Brilliant. Exposed all my most deeply hidden and unidentifiable Detroit Tiger angst. Quite easily the best piece in the NYT in the past two years; while there’s no hope for its politics, there is hope for the medium’s broader charm.
27
Good essay but I had to use a dictionary to understand much of it.
18
it always amuses me when bo sox fans talk about the rich and mighty evil empire Yankees because the Sox abuse the rich payrolls and contracts M.O. as much as anyone.
Rooting for millionaire shirt wearing guys playing for billionaire tie wearing guys.
yay sports!
p.s. I'm a sox fan but more a Wrigley and Fenway fan these days.
9
David, tell us waht you *really* think!
13
Baseball, the best game ever made. The Yankees play excellent baseball. Yet, too often for me, they can lose. Just like any other team. And, notwithstanding the current Steinbrenneresque administration, America's decline is less than claimed. Silly, albeit well-written essay.
7
As a Phillie fan and a former yankee-hater, I’d suggest that you just give it a rest. Life is too short. Now I am a disinterested Yankee observer, but hoping for a rematch of the 2009 Series!
7
As much as they try to ignore it, the Orioles are the hapless St. Louis Browns, who moved to Baltimore in 1953 and pretend to be a new team.
10
Mr. Hart should take the time to learn the sport and realize that an incompetent owner such as Peter Angelos has wrecked his beloved O’s - also Mr Hart stand up and ease the pressure on your brain.
15
Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for Apple. They usually give you a good product but there is no longer any fun in it.
19
Purple Prose for a Purple America. Well done. Let us pray (no, work) for a mighty underdog to trumph over the National ( NOT Nationals) evil in the way that occasionally happens in sports but rarely in global affairs. (well, except for 1776...)
9
Oh dear. It's as if "Butch from the Cape" was resurrected as a Red Sox fan.
4
Just keep repeating to yourself - Jerry Kenny, Horace Clarke, Mike Kekich, Fritz Peterson - until the only baseball you remember runs from 1966-1971.
4
Co-signed by Red Sox Nation.
5
Who are these Yankees this guy is writing about? I never heard of them. In my town it's always damyankees. One word.
2
This is so silly. If the Yankees are so obscenely wealthy, why don’t they win every game? Why don’t they win every championship and World Series.
7
Hart go kind of carried away, don't ya think? I wonder what he likes about America.
4
Amen! Say it, brother!
5
You, sir, are to be commended for using the phrase " lascivious cephalopods merged in seething tangles of prehensile carnality..." in an article about the Yankees. Well done?
13
Lord, this was pathetic and tired. Purchased championships? I'm sorry, were the players on non-Yankees championship teams paid minimum wage? Also, people who would leave their jobs in a heartbeat for a $100/wk raise have no moral ground to point fingers at a man who's being offered millions more and only has a short window to exercise his options in his chosen profession.
Yes, our fanbase is teeming with knuckleheads who take for granted how good we've had it. But disingenuous doesn't even begin to cover how wrong it is to lay on the doorstop of the Bronx faithful the sins of deification by the sports media just because the subject was an overrated Derek Jeter.
Bronson Arroyo once said that the only owner in baseball who would gladly lose $20m if it meant winning a championship was George Steinbrenner, a man who put the team's revenue back in it to make it the monolith it is now. You know what small market teams do? They sell their fanbases a 'we're poor, we can't compete' bill of goods while their owners pocket the profits they refuse to reinvest in the team. And since no MLB team operates at a loss...Talk about a lack of romance.
I'd heard that the NYT had been overtaken editorially by Red Sox fans and didn't believe it. Guess I was wrong.
37
It’s a fair point that the USA and MLB are both in decline. And generally speaking, management is usually to blame in such situations. But arguing that the dominance of the Yankees/rich teams is the proximate cause of that decline is, at best, a stretch. The Yankees—who have won one championship in 17 years so far this century—were much MORE dominant when the sport was growing back in the early-mid 20th century…indeed one could argue that their storied success and rivalry with the Dodgers and Giants stimulated much of that growth.
Teams from the three biggest markets—NYC, LA, and Chicago—have won four times out of 17 years since 2000: the Angels in 2002 (first time ever after 60 years of failure), the White Sox in 2005 (first time in 88 years), the Yankees in 2009, and the Cubs in 2016 (first time in a century). The Dodgers and the Mets are a combined 0-for-34. That’s a pretty loose definition of dominance, albeit stylistically consistent with Mr. Hart’s loose employment of logic…not to mention his lurid hyperbole and gratuitously hostile tone.
So, a fun read if one is into that sort of thing, but clearly aimed at the heart…not the mind.
22
There are two words that show how special the Yankees are and prove their excellence is not due to the NY big market. Those two words are “the Mets”.
21
"... resentment of all that boughten glory..."
That sums it up quite well. I grew up in Baltimore with our special loathing of the Yankees who buy up all the best players so they can win the most games. Where's the sport in that? Shooting fish in a barrel is a coward's game. The team is just another example of income inequality; the rich man's kid goes to the best schools and ends up on the Supreme Court. American Exceptionalism? Bah humbug!
7
Wow.....Vitriol and hyperbole at their finest. My grandfather, father and I were and are all rabid Yankee fans. A Machinist, Police Officer and a teacher. Clearly the imperial forces of the most evil team on the planet!
16
Right on dude...
5
After cheering for the Cubs for 50 fruitless years, I decided sometime in the ‘90s that I need a winner to cheer for. I picked the Yankees. I still cheer for the Cubs and, out of habit, the Yankees. I’m unapologetic
7
This may be the most gorgeous piece of writing I've ever had the pleasure of reading.
6
I’m not a Yankee fan, but I am a baseball fan. Jeter might not have had the range, but he always seemed to be in the right place. Just ask Jeremy Giambi.
8
Why does Yankeeography have nothing on the Horace Clarke era? To me, the only thing better than a Yankee loss is a Yankee rainout with 45,000 drenched Yankee fans sitting in a traffic jam trying to get home
Michael Kaye is arrogance personified,. But I find John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman to be unintentionally hilarious.
And listening to the exasperated Yankee fans on WFAN is a treat. They all remind me of Jerome from Manhattan.
6
From Roger Maris, to Reggie Jackson, to Ricky Henderson (and on and on) I don't think any team has lost more talent to the Yankees than the Athletics. A pox on them.
4
As the son of a Yankees loving Bronx native, and much like religious rituals that are past from generation to generation, I of course only but for the matter of fate, am an observant Yankees fan since I can remember. I invite you to read this if you'd like some comic relief.
3
The author states: "By exciting in the rest of us that sweet cold loathing that only they induce — that strangely tender malice, at once so delicious and yet so purifying — the Yankees and their followers provide an emotional cleansing. They give us occasion for the discharge of a dark, dangerous passion, but one unburdened by guilt."
Replace "Yankees" with "Trump" and "Yankee followers" with "Trump's base" and see if the above doesn't sound better.
7
I’m not American, I don’t know anything about baseball and I have no opinion to give on the Yankees ...
But I do love a good rant when I see one and that was a beauty.
Don’t hold back mate - tell us what you really think!
24
Come to the Spanish Football League, and you will see the same occurrence. Have money, and win, and that's all.
The pattern is universal; never in the history of human kind has avarice run so supreme.
For the beisbol issue, the solution is very simple, but impossible to achieve: just have every other team to loose voluntarily against them, have those nine innings end without opposition, and have a real League amongst the rest of the teams.
About politics in the USA, we have similar kind of problems over here. That's more difficult to solve than the complete hegemony of the NYY.
I can only think this is a mock-rant. In case it is not: No romance in Yankee History? Lou Gehrig’s, speech, Babe Ruth Day? Small market the Mets, are they? Red$ox and Dodger$ mega budgets. The homegrown baby bombers?
But I have to believe Mr. Hart is just joshing us.
11
Every word of this is true.
4
Part 2. I can admire the Yankee organization for its ability to identify and develop talent and attract the best available free-agents, churning out dynastic teams. But the organization refuses to revenue share for the good of the game – making it fair and vibrant for every city blessed with a team. To root for such a juggernaut is rooting for Goliath over David – it's a sickness of the soul. That sickness manifests itself in many Yankee fans as an element of emotional cowardice - they're afraid to lose and they project the Yankees on-field success to their personal selves. I'm a huge Yankee fan – I'm a winner. You're not a Yankee fan – you’re a loser. Certain Trumpishness to it – no?
6
I grew up in the Bronx but was a New York Mets fan.
I grew accustomed to being beaten up by Yankees fans.
Why a Mets fan? I went to my first baseball games in 1962. When I went to the Polo Grounds, the expansion Mets' first home, the players were more than happy to talk to kids and give them autographs. When I went to Yankee Stadium, the $0.75 bleacher seats were filled with drunks and the Yankee players would just as soon spit on you than give you an autograph.
From my perspective as a kid, then an adult and now approaching senior citizen status, the Yankees were always reprehensible, thuggish and without soul.
6
One of the strangest articles I've read in the paper over the past 50 years. Am scratching my head and wondering who thought this would be a humorous or witty or whatever kind of article the NYTimes would be happy to have on its pages. I confress to being a lifelong Yankee fan. I live abroad. I don't relate to almost anything Mr. Hart writes about. Bizarre.
20
As a New Yorker who grew up rooting for all of our sports teams, I didn’t find this trite tirade humorous or even sour grapes, but the kindly of self-absorbed ugliness best reserved for a Twitter rant, not the Grey Lady. The writer engages in unnecessary demonization or a corporate sports entity that is doing its best to manage the abilities of its players, management and staff in a professional manner that maximizes the success of the company. We’re a nation that succeeds together, not on descending into Trumpi-Putinian nihilistic envy.
13
Uhmmm....NO. A ton of US pro and college sport is pure plutocracy, like it or not. (No, I know, not your kids college fencing team). As pointed out by others, not just US but we sure set the benchmark.
A little hyperbole in the yamkees metaphor...OK, we call that art. In the political points, just calling it out as we all should.
5
Ahh! Feel better now David? It's not so bad and will get better.
2
Wow...this hits on all cylinders.
Lovecraft parody. Diagnosis of both MLB and USA. Truth to power baby.
Go Indians!
4
Part 1. I have always wondered what creates Yankee fans. I can understand if you were raised in a generations deep Yankee household. The team and its glorious history are part of family lore and demands commensurate loyalty. It is the converts to Yankee-ism, the newbies, I can't abide. When you're a fan, you root your heart out for your team - gushing over its victories and being distraught over its losses. Yet the Yankee fan has somehow been conditioned to expect only success. It robs the fan of a necessary, balancing, emotional experience in sport - failure and heartbreak. It's akin to being a nerdy teenage boy at a party, trying to summon the courage to approach that beautiful girl from your AP History class that, from afar, you've developed a mad crush - only to watch the preternaturally handsome, athletic baseball captain (wearing a Yankee shirt) waltz in, scan the room to decide which one of its many beautiful girls he will effortlessly seduce that night - and head straight for "your" girl. One doesn't envy the baseball captain or "root" for him. He will be successful, because he is successful. He has the look, the swagger, the confidence – success is not merely expected; it is inevitable.
3
It's time for Congress to eliminate MLB's legal monopoly. The game has been corrupted, beginning with the designated hitter nonsense in 1973 up to the present day's efforts to "speed up" the game. Since there is no apparent respect for tradition and willingness to adhere to it, allowing new competitive leagues to form would allow for creative and dynamic experiences for fans. It's no wonder that I have enjoyed minor league games more than big-league contests over the years.
America — with its decaying infrastructure, its third-world public transit, its shrinking labor market, its evaporating middle class, its expanding gulf between rich and poor, its heartless health insurance system, its mindless indifference to a dying ecology, its predatory credit agencies, its looming Social Security collapse, its interminable war, its metastasizing national debt and all the social pathologies that gave it a degenerate imbecile and child-abducting sadist as its president — remains the only developed economy in the world that believes it wrong to use civic wealth for civic goods.
—-
Wow. Just wow. That was one sentence? In an article about baseball? I have to re-read this a few times. I mean, YAY! I wish I had penned this diabolical missle aimed at our Trumpocracy.
But I don’t have those vocabulary chops. About the Yankees, I moved from LA to NJ for a job. And as a former Dodger season ticket holder, I was conflicted. But I bought in with some people at work and started going to Yankee games. Someone asked, how can you switch loyalties?
I said, if you have to live in Hell, you root for the Devil.
16
Well. On the contrary, I do remember very clearly Joe Morgan on Sunday night baseball mid season in 1998 saying words to the effect that the Yankees were a good team with a lot of good players but “no superstars”, at which point I yelled at the TV that Jeter was going to be a superstar (and of course we know who was correct on that). So in 1998 as in 2018, the Yankees are excelling mostly with their homegrown recruits, so stop the whining please.
As to your comments on America, I do agree.
7
A bit of historical analysis.
The Yankees have won 40 pennants in their history, with the first in 1921. In 1964 they won their 29th pennant. Think about it: about 73% of their pennants were won in a period that ended more than a half century ago.
A second point. In that period ranging from 1921 through 1964 the Yankees never passed more than three seasons without a pennant. They were constant winners. In the period since 1965 the Yankees have been dominant in only two periods; 1976-1981 when they won 4 pennants in six seasons and 1996-2003 which saw six pennants in eight seasons. This does not compare with the earlier period cited. It shows me that Yankee fans are more excited about the team's history than what has happened recently.
5
Never thought, as a lifetime Dodger fan, I'd be defending the Yankee's, but here I am! Yes, baseball and America are in decline, but the Yankees have nothing to do with it! It's merely the profound change in demographics, and its' side effects!
10
Hey! Everyone knows the 28th championship is always the hardest one to win!
6
Timing matters. The Yankees began the season with the 10th highest payroll in mlb. This piece would've resonated 3 years ago when the yankees were a collection of aging overpaid former superstars, but that ship has sailed. Jeter, Rodriquez, Texeira, McCann, etc gave way to Sanchez, Torres, Andujar, Gregarious, Judge, etc. No one loves satire more than me and i just watched a promo for Sacha Baron Cohen's new show that made me laugh quite hard. But this piece is a reminder on how tricky satire can be. It'd be like criticizing the GOP for the Bush years. Huh? I think that's a little late. The Yankees are a young team made up of players in the 20's who came up from their own system or were parts of trades and were the prized prospects from other teams. Hardly a moral abomination.
10
"lascivious cephalopods merged in seething tangles of prehensile carnality."
Greatest line ever written in the NYT.
I don't agree that baseball is in decline. I do think that more effort should be made to entice youth to play. Fun article in any case.
5
Good grief!! I'm a Red Sox fan and I don't think, in many, many years of loving baseball, that I've ever read anything so overheated and absurd -- even by angst-ridden members of Red Sox nation. Hey, it's only baseball.
31
Actually STEVE the ASTRO are at payroll 166 million and Yanks are at 178 million...look it up because you know that reading is fundamental ...Yankees are paying 42 million of the 178 to players on disabled list (not playing) and players no longer on the team ...So yeeHaaa Texan ...Yankees payroll is not twice as much as ASTROS neither are any of the teams you mentioned. But as a true baseball fan you love your team I get that, ME TOO, but the cold hard facts are that Yankees draw more on the road than ANYONE else in baseball. That equates to (haters) keeping small market teams flush with loot. Nobody told the ASTROS to cut Altuve in spring training the year before he made the team, and STEVEROO if you think joining Houston resurrected Verlander than as obvious as it is your ability to judge talent is askew .. So let me just say to you Steve O saviour the flavor of WS win . So hard to win and harder to repeat but we have proved that wrong many times . But not anyone else ...PS Mazeroski HR was 58 years ago, and here is one for ya'LL to chew on Don Larsen was the ONLY WS PERFECT GAME...SEE ya in the playoffs
4
You folks just don't get it. The Yankees are evil. Anyone who grew up in Cleveland knows this. George Steinbrenner was evil. His sons are evil. Derek Jeter is evil. Mickey Mantle was evil. Roger Maris wasn't evil until he went to the Yankees, but he became evil.
The only one who is not evil is Yogi Berra, but he knew not what he was doing.
And, of course, everything I hate about the Yankees is found in the baby blimp in White House. Arrogant and ugly. The only difference - a big one at that - is that the Yankees are actually guilty of too much winning. Trump can't really win even when he cheats.
11
The author is correct as to the reasons for the decline in MLB fan support. Another reason is that ticket cost has become obscene.
Hating the Yankees is what summer is all about.
4
Baseball has by far the greatest attendance and TV ranking of all sports.
This Yankee-hater screed seems as if it was written twenty years ago, when the Yankees sought and signed many of the best hired guns, and usually had the highest team payroll in all of MLB.
Has the author viewed the team recently? Currently, the New York Yankees' team payroll is ranked seventh, and its roster is one of the youngest in MLB, comprised mostly of players who have been promoted from within.
Meanwhile, the 'underdog' Red Sox, who many uninformed fans claim are the antithesis of the 'greedy' Yankees, have loaded their roster with expensive free agents poached from other teams, and have the major league's highest team payroll. "Evil empire" indeed.
Knee-jerk hating of other teams is the weakest form of fandom.
17
Amen.
3
Salary caps are a red herring. The reason the MLB doesn't have a salary cap is not because the managers of the Yankees and the Red Sox and the Dodgers and all the high spending, big market teams don't want a salary cap, it's because the players are well organized! The lack of a salary cap, rather than being symptomatic of capitalistic greed, is a symbol of leftist success: the working players successfully fighting against the appropriation of their market value to the profits of their managers and their team.
And frankly, the MLB doesn't need a salary cap. The Dodgers, #1 spenders, lost to the Astros, who were below league average. Right now my beloved Cubs, #3 spenders, are struggling to hold the NL Central against the Brewers, 5th lowest in the league. The Nationals are perennial high spenders and they've never won! The Dodgers haven't won for ages! The Yankees might be really good now, but they actually are spending relatively less this season than before.
I just can't accept the lack of a salary cap as an explanation for why teams win. It's not high spending that matters, it's smart spending. And the most beautiful thing about baseball is that each game is practically random: even if your hometown team is the bottom feeder of the league you still might get to watch them blow out the Yankees at home, no matter how much more they've spent than your team.
