The 1986 Giants featured a devastating defense.
In my sports life, the Mets and the football Giants have been inexorably linked.
Yes, I’m the exception: The Mets fan who doesn’t root for other teams whose nicknames rhyme with that of my favorite baseball team (though I do pull for the Jets when they’re not playing the Giants).
The Mets came into my life first. I became a fan as a kid during the post-Seaver seventies. Early on, I was never too concerned that they were horrible, it was just a fact of life. I liked that they were the underdogs in New York City, and that they weren’t the Yankees. Also, the Mets were my “gateway drug” into the wonderful world of baseball, a game I learned to love as a spectator and a (not too good) player.
The Giants came next. When I discovered that I felt a void during baseball’s offseason, I realized I needed to find another sport. My uncle would always have the Giants game on if we visited him on a Sunday. He was one of those guys who had been a fan since the Truman administration. So I figured I’d give them a shot, and while I was at it, take in the Jets games as well, so I could see how Shea Stadium looked with a football field covering the diamond (He slides in safely with a touchdown!).
Back in the late ’70s, the Mets and Giants were both train-wrecks. The Mets were perpetually in the cellar, and the Giants never came close to making the playoffs.
This, incidentally, is my theory about why so many Tri-Staters my age are Cowboys and Steelers fans. With both New York football teams in the tank, they hopped on the bandwagon of the dominant teams of the late 70s. OK, back to the post.
Then, in the mid ’80s, the Mets and Giants both started to improve. In 1981, the Giants made the playoffs for the first time since the
Unlike the Giants, the Mets haven't had much success since 1986.
’60s, but would falter in 1982 and ’83. In 1984, the Mets finished second in the NL East to the Cubs, and the Giants went back to the playoffs. This year started a run of success for each team that would last the rest of the decade.
In 1986, the Mets won the World Series. In the ’86-’87 NFL season, the Giants won the Super Bowl. Talk about spoiled! Gone were the days of low expectations – now I expected my teams to win it all every year.
The Jints won another Super Bowl in 1991, right around the time the Mets were fading into another, if brief, dark age. The Giants wouldn’t be far behind however, as the Dave Brown/Danny Kanell era soon cast its shadow over the Meadowlands.
In 2000, the teams had returned to competence. The Mets played the Yankees in the World Series, and the Giants returned to the Super Bowl. Both teams suffered bitter losses.
The two teams diverged for a time in the early ’00s, the Giants continued to contend, while the Mets suffered under the weight of poor player personnel decisions. But they reconvened in 2006.
Each team played at a championship-caliber level that year, but both lost in the playoffs. The next year, the Giants scored an improbable upset over the undefeated Patriots in the Super Bowl, while the Mets succumbed to a dramatic September collapse.
Since then, the Giants have managed to keep up their level of play, while the Mets have been forced to slog through a rebuilding process sparked by financial ruin.
As Super Bowl 46 approaches, this Mets fan has a welcome distraction from the daily negativity that surrounds the team. This week, I can savor the fact that my other New York team has a chance to win its second championship in 4 years. As far as my sports life goes, that’s better than a therapy session.
18 comments
SaltyGary
1/31/2012-11:36am at 11:36 am (UTC -4)
As always, great stuff Paul.
It’s Mets and Giants for me. ’85 is the first year I really started to watch sports. I still remember crying after the Bears beating the G-men 21-0 to go on eventually to the SB. Growing up in CT, I rooted for the Pats in the SB but the Giants were way cooler. The presence of that team especially on the defense side, was amazing to watch.
It’s weird, I am just as fanatic about the Giants as I am the Mets but I don’t bother to find any Giants blogs. Probably because it’s more fun talking about baseball and how it compares to numbers over the years.
Paul Festa
1/31/2012-12:34pm at 12:34 pm (UTC -4)
Thanks!
That 1985 Giants season was similar to the Mets ’85 season. Both teams were great, but they ran into a hot team that was always a little bit better.
I haven’t found a Giants blog that’s on par with all the great baseball blogs out there. I think you’re right: we just have more fun talking about baseball’s nuances and minutiae.
gategem
1/31/2012-4:23pm at 4:23 pm (UTC -4)
I frequent this site for information on the Giants:
http://www.bigblueview.com/
MetsFan4Decades
1/31/2012-11:38am at 11:38 am (UTC -4)
I don’t follow football all that much but something tells me if I did, I’d be a Jet fan rather than a Giant fan. Probably if for no other reason than that’s my Dad’s football team.
Good luck to you Giants fans on Sunday.
I’ll be watching – especially since I’m in 2 pools. Which means I”ll care more about the scores at each quarters end then I will who is beating who.
SaltyGary
1/31/2012-11:45am at 11:45 am (UTC -4)
There are many Mets/Jets fans. They really are the red-headed step child of NY teams. Also, both one in 1969, which is probably the same reason why newer generations like me like Mets/Giants.
It’s really tough to like 2 under-performing teams in sports. So if you get into football, I would not pick the Jets, unless you are really glutton for punishment.
kingman 26
1/31/2012-1:25pm at 1:25 pm (UTC -4)
“It’s really tough to like 2 under-performing teams in sports.”
