It’s not easy being for the Met fans these days.
Not only is your team in the toilet, they have to see the indignity of their home stadium being invaded by thousands of Yankee fans, as they go and take on the “home” Tampa Bay Rays.
Last night, you would have thought the Rays caught something from Mets, as they seemed to lose interest in the 5-1 Yankee win. In reality, even though Tampa Bay were here in body, its spirit was back home after Hurricane Irma came though.
And thus, this unique opportunity. With so many firsts yesterday, here’s one for today. Rays starter Brett Snell is now the proud owner of the lowest number starting pitcher’s jersey for any home starter at Citi Field.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t as cool as the others, but we try.
What is cool is seeing this great ballpark come to life again with the Rays fighting for a playoff spot and the Yankees trying to hold onto theirs. And tonight a tight pitcher duel with the Rays eking out the 2-1 win.
It makes for great theater, even though it still feels kind of surreal.
But since the Rays are Citi Field’s home tenant for another day and its landlord will be playing golf in a couple of weeks, maybe Met fans should just adopt the Rays for the rest of this season. They seem to be a young and hungry team and frankly with outside chance at the wild card, you really aren’t front running, so if they make the playoffs, you have a claim.
Even the Wilpons would approve, because with a payroll of around $97 million, they may look at the Rays as the franchise they want to model their team after.
Heck, even Lucas Duda is playing for the Rays, so every Met fan has their favorite Ray already.
Besides, what else are you going to do? The NFL? The Giants look terrible and the Jets are just unwatchable.
Unless you are going to watch the Mets lose over the next three weeks, you have to adopt someone and the options are just not very appealing. The Yankees? No. Red Sox? Before you say yes, go up to Boston and tell some Sox fans you like the Mets and get back to me.
Houston? Blah. Cleveland? Then you are a front runner.
And the National League doesn’t get any better. Nationals? Cubs? Cardinals? Dodgers? Come on. We all know those aren’t options.
See, the Rays are pretty appealing.
Besides, It would be nice for the people in Florida to have something like the Rays over the next few weeks to take their minds off the devastation, just like the Mets did for us in 2001.
Think about how nice that would be for the people of Florida if the Rays can manage some sort of miracle run and make it to the World Series. It would be a great story.
And part of their lore would be the three games they played as New York’s third home team.
Could you imagine if they knocked the Yankees out in the Wild Card game? Wouldn’t that be Amazin’.
So yeah. Adopt the Rays, Met fans and lets watch some meaning games this September.
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