Hate, Explained

Come this time of year, there’s always a lot of bickering between the pro and anti Yankee factions across the various social media platforms. I often wondered where it all started. I feel like it’s a “chicken or the egg” kind of thing. Did an overconfident Yankee fan, completely unprovoked, needlessly badger a fan of another team first? Or did the fan of another team “hate”, as the kids say, on the Yankees first?

Personally, I try to stay clear of the whole mess. I try to live my life focused on doing what I do. Whatever someone else does or doesn’t do well, that’s on them. But even I can’t help spewing a little Yankee vitriol now and then. There are numerous reasons to dislike the Yankees; a large, douch-ey entitled fair weather fan base, the outrageous payroll, the bullshit “aura”, “mystique” and “The Yankee Way”. For me, though, I think it’s because I simply just don’t get being a Yankees fan.

Being a Yankee fan is like having rich man problems, observe:

“Fuck! My Bentley’s getting detailed? Ugh! Fine, I guess I’ll drive the BMW.”
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“What the fuck, A-Rod, the best player in the world for the past 15 years, how come you only have 20 home runs through August you bum!”

And when Joba Chamberlain was having a disappointing season, you went and picked up Kerry Wood and all the remaining money on his $10 million dollar contract. Could you use a slight upgrade at DH? Why not go and get Lance Berkman and the remaining money on his $14.5 million dollar contract?

I don’t blame the Yankees for spending money. How much they are able to spend is completely up to them as an organization. But, to get marginally better they spent tens of millions of dollars. That’s like throwing away your Rembrandt for a Picasso because it’s worth slightly more. Not only that, could other contenders have benefited more from additions like Wood and Berkman? Of course they could have, but the cost of their contracts made those moves prohibitive. If you’re the only team who can afford to make one of those moves, let alone both, how is that fair? Or more accurately, as a fan, how can you feel good about that?

The faulty economics of baseball aside, I think the thing that baffles me most is how does being a Yankee fan bring you any joy? Back in 2006 I was absolutely crushed when Beltran took a called third strike on an Adam Wainwright curveball in game seven of the NLCS. But years later I look back on that 2006 team and season with great fondness. I remember all the games I went to, witnessing them clinch the National League East for the first time in almost twenty years, the excitement of attending my first playoff game. Despite the fact that the Mets failed to even make the World Series, I consider that season a success. Numerous teams/players/seasons around Major League Baseball are beloved by their fans despite not winning a championship. Did you hear the Texas crowd’s defeaning eruption when the third out was recorded? Even if the Rangers are swept in World Series, how many fans will look back and smile when thinking about Josh Hamilton, Nelson Cruz, Cliff Lee, Neftali Feliz, Ron Washington, or that silly claw and antler things they do?

Conversely, how many Yankee fans will wax nostalgic about that magical 2010 season where they almost made it? How many Bronx faithful will remember all the clutch plays Nick Swisher and Austin Kearns made? Right now millions of Yankee fans have already moved on, content that with Cliff Lee likely in their rotation behind Sabathia next year, a World Series title is never more than a year away. And that’s been the “Yankee Way” for the last ten years.

We all wish we could always come out on top in life in whatever we do; have a great job, make ass tons of money, have a beautiful family, and an overall sense of spiritual fulfillment. Unfortunately, that’s not how life works. Most of us work too hard at jobs we don’t like, for too little money, feel shitty and come home to even more problems with only a sliver of time to do the things we actually enjoy in life. But, once in a while, we win; getting a fat tax return check, just catching a train, or calling out your boss in front of his/her bosses. And when we do it is so…fucking…sweet. It makes all the bullshit worth it.

To me, that’s what makes sports enjoyable. Most of the time your team is bad, mediocre, or at best pretty good. But when they’re good it’s an amazing, occasionally transcendent feeling. That’s why you stick it out through the bad times. That’s why you stay the entire game during a blowout loss; because someday, whether it’s two years or twenty years from now, you will remember that seventy two win season and say “Fuck you history! I suffered through Anthony Young‘s consecutive loss streak. I deserve this!”

So, in the last sixteen years, if you’ve made the playoffs sixteen times, won the pennant seven times, and the World Series five times where do you derive that joy? For a large segment of Yankee fans, the answer is you don’t. For me, that’s why I don’t “hate” on Yankee fans. It just makes me sad for them.