This Subway Series is the same district fight with a different feeling

The Yankees and Mets have played each other 142 times since interleague play began in 1997, 147 times if you include the 2000 World Series (and you should always include the 2000 World Series).

There have been times when both teams have started the season on a high note (see 2000). There have been times when both teams have struggled, like last July when the Mets had already parted ways with a large portion of the team and the Yankees were just weeks away from the nine-game losing streak that would ultimately ruin their season.

There have been times when one of the teams – and when that happened, it was almost always the Yankees – was clearly better. And there have also been times when the rivalry brought out the best in the losing team, such as in May 2013 when the Mets (already 11 games under .500) won four games in four days against the Yankees (already 10 games over .500) in both the Bronx and Queens.

This one is a little different.

This time, the Yankees come in ice cold, having spent most of the season in a baseball sauna, that’s how hot they’ve been — the Yankees have lost three series in a row and four of their last five, 3-7 in their last 10 games. And this time, the Mets come into June red hot, having spent most of April and May in a baseball igloo, having won four series in a row and 13 of their last 17 games.

The Yankees are banged up: no Giancarlo Stanton, no Anthony Rizzo, no Clarke Schmidt, no Ian Hamilton. The Mets are also shorthanded: Starling Marte’s knee is questionable, although he was re-evaluated on Monday, Brooks Raley is out for the rest of the season, and Edwin Diaz is likely out for 10 games after being ejected Sunday night in Chicago for too much sticky stuff on his hand.

And interestingly, the Mets have already been bolstered in their efforts to get back into the season by a trio of former Yankees (Luis Severino, Harrison Bader, Luis Torrens). At the same time, the Yankees have gotten great work from former Met relief pitcher Michael Tonkin and hope to see a similar performance once former Met JD Davis arrives to bolster their infield.

It is definitely a Subway series of a different kind.

But it will be about an inning, maybe two, before the next two games over the next two nights remind us that this remains one of the most entertaining landing spots on the New York sports calendar each year. Maybe the new is long gone, and so it will never be the same as it was in the days and hours before June 16, 1997, when these teams first played a game that counted, or in the days and hours before Oct. 21, 2000, the first game of the 2000 World Series.

But there’s still something moving about the acoustics when you hear occasional chants of “Let’s Go Yankees!” at Citi Field when the visiting team is getting their act together, or when you hear sections of “Let’s Go Mets!” at Yankee Stadium when the Mets are getting revenge in the Bronx.

After all, our civil war is the most civilized. We’ve been fighting it for 27 years, and while our city remains divided along baseball lines and these arguments often get heated at water coolers, in bars, or in text messages, it’s never gotten ugly. There’s a lot of good-natured trash talk in the hallway, a heated back-and-forth on talk radio.

It wasn’t always that way. Back then, the rivalry between the Dodgers and Giants sometimes turned violent, once ending with the murder of a Giants fan named Frank Krug after he had engaged in some slightly saucy banter with a Dodgers fan named Robert Joyce at a Brooklyn bar called Pat Diamond’s. Joyce, perhaps the first and most extreme first-time offender in a long time, decided to have the last word by shooting himself.

So, no, the Mets/Yankees never quite left There.

(Thank God.)

(Knock on wood.)

And so we’ll face that civil war again this week, and again in a month when the final two games of this year’s Subway Series return to Yankee Stadium. Mets fans and Yankees fans will be mostly concerned with the important stuff – the Yankees focused on getting the Orioles a few yards ahead of first place in the AL, the Mets trying to stay within shouting distance of the NL wild card.

And as a bonus, they can chat with their friends, siblings and neighbors who happen to cheer for the other uniform colors. Politely, of course.