CHICAGO -- They usually avoid each other without even trying, these Yankees and Mets do, one skipping town just as the other rolls in. That's how Major League Baseball likes it, and that's how New York's thousands of commuters expect it. If the George Washington Bridge is snarled, maybe -- just maybe -- another might stay empty.

Baseball, however, is not without its peculiarities -- the game thrives on them, really -- and schedules aren't immune to those quirks. So if the Yankees decide to stroll down Michigan Ave. on Tuesday, they might just run into an unfamiliar sight: the Mets.

Both New York teams will play in Chicago on Tuesday, those Mets facing the Cubs in a Wrigley matinee and the Yankees taking on the White Sox at night. It's the first time in more than 11 years that two teams from one city have played in another metropolitan area on the same date, and the first time in 28 years that the quirk has involved Chicago.

The baseball oddity, according to Katy Feeney, Major League's senior vice president of scheduling, may have started with the Pope, whose appearance in the Bronx on Sunday forced the Yankees to play on the road. One small change can have a ripple effect on the entire schedule -- "nothing is just a one-team issue," Feeney said -- and this one may just have felled enough dominoes to thrust Chicago into this New York state of mind.

After all, as Yankees manager Joe Girardi noted last week, "Who's going to argue with the Pope?"

Catholicism aside, this quirk last happened back in 1997, when the Dodgers played at Shea Stadium and the Angels came to Yankee Stadium on an otherwise idle Tuesday -- just like this one. Those games both took place at night, with Lance Johnson driving in four runs to lead the Mets to a 5-0 victory in Queens, and Jim Leyritz capping a ninth-inning rally with a two-run double to lead his Angels over the Yankees in the Bronx.

Seventeen years earlier, the Yankees and Mets both played afternoon games in Chicago. In the most recent mirror image of Tuesday's schedule, Dave Kingman rapped out two hits to help the Cubs beat his future team, 4-1, at Wrigley, while less than a dozen miles to the south, then-Yankees second baseman Willie Randolph's error helped fuel a five-run inning, vaulting the White Sox to an 8-6 victory at the old Comiskey Park.

So it's happened before -- or, as Feeney says, "Nothing is without precedence."

Still, in each of those most recent instances, the two games took place simultaneously. Both New York teams played in the same city, but fans had to choose between them.

Not this time, with the Mets and Cubs playing at 1:20 p.m. CT and the Yankees and White Sox squaring off at 7:11 p.m. Fans, if they are so inclined, can catch both games, and see a little piece of history that comes around once every decade or so.

After all, they're only just a train ride away.