Met fan since 1973 and Net fan since 1977.
How’s THAT for 2 under-performing teams?
Now my Dolphins have not won a title since 1974, but from then until about 10 years ago, they were in the playoffs constantly.
And then just as they started to suck, the Nets had the amazing Jason Kidd era.
So, for me, for five years now, it has been THREE horridly under-performing teams!
Stick
1/31/2012-2:23pm at 2:23 pm (UTC -4)
Why not root for the Islanders too, and make it a grand slam of suckitude?
NJstuckinTX
1/31/2012-5:47pm at 5:47 pm (UTC -4)
Early 80′s weren’t all that bad…
kingman 26
1/31/2012-6:22pm at 6:22 pm (UTC -4)
I was never a big hockey fan–but I do remember rooting for the Rangers against the great Islanders teams in the 1970s. Also used to sort of root for the Devils, but the combo of being so busy the last decade and that crazy strike a few years back pretty much extinguished my interest in hockey.
I really used to be heavily into college football and basketball and also boxing (LOVED Larry Holmes)–especially heavyweight and welterweight divisions bigtime–and also followed golf a lot, and even tennis to a degree, but these days, I just only have time for my true sports loves, the Mets/Dolphins/Nets.
Anyway, those three provide all the losing a man can handle.
Mr North Jersey
1/31/2012-12:19pm at 12:19 pm (UTC -4)
Nice read Paul. Thx. It reminds me of the excitement during the time of Riley’s Knicks and the Rangers run for the Cup. The Rangers held up their end but the Knicks fell short.
Hazmet
1/31/2012-8:00pm at 8:00 pm (UTC -4)
If the league didn’t change the hand check rule to counteract Rileys defensive schemes as Knicks coach they very well might have gotten one. That always pissed me off to no end, “oh poor Bulls can’t deal with the Knicks hand checking at the top of the key and then getting smacked by Oakley down low, boo hoo, we’ll change the rules for you…” grrrrr.
Hazmet
1/31/2012-8:01pm at 8:01 pm (UTC -4)
Oh and lest I forget when they do make it to the Finals when MJ’s on his baseball sabatical they gotta cut away from a Finals game with Houston to show F’in OJ driving around his damn white Bronco. Grrrrr part 2.
Stick
1/31/2012-2:20pm at 2:20 pm (UTC -4)
Mets/giants here too. As is all my family (except the few outcasts that are yankee/giants, but that is on my wife’s side).
I do have a couple of friends that are Met/Jet (though one is Met/Seahawks for some unknown to me reason)
gategem
1/31/2012-4:42pm at 4:42 pm (UTC -4)
I’ve rooted for the Giants since the early 1950’s. During the late 1960’s and throughout most of the 1970’s the Giants were a pathetic franchise on the field but a prosperous one off the field. We Giants fans remained faithful if not disillusioned (sounds like some Mets fans) but the natives turned restless and showed there unhappiness by renting a skywriting service that wrote something to the effect of 20 years of losing football is enough over Giants Stadium during a game. Things came to a boil over what was termed the fumble or “The Miracle at the Meadowlands” and subsequently ended with Commissioner Pete Rozelle forcing the two majority owners at that time (represented by Wellington Mara vs. his nephew Tim Mara) to accept George Young as the GM. Young accomplished with the Giants what we all hope that Sandy is able to with the Mets.
BTW there was a time when home games were not televised by the NFL and the Cowboys were televised it seemed every Sunday and many New York fans became Cowboys fans.
Paul Festa
1/31/2012-4:52pm at 4:52 pm (UTC -4)
Interesting! Thank you for your input.
kingman 26
1/31/2012-6:24pm at 6:24 pm (UTC -4)
I was at the game when I think a plane carried a huge banner over the stadium reading 20 years of lousy football is enough.
I was maybe 10 years old, and the fans were getting truly restless.
I remember classic banners in the 1970s like “Now in our 20th year of rebuilding.”
But George Young and Parcells sure changed things.
Seems like they have been good for the most part for 30 years.
MetsFan4Decades
1/31/2012-8:10pm at 8:10 pm (UTC -4)
“Now in our 20th year of rebuilding.”
hahahaha – seriously, that better not be us Met fans several years down the road….
Hazmet
1/31/2012-8:15pm at 8:15 pm (UTC -4)
I don’t go back that far but you definitely capture how bad it was for Giants fans for a long long time. I started watching late 60′s early 70′s. Spider Lockhart and Tucker Fredrickson were my 2 favorite players as a kid. My dad went way back with the Giants and was at the Sneaker game. Giants used to have a great policy after WWII for vets to attend games and get on the field, my dad used to get in on some of that and he passed his love of big blue to me too. I also am always amused by the term America’s team for the Cowboys. If you want to look for the success of the NFL you can link it directly to the Giants and their willingness during the 60′s to not only agree to but promote the revenue sharing that exploded league popularity and permitted franchises in less populated urban areas to grow and succeed. If the Mara family did not agree to sharing the pie as the kingpin on the block in the largest market, the NFL would not be what it is today. So America’s team, Cowboys, fine you want that moniker knock yourselves out. But the Giants and the Mara family are the real deal. Go Big Blue.