I have therefore started to move away from the Mets as a fan and have started to look into some other sites and other teams. When I buy a DVD-player from Panasonic and it’s terrible and breaks down, I don’t keep buying Panasonic DVD players. If I get a crappy sandwich from a restaurant and every time I go there the sandwiches stay crappy no matter what I order, guess what, I stop frequenting that restaurant. These players love to say “baseball is a business.” Owners couch their talk in business-speak all the time – “Best product on the field!?” If they want to treat it like a business, fine. I’m starting to feel like I’d be better served by putting my time and devotion and emotions in a team that knows how to reward that dedication.
– Shamik, comments section yesterday.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, first things first, Shamik: Other teams we’ll discuss in a sec, but other sites, no way. Keep it locked on TedQuarters. You can skip the Mets stuff and just read about Taco Bell and dinosaurs or whatever.
As for the first part, I think Shamik’s comment raises an interesting discussion for a number of reasons. For one, I’m with him on being turned off by the business-speak thing. That comes down to a big-time divide between the rational and irrational minds, I think. We all recognize that sports teams are, in fact, businesses, but I don’t think anyone hopes to hear their teams’ owners speak about them as such, referring to the product on the field and the customers in the seats and everything.
But my public-relations quibbles aside, I don’t think I could ever actually stop pulling for the Mets, even if at times I’ve felt like I wanted to. Remember that I said I’d quit if they traded for Jeff Francoeur, then they did and I stuck around like a shmo. Perhaps moving away would make it possible — transplanted New Yorker Tim Marchman has discussed how he finally stopped caring about the Mets last year — but I fear it might be too deeply ingrained in me to change allegiances now, and I don’t think I ever want to know baseball without a rooting interest.
I could imagine taking up a second team if I moved elsewhere. When my wife was applying to medical schools a couple years back I gave her pretty simple qualifications for places I was willing to live: Anyplace with a Major League team except Philadelphia.
I argued that case based on my career, but really I just wanted to know I’d be able to get to big-league baseball games when necessary. And though I harbored some small bit of excitement that we might move somewhere with a team that actually won something every so often, I knew all along I’d really still be rooting for the Mets from wherever we went.
I think it’s the rational vs. irrational thing again though. I can recognize that, as a fan, I owe the Mets nothing and should be free to change sides if I so choose. But in my gut it doesn’t work like that, and — though I certainly don’t begrudge him the decision — I wonder if Shamik would (or will) actually find the transition as easy as switching from Panasonic to Sony.
Tedquarters 
This was exactly the point I made to Sham in the comments section. The theory works great in terms of DVD players, or whatever else you are buying, but its just not the same in sports.
Buying the best, and most high quality stuff in general is a good option, but in sports its basically front running. When I go buy a car, I buy what looks the best and runs the best for the price when I’m looking to buy. I dont have allegiance to Toyota, or Acura or Ford, those just happened to be what was appealing the last 3 times I bought a car.
Part of being a fan to me is the ups and downs, and being a part of something through the good and bad, thats part of sports. Again, different from other consumer products, because I dont want to go through the ‘bad’ with my car, and be stuck on the side of the road.
And we’ll give you a pass on the Jeff Francouer thing, since the trade was for Ryan Church who sucks prob even worse than Frenchy.
We know you meant “if the Mets trade anything of value for Francouer” right?
Keep in mind that I’ve pretty much said this every year the past 3 years. Honestly the Mets have done a great job in every other aspect except for the damn team. Citi Field is gorgeous, the announcing team of GKR is second to none, and the Mets blogosphere is terrific. However, to wax poetically about following your baseball team when there is no such sentiment from the team itself is lunacy. We expend so much time, energy, and emotion to see it blown due to long-time sheer incompetence is endlessly frustrating.
Maybe you are the problem in that you invest to much energy and emotion into sports. I am a huge fan of the Mets, and I watch the games because I like baseball and they are entertaining to a point. If the team sucks, like late this year, I dont watch as often, its that simple.
At the end of the day its entertainment, nothing more. Do I have emotions toawrd the team, of course, but the failures of the Mets (or Giants or Knicks etc) never affect me to the point of frustration that effects other aspects of my life.
I mean maybe you just need to become less emtionally tied to sports, and find some other form of entertainment.
Actually with so many great blogs I feel even more tied into the team. I never used to know or care about bench players or prospects. I would pay no mind to the offseason. When the Mets were terrible, it was very easy to put them out of sight and out of mind. As a full-time student with tons to things to study I rarely have time to sit down and “enjoy” a Met game. I do however have the time to read a blog post and comment every now and then.
For as long as baseball teams have had owners, there have been these tensions. And baseball fans, through the ages, find a way to love their teams despite whatever idiocies of the owners are on display at any given time. It’s not a business decision. It’s a decision made by the heart.
Not to mention, if you base your allegiance on the maximizing terms you outline, you’ll need a new team every decade or so. Look at the history. And a new baseball team every decade is no better way to go through life than a new wife every decade. It would just be sad.
One time, in the dark ages of 93, I tried renounce my status as a Mets fan. I searched the box scores (back then the sports sections were better) trying to find another team.
I found something objectionable for every team in the NL. So, despite my religious objection to the DH, I searched through the AL until I could find the least offensive, blandest team I could imagine supporting.
The Twinkies.
