Are you an over or an underdog?

12 April 2012

New Yorkers, usually the second most sophisticated urbanites in the world after Londoners, have blown their collective cool.

The city's population has divided along rabidly partisan lines because their two baseball teams, the super-rich Yankees and the under-doggy Mets, are to face each other for the first time in a seven-game "subway" series (so named because it's possible to get both to Shea Stadium in Queens and Yankee Stadium in the Bronx without using a car - a weird concept for Americans) within the World Series. Forget the mayoral or presidential elections - to listen to New Yorkers, you'd think that the Yankees playing the Mets was the most important contest since the Yankees played the Confederates.

Now, quite apart from the fact that it's ridiculous to get worked up over a game which is, basically, rounders, the idea of defining yourself by the sports squad you support is a profoundly un-metropolitan idea. A team-based rivalry that divides the populace is entirely understandable in underprivileged areas where little happens - Manchester, Liverpool, or Scotland, say - but would be unthinkable in London. Sure, there are local rivalries among football clubs such as Arsenal and Spurs, Fulham and Chelsea, Millwall and everyone else, but there are no pan-capital battle lines. Can you imagine this city riven by arguments over the relative merits of the MCC or Surrey cricket clubs, or Catford and Walthamstow dog tracks? No, I thought not. Londoners do divide into overdog/underdog fan factions, but on issues far, far more important than sport.

Rain gods vs anoraks

Buses vs Tube

The corner caff vs Starbucks (ditto local pubs vs All Bar One, chip shops vs McDonald's)

Sainsbury's vs Tesco

quite

Heal's vs Ikea (ditto Harvey Nichols vs the Whitgift Centre)

West vs East...

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