Agony of defeat
Rare moment in Gotham as N.Y. teams go 0-for-Sunday
IT FEELS like we’ve done so much losing around here the past couple of years. We’ve discussed plenty in this space that we are presently in the largest championship drought in our history as a sports town, a Gotham Gap that, as of Tuesday, will stand at 2,407 days (and counting), with the Yankees the only legitimate candidate to end that streak anytime soon. Of course, it was the Yankees who helped contribute to the latest brick that we as a frustrated city must bear. The Yankees lost 3-2 to the Blue Jays on Sunday afternoon at Yankee Stadium. In Fenway Park, the Mets fell 4-3 to become the Red Sox’s 103rd victim of the season. And the football teams lost by eerily similar scores, the Jets falling 20-12 to the Dolphins in the afternoon at MetLife Stadium, the Giants 20-13 to the Cowboys a few hours later at Jerry’s World in Dallas. By the time midnight arrived, that meant Sept. 16, 2018, would officially stand as just the seventh time in the 56 years, going back to 1962, that the Yankees, Mets, Giants and Jets all lost on the same day, the first time it’s happened in four years and only the second time in the past 19. Yes, hard as it may seem to believe, the four teams who share most September Sundays (as well as the occasional October cameo) have actually swept more than they’ve been swept, going 4-0 on eight different Sundays through the years, most recently on Sept. 27, 2009. Remarkably, given some of the lean years all four teams experienced throughout the ’60s and early ’70s, the baseball teams and football teams waited until 1979 before turning in their first golden sombrero, although that probably should come with an asterisk. All four teams lost on Sept 30, 1973, too. For the Yankees it was a buzzkill loss at home to the Tigers in the last game ever played at the old Yankee Stadium, pre-renovation. The football teams (who would go a combined 6-21-1) both lost by a total of three points to the Bills and Browns, and the Mets lost in a steady downpour in Chicago — but that was also the caveat, because the Mets played a doubleheader at Wrigley, they won the second game and actually cinched a tie for the N.L. East pennant by doing it. It would take six more years before they all reached maximum futility, and it happened in a blur: the Jets were stomped 56-3 by the Pats and the Giants 27-14 to the Cardinals in Week 2 of the NFL season, while the Mets and Yankees, engaged in playing out the string of lost seasons fell 6-5 to the Pirates and 3-1 to the Tigers. The quirks of schedules have helped keep those numbers down, I suppose; in most years there are usually only four shared weeks of season (a couple more in the odd years the baseball teams both survived ‘til October). Both sports have had weeks wiped out by strikes. In times of prosperity the Jets and Giants have both played a surplus of Monday and Thursday games, and in the early days the Jets played a lot on Saturday. And sometimes it feels like we take an 0-for-4 collar every week. But no: it happens, on average, once every 9 ½ years or so. So if you felt a little extra lethargic Monday morning? Maybe now you know why.