The Bleeding Blueshirts

By Taryn "The Coop" Cooper
Posted Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Like many of the relationships I have with men in my life, there is a certain theme. I feel like I give my all, and yet, in the end, I can be left unfulfilled. Something seems to be lacking in these relationships, and I can never really pinpoint what it is.

But my nearly 25-year relationship with a baseball team (that seems to have more turnover than your local McDonald’s) and a 20-year relationship with another team (who all seem to say “about” weird) allows me to come to terms with my feelings about sports teams and how they impact my subsequent relationships.

I am in an S&M relationship with the New York Mets baseball team and the New York Rangers hockey team.

Think about being a Mets fan. Has there been a day in your whole life that when you say you are a baseball fan who is from New York, people automatically assume you are a “Yankee” fan? To which you scoff and say HELL NO!!!!

And then you are asked the inevitable question…so…why are you a Mets fan?

Many of us have different explanations. In my case, my dad was a fan of the blue and orange when I was a kid. When a guy he called “Mex” was on the team, I asked him why he rooted for this team. Well, it turns out his dad rooted for them, therefore he rooted for them.

Well, like Cookie Monster once said, that was good enough for me. I was seven. My life hasn’t been the same since.

But rooting for a team doesn’t have to always be that simple. It can be simpler. I have a Mets fan friend who used to be able to get the games on the old WOR-TV and therefore, started rooting for the Mets. I have another friend who was from L.A. once upon a time, and when franchise player Mike Piazza became a Met, guess what? He became a Mets fan too.

Some people simply get addicted to the game. I have two female friends who became fans of the Mets – during the Robbie Alomar and Art Howe era, no less! – and hey, they fell in love with the game and the team.

So asking a Mets fan why they root for the team they root for, it’s almost like asking – why is the sun good? Why is a rainbow good?

It just is.

Now here’s the funny part of my existence as a sports fan. I root for the Rangers in hockey, the Jets in football and the, um, San Antonio Spurs in basketball? (Wait, how did that happen?) But as my friend Woodside Frank used to say, when the Mets lose, I am the biggest sourpuss. When these other teams lose, I just say, oh well, let’s just drink. Which is funny because, number of games-wise, the Mets play more games per year than any of my other teams. Yet, the roller coaster involvement, I think I just like it more. I like the pain, the drama. The agony of defeat and the thrill of winning.

But the Rangers. The only threat to my 20+ year love affair with those fellows out in Flushing is my love for the midtown Manhattan New York City boys, where you never have a boring day.

And when the Stanley Cup was won in 1994, after a 54-year drought, I thought, I will never love another.

Until, of course, they decided to play head games with me, by bringing on Wayne Gretzky (for those of you keeping track at home, the greatest player of not only his generation but everyone preceding him) and letting Mark Messier (Captain Forever) go, forever killing the prospects of winning another Stanley Cup in my lifetime, EVER.

Not to mention trading away Mr. Ranger himself, Brian Leetch, when he realistically should have retired as a Blue Shirt. And I continued to allow them to mess with my head, even when I was well aware of how human psychology worked, thank you very much.

Because that’s what true love is about.

But when my favorite player of all time, Jeremy Roenick (and for anyone who is a true Ranger fan, you may wonder why…well, I can’t explain, I just loved him, so deal with it) told all fans to kiss him where the sun don’t shine after a lengthy strike, I thought – screw you (I may have used a stronger term), bud! I was done with hockey.

It was bad enough the Mets tore my heart out of my butt. But now my hockey team? The team I could count on to at least make the playoffs? By the way, I’d like to bring up that only four teams out of two conferences don’t make the playoffs and the Rangers didn’t make the NHL playoffs…from 1998 until 2004.

As these fans from Yonkers once said to me – we sit here, we’re another year older, and we still don’t make the friggin' playoffs.

So I gave up on hockey…until my cousin, who has been a die-hard Devils fan since she was seven (seems to be a recurring theme – her father was a big hockey fan and turned her onto it), asked me to go to a Rangers/Devils game last Sunday.

I thought…what the heck? I’m not emotionally invested in this team. It will be great to watch a game and leave my emotions at the door.

Well, when Brendan Shanahan scored the winning goal off Devils goalie stalwart Martin Brodeur, I could only think one thing. Maybe two.

One thing was – oh, I am sooooo back.

The other was – HEY! HEY! Heyheyhey!!! (The chant after the Rangers score).

My teams may leave me unfulfilled with no championships in an extended period of time, or by disappointing me time and again.

But I’ll never root for another team or feel the same feelings as I do when they do win it all.

I was at Game 7 of the 1986 World Series when I was 10. I was across the street from the Garden when the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1994 (and kissed a bunch of cops when the Cup was in hand).

We’re locked together for life. If they whip me and leave me chained to the bed, I don’t care. I know when they win it all, the euphoria I feel compares to nothing else in the world.

Being addicted to something. Something bigger than yourself. When it ends, like baseball season or hockey season inevitably does, you have to replace your addiction with something else.

Rooting for baseball and hockey is the perfect cure for anyone with an addictive personality. Hockey and baseball season overlap. So you are never conflicted. You can safely replace one with the other, and be almost satisfied all year round.Pretty sweet.