Yankee Title 27: Do People Care?

JESSICA BADER: I was ten years old when the Yankees won the World Series in 1996. While it wasn’t until the following season that baseball became a major interest of mine, I already identified myself as a Mets fan and couldn’t quite understand why most of my classmates weren’t. After all, we were in Queens, and the vast majority of us were born in 1986 – what more could be needed to cement one’s loyalties?

Shockingly, that belief didn’t exactly endear me to my peers. I was already the scrawny nerd the bullies loved to target, and rooting for a team that lost over 90 games when everyone else’s favorite team had just won it all was like painting a blue-and-orange “Kick Me” sign on my back. If I even thought of celebrating Todd Hundley’s 41 home runs or Bernard Gilkey’s monster season, someone would be there to remind me that Mets was short for “my entire team sucks” (I could never quite put together a snappy retort based on “Yankees,” but if anyone has one, feel free to share it). Over the next couple of years, the Mets would become both a good team and a tremendously entertaining one under Bobby Valentine, and I would be picked on for enjoying them (when I wasn’t being picked on for a hundred other things) because there the Yankees were better, winning the World Series every year and giving my classmates every reason to gloat and taunt.

I share this with you not to ask for pity or bludgeon you with the fact that middle-school kids and cruelty go together like Bud Selig and mealy-mouthed bullshit, but to explain why this World Series was such agony for me. It was worse than the Yankees facing the Braves in 1999  – at least then the hated NL East rival’s fans didn’t invade Mets home games in drunken, trash-talking swarms the way Yankees fans always have, at least then Facebook wasn’t around to bombard me with hundreds of status updates all drenched in pinstriped smugness, at least then the Mets’ season had ended in late October and not early July. There’s a reason (actually, two reasons) so many Mets fans were rooting for meteors or a blizzard lasting until pitchers and catchers or some other event that would result in neither team winning, and yet many took a side.

In the beginning I hoped for a mercifully quick series (no need to prolong the suffering), but even as I snickered over Cole Hamels getting shelled and putting his foot in his mouth, even as I relished Jimmy Rollins not coming close to backing up his boasts, by the time all was said and done I was disappointed that the Phillies did not beat the Yankees. My brother and I argued about this over the weekend, but of course he wouldn’t understand why I felt the way I did – he’s three years younger than I am, and so his awkward years did not overlap with the late-90s Yankee dynasty the way mine did.

I work just a few blocks from City Hall, and so I did not have the luxury of ignoring the parade. When I left my office for lunch on Friday, I could barely make it through the massive crowds filling the street. When I had finished my meal and prepared for another struggle through the hordes of revelers, I heard my name being called from another table in the restaurant. Two girls I knew from elementary school, still giddy from the festivities, marveling at the small world that had us running into one another. How fitting that to cap off  a baseball season that kept taking me back to days I’d rather not revisit, there was just one more thing to make me feel like I was ten years old all over again.

STEPHON JOHNSON: It had taken a whole nine years (NINE YEARS!) for the New York Yankees to return to the mountain top. To reclaim what’s rightfully theirs. A World Series Championship. After defeating the defending champion Philadelphia Phillies in six games, the Yankees paraded down the Canyon of Heroes in lower Manhattan, were given keys to the city by the human embodiment of the Yankee organization (Mayor Michael Bloomberg), and given standing ovations at every non-baseball sporting event that players and management attended.

But why did this victory feel like less of a triumph than previous Yankee ones? What does it seem like most New Yorkers can care less about the resurgence of baseball most’s beloved/hated franchise? There are several ways to explain this. Some involve the organization, some involve the citizens of New York City and some involve the evolution of the New York sports fan itself.

Going into the 2009 season, people were still up in arms about ticket prices at the new Yankee Stadium (aka The House A-Rod & Taxes Built). Folks who would have normally sat field level were suddenly relegated to the upper deck. People who would’ve sat at mezzanine and upper deck levels in the old stadium now have to plan a trip to a game like someone plans a family vacation. I personally knew Yankee fans who didn’t want to root for the team simply because they had been priced out. Granted some fans of the New York Mets (that other team in the city that attempts to play baseball) felt that way, but the hatred wasn’t as venomous. Prices were still relatively reasonable at Citi Field for those who wanted to check a few games out here and there during the season.

The construction of the billion-dollar stadium also took away extremely important parkland away from a neighborhood that desperately needs some. I grew up and spent most of my life around that part of the South Bronx and Macombs Dam Park was the centerpiece of the neighborhood. Various little league played games here, local football called the place home. Some of the Mexican men in the area started their own soccer league and played there as well. The park included a track and a several bleachers. It was a fantastic area to be and it was made cooler by being next to Yankee Stadium.

Yankee owner George Steinbrenner had his eyes on that land for years and finally came up gold with Bloomberg as mayor. Now the new Yankee Stadium has taken away one of the few free leisure areas from one of the poorest neighborhoods in the city and are taking their time tearing down the old stadium as they squeeze every last dollar out of those who want to purchase Yankee Stadium memorabilia for their homes. The new parkland will take the old stadiums’ place, but that won’t be ready until Spring of 2011. I’ve talked to several fans who call that neighborhood home who hate the fact that the Bronx Bombers could care less about the neighborhood they reside in.

With the citizens of New York City angry over that and the amount of tax money going towards the stadium (again, Citi Field as well just not as much), the Yankees lost some fans despite their great postseason run. As a fellow writer told me, “you have a third of the city that cares about the Yanks, a third that can’t stand the Yanks and a third that doesn’t pay attention to sports and doesn’t like tax money going to something they don’t care about.”

But the one of the main reasons that the Yankees’ victory rang hollow to me was the fact that it is 2009 and the New York sports fan is a different monster than it was in 2000 (the last time the Yanks were on top of the mountain).

Yes, New York City (along with Boston until the Patriots Super Bowl runs) are two of the ever decreasing cites that care more about baseball than football. While football has been king of the sports world for some time, America’s appetite for the pigskin didn’t really spill over to the five boroughs. Yes, there are football fanatics here, but there were more baseball and basketball fanatics in NYC at the time. With the internet, the rise of appointment-setting television and the Giants winning the Super Bowl, New York has officially joined the rest of America in going gaga over Roger Goodell’s league.

That’s why it seems like less people cared about the Yankees’ victory this year. While folks partied outside the stadium and outside of Times Square, every one else in the five boroughs had already moved on to football and the NBA. Besides, you probably won’t see a real sports celebration in this city until the New York Knicks (the only sports team New York can unite around) win a championship. We all might be on our deathbeds when that happens.

Tags: Citi Field, Macombs Dam Park, Michael Bloomberg, MLB, New York Mets, New York Yankees, The Bronx, World Series, Yankee Stadium

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.