Yankee Fans

I take Pinstripe Alley as a representative sample of Yankee fans. Go there and tell me that nothing ignorant is written. The site moderator actually said that Game Two should have been called for bugs and had the further temerity to suggest that they effected the Yankee players more than the Indians. That's ignorant. So is the idea of trading Matsui for Santana or the suggestion that Bruce Froemming wanted the Indians to win or this quote "No bugs, Indians lose." That is ignorant and that is why I said that. Furthermore, I have yet to meet a Yankee fan who didn't have some of that entitled arrogance about him.

People here know and understand the history of the game better than almost any city.

False.  People in New York know and understand the history of the Yankees, and only the Yankees.  Generally they know squat about anything else, because nothing else matters.

Look at how you've tried to differentiate Yankees fans from their peers: They don't bitch -- at least, not like Phillies and Cubs fans bitch. (Having lived four years with Chicago residents, I'm inclined to agree, but that's not the point.) They buy lots of Yankees merch. They have a history -- look at all the championships!

I think you're just making this up. You're choosing characteristics that you think Yankees fans have, and THEN calling those characteristics "true." And it just so happens that the characteristics you choose to define true fandom -- visible merchandise, number of championships, age of franchise -- will have the effect of making Yankees fans truer than fans of any other team.

There's no such thing as a true fan, not the way you mean it. There are, of course, people who really enjoy watching the game. Look again at Chuck's post. Edit out the gloating, and what's he really saying? Yankees fans aren't fun. They blatantly dismiss competition -- read the Post playoff previews to get an idea of what I mean. They do insane things like demonize the league's best hitter because opposing teams pitch around him. They try to win arguments about baseball by saying, "Count the rings." In short, by demanding championships, rather than by enjoying the road to them, Yankees fans make the game less fun.

And we're here for fun, right? If not, what did you come here to say?

http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/NYY/

The Indians (and Red Sox) are the playoff teams with history, being original members of the American League.

[By the way, I like your new footer better than the old one.]

I think that's my word of the series.

Actually, some folks now hate Red Sox fans more than Yankee fans.

Second thing is, most of those other teams aren't good enough to even deserve our hate.  They just get our scorn.  And their fans don't have the same dopey-rich-kid sense of entitlement, of course, because they haven't done very well.

Third thing is, the Yankees' financial advantage is in a whole other category even from those other teams.  Those teams have a huge, huge advantage over the average major league team, and the Yankees have an additional huge, huge advantage over even those teams.

But every sport has a team like this - Dallas Cowboys, LA Lakers, Duke basketball, Notre Dame football.  Each one of these teams has thousands of bandwagon-jumping fans all over the country that have no connection to those teams.  And fans of the local teams get annoyed by these people who know next to nothing about "their" team yet brag about their accomplishments and rub it in the face of others just to make themselves feel good.

Notre Dame is the best example.  I'm a OSU fan, of course, but I hold nothing against other traditional powerhouse programs such as Alabama, Oklahoma, and USC.  Now, I obviously want those teams to lose if they're ranked ahead of (or close to) Ohio State but that's just so my team can move up in the polls, not that I have anything against them.  If Alabama is ranked 20th and playing another team, I'm not really rooting against them.  But Notre Dame is a different story - no matter what their ranking, if you don't love them than you hate them and want them to lose every week.  Notre Dame, like the Yankees, has fans across the country with no connection to the team.  Their fans think that they're entitled to win in the same manner than Yankee fans do.  And the rest of the country hates them because of it.