6
So, Mr. Hart, if you were an MLB general manager who could somehow see the future and knew the future statistics, both offensive and defensive of the last 40 years of shortstops, which one would be your pick for your team? Jeter ranks so high in all around statistics and his average but more than adequate performance at shortstop and high production at the plate make it laughable that you disparage him as you do.
Your piece, however was a lot of fun to read, however, as misplaced as your anger is. the Yankees have nowhere near the highest payroll and have very few free agents. Go pick on The Red Sox, the new Evil Empire, and their increasingly spoiled fanbase too.
11
As anyone from the block knows, the real abomination of the Yankees is a payroll that should nominally win 110 games each and every season – but punches out at about 90, and then has the gall to make the run for the wild-card out to be added excitement…
But – hope springs eternal….
At 62-32, just like the song (more or less) - it was twenty years ago today, that the Bombers last did come to play…
.....
Had just gone to a first game since the old stadium – absolutely loved the place…
Not an obstructionist beam in sight – and no trouble telling Aaron Judge in the batter’s box, even from the nosebleed seats…
Only thing…This guy named Altuve – who looked like he’d be more at home on a horse at Aqueduct than on infield clay in a major league ballpark – rips a 425-footer…
New park must be at a much higher altitude – no other possible explanation…
Aaah - Google says the new park is actually 10 feet lower than the old one…
Fake statistics - why AI is so frightening…
Good thing real umpires are still calling the balls and strikes – amazing how many the TV camera strike-zone gets wrong…
2
Perhaps Mr. Hart could write a similar piece on Christianity and American decline. That seems to be a subject in which he has a claim to expertise.
8
I grew up a BoSox fan having grown up outside Boston. I also suffered in the 50'and 60's.
I now live abroad but I now respect the civilized way the Yankees go about their business. So yes, rich. overpaid etc., I like them. Understated a bit too strong.
That said, time to perform.
2
A Red Sox fan in the Bronx am I! So this is a subject on which I am quiet. But the President of All Hallows High School once said it best: over the decades, so many institutions have left the South Bronx -the Yankees stayed.
5
As Jerry Seinfeld said, we all just root for clothes. Come to think of it, that analogy also holds when it comes to nations.
1
Thanks for reviving the dying art of satire with a front-page feature. Particularly these days, our news could use a much higher dose of the purely facetious. Well done!
7
It is worth noting that the Yankees haven't won the World Series since 2009. Before that you have to go all the way back to the year 2000 for a Yankees World Series win.
While I agree that MLB could do something to even the financial playing field, MLB history would seem to suggest that the Yankees have not gotten their money's worth when it comes to world championships.
4
I had the same thought. A lot of "lesser" teams have won in recent years, including the Chicago White Sox and Cubs who broke two different curses to do so. And in 2011 the St. Louis Cardinals won. Money isn't everything and it can't buy team spirit. What is missing from the more recent Yankees is the latter. It hasn't been the same since the retirements (or sale) of many of the core teammates that made up the 1996-2000 team. As for America, agree completely and hope that voters wake up and vote in more responsible Congressional members in November and a new president in 2020 to try to repair the damage.
5
The only section of this article that I understood and fully agree was: America - it's decaying infrastructure, it's third-world public transit, its evaporating middle class, it's heartless health insurance system etc.etc. Didn't understand why the NY Yankees, as opposed to all the other lucrative professional sport teams (football, basketball etc.) was singled out for this 'attack'. Better to direct it to the Congress, - to the citizens' smug complacency for the past 30-40 years. Actually, one can thank Trump for pointing out these failures of our Capitalistic system, albeit he's not the one to 'fix it' as he claimed. It's the System that has allowed the Republicans to methodically bring us to this rock bottom disgrace. How do we change the System regarding - voting? health? education? Amend the Constitution? Completely rework the process of lawmaking by the Congress? Sadly, too few Americans understand that and/or the need of change at the basic level of the Democracy we no longer have. Revolution? Aah, but that's 3rd world mentality - we live in a third world country but think like good ole Americans - perhaps we've been brain washed.
17
A lot of Hart’s flowery Thesaurus helped prose should be leveled at Peter Angelos, he has earned flag rank in the pantheon of incompetent short sighted owners who in spite of a marvelous stadium can’t put together a remotely capable team.
Maybe if Oriole fans would support the franchise Camden’s Yards wouldn’t be invaded by Yankee and Red Sox fans which I surmise is really his bone of contention.
2
What a bizarre article! The Yankees win because they have a long tradition of developing good, even great players, spotting talent, and finding GREAT chemistry. And then there was the Yankee ethos. Babe Ruth brought in the crowds, but it was Lou Gehrig who set the standard for what it meant to be "A Yankee" that comes down to this day. Even funny-looking, squat, malapropism Yogi Berra, was, otherwise in how he approached the game, was the quintessential Yankee--Nobody EVER claimed Yogi didn't have class.
During the spend-like-a-drunken-sailor years, under George Steinbrenner, the Yankees won in '77 and '78, and went through their only decades since "The Babe" without winning a World Series. When GS was banned, they brought up a bunch of rookies and didn't trade them for 30+ year old expensive has-beens, Steinbrenner's pattern. Instead they had new players in Jeter, Petite, Posado, and Riviera. Along with Bernie Williams, and others, they formed the core of a team that won 5 titles, without GS's interference.
We saw that class in those 5, and see it today as well.
Criticizing a business for being better at the business than anyone else is demanding mediocrity, demanding less than the best.
When the Mets were new, with no resources, and no players, they were lovable losers and we loved them, bumbles and all.. Now they are just losers.
And, for the record, I ALWAYS root for the Mets when they play the Yankees.
5
Just how in the world will enjoying a sporting event improve the deplorable condition of the United States of America??? Or do you mean, take some time to enjoy yourself and forget the problems at hand? Most people do that and more - the late nite shows make them laugh at their misery.
1
Don't confuse or associate the corrupt and evil current leadership with the many good wholesome Americans marginalized by brute strength and gigabucks.
2
Baseball on the decline I guess the author doesn't want to be confused with facts. Rough attendance per game 1969, 14000, 2017 , 28000 plus. Percentage of Latino players up to nearly one third with teams emerging in cities with Latino populations. Baseball will be fine. America I am not so sure but let's talk facts not fantasy
11
Wow. It takes a great deal of skill to intertwine the Yankees and the current White House occupant. It's a stretch, though
2
I'm from Philly. Who are the Yankees?
6
Been a Yankees fan since I was a kid ( Thurman Munson was my favorite ). I can understand the disgust at how the league tilts gratuitously in favor of the fat-wallet franchises - much like the futbol leagues in Europe. But one fact that the writer omits is the MLB era before free agency, when players were pretty much shackled to the team that owned their contracts, and the collusion amongst the owners that followed if a player refused to resign with the team that employed him. Many know that the Yankees made one of the first big free agent signings when that era arrived in baseball ( Catfish Hunter was the big free agent if I remember right ). If anyone follows the Scottish Premier League, they can see how it is perenially ( sp? ) a two horse race : Celtic FC and [ other ]. Usually it had been Rangers FC. La Liga of Spain is similar. The rich teams dominate and the minnows can only hope. Hopefully MLB will see the light and take steps to level the playing field....
2
Back in the day, the Yanks were amazing. DiMaggio, Keller , Henrich - the million dollar outfield . Kids in NYC were given free tickets by the police to attend daytime games ( no nights. no lights ). They won all the time. “Going , going , gone .. was my homerun mantra.
5
You had me until the author said that he admired the St. Louis Cardinals. It was then that I knew that the article was pure sarcasm.
3
I’m scratching my head at “child-abducting sadist as its president.” Huh?
1
Should I assume you're not aware of the thousands of immigrant children abducted from their parents by Trump's administration?
6
I agree - however 'hating' a sports team is a waste of emotional energy. Our culture is to blame for the abnormal adoration of 'stars' - sports stars, film stars, glamor and everything that money can buy. Oh, I forgot, the most important part of our culture is the love of......guns. God bless us all said Tiny Tim (Charles Dickens)
1
Since my arrival on this planet circa '60, a Democrat was in the White House 28 years, and a Republican 31. Over that time, the Yankees won 8 World Series. Every Yankee championship was under a Democrat.
That's actually stastically significant.
OK, coincidence. But championships do reflect regional spirit.
The Yankees represent something truly great about America, as do the Dodgers and Cardinals. Lefties can crow about Branch Rickey, but the way the Yankees repeat history keeps us grounded.
The only great Yankee team built by purchase was 1977's. Even that was special, since it was the first and only free agency free-for-all. Oakland's great players did a mass escape from Charlie Finley. Instead of being diluted across the league, the Yankees got the 2 brightest.
The 90s weren't purchased, nor this team, nor the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s. Ruth was bought, in a trade for equity in "No, No, Nanette." No one expected what happened.
England has Manchester United, Bayern München in Germany. Some countries have their champions. The Yankees are Americas. Deal with it.
13
The vast majority of New Yorkers despise Trump, have seen through his phony facade for years, and obviously didn’t vote for him. It was the midwestern voters that fell for his con job and handed him the Presidency.
22
The article directs its anger at the New York Yankees, their fans, and the media that mindlessly and self-servingly champions them. It does not direct its anger at New Yorkers. At least half of all New Yorkers are indifferent to baseball, and about half of all New York baseball fans are Mets fans and would agree with this article. So that means that something like only about one quarter of New Yorkers are Yankee fans, and implicated by this piece.
Haters gonna hate. Look what the Democrats did to your beloved hometown while enjoying your hatred and depression. I visited Baltimore last year. I was told by folks at the hotel, uber drivers, etc., etc. DO NOT get outside the tourist zone!
1
I just visited Baltimore and found it safe with great restaurants and museums. The Democrats have nothing to do with crime there. The wannabe dictator in the White House has everything to do with our low standing in the world however.
7
My dying brother, dying father and 92 y-o mother had/have one thing to divert their grief - the Yankees. Go tell the patients at MSKCC they shouldn't watch the Yankees bc that's what on most TV sets each night. Then tell us what diversion and healthy sublimation the 1% provide the dying middle class while they float away on their yachts when they're feeling down. Or when they take wistful walks while lovingly holding the arm of their sick loved one along their private stretch of their ocean front homes, breathing in that ever so healthy sea air before returning home to their concierge doctor who attends to every boo-boo, unlike the middle class hanging on by a finger nail in a two by four double room sharing a nurse with 8 other patients, longing for one thing only - to see the light of day and return home. And let's see what physical prowess the rich or anyone else naturally has, without their one-on-one trainers, massage therapists, PT's, etc. My guess is they are just as mediocre as the rest of us. That's why they need their money -- to get a hierarchal position in the Darwinian world they don't naturally deserve. Leave the middle class and our Yankees alone. We've got it bad enough knowing we have less benefits than the poor and the rich, and we've worked harder than both. And I know you already know that the 1% couldn't be happier with our little obsession. Gives us less time to formulate a revolt against them. And Jeter? You clearly don't know beauty in motion.
5
America in decline. I'm 66 years old. I heard that in the sixties. During the gas crisis of the seventies it was common knowledge that gasoline would run out in 30 years. Been hearing the bad news about America all my life. Heard it when the Japanese bought Rockefeller Center. Heard it when we screwed up and invaded Iraq. Really hear it now since Trump got elected. Repeat something often enough and people will believe almost anything.
If this comment seems like a disjointed set of statements and incomplete in so many ways...well DB Hart's article sets a low bar.
8
You can replace the Yankee name with Dallas Cowboys, or Hendricks Racing. No one likes it when their team has to face a success machine. Yet as successful as they are, they don't win all the time. So, why the hate?
3
All want to say is please dont hate. Appreciate. You are in the presence of the greatest sports franchise in the history of sport. If they were not you would have nothing to write about
5
This article is nothing but a thoroughly uninformed rant. Baseball is not in the state he describes, and and virtually none of his claims about the Yankees are accurate. Competitive balance is at an all-time high. It is easier to win as a small-market team now than at any other time in baseball history. Baseball does have a system of revenue sharing, and while it lacks a salary cap, the penalties for exceeding the luxury tax threshold have become so severe that it rarely makes sense for any team to exceed it. The Yankees will not exceed it this year.
Nor did the Yankees "buy" their championships during their greatest run in recent memory in the 1990s. Those teams' major stars- Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte, and Bernie Williams- were all Yankees draftees. They acquired other key pieces like Paul O'Neil, David Cone, and Tino Martinez through smart trades.
Their current team is similarly built- no starting position player was a free agent signing. Players anyone could afford, but only the Yankees thought to acquire, carry this team.
The author's beloved Orioles are not in their current state because some demonic super-villain plays in the nation's largest market and cultivates winning teams but because they have wasted the resources baseball provides them. Their owner refuses to use the international market, and their player development program is abysmal. The Orioles have let their fans down. The Yankees bears no responsibility for their troubles.
8
Baseball is not in good shape. Young people are not going to the stadiums, and children are increasingly not watching baseball on television. Also, smaller numbers of Americans are playing baseball, and an increasing number of the young players in baseball are from overseas, especially the Caribbean. Ticket prices are escalating. It is becoming nearly impossible for blue collar families to attend even one or two baseball games a year.
2
Just a reminder that there is a MLB team in Houston. Somehow, with about half the total team salaries of the Yankees, Red Sox and Dodgers, they managed to beat all three in last year's post season and win the World Series. With an MVP who is too small for the majors, two starting pitchers who seem to have resurrected themselves after moving to Houston (way lower ERA's), and a handful of All-Stars this year, maybe folks will take notice. After all, Bill Mazeroski got some attention from Yankee fans a while back - the only game 7 walk-off homer in World Series history.
2
F Robby stole a homer from Roy White and in the process, a ball game from the Yanks in '66. So you've had your fun. Now its our turn.
Permit me to quote your analogy, 'comparing' the ills of our nation to the illness the Yankees cause you to suffer:
"The analogy is imperfect, but irresistible. America — with its decaying infrastructure, its third-world public transit, its shrinking labor market, its evaporating middle class, its expanding gulf between rich and poor, its heartless health insurance system, its mindless indifference to a dying ecology, its predatory credit agencies, its looming Social Security collapse, its interminable war, its metastasizing national debt and all the social pathologies that gave it a degenerate imbecile and child-abducting sadist as its president — remains the only developed economy in the world that believes it wrong to use civic wealth for civic goods. Its absurdly engorged military budget diverts hundreds of billions of dollars a year from the public weal to those who profit from the military-industrial complex. Its plutocratic policies and libertarian ethos are immune to all appeals of human solidarity. It towers over the world, but promises secure shelter only to the fortunate few."
……
N.B. Given your regard of the State of the Union, I'm quite sure I share your non-sports politics -- but, as a Yankees fan since 1955, I am absolutely sure of the great measure of pleasure I take in the suffering you experience while spoiling in your "envy-free" (!!!???!!!) hatred of The Bronx Bombers.
Very clever. Mr. Hart’s overwrought loathing of the New York Yankees has given him a vehicle for expressing his hatred for what the United States of America has become:
“America — with its decaying infrastructure, its third-world public transit, its shrinking labor market, its evaporating middle class, its expanding gulf between rich and poor, its heartless health insurance system, its mindless indifference to a dying ecology, its predatory credit agencies, its looming Social Security collapse, its interminable war, its metastasizing national debt and all the social pathologies that gave it a degenerate imbecile and child-abducting sadist as its president — remains the only developed economy in the world that believes it wrong to use civic wealth for civic goods. Its absurdly engorged military budget diverts hundreds of billions of dollars a year from the public weal to those who profit from the military-industrial complex. Its plutocratic policies and libertarian ethos are immune to all appeals of human solidarity. It towers over the world, but promises secure shelter only to the fortunate few.”
Calling it like it is, in the pages of The NY Times no less, and making everyone think it’s about baseball! Wow.
6
Ah no. The AntiChrist has appeared, but it's not the Yankees, it's Trump
You just don't get the gestalt of a typical New Yorker: We bathe in the tear from the rest of America.
3
Has anyone pointed out that a large section of this column was a parody of H. P. Lovecraft
7
I noticed that right away!
As long as we are talking about all things baseball and America ..
How the owners keep the salaries down..
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/12/mlb-salaries-labor-...
There are modern eras of the Yankees that were not built on money and had great teams you would be pressed not to respect: the Thurman teams particularly before the trade of Chris Chambliss, the 95 era team until George came back & messed it up, Go Stick! This team.
In between, a lot of money and not much worth rooting for from a team point.
This column is incredibly overwrought. I honestly couldn't tell if it was sincere, or if it was intended as a parody of obsessive sports fans.
6
Hats off to the New York Times for printing this! And this piece hardly scratches the surface of Yankee arrogance and greed, and the Media championing of anything in pinstripes (no mention of Jeffrey Maier and the media making light of an infamous botched call in a critical ALCS game in 1996, or of George Steinbrenner's ridiculous antics at the helm of the Yankees-- here was a man whose love of money, power, and attention obviously overwhelmed whatever love he had for the game of baseball, and has helped to lead it to its current predicament). By the way, speaking of Jeffrey Maier, did you hear this one back in the 90's? How are the New York Yankees like Michael Jackson? They both love to score with 12 year old boys.
I know you wrote about The New Testament but there's one of those Old Testament Ten Commandments about not coveting. Did you just skip over that one?
3
I enjoyed this, but also what a ridiculous op-ed.
5
Nice try at mimicking Faulkner/Joyce is a sports column but you used the same words too many times.
Very entertaining I must say.
I grew up in Ft. Lauderdale and went to a lot of spring training games in the 60s with my best friend and his father who was a Chisox fan from the South Side of Chicago and a Yankee hater who went to the games solely to boo Maris, Mantle, Pepitone et al.
Reminds me of you.
I hated the Yankee organization too when George the Felon was running things and acting like a manager. I especially hated him when they moved spring training to Tampa.
But I never hated the team. I’ve always loved them and think they are the classiest team in baseball by not having the names of the players on the back of their uniforms.
As for Jeter he doesn’t need anyone to vouch for his character or his on field abilities.
