Mets Intern Writes Popular Baseball Column.

The Yankees are worth $1.2 billion and now draw 4 million every season to decrepit Yankee Stadium.

Bear this in mind as you read another of Mike Lupica's endless attempts to shove the Mets down your throat:

"This is not breaking news inside Shea Stadium, or even on the inside with the Mets. But the way they measure how they are doing each day is by checking the standings in the NL East, not whether they are on one of the back pages of the New York City tabloids, and not by checking their record against the one belonging to the darlings of the tabloids, the Yankees."

The Mets are better than the Yankees in 2007. This is not breaking news anywhere. The Yankees are the most underachieving team in baseball.

In fact, to say the Yankees are the second-best team in New York is an insult to the Brooklyn Cyclones.


"Boy, oh boy, the Yankees do win when it comes to big headlines. You can call that one the way Russ Hodges called Bobby Thompson's home run: The Yankees win the back page! The Yankees win the back page! The Yankees win the back page!"

The fans don't care about the back page.

The business owners care because it's free advertising.

But the Yankees are so much more popular than the Mets (2 to 1, I'd guess), and baseball is so big in the metro NYC area, that the Yankees are going to get covered endlessly no matter what.


"The Mets were a better baseball team last season than the Yankees and are a better team so far this season, even with a payroll that is $80 million smaller. The gap was even wider last year. The Mets were a more interesting team last season, got a better managing job out of their manager and got a much better job out of their general manager, whose solution to all pitching problems isn't throwing the equivalent of $28 million at Roger Clemens."

• Last season, the Yankees were better than the Mets. Both won 97 games and the Yankees played in a much more difficult league and much more difficult division.
• As for the payroll argument, please stop comparing the Mets to the Yankees. The Mets just lost 12-3 to the Brewers. The Brewers have a better record than the Mets despite spending $50 million less than the Mets. The Mets have the highest payroll in the NL and Lupica still insists that they're gritty underdogs.
• Randolph is better than Torre? Check.
• Minaya is better than Cashman? Eh. Minaya just throws money around, too. What is Minaya's solution to all his pitching problems? He lucked out with John Maine, bless his heart. Everybody other problem was solved by throwing money at it.
• One more thing: The "equivalent of $28 million" is $28 million. Which the Yankees are not spending on Roger Clemens.

"They did not get the back page with their third baseman talking about their shortstop. They did not do it Yankee style, which is often Paris Hilton style. The Mets did not do it because the manager was in trouble or with Clemens or Carl Pavano or the owner's son-in-law getting picked up by the cops or questions about the line of succession or by firing a trainer."

No, they get the back page by shaving their heads.

They get the back page when their catcher got a divorce.

They get the back page when their overrated third baseman finally hits a homerun.

You know, I watched the first four or five innings of Saturday's Mets game. The boxscore says 50,000 people were there. I saw a sea of empty orange seats on a Saturday afternoon, perfect weather, playoff preview.

The Yankees are not going away. The Yankees are getting a new Stadium, which will be sold out for ten years. The players will come and go, but the solid marketing campaigns will remain. An entire generation of new Yankee fans have seen Jeter play ss for ten years and have never seen their team miss the playoffs. They're not becoming Mets fans overnight because the Mets beat Jeff Suppan or even if the Mets win the World Series.

The best thing for the Mets and Lupica to do is stop comparing the Mets to the Yankees. The only people you're going to convert are a smattering of disloyal fans who don't know the difference between John Franco and Julio Franco.