commercials, brought up Lee Mazzilli from the minors and promoted him as the team's matinee idol and quasi-all-star. Meanwhile, in the Bronx, Sparky Lyle and Dick Tidrow were teaching the slider to skinny, struggling 5'11"162 pound lefthander named Ron Guidry.
That pitch saved his career. Guidry and the Yankees went on to win three consecutives World Series ('76, '77 and '78). They became megastars, ushering in the era of Steinbrenner rule. Guidry won the CY Young in 1978 with an unbeatable 25-3 record and an un-hittable 1.72 ERA.
The Mets and Mazzilli, however, endured some of their leanest years, finishing in last place three consecutive seasons ('77, '78 and '79). They were starless except for the switch-hitting, "Mazz," Lee Mazzilli. Because every team must be represented, Mazzilli was chosen to represent the hapless Mets in the 1979 All-Star game. On his biggest stage (that's if you don't include his excruciating but brief run as the lead off-Broadway in Tony and Tina's Wedding), Mazzilli hit a game tying homerun in eighth inning and then faced Ron Guidry with the game tied and bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth. Guidry flinched. He walked Mazzilli and the National league won the game.
Today, these two mid-1970s symbols of their respective teams, inexorably bound to each other since their entry to Major League Baseball, now share the New York Yankees dugout as assistant coaches to Joe Torre. That's the same Joe Torre who played with Lee Mazzilli for three years with the New York Mets.
That men of dual allegiances make commend decisions for Gotham's two opposing baseball forces may come as shock to some of their faithful fans. They may also find it shocking that several World Series Champion managers and household names-Joe Torre, Dallas Green, Yogi Berra and Casey Stengel-managed both the Mets and Yankees.
Mets and Yankees fans, we are one.
Like Cain and Able, we are brothers. Like Jerry Lee Lewis and Jimmy Swaggart, we are kin despite all of our differences. Whether you prefer the stately Yankee pinstripes or the Mets garish orange and blue, we all pull from same dirty laundry bag.
Let this house no longer be divided. Otherwise, let the plagues of dueling networks, escalating tickets prices and stadium land grabs fall on both our houses.