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During the 5th annual Daily News Breakfast Club, Daily News Senior Executive Editor Robert Sapio was asked why the Yankees get more 
coverage from his newspaper than the Mets.
According to Sapio, right now, ‘the Yankees are magic,’ since they have Alex Rodriguez, the Steinbrenners and Derek Jeter.
However, he noted, had the Yankees continued to lose last summer, and had the Mets continued to win, instead of how it eventually played out, ‘it would have been the Mets dominating the sports pages in September.’
…well, of course…and that’s exactly why this question was asked…i mean, look, part of my job is to keep very close tabs on what newspapers are doing…from what i can tell, using the very scientific method known as ‘my eyeballs,’ over the last two years, regardless of who is winning more, or who’s losing more, the Yankees get more coverage, plain and simple - be it in print or on television…according to me, this is why there are far more regularly-updated Mets blogs than Yankees blogs…
…the thing is, outside of actual Yankees fans, most people hate the Yankees…you’re either a fan of theirs, or they’re the enemy…for the majority of baseball fans, there appears to be no middle ground…and this goes for pretty much every fan in baseball, as far as i can tell…and so, when a team is that hated, it makes sense that they’ll be so obsessed about locally and nationally…people obsess over their success, because it’s ‘bad for baseball,’ and they obsess over their failure because it’s downright hilarious and so much fun when it happens…
…i stopped caring about the War of the Back Pages when i stopped being concerned with the Yankees altogether - and, instead, started focusing my energy on worrying about the Phillies, Braves, Marlins, Nationals, and the rest of the National League…seriously, i am a far happier baseball fan, in general, ever since i started mocking the American League as a whole, started viewing them as some side-show circus, while seeing the National League as the place where real baseball is played, and where the true competition sits, with regards to the Mets getting to a World Series…
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The ironic thing is, I would guess that about 75% of the back pages are negative headlines. So they Yankees can win that war if they want it.
+10
The only thing better than good Yankees press is
. . .
bad Yankees press.
-10
I think you meant “good Mets press.”
I wouldn’t refer to a perennial first round playoff knockout as “magic,” but I guess standards everywhere have sunk to new lows. Consideribng the final month the mets had, they should have dominated the page. It may have been black magic, but that was magic, my man.
Since November 1, Daily News back pages have shown:
Yankees: 8 positive (mostly ARod coming back), 9 negative (most steroids or winter meeting breakdown)
Knicks: 11 negative, no positive
Giants: 3 positive, 4 negative
Mets: 2 positive, 1 negative
Bonds: 2 negative
Jets: 1 negative
and a few that were neutral about an upcoming matchup (like Pats/Colts)
Not sure if Yanks getting 17 DN back pages to Mets 3 is a good thing or bad, but this only proves that there is a lot of truth to the more coverage thing.
I don’t think it has anything to do with the amount of coverage that the media wants to give the Yankees.
I think that if you do nothing that warrants coverage, ie the Mets, you are going to get trumped on the back pages by a team who has been pretty active, ie the Yankees.
I guess that’s true if you consider resigning your own free agents and that big trade for Jonathan Albaladejo “pretty active.”
As opposed to what? The Mets signing THEIR own FA’s, and making the non-issue trade of Milledge?
When “your own” FA’s include A-Rod, Mariano, Pettite, and Posada, then yes, I do consider that being “pretty active”.
do the Yankmees transactions include “bigger” names? Absolutely, no argument from me there. Since 11/1 the Yankees have resigned 4 of their own players and made one trade, the Mets have resigned 2 of their own players, made 3 trades and a rule 5 selection, so I would argue that the Mets have been “more” active as opposed to suggesting that they have “done nothing,” but yes their names are bigger so you win on the “warrant coverage” thingy, well played.
Don’t Yankees draw the most people both at home and on the road? At root, newspapers are always looking to get the best possible circulation.
I’m guessing Yankees sell papers better than Mets sell papers.
I’m a Mets fan and a Yankee hater, but as long as Yanks sell more papers they will get more coverage.
Very true. They are in the business of selling papers, and this applies to those in other states who buy the out of town version of the Daily News over their local paper to read about their Yankees.
However, nothing sells like a headline about Isiah.
I like that the Yankees are so polarizing. I think they are great for MLB.
Matt, once every few thousand words, you say something profound. This is one of those times.
“New York was, is and always will be a National League Town.” – Omar Minaya
So, Dodgers and Giants weren’t forced out of NY by lousy attendance. They were just the vanguard of NY’s expansion into the Left Coast?
I don’t know. I heard there is a great documentary about the Brooklyn Dodgers… “Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush”… i’ll have to see it sometime.
arod would that turned the back page thing around immediately
The Yankees are magic? Ugh. Utter garbage. He must be a Yankee fan. Here’s what the Yankees are:
Pride, Power, and PEDs!
