Growing up in the New York metropolitan area, you are indoctrinated in the belief that this city is the biggest, the best, the greatest: Look, ma, I’m the capital of the world! We are the ultimate closers, you are taught, embracing the winners-and-losers philosophy espoused in “Glengarry Glen Ross,” David Mamet’s play about real estate sales.
First place: a Cadillac Eldorado.
Second place: a set of steak knives.
When we deign to participate in silly competitions with other cities — over the best museums, the best pizza, the best organized crime — we do so with an eye roll so exaggerated that it can unite this divided country in a shared loathing of New York. You could say our condescension is a patriotic act.
But throughout the decade about to close, smaller American cities have been able to wipe the smirk from New York’s collective countenance by bringing up one subject. It is the Goliath-toppling stone in David’s arsenal:
Sports.
“How nice it must be to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art anytime you want,” Kansas City, Mo., might say. “By the way, how are those Mets?”
“That ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ play on Broadway is supposed to be wonderful,” Boston might say. “Speaking of which, what’s up with your Jets?”
And pretty much any city could simply ask:
“Are the Knicks still in the N.B.A.?”
Consider how the rest of the country experienced the last decade. The Golden State Warriors reached the N.B.A. finals five times and won three championships. The New England Patriots made it to the Super Bowl five times, and won three. The Chicago Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup three times. The San Francisco Giants won three World Series, and the Boston Red Sox won two. The Los Angeles Galaxy won three Major League Soccer championships, and the Seattle Sounders won two.
If you were to plot a map of winning sports cities over the last 10 years, you’d run out of pushpins. Meanwhile, the New York area has at least two teams competing in most of the major sports. And how many championships did the area’s 12 teams — including the New York Liberty and the New Jersey Devils — bring home?
One.
The Giants prevailed in the Super Bowl back in 2012, distant enough for that Eldorado to be sold for parts by now at some chop shop in Queens. Otherwise, it’s been a decade of: Here’s your set of steak knives, New York; use them responsibly.
In fact, New York has won second-place steak knives only three times in the past decade: once in baseball (the Mets in 2015) and twice in hockey (the Devils in 2012 and the Rangers in 2014). With the occasional interruption of a futile playoff run, the rest of the decade brings to the troubled mind a quotation attributed to the poet William Butler Yeats: “Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”
Replace “Being Irish” with “Being a New York sports fan,” and there you have it for him, her, them and us.
But WHY, the New York fan wails.
It’s not for lack of spending. By most measures, New York sports franchises are often near or at the front of the pack in team payrolls. Which reminds us to give a shout-out to Bobby Bonilla, the long-retired outfielder who played for the Mets last century, yet every July through 2035 will receive a check from the Mets for $1.19 million. Honor is due.
The sustained sports failure of this superlative-obsessed metropolis is due to a toxic combination of better opponents, questionable coaching and front-office mismanagement. Add in a few owners who earned their vaunted positions in life through the hard work of having been born, and whose behavior sometimes distracts from their teams’ often frustrating performances.
There is, for example, Jeff Wilpon, the chief operating officer of the Mets and a son of Fred, a real estate developer and the team’s majority owner. A few years ago Jeff was accused of repeatedly humiliating a senior vice president in the Mets organization for the audacity of becoming pregnant while not married; she was later fired.
Though the matter was settled out of court, the former employee still threw some sassy shade in her lawsuit, claiming that she had done well in her job despite “extraordinary challenges,” including the organization’s repeated public-relations blunders and failure to “field a winning team in six years.”
But Wilpon is no match for James Dolan, the son of the founder of Cablevision who, as chairman of Madison Square Garden, has been responsible for the Knicks, the Rangers and, until January, the Liberty — therefore owning a disproportionate share of New York’s sports-related misery. He also fronts a band that has opened for various A-list acts, including the Eagles, at places like the Garden. (Some have suggested that his appearances at these coveted venues are directly connected to his day job as a billionaire with enormous sway in the entertainment business. People can be so cruel.)
In 2015, Dolan demonstrated his peculiar approach to audience development by sending a vicious response to a 72-year-old Knicks fan who had implored him in a harsh email to sell the team to someone with competence. This was a fan, by the way, who had been rooting for the Knicks since before Dolan was born.