I’m 67 and been around baseball all my life. Jeter’s flip to Posada in the 01 ALDS to get Giambi at the plate is the greatest, most instinctive heads up play I’ve ever seen.
All that being said I’m not a hater. If the Yankees can’t win it all, I pull for Boston.
Go figure.
2
2018 payrolls
1. Boston Red Sox 235M
2. San Fran Giants 208M
3. Los Angeles Dodgers 187M
4. Washington National 184M
5. Chicago Cubs 183M
6. Los Angeles Angels 174M
7. New York Yankees 169M
6
I really liked this piece. Thought it summed up my feelings about the residents of NY City pretty well and America in general. Arrogant and overpaid for clipping pieces of paper into t tranches then pimping them to the unsuspecting. (your pension fund) When the next take down comes these fine financial geniuses will not to be found, except at the bailout window. And they call that work? The wealth effect in baseball can be seen here in DC too. Hundreds (sometimes thousands) of empty seats at a game that is posted as 90% full. Wealthy lawyer/lobbyist pigs bought the good seats (probably used as a tax write off), don't show up or put them on stub hub at over priced rates. Where does it end? Do we really need two franchises that nobody cares about in Florida? Gone. KC had their day, nobody goes there anymore even if they still have some crazy little women. Gone. Toronto draws, but can't compete. Merge with Detroit and you get a potential regional dynasty. Cubs and Sox, put them together. Seattle mergers with the Twins. Call them the Northwest Passage. Baltimore, send them back to St. Louis and merge with the Cards. They can become the St. Louis Brown Cards. As for the US, let California merge with Mexico and Florida with the Caribbean. (including Cuba) Break the country into geographic regions. Keep the nuclear arsenal in the vault of the NY Federal Reserve under lock and key.(Maybe it goes off by mistake) Can't be any worse than we are now.
1
I think you're pulling your punches when you refer to Donald Trump as "a degenerate imbecile and child-abducting sadist." Can't you come up with anything more villainous? I think I can but it's not fit for print.
1
Thank you for resurrecting H.L. Mencken from his Baltimore grave and giving him a guest column in the New York Times.
5
Greatest. Op-Ed. Ever.
2
Mr. Hart,
Now you know how the Arabs feel about America and the Western cultures. How about Bill Belichick and Tom Brady?
1
The Yankees have always been a moral abomination.
Go Sox!
3
This column is about 50 years too late. Yes, my dad warned me never to root for the evil, right wing Yankees--even their emblem looked like a swastika! They didn't hire their first black ballplayer (Elston Howard) until a full decade after Jackie Robinson graced the stage for the beloved Brooklyn Dodgers, "the people's choice."
George Steinbrenner continued that contemptuous tradition of bullying and overspending for another couple of decades, and yes, Derek Jeter is no hero, as his true character has been revealed via his heartless, inept handling of the "team" in Miami.
But Steinbrenner's kids aren't like him--both are reasonable men. The heroes of the new Yankee Stadium are almost all Hispanic or African-American. And they are actually under the spending cap!
If you want to hate a team, try the Mets, from the outright bigots who used to own the franchise when it began to the cheap, inept Wilpons, who act like they are directing a team from Peoria instead of the nation's largest market.
My God, even Germany is one of the most decent nations in the world today. Things change. Moral abomination? I think not!
www.newyorkgritty.net
6
The Yanks are every bit as righteous as Standard Oil and AT&T in its prime, and Facebook now. Besides, if the Yanks got moral, then every baseball fan outside of NY would loose its favorite team to hate.
I disagree that America is past its prime. We have a Boulder socialist/commie running for governor in Colorado, Jerald Polis, Democrat, who wants health care for everybody, and he is going to win. Yes! Just as assuredly as marajuana became legal in the state. So there.
1
How appropriate that Mr. David Bentley Hart has studied the New Testament as his reflections on baseball enter into the realm of higher matters. Everytime I drive down from Boston and take "short route" into Manhattan, I pass over the Mcombs Dam Bridge. And looming up in my rear-view mirror is Yankee Stadium, the very proof of the existence of ontological evil.
It’s easy to hate the Yankees. We abhor the Candiens, their fans are boorish. The Lakers are easy to dislike, all those big shot Hollywood types sitting court side. The Jets are hapless, we actually feel bad for their fans, in fact we view the rest of the NFL as a bunch of Jayvee teams. But when it comes to the Yankees, it’s a different level.
Bucky eefin Dent! This year the Yanks have a great team, the Red Sox are better, but somehow they are viewed as an afterthought. Perfect example, I tune into Sportscenter, top story is a hard fought Yankee win at Cleveland, all the details, it seemed like every Yankees at bat is shown. Next story? Red Sox walk off grand slam win in the bottom of the 10th at Fenway. ESPN devoted all 12 seconds of the action.
Maybe it was that Babe Ruth thing who knows. It does seem as though the Yankees want to be the Red Sox, they want Fenway Park, they want the whole underdog motif.
But here’s the thing, we don’t want to be them, not in a million years! We’ll take 2nd place anytime they are in 3rd.
1
Yankees = steroids. Sad.
1
Just because Big Papi never got caught...
Yeah, like Jeter was a 'juicer'...
1
They used to say that rooting for the Yankees was like rooting for US Steel. To update this, rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for Mark Zuckerberg.
1
Sweet and sour soup here. Yes, The Yankees are detestable for the same reason we Yankees are detestable. But too many people undoubtedly stopped reading before they got to the point of the piece. Sesquipedalian contumely with more than a hint of Jonathan Edwards is great fun, but I wonder how many people stopped reading thinking the article really
was about Yankees who are trying to get to home and not about the Yankees others wish would go home. If your readers think your piece about baseball is actually about baseball, you have struck out.
4
Switch out the word "Yankees" for others such as "Koch Industries" and its brethren, and this article might make some sense as social commentary. But whether or not the Yankees are the Evil Empire is irrelevant to what was apparently intended to be the "deep" purpose of this rant. Never mind that all the big words and constant grasping for deeply silly tangential metaphors or whatever to try to describe one's adolescent "hate" of a sports team is simply not a strong enough comparison to the awesomely ugly and important chaotic partisan political mess we are in here in the US.
5
Lest anyone doubts the veracity of this fine essay, just recall that Rudy Giuliani is a "yuge" fan of the Yankees.
And the classic Gothic horror author, HP Lovecraft, would salute some of the prose in this piece. In fact, it sounds like Lovecraft dictated it from the unplumable depths of his indescribably dank and terrifyingly horrible grave.
3
The author doesn't know his way around today's MLB (please recommend commenter Richard Brown's BRILLIANT comment about who the real winning teams have been lately). But his description about the lack of morality in our government is skewering prose for us to use to rob Trump of his illbegotten power in November:
"America — with its decaying infrastructure, its third-world public transit, its shrinking labor market, its evaporating middle class, its expanding gulf between rich and poor, its heartless health insurance system, its mindless indifference to a dying ecology, its predatory credit agencies, its looming Social Security collapse, its interminable war, its metastasizing national debt and all the social pathologies that gave it a degenerate imbecile and child-abducting sadist as its president — remains the only developed economy in the world that believes it wrong to use civic wealth for civic goods. Its absurdly engorged military budget diverts hundreds of billions of dollars a year from the public weal to those who profit from the military-industrial complex. Its plutocratic policies and libertarian ethos are immune to all appeals of human solidarity. It towers over the world, but promises secure shelter only to the fortunate few."
p.s. - To the commentator who said this passage is accurate except for the fact that Social Security is healthy- Social Security is on track to be reduced to 79% benefits in 2034. So you're partially right.
2
What rank, rancid overwriting. For all its excessive length, the only redeeming feature is that it loads every malarious beef in one place. What is it that the Yankees "cannot help but?" What hideous monskers dwell in yet another translation of the New Testament? Can this textualist recognize the quality of Aaron Judge's s good nature, or Brett Gardner's grit? And what hopeless vice possessed Derek Jeter when he flew to catch the overthrown cutoff and tossed out the fella?
3
Mr. Hart's playful expository excesses aside, the parity among major league teams is far evener now than in the Yankees' imperial heyday. He's right about Jeter, though.
No, he isn't.
This is a very funny, over-the-top Yankee-hating article... until it turned into a depressing and all too real metaphor for our current state of affairs.
World Cup final starting 25 minutes. I’ll watch it while I think about the brotherhood of man.
Upon looking at the title of this article I had a feeling the opinions would be based only upon emotion and no actual facts. The majority of the Yankees success over the past 2 decades has been attributed to talent in our farm system. With 2009 being the only exception our past five world series' have came on the backs of players brought up in the Yankees organization. Moving on from those incorrect statements you turned your uneducated (in baseball) opinion towards our former captain and pride of the Yankees. Jeter lead the league in fielding percentage in 2009 and 2010 which was after what you say was his prime, when he was "only slightly above mediocre." Apart from Jeter's limitless range into the 5 hole, he also made 14 all-star appearances, won 5 gold gloves and was the only player to be all-star game and world series MVP in the same season. Jeter is 6th ever in double plays turned by a shortstop and 17th all time in total put-outs. If you're saying Jeter's farewell tour was not as earned if not more earned then Chipper Jones' or Mariano Rivera's than you truly have never seen a game of baseball. Please don't slander the Yankees and our revered past players because you're upset with our success and the lack of success your home team has seen. Try sticking to analyzing the New Testament because you failed miserably at analyzing baseball. Thanks for your opinion, it was wrong.
6
"nightmarish revenants . . .One simply knows" the man can write! bet Falstaff is a beloved character -
1
The criticism makes a mountain out of a moundhill. Indeed, if the comment that says the Yankee payroll is only the 9th highest is correct, the mountain is a mirage.
What is abominable is the Yankees’ starting pitching and their infield defense. And that, American League fans, can do them in in a short series.
Readers await your next fire-breathing piece, Mr. Hart, on the consummate greed and corruption in Division 1 football and basketball!
3
Although I cannot help but applaud the politics, I cannot condone the superfluity of adverbs. So, so many adverbs! But fear not, Orioles fans. Better times are ahead. Sonny Gray and Louis Cessa now own you.
1
"...how does a Yankees fan’s pride in all those purchased championships differ from the self-delusion of a man staggering out of a bawdy house at dawn, complimenting himself on his magnificent powers of seduction?" Perhaps the difference is in the fact that a man staggering out of a bawdy house has broken the law? What a silly article.
Gasp! Why so much hating on the Yankees? Definitely envy. Here's a big Bronx cheer for you!
3
I always thought the problem with the Yankees was Donald Trump. Or am I reaching?
2
Jeter's jump throw, selfless catches into the stands and heads up defense make him a golden Glover with few equals during his tenior, its not just range. Indicting his play and accolades make you come across blinded by hate.
2
So much angst, so much hot air, so many silly analogies to the state of the nation, so many big words that say nothing. Just another hater of a well-managed organization that invests in its team because of a singular focus on winning. Maybe you should direct your purple eloquence at the Angelos-fueled nightmare in Camden Yards and somehow convince the powers-that-be to install a leadership team that embraces the values and shrewd management that made the Orioles great some 40 years ago..the type of commitment to excellence that continues to flourish at that at that awesome edifice in The Bronx.
2
Stop your crying and try doing things the right way instead of the Baltimore way. Try it, you might like it!
I'm going to watch my homegrown, non-free agent packed Yankees take the field tonight and enjoy every minute of it. And you'll be watching this guy-
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2777037-chris-davis-161m-megadeal-ha...
4
This piece is, of course, a long exercise in trolling. But then there is this,"And there are few luxuries more gorgeously nourishing than the license to hate with an unclouded conscience." I had to read that sentence again. One must care little about the meaning of words -- either that or decency -- to write something so loathsome.
10
2017 - Houston Astros
2016 - Chicago Cubs
2015 - Kansas City Royals
2014 - San Francisco Giants
Opinion based upon false history is as valueless as Chris Davis’s contract. No major sport is more competitive than baseball. It thrives.
This piece reflects the rantings of a man driven mad by a perennially pathetic Orioles team that has the money but continues to bumble and fumble it away. This pattern began long ago when the team concept - the “Oriole Way” - was sacrificed in favor of the “me first” of the “Ripken Streak.” They’ve been lost in the wilderness since.
If you want to hate an incubus worthy of hate, hate the Red Sox, the team that held on to apartheid decades after Jackie Robinson and years after Mr. Steinbrenner’s complete integration of the Bronx Bombers, an action for which he never gets credit. Hate the team who’s fans just last year called your once stellar center fielder Adam Jones “the ‘N’ word” loudly enough to make him bring it up postgame, inspiring several other players to chime in with, “Yep, it happens to me all the time there too.” Hate the team that’s eradicating it’s former, longtime owner’s name from the street that runs past its dump of a stadium in a feeble effort to re-balance its racist history.
You weave together a kaleidoscope of words but it all comes down to black and white - The Yanks are historically the best by far at what they do and the Gods of Baseball smile upon us. Next time, craft fire and brimstone for the Globe
8
Derek Jeter's mediocre defense?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCUMXpU6N3k
2
I have two words to refute this entire essay: Yogi Berra!
A commoner AND one of the most noble Americans who ever lived.
When he was lied to by the windbag owner Yogi boycotted his beloved team for 14 years. Yogi Berra - the world would be a much better place if we modeled ourselves on this Yankee.
3
This is untalented, bilious baloney. For sheer detestability it's hard to beat those darlings of the literary set, the Red Sox. Who, by the way have a larger payroll than the Yankees and who love to buy championships. Roger Angell where are you?
1
(Insert self-satisfied smile emoji here)
But I do give the author props for “coupé-chassé en tournant,” “bibulous,” and “yawps.”
1
This article, and those like it, are why there are people hate the New York Times. As other commentators have pointed out, the author, despite his obnoxiously elite penchant for $15 words, uses bad info and plays loose and fast with actual facts to rail against his proxy of the establishment. Fake news indeed.
In 2018, the Yankees are no different than any other large market team, most of whom, like the Red Sox, only found success after decades of failure by emulating the strategy of their sworn enemy—supplement a core of farm-produced talent by spending above market on free agents. 5/5 eye rolls here, if for no other reason than I can’t imagine the Boston Globe ever, in a million years, publishing similar drivel about its hometown team.
2
This is simply the greatest piece of writing ever published in the TImes.
Bravo.
2
David Bentley Hart: All of us outside the greatest city god ever smiled on share you loathing. Take heart in this: The Yankees were born in Baltimore in 1901 as the Baltimore Orioles. And, sweet schadenfreude, those despised Red Sox are ahead of them in the standings.
1
I do not even dare ask Mr. Hart his opinion of the New England Patriots!
4
It is not appropriate to link the nature of the Yankees to the state of the United States or of baseball, in that while the US and MLB have changed the Yankees have not.
My grandfather was a NY Giants fan. Before the crash, he was inside salesman for a men's coat and suit manufacturer. He had two Giants season tickets, and when out-of-town buyers would visit he would take them to the Polo Grounds. Nice work if you can get it.
My father, perhaps in reaction, became a Yankees fan. He was 8 years old in the summer of 1927 and got to root for what was arguably the best baseball team in history. When I was a boy growing up outside Washington, he would take me to Griffith Stadium when the lowly Senators played the Yankees. He would root for the Senators, but it was clear he had a lot of affection for his old team - especially when Micky Mantle would hammer one into the bleachers.
Perhaps somewhere around 1920 the Yankees sold their collective soul to the Devil and have been dominating baseball ever since. But it is not a new phenomenon. The Yankees, and their dominance, have been an integral part of American culture for almost 100 years.
Aside from the excessive envy of, fawning over, and favoritism shown to the Yankees, let's focus on the truth David Bentley Hart imparts about the abomination of the MLB's runaway cash factory.
As a resident of St. Louis (home of the Cardinals), I stopped paying the team's outlandish ticket prices (starting at $32) and vendor costs ($11 for beer) 15 years ago. Instead, my wife and our friends and I take in baseball as it oughta be, by attending the Gateway Grizzlies games of the Frontier League. Individual cost of an evening of baseball (ticket, parking, beverages, food): under $25.
The Gateway Grizzlies even play better -- play more professionally -- than our Cardinals, though they earn 1/1,000 the pay. And, kids get to run the bases between innings.
If anyone wonders why the Cardinals' manager Mike Matheny and its hitting coaches John Mabry and Bill Mueller were fired last night, see the comments above.
1
I grew up in the Detroit area in the late 60s and early 70s, when the hated, dynastic Orioles of the period would (with one glorious exception, 1968) beat my hometown Tigers and win titles with regularity. Their loaded lineup (admittedly before free agency) seemed unfair, but they were shrewdly managed both on the field (Earl Weaver) and in the front office (Frank Cashen). The Yankees of the time were an afterthought. Now the Orioles, while still well-managed on the field (I pity poor Buck), apparently haven't been able to formulate a coherent team-building plan. The O's will return, but it will take time and good choices. In the meantime, keep off the Yanks, Sox, Cubs, Dodgers, et al. and remember: how many teams have ever had four 20-game winners in a single year, and when will any team ever repeat that feat?
1
One cannot expect greedy players and even greedier owners to ever consider a salary cap. It woud be a challenge to put in a salary cap while grandfathering in those already under contract but it would definitely mean more fun for the fans of less affluent teams, like Baltimore and KC. These teams hope that quality coaching and scouting can overcome the unlikelihood that a young talent, drafted and developed will stay around when free agency beckons.
The author's dislike of the Yankees is as irrational as the adoration of Yankees fans for their team, or of his adoration for the Orioles team for that matter. For, as we all know, all the professional teams (including small market teams) are not composed of locally grown talent, for whom we may expect natural affection borne of nurturing, but assembled to the best of their affordability. The emotional investment we make in our teams is just a delightful self-delusion, and not a justifiable cause for getting too carried away. Naturally, any extension of it as a metaphor for society at large, if honestly applied, would have to reflect on all segments and personalities, not just to those disliked by the author.
1
The great irony of this piece, which I thoroughly enjoyed, is how much more on point was his assessment of the state of the nation than the state of the MLB.
5
Bravo, David Bentley Hart -- so eloquently stated.
