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Bobby Valentine would like you to know that the Mets were better than the Yankees Post-9/11

Bobby Valentine Mets

This interview with Bobby Valentine on WFAN about remembering the scene in baseball post-9/11 has many interesting bits. As you may expect, given that he was the manager of the New York Mets at the time and the Mets played center stage in baseball following the 9/11 attacks. The first game. The big Piazza home run. The New York connections of many on the roster like John Franco, which in turn led to a lot of touching moments and meaningful gestures.

Which is all fine, but it turns a bit unseemly when Valentine turns to credit-taking. Indeed, he seems to want to make it clear that the Yankees were not as important to New York as the Mets in those days after 9/11:

“Let it be said that during the time from 9/11 to 9/21, the Yankees were (not around),” Valentine told Joe Benigno and Evan Roberts on Wednesday. “You couldn’t find a Yankee on the streets of New York City. You couldn’t find a Yankee down at Ground Zero, talking to the guys who were working 24/7.”

He added: “Many of them didn’t live here, and so it wasn’t their fault. And many of them did not partake in all that, so there was some of that jealousy going around. Like, ‘Why are we so tired? Why are we wasted? Why have we been to the funerals and the firehouses, and the Yankees are getting all the credit for bringing baseball back?’ And I said ‘This isn’t about credit, guys. This is about doing the right thing.’”


No, it wasn’t about credit then, Bobby V. says. But boy howdy it is now, apparently. All of which: (a) seems really petty; and (b) seems, if my memory is serving me, pretty counterfactual too. Yankees players were out in the city after 9/11 too.

Not sure what Valentine’s aim is here, but he seems to be, as he so often does, making whatever topic is in front of him about Bobby Valentine.