By Tyler Park, ’14, Staff Writer

New York is a city well-acquainted with athletic glory. Its teams have long been synonymous with victory parades and winning records, embodied by clubs like the Yankees, who’ve won an astounding twenty-seven World Series Championships.  Many Big Apple sports fans have been spoiled by this success and expect championship-caliber teams year after year.

Two of the city’s teams, however, have not lived up to the golden Yankee standard: the Jets and the Mets. Their fans have had to sit through decades rife with heartbreak and disappointment, while staring angrily up at their superior crosstown foes.

For the Jets, the past five years have been a rollercoaster ride. 2008 started with promise as they welcomed one of the most accomplished quarterbacks in NFL history to the Big Apple: Brett Favre. With high hopes for the first time in many years, fans were crushed as the Jets collapsed down the stretch and missed the playoffs.  After enduring painful playoff losses in 2009 and 2010, the Jets hit rock bottom last year when they missed the playoffs amid a season of locker room turmoil. Questions have sprouted about young quarterback Mark Sanchez’s ability to win games, and team coverage has turned into a media circus, thanks to the polarizing Tim Tebow and the loudmouth head coach Rex Ryan.  On a larger scale, Jets fans have not seen a Super Bowl victory since the days of Joe Namath, over forty years ago.  In the mean time, their New York rivals and stadium-mates, the Giants, have won two Super Bowls in the past five years.

The Mets are viewed in a similar light. Since 1996, the Mets and their fans have watched the cross-town rival Yankees win five World Series. The past five years have been especially brutal.  In 2007, they blew a seven-game lead in September by losing 12 of their final 17 games, an epic collapse that is regarded as one of the worst in baseball history.  To make matters worse, they crashed again the following year, losing seven of their last ten to narrowly miss the playoffs by one game.  Since then, management has aggressively signed players like Johan Santana, Jason Bay, and Francisco Rodriguez to huge contracts, only to watch helplessly as they fail to meet expectations.

Fans of these two beleaguered franchises have indeed suffered through more than their fair share of heartbreak. Given that the Newark Academy community is a hotbed for New York sports fans, the effects of each team’s struggles resonate throughout the halls.  “Being a fan from New York and wanting to see them win now, the losing is a hard bullet to bite.  We’ve watched other teams like the Tampa Bay Rays rebuild and get to the top, but another two years removed from 2006 is another two years of torture,” says Mets fan Chewy Baumel ’13.  Jets fan Jake Wieseneck ’14, has had a similar experience, saying that, “Being a Jets fan is a lifelong commitment.  You can’t be half-in or half-out, you have to be all-in or all-out.  I would even call it a lifestyle.  It is painful at times, but I don’t think there’s another team whose good moments are more rewarding.”

One can draw many parallels between the two hapless franchises, but their “little brother” position connects them most strongly. Almost anyone can identify with this concept.  Whether that means actually being a younger brother, or simply being overshadowed by someone superior, it is a feeling that almost all of us will run into at some point in our lives. For the Jets and the Mets, that feeling is constant. The bitterness of losing is only accentuated by crosstown jeers from ecstatic Yankees and Giants fans.

Being a Mets or Jets fan is certainly a tumultuous ride, with more downs than ups.  It is not easy to absorb the pain year after year, but as a result, some fans become closer to their team than ever, bounded by struggle and desire.  These are people who have gone through years of pain and suffering, and still stick it out, refusing to give up.  They are the ones who deserve success.