Dunkirk NY – I follow this blog primarily to read Hart Seely’s writing, whose prose style I enjoy. I don’t comment because, generally speaking, the comment section has a devoted clique that tends towards the negative – everything always sucks. So I would like to make the following observation: Yankee fans display a great deal of passion but too little rationality. In my time as a fan, I know the game has changed, and I have changed my expectations accordingly. But too many fans, I fear, do not.
I read in the NY Times the other day a column containing a story about G.K. Chesterton. When the Times of London asked of its readers the general question “What is wrong with the world today?”, Mr. Chesterton responded, “Dear Sirs, I am.” Mr. Chesterton’s point was that, before we start blaming the problems of the world on others, we should check in with ourselves first. I think, as we ponder the problems of the Yankees, we should take this ASB to check in with ourselves as well.
I have found I’ve had to change my expectations of the NY Yankees in proportion to the changes in the game. As a boy, I do not recall having expectations of the Yankees to win a championship every year. They just seemed to do that. It was George M. Steinbrenner, a man I came to despise, who, over his years of misrule, set the now-unreasonable expectation that every year was a failure if we didn’t go to the World Series, and a failure if we got there and did not win. This concept, in the modern game, is unreasonable, and died with the 2009 championship.
Yet it seems the average Yankee fan cannot get over this ideological hump. This “World Series or bust” garbage is the last vestige of the G. Steinbrenner years that must be jettisoned, and the sooner the better. It’s the same kind of mentality we see in our society today that makes our national political discourse an intellectual cesspool. Mr. Steinbrenner was never at all interested in making the Yankees #1. He was only interested in making himself Public Celebrity #1, and he used the Yankees to do that. He was a rich bully who never wanted the spotlight to shine on anyone but himself. A convicted felon who had to be suspended from daily baseball operations, he poisoned the Yankee environment as CO2 emissions poison the air we breathe.
More than being a Yankee fan, I am a baseball fan. I came of age with the losing records of 65-67 and 1969. I think it’s great that I am a fan of a team that hasn’t had a losing record since 1982. I’m amazed that the Yankees have missed the playoffs only 4 times since 1995. The game has changed so much since then, and every change has added a new layer of difficulty to achieving success. Yet here we are, at the All Star Break of 2023, with a winning record of 49-42, and a reasonable chance of making the playoffs yet again. And people still complain.
I’ve changed my expectations for the Yankees from those Mr. G. Steinbrenner relentlessly beat into us during his megalomaniacal reign of terror. Even when the team looks as bad as it is, my mind reels at the fact that the Yankees have a winning record in a division where every team has a winning record! I want to suggest that, as Mr. Chesterton so humbly observed about himself, that what’s wrong with the Yankee world is, perhaps, not the Yankees, but we the fans. There’s no one out there to make us check into our own expectations but ourselves. Perhaps, given all the changes in the game over the years since Mantle and Maris pursued the Babe’s home run record, we need to re-set the bar, jettison the poison fed to us by King George, and enjoy the game and the season as it unfolds. Is this team flawed? Yes. Does this team and organization need changes? Yes. Will it be a complete and unmitigated disaster, a failure, if we don’t make the playoffs? No. That’s baseball, Suzyn. And it’s great. -twl