I’ve noticed that people from NYC tend to phrase things this way - rather than say “the Knicks game,” they say “The Nick game,” or “The Met game” rather than “The Mets Game.”
What’s up with that? Do they think that each team member is a “Nick” or a “Met,” and therefore it’s a “Nick Game” rather than a “Nicks Game?”
A lot of people I know do this with other teams too though - “Packer game” is the one I’ve heard most. On the other hand I’ve never heard anyone do this with the Rams, since “Ram game” is just too short and sounds truncated. “Tiger game” I think I’ve heard. I definitely agree that New York fans do it more. All my family members say “Yankee game,” never Yankees.
“Cub game” here too. No issues with it.
I’m as likely (or more likely) to say “Mets game” and “Knicks game” as “Met game” and “Knick game”. But it’s very common to hear/say a specific team game referred to in the singular, because yes, we do refer to individual team players as “a Met”, “a Yankee”, “a Knick”, “a Ranger”, etc. You almost never hear “the Giant game” though, always “the Giants game”, who play in Giants Stadium. Some old timers insist on continuing to specify “the football Giants”, even though the baseball team left in 1957.
Isn’t this true of almost any team that has a name that is a plural form (Cubs, Orioles, Dodgers, etc.)? I mean, it’s “Dodger Stadium” and “Yankee Stadium”, so of course one might speak of going to “the Dodger game” or “the Yankee game”. The Red Sox and White Sox are a sort of gray area, since their team name is a kind of bastardized plural form, but nobody speaks of even Curt Schilling being “a Red Sock” player; they’re “Sox” of either color.
Then there are teams with more abstract team names that don’t really have a plural, like the Miami Heat or the Utah Jazz. Was Alonzo Mourning “a Heat” and John Stockton “a Jazz”? Sounds kinda funny but that’s what I have heard said.
I wonder where a player for the Seahawks fall in?
Impossible here in Boston. “Do you want to go to a Sock game?” No, thanks.