As an 11-year-old boy, I buried my face in the couch in anguish the night Chris Chambliss hit his walk-off home run in the fifth and deciding game of the 1976 American League playoffs against my beloved Kansas City Royals, sending the Yankees to the World Series for the first time since 1964, before I had been born. The response by the crowd profoundly shaped my Midwestern, pre-adolescent view of who New Yorkers are, and the memory of it has since shaped my understanding of how such a city could produce someone like our 45th president, who must have been coming into his own as a brander of properties just about that time.
Here's a clip of Phil Rizzuto's call of Chambliss's shot off Royals' reliever Mark "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" Littell:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS6HGwoRrkY
By the way, Rizzuto is wrong when he states Chambliss touched home plate: Chambliss, genuinely fearing for his personal safety, rounded third and fought his way to the dugout. Once in the dugout, Graig Nettles asked him if he touched home -- he had not -- so he attempted to return to the field to touch it (never mind that he had left the baseline and thus should have been called out). He to this day has never touched home plate because when he returned to the field, the Yankee "fanatics" had already ripped it out of the dirt and carried it away.
Happily, the next week the Yankees were swept by the Big Red Machine in the World Series.
My own comment piqued my interest to go back and watch the whole game. Littell had entered the game in the 7th and pitched brilliantly in the 7th & 8th. After the top of the 9th ended on a botched call at second base, Yankee fans began hurling beer bottles--yes, glass beer bottles--at Hal McRae in right field. (Rizzuto admits it was a missed call, and had Al Cowens rightfully been called safe at second George Brett would have been up with the bases loaded, game tied 6-6.) There was a very long delay (the umpires eventually had to ask the Yankee Stadium announcer to implore the crowd to show some sportsmanship for the safety of the players) and on that NY October night Littell struggled to keep his arm warm. Littell's first pitch in the 9th was up and over the plate, and Chambliss sent it over that famously short fence, inches past the glove of, yes, Hal McRae.
The crowd was feral. In post-retirement interviews Chambliss has talked about the fear he felt, despite his elation, trying to get to the safety of the dugout. I imagine everyone--on both teams, as well as the umpires--felt that fear. In 1976 the fear felt by the African American players like Chambliss, Cowens, and McRae in such a situation understandably might have been even more acute. (I still remember watching on live TV in 1974 the body-covering bear hug Hank Aaron's mother gave him in Atlanta after he crossed home plate after hitting home run #715, breaking iconic Red Sox/Yankee Babe Ruth's all-time record.)
So...we not only get the government we deserve, we get the baseball team we deserve? Interesting. When I was living in New York in the mid-to-late seventies, my parents and I would go to games at both Shea and Yankee Stadiums, but after '81, we sort of became Mets fans exclusively.
Why then? That was the year the Yanks lost the World Series to the Dodgers and Steinbrenner issued a public apology to the people of New York. We started to call Yankee Stadium "The House That Ruth Built And Steinbrenner Ruined". I never set foot in that version of Yankee Stadium again, though I thought I'd go back to see one final game there in 2008 (didn't happen; wasn't able to get to Shea either).
It's possible to respect the history of the franchise and to appreciate certain players on the team but still hate the team. Yes, they get results, but unless you believe that the attainment of results expiates all sins ("the ends justify the means"), you can't really get behind them.
Does make you wonder, though: we could have had Trump a lot earlier if Steinbrenner had decided that running a ball team wasn't enough...
1
I have read the Times nearly every day since 1984. This essay is one of the funniest and best pieces I have ever read in this newspaper. Truly, the New York Yankees have replaced the USSR as, in Ronald Reagan's words, "the focus of evil in the modern world."
8
It true that the folks who come to Yankee games are Trump fans? ( Note: there are very few Bronxites in the stands ; watch the traffic patterns before and after a game).
1
Maybe if kids could actually see a All-star or World Series instead of starting everything after bedtime baseball could have some new fans.
1
That is SO true! I miss the afternoon games on the radio!
I'm shocked that the author did not blame Trump as to the Yankees. He is, of course, responsible for EVERYTHING negative in our society past, present and future by my many Democratic friends. But I bet my fellow letter writers will in short order. Surprised?
2
Oh, no!
Trump has already blamed everything bad that has happened since the Fall from Grace on Obama and Clinton.
I love the hypocrisy of the Trumpie "victims".
3
Yankee fans, like Americans,
are not monochromatic. I am also a die hard Jets fan. I worship the Packers from afar, and am a happier fan when both the Mets and Yankees are playing well. I cried tears of joy for Cal Ripken when he broke Lou Gehrig’s streak, it happened on my Birthday, and it was an incredible moment in baseball history I felt privileged to witness. This is not to give a pass on our arrogant fans, and there are many. But I’ve run into arrogance in Green Bay, and Chicago, and Philadelphia watching games there.
Trying to make sense of what’s going on in this country today, is something many of us are struggling with. However when we paint a broad brush, the real truth is often covered over. Professional sports, and America, are run by billionaires, and that’s the major problem they have in common, making it nearly impossible for the average Joe to simply enjoy the game.
The NBA is going the way of the MLB in this. When even Lebron James gives up on the idea of winning the NBA Finals, unless he is on the Golden Warriors team, you know you have a problem.
Who cares what you think?
I became a Yankee fan in 1965. Where are you Roger Repoz?
The Yanks went on to win in '77 & '78. Alrighty then!
They won again in '96 and in 3 of the next 4 Years. And won again almost a decade later.
Baseball has NEVER made more money than since the Yankees started winning in '96.
The Yanks make more money than any team in sports.
The owners can do 1 of 3 things with the money:
1) Put it in their pocket
2) Spend it on the team
0r
3) Give it to the other clubs. Who will put it in their pockets, as has been shown.
Which would you recommend?
And BTW, the only thing you should hate about Jeter is that he didn't play for your club.
Who cares what you think?
4
It appears that you do
1
This article beautifully combines two practices that have always confounded me: the way fans of baseball teams that the Yankees regularly beat complain about the Yankees winning and try to claim that they are not motivated by jealousy and the pride some writers take in their command of the thesaurus.
1
Everything in the world is important--everything, that is, except professional sports. For some mysterious reason, people become very emotional about this unimportant subject. Intense emotions lead to hatred. hating the Yankees, or any sports team, is a result of being overtaken by pointless emotion.
Yankee fan forever. Nothing more to be said!
1
This was a well-written and amusing read, but I wish the author had spent at least one tiny paragraph explaining what specifically the Yankees have done to justify this. Instead, he just mentions two or three times that they "purchased" their wins. This can mean any number of things. So without any context, this just reads like sour grapes, even though the author does go to great lengths to assert that there is no envy, but only resentment, towards the Yankees from fans of other teams.
A magnificent essay! Bravo, sir, bravo!
4
Having read this accurate and florid piece, I'm not so sure I'd trust Mr. Hart's translation of the New Testament. If he could really put Jesus up against the Yankee Sandhedrin, maybe. But hold on. This bloated, outrageous franchise, corrupted not by itself but by the rules that permit it to be, does nonetheless gather some amazing talent. What mere denizen of the cities of the plain--what Royals fanatic--can ever forget the secret satisfaction he took in the genius of Mariano Rivera? And who can forget that though they are absurdly rich, the Yankees while always in contention don't always win? I favor some big changes to the whole structure of major league baseball, but the new structure has got to permit every team to get itself another Rivera. If not, change nothing.
Spoken like a true NY Mets or Boston Red Sox fan. He says he’s not jealous. I think he might be, at least a little bit.
Although raised in NYC, I have been a lifelong Oriole. I forwarded your column to my Yankee fans with the subject line "Genius, Poetry, Clarity, Perfection."
I agree with all of this wholeheartedly, and, on the subject of envy, I wish I were the one the have put it so well. Here's a little addendum for Oriole ex-pats (I live in LA:)
For a fan, the stretch from Jeffrey Maier (aka Satan's minion) to Showalter's 34-23 to end 2010 was hard to bear and a nightmare of depression from Spring to Fall; it was ALJ's arrival, 2 years before Buck, that had given me hope. His energy, intelligence, humour and demeanor told me something good was coming (I was right). It is fitting (not in a good way), then, that in the last year of his contract, the franchise should disintegrate with such an irredeemable totality.
I had hoped that, like the players of my youth, he would spend his baseball life as an Oriole: that seems unlikely now.
For the first time since 1990, I have stopped watching. Oy Vey.
Ennio
2
The present Yankee roster is mostly home grow &/or young players acquired thru trades. Additionally the Yankees are under the salary cap for once & don’t have the highest payroll in baseball. Cute writing but the column is about 10 years of out of date just like the Orioles.
1
some resentment? has the author realized that the Yankees have won only 1 championship in the 21st century?Baseball has problems but its more about the excess of strikeouts and extreme shifts....
I was at the Orioles-Yankees doubleheader last Monday in Camden Yards, sitting behind home plate - in seats at $60 a pop, compared to $1500 per seat at the Stadium - amid a sea of Yankee fans, so I get the author’s angst. Yes, the imbalance seems enormous, but I have two words: Farm System. Gardner, Judge, Andujar, Sanchez, Bird, Robertson, Bettances, Romaine, plus great trades, Didi, Gleyber, Hicks, for young talent. That’s always been the secret to Yankee success. Core 4 and Bernie!
1
As a lifelong Red Sox fan, I'd say that the Yankees were a moral abomination from roughly 1930 through 2003. The moral abomination was fused of arrogance and a sense of entitlement, embodied by both the team and especially its fans.
The Yankees' arrogance began to dim when they were defeated by the Red Sox-- who went on to win the World Series, breaking the storied Curse of the Bambino-- in 2004.
Now that the Yankees have fallen short of an American League pennant since 2009, any remaining arrogance and entitlement are risible. Yankees fans may not have grasped this yet, but everyone else has.
There is a God.
2
As a lifetime Red Sox fan I enjoyed the tone of subtle understatement throughout this piece.
6
I just spent a week of vacation in San Diego where Tony Gwynn is revered. He had as much class and talent as Jeter, if not more, but will never be as known because of where he played.
We will never know if baseball would still be the number one sport if the greed of the Yankees ownership had been as measured as that of the NY Giants in the NFL. It seems pretty obvious though that baseball would be stronger if teams in smaller cities had a chance. A small child could live to be a grandparent before his team in Pittsburgh or Kansas City could sustain greatness.
1
This was a well-written and amusing read, but I wish the author had spent at least one tiny paragraph explaining what specifically the Yankees have done to justify this. Instead, he just mentions two or three times that they "purchased" their wins. This can mean any number of things. Then there's mention at the end of things the League can do to make things more just, but this sounds more like a criticism of the League overall than one of the Yankees specifically.
So without any context, this just reads like sour grapes, even though the author does go to great lengths to assert that there is no envy, but only resentment, towards the Yankees from fans of other teams.
10
I agree that this piece was well-written (although a little showy in word choices), but I also agree with Humanesque regarding the basic premise ~ that the Yanks bought their success because of their predominance in the marketplace. If so, why haven't the NY Knicks dominated the NBA? Or the NY Rangers the NHL?
1
This piece might have been more relevant, at least in its baseball musings, twenty or so years ago. The current iteration of the Yankees is well outspent by the Red Sox and Dodgers, and is shrewdly working to remain under the luxury tax threshold. When a team like the author’s beloved Orioles lavishes an enormous contract on Chris (.150) Davis, and prepares to let a young centerpiece player like Manny Machado walk out the door, I suppose pointing fingers at the competition is a route less painful than the introspective one.
17
Talk about constructed illogically constructed syllogism. MLB is an independent business construct supported by millions of fans, a construct that makes more money for teams in larger markets. It's unfair, life is unfair, and some teams are just better than others. So while not a metaphor for America, perhaps it is a metaphor for the unreasonable entitlement that predominates all levels of our culture.
3
The super wealthy donor class buying politicians may be similar to a rich team owning family able to buy superior ball players in principle, but the consequences of the Orioles(I'm from Baltimore)losing a game to the Yankees pales in comparison to the profound harm done to most of the citizens of this country from the implementation of the right wing plan as described in the Powell Memorandum. All non wealthy citizens lose a very serious game everyday in these dark times of GOP control.
Even the worst owners of baseball teams don't hurt the entire nation like bought politicians do.
6
I don't know much about the current state of baseball, but Hart's searing description of the current state of the country is true and heartbreaking.
17
A delicious piece. It marks the first time I have ever commended a writer for burying the lede in the 3rd-from-last graf.
Beautifully done commentary that is much more than the hed would suggest.
12
I have such fond memories of my college days as a New York Yankee ex-pat at Memorial Stadium (my high school bleachers putting it to shame) and flinging Natty Bo bottle caps at the O’s as they took the field. Not really the O’s more like the 0’s.
....and yet, they finally jettisoned A-Fraud and soon-to-be Ells-bury-me to clear the way for the Judge, DiDi, Torres et al. OK Stanton meh. So refreshing, so needed that a lifelong Yankee fan can now re-enjoy an exciting team.
1
After all is said and done, as Bill Littlefield says, and sadly will all too soon stop saying, "It's only a game." Go Sox!
i kept thinking this piece was about the president. perhaps, on the model of soviet writers' use of metaphor, it is.
5
Here's an idea from flyover country: How about the small market teams secede and form their own league? Then watch the Yankees, Red Sox, Dodgers, Cubs and one or two other big-market teams make a go of playing in a 6- team league.
BTW: When I grow up i want to write like Mr. Bentley Hart
8
Unfortunately and not in any way disparaging the players, teams or people of the Midwest where I lived and loved, it would be a minor league. It’s takes no talent to disparage New York and other big cities while surrounding areas’ incomes and home values derive their successes. It’s a hateful article that you can pretend to be funny but it’s divisive.
1
You overlooked the Giants both as member and metaphor.
Amen! I think I will read this man's book.
1
Brilliant writing! Congrats!
10
There’s a lot of intellectual pessimism going on here. I don’t like it.
Simply put: Yankees good, America good.
Let’s start there to enjoy the game and improve our country. Be accountabile rather than blaming ‘evil’. That’s just lazy complaining.
6
The third to last paragraph should have been an op-ed on Mr. Trump; brilliant. The rest is a far too intellectually complicated vocabulary exercise that could have been summed up in four words: "I hate the Yankees".
4
Hmmm, this writer seems pretty jealous to me. Hope the Yanks win the Series in '18!
1
Nah -- the Red Sox are worse.
2
Agreed!!!
Certainly their fans are...
2
Mr. Hart was simply, and eloquently, talking about the perversion of America by one thing: money! And he got it just right.
6
"So, I confess it: There is some resentment. But it never degenerates into emulousness or envy. No one elsewhere wants to root for a team like the Yankees. The notion is appalling. "
Sad for you David, and false. Worldwide, there is no logo more ubiquitous on hats and clothing than the NY Yankee "NY". No matter where you are, you are overwhelmed by envy.
4
See also Gucci's entire Summer/Fall 2018 line.
This is silly on at least two counts: many Yankees' fans grew up cheering the Bronx Bombers even through harsh times. And several other teams (notably Red Sox, Dodgers, Angels, Nationals), including Mr. Hart's dreadful Orioles in the past, have spent lavishly. Is the success of the Yankees, Astros, Indians and Red Sox due at least in part to superior management? Come on
Mr. Hart, get off your high horse, and exchange your sour grapes for a good old Bronx cream soda!
11
While this is well written, the author never gets around to saying exactly why the Yankees are a moral abomination. His problem seems to be with capitalism, or the advantages of larger cities over smaller ones. As a Yankee fan, I often cringe at the excesses of the Steinbrenners, but fail to see how they are worse than other baseball owners. To paraphrase from the younger generation: You hate us 'cause you ain't us.
10
The best thing about this tirade is that there's at least a slight chance that the author actually believes this nonsense.
But in reality, this is almost as classic a piece of self-parody as the late Charles Reich's "The Greening of America"----you know, the one where it was argued in all seriousness that we were going to be saved by hippies in bell bottom blue jeans!
Of course someone might want to remind Mr. Hart that unless you're involved in the business side of things, baseball is----wait for it----just a game. It's sad that Mr. Hart can't seem to enjoy it for what it is, but then to each his own special form of torment.
1
Dear Mr. Hart: Baseball is a game, Trump is a threat. Fancy wriiting will not change that.
8
Nice, fun, funny, and true.
4
Uh, if this is a rip on the Yankees, it doesn't exactly back it up with reasoning.
If this is a rip on "moral abomination" itself, then the absence of evidence could be a feature, not a bug. It highlights a fundamental problem in feelings replacing thought.
(Disclosure: I lived in the Boston area for over 10 years. Go Sox.)
4
Life long Detroit resident and Yankee fan here, love my Yankees, Ford, Berra, Mantle, Arroyo, Howard, Skowron, Kubek, Richardson, Terry, Maris, Boyer, Tresh, et. al. Saints all. Hate Mazeroski with a passion. Not disagreeing with Hart's observations of the harm caused to a country by capitalism, but he is nutz on the Yankees.
5
I loved this thinly disguised satire of Yankee-haters everywhere!
1
Preach! Yankee exceptionalism hews closely American exceptionalism. It's an arrogance that hurts the world it lives in.
2
What is more funny than the article is how a number of Yankee fans will not be able to comprehend the erudition by which they and their team are lambasted. Funny, but sad, because they cannot feel the impress of words into their skin and up to their mind, and thus will keep running roughshod over everything, like the President, who Brian Cashman and, undoubtedly, much of their brass, support.
3
Undoubtedly? Then you should be able to furnish evidence in support of your claim.
Meanwhile, this is what the site Open Secrets says about the late George Steinbrenner's political donations, citing a Center for Responsive Politics review of campaign finance records:
"Republicans received about 44 percent of Steinbrenner’s contributions over the past two decades. Democrats, likewise, received about 44 percent. And political committees not tied to either Democrats or Republicans received about 12 percent of their donations, the Center found."
Additionally, Open Secrets reports that the Yankees led all franchises in donations to MLB's Political Action Committee, and here's how that PAC's money was spent:
"In general, the baseball PAC gives more money to Democrats than Republicans, although this pro-Democrat margin proved relatively narrow during the 2002, 2004 and 2006 election cycles.
