I love sports. Whether it's hockey, football, basketball (college not NBA) or soccer, sports takes up a tremendous amount of my free time. Above all of these, stands baseball. Playing Little League, practicing pitching against my stoop, being Keith Hernandez for Halloween in 2nd grade or being a Mets season ticket holder are just some of the ways that baseball has played a huge role in my life. It's impossible to be a baseball fan without at least thinking about the Yankees. They're the most storied franchise in the sport and if you live in New York, they've returned to being the city's most dominant franchise over the past 15 years.
I didn't always hate the Yankees. As a child of the 80's, during my entire childhood the Yankees were basically a non-factor in New York during the days when Doc, Darryl, Keith and the Kid ruled the city. When the Yankees became good again in the mid-90's I was actually rooting for them, especially in the '96 World Series against the hated Atlanta Braves. However, as they kept winning my hatred of them began to grow but I soon realized that it wasn't because of the team, as much as it was their fans.
Yankees fans. So many words to describe them. If I had to pick three, I would choose......
1)Entitled. I would attribute this to the Steinbrenner propaganda that "any year without a title is a failure!" Shut up. Listening to the game last night on the radio and hearing John Sterling explain how Yankees fans have been waiting "a long time" for this title was just a bit too much for me. Hey John, this franchise has won 26% of all the World Series ever played.....get a grip. As Kate said to me last night, "the same team isn't supposed to win every year." Very true Kate, just don't tell that to a Yankees fan.
2)Uninformed. If you ask 70% of Yankees fans one question about ANY other team in baseball they wouldn't have a clue. Asking a Yankees fan who the rightfielder for the Phillies was before this series would be the equivalent of asking them who the goalkeeper is for Portsmouth in the English Premier League. Of course this is a "Yankees Universe" so how could I blame them.
3)Obnoxious. This is really the big one. Yankees fans love to remind you just how much your team sucks. These are the same guys that who have pinstripe jerseys with the names of the player on the back.
Anyway, the point of this blog is not to trash the Yankees and their fans, it's actually a tip of the cap to them. From the beginning of the year you just got the sense that this team was for real. Championship teams usually have a mix of comraderie (see corny/obnoxious cream pie ritual), late inning comebacks (see every game against the Twins) and even a little bit of luck (see Luis Castillo). Oh yeah and this team had the added bonus of spending 1/4 billion dollars on three players this year. (there was no way I could write about the Yankees without a mention of their payroll) Sure enough, after stumbling out of the gate, the Yanks steamrolled through the summer, won the division and the pennant. As if this season wasn't bad enough for Mets fans, we had to endure a World Series featuring the other team in our city with the jerk off fans vs. our division rival with even bigger jerk off fans (Phillies fans seem to have forgotten that they're the most losing franchise in the history of American sports and that they've won a grand total of 2 championships since 1883) Well sadly enough, I came full circle from 1996 and I wanted the Yankees to win, or more accurately I wanted the Phillies to lose.
Last night the Yankees won the World Series and in some strange way, the sports universe seems normal again. Maybe it's just that I had grown so used to them winning all the time that it was strange to seem them lose for so long. Perhaps it's because that scrappy franchise with tough blue collar guys came together and won one for their likeable owner.....wait scrap that one. Even though the next few days will be full of parades, keys to the city and those entitled, uninformed, obnoxious fans, in a weird way, it's kind of nice to have the Yankees back on top. For now, all I can do is survive the cold winter, waiting for the ice to thaw, the sun to come shining through and baseball to begin again.
109 days till pitchers and catchers.
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