THE BRONX, N.Y. (PIX11) -- The Subway Series is so named, for good reason: not only are both teams' ballparks next to subway stops, New York fans use the subway to get to games 400% more than the three other U.S. cities with crosstown rival ballparks, combined. It means that, in contrast to Los Angeles, Chicago, and the San Francisco Bay area, the Mets-Yankees rivalry is a true subway series, and nobody knows that better than people who take the subway to the games.
Zach Schmidt and Bill Danko are among the millions who match that description. They somehow have managed to remain best friends despite the rivalry that each displays on his chest. They were together on the No. 4 train platform on Tuesday afternoon, with Schmidt wearing his Mets jersey, and Danko sporting his Yankees pinstripes.
They taunted each other, in the hours before Tuesday's game, with their respective predictions about the game's outcome.
"Yankees," Danko said, definitively, to which his best friend, Schmidt, retorted, "The Mets. We're gonna blow 'em out 10-nothing."
"We'll hit home runs," Danko replied while invoking the names of Yankee heavy-hitters Aaron Judge and Juan Soto. "That's all we need to do."
Also on the elevated subway platform was Mets fan Marshall -- he declined to give his last name. He acknowledged that his being in the Bronx at the Yankee Stadium subway stop for work nearly every day puts him in a compromising position.
"You try not to say too much when you're in enemy territory," he told PIX11 News. "Saying too much is kind of like fighting words," he continued.
He said that the outcome of the Subway Series is easy to predict.
"Very simple," he said. "We're gonna take this one, we're gonna take the next one."
He said that as a Mets fan in the Bronx, he's as New York as it gets. Some other fans on the platform also showed their true blue New York fanaticism, even though they're not New Yorkers. Far from it, literally.
The Adams-Vasvinder family is from Vancouver, Washington, a suburb of Portland, Oregon. They were dressed head-to-toe in Yankees regalia, and said that after they take the subway to the Subway Series at Yankee Stadium, they have tickets for the Mets game against Atlanta on Thursday at Citi Field.
They'll take the subway to all of the games, but have one team centered in their emotions. It's not the Mets.
"As Jeter once said," Hannajoy Vasvinder said, referring to the Hall of Fame former captain of the Bronx Bombers, "They're just the Mets; They exist."
Her sister, Ashley Adams, continued the thought. "The Yanks have it," she said.
Two other baseball fans, Leticia Milla and Gabreo Meltaes, had just gotten off the train, on their way to the official Yankee Stadium tour before Tuesday evening's Subway Series game. Milla was wearing her Yankees gear, Meltaes wore his Mets jersey. The pair said that they're a devoted, loving couple, at least for now.
"So it's our first time together at a game," Milla said, "So let's see how it goes."