I wasn’t awakened by the alarm clock Thursday morning, or by the usual suspects Fiona and Desmond, the Westy and the Airdale, who twice daily try to roust the whole neighborhood with their plaintive wails of starvation.
No. It was the phone that fractured the slumber this day. It was buzzing. It was humming. It didn’t much pause for air. Now this can be a disconcerting thing, a hint that something is amiss somewhere with someone you care about. Or, glass-half-full, there is a splendid development that someone simply has to share before the neighborhood rooster clears his throat.
(Yes. We have roosters in North Jersey.)
And, well … it was both. It was multiples of my regular text threads crackling to life. Only it wasn’t about life and death. It was far more important than that.
It was baseball.
Specifically, trash-talking about baseball.
And we are reminded, again, why the Subway Series is still such an important part of our lives in and around New York. The trash talk was glorious: on your own phone. On social media. On the subway. In your office. In the cafeteria. In the saloons later on. You can tell me baseball is a gasping game, and there are days I may be inclined to believe you.
Just not during Subway Series days.
“I’m just going to leave this one here,” one Met-fan friend texted, after dropping the equivalent of a stink bomb on a thread populated by equal parts Amazins and Bombers. It was a picture of a father and a baby. Only Max Scherzer’s face was superimposed on “daddy.” And Aaron Judge’s was on the infant. That arrived at 5:17 a.m.
At 5:27 came the first counter-attack: a picture of Yogi Berra with his Yankees World Series rings, one for every finger on both of his gnarled catcher’s hands.
At 6:03, a cartoon of Mr. Met with a broom in his hands.
At 6:14, a picture of the outside of the old Yankee Stadium, which in its final days meticulously listed all 26 Yankees champions to that point; the author of the text helpfully added: “Add two more: 2009 and 2022.”
And it was on, like Donkey Kong.
It’s entertaining enough to see how split ballparks react in real time. Citi Field sounded about as loud as it’s ever sounded when Scherzer struck out Judge with his 99th and final pitch Wednesday, and it was a fair question to ask: where were the Yankees fans?
And then in the top of the eighth, Gleyber Torres clobbered a David Peterson pitch over the right-field wall to tie the game at 2-2, and the roar was rich enough to send a shock down your spine. The official box score insists that every seat at Citi Field was filled, an official count of 43,693. But to hear those two distinct and deafening bursts of thunder, it felt like that number should’ve been doubled up, should’ve been 87,386.
It is a distinct sound, one that should be copyrighted. Call it GothamDin©.
Then, of course, there is social media, which in the hours after the end of the series became a classic Federer-Nadal back-and-forth of insults and barbs and wisecracks and slurs, an endless volley of inspiration and invective. Mets fans, not the most optimistic lot, were crowing like that North Jersey rooster. Yankees fans, not easily humbled, were brushing off the sweep like so much lint from their lapels.
I liked this exchange especially, begun a few minutes after I posted my column off Wednesday’s 3-2 Mets win:
@CapoDeiCapi718: Sometimes Freddie Krueger shows up and he’s got 2 different color eyes (he added the Scherzer-as-Judge’s-daddy picture).
@Provena: Met fan always gonna Met fan.
@H_Rockhoff: Mets ownership makes them the #1 team in town.
@Provena: The Mets finally spend money and – bam! – we’re great! But we also understand 27 World Series championships.
@H_Rockhoff: The classic 27 championships BS. Because all Yankees fans have been alive for 120 years. LOL.
It goes on from there. And there are so many others. And it is glorious, because in this town, in this summer, bragging rights are especially meaningful because everyone has something to brag about. Even in a scuffling stretch the Yankees have the best record in baseball, something even fans younger than 120 can appreciate. The Mets are three games clear of the Braves in the NL East. This week at Citi only makes the rematch in August at Yankee Stadium more delectable.
And a possible date in October … well, let one of my text threads take it home.
Met Fan 1: This will be so sweet in October.
Yankees fan 1: If by “sweet” you mean “sheer agony watching the Yankees in the Canyon of Heroes,” I agree with you.
Mets fan 2: Sweep dreams!
Yankees fan 2: 27-2. Twenty-seven to two. XXVII to II.
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