Old New York Teams Haunt the Mets
The Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants and the New York Yankees were once the Major League franchises that called the Big Apple home. In 1957, much to the dismay of their fans, including many members of my family (I'm old but wasn't around yet), the Giants and the Dodgers headed to the left coast and the National League fans in New York were left devastated. A choice of rooting for the Yankees, for many, was not an option.
Hall of Famers like Duke Snider, Roy Campanella and Don Drysdale called Ebbets Field, located at 55 Sullivan Place in Brooklyn, home. If you headed to W. 155th Street in Manhattan, you could see more members of the Hall like Willie Mays, Monte Irvin and Orlando Cepeda, who called the Polo Grounds, home. National League baseball had many of their best players on New York teams. Baseball was a way of life in those days and nobody had more baseball than New Yorkers. Again, that ended in 1957.
In 1962, the New York Metropolitans moved into the Polo Grounds while their new stadium was being built in Flushing, Queens, not Brooklyn, not Manhattan where the old teams were. Their new home, Shea Stadium opened in 1964.
My dad was a Giants fan and quickly adopted the Mets as his new team. That's how my personal curse of being a Mets fan began and I in turn passed the same curse on to my son and rightfully so.
So on Friday the 13th, when the Mets welcomed Los Angelas to begin a 13 game stint against the Dodgers and the Giants, it only seemed apropos that the Mets were desperately clinging to a half game deficit behind the first place Phillies. Their fate in the race for the National East title could be decided by two teams that once called New York home. The Giants own the best record in baseball and the Dodgers are 2.5 games behind them. They are truly two of the best in the game right now.
So far going into tonights game, the Mets have won 2 out of the 11 games played. They are 6.5 games out of first place and I guess you could say they have been buried by the ghosts of New York's Baseball PAST.