Thursday, April 16, 2009

More Thoughts on Second-Class Citizens

As I was writing this week's Flushing University column, I had to reconcile myself with a simple truth to remain somewhat even-tempered in my analysis.

There are still some people in New York who legitimately miss the Brooklyn Dodgers and are still sad that they had to watch them leave time. Many of those fans have since embraced the Mets, but the Dodgers (the Brooklyn version) still have a place in their hearts.

But I am not like some of the older guys who have had two baseball loves. My problem, as someone who was born 20 years after the Dodgers skipped town, is that my favorite team has always been the Mets.

The great majority of Mets fans today - myself included - have no connection to the Brooklyn Dodgers. I happen to fall into a smaller subset of those Mets fans who consider themselves actively antagonistic to Brooklyn Dodger-worship.

Even if you buy into the idea that the Mets are in some way the offspring of the Dodgers and the Giants, the Mets have forged a history of their own. They chose not to dedicate even one inch of the grandest space in their new stadium to any aspect of it. I can't help but to find it maddening that the most impressive design aspect of Citi Field is dedicated not to the Mets, but to a player who retired over 50 years ago and played for a team that left town.

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