It’s not quite yet a Subway Series between the Yankees and the Mets, which would be the 15th crosstown World Series, but with both local teams now competing for the pennants, New York has not been this close since 2000. While we’re not going to pick sides in an all-New York World Series, let’s get there first, so we are urging the ballplayers on both teams to go for it guys, in both the American League and the Senior Circuit. This week, Yankee fans need to cheer on the Mets and the Mets faithful have to pull for the Yanks. Root, root, root for the home teams. While the Bombers have won 40 American League pennants since 1921, their last was in 2009. That 14-year dry stretch matches their longest ever, when they went from 1982 to 1995 without an AL pennant. But rather than rack up a record 15th pennant-less year, we know that they will come through against Cleveland starting tonight in the Bronx. The Mets don’t have that storied history, having captured five National League pennants since their 1962 founding, but their last NL pennant was more recent, in 2015. After playing in L.A. last night and this afternoon, the Mets can come back home with the chance to win it all this week in Queens. If it happens, this will be the first Subway Series played in the new Yankee Stadium and Citi Field, which both opened in 2009. The first two Subway Series, in 1921 and 1922, you didn’t need to take a train, as all the games were played at the Giants’ uptown Polo Grounds home that the Yankees were subletting while their new stadium was being built just across the Harlem River in the Bronx. The Jints won them both. Since 1923, every Subway Series was at the House That Ruth Built, old Yankee Stadium, alternating with the Polo Grounds (4 times), Ebbets Field (6 times) or Shea (once). With the lone exception of the Dodgers sole magic championship year of 1955, the Yankees always won. During the first three Subway Series, Casey Stengel was a player for the Giants. He would later manage the Yankees during six more Subway Series, from 1949 through 1956, putting him in uniform for nine of the crosstown showdowns. After he was let go by the Yanks, the upstart Mets hired Stengel in 1962. His success of seven world championships in the Bronx was not repeated, which included a record five consecutive World Series in his first five seasons as Yanks manager. He was manager for the Mets for their first four years and the Mets were 10th of 10 in the NL for all four years. During his first three years with the Mets, the Yanks won three more World Series. We happen to have a copy of the Mets team yearbook from 1964, their first year at Shea (cover price: 50¢ and tickets were $1.30 for general admission, $2.50 for reserved seats and $3.50 for box seats). The yearbook has a feature on Stengel, saying that he is now appearing in uniform at his fifth New York City major league ballpark: He played for the Dodgers at Ebbets Field and it predecessor, Washington Park at Fourth Ave. and Third Street, the Polo Grounds, and managed at Yankee Stadium and now Shea. All five of those ballparks are now gone. Let’s have the first Subway Series at Citi Field and new Yankee Stadium.