"That changed dramatically during the 2008 election cycle, when Democrats received about $2 from the PAC for every $1 a Republican took in. The 2010 election cycle is even more lopsided, with Democratic interests and candidates the recipients of 72 percent of donations from the Major League Baseball Commissioner’s Office PAC."
I await your evidence in support of your certitude about the political leanings of the Yankee brass.
1
Such a joy to read. From our national pastime to our national condition Hart blessedly did not balk, but pitched true with the analogy of the "degenerate imbecile" piloting our hijacked ship of state, ably assisted by his plutocratic sycophants, past the crumbling embankments of civic benevolence, through the barren, salt-sown narrows of corporate altruism, toward the the beckoning but malignant shoals of rampant narcissism.
3
Gothic sports cum social commentary….a new and possible witty piece. So why did I groan when I read the title and why did I flit through the text refusing to conclude on the gravity of Mr. Hart’s intent? Perhaps, in this time of evangelical Trumpism, it seemed insufferable that one of the few refuges from the dismal, political discourse of the day was under attack. Yes only things Yankee were being demonized but it would take only a few tugs on the metaphor to expand it to all of fat-cat baseball. And who needs such metaphors anyway when we have The Genius turning the real world topsy turvy?
2
I applaud a franchise that has always spent wildly for the benefit of their fans. Yes, it was the Trumpian ego of Boss Steinbrenner that made him unbearably obnoxious and even criminal (see Dave Winfield/ Howie Spira)—but unlike Trump who is all debt, bankruptcy and stiffing his contractors, Steinbrenner plowed real millions into making the team exciting and pleasing to the fans.
We don’t really know what the other owners do with their money, and we don’t really know, because their books are closed. There are no “poor” baseball franchise owners and not one major league franchise whose valuation over 10 years doesn’t beat real estate, the stock market or Berkshire Hathaway.
As for Spoiled Yankee fans so accustomed to winning and therefore acting like entitled jerks, we’ve only to consider the newly obnoxious Red Sox and Cub fans who shed their “lovable loser “ personas as soon as their teams’ owners decided to actually put some Steinbrennerian swag ito their operations.
Nevertheless, these fans are all perfectly miserable because they can never enjoy a game without obsessing over who will pitch in game two of the World Series while they call in to sports-talk radio running down their shopping lists of pitchers to pluck for the post-season.
Being a fan is being an idiot who engages in magical thinking, confirmation-bias, and vicarious thrills. At least the Yankee owners know how to deliver that.
6
What a richly described anguish of a superb game gone bunkers, caving it's own grave by self-aggrandizing inequality and not allowing other's glory in a planned loss for the ages. Fans, of course, at least the old one's, are religiously dogmatic about their team's unique flavor, patient sufferers no matter how many times some applause is found wanting. That's sports, magnificent while it lasts, the end results be damned. As they say, the pleasure is not in the end...but in the process; a memorable trip while it lasts, the destination just an accident of nature.
Beautiful prose. Intellectual and interesting. The metaphor or analogy to the Yankees though? I don’t quite get the damn Yankees reference. Such a good, young, clean exciting team. I think a better analogy would be to the rich and powerful football clubs that dominate annually — Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Juventus, and Paris saint germain, for example. Of course, the American basis of the diatribe is then lost. Weird, inaccurate, yet brilliant.
very well stated. i agree with what you say. in baseball as in trumpland the world is divided between winners and losers and the rules are winner take all, and the bosses can try and rig the game and often succeed. love it or leave it. it's dangerous in the real world but in baseball i can be a yankee fan and still sleep well. boston sucks
1
Chris Davis $161 million. The Yankees have one position player with a higher contract. Adam Jones, Manny Machado, Mark Trumbo all make more than any other position player on the Yankees. Bad contracts and bad player development have doomed the Orioles. The Astros, Indians, and Mariners are not big market teams yet they are all doing just fine competing against the Yankees (and Red Sox). Your ire should be directed at Baltimore Oriole management and owner for being so ineffective and reckless.
2
The impending decline of baseball starts with the out of control ticket, parking and concession prices. Add to that the lack of loyalty of team to player and the reverse, and it all just a big money game and with an equal fading of fan loyalty. As for me I have always been and intense Red Sox fan. Hating, and respecting the Yankees and just loving the game. When I was younger, back in the 60s, 70s and 80s it was an incredible time for the sport. Fans moving back and forth between venues, living the rivalry day to day. Ultimately, MLB, like other pro sports, was cursed by big big money. The comparisons with Trump, however, is mostly misplaced. Recall that baseball once had it's glorious and beautiful heyday, the 20th century. Trump, on the other hand, has never been anything other than a lying, cheating, and disgusting tool. Unfortunately, we need to look no further than the growing oligarch, along with it's unlimited money and power, to realize that we have long since seen the best of our beloved national pastime, and our beautiful country.
"The West Wing" was one of the great TV shows of our time, epitomizing a country and an administration that all right-thinking people should emulate. The only discordant note was that Toby Ziegler, the moral soul and authority of President Bartlett's administration, was a Yankee fan! One of writer Aaron Sorkin's greatest mistakes.
1
if you go to Camden Yards and the Yankees are in town the stands are 50% Yankee fans, you're welcome for the revenue
2
Darwin’s theories don’t have anything to do with things cultural or societal;, only when analogized incorrectly. Starting with such misconceptions makes it hard to read the remainder...and believe that latter claims are founded.
Heaven help us, another Yankees basher. I tease some of my flyover friends for their fearing and loathing of the Yankees but the same types can be found on my block, I am sure. In truth, I once hated the Yankees, living far away but for reasons I won't go into, rooting madly for the Brooklyn Dodgers. I moved to NYC in the 60s, was inveigled a decade later by the Munson/Reggie/Gator Yanks and have been a fan ever since, though ready at the drop of a throw or a blown save to blister the tv screen with insults. I like the Mets too. In a calmer way.
1
In my opinion professional sports are benign, escapist, and utterly meaningless. That is the draw. We get to cheer for our side and no one really gets killed. It is a poorly analogous to the decline of Western Civilization.
1
I did not realize that the Yankees were so powerful that the epitomize everything that is wrong with our country.
Perhaps some of the blame rests with the fans as well.
Certainly sports teams used to be heroes to their fans and even non-fans. Derek Jeter does come to mind at the moment, but more for his grace than his ability.
What is needed more in sports and this country is good sportsmanship. But instead what we have become is a county more of sore losers than having the temperament of good sportsmanship.
Take the NFL for example. The owners voted to not allow their players not to protest by taking a knee against police brutality. A bow to Trump. They have no guts, just like Trump, and certainly no love of Freedom to Protest for all Citizens.
They basically have taken away the right to protest from the very players who also happen to be citizens and the reason the owners are so rich. Talk about bad sportsmanship.
Until we, as citizens of this country, bring back respect for each other, there is no hope that sports teams will be free to show their respect for each other, only to display disdain and lack of respect. This is what their coaches and their owners expect. And so do most of their fans.
1
This whole piece is a reach. A column decrying social inequality via Yankee- and Yankee-fan bashing, making specious correlations in the name.of making a point. I think.
I'm sure MLB would love to have a salary cap, but the union wouldn't go for it.
Blame the Yankees for being prosperous and using the team's money to get better? What a preposterous notion! Being financially successful the nation's largest city and media capital, why that's not fair!
By the author's logic, income and social inequality mirror how well the Yankees do when compared to his Orioles and other mismanaged franchises. I wonder how far back his data goes. The beginnings of MLB, when there was no Yankee team? Maybe when they moved to the Bronx? How about the mid-60s through the mid-70s, when the Yankees we're awful. Those must have been salad days for America. No social strife then, and Baltimore fielded championship level teams.
I hope, Mr. Hart, that you find a better use for your time soon. The individuals associated with the organization who actually participate in the day-to-day games-both on the parent team and on its minor league affiliates are folks no more reprehensible than, say, you. Denigrate the hype, the puffery, even the affluence of the superstructure if it pleases you, but give the core (not "corps," but "core") a break. They are not "moral abominations." They're people making an honest living.
1
Must be a met fan, and baseball is not an Exquisite game it's like watching grass grow.
2
This proud son of the Bronx and third generation Yankee fan has stayed and will stay with his team come thick or thin. That the team has been built through the nurturing of young platers is all the more exciting and that, far from an abomination, should serve as an object lesson for the other teams that look for quick (and cheap) fixes. I endured the eighteen year drought form 1978 to 1996 but was rewarded with a great five year stretch and it looks like we are heading into a new dynasty that the fans of other clubs will despise and I will relish, eat your hearts put Yankee haters the handwriting is on the wall.
2
Joe Quinlan once wrote that he recused himself from reviewing an otherwise fine novel (I think it was David Benioff's "City of Thieves") because in the first few pages one of the major characters was described as committed Yankee's fan. Quinlan grew up in Philadelphia in the 50s and 60s. I grew up in Detroit at the same time. I hate the Yankees. I've been living in New York City and loving it since 1978, but I still hate the Yankees and hate them more each year. They are, have been and always will be, the Donald J. Trump of baseball.
1
Oh, the hypocrisy.
Skim through the comment threads on any baseball discussion forum hosted for fans of any smaller-market franchise, especially in the off-season when free agency wheeling and dealing is going on, and you're likely to read words to this effect: "We'll never win with these cheapskates running the franchise!"
And in many cases that complaint is valid. In fact, last February the Players Association filed a grievance against four teams (the Marlins, Athletics, Pirates and Rays) whose owners pocketed revenue-sharing money they gleaned at the expense of richer franchises, instead of plowing the money back into the improvement of those teams.
The owner of one of those teams, the Athletics, is John Fisher, the billionaire heir to the GAP fortune. In Oakland, visiting players have been sickened by infections when the malfunctioning toilets in their clubhouse overflowed into the showers. But Oakland fans are an anomalous lot. Thanks to "Moneyball," they've been convinced to take pride in Billy Beane's aptitude for fielding teams on the cheap for Mr. Fisher.
But most small-market owners don't get that kind of free pass from their fans. Their fans blast them.
But the Yankee owners do exactly what those smaller-market fans rip their own teams' owners for not doing: i.e., they invest in the product on the field. So, what would be deemed a virtue if it were undertaken by their own teams' owners is deemed a vice by those same fans when the Yankee owners do it.
1
Why would anyone dislike the Yankees more than the Red Sox?
3
Why is baseball on the decline?
It's not the Yankees fault although they are part of the problem...
It is the MLB front office and the owners collectively who are nickel and diming fans to attend or even see a game.
They need to squeeze every single penny out of us for their fiscal irresponsibility. For they failed to realize is that the game is it's own advertising. You need to see the game to become a fan. Absence does not make the heart grow fonder - it makes one fond of a replacement. When I was a kid every single Yankees and Mets games were on WPIX or WOR and I watched. Now, I have to have cable or satellite - might get blocked for whatever reason. When an entire league's playoffs are on some cable station, fans will miss it entirely.... and so they - the leadership of baseball - are literally killing fandom. And with all the cord-cutting, it's not going to change.
Streaming? That's even more ridiculous! Phone streaming burns through data. Meanwhile MLBTV STILL has blackout rules.
Bottom line:
It is impossible for a fan to cheaply and easily see every single game of their local team on a single platform. It just costs too much and is too much effort. We have more important things to do now.
MLB seriously needs to rethink how their product is delivered and paid-for.
3
Ah, so satisfying, so satisfying, indeed. Lifelong Yankees fan here (now transported to gentler climes), and bravo to Mr. David Bentley Hart and his humidly suffering ilk in Baltimore, which I am told is a township somewhere on the East Coast. When excellence is scorned, excellence is reaffirmed in its excellence, so let the scorn come forth with full venomous force. I say, let us celebrate the achievement of the way the game can be played, sir. And where, may I ask, would be the beauty of the Cubs, my late father’s team, were it not for such as the Yankees? But to link even just slightly my proud blue cap to the puerile mediocrity of MAGA red is not just an “imperfect” analogy, but indecently cheap shotish. So I say to you, Mr. David Bentley Hart, sir: Let NATO grapple with DSM issues, and let us of the green fields of summer agree to leave untainted the crack of the bat and the perfection of a game mutually loved.
Did anyone else simply enjoy this article? Reading it for me was like seeing the Trump baby balloon. A laugh that contained a profound message.
Say it ain't so. The Catcher in the Rye protagonist could not protect the children from the reality and that reality is/was manifested in George S.
It was also reflected by Calvin Griffith, who got mooned by Bert Blyleven, the pitcher with a great curve ball.
Baseball though does "Happen Every Spring" and there is a magic to it. My father showed my a sweeping round house curve ball, played catch with me on the farm, and answered every question my 10 year old voice came out with "Are the Twins on tonight?" I would curl up around the radio counsel in the northern Minnesota farm house and hang on every word the kind and diplomatic Herb Carneal would utter in his NC accent, a true gentlemen.
I have passed along the seam combinations for a fastball to my grandson and pitching mechanics - the boy has a heater. Say it aint so ... George S isn't baseball. Play catch with boys and girls.
1
When the new Yankee stadium was built, largely at taxpayer expense, the cry was "Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!" Much of this invariably came from construction unions, who unlike every other union in the world, reports shamelessly to management, show up as giddy cheerleaders to the developer's photo-ops and have helped price their own members out of living in the city. When the dust cleared, the stadium directly provided 22 full-time jobs. Score another one for Bloomberg and crony capitalism.
1
This may have been true of the George Steinbrenner days. (If GS were still alive he probably would be giving millions to DT). But the modern day team has to compete with free spending Dodgers, Cubs and Red Sox. So to call them an abomination is grossly unfair. Are Amazon, Apple and Google abominations?
1
Divine Comedy or Paradise Lost, a terrifying poetic description of our current spiraling predicament voiced through the frustration of a fan of sport, the modern day opiate of the masses.
The state of baseball a metaphor for our failing American civilization written to be so uncomfortable as to be art.
Enjoy freedom of speech while it lasts. Such an indirect shot across the bow of the powerful could end your freedom in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, China, North Korea, Russia ... someday the USA.
Perhaps learn chess, something to pass the time while held as a prisoner of conscience.
Why does it feel like the end of Rome and everyone is fleeing reality by attending the games in the Flavian Amphitheater?
1
They tore down The House That Ruth Built.
1
I congratulate Mr. Hart's admission that the Orioles sorry state may be contributing to his bile. But the admission is insufficient. Peter Angelos has destroyed the proud tradition of the Orioles and before Mr. Hart throws stones at the Yankees, I suggest he vent his spleen at a more local target.
As a lifelong Yankee fan I don’t agree with your hate , especially of this current young team. However I do agree with your assessment of America today.
2
Great column! MLB is a major offender. I am an Orioles fan, too and it is near impossible to imagine overcoming the Yankees and the Red Sox in the 21st century since there is nary a thought to team equity in the Commissioner's Office, as Hart writes. But, I am also a Bills fan and so I know first-hand that the NFL is also a terrible offender. Exactly when can we expect the Patriots to feel the pinch of their payroll? But, the worst offenders appear to be the NBA. Why was Durant allowed to go to the Warriors?
1
In case you missed it the Yankees have done very little for many years now.
There are only two kinds of baseball fans. Yankee fans and those who don't know it yet.
When I started playing ball the Yankees stunk and Bobby Murcer was the savior. Mets just won the ship. George built the Yankees back up from a discarded joke. The Wilpons have no sustainable plan to keep the Mets competitive, much like too many teams in an over-expanded league. Not enough starting pitching for years which proves overexpansion. Anyway your article is such a deep hate dive and I'm glad your not a fan.
2
Geez, I am astonished at how angry people are about "the Yankees" .... I guess we are in pretty good shape if the only thing we have to complain about is the Yankees.... of course it's an Orioles fan, better than a RedSox fan, at least I read the article.....
Baseball would be more popular around the country without Yanks & Sox.
I was surprised by the impressive histrionics until I got to the part about being a Baltimore fan.
1
It’s gratifying to fill a need,,,,,,Signed. A Yankee fan for 68 years.
2
So....to summarize, the Yankees, being an obvious symbol of a profit making conglomerate in America is....evil and represents the dark collapse of the entire country.
Hmmmm.
Well....
I thought making a profit honestly was the backbone of a free republic.
Silly me, I thought the Yankees were simply an available form of entertainment to which no one is REQUIRED to attend. There’s that free republic thing again. This time on the citizenry consumer side.
Contrare. THIS is exactly what makes America great.
1
Ah yes, those poor small-market teams, like the Mets, can never compete with the big-market Yankees for fans and titles.
2
Well written. America is dying from withing. Wall Street and big banks are the biggest threat to the survival our country - not the "JV" teams. The burning of "Yankee Stadium" unfortunately will reach well beyond the Bronx. God help us.
Beautifully written! Thank you, Mr. Hart.
3
No worries, Mr. Hart, curling season is never far away.
1
RedSoxNation at Camden Yards (or as they contemptuously call it, "Fenway South"), are far, far worse than Yankees fans. Yankees fans don't boo the Orioles lineup.
1
"The detestation that any rational soul spontaneously feels for the Yankees is so innocent, so uncontaminated by spite — just instinctive revulsion before something obscene, like the goat-headed god of the diabolists. And there are few luxuries more gorgeously nourishing than the license to hate with an unclouded conscience."
Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on my grandfather's lap listening to Red Sox games on the radio beck when Curt Gowdy was the announcer. for me, this is self-evident.
Nope--Love the Yankees!
Loathe the Dodgers!
My Grandmother was born in NYC. As a young women, she saw Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig play. We were born and raised Yankee fans!
Fandom is an interesting psychological phenomenon. Perhaps it's related to the same evolutionarily developed impulses that give us xenophobia and tribalism.
Oh, come on. The Yankees aren't all bad. In fact, their home uniforms are quite useful. The pinstripes allow you to perfectly align the pins on the voodoo doll.
