Yankees (& Fans) Are Down
With the attention that Mike Francesa gives the Yankees and how he seemingly dreads saying anything positive about the Mets they should change the name of his Sunday night show on channel 4 from Mike’d Up to Yank’ed Up. (Giving credit where it’s due Mike’d Up is a clever name for a sports show.) Did you see how much time he spent last night discussing how the Yankees are sucking so far this year? Talking about the Yankees ‘lost weekend’?
Along similar lines Angels shortstop Orlando Cabrera was quoted in Los Angeles newspapers yesterday as saying that Yankees fans are bad losers. (Tell me something I don’t know.) Yankees’ fans response to this was something along the lines of “who the heck are you?”. But Cabrera makes a valid point. When the Yanks are winning (as they often do) there is no happier person in the world than a Yankees fan. But being used to winning has made them lose perspective. They really don’t know how to analyze the team and figure out what’s wrong. Is Joe Torre to blame? Is Brian Cashman to blame? Are the players to blame? Is Alex Rodriguez to blame? How about Derek Jeter? Jason Giambi?
I’m not saying that I have any clue how to fix that team (I don’t follow them closely enough to keep track of all the sub plots and egos involved) but I know enough to know that booing Torre yesterday was wrong. Torre was a hero for ten years while running a championship caliber team. But no team wins forever and even a dynasty can have an off year. You don’t have to like it and you don’t have to accept it but firing Torre now would be an injustice.
And don’t get me started on how they’ve treated ARod. I mean, the guy is a bit spoiled and has never lead a championship team. But he is one of the greatest athletes in the game (definitely a better athlete than Jeter – this is not a slight on Jeter, he’s just not as good an athlete). They didn’t waste time getting on this guys case the moment he arrived. Despite changing his position for the better of the team he still gets barbs from Yankees fans over his defense. Yes, there’s plenty of garbage that comes along with ARod but there’s also a lot of garbage that comes along with Roger Clemens and I don’t see any complaining going on there.
I’m getting off on a bit of a rant but the point I’m trying to make is that Yankees fans, from Francesa on down, don’t appreciate what they’ve had all these years. I don’t doubt their love for their team but you learn more about people in bad times than you do in good times. And now that the Yankees are in bad times (at least for now) we’re seeing a lot of ugliness coming from their fans.
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Hey Guy,
Your Mets where exposed over the past few weeks and destroyed yet again by the Yankees last night. Your little brother syndrome is about to go up a whole notch today. YANKEES R NY’s team! The mets will always be well just that other team from NY. And the team in the NL East is the Phillies now. I guess J-Roll was right