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New Yorkers were given a taste of hope this spring with the buzz of the Rangers and Knicks spilling from Midtown into bars and offices around the tri-state area. As a die-hard Mets and Giants fan, this brief run of success feels like the exception, not the rule.
It is a tough time to be a NYC sports fan. Our rivals in other cities have experienced the highest success. Philadelphia, Boston, Atlanta, Dallas, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles have all had at least one big 4 sports league team win their league championship in the past ten seasons.
How disappointed should we be as sports fans? Quantifying our disappointment is what 2xParked will be exploring today.
Overall NYC Standings
To measure disappointment, I first analyzed all the current major NYC-metro area sports teams and their performance over the past 100 years (1924-2024)12 . Below is the winning percentage3 and championships won4 by current NYC-based teams in that time:
Perception-Based Standings
At first glance the standings do not look too bad, but these records are not a fair representation of our disappointment. Recency bias is not — and it should be —accounted for. For example, most of the Yankee championship teams were won over 60 years ago when there were only 16 MLB teams. This means (1) the positive feeling from those wins has likely been forgotten and (2) most people alive did not see this success.
I relied on Decay Theory to account for the softening of present impact of events long ago. This theory says that memory fades over time. Wins which happened in the past should be weighted less than in the present. To find a proxy for sentiment decay, I analyzed Google Trend searches of the top songs from 2003. Their searches diminished over the following 20 years, and I extrapolated tp 100 years out to account for all seasons in my data set.
To estimate what people actually might have seen, I extrapolated from Census NYC data the distribution of the population by age. I only included people 5+, since that is a good cutoff signifying when autobiographical lasting memories begins.
When we account for these two factors, here are how New Yorkers presently perceive team success:
This looks a lot different than before:
7 of 13 teams won at least 50% of their games over the past 100 years, but it only feels like 5 of 13 teams have. Only 2 of the 9 teams (Yankees and Rangers) of the big four sports leagues have a winning percentage much greater than 0.500.
Except for the worst NYC team’s, Gotham FC, surprise win, it feels like none of the other NYC teams have won a full championship. NYFC winning a recent MLS championship, the Yankees winning so many titles in their history, and the Giants with the two semi-recent fluke seasons makes them nearly feel like championship teams.
The Giants have the third worst perceived winning percentage but the third best actual winning percentage. Radio talk show callers don’t care about Hank Soar’s game-winning touchdown pass in the 1938 NFL Championship.
Disappointment Standings
There can’t “disappointment” without expectation. For example, in a league with 2 teams, if we won 25% of the championships, we would be disappointed. In a league with 30 teams, 25% would feel great.
I included a few more measures into the Perception-Based Standings.
Perception Championships: The total championships the city has perceived of winning as of today (same as above).
Expected Championships: How many championships we should have perceived if winning was completely random.
Disappointment: The difference between the perceived championships and the expected championships.
Weighted Disappointment: Average disappointment per New Yorker, which is Disappointment weighted by how many New Yorkers actually care (proxied off of Google Trends of the teams).
I ordered and split the standings into three tiers: (1) exceeding expectations [green], (2) meeting expectations [yellow], and (3) disappointing expectations [red] for NYC from a Championship perspective.
Nice Guys Finish Last
It is no wonder that there is a little-big brother relationship between the Mets and the Yankees. The Yankees are one of the few NYC teams exceeding fan expectations, while the Mets — last winners of a World Series in 1986 — are the city’s biggest disappointment.
What is more impressive about the Mets disappointment is that they have tough competition. The Knicks and Jets have not won a championship in over 50 years, while the Rangers have a long history of losing despite a large chunk of their history competing against only 5 other teams.
There is a reason why the quote “nice guys finish last” is based off the failures of the a New York baseball team (the 1946 New York Giants). I choose to be optimistic though, and as the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team used to say after losing the World Series year-after-year, “wait ‘til next year.”5
E.g. I only included when the team’s official home was in the area. For example, the record for the Devils prior to moving from Colorado to New Jersey was not included.
Seasons currently being played (e.g. MLB, WNBA) were not included. I only included the last full regular season.
Winning Percentage is defined by wins / (wins + losses + overtime losses). I excluded draws and ties.
All major league championships would be included. So for example, I included the ABA for the Nets and AFL for the Jets.
Please ignore the fact that both the Dodgers and Giants baseball teams left NYC.