3
"America — with its decaying infrastructure, its third-world public transit, its shrinking labor market, its evaporating middle class, its expanding gulf between rich and poor, its heartless health insurance system, its mindless indifference to a dying ecology, its predatory credit agencies, its looming Social Security collapse, its interminable war, its metastasizing national debt and all the social pathologies that gave it a degenerate imbecile and child-abducting sadist as its president — remains the only developed economy in the world that believes it wrong to use civic wealth for civic goods. Its absurdly engorged military budget diverts hundreds of billions of dollars a year from the public weal to those who profit from the military-industrial complex. Its plutocratic policies and libertarian ethos are immune to all appeals of human solidarity. It towers over the world, but promises secure shelter only to the fortunate few."
How has this happened? Most Americans are against all of these things (save the libertarian impulse) and are as willing to spend civic wealth or civic goods as they were when the "decaying infrastructure" was built.
Ronald Reagan Margaret Thatcher neoliberalism, globalized inequality, Bush 1 and 2, Citizens United ... Trump.
Another envious Orioles fan. And I doubt the Yankees have anything to do with the apocalypse that is coming.
1
Jeez, that was fun. I especially liked this line:
One recollects only a kaleidoscopic flux of gruesomely fragmentary impressions, too outlandish to be perfectly accurate, too vivid to be entirely false:
As a Red Sox fan since the glory days of YAZ, I couldn't agree with you more about the abomination the Bronx Bombers are. [And have been so since even before the seduction and abduction of the Babe. (yes, yes, I know... he made more moolah than the president, but oh, the degradation of it all...)]
But -- as more than one comment on here seems to indicate -- Mr. Hart is well behind the times by using the Yankees as an analogy for America. With Trump and his like in ascendance, the sport of baseball can no longer serve a metaphorical purpose. The new national epitome is roller-derby.
Despite the author’s hyperbole there is a deep sense that all is right in the universe each time the Yankees leave the field with another W. Aaron Judge has picked up Derek Jeter’s elegant mantle. (Or Mantle). A close-up of Didi Gregorios smiling as the credits roll is a sign that what is pre-ordained has happened and that we can sleep peacefully again for one more night.
2
David Bentley Hart,
You have just described the nature of Godzilla.
(A mythological creature, in which the Japanese first used to anthropomorphize the nature of United States)
3
Superb column! The Yankee fans will find it hard to swallow as will probably a few other teams (and the baseball owners) who have let the national past time drift into an emblem of plutocracy. "Cheap" Yankee tickets are about $89, if you want to be close enough to see anything. Plus treats and transportation. For a family of four with HHI of $50K going to a game is a once-in-a-lifetime extravagance.
1
I remember when Willie Mays, the greatest player in baseball, earned $100,000, which was more than any player in baseball. Then came the union and free agency, both of which are good. I think we need to talk about them as well.
1
9 other teams in MLB have payrolls that are higher than the Yankee, including some terrible teams (Mets and Nationals come to mind). So it seems that money does not buy success. Maybe it's about good management. Do you hate the Red Sox, the team with the highest payroll?
13
Hart's Op-ed ring a bell for me, but that because so thought Yankee affluence and payrolls a lawyer at it near top. Insofar as that's not True (e.g., Yankee payrolls rank about ninth highest) the Hart Op-ed is pretty much nonsense. No big deal if Jeter 's field was overrated. Gracefully players are frequently
overrated: Ichiro Suzuki is a shop in for the BHF
But there are many good players with better or comparable records -- say Jorge Posada-- who've not chance, as well as players like Tim Raines who took for ever to get elected but has better base stealing and careers WAR and OPS states than Mr. Singles.
Team with most games won, including playoff games, in the National Football League: Green Bay Packers. Owned by the people. Cooperative (people, not state or corporate owned) enterprises always perform better.
3
Since the Patriots came into being, the Packers are a distant 2nd. Since the Super Bowl era started, the Packers are a distant 5th having been to 5. Pats 10, Pittsburgh 8, Dallas 8, San Fran 6. The writer best add up playoff wins again. New England has lost as many Super Bowls as Green Bay has gone too. FIVE
Most guys reading this piece probably feel as I do. Who really cares about baseball anymore. Me, like others grew up in the boroughs in the 50's and 60's and remember the Yankee games televised in black and white on Sunday afternoons on PIX. Our Dads beholden to the most famous of beer and cigarettes brands and identified with players who looked like them, maybe saw some action in the Pacific or Italy- provided a few hours of diversion ahead of an unglamorous workweek. Choosing our favorite players was un-scientific at best. But with expansion and open check books, the choices became too overwhelming. Conversations about teams and players and pennant runs became one-sided and impossible to follow. Too many games, too many teams who sat at the bottom for decades, too many ethical and social issues infused the game and exhausted me. Now, two generations or so after the Dodgers found greener acres, just who watches beyond 4 innings? And who really cares to analyze if 5 year development plans, pays off. Whose going to watch MLB streaming in 2023 on a 2 inch screen?
7
actually, baseball is as popular as ever. maybe it's just you?
There are better questions to ask-like, why does Buck Showalter still have a job?
13
My husband has no use for baseball because he finds it boring and harps about the money spent, particularly by the Yankees. During Alex Rodriguez's time, he demanded that one paid so high should just produce championships. Really?The money, in the case of baseball, can only get a team so far. One can't explain the exquisite cerebral movement behind each pitch, which takes time, or the many, many weird occurrences that each game holds and to my 10 year old eyes in 1976, watching Chris Chambliss hit one out to grab the pennant or Reggie's 3 against the Dodgers 2 years later and in fact Ron Guidry's entire year that year or Dave Righetti's July 4, 1983 no hitter in some dry times or the late 90's when I was at home with my babies and that spectacularl team helped get me through all the work or Aaron Boone's 2003 launch against the Sox, too beautiful for words, or anything Mariano. Today, Judge, DiDi, Betances, Severino! Money can by some stuff but not this history. And my husband comes from a family of Trump supporters so divorce because of baseball or the so called president is not out of the question.
21
Judge, DiDi, Betances and Severino make approximately 5%of the threshold but an amazing amount of productivity and 10% of the roster. Yankee fans brazenly attired at stadiums across America and the populist hatred they inspire only help assure the continued well being of our national pastime.
I wonder if anyone who hates Trump and likes this article can explain the difference.
Sounds good to me, Danny.
Good stuff in here, even if over the top. I live in south Jersey on the coast, but the Phillies are my team because I used to live closer to the middle of the state.
Here, you see the stereotypical New York transplant proudly wearing his Yankee jersey above his blue jeans. In my mind, I always question why anyone could see the Yankees as a true baseball team. It is simply another business with profit as the main motive. They don't earn their wins, they buy them.
6
Very dated article and beliefs on display. The Phillies are doing well. The Yankees are definitely not the biggest spenders and their most exciting players are homegrown. Where have you been the last five years? You can’t disparage Judge, Torres,Andujar, the young pitchers surprising us with their guts and craft. The stadium is electric with Judge, Stanton and now Bird on display. The Orioles are terrible and the stadium is dead. Why don’t you complain about the Red Sox?
Aside from the humorous hyperbole, the author effectively pokes at the weak spot of MLB--and all other sports, frankly. But let's be honest. (like the NBA is fair?) The Yankees thrive because of great management that understands how to play within the rules of the system. They produce great teams in the greatest city in the world. This is the difference between the Yankees--who are great--and the Mets--who are not. The Orioles have been great in the past--don't blame the Yankees for their failure, blame Peter Angelos!
25
Come on, David, stop complaining too bad about your Birds. But remember my favorite player: "The Maryland Mauler." Charlie Keller. From your dear State, wherever it is. As for Deter hardly a more decent person ever to hold a bat and put on a glove.
I didn’t know that growing up in Baltimore could produce such pessimism about life, baseball and America. The author needs to relax with a good scotch and chill. harping about the Yankees has been a feature of American sports life since, I don’t know, maybe 1927? MLB in decline? Don’t think so, since unlike the NFL its game is not dependent on men smashing heads till they drop. As values of franchisees continue to grow? Pessimists have been predicting the fall of baseball for decades and for many reasons; its too slow, too traditional , too white, too well American. And I’m not a big baseball fan, haven’t watched a game in decades. My biggest sports thrill in the past decade was bringing my grandson to Barcelona to watch Barca play in their home stadium.
The author has some kind of moral pain to explain and share, and by arguing for the parallel decline of the USA and baseball has demonstrated his complete disconnection from reality. Brooks Robinson would not have approved of either.
10
The problem is not the Yankees. The problem is major league baseball. MLB is a cartel, specifically designed to drive out any true competition. Revenue-sharing would help the sport. But even better would be to take away territorial exclusivity. Under current rules the Yankees (and the hapless Mets) enjoy total control over the biggest market in the country. Nobody else can do anything in the New York metropolitan area. Meanwhile, teams like the Royals and Indians operate in much smaller territories. You simply can never get the revenue streams in the smaller markets that you can in the bigger markets like New York and LA. So the game is rigged from the beginning. Small-market teams have to improvise, get smarter and get luckier, to occasionally compete with the big city clubs. What if all teams have the right to market themselves equally everywhere? A seachange would occur… For more, see my book “Playing the Field.”
1
Sadly, I must agree with Mr. Hart. I grew up in the Bronx in the 50's and 60's. Took the subway to Yankees games in the summer and entered with my "G.O" card and sat in the bleachers for 5O cents. My mom gave me a buck so I could have a hot dog, a soda, a dixie cup and pay the 30 cents for my "tokens." I returned home with a sunburn and enough memories to realize now what we are all missing. The revolution will not be televised. Not even on You Tube. The 1% have us just where they want us.
31
Future truth from the dustbin of the American Experience
"It towers over the world, but promises secure shelter only to the fortunate few."
America? Not the America I know and warmly regard. Perhaps the author's moral indignation is somewhat overblown.
2
Same argument the Klingons made against the Enterprise in Star Trek - the flagship of the fleet, which recruited, and attracted, the best and the brightest. There should always be such a goal, and I guess there will always be people who tear that down. I'll go on enjoying the state of the art.
7
I was born in New York and learned to love the Yankees from my uncle. I still remember the names Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris from watching games on tv with him. Later we moved to Maryland in the mid 60's and I still loved the Yankees. My father took me to my first game in Baltimore to see Mickey Mantle,what a memory. I was a fan during the hard years, what a friend of mine termed the "Roy White" Yankees. They usually lost and Bobby Murcer became my favorite player.
Then things changed. After the 70's the Yankees just seemed more corporate and to exemplify everything the author says. They seemed false and right here we had a team with young Cal Ripkin and others who had a different ethic (or seemed to in public), just hard working guys. I was a won over and never looked back. There is a certain joy in rooting for the underdog, the passed over. I share Hart's sentiments for the Orioles even in this disastrous season. Mostly because our city needs our support.
It sort of happened here too. We now see the Orioles in the tax funded Camden Yards that has been copied several times now by other cities and not the working class in the middle of a neighborhood Memorial Stadium. Its just not the same and its all part of the decline in values that Hart describes.
America is becoming more like George Steinbrenner in the form of Donald Trump. I'm great because I'm rich philosophy. No fault of Yankee fans like Stu Freeman.
Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?
7
Good article.
Baseball has always been about what is the best in America and what is the worst.
It was the best around 1945-1980 when we did not have the ugliness of segregation in the sport and the ruination of the game with PEDS and money and poor and immigrant children and families could afford the game.
From 1945-1980, baseball was integrated, no PEDS and you could get a field level box ticket at Yankee stadium in 1961 for $3.50 now unless you are rich you need a loan to get these seats.
8
At last - an article explaining why I loathe the Yankees. When I was a child my family was split into three - supporters of the Yankees (my older brother who went on to a successful career, making him a sort of living Yankee in another guise), supporters of the NY Giants, and me the deeply loyal, loving fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers. I still know the names of the players on the greatest team - Robinson, Reese, Hodges et all (although left field was always a problem). How could anyone ever love the Yankees - I still don't know. When the Dodgers left for L.A. my heart was broken forever.
6
If my memory is correct, the last time the Yankees played on an even field, salary-wise, etc., was when the Dodgers inhabited Brooklyn. or say about the 1950's.
I have no memory of when this country played on an even field. Possibly during W.W. II rationing, but that was temporary.
8
Aside from demonstrating his prowess at Scrabble, I agree that the Yankees will always be reviled for their largesse. But at the end of the day, it is societal change that ultimately will doom the sport. 160 games that many could care less about, forces the majority of revenue generation to the playoffs that provide monetary rewards for only a handful of teams.
3
"Yet M.L.B. would never consider the wisdom of creating a real system of shared revenues and salary caps."
Though shared revenues and salary caps would address some financial inequities, though probably not financial iniquities, I would wish to see American sports adopt the European league system wherein the bottom teams from each league are demoted and the top teams are promoted. (Oh don't worry, Fantasy Baseball, I know.) But can you imagine excitement as all those meaningless games in September suddenly are life and death struggles with teams like the Orioles and the Mets having MLB survival to play for instead of a few first round draft picks. Of course this would be a risk for the owners (just ask the American owners to former Premier League soccer clubs like Swansea and Sunderland) and we all know that ain't happening. So the interminably boring and pointless end of season games will continue. Sad.
3
No professional sport has has been more elevated or more trivialized than has baseball by the constant straining after cosmic significance of fine writers and hacks. Languid and slow as the summer days it fills and sometimes electrifies with a flash of energy, the game remains a simple contest of skill that children in grass and daisy covered fields can still somehow as play as fully as its millionaire pros. If we are to be hones, the Yankees are no different from the Lakers, the Patriots, or the preposterous Dallas Cowboys, or FIFA, or the Olympics for that matter. And what ails MLB is no different from what ails any those corporate-cash-driven entertainments. Mr. Hart may want to make that point, but in the end his anger is every bit as theatrical as his diction and as uninteresting as his specific complaint.
35
As a lifelong Cleveland Indians fan, I used to think I hated the Yankees. Certainly, some members of the Bronx Zoo from the late '70's were easy to dislike. As I got older (but not necessarily more mature), I began to realize that what I hated were not the Yankees per se (say what you want about Derek Jeter, but everyone has to admit he was really a credit to the game), but certain Yankee fans. They have a willful blindness to the fact that two things have historically made this team rise above the rest, and it’s not Yankee “aura” and “mystique” (which Curt Schilling memorably described as a pair of exotic dancers before crushing them in the 2001 World Series), but a boundless payroll and an overwhelming media horde that is ready to deify any above average player in pinstripes.
10
Please don't forget the culpability we the citizens have in this for electing and tolerating politicians both Democratic and Republican who provide tax breaks for the wealthy owners of these teams, diverting funds from the needed infrastructure repairs and education of our future fans into the hands of the billionaires running these games.
The Times had an excellent piece on this just this week:
https://nyti.ms/2L8ZiwJ
We need to look in the mirror. I've stopped attending games regularly and never by $10 beers and $7 hot dogs when I do.
I also don't vote for anyone who gives tax breaks to the rich.
31
David Bentley Hart gives eloquent voice to the frustration and outrage which the New York Yankees inspire in people outside the Bronx. He provides some comfort to an old man who has hated the Yankees for many decades.
In kindergarten, listening on the radio, I experienced the only ultimate triumph of the Cleveland Indians in my lifetime. Nearly as much time has passed since that glorious World Series victory of 1948, as elapsed prior to it – measuring from the victory at Little Bighorn in 1876.
I’m too young to remember Cleveland’s win in the 1920 World Series over Brooklyn, a feat accomplished even though Cleveland’s shortstop had been killed by a Yankee pitcher six weeks earlier. I do recall vividly, however, growing up in the 1950s, when the Indians often were the best team in the American League – as long as you didn’t count the Yankees.
The purchased success of the New York Yankees in recent years is described perfectly by Mr. Hart, and the salt in the wound for me is that the crass Yankee owner, George Steinbrenner, was a Clevelander when he bought the team.
Steinbrenner was, of course, a notorious bully. It is no accident that the latest resurgence of the Yankees comes at a time when there is a decline in American political values and an erratic New York bully in the White House.
12
What baseball has become is discouraging. I'm a Red Sox fan and the Red Sox are in the same category as the Yankees: those with the resources to buy championships. Humanly, I feel better when the Sox win, but the euphoria dwindles with every mediocre, triple A quality team they play that can't compete with any consistency.
Yes Yankee fans and Red Sox fans can gloat with each victory but, if one is also a BASEBALL FAN, who enjoys and appreciates competiveness, there's a growing hollowness in observing the competitive level of at least two thirds of the teams.
28
Having my roots in the Midwest I have come to conclude that Yankee fans from NJ, NY, or CT have a reasonable explanation for their dismal choice for a team. All others have a character flaw that deserves to be reflected upon and reformed.
7
Can I recommend this comment 100 times? And had Cowboys fans who are not from Texas or Oklahoma?
1
Major league baseball threw out the baby with the bath water when it gave players complete freedom to shop around for the team offering the highest salaries. Of course, there were court rulings prodding this, but regulatory offsets such as the revenue-sharing suggested here might have helped, but were never seriously considered.
What has helped is the expansion of franchises from 16 before the 1960s to 30 teams by the late 1990s. Before 1970, the Yankees appeared in 44% of world series; since 1970 only 23%.
Competition between the thirty different teams has anyway never been only a matter of size and money. Of the current thirty, only two have never made it to a World Series. That provides enough basis for hope to sustain fan interest for a long time (witness the Cubs and the Red Sox).
Having the Yankees as a common top dog rival gives less financially endowed and less successful teams a common sense of a long shot chance. There is always another season, another game, another inning, another out, or another strike still ahead. And, the harder the struggle the greater the eventual, if rare, triumph.
5
A similar thing happened in my mother's family (I'm too young to remember). All ten siblings were Brooklyn born and bred, and the men were all Dodger fans, taking the subways to Ebbets Field to cheer for "da bums" until O'Malley followed the money, the bigger ballpark, and the WWII vets who stayed in southern California after the war and moved the team to LA. At that point, the family attitude changed and I don't remember any of them watching baseball or attending any games either and sports were not discussed in any of their homes, except to mention fellow MOT Sandy Koufax with glowing terms reserved for war heroes.
