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METS
Derek Jeter

Matt Harvey, Mets poised to be New York's top team again

Joe Lemire
Special for USA TODAY Sports
Mets fans cheer as starting pitcher Matt Harvey is taken out of the game against the Yankees at Yankee Stadium.

NEW YORK — When rehabbing New York Mets ace Matt Harvey sat in the stands for the final home game of New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter's career, it was an appropriate homage — and torch passing — from the younger Harvey, who has said Jeter is a role model and now a friend.

Jeter is nominally Harvey's boss now, through The Players' Tribune website Jeter started, for which Harvey has written under the cheekily appropriate byline of New York City Bureau Chief.

Harvey has, after all, supplanted the retired Jeter as Gotham's biggest sports star.

Harvey starts are must-see events, as was the case Saturday in sold-out Yankee Stadium for the second of three games in the first Subway Series in which both clubs entered in first place in their divisions. Harvey came within one out of a complete game in the Mets' 8-2 victory. He struck out seven, even blowing a 98 mph fastball by Alex Rodriguez in the ninth inning.

"He craves this spotlight," Mets manager Terry Collins said of Harvey, who was the 2013 All-Star Game starter before having Tommy John surgery. "This is what the guy looks forward to doing — on this stage, in this city."

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Behind Harvey and franchise cornerstone third baseman David Wright, the team has a chance to do what hasn't been done in a quarter-century: make New York a Mets town.

From 1984 through 1990, the Mets ruled the Big Apple, winning 95 games a season and the 1986 World Series thanks to a star-studded cast that included Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Gary Carter, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling.

Darling, now an analyst for the Mets' SNY broadcasts, says there are two prerequisites to becoming the dominant club in this baseball-mad city: "sustained success" and "star power."

Of the latter, Darling says Harvey's stardom "transcends sports."

Darling says Harvey's only competition to being the biggest sports star in the city is Henrik Lundqvist, the goaltender for the New York Rangers and another pal of Harvey's.

"New York is a celebrity-driven town," Darling says, adding there's as much a premium on getting tickets to a gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as for a Mets game.

While average attendance at Yankees games (41,134) still exceeds that of the Mets (31,286), the trend line favors the National League club: Those figures represent a decline of 2,439 fans a Yankees game since last year and an increase of 1,433 for Mets games.

Both clubs have had successful opening months: the Yankees' 6-1 win in Friday's series opener was their seventh in eight games and broke the Mets' franchise-record-tying 11-game winning streak.

"After losing the streak last night, the big thing for me was to start a new one," Harvey said. "I woke up and was prepared for today and knew there were going to be a lot of people here, a lot of hype and things like that."

A vocal minority erupted at Yankee Stadium on Saturday when Mets rookie catcher Kevin Plawecki hit his first major league home run and again when Harvey jogged back to the mound to start the ninth inning.

Nothing can take away the Yankees' vast advantage in championships, but a look at the teams' trajectories suggest the Mets will supersede their rivals as the city's best present-day club by 2016, if not by the end of this season.

Take Friday's starting lineups: Eight of the 10 Mets were homegrown players to one for the Yankees, left fielder Brett Gardner. ESPN's Keith Law ranked the Mets farm system No. 4 and the Yankees prospects No. 20.

The sport is getting younger, a trend the Yankees lineup is ignoring. Their hitters' average age is 32, two years older than any other club and the 22nd consecutive season that average age has been greater than 30. The average age of the Mets' hitters is 29.

While the average age of Mets pitchers (29) is two years older than the average age of Yankees pitchers, the discrepancy is distorted by 42-year-old starter Bartolo Colon, who is in the final year of his contract. Heralded youngsters Noah Syndergaard, Steven Matz and Rafael Montero — all current or former top-100 prospects — will replace Colon and veteran Dillon Gee no later than next season for the Mets.

The Yankees' opening-day payroll, however, was about $213 million, vs. the Mets' $100 million. Harvey's mound opponent Saturday, 2007 Cy Young winner CC Sabathia, 34, is earning $23 million this season. But his average fastball is down more than 5 mph since he joined the Yankees in 2009, and, after being out because of injury, he hasn't won a big-league game in more than a year.

The official retirement of Yankees center fielder Bernie Williams before Friday's game was a reminder of what made the club a dynasty in the late 1990s: homegrown stars. Jeter, catcher Jorge Posada, starter Andy Pettitte and closer Mariano Rivera all came up through the organization together and formed the championship "Core Four" — or, as general manager Brian Cashman tried to rebrand them, the "Fab Five" in deference to Williams.

Such success often follows more fallow periods for a franchise, because it enables rebuilding with high draft choices. The early 1990s Yankees weren't very good, just as the Mets of the last six seasons had losing records.

"If you're talking about potential in the future, you've got to have young, successful talent," said Mets right fielder Curtis Granderson, 34, a Yankee from 2010 to 2013.

It's an uphill battle for the Mets logo to actually become more popular. Jay Z sang about how famous he made a Yankees cap, and Granderson noted the Yankees' interlocking "NY" is "iconic" and a fashion statement beyond baseball.

But there are fans everywhere: He saw a Mets decal while traveling in Argentina. A group in orange "Bronx Invasion" T-shirts were spotted at Yankee Stadium on Friday with a sign for "The 7 Line Army," the unofficial Mets fan group.

"You've got to continue to win in order to keep people talking and wanting to talk and prideful of wearing the blue and orange," Granderson said. "That all comes from winning baseball."

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