What mattered was that they weren't the Yankees, the Mets' glamorous rivals. Their caps could be bought on any British high street, appearing in hip hop videos or police identity parades. Supporting the Yankees seemed to be the equivalent of picking Manchester United and Barcelona as your English and Spanish teams – fine, but not an indicator of the true fan, the sort of person who prefers their glory fleeting and interspersed with years of unrelenting misery.