"East Side, West Side,
All around the town;
The Mets and Yanks fans are training;
They’re ready to go a few rounds.

Boys and girls are a bit anxious,
But that's not stopping them from talking the talk;
If either the Mets or Yanks win the Series,
Look out on the sidewalks of New York!"
(with apologies to Chas. B. Lawlor and James W. Blake)

It’s becoming very apparent on the streets of New York that the city is preparing for war between Mets and Yankees on the baseball diamond. One can see an almost equal amount of colors being worn by people around town for both clubs. There are signs in store windows; flags for both teams are flying from car antennas, and even babies in carriages are wearing team shirts and hats. The thing I (as a Met fan) am waiting for most is to see The Empire State Building bathed in orange and blue. Yes, ladies and gentleman, the gloves are off and the fun has just begun.

Of course, the Yankees have to first get through the Detroit Tigers and the Mets will have to deal with the Dodgers. The Yankees would seem to have the easier task here, for the Tigers literally collapsed and had to settle for the wild card instead of winning their division. It is almost unbelievable that a team seemingly destined for one hundred wins and a runaway with their division fell apart like this. As Mets fans have come to know, when Kenny Rogers is involved, all bets are off.

The Mets have their own problems meeting the Dodgers at Shea starting on Wednesday afternoon. Some of us diehard (and older) Mets fans can recall the crushing loss to the Dodgers in the playoffs in 1988, when a hobbled Kirk Gibson and a ubiquitous Orel Herscheiser (working as a starting pitcher and reliever) led their team to victory over the Amazins. What we’re really dealing with here is not just the LA team but the Brooklyn ghosts, notwithstanding all those former Dodgers who subsequently went on to wear Mets orange and blue (current Met Shawn Green is one of them).

If the Mets and Yanks can get through their respective division series, then there is the more difficult and daunting league championship series. We won’t know which opponents will be waiting, but these are really just like preliminary rounds. Everyone here in New York knows what they want to happen and, while there is no guarantee that the Mets and Yankees will make it to the World Series, most of us are salivating at the prospect of a rematch of the 2000 Fall Classic.

As a Met fan, I like to think things are going to be different this time. Back in 2000 we were dealing with the Bobby Valentine-Mike Piazza Mets. These guys were a likeable enough bunch, but they were not dominating or any way similar to their 1986 counterparts. Conversely, the 2006 Mets look an awful lot like the guys from the Hernandez-Johnson Mets. While not without their controversy (Lastings Milledge is something like him, but nothing really close to Darryl Strawberry in the talent department as of yet), the 2006 Mets are a clean, lean, nothing-near-mean fighting machine.