May 07 2010 07:56 AM
Edited 2 time(s), most recently on May 07 2010 08:02 AM
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... bs=article
| Yankees Fans Are From Mars... In an Exclusive Poll, We Expose the Differences Between Fans of New York's Baseball Teams; Wait, Mets Fans Worry Less? by SOPHIA HOLLANDER Everybody in New York has an opinion about what makes Yankees fans different from Mets fans. So do we. The only difference is that we've got 445 pages of data to back it up. To better understand the personal lives and psyches of New York sports fans, The Wall Street Journal tapped the polling firm Public Opinion Strategies to conduct a survey of 650 male and female fans across all five boroughs. In the coming weeks, we'll share the results in an occasional series we're calling The Grand Fanalysis. Today's installment will attempt to answer one of the city's most hotly debated sports questions: What really separates men who root for the Yankees from men who prefer the Mets? Unsurprisingly, the Yankees are more popular: Sixty percent of the survey's baseball fans said they followed the Bronx Bombers, compared to just 33% who favored the Mets. The Mets have more fans in Queens, of course, and the Yankees have an edge in the Bronx, but Manhattan is dead even at 19% each. Men who follow the Mets are slightly more likely to have stopped their education during or just after high school (30% versus 25%), but there's no great income disparity. Yankees fans are more likely to earn $100,000 a year or more, but the margin—28% to 24%—is statistically insignificant in a poll with a margin of error of 3.8%. But the biggest distinction of all had nothing to do with income, education or neighborhood. It wasn't what they read or do for fun or prefer as a pet. It was their relationship with alcohol. Male Mets fans were 43% more likely than Yankees fans to drink beer. They also drink more in general: the percentage of male Yankees fans who said they don't drink was almost double that of their Mets counterparts (30% to 16%). Yankees fans had no trouble generating theories about this disparity. "Blame their team," said Sal Richichi, 30, an electrician from Sheepshead Bay who participated in the survey. Mr. Richichi also expressed concern about another finding: that Mets fans owned more guns (11% versus 5%). "I don't think a Mets fan should be having a gun in the house," Mr. Richichi said. At least the Mets men have better support systems: they rated higher for marriage (51%) and pets (47%). By contrast, the typical male Yankees fan is unmarried (59%), owns no pets (58%), and is less likely to have children in his home. "The Yankees are more like that because they really don't care, they just care about winning," said Michael Dawkins, a Mets fan from Brooklyn. "They don't have time to focus on the other things in life." Yankees fan Emilio Fields, 27, who lives in Manhattan, had a different theory about why more single men were Yankees fans. "More single girls are Yankees fans," he said. "You see those pink Yankees hats all over the place. I don't see pink Mets hats." Some results generated more questions than answers. If the Yankees have won 27 World Series titles, why do they say they feel worried far more often than Mets fans? (The tally was 15% to 8%). Would Mets manager Jerry Manuel be surprised to learn that 40% of male Mets fans consider themselves professional managers? (We think not.) And is it really fair for the Yankees to claim the blue-collar crown (by 21% to 16%) and to make more money at the same time? Mets fans had the Yankees fans beat in one telling category: they seem to pay a lot more attention. Not only do they monitor their team's progress more often and make more bets, they listen to substantially more sports radio (26% to 17%). Mr. Dawkins, the Mets fan, had a ready explanation: You'd better pay attention, he said, because "you never know when they're going to win." Write to Sophia Hollander at sophia.hollander@wsj.com |
