Higher Power Day

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment” (Matt 22:37-38).

Who isn’t revved up by Francisco Lindor’s performance (especially on Father’s Day weekend, 2022) since his mother, Maria Serrano, arrived in town? Saturday’s game, with his 440-foot home run into the wind is good, but got even better: ‘I thought the wind was with me,’ he said. It’s amazing what good parents (& higher powers in general) do for players, whatever the game. Further, the incredible human performance that’s teased out by these forces is…use your own words.

The Mets and Yankees are both doing well this year; for a native New Yorker to entertain the idea of a Subway Series makes the heart race. Because Pray4Mets’ goal is to uplift Mets fans and the team, but, secondarily, all of New York City (and, perhaps more), a compounding concentration of energy toward achieving either team’s win is potent in the style of Wrigley’s Doublemint Gum’s ‘double the flavor, double the pleasure.’ In my quiet opinion.

So a question occurs: in a two-team market such as New York’s, can a fan favor both teams simultaneously? As a parent’s heart expands when child two, three or four arrives, can the fan’s mind and gut develop parallel bandwidths of affection, bonding and excitement?

I tested the concept and a couple of descriptive phrases with an old friend when we were lightly talking baseball and the subject of for whom one roots. Explaining my attraction to both New York teams, despite being married to a devout Mets fan and writing the Pray4Mets blog, I called myself ‘bi’ (no response, blank stare) and then tried out ‘goes both ways.’ That phrasing fell flat, too. There could be at least several reasons for lack of response, but clearly, the wording did not resound enough with that experienced baseball fan to prompt a chuckle, a twinkle, or some signal that my words made sense to anyone but me (and that I could use them to captivate readers in a blog post).

My long-time neighbor, a Pray4Mets charter member, died on June 1 of this year. Originally a Yankees fan, he took on the Mets when his children were young, but moved serially from the Yankees, not remaining yoked to both teams. At the rituals to mark his passing, the subject of the Mets came up many times. I floated my idea of being able to root for both New York teams at his wake, in a group of three men and three women: ‘do you think a person can be an equal fan to two teams?’ The men fell stonily silent while the women said, like a Greek chorus, ‘Don’t tell your husband.’ Oooh.

At the next day’s repast, the table talk also turned to the recently departed’s appreciation for the Mets. I gently raised my subject, seeking just a bit more opinion to help me formulate and test a perspective, and introduced my new word and contribution to the sports lexicon to describe this possible phenomenon: bi-teamorous. ‘Can a fan be bi-teamorous?’ I asked. ‘Maureen,’ said the elder at the table, reflecting today’s times, and with complete seriousness, ‘it would be easier to have more than one gender than to have more than one team.’ For public purposes, that sealed the deal. The discussion is over, at least among the men. And, I trust them.

We know that women do things differently than men. Yes, they do. Many parts of their architecture – physical, emotional, chemical, etc., are different than men’s. So, it may be that women can favor two teams, while men can’t, each for their own good reasons; or even that a woman can simply raise a question that a man can’t bring to the table. These are other discussions for the spa, salon, military academies or historians from this point forward…‘is the acceptance of bi-teamorous behavior the slippery-slope beginning of an ‘everyone gets a trophy’- decline of civilization?’ In the meantime, I’ll never look quite the same way at dual citizenship, interfaith marriages, shared military commands, or, sports markets with two teams. Choose just one, a la the First Commandment, embrace the ‘One Father/One Mother/Higher Power’ concept, and commit to one winning team…in this case, Let’s Go Mets.

This post is dedicated to Dewey Storms… the model of an American man, and a great Mets dad.

Happy Father’s Day to all,

Maureen Edelson, Creator

Pray4Mets

Montclair, New Jersey

Email: Pray4Mets@gmail.com