New York's A Met Town

Dana Brand at NY Baseball Online, writes about New York and how it's truly a Met town:

From the time the American League was founded in 1903 until 1957, there were two National League teams in New York. Throughout this period, the combined attendance for the two National League teams was consistently higher, by a wide margin, than the attendance at Yankees games. This was particularly true after 1945. The Dodgers and the Giants had large fan bases, each with a proud tradition of Yankee hatred. When the Mets came along in 1962, they inherited almost all of the orphaned National League fans. The Yankees ended up with hardly any of them.

It should not therefore surprise you to learn that during the first 31 years of the Mets existence (1962-1992), the Mets outdrew the Yankees 19 times and the Yankees outdrew the Mets 12 times. Both teams had their ups and downs, but the Mets’s peak attendance figures were consistently higher than those of the Yankees. The pennant-winning Yankees teams of 1962-4 drew between 1.3 and 1.4 million fans. But between 1964 and 1968, the lowly Mets drew 1.6 to 1.9 million fans every year. The Mets drew 2.1 to 2.7 million fans between 1969 and 1972. That’s much more than the great Yankees teams of the ‘50s and ‘60s had ever drawn. When the Yankees became great again in the late ‘70s, they didn’t quite rise to the Mets’ level. They drew between 2.0 to 2.6 million fans per year between 1977 and 1980. But when the Mets came roaring back in the mid-‘80s, they busted their own records, drawing between 2.8 and 3.1 million fans between 1985 and 1988. The Yankees had never drawn that many fans to their stadium. In the 1980s, the Mets drew over 3 million twice, but even the 1998 Yankees, one of the greatest teams of all time, did not draw 3 million. The Yankees draw 3 million for the first time in 1999 and it is only in the 21st century that the Yankees attendance figures have been astronomical, and decisively better than the Mets.

To view the entire article, use the link above.