The Other Team

I'm not much of a trash-talker. sure, if I'm antagonized, I can verbally throw down with a Yankee fan, but I don't seek out the confrontation. hostility isn't a part of my fandom, and I don't understand those for whom hostility toward another team is as defining a quality of their life as a ball fan as love of their own team is a defining quality.

yes, I hate the Yankees. but I don't hate the Yankees the way my father does, the way my uncles do, the way anyone who ever was a Brooklyn Dodger fan does. and I don't hate the Yankees the way any Boston Red Sox fan does, for obvious reasons. I hate the Yankees for two reasons-- first, because the Mets can do nothing without it in some way being compared with what the Yanks are doing (check out my ongoing NYC sports press watch for evidence of this). the other reason is that, while I count a number of Yankee fans as friends, the overwhelming majority of Yankee fans I've observed and come into contact with are represented well by the Yanks' biggest fan.

and yet today, the strangest thing happened-- while watching the Yanks struggle against and lose to the Blue Jays today, after being swept at home by the Angels and on their way to get beaten into the ground in Boston over the weekend, I actually felt a twinge of sympathy for the Yankees and (ok, some of) their fans. I remember what it feels like to watch your team seem to lose all luck, spin out of control and spend more than a decade in the woods. it happened in the '90s for the Mets, but not since before I was born were the Yanks as bad as they are now. it must feel as though the world is crashing down on them, and they have no idea what to do to hold it up. it's legitimately sad to watch.

well, it is for a minute anyway. thankfully, the feeling passed quickly, and I went right back to enjoying the Yankees slide into American League oblivion.