Yippee. It’s the Subway Series, Game 3

Yippee. It’s the Subway Series, Game 3
May 22nd, 2011 by slangon

Well, I guess you can’t win them all. The Yankees beat the Mets 7-3 thanks to 4 Yankees homers hit to the Little League-sized right field of Yankee Stadium. Of course, the Mets were playing in that same Little League-sized Stadium, so there’s no complaints from me. I’m just saying. Hopefully the Amazin’s can take the final game today and keep themselves at .500.

Anyway, we all know that inter-league play started in 1997. Do you believe that this is actually the 15th year? Geez. Before that obviously, the only time American League teams would face National League teams was the World Series and occasionally during Spring Training, right? Wrong.

At least in the case of the Mets and Yankees, there used to be an annual in-season exhibition game where the 2 squads would face off to win the Mayor’s Trophy. The game was a way for the City of New York to raise funds for sandlot baseball. The Annual Mayor’s Trophy Game tradition had actually started in 1946, when the Dodgers and Giants were still in New York. It started with the Yanks and Giants agreeing to play a best of 3 series, but after the second year, the series format was abandoned in favor of a single game due to scheduling headaches. For the first few years it was the Giants against the Yankees, but eventually the Dodgers got into the act as well.

The last of this first round of Mayor’s Trophy games was played in Ebbett’s Field in 1957. I guess it’s hard to have an exhibition game when you only have 1 baseball team left in New York. In the end, The Yankees were 10-3 in these games, the Giants were 1-7 and the Dodgers were 2-3.

The Mayor’s Trophy was revived once the Mets came to town. The first Mets/Yankees game was player in 1963 at Yankee Stadium. Interestingly, the laughable Mets somehow beat the American League Champion Bombers 6-2. Supposedly, Casey Stengel was looking to get back at the Yankees and decided to pitch Carl Willey, who was one of his better pitchers but had just thrown 2 days before, rather than Ken Mackenzie. All the Mets fans who went to the game had their banner confiscated at the gates.

The final Mayor’s Trophy game between the Mets and the Yankees was played in 1983. In the end, the Yankees won 10 times, the Mets won 8 times and there was 1 tie, in 1979 when the game was called in the 5th due to rain.

As a side note, we here at SlangKo Corporate extend our thoughts and prayers to Gary Carter and his family. It seems he has a couple of small brain tumors, which is definitely not cool.