Encounter on the Van Wyck, er, Highway Farty
As a displaced Mets fan, living in St. Louis as I do, I’m mostly isolated from New York culture. At rare times, however, I get to experience it first-hand. To wit: my morning commute today, during which I was cut-off by a thick-goateed man driving a navy Ford Taurus (well, he waved his hand out the window to warn me, and I was listening to KDHX, and it was a beautiful day, so I didn’t mind terribly). After merging ahead of me in the far left lane, he held up his hand in gratitude, and I pointed back. Then I looked down at the license-plate holder: NEW YORK YANKEES.
Now, not having been born a Mets fan (I was a pre-teen convert), I can’t claim to really harbor the deep disdain of Yankee fans that I suppose most non-pinstripers have. Rather, it’s become somewhat of a learned behavior, and so I tried to screw up some anger when I realized just whom I had let in. Almost as quickly as he’d entered my lane, he veered back into the middle lane from which he’d come, and I pulled ahead, and, noticing his lowered window, lowered mine. What ensued surely appeared to unknowing drivers as an escalating episode of road rage, but in reality was a time-honored tradition of trash talk among baseball rivals. I shouted across at him something to the effect that if I’d known he was a Yankee fan, I wouldn’t have let him in, and he laughed and vouched that he was indeed a big fan. I proudly countered by claiming my Mets allegiance, which inspired a loud Bronx-accented anecdote about how he “was there at the 2000 Subway Series, you know” which he believed the Mets should’ve won had they not “f#$@-ed up Game 1.” Thanks for the Armando-Benitez-implosion memory, guy. Before I could brag how Carlos Beltran was going to tear up Randy Johnson (1.100 OPS lifetime vs. the Unit), the guy had impatiently steered over into the far right lane and was gone.
It was almost like springtime in New York.