Aura and mystique and deca-durabolin.
That’s their magic.
+10
after the 2000 season, the ny yankees built a team filled with stars who fill the stadium and back pages. maybe the hgh/’roid got to their heads.
not a winning formula, but a great business model. go luck to them.
True Matt,
All the AL needs is aluminum bats and football style face masks and they will officially become the Micky Mouse League. I watch my AL fan friends look at us NL fans with confusion when we are focusing or cheering on moving a runner over, bunting, or hitting and running. Wow, AL baseball is a shell of the real pristine game that we all love.
VIVA LA NL!
I can’t wait for the day the AL adopts a DH for ALL position players. This plan will be spearheaded by Donald Fehr and the player’s union.
$$$$$ + PHD + Old Stars = MAGIC ???
You got the formula all wrong, it’s more like:
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ + PHD + denial + Old Stars = MAGIC
-10
Say all you want to, but they still win more than we do.
to be fair, the Yankees have deserved the back pages more this offseason than the Mets. Other than the Milledge trade, what have the Mets actually done? The Yankees are a circus act these days with Hankbrenner, the Torre “saga”, the ARod “saga”, and now the Mitchell Report stuff. They’re looking more and more like the Yankees in the good old days of the 80’s.
By the way, if you can stomach it, go check out the back pages from September 1 – October 1. I’d make a pretty big wager the Mets were being covered more than the Yankees at that point, unfortunately. Bad news sells better than no news.
The Yankees are more of a national team. The Mets are the only true local baseball team.
I forgot who said it, some writer being interviewed on SNY about the 86 Mets. He said, when the Yankees win, the town is happy. But when the Mets win, the town turns into a huge party.
And I’ve always harped on this: if and when the Mets win a championship, it will be so much more satisfying than any of the Yankees’ championships. The heart just works that way.
Exactly. 69′ and 86′ were like D-Day when the Mets won. I’ll give the Yankees a pass on 96′ since there was the whole feel good story with Joe Torre and his brother, and them coming back down 2-0 against the Braves. But other then that, 98-00 was met with a collective yawn. The Yankees are expected to win, so when they win it isn’t a big deal. When the Mets win, it’s an event and almost everyone in New York gets pumped up about it. All you gotta do is remember the 80’s when the Mets got most of the back pages and coverage and the only time the Yankees got the back page was when Steinbrenner fired one his managers.
+ 5 to points guy.
Forgot a few $’s and ofcourse “De-Nile”…that river in Egypt.
We could also add a few *************************** to that formula
“you’re either a fan of theirs, or they’re the enemy…for the majority of baseball fans, there appears to be no middle ground…and this goes for pretty much every fan in baseball, as far as i can tell”
This is true for the majority of fans. But you must take into account trans-planted fans that live in Boston.
I may be one of the few Mets fans that hates the Red Sox more than the Yankees. No one should question it either until you live in a city of Red Sox fans. If there was one thing worse than a Yankees fan, it is a Red Sox fan….I know….I know…it is shocking, but trust me.
example . . .
i dislike the redsox more than i dislike the yankees, mainly because of their fans.
Your right, I shouldve clarified my statement…I dislike the fans much more than i dislike the teams.
100% agree. went to college with alot of red sox fans, grew up in NY. post 04 the red sox fans have been worse than any yankee fans ive ever dealt with. the yankees for all the hate they get from us still do have the 26 titles and the laundry list of great players. the red sox have 3 WS in 89 years. i honestly wouldve rooted for the yankees over the red sox this year in the alcs had it happened.
amen
That’s blasphemy.
You are absolutely wrong.
I lived in Boston for just over 13 years and I can tell you first hand that you’d be hard pressed to find a city that loves their baseball team more than Boston does. It isn’t like going into Philly, where you honestly could be mugged for wearing the jersey of a foreign team.
People in Boston know their baseball and they, for the most part, are a civilized people. I think they are 100% better fans than the majority of Yankee fans.
I disagree, I was born and raised in suburban NY as a Met fan, then as an adult moved to and lived in suburban Boston for 20 years. The Red Sox fans I met all loved me precisely because of our common bond-Yankee hatred, despite the fact that I moved up there in summer of ‘87 when their wounds of ‘86 were still fresh.
For a young man who is from New York and goes to school in Boston, I have to deal with thousands of bandwagon fans. Maybe they give real Boston fans a bad name, but if so, they give them a reallllly bad name. These fans barely follow baseball and the only true thing they root for is anything anti-yankees. I mean they dont care how theyre team is doing, they couldn’t even name everyone on the active roster, but what they do know is how to chant “Yankees Su ck” . And they do a very good job of chanting that at every single sporting event in Boston, no matter what sport, what level of play, or who the opposition is. THIS is why I hate Red Sox fans more than Yankees fans, because Yankees fans could care less about the Sawx, but it aint the other way around.
