New York and Chicago are, to put it lightly, a bit like oil and water. When New Yorkers boast they have the better skyline, Chicagoans point to the Willis Tower. New York is a thin-crust town, Chicago is all about deep-dish. One’s got Coney Island, but the other has Navy Pier.
Really, the Big Apple and the Windy City couldn’t be more different.
Maybe the only thing they have in common is die-hard baseball fans. Mets fans are no strangers to futility, of course, but nothing compares to suffering endured by Cubs fans — 107 years since the team last won a World Series.
The cities share a passion for sports and pride in these teams, now more than ever as the Mets and Cubs face off in the National League Championship Series.
Fans naturally had a lot to say about how the two cities compare, and why each respective hometown deserves to win more.
“What I think makes Chicago better than New York is our skyline,” said lifelong Chicagoan and Cubs fan Hope Larkin, who’d visited New York. “We have a beautiful skyline and it’s linear and it’s by a lake and it’s great.”
“I could not get over how crowded Manhattan was,” she continued.
Larkin said that after 107 years without a championship, Chicago — whose team is affectionately nicknamed the “lovable losers”– wants a victory more.
“The Cubs really want to get a win for the fans; for the people of Chicago who have been following the team all their lives,” the 48-year-old office manager said. “We’re known as the second city and New York is, well, New York. But, if we end up winning, then we’ll be the first city in this race.”
While discussing the series, fans of both teams often mentioned that “second city” rivalry. Although unable to easily dismiss the Cubs, who won 97 games in the regular season, New Yorkers such as lifelong Mets fan Chris Meehan were pretty confident of the city’s superiority in most other areas.
“I’m going to try to sum it up in three words: No. 1 is pizza, No. 2 is culture, and No. 3 is our women are better looking,” the 33-year-old lawyer and Upper East Side resident said.
Lolita Ortiz, a 38-year-old client relationship manager and Cubs fan from Chicago, pointed out the two teams have a small chapter of contentious history before this series: “1969, the Mets, that’s it; that’s the rivalry.”
That year, the Cubs blew a nine-game lead over the Mets, who famously went on to win their first World Series.
Emily Wolodiger, a 26-year-old PhD student and Mets fan from the Upper East Side, who also lived in Chicago for six years, gave an edge to the Big Apple for two major reasons.
“Chicago is a really good city, but New York has a lot of really good qualities–the opportunities here are a lot better here,” she said. “There’s unlimited opportunities. And the pizza’s better here. And the bagels, Chicago doesn’t have bagels.”
