"ESPN would duct tape Brett Favre to Derek Jeter and throw them both into the mouth of a live volcano if it meant they could have the Cubs and Red Sox in the World Series."

Bwahahaha! NICE. Much as I'd love to see Brett vs. The Volcano, though, I have to disagree. ESPN would have fired up Mount St. Helens in 2003 - BEFORE the Red Sox won in 2004 - but now? Not so much. They need the Cubs to WIN, for the ratings. Red Sox are old news at this point, and there's the goat! Bartman! The '69 collapse! Lots of things to repair in Wrigleyville.

Which means...repeat after me...Dodgers in 3.

If we're lucky enough to see a Red Sox/Cubs World Series, I don't think I'd need to see the Jeter/Favre/Vesuvius stunt. ESPN should keep that one in their back pocket, though...

Cubs v. Red Sox...

An all Chicago Series (If the White Sox win tonight)...

An all LA series...

Dodgers v. Red Sox (a.k.a. Manny's revenge)...

But you know what I'm rooting for, and I'm willing to bet alot of people are rooting for? Brewers v. Rays. Battle of the little guys.

Even as a long-time Mets fan (who suffered through the '70s), I understand those who think a year without either the Mets or Yankees in the playoffs is bliss. But, as a Mets fan who lives in Boston, I'd say that true bliss would have been a year without the Mets, Yankees or RED SOX in the playoffs.

Once upon a time, the Red Sox were a mildly interesting, if wildly overblown, story of futility. Now, they are just as much of an arrogant evil empire as either the Mets or Yankees can be claimed to be. Had they missed the wild card, THEN people could have claimed that all is right with the baseball world.

The Mets and Yankees are two completely different teams... the Yankees usually get something for all the money they spend.

This year, ESPN struck me as being very AL East-centric. Whenever I wanted to watch game highlights, it seemed I was treated to a half-hour of every noteworthy play and endless commentary about Yankees, Red Sox, and Rays, and all other teams were discussed by showing a couple of big hits and the last out. Very very lopsided.

Forgive my fellow Mets fans. We were down so far so long that now that we are a big city, big salary team we haven't adjusted yet.

Cubs fans have hated us since '69 when our lovable losers beat their Cubbies for the NL East overcoming a 9-game lead in six weeks.

Everyone hated the '86 Mets who were cocky, the baseball version of the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street, hard drinking, coke snorting, hard playing underachievers who managed only one WS win. The Miracle Dodgers of the '88 took care of those guys.

Now we are hated for our big payroll. Well, relax people, the Mets are out of the playoffs so you can hate someone else for the next month.

As one who has seen all the downs and ups of the Mets' entire history, the ups are better. I hope Omar Minaya can find a closer, a bullpen, a left fielder and a tougher spirit for this team so the ups get better.

Even though my Phils got clobbered in the postseason, last year whet my appetite for postseason baseball and I can't wait for Hamels v. Sabathia Game 1.

I'm not one of those guys who indescriminately hates every division rival, but I really find these Mets an unlikeable bunch. Wagner is a blowhard who doesn't back it up on the mound anymore. Reyes is acts more like a classless NFL wideout than a ballplayer. And Mets fans are like the Red Sox before they reversed the "curse" - fans of a big money team who somehow manage to have a whining kid sister complex anyway.

F#$*% you, too.

Unless you were actually born within a 75 mile radius of one of these teams, it is every red-blooded American's responsibility to hate:

The Cowboys

The Raiduhs

The Lakers

The Cowboys

The Yankees

The Canadiens

The Cowboys

Any any team from NYC

It's normal to dislike a teams' fans when they are in the midst of a winning streak. Who (except a true fan) could not hate the Steelers in the 1970s, the 49ers in the 80s-90s, the Bulls in the 90s, or Boston fans in the 2000s? But once these teams returned to persistent mediocrity their fans calmed/will calm down (or in the case of the 49ers, apparently lost interest and let the real core fans have the stadium back).

But the teams mentioned above have fans that just won't quit with the arrogance, and no one can stand to see them win again.

For some reason, that rule seems to apply to any team from NYC. Islanders, Rangers, Knicks (especially the Knicks), Jets, Mets and Giants.

One consolation for Mets fans, though. The rest of the country was very strongly rooting for you in 2000.

Why?

I understand why and do (or can turn on the) hate for every team on the list except the Raiders. Please explain.

The Cubs v. Red Sox World Series isn't quite the same thing when both teams aren't century long losers. Still, I agree that this is the preferred matchup of the sports media, though I think they would settle for Cubs v. anyone. And you're right, there would be no coverage of anything else in sports were that to happen.

Brewers v. Rays is fun to imagine though. If that happens, I'm predicting a stock market crash.

Every day that a team from New York, Boston, Chicago, or Los Angeles loses, it's a good day for sports.

I don't expect fans from other cities to get that Mets fans are the downtrodden masses of New York City fandom (well, except maybe people from Chicago, but that would require sympathy with White Sox fans). I mean, from a distance, New York seems like a unitary entity, and any distinctions between the Mets and the Yankees seem as trivial as the difference between Saks and Bloomingdale's. But the class distinction between the teams is very real, and no serious Mets or Yankees fan would deny it; heck, for most of the last forty-six years, the Yankees fans have reveled in it.

Again, it's hard to appreciate from outside, but one example might help explain: The New York Times routinely gives the Yankees much better and more prominent coverage than the Mets. It doesn't matter which team is doing better - even Yankee mediocrity is more interesting than Met success or abject failure. Heck, Yankee Stadium, which in truth is a hollowed-out shell of the original, was subject to massive hagiography this year, while Shea's big moment in the media may well have been the article about how pilots use it as a landmark for the approach to LaGuardia Airport. If you're a Mets fan, you internalize this, to the point that the 2000 World Series was a moment of dread, not joy, since we all knew exactly what would happen.

So, yeah, a lot of Mets fans get prickly when they're equated to Yankees fans. But it's okay if people from other towns don't buy that distinction - it only demonstrates that nobody really understands us, and we kind of like that, even if we don't want to admit it.