Photo: Mary DeCicco/MLB Photos via Getty Images
New York is a baseball town. The NFL has been subsumed. Stroll around the five boroughs and witness the blue-and-orange, once donned sheepishly or with dour fatalism, become Hope personified. Consider Grimace, OMG, Hawk Tuah, Polar Bear’s playoff pumpkin, and Mr. Smile, with each parabolic shot into the night making plain his case for Cooperstown. These Mets are four games away from the World Series and it can feel like, on yet another playoff weekend, there is nothing to keep them from barreling there. The bars and restaurants are humming with Mets talk. There are generations who have barely known this feeling and they will revel in it for as long as the spirit is willing.
Can the Mets, as the Padres fans once screamed in vain, beat L.A.? Yes, they can. (We told you back in March they’d be contenders.) And the Yankees, rolling into the ALCS after dispatching the Kansas City Royals in four games, will be waiting for them in the World Series if they can knock off the Cleveland Guardians. Soon, we may glide on the 4 from the Bronx to the 7 at Grand Central and change for the long, lazy ride to Flushing Meadows.
It’s been 24 years since the Yankees and Mets collided in the World Series, which was also the last time the two franchises both reached the ALCS and NLCS. Bill Clinton was president, the Twin Towers were still standing, and the Yankees’ Manhattan-born shortstop, Anthony Volpe, wasn’t yet alive. Those Yankees and Mets, unlike today’s teams, shared genuine bad blood, after a Rogers Clemens fastball smashed Mike Piazza in the head that summer. They met again in the World Series, and after Piazza shattered his bat on another Clemens fastball, the Yankees ace picked up the shard and inexplicably flung it toward Piazza as he jogged to first.
Gerrit Cole, conversely, holds no ill will toward Francisco Lindor. But the fan bases, if gratified October baseball has swallowed this city up, will not stomach defeat. Met fans crave revenge for 2000. Yankee fans are haunted by the plausibility of a Mets ascension that hasn’t been seen since 1986, when a brawling, coke-fueled Mets squad won a ring and heavily overshadowed the Don Mattingly-era Yankees. The fans want a battle now; they’re ready to explode.
But first, the Dodgers. The Mets have a much tougher road ahead of them than the Yankees. The Dodgers were baseball’s best team during the regular season. They have their two-way Japanese superstar, Shohei Ohtani, who was a mere designated hitter this year and became the first player in baseball history to hit more than 50 home runs and steal more than 50 bases in the same season. Their $325 million Japanese ace, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, struggled with injuries but threw five shutout innings in the do-or-die Game 5 against the Padres. Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith, Max Muncy, and Teoscar Hernández join Ohtani to make up one of the better lineups of the last quarter century, three potential Hall of Famers among them. Kiké Hernández, not a Hall of Famer, is doing his best Reggie Jackson impersonation. The Dodgers’ bullpen helped blank the Padres for 24 innings. Star-crossed in the postseason, barring the COVID championship of 2020, the Dodgers now seem poised to break through.
What the Mets have is balance. The Dodgers, for all their glitz, can barely run out four starting pitchers for a seven game series. Injuries ravaged their rotation (the Dodgers’ front office has a habit of targeting the injury prone) and forced them to win a game against the Padres with only relievers. Yamamoto himself, coming off a right shoulder ailment, can’t be stretched very far, and the Dodgers will have to hope deadline acquisition Jack Flaherty carries them through. Walker Buehler, demolished by the Padres in the division series, is going to struggle against a relentless Mets lineup.
If the Mets can’t quite out-slug with the Dodgers — though Lindor, Pete Alonso, Mark Vientos, and Jose “Candelita” Iglesias are still tough outs — they can overcome their West Coast nemesis if the series stretches to six or seven games and their starting pitching outshines. David Peterson, Sean Manea, and José Quintana have already carved up strong lineups, and they offer the Mets starting depth that the Dodgers simply lack. The Dodger bullpen is superior but will be heavily taxed. For now, the Mets are underdogs, but if they split the first two games in L.A. and head back to Citi Field, they’ll be well-positioned to topple a giant.
For any Met fan, beating the Dodgers would be especially glorious. The elderly recall Walter O’Malley stealing Brooklyn’s franchise and plumping it down in Chavez Ravine, where the team then found greater success. The seven-game loss in the 1988 NLCS still burns Gen X Mets fans who were sure Keith, Doc, and Darryl were building a dynasty. The Mets got revenge in the 2006 and 2015 division series, but Chase Utley shattered Rubén Tejada’s leg. What could be better, in 2024, than making the city of Los Angeles miserable?
Meanwhile across town, the pressure is entirely on the Yankees. If the Mets do lose, their season will still be celebrated, all of these postseason thrills having been so unlikely just a few months ago. The Yankees must beat the Guardians. They have to win for the sanity of the fan base, which last saw World Series baseball before Instagram existed, and perhaps for their very future, with the marvelous Juan Soto entering free agency. Aaron Judge is 32, Cole is 34, and their window for contention won’t be open forever. The last three times the Yankees appeared in the ALCS, they faced a Houston Astros team that was always just a bit stronger. The Guardians boast one of the great players in the game, José Ramirez, and underrated hitters in Steven Kwan, Lane Thomas, and David Fry. Their bullpen, led by baseball’s best closer, Emmanuel Clase, is elite. In 2022, they pushed the Yankees to five games in the ALDS, and the hulking Josh Naylor briefly rocked the baby against Cole. The Guardians are eager for another clash.
But this, in every sense, is the Yankees’ series to lose, though they can lose it by beating themselves. Against the Royals, they didn’t hit enough, and their outstanding bullpen, along with the quiet October legend Giancarlo Stanton, bailed them out. If Judge is the regular season version of himself and Soto keeps getting on base ahead of him, the Yankees will score many runs and win. Gleyber Torres has been excellent, Jazz Chisholm Jr. is the swaggering otaku the Yankees needed along, and Austin Wells, until a late season slump, was a rookie of the year contender. Led by Cole, the Yankees starting pitching is more than good enough to win a pennant, and the Guardians lack the depth to effectively match it. On paper, this is a series that should be wrapped on quickly.
Of course, we know baseball is nothing like that. The postseason is often volatile. The Mets and the Yankees have gut-punched their fan bases plenty. But if they both win, we can have the wondrous spectacle of an indicted New York City mayor presiding over a subway series. We’ve earned that at least, haven’t we?
