F the MFYs - 2022 Thread

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

ALERT: MFYs Nestor Cortes just lost a no-hitter with one out in the 8th. MFYs-Texas tied 0-0 in a makeup game

[Edgy MD]

Teckis had a late-inning NH going against the Yanks over the weekend.

[Fman99]

Willets Point wrote: I read a book called Soccernomics and one of the things they tested was the conventional wisdom that the largest demographic of fans were the diehards who supported the same football club their entire lives. They found in reality that the vast majority of fans attending games and watching on tv changed their allegiance at least once over the course of their lifetimes. I suspect the same holds true for American sports fans. And in a multi-team city like New York there is a sizable block of people who root for all of their hometown teams.

These concepts are wholly alien and inconceivable to me. Change teams? Root for more than one team? What kind of chicanery is that?

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

I actually did an interesting story about international soccer marketing for work. The nature of the sport concentrating its best athletes in foreign superleagues with big TV deals has meant the US (with its own pro league but vastly inferior play) generally has fans who say "I'm a soccer fan" and have 4 or 5 favorite teams vs. people in the countries with the top leagues (the like the UK, where a fan is more likely to say "I'm a West Ham fan."

[Frayed Knot]

I suspect what the book Willets cites is saying is not that the kid who grew up from a Liverpool FC onesie to season-ticket holding/red scarf wearing super-fan as an adult will suddenly

change his spots and claim to be an Everton fan on a whim, only that that type of one-team-forever fan represents a smaller percentage of total fans than is generally believed.



I've often thought that there are three types of NY-area baseball fans: 1/3 who root for the Mets, 1/3 for the Yanx, and the final 1/3 for whoever is winning at that particular moment.

Made up numbers for sure, but I think the concept is right even though that final third is not so much jumping on and off bandwagons (at least not in their own minds) as they are

drifting in and out of baseball fandom as new players and eras capture their fancy, not to mention all the headlines.

So some of those who caught 'baseball fever' with the rise of mid-80s Mets stopped following the sport itself as the team skidded into their early '90s dumpster fires, but then maybe

a new group of friends and/or love interest got them into the Yanx of the late '90s because now they were the stars in town and it rekindled how much fun pennant races could be.

So, yeah, that concept doesn't really apply to the die-hards but not everyone spends their spare time on NYM message boards.





Having said all that, I've said here on several occasions that I've never been as pissed off at Met fans as I was over the ones who declared it OK to root for those MFY teams squads of

the late '90s "because of Doc & Darryl & Coney" while also somehow deciding that George had morphed into a nice guy. If I actually believed in karma I'd be blaming them for Causing

the Yanx run of WS years and, btw, Fuck Doc & Darryl & Coney!

[Willets Point]

Frayed Knot wrote: I suspect what the book Willets cites is saying is not that the kid who grew up from a Liverpool FC onesie to season-ticket holding/red scarf wearing super-fan as an adult will suddenly change his spots and claim to be an Everton fan on a whim, only that that type of one-team-forever fan represents a smaller percentage of total fans than is generally believed.

This is correct. Also the book was about English Football, which I neglected to mention.

Edited May 10, 2022 by Guest

[Edgy MD]

There's also the Willets model, of folks who move to a new city, and boldly keep their Mets flag flying, but then the kids come along, and they want to go see the local team and you take them, and they fall in love with the local team and you love them, and so you have to adopt the local team into your heart at least a little.



That's cool, and most of my friends who've gone that way still keep the Mets in there riding shotgun alongside, and still let their kids know, "You know, there's also this other great team ... ."



I do confess that it goes down a little harsher when it's a National League city that friends have moved to. My friend Kenny posts on Libro de Rostro about "our Bucs," and I shouldn't begrudge the Pirates any support they can get, but I'm all "What do you mean OUR Bucs, Kenny? I was with you the day you got that prized Gary Rajsich autograp!?"



But New Yorkers moving to other cities and giving up half their hearts to join their children in chasing the Mariners or whoever is a small price to pay for seeing sections of local Mets fans in Miami, Phoenix, Los Angeles, or even Kansas City.

[MFS62]

You're talking about moving the (metaphorical) boy away from the team.

In my case the team was moved away from the boy, and I have never had any question or angst about why I chose not follow them, nor did I adopt the other local team (that members of my family rooted for) as mine.

Another CPF-er who felt the same is Old Mole. We had a nice discussion about this when we met at one of his poetry readings a few years ago.



Later

[seawolf17]

Edgy MD wrote: There's also the Willets model, of folks who move to a new city, and boldly keep their Mets flag flying, but then the kids come along, and they want to go see the local team and you take them, and they fall in love with the local team and you love them, and so you have to adopt the local team into your heart at least a little.

One of my best friends from high school lives in south Jersey, and his kids are growing up Phillies fans and it kills both of us. LOL!

[vtmet7]

Edgy MD wrote: There's also the Willets model, of folks who move to a new city, and boldly keep their Mets flag flying, but then the kids come along, and they want to go see the local team and you take them, and they fall in love with the local team and you love them, and so you have to adopt the local team into your heart at least a little. One of my best friends from high school lives in south Jersey, and his kids are growing up Phillies fans and it kills both of us. LOL!

luckily when I lived in Jersey, the Phillies sucked so most people didn't seem to know that they existed

[Edgy MD]

Luckily, I never lived in Jersey. OHHHHHH!!!

[Willets Point]

I left Jersey as a toddler so I have no recollection of it at all.

