Yankees: Hate-able Even Before Yesterday

I usually try to stay away from reading sub-par news outlets because if you think the writing by ‘the big boys’ is bad, it is many time worse as you go further down the totem pole.

Like this gem from Newsday writer Ken Davidoff.

Yankees president Randy Levine, on live television yesterday from the old Yankee Stadium, announced, "Today, we reaffirm the Steinbrenners' commitment to Yankees' fans."

For the rest of the world, of course, it meant just the opposite: Time to hate the Yankees again.

Except that it doesn’t, for two reasons:
1. It logically follows that a team owner, any team owner, who spends $243.5 million on players is emphatically reaffirming a commitment to the fans. What I would give for Carl Pohlad to spend like that (actually, glad you asked, it would include my born-again virginity, my luck Twins hat, visiting rights to my dog three days a week and a perpetual 10% tithe payable directly to the Minnesota Twins at 34 Kirby Puckett Way, Minneapolis, MN).

2. Hating the Yankees never went out of style. It never does. Seriously, it just doesn’t. It’s a classic. Like the little black dress, Charlie Brown’s Christmas and a college football national title game that nobody’s really happy with.

There existed, this past year, the tiniest window in which the Yankees made it difficult to loathe them. But they utilized the power left arm of CC Sabathia and the power right arm of A.J. Burnett to slam that window shut.

This is the first time in fourteen years that the Yankees missed the playoffs. Sorry if I am unable to feel the depths of sorrow for the abject failure as I am for, say, the Royals, Reds or Rangers.

And you know what, even in the 80s I still hated the Yankees…even when they are not a good baseball team they are still the richest and most successful sporting team ever in America. Also, their fans are New Yorkers and assorted other bandwagon hangers-on across the country.

The Yankees could play Al Qaeda and I will still be rooting against the Yankees.

So no, one bad season didn’t make it difficult to dislike the Yankees. If anything, it primed me for extra dislike when they inevitably waved their huge checkbook around to the best players in the Major Leagues.

Yankees bashing is back en vogue.

Again, unlike corduroy or hippie hair, it never went out of style.

Spending $243.5 million on two pitchers, at a time when our country is drowning financially, will create some bad will out there.

Though I may have been subtle in communicating this, the Yankees are not my favorite team. But it is hard to fault them for spending money since, you know, they make a lot of money and, you may have heard, they spent their money on good players who will help them win games and, research shows, winning attracts the fans that make teams profitable. So, like most people, and this might hit you like a striper wrapped in yesterday’s Post, I don’t care that they are spending a lot of money as long as they are NOT asking my elected representatives to steal money from me to give it to them and their business.

I may fervently hope that Sabathia and Burnett turn out like Tartabull and Johnson, but I am not angry that they spent their money to buy players. It’s called the free market.

Oh, and it’s what I wish the Twins would do, too.