This was supposed to be a golden, glorious week for New York baseball fans.
The Mets are in the playoffs! The Yankees are too! A fated Subway Series, the first time the teams would be meeting in the World Series in more than two decades, is but a few wins away. You’d think fans would be happier than a kid in Cooperstown.
But then, on Monday, Mayor Eric Adams marched down Fifth Avenue during a Columbus Day parade, wearing a baseball cap that pleased exactly zero New York sports fans.
The hat featured a Mets logo on the right side and a Yankees logo on the left. If there’s no crying in baseball, to Mr. Adams there’s apparently no picking of sides either.
At the moment, as he’s facing federal charges and a sinking approval rating, the mayor’s fair weather hat seemed to be an I’m-With-You plea to baseball fans of all five boroughs.
“I’m like everyday New Yorkers,” Mr. Adams told reporters on Monday, with the curved brim cap situated on his head.
Fabien Levy, a spokesman for the mayor, said that the hat captured a mayor caught between his personal fandom and his political duties.
“Mayor Adams is a long-suffering Mets fan and has been clear he’s cheering them on to win it all (what can I say, no one is perfect),” Mr. Levy said in an email. “But as the mayor of the greatest city in the world, he’s also rooting for a subway series that will make millions of New York sports fans happy, while bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars of economic impact for our city.”
There is just one problem: We’re talking about Mets and Yankees fans, a class of maniacs weaned on sports radio inanity, grievance and pure, unhealthy dedication to their chosen team. If there was ever a pair of fan bases that weren’t going to accept having their team’s logo sharing woolen real estate with their crosstown rivals, it was these.
“Mets, Yankees you can’t be down the middle,” said Christian Baumann, 28, who works in real estate in New York and is a lifelong Yankees fan. To Mr. Baumann, who runs @yankees_fitted_archive, an Instagram account dedicated to the Yankees’ iconic NY cap, it is vital for New Yorkers to choose a side. To do any less is to brand yourself as an uncommitted and unserious observer unworthy of the title of fan. The mayor, according to Mr. Baumann, is “trying to be the people’s mayor but everyone just revolts against it.”
Indeed, online the hat was called awkward, a travesty, dumb. Justin Brannan, a City Council member and a Mets fan, offered that the hat should be ruled illegal, posting on X that, “I’m all for Carl Jung and the duality of man, but this is egregious.”
The mayor might have seen this cap controversy coming. Since the Mets got their start in 1962, the city has been a house divided (a return to form in a city that had previously boasted three major league teams). And somehow, time and again, politicians have managed to make an unforced error out of that crucial question: Mets or Yankees?
When asked which team he preferred, then-mayor Michael Bloomberg dodged with, “I grew up in Boston.” Despite his being born in Manhattan, Mr. Adams’s predecessor, Bill de Blasio, was roundly jeered for his allegiance to the Red Sox. That, along with his proclivity for eating pizza with a fork, were pointed to by detractors as evidence that the former mayor wasn’t a real New Yorker.
The Brooklyn-born Rudy Giuliani at least took sides, but the result was much the same. “When they play each other, I root for the Yankees,” Mr. Giuliani told ESPN in 1999, adding that Mets fans booed him “all the time.” He tried to appease them, with little success, by showing face at Mets games in blue and orange gear.
For his part, Mr. Adams has never been on the firmest footing with his identity as a New Yorker. During his campaign, he was plagued by accusations that he lived in New Jersey, rather than the five boroughs. While the city’s politicians normally hail New York City, singularly, as the greatest place on earth, Mr. Adams has a habit of likening it to other more minor capitals. New York City, according to Mr. Adams is the Athens, Istanbul, Kyiv, Seoul, Tel Aviv, Islamabad, Zagreb, Lima, Mexico City and Dublin of America.
Offensive to fans though it may be, Mr. Adams’s NY/NY cap solidifies his status as the city’s highest order hat guy. Throughout his tenure, Mr. Adams has used his hats — “Mayor Adams,” “NYC Mayor” and others — as a messaging medium. The message normally being: I’m in charge.
As for the dual-team snapback, the mayor’s spokesman, Mr. Levy, said it is owned by someone on the mayor’s staff who has had it since around the time of the 2000 Subway Series. According to Mr. Levy, the staffer lent the hat to Mr. Adams after the mayor asked if anyone had an option to back both teams.
The concept of the hat has been around for a long time, with a few options to choose from. A two-team cap that appears very close to Mr. Adams’s is available on the shopping platform Mercari for around $48. Exclusive Fitted, a hat store in Jamaica, Queens, also sells a similar style that is, according to the shop’s website, “a very unique concept” representing “both New York ball clubs.”
Despite his critics, Mr. Adams may have been onto something: the $45 split personality hat from Exclusive Fitted is sold out online.
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