[vtmet7]

I only lived in Jersey for a short time while floundering in my first attempt at college, from January '84 thru early summer '86...after growing up 100 miles from NYC in upstate NY, it was a treat to see the Mets games free on tv, and be able to have a short drive to either Shea or Veterans Stadium (weekends when the Mets were there)...I couldn't have picked a better time to be there, it was the beginning of the Davey Johnson era of the Mets...which most likely was why I was doomed in my summer tri-mester at DeVry: hotter than hell, going to school during the day, watching the Mets at 7pm and then working graveyard shift M-F at UPS; I was too wiped out to put a lot of effort into school work

[Edgy MD]

Willets Point wrote: I left Jersey as a toddler so I have no recollection of it at all.

You must have had a lot of trouble scratching together the toll money. OHHHHHHHH!!!

[Edgy MD]

=vtmet7 post_id=91833 time=1652204100 user_id=80]
I only lived in Jersey for a short time while floundering in my first attempt at college, from January '84 thru early summer '86.

[Fman99]

My brother got his PhD at Rutgers and every time I went to visit him in NJ I either got stuck eternally in traffic or I got a parking ticket. So, fuck New Jersey.

[vtmet7]

=Fman99 post_id=91846 time=1652208468 user_id=86]
My brother got his PhD at Rutgers and every time I went to visit him in NJ I either got stuck eternally in traffic or I got a parking ticket. So, fuck New Jersey.

[nymr83]

=Fman99 post_id=91846 time=1652208468 user_id=86]
My brother got his PhD at Rutgers and every time I went to visit him in NJ I either got stuck eternally in traffic or I got a parking ticket. So, fuck New Jersey.

[Lefty Specialist]

[Harumph.] Long time NJ resident. I laugh at your quibbles. Real Jerseyans know where to park and don't care about tolls because we have EZ-Pass. We know that the best cheesesteak sandwiches are actually in Camden, not Philly. We know that the Jets and Giants play in New Jersey despite what their helmets say. Everyone else has a beach, we have The Shore. Atlantic City is run by good old-fashioned mobsters, not people pretending to be Native Americans. Mets baseball is freely available anywhere, all the time.



We have freedom to move around, unlike those trapped on Long Island with its NYC choke point. We don't live in or near Red Sox Nation. And we don't live in upstate New York where summer is two months long.[/Harumph.]



Rutgers can be as good or bad as you make it, like any other state school. I'm currently taking a Rutgers Extension course and it's quite good.

[Edgy MD]

The real dis' there wasn't for Rutgers so much as Montclair State and Stevens Tech and William Patterson. Holy smokes, Nymr totally shat all over them and tossed them into a landfill in Elizabeth!

[MFS62]

Lefty Specialist wrote: We know that the best cheesesteak sandwiches are actually in Camden, not Philly.

"Camden makes. The world takes."

Or so says the sign you see when you take the Southbound train going to Philadelphia. So, if we're going to Philly, you suggest picking up a cheesesteak to go?



Later

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

That's Trenton actually.

[metsmarathon]

Edgy MD wrote: The real dis' there wasn't for Rutgers so much as Montclair State and Stevens Tech and William Patterson. Holy smokes, Nymr totally shat all over them and tossed them into a landfill in Elizabeth!

as a point of correction, Stevens Institute of Technology is most assuredly not a public university, and fabulously expensive. it is, however, excellent, and is frequently very much among the tops of colleges in terms of return on investment. with great tuition comes great salary expectations. i guess. i work for the government. so i don't think it quite did it exactly right.



NJIT, though, is indeed an excellent public engineering college. It's in newark, which isn't nearly as awesome as hoboken. but is much better than it was 'round the turn of the century.



neither, though, is quite a "university" if that's what you're angling for.



i'll also give a shout out to little rowan university. one of my coworkers went there, and he's not awful.



on the whole, i'd say that new jersey is massively underrated. mostly thanks to the vast swath of concrete and traffic in the middle of it. we make up for it with feisty debates over the intricacies of taylor hand and pork roll, and whether or not central jersey is a figment of the demented imaginations that wish to delude themselves into thinking they're not actually in south jersey.



oh, and fuck the yankees.

[MFS62]

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: That's Trenton actually.

[CROSSOUT]Who cares? All Joisey looks the same to a New Yorker. [/CROSSOUT] Thanks.

(sorry, Lefty)

Later

[Edgy MD]

Edgy MD wrote: The real dis' there wasn't for Rutgers so much as Montclair State and Stevens Tech and William Patterson. Holy smokes, Nymr totally shat all over them and tossed them into a landfill in Elizabeth! as a point of correction, ...

Sorry to conflate my techs.

[Lefty Specialist]

Only one 'T' in Paterson. Just saying.



And there's no Central Jersey. North and south are defined by the original 201 and 609 area codes.



In 1958, 201 was restricted to northern New Jersey, while the area from the state capital, Trenton, southward, including the southern Jersey Shore and the New Jersey side of the lower Delaware Valley, received area code 609.



For the next 33 years, area code 201 served Bergen, Hudson, Ocean, Essex, Union, Morris, Passaic, Hunterdon, Somerset, Middlesex, Monmouth, Sussex and Warren counties, a region largely coextensive with the New Jersey side of the New York City area.



There is no Central Jersey. You're either north or south.

[Edgy MD]

I like this. Meaningful distinctions!



Although, if there's no Central New Jersey, you might want update its https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_JerseyWikipedia page to note its non-existence.

[Willets Point]

According to Wikipedia, I was born in Central New Jersey. Who knew?!

[nymr83]

There is no Central New Jersey. There is also no North New Jersey or South New Jersey. There is just 'fucking Jersey' which ain't New York.

[Edgy MD]

There is no Jersey. There is only Zuul.