Story highlights
New York Mets play in their first World Series since 2000
New Yorkers prefer the crosstown Yankees over the Mets 61% to 27%, a Quinnipiac Poll says
Mets fans toss around terms like "blue collar" and "underdog" to describe themselves
In New York after their second loss in as many games in the World Series, the Mets are back on home turf.
But they’re hardly the home team.
A map of baseball fandom by county put out by Facebook in April shows a sea of black over New York City and much of the tri-state area – the territory of the Big Apple’s other baseball club, the Yankees.
Even in Queens, the backyard of Citi Field, where the Mets’ godly Noah Syndergaard will throw the opening pitch of Game 3 on Friday, the team isn’t No. 1 for fans. Queens residents backed the Yankees over the Mets 50% to 43%, a 2014 Quinnipiac match-up found.
So who likes the Mets?
“Mets fans are more degenerate,” saidJohn Walsh, 48, as he leaned against the counter of Dive Bar on Manhattan’s Upper West Side during Tuesday’s opener of the best of seven series against the Kansas City Royals.
Cheering on the blue and orange in Manhattan and at bars in Queens during Games 1 and 2, Mets fans tossed around terms like “blue collar” and “underdog” to describe their compatriots.
A more scientific survey by the Wall Street Journal in 2010 agreed.
Mets fans are more likely to have stopped their education after high school than Yankees fans – 30% to 25% – the study found.
And Yankees fans are slightly more likely to earn $100,000 or more a year, though the wage gap was statistically insignificant, the Journal said.
Mets fans describe a love story born through both parentage and choice – even though New Yorkers prefer the crosstown Yankees 61% to 27%, the Quinnipiac Poll found.
“I had the privilege of choosing,” Shira Levine, 29, said Tuesday night at Dive Bar.
New in town years ago, Levine went to both Yankees and Mets games before picking her team.
“Yankees fans kept leaving early,” she said. The Mets, where her loyalties were laid, are “a real fan-based team,” she said.
With a surge in the second half of the long season, the Mets (90-72) ended with a better record than the Yankees (87-75). But their fans aren’t used to many winning seasons.
Since 2010, the Yankees have won 56% of their games, the Mets, 49%.
It’s part of what makes Mets fans “softer,” John Chang, 36, said at Dive Bar.
“They’re passionate, but they’re not out there bragging,” he said. To which his friend chimed in that they don’t have much to be bragging about.
That passion could be a factor driving them to drink. Male Mets fans were 43% more likely than their Yankee counterparts to drink beer, the Journal study found.
“We appreciate a good beer,” Levine mused at Dive Bar over a dark American porter.
Walsh at the bar said of Yankee fans: “They’re not beer drinkers, they’re wine drinkers.”
The image of the frou frou, fair-weather Yankees fan was a common one described by the trash talkers at the sports bars.
Plus, Yankees fans are considered to be better looking than their Mets counterparts, according to preference data from the dating app The Grade.
Whatever they look like, Yankees fans aren’t being welcomed aboard the bandwagon by many fans of the other team in town.
“Playoff times everyone comes out of the woodwork,” Patrick Joseph Donohoe said over a beer at Sissy McGinty’s in Astoria, Queens.
Way to strike out, he said of “Modell Mets fans” who watch the championship games at sports bars with the price tags still sticking out of their fresh blue and orange jerseys.
Regardless, bars across the city will be filled with the colors of the Amazin’ Mets fans come Friday night, when they try to come back from two games down against the Royals.
It’s not an uncharted climb for the Mets, who in 1986 rebounded from an 0-2 start in the Fall Classic to beat the Red Sox.
Still, it has been nearly 30 years of postseason disappointment for the team, who last appeared in the World Series in 2000, losing to who but the New York Yankees.
Pumped up, but with a wary eye on history, many Mets fans interviewed during the first two games of the championship series were just happy to be there.
“2015, to be in the World Series, this is just a bonus. I get to celebrate baseball in October,” said Kevin Gil, a lifelong fan celebratingat last with his friends at the Irish Rover in Queens.