Lots of wonderful people are Yankees fans. So I’m not going to do this thing with you where I say that Yankees fans are the kind of people who throw junk into the visiting bullpen. Remember that Red Sox fans tried to do something like that with Mets fans in 1986 when some jerk at Shea threw a beer bottle in the general direction of Roger Clemens. This sort of stereotyping is never fair. If you do it with a human group other than a fan base, you deservedly get into trouble. If you persist in thinking that the people in any one fan base are better than people in any other, my view is that you’re taking all this stuff too seriously. I am also not going to say that Yankees fans are the kind of people who leave an important game early when their team is losing. I’ve seen some Mets fans do this plenty of times. And we all know that a lot of people at playoff games couldn’t care less about which team wins.
While I don’t have anything against Yankees fans, I also don’t have much sympathy for them right now. Their team lost. Good. I say this after respectfully waiting 20 hours. Yankees fans are undoubtedly healed by now. They’re already confidently considering how the Yankees are going to get Cliff Lee and Carl Crawford and are therefore not going to have to go into the playoffs next year with a team that has the kind of glaring imperfections that were so evident in this year’s Yankees team.
Yankees fans are annoyed right now with those of us who are doing what they call the Snoopy dance. A Yankee fan Facebook friend of mine, the estimable Lisa Swan of Subway Squawkers, is perfectly right to observe that we who are doing the Snoopy dance have not won anything. You’re right, Lisa. But that doesn’t mean we’re not happy. We’re not celebrating the fact that we have won. We’re celebrating the fact that you have lost.
Why are we being so mean? (Yankees fans ask, plaintively, uncomprehendingly, with their eyes open wide and tearing a little bit.) Well, guys, you may not deserve our sympathy, but you do deserve an answer to this perfectly legitimate question.
We are celebrating the fact that the Yankees have lost because we are human beings. Human beings have a tendency to resent other human beings who feel they’re entitled to what everybody else hopes and dreams about. Yankees fans, you know this. You call it jealousy and you ask us to rise above it. But it’s not jealousy. It’s more complicated. The way you think devalues what we yearn for.
Baseball is a game whose pleasure comes from hoping and dreaming for something that is unlikely to happen. It is not a game whose pleasure derives from winning. If it were a game whose pleasure derived from winning there would no longer be any Texas Rangers fans and there might not be any Mets fans either. The pleasure is in hoping and dreaming for what is unlikely. This is what keeps the rest of us going.
Fans who feel that they’re entitled to making it to the World Series, and winning it often, are trying to turn the unlikely into the likely. This devalues baseball. It devalues the unlikely thing and in the process it devalues the hopes and the dreams of the rest of us. If baseball triumph is something that should be had, rather than something that might be had, it is not a big deal. This is why Yankees World Series tickets on the secondary market were selling for so much less than Giants tickets or Rangers tickets. What Yankees fans have is not worth much. This is why, to your infinite annoyance, the rest of us don’t envy you. This is why the rest of us like to see you lose. We like to think that losing will remind you of something you no longer believe.
We still believe. We do not expect. This doesn’t make us better than you, But this makes it more fun to be us. When the Mets win, or the Rangers, or the Giants, our cups runneth over. Your cups just fill up.
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I want to give a shout out to all the wonderful people I met at the showing of Billy Joel’s The Last Play at Shea in Rockville Centre on Thursday night. I enjoyed seeing the film with you and talking with you about it afterwards and I relayed the things you said and the enthusiasm you expressed to the producers. This is a terrific film and everyone should try to see it. To find out where it’s playing for a more extended run, and to keep abreast of all the news about future showings and a DVD release, visit thelastplayatshea.com.