5
My father, Brooklyn born and raised, told me he felt the same way. But as a good dad, he took me to the Stadium (I grew up in the Bronx), and as a child of the 50's and early '60's I followed baseball until Koufax (1966) and Mantle (1968) retired. I assume MOT means "Member of the Tribe".
1
It all goes to show how these things are a matter of perspective. As a child I loved playing all kinds of baseball games, usually without enough friends to do more than hit, but I finally became a *fan* in 1990, when the Yankees were mired in the midst of an 18-year-long championship drought. My most ardent fandom was during the lean years of 1991, 1992, and 1993, when just being competitive was a pipe dream, and I was crushed when the Yankees were eliminated in 1995, and I knew that Don Mattingly was retiring without ever having the chance to play in the World Series.
To me, the Yankees of those years were the Biblical Hebrews, wandering through the wilderness for forty years, cursed by the evil Steinbrenner; the ruins of the Roman Empire after its fall. Most of my heroes were the legends of the past: Babe Ruth, the demigod who rescued the Yankees from obscurity when he arrived from Boston in 1920; Lou Gehrig, a modest but tragic hero; Joe DiMaggio, the epitome of grace; and Mickey Mantle, an echo of Ruth for the 1950's.
The Yankees have been more successful than most franchises in most sports, but every professional league has teams that dominate for many years. New York may be the most hated team in baseball, but it's also the most beloved, and if it weren't, then some other team would be, like the Dodgers, the Braves, or the Red Sox, and we'd be having the same conversation.
That said, love the picture, hate the pajama pants.
10
The Yankees buy championships? Of course, they do and that is also the objective of every team in the NBA, NFL, NHL or whatever. I have yet to see a team of players playing for free.
12
This problem and the resultant lack of competitive balance is currently the worst in the NBA. Here's how to fix it.
1) Pick the top 8 - 12 cities in the US where young men with enormous amounts of disposable income would want to live.
2) Get rid of all the other teams that have been mired for years in "lottery pick" hell or low draft seed purgatory. Let's face it, these are the Washington Generals of the NBA.
3) Let the players sort out the teams in their multi-million dollar game of pick-up basketball (actually, this happens now).
There.
Now you truly have a league of super teams and every game would be highly competitive. Prior fans of Milwaukee, Utah, Sacramento, (and now) Cleveland, et al will just have to pick a rooting interest among these. Maybe based on uniform design? After all (as Seinfeld cogently observed), we're all just cheering for the clothes anyways...
It appears that I misrepresented Peter Angelos as siding with tobacco and asbestos companies, when in fact he helped to sue them. I would never seek to falsely accuse anyone, and I sincerely apologize for that error.
5
Funny, my father would have said the decline of America was started when the N.Y. Giants left for s.f. My great grandfather, grandfather and he were all lifelong fans. Until, that is when the team left town. My father never cared that the Dodgers left, but he never, ever forgave the Giants. After that, baseball was never spoken of, nor allowed in his house again. Truly the end of an era.
7
A similar thing happened in my mother's family (I'm too young to remember). All ten siblings were Brooklyn born and bred, and the men were all Dodger fans, taking the subways to Ebbets Field to cheer for "da bums" until O'Malley followed the money, the bigger ballpark, and the WWII vets who stayed in southern California after the war and moved the team to LA. At that point, the family attitude changed and I don't remember any of them watching baseball or attending any games either and sports were not discussed in any of their homes, except to mention fellow MOT Sandy Koufax with glowing terms reserved for war heroes.
1
Sorry to inform you of this, but the keepers of the 'Holy Grail' baseball records deemed that the New York Yankees did not derive from Bailtome, but came into existence in 1903. The Baltimore years have been erased from there history.
Sorry to inform you of this, but the keepers of the ('Holy Grail') baseball records deemed that the New York Yankees did not derive from Bailtome, but came into existence in 1903. The Baltimore years have been erased from there history.
I spent the first eight years of my life - back in the fifties - living in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx --
Back then most games were played in the daytime - and we could hear the "Five O'clock Thunder" rumbling in the distance on many afternoons at around 5:00 P.M. -
I became a lifelong Yankee fan - and remained so even during the lean years from 1964 thru 1976 - when the Yankees once again became competitive --
I remember when there were eight teams in two leagues - there were no "divisions" - and after the last day of the 154-game season, there were two first-place teams - one in the National League, the other in the American - who would go straight to the world series -
I can remember as late as 1973 listening to the Mets play a World Series game on the radio during the daytime - between college classes - something which would be unthinkable today -
It wasn't until I spent a couple of summers in Cleveland that I learned about this apparent inbred midwestern hatred for the Yankees (I just thought it was a Boston thing) - and then from my friends here who were from Chicago --
For those of you who are compelled to attach some sort of sociopolitical hidden meaning and reflection about our society to the game of baseball -- I guess all I can say is I feel bad for you that your frustration about the state of our country - understandable as it may be - has infected your ability to enjoy a simple game of baseball -
It's too bad - really...
64
I don't think I do any disservice to your memories of, and allegiance to, baseball, by reiterating a key point in my own comment: That the essay isn't about "baseball" at all. Truly, I think its an inspired piece of sustained irony that mimics the voice of New Testament epistles and translates it into a contemporary (and much more benign) idiom: Baseball. The point of the commentary: America Right Now. Hence the wit of the endeavor and the seriousness of the commentary. (Right about now, I'm thinking of C.S. Lewis's "Screwtape Letters," which similarly invoked a morally upside-down world to make make keen insights into human nature.)
16
That’s the baseball I also knew, growing up in N.Y. in the late ’40s. Even then there was something about the Yankees, in their pin-striped uniforms, that instinctively repelled me. I was a Boston Red Sox fan.
The one thing I’ll say for the Yankees, they have a handsome monogram, the N and the Y fitting together in a neat oval outline. You see it everywhere on baseball caps here in Stockholm, most, if not all, of the wearers having no idea what a diabolically plutocratic thing it stands for.
This is brilliant. The best written, wittiest chunk of commentary I have read in --pretty much-- forever. Maybe since John Leonard left us. Thanks.
15
My wife of 60 years and I were Brooklyn Dodger fans and Met fans there after and we have 2 grown sons, one a Mets fan and the other a Yankee fan. Were, or were did we go wrong?
3
I am puzzled that so many of the comments focus on the baseball in this essay. To my mind, this isn't about baseball at all. "Baseball" is just a device in service of a quite-serious discussion of America and America's place in the world today. It's been decades since I seriously looked into the New Testament (which I see the author has recently translated), but the essay strikes me as a wildly funny (but, again, dead-on serious) travesty of an epistle from one of the Apostles.
19
They play in NY now, but they began as the Baltimore Orioles (transferred to NY in 1904), so Baltimore should get credit for whatever success they've had. NY's team is the Giants.
3
I win a lot of bar bets with that one: "What was the original name of the NY Yankees franchise?" Of those people who even have an answer, 90% say "Knickerbockers". I haven't lost yet, but you just might have spoiled it for me.
OK, so what was the original franchise name of the current Baltimore Orioles?
1
You go too far in the other direction, Milton. Of course baseball and other sports are just games, played for entertainment. But it is naive to claim they are "nothing more than that", and deny the multitude of ways that fandom impacts the human psyche, both personally and culturally.
There is a very real reason people say "WE won!" At first, this may not seem to make sense rationally, but it's there, deeply embedded (I suspect) in epochs of cultural evolution.
St. Louis Browns.
A magnificent essay about a wretched baseball corporation and a wretchedly hijacked nation-state.
Bravo, David Bentley Hart !
150
I walked away from this article scratching my head. I was waiting for a punchline that never came. The Yankees are a sports team, not a cultural representative. Also, it should be noted that the Boston Red Sox far outspend the Yankees in team salary. I am not optimistic about the future of our political system, but can you let me watch my favorite baseball team and not cast me as a villain for doing so in some pseudo philosophical opinion piece?
192
Like Donald Trump, you forget your history. True, the Sox have a larger payroll this year. But I’d wager the payroll of the Yankees is historically atop the majors.
Without a salary cap, revenue sharing, etc, that attempt to create some semblance of parity, the Yankees will always enjoy the benefits of its geography that’s few others will ever match.
Enjoy the Sox’s payroll this year! Now you know what it’s like to be other than a Yankees fan.
5
You'd bet, but you'd be wrong. For most of the sixties and seventies, they were a poor team, with few stars and low salaries. Yes they were atop the free agent sweepstakes for years but for the last generation their success came from homegrown players, or traded where they gave up homegrown players for stars.
Beneathdata.com would actual facts to dispute you. There might have been bad teams like you say, but the payroll data shows the Yankees as a huge salary outlier during the free agency era that began in the 70’s. Just a fact of life - like my Sox’s historical propensity to tank in September.
1
There isn’t a true salary cap but the luxury tax has had a real effect on curbing salaries. There is a ton of revenue sharing, which many of the small market owners pocket.
Many teams are terribly mismanaged, like the Mets and the Orioles.
I was not a fan of Steinbrenner but he was far from the richest owner. He put his money back into the team. Other owners like David Glass of the Royals and Drayton McLane of the Astros were billionaires but constantly skimped on the team’s resources. How is that the Yankees’ fault?
40
Mr.Hart is way overreacting to baseball and the Yankees. M.L.B. is just a game. A summer escape from some of the tedium in our daily lives. It does not represent American life during good times or challenging times during the Trump era. A group of talented young men playing a game. For our entertainment. Nothing more than that.
23
"The median age of its fans rises each year; the young increasingly prefer other diversions"
This isn't just a problem for baseball. Interest in all major spectator sports appears to be at low levels among people born since 1990 (my cutoff year for defining "young"). It's impossible for me to understand this, but many young people would rather watch other people play video games (this is known as "eSports"). Apparently one reason for the popularity of eSports is that any person who's overweight or out of shape can succeed, i.e. it's an ego boost to people who aren't athletic. Baseball, football, and maybe even golf can't compete with that line of reasoning.
The 2020s are going to be a very interesting and challenging decade for some of the most cherished institutions and activities among relatively older people in America. I can easily see the Oscars no longer being broadcast on network TV and being relegated to basic cable. At least one of the nightly national newscasts of ABC, NBC, and CBS will likely cease. And contraction of some kind is likely to occur in the major sports leagues. I personally thought MLB's double expansion in the 1990s from 26 to 30 teams was excessive.
Outrageous ticket prices for MLB games haven't helped. It's a vanished world where kids could go to daytimes games on their own and purchase cheap bleacher tickets. MLB stadiums are more like multipurpose theme parks where watching the game isn't even the main point. Not the way to build interest.
48
This is a very odd piece. I assume the intent is satirical, but what precisely is the satirical object? The self-forged psychological problems of those who, as Americans, are better off than the vast majority of people on this planet? Or perhaps the endless hair-splitting debates on the ever- proliferating list of sports talk shows? Without a clear satirical object, the writer ultimately only satirizes himself, and the way he has put his considerable skill to what seems to be an utterly superficial purpose.
46
This is an incredible rant and very amusing. The Yankees win a lot and their fans are a privileged lot. The United States have all these contradictions and more. It started out as conquerors and believers in manifest destiny and white patriarchy. Rampaging capitalists with no thought to environments or indigenous peoples except to exploit it all. Somehow the country, like baseball, learned some new ways, included more ways of thinking, but still is a towering institutional colossus in need of reform. Always there are better ways. Yet, the last line of the rant is telling. Ranters are always searching for someone, some country, some team to blame for the ills they view in the world. Instead, I watched an amazing double play last night. Baseball on a hot summer New York night. And the Yankees win. What joy! It doesn't matter what you look at, it's what you see.
11
Great writing. Someday the history books will have to come to grips the New York Yankees culture phenomenon. How could such low grade New Yorkers get to be so influential and powerful? From Steinbrenner to Trump. Bernard Goetz, Rudolph Giuliani a couple of the missing links.
Is there a bottom to this pit? We're going to have to find out.
14
This is interesting. The "media horde" is a manifestation of the fact that New Yorkers, the whole metropolitan area, pay attention. They are interested all the time in everything and their appetite for it all is insatiable. This powers the Yankees, the city and by extension, the world. New Yorkers pay attention and the world sits up, with shattering hatred or boundless admiration (with all the other shades of interest) and takes notice. And Yankee fans revel in all of that and are infuriating in their willful blindness to the inequity of it all.
Couldn't agree more. When you watch a yankees home game you see so many empty seats in the .001%ers boxes. Only god knows how much these seats cost . And why are there so many empty seats.?And why do the few scattered zillionaires seem so grim.
Nobody smiles. Contrast this smile desert to the Red Sox fans behind home plate in Fenway. Was it Nixon who pardoned Steinbrenner? And the kids today? They want to do sports, not watch sports.
4
Yankees owners tearing down “ Yankee Stadium “ have cursed the franchise.
Cubs, Red Sox were rewarded for rehabilitating of existing parks , because they understand that baseball is based on history .
Steinbrenner family have hexed franchise.
After 61 years I’m glad I’m done being a fan , and very happy I never turned my three kids onto sports .
And by the way the only NY Football team is Buffalo Bills
giants and jets play in NEW JERSEY !!
7
Except they won the first year the stadium was open. Got any more brilliant theories?
A significant majority of New Yorkers voted against Trump. (Clinton 59%, Trump 36% statewide) The Yankees payroll this year currently stands at $178M, the 7th highest in major league baseball. Given the performance of the other baseball team NYC, run by a family of inept Ponzi schemers, it's a bit of a fallacy to say that simply playing in New York guarantees success or financial windfall. A group of people bought the Yankees in 1973 for $8.7M. The leader of that group, George Steinbrenner, invested less than $200K of his own money. Today that investment is worth $3.2B dollars. Why? Because Steinbrenner, who was, granted, a bit of zealot, was a marketing genius. He took a dying brand and made them as popular as Disney. What's my point? If you're in Kansas City, San Diego or Oakland, do better. If it was only the Mets in New York we wouldn't even be having this argument.
64
Steinbrenner was a large NOTHING with a lot of money. The "dying brand" you refer to was the most winning team in the history of the game when he bought them. t
The Yankees are under the salary cap, the real villains are baseball’s highest payroll team, the Red Sox.
14
The author fails to mention the special treatment Joe Torre gave to Roger Clemens for a few years. If the Yankees were ahead after five innings and Clemens showed the slightest sign of fragility, Torre would yank him out so as to earn a win for one of the dirtiest pitchers in baseball history. I'm an Oriole fan, too, but give me Jim Palmer over Clemens any day. Palmer never surrendered a grand slam, secured well over 200 wins and, one season, walked into the manager's office in June and declared that he wasn't going to lose another game for the rest of the season. And he didn't.
10
Why have children given up on baseball? Here are a couple of thoughts: let's say by some bit of fortune your favorite team makes the playoffs, and you live on the east coast, along with about 100 million other people. All of the games start at 9PM which means they won't end until midnight or later. Most are played on weekdays when you have to go to school. So, you are not going to be able to watch the games after following the team all year. In addition free agency has run a bit amok. As a child and a Giant's fan I never doubted that Willie Mays would be with the team throughout my childhood. Now players take their talents to the highest bidder. So the player you fall in love with could easily be gone. I'm not suggesting free agency be eliminated, but a sharing of revenue among teams might make it more likely that a team's stars would remain with them.
15
Completely agree with your criticisms of post-season games starting too late at night, and great players going to the highest bidder; but my two sons adore baseball (they are Yankee-hating Mets fans, of course!), both playing and watching. One is in college, one still at home, and it is by far their favorite sport. From what I've seen over the years among their friends and teammates, they are not alone. There's hope yet.
2
As the father of two young boys who adore their team, the post-bedtime games are a killer. They are so disappointed. Sorry, but school nights our boys go to bed on time. We DVR the games, but it isn’t the same thrill. Joe Buck doesn’t help live or DVR.
With Trump in sight Hart picks the Yanks
Who are innocent of hanky panks,
Trump's someone to hate
To abominate
But to defile the Yanks? No Thanks!
128
Thank you, Larry.
Hanky panks?? That's truly hilarious and you are the best, Mr. Eisenberg!!
Your prose is fun but flawed. I've been a dedicated Yankees fan for many years, including the icky '80s and early '90s (when I proudly sported a "No Yankees With Steinbrenner" T-shirt). However, I also rooted for the Cubs and the Mets when they made the Series and for Boston too. Sure, my team is riding high now, but that doesn't last forever -- as any true fan knows.
I love baseball dearly. It certainly has serious problems, but it's not time to sing the dirge yet. Baseball is trying (sometimes ineptly) to fix these problems, and continues to evolve.
Most of all, though, it offends me deeply that anyone would try to draw parallels between the Yankees and the disgusting decline of our national values under Donald Trump and his ilk, whom I detest deeply. The Yankees are not perfect, but nonetheless embrace sportsmanship, charity, canny decisions, and long-range planning -- none of which may be found among our nation's current leaders. And remember that Peter Angelos (defender of big tobacco and asbestos) is no paragon of virtue, and that he also tried to buy his way to a pennant with the likes of Sabo, Palmeiro, Fernandez, Erickson, Sosa, and Ponson while he let the farm system crumble.
So stop blaming our nation's many woes on the Yankees, and rejoice that baseball (and the Orioles) may yet recover --probably much faster than our devastated country will.
21
I’m a Yankees fan, but must correct one of your statements about the Orioles owner. Angelos made serious money suing the tobacco and asbestos industries, not by defending these industries.
2
My sincere apologies if I've erred!! I'd never seek to accuse anyone falsely, and was apparently misinformed. I'm truly sorry.
Huh? After reading, re-reading, and re-rereading this, I still fail to understand exactly what Mr. Hart's talking about. I'm a college grad, a reasonably astute individual in my 70's. I'm not a sports fan, never was, but I mostly understand baseball, the pros and cons of old/new stadiums and their real and envisioned economics, well enough to know I'm not going to become one.
Anywho, I just don't get the point of this. OK, New York has two baseball teams. I never lived in New York, but I've been there for a number of weeklong visits over the years, so I have an interest. I still don't get it tho. I'd like to see Mr. Hart explain things for us, the non-New Yorkers, and do so in far less florid terms. Otherwise, I/we will remain baffled.