Dolan’s emailed response began, “You are a sad person,” and devolved from there. He bet that the fan was a “hateful mess” who probably hadn’t done anything positive or nice in his life. “You most likely have made your family miserable,” wrote the billionaire with music in his soul. “Alcoholic maybe.”
Dolan sent his flaming email during the 2014-15 season, which the Knicks finished with a 17-65 record.
Fun fact. In the five seasons before the dumpster fire of this current campaign, the Knicks won 126 games and lost an astounding 284. Holograms of the 1973 world champion Knicks would have posted a better record.
But it’s the fouls committed in the front office, more than those on the court, that have persuaded elite stars like Kristaps Porzingis to leave and franchise players like Kevin Durant to stay away.
How bad has it been? Or, as the former Knicks president Phil Jackson once infamously tweeted about 3-point-shooting teams like the often dominant Warriors: “Seriously, how’s it goink?”
It ain’t “goink” so good. When the Knicks recently won two games in a row, fans didn’t know how to celebrate such success — and if they did, it was from a distance. About the only people able to afford a Knicks ticket these days are preening hedge-fund bros who think a back-door play is something to hide from the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Knicks, though, are only the most extreme example of New York City’s consistent sports futility.
The Jets haven’t made the playoffs since the 2010 season, and the Giants were crushed by the Green Bay Packers in the 2016 season’s wild-card round. The Islanders and Devils haven’t gotten past the second round of the playoffs in years. The Yankees have delighted the rest of the country — especially Houston — by repeatedly coming up short in the postseason.
This is not to say there haven’t been moments of grace, even of glory. Who can forget guard Jeremy Lin coming off the deep end of the bench to inspire the Knicks during the “Linsanity” of 2012? Or Derek Jeter hitting a game-winning single in his last at-bat at Yankee Stadium in 2014? Or the back-to-back Cy Young Awards won by Mets pitcher Jacob deGrom? Or the late-career class of Giants quarterback Eli Manning, Yankees pitcher C.C. Sabathia and Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist?
But the Knicks let Lin go after that magical season, Jeter’s farewell tour seemed to last longer than his 20-year career, and we are more likely to remember — and perversely cherish — other moments:
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The notorious “butt fumble” of Thanksgiving Day 2012, when Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez collided with the derrière of one of his offensive linemen, causing a fumble that was returned by the Patriots for a touchdown. Perhaps the greatest Jets achievement of the last decade has been to introduce the term “butt fumble” into the lexicon.
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The remarkable 2014 season of the Yankees superstar Alex Rodriguez; not one pitcher was able to strike him out! Mainly because he was serving a one-year suspension for his involvement with performance-enhancing drugs.
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The notorious Ponzi scheme of the former stockbroker Bernard L. Madoff that involved the Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz — which beleaguered fans noted by simply saying: Of course. The owners were forced to pony up a multimillion-dollar settlement that jeopardized their control of the team.
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The inscrutable triangle offense famously imposed upon the Knicks by the team president, Jackson, who assumed that his players understood such concepts as “passing” and “teamwork.” He clearly did not understand what was meant by “Carmelo Anthony.”
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The forcible removal of Charles Oakley, the outspoken but well-liked former Knicks star, from the Garden by Dolan’s security staff during a Knicks game in 2017. In the ensuing altercation, Oakley (Did we say this was Charles Oakley?) was arrested and handcuffed — and his lawsuit against Dolan is still pending.
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That moment when Mr. Met overcame adversity and flipped the bird at some hecklers despite having only four fingers on each hand. Easily the highlight of the team’s 2017 season.
We could go on, but why continue to kick a dead decade?
Perhaps it’s time to consider the feats of individuals, like Dalilah Muhammad, the track and field superstar from Queens who recently broke her own record in the 400-meter hurdles. Or time to look to the future, when the Yankees will have a new superstar on the mound, the Mets will have a different controlling owner, the Giants will be building around a young quarterback, the Knicks will — ah, the hell with it.
Happy New Decade, enjoy your steak knives, and please direct your emails of outrage over this rant to James L. Dolan, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Madison Square Garden Company. He’s good about getting back.
Dan Barry is a senior writer at The Times who has completed a circumnavigation of Mr. Met’s head.
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December 31, 2019 at 02:06AM
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