#Mets-Yankees reintroducing New York to team sports

The last time a notable sporting event involving two teams occurred in the five boroughs, St. John’s and Creighton departed the floor at halftime of the Big East men’s basketball tournament on March 12 and never returned.

After four-plus months, New York team sports will in a sense return this weekend, with the Mets and Yankees playing two exhibition games that signal the proximity of the regular season. Round 1 is Saturday night at Citi Field.

“I know a lot of New Yorkers will be tuned in to the games, just watching,” J.D. Davis said Friday before a Mets workout. “All eyes are going to be on it. But it’s definitely a great feeling and going to be a great turning point in our economy, society and our country that we’re starting up and going forward and giving some light on what’s going on. Hopefully we can throw in some good games.”

The Mets were within two weeks of their season opener when the COVID-19 outbreak shuttered spring training in March. For the last two weeks they have trained at Citi Field, with most of the work in recent days occurring in intrasquad scrimmages.

MLB gave teams the option of playing three exhibitions, and the Mets and Yankees — who will play six times during the 60-game regular season — agreed to meet twice. The logistics, with a short bus ride as the travel for the visiting team, dictated the arrangement.

“It’s an exciting time for sure,” Michael Wacha said. “We’re a week away from Opening Day, getting back out there on the field and getting baseball started back up, but these exhibition games are leading up into that regular season. It’s definitely an exciting time, not only for New York, but for the whole country and the whole world.”

The Mets have held dress rehearsals the last two days, wearing full uniforms and dividing the roster for scrimmages. Cardboard cutouts of fans have been placed behind home plate, with crowd noise and music part of the fan-empty ballpark experience for players.

On Friday, the team added a tent area behind the first-base dugout that will seat players during games with social distancing in effect.

“Hopefully we don’t get to the point we’re scrambling out of the stands to get a guy into the game,” manager Luis Rojas said. “We’ll definitely talk about where everybody is and we’re learning every day sitting in the dugout, kind of like the moving parts. It’s kind of feeling normal right now, everyone keeping their distance and able to have that camaraderie and yell at each other, so it’s going well, but once we play those games against the Yankees we will have a better feel of that.”

The Mets might be bored playing against each other, but will resume the intrasquad games after the Yankees series to prepare for Friday’s opener against the Braves at Citi Field.

“It will be great watching the opposing uniform come in and face us, I think it would give another taste of competition to the guys,” Rojas said. “[Thursday] night we had our first ballpark, fully operational game. All the sounds were in there. The other day we had the crowd sound only and we had some feedback that we need more, we need more sounds than that and [Thursday] night I got great feedback from the guys saying they felt like a real game. I think this will take it a step further.”