Natalie Petykowski, an 11-year-old baseball fan, was wearing a lighter shade of blue than many at the World Series block party on Newtown Lane on Saturday, having donned a Los Angeles Dodgers jersey and a signature “L.A.” cap.
Natalie is not, in fact, a Dodgers fan, just a heartbroken Mets fan who couldn’t bring herself to support the Yankees during Game 2 of the World Series, even after the Mets’ own loss to the Dodgers in a series that wrapped up on Oct. 20.
“If you’re a Mets fan,” Natalie said, “you don’t root for the Yankees.” Her friend Kaya Posillico, 12, was nearby in Yankees gear.
“I just want the Yankees to win,” Kaya said. Natalie echoed her: “And I just want the Dodgers to win.”
East Hampton Village closed off Newtown Lane starting at 5 p.m. on Saturday — three hours before the first pitch in Game 2 — so the community could come together, with Montauk Brewing Company beverages in hand, and watch the game, which ended in a 4-2 Dodgers win.
Other businesses took advantage of the opportunity, too. The Golden Pear stayed open late, serving hot coffee to police officers and partygoers as employees poked their heads out when business was slow to watch the crowds and peek at the big screen down the block. Next door, Sam’s restaurant set up tables in the street, serving baseball fans hungry for both pizza and a championship.
Across the way, two Cittanuova employees got a great view of the first pitch, standing on the restaurant’s rooftop just in time to watch Ice Cube on screen meander through the Los Angeles outfield to the tune of “It Was a Good Day,” his 1993 West Coast hip-hop hit, some of its lyrics adapted to suit baseball instead of basketball.
Ice Cube’s summertime classic describes his perfect day — the Lakers beat the Supersonics, no trouble from the police, “Yo! MTV Raps” on TV, and a 2 a.m. burger — but it could just as easily have been about Saturday on Newtown Lane, as many praised the move to sacrifice six hours of traffic for the block party.
Darius Narizzano described it as a “great idea” and praised Mayor Jerry Larsen for orchestrating it with the East Hampton Village Foundation. On her way back from Starbucks, Rita Narizzano walked ahead, warning Mr. Narizzano about missing the first pitch. The couple made it with time to spare.
“My dad and I used to do strolls here in the ‘80s, and it felt organic, like old-school East End,” said Chris Mack, who attended with his father, Steve Mack. “So, this I think brings back a little bit of that feel.”
When the younger Mr. Mack was growing up, the two would take baseball road trips to cities like Pittsburgh, Detroit, Toronto, and Cleveland. They drove as far as “the Houston Astrodome for baseball and Americana,” the son said. Another one of their adventures took them to the “Field of Dreams” in eastern Iowa.
The Macks are Mets fans — “When we started doing these trips, I thought I was going to be a Met,” Mr. Mack said — but he and his father appreciate baseball no matter who is in uniform on the field.
“The Dodgers were once at the corner of Sullivan and McKeever in Brooklyn, and the Dodgers as an organization, the team — pioneers of change: Jackie Robinson, Don Newcombe, Roy Campanella.”
He praised the initiative to hold the party, especially with Election Day looming, describing it as “a little peace on the East End in advance of a probably choppy next couple weeks for our country as a whole,” adding, “baseball unites the people.”
For his part, Mayor Larsen agreed with the Macks and the Narizzanos, calling the block party a “a great success” in a conversation on the street. “It’s all about community, and this is really all the local community that’s here.”
The idea was one he’d had for a long time, he said, though New York sports teams didn’t always cooperate. “The Yankees haven’t been in it for 15 years, and how long has it been for the Mets?”
Mayor Larsen grew up a Mets fan, listing some names — Rusty Staub, Ed Kranepool — but raised his children as Yankees fans since the Mets were such “heartbreakers.” Had it been a Subway Series as he’d hoped, the mayor would have been cheering on the Mets.
Thinking back, the mayor couldn’t remember a time when anything like the block party had been done, with the exception of closing the Reutershan lot when Southampton and East Hampton High Schools played each other in football when he was younger.
The night game wouldn’t affect retail stores, and the restaurants were “thrilled” to be a part of it.
“I love this, and we’ve been talking about if — in the N.F.L. or in basketball — we get another New York championship, we could do this again,” the mayor said, eyeing a possible New York Knicks playoff run in the next calendar year.
