It used to be that New York’s Mets and Yankees played against each other just once a year in a relatively meaningless exhibition called “The Mayor’s Trophy Game,” a battle for the bragging rights of fans more than for anyone else involved.
From 1963 to 1983, the Mets and Yankees squared off annually, with the Bombers holding a 10-8-1 advantage over the Amazins’ (the ’79 game ended in a 1-1 tie after Reggie Jackson singled in Mickey Rivers in the fifth inning before the game was rained out). The teams didn’t meet in ’80 or ’81, but instead made cash contributions to the city’s Amateur Baseball Federation; after two more contests, the whole thing was unceremoniously canceled, in 1984.
As a pubescent paper boy delivering Newsday on Long Island in the mid-1970s, I was able to convert points I received for signing up new subscribers into prizes, like the famous Farrah Fawcett poster or a ticket to the Mayor’s Trophy Game. At some point, I achieved “Master Carrier” status, which I recall took 50 new subscribers to reach. When I walked down the halls of my junior high school wearing my Master Carrier sweatshirt, all the other paper boys stepped aside.
I wallpapered my bedroom with posters of all of Charlie’s Angels, and rode a bus full of delivery boys and girls from Stony Brook to Shea Stadium, in Queens, for the 1977 Mayor’s Trophy Game. We were among the paltry 15,000 fans on hand for the game, on June 23, which had been rescheduled after the original May 9 date was rained out. The Mets defeated the eventual World Series champion Yankees 6-4 with a pair of home runs from utility infielder Joel Youngblood and backup catcher Ron Hodges.
In the middle of a more-than-decade-long doldrum, the 1977 Mets would finish the season with a 64-98 record in sixth place in the NL East, the first of five last-place finishes over the next seven years, finishing fifth in the other two seasons.
Nimmo was able to escape wearing the goat horns two nights in a row by driving in extra-innings ghost runner Eduardo Escobar with a double in the bottom of the tenth, sending Mets fans back to the 7 train with smiles on their faces, at least for this one night.
Since the advent of interleague play, in 1997, the Yankees hold a 79-61 edge over the Mets in games that count (The Yankees took four of six interleague games played in 2000, and later that year the teams met in the Subway World Series, which the Bronx Bombers won four-games-to-one).
Like the old Mayor’s Trophy Game, the first round of this year’s four-game interleague series felt again like bragging rights were more significant than either team’s place in the standings, with the Mets floundering in fourth place at 31-35 and the Yankees in third place in the AL East, at 38-29.
Speaking of “standings,” I watched the first of the opening pair of Subway Series games (June 13 and 14) at my favorite Mets bar in the city, Standings, at 43 East 7th Street, in the East Village. “Mad Max” Scherzer, 38 (he seems to have gotten increasingly cantankerous this season) was on the hill for the Mets, and the team had already taken a 4-1 lead by the time I arrived. (I was around the corner at the Tribeca Film Festival watching a screening of The League, a documentary on baseball’s historic Negro League.)
By the time I finished my first beer, the Yankees had taken a 6-5 lead, scoring five runs in the top of the fourth. The full-house crowd was about 90 percent in favor of the Mets, with a couple of polite Yankees fans seated at the bar, doing their best not to gloat at the Mets’ misfortunes.
The Mets tied the game on a run-scoring single by Luis Guillorme in the bottom of the fifth, but relinquished the lead when Brandon Nimmo misplayed a fly ball off the bat of Yankees rookie shortstop Anthony Volpe; Josh Donaldson followed with a sacrifice fly in the top of sixth. The Mets squandered an opportunity to tie the game or take the lead in the bottom of the eighth, when both Francisco Lindor and Starling Marte struck out in succession with the bases loaded in the bottom of the inning.
A subdued crowd filed out of the bar immediately after the Mets went quietly in the ninth, as game one of round one went to the Yankees, 7-6.
From Standings to standing-room-only, I joined the masses for the sold-out game the next night, at Citi Field. With my friend and Yankees-fan rival Damien, who lives in an apartment on the floor above mine in Baltimore, we watched from the left-field corner as the Mets’ $40-million-plus man Justin Verlander (2-3 with a 4.85 ERA entering the game) was locked in a pitcher’s duel with Gerrit Cole for six innings, each surrendering a lone run and departing with the game tied.
The Yankees scratched out two runs in the top of the seventh, the first on a fielder’s choice ground ball by Isiah Kiner-Falefa scoring Donaldson, who led off with a walk. Both advanced on a throwing error by Mets second-sacker Jeff McNeil. Just three pitches later, from our vantage point down the left-field line, we had a much better view of Falefa stealing home than Mets reliever Jeff Brigham, who didn’t notice until it was much too late, giving the Yankees a 3-2 lead.
Yankees reliever Ron Marinaccio proved equally inept in the bottom of the seventh, drilling Nimmo with the bases loaded and surrendering a single to Starling Marte to tie the game. Nimmo was at the center of another blunder, getting picked off running back to second base when he didn’t realize that Mark Vientos running in front of him had been held up at third on Marte’s hit.
Neither team scored in the eighth or ninth innings.
Nimmo was able to escape wearing the goat horns two nights in a row by driving in extra-innings ghost runner Eduardo Escobar with a double in the bottom of the tenth, sending Mets fans back to the 7 train with smiles on their faces, at least for this one night.
The Mets dropped two of the three from the Cardinals at home in the following series, and the Yankees were swept by the Red Sox in Boston over the weekend.
What a difference a year makes — last year marked the first time in the 25-year history of Interleague play that the two New York teams would meet after the All-Star break with both teams leading their respective divisions, and the Subway Series was looking like a World Series preview.
We’ll see what difference a month makes, when the Subway Series resumes at Yankee Stadium on July 25 and 26. ❖
Baltimore-based Charlie Vascellaro is a frequent speaker on the academic baseball conference circuit and the author of a biography of Hall of Fame slugger Hank Aaron. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and other publications.
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