A Subway Series? The phrase is a time machine, conjuring a city of egg creams and spaldeens, Mickey Mantle and Bobby Thomson. It’s a citywide festival – and its a tragedy that one team has to lose. Chris Smith explores the bond Mets like Mike Piazza, Al Leiter, and Todd Zeile have with their city. Alex Williams parties with the Yankees and the mayor, and wonders whether there could be a better symbol for millennial New York than the team from the Bronx. And former Dodger fan Mark Jacobson meditates on the nature of Yankee-hating – and celebrates the fact that his son, after flirting with Yankee-fandom, is now solidly behind the Mets.
The Hunger
BY CHRIS SMITH
Mike Piazza’s metal spikes were clicking like tap shoes down the cement tunnel leading to the field. He was in a September slump, but he was laughing . . .
A Habit of Winning
BY ALEX WILLIAMS
The Mayor is just standing there in the Yankee clubhouse, not fifteen minutes after the Yankees clinched their fourth American League pennant of his two terms . . .
Bronx Monsters
BY MARK JACOBSON
The Yankee hater in me, sometimes dormant but never dead, stirred last summer inside the Modell’s out by Caesar’s Bay in Bensonhurst. I’d promised my 10-year-old son a new hat . . .