I'm here in Cooperstown, NY having just visited the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In addition to checking it off my bucket list, (I haven't been here since I was eight) I was also searching for meaning and connection to a game that I have always loved deeply and now find I can no longer watch.
Like many of us here, I came of age not with the legendary Yankees of my father but with the 65-75 Yankees. Not the greatest era. My faith was rewarded with the Munson Yankees. I actually cried when Chris Chambliss hit the HR against KC.
Sadly, and it kills me to write this, but JM might be right. If there is any hope of my retaining my love of the game...
And I want to be clear... I do love the game. Give me a a pair of dice and an index card and I'll create an entire season. Wad up a sock. Tape a crunched up newspaper and hand me a ruler and I'll play. Pool baseball, backyard baseball, whiffle ball, stick ball, softball, hell, I played 1st base in an 1860's historical recreation league despite being in my sixties and that I wasn't allowed to wear a glove. (Fortunately I have soft hands!)
I still have most of my baseball cards. For the record many of them are not in great condition. I like to play closest to the wall, topsies, and knockdown.
But I digress...
If there is any hope of me retaining my love of the game I may have to become a Met fan.
I hate typing that. I write on a Yankee blog! My father used to go from Hunts Point to the stadium to watch DiMaggio. I watch EVERY game from spring training to their inevitable elimination...
And, while on that idea, that they don't win it all... Hey I'm a NY Giants fan and a NY Knicks fan. I know how to lose and lose with grace. The current NY Yankee organization is a different thing all together. Souless. Clueless, seemingly by design.
I actually hate the team I love. There's nothing left. The Stadium is a Las Vegas Simulacrum. The best players (such as they are) leave me cold. My dislike of Hal and Brain are things of record. Boone is easily the worst manager I have ever seen. No joy in Mudville...
Being in Cooperstown hasn't helped me. Seeing tributes to the game as it once was and the players that fostered my love of the game has only exacerbated my feeling of loss.
How can I keep watching a team that is not only destroying my fandom but is destroying my love of the game?
If I'm rooting for a "product" and I dislike everything about the "product" including the philosophy of the company that makes "the product" how can I in my heart, continue to support it?
To paraphrase former president and baseball fan Ronald Reagan, "I haven't left the NY Yankees. The NY Yankees have left me."
Now what do I do?
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23 comments:
Not the Mets.
That's all I'm saying.
Not. The. Mets.
NOT THE FUCKING METS.
NEVER.
EVER.
SUICIDE IS A MUCH BETTER OPTION.
Or, you could drink yourself to death over the next six months on the way to another routine wild-card elimination.
(But please stay here so we can all suffer along with you)
Funny AND poignant, Doug!
And, full disclosure: I tried rooting for the Mets. Back in the 1980s. Mad George had just destroyed my last hopes for his regime by dealing Graig Nettles to the Padres. I felt like being a Yankees fan was like being an abused spouse.
But a team called the Metsies? That plays out in Flushing? I just couldn't do it. Maybe if the old Dodgers had still been in Brooklyn, or my father's beloved Giants up in Harlem...
But the Mets? Don't go there, Doug. When you go into their new park with the stupid name, don't be surprised when they all start chanting, "One of us...one of us...one of us..."
Get a new hobby. My pastime is pretending to fix an MG. Used to be a winter thing, but increasingly it’s full time since the Yankees suck and the car is still broken. A second wife gives better head anyway, Just don’t change too much…. But the Mets are more of a boyfriend named Blaine
Why not the Mets? Smart ownership, nice stadium, great announcing teams on TV and radio, and a brilliant former Yankee field manager. No-brainer.
Because the Mets have loser fans from Staten Island.
Say it ain't so, Doug!
you can have it all. you can REMAIN Yankees fan, but root against them in every game this year. that way, you get to enjoy baseball AND support the best interests of the Yankees.
Giants if anyone, but I'm with bitty. I'm rooting for everyone who plays against the Yanks except the Red Sux and Houston. I wish for those two to die from chancroid.
Fire Cashman. He didnt do anything to address this team's obvious run scoring problems. He could have hired new coaches or at least developed new statistical ways to assess the problem. He could have gone after guys who put the ball in play, dont hit into the shift, and shorten up after two strikes. He could have put a premium on speed.
Instead we have slow guys with big slow swings
Yeah, I'm wondering when Spreadsheet Hal, the Intern, the Deputy Mayor and their gang of sabermorons will bore me to death so completely, I'll fall asleep and wake up wearing a Met's cap.