I completely disagree with you. My experience with the Boston baseball fans is the exact opposite of everything you post here.
And by the way, you get bandwagon fans everywhere you go, and in my experience there are more bandwagon fans in NYC than there are anywhere else.
And if you honestly believe that the Yankees and their fans could care less about the Red Sox, their fans, and what they are doing then you just aren’t paying any attention.
For one, have you even heard of Johan Santana?
Go to a rangers game, go to a jets game, go to a rutgers game, you will not here one ” Red Sox Su ck” chant.
Go to a celtics game, go to a pats game, go to a BU or NU game, and you will ALWAYS here a “yankees Su ck” chant.
I went to a concert in NYC, of a band with Boston orgins, witha heavy Boston following in attendance and I heard numerous Lets go Red Sox and Yankees Su ck chants all night. These people give your beloved red socks fans a bad name.
You do get bandwagon fans everywhere, tis true, but with the recent success of Boston, IT IS everywhere in the city.
Last I checked, Johan is still on the Twins.
What does Johan have to do with
The Mets could have owned NY in 2006 if they would have beaten an inferior Cardinal team and beaten Detroit in the World Series. They blew the opportunity and i’m afraid with the way the baseball world is looking the Mets aren’t going to get that opportunity again for a long time.
Great post Matt. I’ve been making the NL>AL argument for years.
im not sure i really care about this kind of stuff. i mean what have the mets done to earn any kind of press coverage since the season ended besides trade lastings milledge for 1/4 of the worst offense in baseball.
You can call them a side show circus all you want, but until the NL breaks away and starts having their own “Real Baseball” Championship series, we all have to deal with the fact that the AL is the dominant division.
yeah – plus if the idea is to not get worked up by the yankees and to focus on the NL East, why even pretend there is some NL/AL rivalry? what is this, the 1960’s? plus, as far as competitive balance goes, the AL destroys the NL.
You’re right the AL does destroy the NL.. That is because everyone wants offense.. more and more offense.. So if that is the kind of game that you want to watch – The AL is for you.
I like to watch the NL because that is the way the game was intended to be played. Strategy is part of what makes this game great. If you want to play checkers and not chess, the DH does that for you.
Most of us on here agree with this. However, IF the goal is to win a WS then we have to compete with these offensive offense teams.
I completely agree. We have to compete with them for 7 games (world series) though. Maybe 20 at most considering inter league play, we are not going to keep a 15 -20 mil/year slugger on the bench just for those 7 – 20 games. This puts as at a severe disadvantage when competing with the AL, even in a NL park because they will have the premier slugger on the bench to use as a PH or they can sacrifice defense and put the slugger in to sit an injured player. We will not eat a roster spot or pay the money for a slugger to rot on the bench and rightfully so. We are at a disadvantage and there is no way around it. Both leagues have the DH or don’t, that is the only way. I root for NL style ball.
i have no issue with anyone saying they prefer one style over the other – but i just want championships. they can play standing on their heads for all i care.
Well, I think the only real way the Mets take over the backpages(And I could care less, we don’t need any more know-it-all journalists that think they know what they’re talking about digging for a negative story) we’d have to do some significant and/or play for a while after the Yankees don’t. So consecutive years playing farther into october than them, or winning the world series(over someone else)
The Mets want to dominate the headlines anytime soon?
Trade for Santana. It’s that simple.
Matt, I would say the “true competition” right now lies in the AL. They’ve won 3 of the last 4 World Series…..with a combined record of 12-1 vs NL WS teams (excluding the 2006 Miracle fluke Cardinals).
They havn’t losts an all star game since the stone age, they have better hitters, better lineups, AND better starting pitchers.
I’m all for NL rules and pitcher hitting….but you must be smokin some good stuff to think the NL is where the true competition lies.
There isnt one National League team built to compete in a 5 or 7 game set with their AL equivelents. DH or not…..thats the truth.
And the truth in 2007 was very much so in the pudding. Our best…..was a big joke to the AL’s best.
The DH doesn’t affect a teams entire offense. Not every team has a great DH like big Papi.
During interleague, the NL for the most part…still got spanked and that was using an extra hitter.
You can take away the DH’s for 90% of AL teams….and they still have the better hitters. Pujols, and Howard are probably the only NL exceptions.
And furthermore…..the better pitchers lie in the AL…and they pitch against much better hitters.
So enough of this. It’s not even debatable. The talent lies in the American League Cerrone….wether you want to believe it or not is another story.
Adrenaline levels after percocet….
Percocet. Prescription meds percocet….