Ministry of the Subway

By John "Metstradamus" Coppinger
Posted Thursday, June 14, 2007

I can’t read the newspapers anymore.

Well, that’s not really true. I do barely read them in this sense: I go online, I check only the articles that interest me, and then I play Bejeweled for seven hours straight. It’s the beautiful thing about the Internet: I create my own experience, and anything that I can shut out, I will.

But in terms of reading an actual newspaper more or less from cover to cover when I’m on the train and that’s the only entertainment that I have from Queens to Manhattan, I can’t do it anymore. Sure, I can choose the articles that I want to read and use the rest to line a bird cage…but it’s harder when you have those last three stops of time to kill, and certain articles that you save until the end because you know that they’re going to stick in your craw all day are the only ones left between you and your destination, you figure…well, what can it hurt, right?

That’s what I thought on Tuesday when, for the first time in a while, I picked up a couple of newspapers as auxiliary entertainment to supplement my iPod. Got through Queens without a problem. Had to get through those last three stops, so I chose a selection by Mike Vaccaro of the New York Post, regarding whether Alex Rodriguez’s recent resurgence coincidentally started when he got caught with the exotic dancer in Toronto. Now I thought this was going to be a piece glorifying Rodriguez for getting a piece. But what I actually read sent me into a tizzy. If you missed it, here is the pertinent passage:

“You can take the temperature of the town by the standings in the AL East. A few weeks ago, there seemed to be a lethargic pall hovering overhead, a restless gray that wouldn’t dissipate. Maybe that was the weather. More likely, it was the Yankees.

Now, the days seem brighter, the nights louder, the conversation livelier. There is a definite bounce in the city’s step. The old, familiar swagger seems to be back, and in full force. Maybe that’s the weather, too. More likely, it’s the Yankees.

It works that way around here. Every so often, when it seems the Mets are about to make inroads over the moat that separates baseball serfs from baseball royalty, it seems we are reminded that the Yankees aren’t about to easily part with their throne. The Mets were soaring last month; people took it in stride. The Mets are struggling now; the panic seems strangely muted.

The Mets don’t inspire mood swings. The Yankees sure do.

And right now, the mood is good…”

That in a nutshell, is why I can’t read newspapers anymore. Because that, my students, is unequivocally the dumbest thing I’ve ever read in my life.

The days are brighter because the Yankees are controlling the weather with their stellar play against the Pirates and White Sox?

It flew in the face of a piece I had written this past Monday, where I had about how grumpy I was, and that Met fans are wired to be specifically grumpy when the Mets lose…especially when they lose nine out of ten. And as you know, Met fans take up roughly half of our fair city. But no! According to Vaccaro, the city is happy! The entire city!

The city is happy because the only standings that matter, apparently, are the ones in the Junior League East. Because when the Yankees are winning, the world is a better place, isn’t it? The skies are blue, the air is clean, the birds sing opera, the streets are clean, there’s no crime, bottled water is free, there’s a marshmallow in every spoonful of Lucky Charms, elementary school grades are up, teachers make six figure salaries, there’s a chicken in every pot, there’s a car in every garage, and there’s an ending to every David Chase series. God is a Yankees fan, don’t you know that by now? So brush off the clouds and cheer up, Metstradamus. Put on a happy face!

Bite me. How’s that for a mood swing?

Thank heavens for the Internet, thank heavens for the blogosphere, and thank heavens for Flushing University. Because without choice, without the option of dumping these Yankee-Centric media types posing as down the middle beat guys serving the public interest…the whole public…we’d be looking at sports sections as the Ministry of Truth, where rooting for the Mets would be akin to as a “thoughtcrime” (Winston Smith would have been a great blogger). I myself feel like the girl with the hammer thrown through the television screen in the Apple commercial. But instead of Big Brother, it’s Roger Clemens on the screen telling me what a positive person he is, as FOX rolls the clips of Clemens beaning Mike Piazza in the head and throwing a bat shard at him over and over again. And get ready for all of that today, as the Yankees are up, the Mets are down, and everybody’s favorite Messiah gears up take on us lowly baseball serfs.

(Kids, if you’re confused at this point, Google “1984” or “Winston Smith” so you can catch up with the lesson plan.)

So as we come upon this latest installment of the blood war known as Yankees vs. Mets, remember that there’s a choice. You have a choice of feelings, you have a choice in your rooting interest, and you certainly can choose not to help an old lady cross the street, or buy extra girl scout cookies from your neighbor down the block, or step out of the way when a tourist is taking a picture of his wife standing in front of the Hard Rock Café from across the street because the Yankees are winning ball games, curing cancer, and ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction all at the same time. You have a choice to give Big Brother the middle finger, because he is watching, after all…making sure you have a bounce in your step.

And you could choose not to plunk down your hard earned quarter on a newspaper. It’s a choice I should make more often than I do.
 

You want to know what else bugs me? Then catch up with me at The Musings and Prophecies of Metstradamus for more good, clean whining and complaining.