New York is a National League Town? "It Ain't Necessarily So..."

Gee, it was thrilling to watch those Metsies, with their backs to the wall, pull out an extra-inning win last night.

Down 4-0 in the seventh, with their Magic Elimination Number at 1, the Baymen rallied on 2, two-run homers by Mr. Met Michael Conforto, the second one in the bottom of the ninth, and then won it in the bottom of the 11th on the always spectacular, bases-loaded, walk-off walk by Brandon Nimmo.

Nimmo's teammates went wild, pelting him with sunflower seeds and baby powder, among other items.  Exactly what all that means...well, I'm sure it is some great and probably obscene clubhouse secret.

The Mets' fans went wild, too...all 20 or 30 of them who were left in the stands by then.  Last night, for their last stand, the Team by the Airport drew fewer than 22,000 "faithful," which is about what a particularly loud auto accident draws in NYC.

Which brings us back to something that A-Rod said, while bloviating at the heartbreaking, Sunday- night loss to the Dodgers that all but put the final nail in the Mets' 2019 coffin.

Voicing similar worries that we've had here in totaling back-page tabloid appearances, A-Rod speculated that if the Mets made a big run and went far in the playoffs, it could change the whole balance of power in Gotham.

"You always hear it said," he warned, "that New York is a National League town."

Well, in fairness to A-Rod, who is perfectly capable of saying all sorts of stupid stuff entirely on his own, you DO hear that said, and repeated constantly by sportswriters.  Maybe, at one time, it was even true.

The only trouble is the lack of facts to back it up.

2019 will mark the 27th straight season, from 1993 on, that your New York Yankees have outdrawn the Mets at home.  This year, in a not untypical result, the Yanks will finish first in the AL in fans.  The Mets will most likely be 9th in the NL, and almost a million bodies behind the Bronx team.

Obviously, this is more than just a reflection on the play on the field.  Even in 2015, when the Yanks barely eked out a wild card and the Mets made a breathtaking run to the Series, the Yanks outdrew them.  By over 600,000 fans.

The next season, when a still contending Mets team made the wild card, and the Yanks were barely over .500?  NYY outdrew NYM by almost 300,000.

And so it goes.  In 2006, when both teams made strong runs but the Mets got within a game of the Series while the Yanks folded to Jim Leyland's Cheating Bengals?  NYY, by nearly 900,000.

In 2008, the Farewell to the Ballparks season, in which the Mets were still in contention on the last day of the season and the Yanks had already folded their tent in third place?

Well, for the one and only time in NYC baseball history, BOTH teams drew over 4 millions fans.  The Yanks just drew close to 300,000 more.

All in all, the idea that New York is a National League town goes back to the 1960s, when the Mets first surpassed the Yankees in attendance.  Their edge, for several seasons, came entirely on the huge crowds they would draw whenever the Giants or the Dodgers were in town.

Otherwise, the Mets usually drew about what you'd expect a last-place club to draw.

In other words, it wasn't so much that New York had some weird, undeviating attachment to National League-ball, so much as that Giants and Dodgers fans, as if visiting from vestigial leg, had to go see their old teams in action.

After that, of course, when the Mets got good and everybody was afraid to go to the Bronx, NYM really outdrew the Yanks on their own.  This repeated itself in the 1980s, when the Mets were good again and the Mad King sank the Bombers into the period known as The Great Confusion.

But Mets dominance was really confined to those two streaks:  1964-1975, and then 1984-1992, after which fans apparently tired of players tossing firecrackers at them and spraying bleach on people from SuperSoakers.  Go no.

But the point is this:  Every other year, the Yanks outdrew them, holding an edge of 37 seasons to 21.

You can argue that this is because the Mets have—due to their own volition—a smaller ballpark.  But it rarely sells out (most often: when the Yanks visit).  And the Mets rarely draw well compared to the most popular NL teams.  Without having looked it up, I suspect the Yanks do better on TV and radio (ESPECIALLY radio!) by comparable margins.

Nor is this a phenomenon that started with the Mets.

When New York had 3 teams still, the Giants, a constant winner run by the fabulous Muggsy McGraw, and with a deep, Irish fan base, generally led the city in attendance.

Until Babe Ruth arrived.

Then it was, literally, a whole new ballgame.  The Yankees became the first team anywhere, ever, to draw over 1 million fans in 1920, and were first in 31 of the last 38 years of the three-team city.

(Brooklyn, for all the vaunted loyalty of its fans, led the Big Three only 5 times, and all between 1939-1945.)

In other words, judging by the facts, New York is in reality an American League town, and it generally has been for the last century, or ever since its American League franchise was no longer owned by a collection of crooked gamblers and rogue Tammany cops.

Sorry, A-Rod.

It ain't necessarily so
It ain't necessarily so
They say the town is the Metsies'
But to Queens fans don't getsies
It ain't necessarily so.