Baseball Team Symmetry - Nationals & Mets, part 7

Mets Logo

The Mets and Nationals are linked as baseball partners. Why? The Mets are a resurrected name that stems from the original Metropolitans that played baseball in the late 1800s. Coincidentally in the 1800s there was another team called the Washington Nationals (who are now the Twins). The original Washington Nationals played in the National league form 1886 to 1889. One of its most famous players was Connie Mack whose Major League Baseball career began on September 11, 1889. But soon the original Nationals folded - Mr. Mack later gained fame as longest serving manager in baseball history, with the most wins with the Philadelphia A's.

DC Logo
Note DC was originally shaped like a baseball field!

The original Metropolitans played from 1880-1887. They played in Jersey and Brooklyn like many leagues did in Baseball's golden era. But the Metropolitans were the first to play professional b-ball in Manhattan at Polo Grounds.

Who knew 99 years after the 'original Mets' that a post-modern Mets would win the world series in 1986?

The totem of a National and a Met is rather intangible. It's not an animal, vegetable, mineral, place, or thing. Essentially they are political states of mind in a category of ones community. If you live in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area then you are a LA Met. Thus every large city has its own Metropolitan Community. There are LA Mets, Savannah Mets, Buffalo Mets, Tokyo Mets, and belive it or not...Jerusalem Mets! Basically the people who live around a large city that has sky scrapers or million plus population with a surrounding business community that commutes downtown is a metropolitan zone.


On the other hand there is the nation. Usually only one city - the capital city is allowed to adopt this totem as a title. Thus for Canada it would be Ottawa Nationals - other examples could be Tokyo Nationals, Berlin Nationals, Rome Nationals, Tehran Nationals, Moscow Nationals, or my favorite capital city name - the Ouagadougou Nationals.

But the most harmonious link between these 'geographic political-totems' are that all capital cities come with a metropolitan community. Thus the Mets are an appropriate baseball team partner as the shadow of the Nationals.


On top of that, NYC was the first National Capital of the United States - under the Constitution. Before Washington DC was a twinkle in the eye of America - the first official president of the USA was inaugurated in downtown Manhattan.

So back in 1788, Washington was a bonna fide resident of NYC. You can also extrapolate that G.W. would always pick the Mets over the Nationals, why? G.W. was a humble man, and he'd be uncomfortable rooting for a team with his own name.

Link to NY Mets^
Link to Washington Nationals^

Link to Part 8 - on the quantum baseball field of imagination!