It lasted about a day. I think the Vince Coleman firecracker thing drew me back in. At least the Mets were grandiose in their failure.
Can’t do it. In times of absolute frustration, I have considered it… but no. It really is like a marriage. I acknowledge that I will be a Mets fan all my life. And you know what? That’s a good thing. I don’t say this out of jealousy or spite, but I really wouldn’t want to be a Yankees fan. I see no joy in that. There was a quote somewhere akin to “Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for General Motors, or rooting for the sun to come up.” As painful as it is sometimes (and lately, it is), there is something appealing about the messiness that is the New York Mets.
I am, as they say in the gambling world, “pot committed.”
I’ve said it many times, but I just don’t understand how it’s enjoyable to root for the Yankees. I mean, sure, I wish the Mets won more often than they do, but part of what makes ’99, ’00, and ’06 special (and for those older than me, ’69 and ’86 even moreso) is that they punctuate periods of losing. We know what it’s like to suck, so it makes winning that much better and more memorable.
We didn’t win it all in either ’99 or 2000, and yet, I guarantee you that the average Mets fan can remember more about those seasons and has fonder memories of those teams than the average Yankee fan does of the same seasons, despite winning the World Series both years. There’s something wrong, there, I think.
“I could imagine taking up a second team if I moved elsewhere…”
“…I knew all along I’d really still be rooting for the Mets from wherever we went.”
That’s how I became an Angels fan. But the Mets are still and forever my number one, even if the Angels have been outclassing them in pretty much every way imaginable over the past decade.
(ownership, manager, playoff appearances, fan experience rating (#1 in MLB),) fewer whiny fans)
Marchman’s story was the first thing to pop into my mind reading the Shamik excerpt. The way to do it isn’t to switch teams, it’s to pull a Reverend Lovejoy and just stop caring (“Luckily, by then it was the eighties, and no one noticed”).
And Ted, there is a lot to like here in Philadelphia (yes, I live here). It’s tough as a Mets fan, but there are sandwiches. Delicious, delicious sandwiches:
http://blogs.phillymag.com/restaurant_club/2010/09/24/from-the-magazine-a-sandwich-spectacular/
Secretly I know that. I’m told there’s even a great art scene and good cultural things to do. But I’ll maintain that cheesesteaks are overrated.
The whole no-Philadelphia qualifier with my wife was a career thing. I figured I could at least try to catch on covering baseball wherever we moved, and I knew that a) I wanted no part of covering the Phillies and b) Phillies fans would see through me pretty quickly.
That’s a valid opinion. I do think a lot depends on where you get your cheesesteak. There are some very good places (Tony Luke’s steak italian w/sharp provolone is an amazing sandwich, let alone cheesesteak) and some not-so-good places.
As for my second-favorite team, I’d have to say Twins. My wife grew up in Minnesota but went to high school in Syracuse, and tells stories about how everybody there thought she was weird for having homer hankies in her room during the ’91 run and a crush on Kirby Puckett. (I have mostly won her over to Mets fandom, at least in part because I think it makes living with me easier to deal with). Plus we went up there last year and met one of her childhood friends, and our two families went to one of the final Metrodome games, which was fun.
Also, somehow a plastic drink cup from the ’91 run has followed her through the years to our current house. It has pictures of various distinguished Twins on it, including “Pinch Hitter of the Year” Randy Bush, which is just cool. I say if it’s on a drink cup, it’s official.
One time in college we went to an Orioles game and found that their souvenir cups were honoring Harold Baines even though Baines had been recently traded to the White Sox (one of the many times he shuffled back and forth between those teams). For some reason we thought this was hilarious, and after the game collected all the leftover Harold Baines cups we could from around the stadium, took them back to our apartment and washed them. We probably got like 60 or so all told, and we never bought cups again. We drank to Harold Baines for the remainder of our stay in that place, and at least a handful of cups survived to the next place.
About the moving away thing – I moved to DC. Taking up the Nationals would be like dumping your ugly nag of a wife for an uglier nag of a wife who also has a suicidal streak. What’s the point?
Is there a ‘c’ on schmo?
Yes, it turns out there is.
Well, I met BJ Upton and got his autograph RIGHT after he was drafted, and at that point I decided the Devil Rays were my #2 team. A few years later I started telling everyone how they were going to be great, and they were. Awesome.
Three years ago I moved to Colorado. Now I get to watch the Rockies every day. Awesomesauce.
Even though I’d call myself a “fan” of both teams, I never really follow either until the Mets are out. I mean, I watch way more Rockies games than Mets games and due to the postseason, more Rays games as well. But, even in the offseason I spend a ton of time reading up on various Mets sites. I spend all of my energy on them. Why? They’re my team. You can only have ONE team (even if I truly have three.)
The Rays and Rockies are my second- and third-favorite teams, and I don’t even have the good reasons you do.
I agree with your thoughts about business-speak and baseball. I posted a similar sentiment on Amazin Avenue, however, and 100% responders attempted to tear me a new one.
To clarify, I think it’s fun to play armchair GM and make a game of the business side of baseball.
I don’t like the growing trend of managers and players talking about market size and better products on the field. Winning teams don’t celebrate return on investment. Losing teams use economics as an excuse for poor play.
I’m hopping for a GM that knows his numbers and the bottom line well enough, so we can forget about the business and be consumed again by the game.