The MFY

When I was a kid, I liked the Yankees. I wouldn't call myself a Yankees fan, because I reserved that for my hometown teams (the Brewers and later the Diamondbacks), but I liked them.

Of course, I would have a hard time really characterizing myself as a baseball fan at that time, because I knew so little about the game and really didn't follow it very closely, yet somehow I deeply cared about it. In retrospect, it seems odd, but it made sense at the time. I guess a lot of it had to do with not having ready access to a computer; hobbies are different without easy access to reams of information constantly. (I've often wondered what my childhood would have been like if Wikipedia and broadband had existed when I was young, but that's a topic for another time).

Anyway, when I was a child, I suppose the main way I expressed my baseball fandom was through having baseball hats. I had a collection of several teams, chosen mainly based on which ones I thought had the best logo. To this day, I'm fascinated by uniforms and logos and hat insignias, but at least now I understand the connection between wearing a certain teams hat and supporting them. I didn't really get that when I was a kid, so I ended up with certain things like an Orioles hat (not only a picture of a bird, but with orange, my favorite color) or an A's hat (in addition to being bright green, the A is in a cool font and, c'mon, it's the only hat in baseball with an apostrophe-s on it), and, of course, a Yankees hat. The interlocking NY (from what I understand) was created by designers at Tiffany's, and, much as I hate the MFY these days, I won't deny that it's a cool looking logo. I didn't have a Red Sox hat then; it was just a boring B. Of course now, having spent plenty of time in the Boston area, I own multiple Red Sox hats; I think they materialize on your head if you spend too much time around Kenmore Square.

So, as a kid, not only did the Yankees cool logo appeal to me, but also the fact that they were clearly the premier team among all 28 (later 30) MLB teams. I mean, much as I hate Yankee exceptionalism now, they are the winningest team, have by far the most championships, and Babe Ruth played for them. It wasn't hard to like them.

This started to change a little in 2001, when I got to root against them in the World Series and watch the Diamondbacks demolish them. While I did root against them, there weren't really any hard feelings, because the Diamondbacks did, indeed, demolish them, outscoring them 37-14 and mounting an epic 9th-inning comeback against the greatest closer in baseball history, Mariano Rivera.

In 2003, however, I really began to feel and understand Yankee hatred. When I realized there was a possibility of a Cubs-Red Sox World Series, I was quite excited. Here was something interesting: a World Series where the winner was guaranteed to be a team that hadn't won a World Series in at least 80 years. That was worth getting excited about. When it ended up being Yankees-Marlins, the worst possible outcome, I was quite upset, and hoped at the very least the Yankees would lose, because nothing could possibly be more boring than the Yankees winning the World Series again.

It was that thought, that the Yankees winning is boring, that started to crystallize things for me. And, of course, the next year, when the Red Sox were down 3-0 in the ALCS, I rooted for the Red Sox to win, because nothing could possibly be more boring than the Yankees sweeping an LCS, and, furthermore, few things could be more interesting than a team coming back from 3-0, especially if that team hasn't won the World Series in 86 years.

Finally, when I actually became interested in baseball for real recently, and spent enough time in Boston to understand the Red Sox and their fans, my Yankee hatred came into full bloom. It quickly became apparent how impossible it is to be a fan of the Milwaukee Brewers, one of the most ignored and marginalized teams in all of baseball, and not to resent the Yankees and their gigantic payroll and notoriety.

Of course, the same thing could be said about resenting the Red Sox, who have the second biggest payroll and second most notoriety, but there's something different about it.

Although the impetus for this post was the Yankees' signing of Mark Teixeira, it isn't really the Yankees' profligate spending that inspires this hatred. As much as it galls me to see the 3 highest-paid free agent signings so far going to the same team, as disturbing as it is to see the two consensus biggest stars of the free agent crop going to the same team, I understand. Any team with that kind of money would spend it. I am quite upset that the Brewers have lost the Yankees' first round draft pick on account of the signing, but that's really more a fault with the compensation system, not with the Yankees.

Closer to the point is the way the Yankees spend their money. It is hard to fault them for the Sabathia and Teixeira signings, as they are great athletes. However, it has mostly been to the Yankees' detriment that they ignore developing their young players in lieu of signing free agents. The Yankees' most recent run of success was when the Steinbrenners were forcibly taken out of the equation for a few seasons, and the Yankees were allowed to thrive with homegrown talent like Jeter, Posada, and Rivera. Free agent signings don't have to come at the expense of young player development; just look at the Red Sox. They have money to burn, and they have made free agent signings (Mike Lowell, J.D. Drew), but who's been the core of their team lately? Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis, their homegrown players. However, the Yankees seem to make free agent signings at the expense of young player development. The big story last off-season was how the Yankees were forgoing their old free-spending habits and instead concentrating on developing their young talent. They didn't trade for Johan, preferring instead to concentrate on Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes, and Ian Kennedy. When that didn't work out as well as they hoped and they missed the playoffs, they flipped and immediately reverted to their free-spending ways, leaving the rotation status of said prospects uncertain.

And, really, is the reason to hate the Yankees: they and their fans don't understand that they can't win the World Series every year. When they make it to the playoffs but don't make it to the big show, it's not just luck, it's a display of epic failure. If they miss the playoffs despite winning 89 games and having made them the past 13 years in a row, it's a reason to give up on young prospects and completely jump ship. I was talking to a Yankees fan who was lamenting that they missed the playoffs this year, and I said, "Yeah, well, at least you made it the last 13 years," and he said, "Yeah, but that's not a record." You can imagine how galling that is to a Brewers fan, ecstatic that he saw his team make the playoffs at all for the first time in his life. This is the galling idea: the idea that the Yankees are different, and are supposed to make it, and are entitled to make it, and are supposed to have all the best players, and are somehow always better, even when they aren't, just because they're the MFY.