This Mets-Dodgers series is really vexing me. I find it completely impossible to root for either team, which just doesn’t happen very often in baseball. I’m an American League girl for life, so my usual reaction to the first round of the NL playoffs is one of the following:
1. Root passionately for one team. (This only happens when the Cardinals are in the playoffs—i.e., frequently—because the Cards have long been the only NL team I care about. I love the Cardinals. Even this season, when they’ve been exceedingly hard to love.)
2. Root passionately against one team, and therefore root with temporary passion for whoever is playing them. (This has happened nearly every year in recent memory, because I consider it a solemn obligation to root against the Braves. So does God. That’s right, God hates the Braves. If He doesn’t, how do you explain their World Series record in the ’90s?)
3. Mostly ignore the games and root with mild indifference for whichever team will make an easier NLCS opponent for the Cards and/or World Series opponent for the AL team. (This usually involves the NL West. There are no teams in the NL West that I actually like.)
This time around, option 1 is going strong, option 2 isn’t applicable (because the Braves missed the playoffs for the first time in, what, 20,000 years? Okay, actually 16 years. I just checked). And option 3 is no longer an option, because I utterly friggin’ hate both teams. The Mets: pretenders, wannabes, and pathetic for a significant percentage of their forty or so years of existence. The Dodgers: betrayed Brooklyn (the place of my birth), kept Tommy Lasorda employed, have all the arrogance of the Yankees but little of the glory. It’s really, really difficult to decide who I hate more.
Further complicating matters, the Dodgers now have an edge: Nomar. I adore Nomar. If he hadn’t a) been injured so often and b) gone to the National League, he’d be my co-favorite player in baseball alongside Bernie Williams. As it is, he’s still in my top five favorite players. So I can’t in good conscience root against Nomar. Nonetheless, I can’t in good conscience root for the Dodgers either. But then again, I sure as hell can’t root for the Mets.
So I suppose the only choice is to just hold my nose and wait for the NLDS to be over (and quietly root for Nomar to have a really good series nonetheless). And after that, I fear I will find myself in the curious and unprecedented position of rooting for the Padres, a team whose very existence I routinely forget. But at least they aren’t the Mets or the Dodgers.