And the scary part is that I just won't care.
Rooting for the muts is only slightly better than rooting for the red sux.
Which is like saying stepping in chicken shit is only slightly better than stepping in pig shit.
Both are reprehensible moral failures.
PS,
Fuck you HAL. Please, for the love of god -- SELL THE TEAM!
The Yankees has become the worst of two worlds-boring and soulless.
Actually, Boone is perfect for them.
His postgames are like being forced to watch your daughter's entire dance recital. Three+ hours of mediocrity disguised as someone's idea of entertainment and perfection.
I, for one, cannot root for a different team with any passion, so I immerse myself in the minor leagues.
I got my first Yankees Yearbook at Cooperstown. That fabled 1967 team. Then splurged and got the '64 one too.
That started a string of about a dozen that I always bought through the mail from "Manny's Baseball".
I still have them.
Now, I should figure out where I stored them in the several moves since I bought them
I haven’t gotten there yet, but if/when I do, I’ll root for the Dodgers. Never the Mets
I'm also with Bitty and Winnie, I'm rooting for an apocalyptic fail in the hopes that Cashman is finally fired,,,,, hey, a guy can dream!
I've mostly ignored the Mets for many moons now. I remember watching them win the final game of the '69 WS, and even as a Yankees fan it made me smile bigly.
The Mets have a checkered and sad history, but then, so do the Yanks. The good part is that while we're stuck with current ownership and management, the Mets are starting over. New owner. New manager. New approach to the game (courtesy Buck).
So while I could never root for them the way I've rooted for the Yanks, I can still watch them from time to time--maybe even hang out at Citi in the spacious outfield area (where the eats ain't bad)--simply to enjoy watching a team that's playing baseball, not just running computer algorithms and judging hitters by exit velo, launch angle, and the rest of the bullshit stats that have taken over.
Yes, the color scheme always and forever will remind me of Howard Johnson's. And maybe they do have some mook fans, but did you look at the Yankee Stadium crowds the past decade or two? I mean, do you enjoy being intimidated to stand for "God Bless America" even if you don't want to?
I was going through a bunch of old photos, ditching almost all. But I came across a store of old photos from my dad's family, and there were some (bad) shots form the
'39-'40 World's Fair. I remember going to the '64 iteration. In Flushing.
Besides, the 7 train on game day is a lot funnier than the 4. Just because, you know, Mets fans.
Went to the '64 Fair, too, JM. And I remember my father was very upset that it didn't live up to the 1939-40 Fair. I was awed by it at first, but ultimately bored by all the lines.
Still, hard to believe we ever lived in a world with such optimism.
https://www.audacy.com/wfan/sports/yankees/keith-mcpherson-done-with-yankees-satisfaction-mediocrity
Some of that whiskey in your photo is what I think I'll need to get through the season.
But to join the chorus ... not the Mets.
In the '86 World Series I was rooting for a cancellation. Sickness, bus crash (not death, but enough injuries to get them to call it off) or something of the sort.
Doug, here is what you do;
1. Have several beers with El Duque in Cooperstown.
2. Eat a few pickled eggs or spicy beef sticks with the beers.
3. Adopt a new attitude ( as I have ); to wit;
- I now root for the yankees to fail, flop and lose. I am still a fan. Simply a fan who has gone " to the other side."
My logic is; it will take total failure and humiliation for the Yankees to actually change direction. This begins with replacing Cashman and Boone. It is like the Giants. Finally...after several failures.... they have seen the light and hired a GM and a coach who actually have a clue. Cashman is Gettleman and Boone is Joe Judge.
Until the Yankees do this, they will remain a failed product line.
Money doesn't work because Hal gets richer by the hour. It will take a train wreck in front of his house. One that prevents him from getting out of his circular driveway. One where he must replace Cashman and Boone.
The Yankees must collapse. And that is where I am focusing my support.
Otherwise, I would jump to another sport.
Or fly to. Cooperstown to drink with you.
I'm going with the SF Giants....and pretending they're still in NY over the Yankees rite now over rooting for the mets
Can't root for the Red Sox. Only did that against the Dodgers. My levels of rooting theology go:
Fourth from the bottom: The Mets
Third: The Red Sox
Fourth: The Giants (left NYC, but didn't make money)
Fifth and Dead Last: The Dodgers (left NYC, made money)
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