Jumping The Chop

By John "Metstradamus" Coppinger
Posted Friday, April 20, 2007

So Sanjaya is finally off American Idol.

I know, it’s a strange way to start off a piece on “Flushing University”. But stay with me here…

For those of you who watch the show, Sanjaya Whatshisname is the perfect definition of “jumping the shark”, which is defined as the moment that a television show, or anything else for that matter, loses it’s relevance, becomes a caricature of itself, or just plain starts to get lame. If you watched the show to see the best singers move on to the finals, and you see this kid advancing week after week, then why even watch the show?

With the Braves coming to town today, I’ve been thinking about it over the last few days: Has the Mets/Braves rivalry jumped the shark? Has it lost its relevance? Has it become a caricature of itself? Is it lame?

Think about it for a second. There really haven’t been any tense moments between the two teams over the past few seasons…either we’ve been bad, or in the case of last year, they’ve been bad. And there haven’t even been any big time scandals since Steve Avery threw at Jose Vizcaino in 1996, or Michael Tucker karate kicked Mike Piazza on a slide in 1998, or John Rocker existed in 1999 (Rocker jumped the shark at birth). Recently, the best this rivalry saw was Tom Glavine jumping ship to play for the Mets, which didn’t bear immediate fruit. So you can really say that Mets vs. Braves really hasn’t been much of a rivalry this millennium, in either direction.

So has this rivalry jumped the shark? Have Mets fans become so focused on bigger and better things that the Braves rivalry doesn’t mean quite as much as it once did?

The simple answer is “hell no”.

You know how I know that? Atlanta Thrashers at New York Rangers…Game Three, this past Tuesday night…the Rangers have just scored a touchdown and were awaiting the extra point in their 7-0 victory. There’s about eight minutes left in the game, and what do I hear from the crowd?

The tomahawk chop.

Totally spontaneous, totally unrehearsed, totally sticking it to the city of Atlanta. My hockey team was in the midst of a four game sweep of the Thrashers, and the thing that I’m going to remember most was the mocking of Atlanta’s baseball team. That was probably the equivalent of when Mets fans chant “Yankees suck” during a game against the Nationals…except that this rivalry not only transcends opponents, it transcends from baseball to hockey.

So no, this rivalry hasn’t jumped the shark at all, and I hope it never does. Now all that’s left is to push the Braves into the pool so that the shark eats them, starting tonight.

And can we throw Sanjaya in the shark infested pool while we’re at it?
 

Join me at my home base, found at http://metstradamus.blogspot.com. We can discuss the Braves/Mets rivalry, Henrik Lundqvist, or even Sanjaya being eaten by a shark all you want.