31
I grew up a Yankee fan rooting for Horace Clark, Jake Gibbs, Steve Whitaker and a host of others not mentioned in the Hall of Fame. But I was a fan and every year there was hope. I still loved them. Life was good. Baseball is Baseball, there is a lot to hate elsewhere, especially in D.C.
The Orioles ruled the American League and still lost to the Amazins. I did not hate them, they were poetry to watch.
2
Mr. Hart's analysis gets the psychology spot on, but for some reason he has identified the wrong team. This piece is actually about the Los Angeles Dodgers and, especially, their fans.
Let's go Padres, let's go.
16
That is unkind and untrue. Come into the light, all are welcome.
This is not very creative--or interesting. As for the decline of baseball, when baseball truly was the national pastime, the Yankees won the World Series more consistently. Any person who cannot find something to admire in Mickey Mantle or Mariano Rivera, has not lived a full life.
95
I feel your pain. In 1966, as a college student in DC, I sat through an incredibly boring afternoon double header on the last day of the season. It was the Senators vs the Red Sox. I was rooting for a split, which, combined with a Yankee loss would mean that the Yanks would slip below both clubs and finish last in their division. Incredibly, it all worked out! The Yankees finished in the basement and I felt a sense of retribution for many years of suffering. By the way...….your Orioles won the World series that year.
5
The author's use of words are eloquent - but to what effect?
The Yankees recently fielded a lineup in which every player was less than 30 years of age, and none acquired via free agency.
Meanwhile, owners of numerous small market teams appear extremely willing to pocket the revenue sharing that large market teams provide - and do little to reinvest in the product that they put on the field.
For all the Yankees' vast expenditures over the past decade, they have only won one World Series - in 2009. So it cannot be plausibly argued that the financial advantage that they enjoy by being located in NY prevents other teams from competing for championships.
Look the Madoffs - I mean Mets - across town; same city, same potential revenue base, very different outcome - both on and off the field.
While the Yankees were still run by George, they could be hard to root for, even for a lifelong Yankee fan like me. But Hal's Yankees are a very different matter.
Much of our current salary is tied up in bad contracts, soon to be off the books. Not long ago, the Yankees lost their best player - Robinson Cano - to a smaller market team willing to pay an astronomical sum over 10 years for a player nearing 30.
When I think of how competitive the Orioles were only a few seasons back, I can understand Mr. Hart's angst.
The fate of his franchise is sad - but the Yankees are not responsible for Oriole management not trading Machado while it had the chance to bring back equal value.
35
Yankee management and, yes, Yankee fans would do well to remember the story of David, Bathsheba and Uriah the Hittite, and recall the parable of Nathan about the rich man with many herds and the poor man with but one ewe. The game is weakened - and the riches of its owners will utlimately be diminished - by the anticompetitive effect of the large market teams (the Yankees chief among them) which yields a growing disinterest in the game elsewhere in the nation that indeed cannot be remidied by limiting the time allowed between pitches or quickening the pace of intentional walks. Real revenue sharing is a must if the game is to flourish.
6
“Distorting your perspective a LITTLE”! That’s what I call understatement. And for someone who professes scholarship—in biblical studies no less—I for one detect a soupçon of jealousy. Did you speak this way about the teams of Brooks and Frank Robinson with Palmer and company dominating on the mound? I doubt it.
Yankees fans wandered in the desert for long stretches in the mid ‘60s through 1995 (except for two great years in ‘77-‘78 with mostly home grown players excluding Reggie who was almost more trouble than he was worth.)
Since then the key players were mostly homegrown. The players added weren’t in demand—Brosius,Charlie Hayes, Girardi, Mariano Duncan, Sojo, Graeme Lloyd, even players thought done like Raines, Chili Davis, and Strawberry. But when they came to the Yanks THEY PERFORMED. AURA AND MYSTIQUE!
The same is true for the current crop.
As for the fans, well we live in the toughest city in the country and we expect a great deal from our teams. We’re also the most knowledgeable and the most unforgiving—have you seen what we pay for tickets? But we’re not swine like the animals in Boston and Philadelphia and we pay attention to the game unlike our counterparts in California and parts of the South where there is a rush to the exit in the 7th to beat the traffic.
So look inward my friend; you doth protest too much. And you do have crab cakes and the Aquarium.
37
I'm from Baltimore, but have lived in ny area for 35 yrs.
I too wish the Orioles were better this year ... and almost every year
2
I write as a Chicagoan, numb after living in New York for many years: thanks for reminding me.
6
Very interesting column!!!
I have an outside of the box solution to the baseball problem. Each mid to lower-market team buddies up with another team preferable from the other league. There essentially would be collusion between the teams. At the mid-point of the season they would decide which team has the best chance to make a run that year. Then they would make a bunch of trades for players to be named later. At the end of the season the traded players would be returned as the payers to be named later. Money of course could be involved and may be other players but good prospects would be returned after they have gained valuable experience as part of a pennant. Injuries would be an issue. It is kind of a share the wealth strategy. Play-off earnings could be shared as well. Potential buddy pairs: Tampa and Miami, Cleveland and Cincy, Oakland and San Diego. The buddy teams could end up in court or divorcing. May add more interest.
2
I care nothing for baseball, but I will be saving this to reread, if only because for a moment the prose made me feel like I was having that most enviable and now impossible experience of opening a newspaper to read what GK Chesterton had written for me that day.
There is no particular reason why anyone should read about this comment and care about it, and so I suppose it may be dreadfully indulgent. But I appreciated this moment far too much to let is pass without some manner of recognition. Many thanks to Mr Hart and the Times.
92
I think it's more Lovecraftian than Chestertonian, but yes, an elegant pastiche.
4
First I'd like to say I am a big baseball fan who also happens to be a Yankee fan. I agree with just about all your observations about the problems modern America faces. Your critique of the Yankees probably rings most true pre 1981. The late 90s team
showed the way to be play the game ( we only had two Hall Famers - Jeter and Rivera). But I am also a NY Knicks and Jets fan; both teams have often been disappointing over the last 50 years. So allow me some good cheer with my Yankees.
16
The most clear-eyed, dispassionate, and wholly rational analysis of the NY Yankees (and some other stuff) that I have ever encountered—at once profoundly poetic and utterly true. As I read this piece, admittedly at times through tears, I could only reflect on all we have lost in baseball and in America. Evil Empire, indeed! Lord, forgive us!
137
I fear 'tis too late for forgiveness.
Jeez, you'd think Yankee fans were spending all of their time camped out at the Stadium and applauding Trumps' tweets. Please! Some of us are New Yorkers first and foremost and don't even want to acknowledge that The Donald was born here. New York is as much a state of mind as it is a city. Diversity is prized here and progressivism reigns. Yankees' owners are good enough to spend their money on good major league players and a good minor league system (unlike the owners of many other such teams). The Yankees win a lot of games but so do the Dodgers and so do the Red Sox, so why doesn't this op/ed piece revolve around one of those teams? Ah, no worries. Yankee fans don't take the criticism personally. We're not like Trump, after all.
182
Thank you.
OK, if you can tell me one difference between Trump and Steinbrenner I may buy your argument. Two peas in a pod for most of us.
Your owner ruined the competitive balance of the game. It's as simple as that. Essentially the Yankees have the equivalent of the first and second pick of the NFL draft every year. Have for decades. Seen in that light, they've underperformed but win anyway simply by spending money other teams don't have and will never get.
That's why we hate you. You don't earn success, you buy it. Just like the Trump Mob. You're the bone spurs of MLB and there's nothing playing Kate Smith at deafening volume can do about that.
You're not like Trump. you ARE Trump.
1
"Admittedly, my bitterness over the Orioles’ dismal play this season might be distorting my perspective a little." Methinks the author's perspective is as distorted as his team's deficiencies are vast. The Orioles are on track to lose almost 120 games this year. 'Nuf said.
38
They will have to race the Mets there.
I think I understand what the author is trying to express, although his prose is so -- what's the word? -- distracting from the point he is trying to make, that I simply gave up about half-way through the piece. Professional sports -- and look at the latest deal in the NBA for LeBron James -- has become a business obsessed with outcomes -- specifically, financial results. This reality, necessarily, leads to a landscape where some can afford to win, while others can't. Who loses in this game, the average fan. Using the Yankees as an example is understandable, if I get what the author is trying to say, but the problem is more widespread than the Bronx team.
17
The tone of the piece is off. It starts satirically, then veers uncertainly into serious reflection of how this (supposed) venomous hatred of the Yankees from everyone west of the Hudson relates to Trump, America, etc.
2
I also stopped reading about half-way through for the same reason.
3
Somewhere in this wonderfully written, over the top, dystonic diatribe there should have been a mention of Steinbrenner to bring it into the present. But thanks for a terrific piece.
24
I do not disagree with either your US analogy or the problems the game has - the home run or strikeout dichotomy is troublesome indeed. Nonetheless, I still maintain that for fans who really understand it baseball remains the most elegant of games, although it clearly needs some tweaking. I find your visceral hatred of the Yankees a bit unfair, however. If just being a rich team in a large market guarantees success in 2018, why haven't the LA and Chicago teams and the woeful Mets had consistent success in the modern era? By the way, Houston is a very large market and the Red Sox have a larger payroll than the Yankees. So, my advice is, get over it!
51
Don't tell me: the author is from Boston … right?
28
Wrong, apparently. He claims to be from Baltimore, which no one would if it weren't true.
1
It is notable that the Yankees of the 1970's pre-shadowed presidential politics of our time. Can anyone think of anyone more Trumpian than Steinbrenner? Listen to Reggie Jackson, both at the time and to our own, and one can't help but hear the narcissism of Kanye West. Add to that the sense of entitlement that results in a team that seems to think it deserves nothing but World Series victories every year and does so not through a well constructed minor league system but rather through pure financial power. Today in the Hall of Fame there is a comparison between the team salaries of the Yankees and all other teams. Given their huge advantage it is a testament to their under performance that they don't win every year. Of course, this essay is a satire but the game is endangered by a system where 5 or 6 teams are destined to win every year and where other franchises, such as my Tigers, are in small and declining markets and field virtually minor league clubs. I love the game more than anything else in what remains of this country but it becomes impossible to follow teams that are 20 games behind by mid season. An America without baseball? An America where young people's favorite sport is watching other people gaming? A world where the simple minded boredom and corruption of soccer is finally successfully shoved down our throats? It's as unimaginable as a nation that sells of it's National Monuments and Parks...oh wait.
19
Judging from the comment, you are a Red Sox fan, currently the team with the highest payroll in the MLB.
1
How amusing to read the prattle of one of the lesser beings. I lived in Baltimore for a time. It had a minor league team playing there at one point, named after some bird. I remember a couple of promising players, both named Robinson. Whatever happened to them?
15
If you grew up on Berra and Mantle and watched that level of sustained excellence carry through Judge and Gregorius, how could you root for anyone whose fans and ownership are happy with an off year or losing season,good personal stats. In some cases, other clubs are satisfied with off years that last decades if the turnstiles move,while the Yankees aren't satisfied unless they win it all. Watch Brett Gardner for one game and the example he sets for the younger players and you know why they are who they are, whether being very good is palatable to their non-fans or not.
51
Brett Gardner, a self-regarding caricature of a ballplayer if ever there was one. Meretricious, indeed!
The Yankees are not unique in professional sports franchises that have spent to achieve their ends. But I must push back on Mr. Hart’s statement there is some resentment but not envy. There is most certainly envy.
71
No, it really is not envy.
1
One of the pleasures of the Astros' championship last year was watching them defeat, in order, three most expensive payrolls in baseball. It was especially sweet after a season of hearing nothing but Aaron Judge this, Clayton Kershaw that, Chris Sale the other. And, no, they didn't "tank to win". Their payroll was rock-bottom for years, and anyone with talent traded for dross, because the former owner wanted it that way, to facilitate the sale of the team.
17
I have been an inveterate Yankee fan since 1948 when there were only 16 major league teams, and at that time I could name the starting players on each of these 16 teams, and it seemed that every team had at least one outstanding player with whom I was familiar (e.g., Richie Ashburn, Ted Kluzewski, Bob Feller, Stan Musial, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Harvey Haddix, Warren Spahn, etc). But then greed reared its head, and the leagues expanded to 30 teams, and I couldn't keep up, so I lost interest, stopped going to games, and stopped watching baseball on TV. Let's see if greed will eventually lead to a precipitous decline in the fortunes of major league baseball - I really don't care.
14
Wow, that’s pretty tough, but I can see, and feel, what you mean.
Mr. Mathman you took the words out of my mouth.
I too knew all the players names and in fact used to trade and 'flip' baseball cards in the fifties. AT that time we didn't know we had a small fortune in our hands.
I also knew all the stats on almost any player on any of the 16 teams. Now I go to maybe one or two games every couple years and never watch them on tv.
Something happen to the game and America as well.
An America that could elect this idiot Trump has lost its way.
Sport has long been seen and used as analogies, and apologias, for America. This is as good and to the point as any I've read. Yes, it's a bit over the top, but so are its subjects.
Bravo, Mr. Hart...
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I get the feeling that he meant it to be "over the top."
"Major League Baseball, like America, is in decline. A faint air of doom hangs about this most exquisite of games." -- I'd have to agree, but it goes beyond the so-called "Evil Empire" of the Yankees. I saw an article somewhere which said if not for the home run, baseball would be unwatchable. I tend to agree. But then again soccer fans get excited with 0-0 ties. As a Yankee fan of 51 years, I've favored the AL. The four most dominant teams in the majors this season are all in the AL. But the NL has no comparable dominant team, but much more parity which makes almost all their matchups interesting.
In some ways, the Yankees are the worst, but I don't think you want to push that by maligning Derek Jeter. Plus, and I say this as a fan, this year they're not as good as their record shows and unless the Red Sox suffer some epic collapse (yes, it happened in 1978), Yanks are set for the wild card. They score mostly with the home run and they hit a lot with no one on base. They cannot hit for average. I think Judge is on top at .279. TBA is around .252. League averages are down and yet teams are scoring 14, 16, 19 runs all in the span of a few days. Not sure what's going on there.
4
It's quite simple -- it's called on-base percentage and extra base hits. Both OBPs and extra base hits, including home runs are way up. Teams have taken this approach because the starting rotations and bullpens of the good teams are significantly better than ever before. Plus, the shift has made trying to hit singles a loser's game.
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You make all good points. Agree.
as a yankee fan since 1970, I must agree with all of this, except the part about social security collapsing. that's what its critics want us to believe. the truth is it is in no danger of collapse, only in need of small adjustments to shore up its future. given the enormous popularity and good sense of the program, this will happen eventually. (insert Winston Churchill quote about America doing the right thing, after it's tried everything else.) see sixthreats.com for more. I hope the Orioles get a haul back for Machado.
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"The analogy is imperfect, but irresistible. America — with its decaying infrastructure, its third-world public transit, its shrinking labor market, its evaporating middle class, its expanding gulf between rich and poor, its heartless health insurance system, its mindless indifference to a dying ecology, its predatory credit agencies, its looming Social Security collapse, its interminable war, its metastasizing national debt and all the social pathologies that gave it a degenerate imbecile and child-abducting sadist as its president — remains the only developed economy in the world that believes it wrong to use civic wealth for civic goods."
I also find the Yankees analogy imperfect, but unnecessary rather than irresistible. I'm certainly no Yankee fan, but connecting America's richest baseball team to broader problems in the nation's politics and society has always struck me as a bit of a stretch.
Success certainly went to the heads of Yankee players and their fans in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Becoming the first team to win 3 straight World Series (1998-2000) in the post-1975 free agency era appeared to convince Jeter & Co. that they'd win it every year.
But there was a bright side to seeing a revival of the "Evil Empire." The Red Sox organization got serious about matching the Yankees, because frankly it got too painful for people in Boston to watch New York win all the time. New owners took control of the Red Sox in 2002, and two years later they delivered.
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Yes! And I hope John Henry et al. continue to spend $$$
on the Red Sox and the Liverpool F C ! Winning in the two greatest sports on earth!
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as Jew (non-religious) it is tough to watch as almost every player makes the sign of the cross when stepping to the plate and follows that with a look towards heaven when getting even a single; let alone a home run. Same with many relief pitchers when they end a game. Plus, the use of stats has gone off the radar; not to mention pitch count and speed of the pitch; plus even stat now has corporate sponsor
just trying to watch a Red Sox game without wanting to hit the mute button
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And what, pray tell, have Liverpool FC won lately, other than a case to blame policemen for their own fans' belligerent drunkeness?
Thank you, Mr. Hart, for making me laugh loudly and at length in these dark days of democracy. By all rights, using the Yankees as a synechdoche for America should be depressing, but the panache with which you carry it off is wildly entertaining. (The Lovecraftian catalogue in the middle of the essay had me laughing so hard I had to stop reading at least three times.)
A brilliant analysis, brilliantly executed.
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As a Mets fan, I loathe the Yankees. But Mr. Hart overstates his case. While America is suffering from greater inequality, baseball is suffering less. Yes, the Yankees' continuing dominance is irritating. But the last three World Series have been won by teams with long histories of failure: the Houston Astros, the Chicago Cubs and the Kansas City Royals. Several other longtime have-nots - Cleveland, Milwaukee, Arizona, to name a few - are serious contenders. If only America continued to allow such upward mobility.
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I hate the Yankees because MLB does not have a workable salary cap system and so the Yankees, and now the Red Sox, spend ridiculous amounts of money to sign the best free agents, happily pay their luxury tax, making for a ridiculously lopsided system which enables rich teams to buy championships. The good news is that the Yankees have only won one World Series in the past 17 years, which given their tremendous advantage over the other teams is a disastrous failure.
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Not true. Teams go to great pains to stay under the luxury tax line, as the penalties increase every consecutive year you're over the line. We've seen a lot of basketball-type trades this year where the motive was swapping money and not talent.
If the salary cap is the magic panacea to baseball's problems, why haven't the Yankees won a championship since 2009? One would think since they "buy championships" they might have at least won a few more World Series since then. But being that the last time they won before that was in 2000, it's clearly much more complicated than that.
Honestly, before last season they had trouble making the playoffs over the past few years; much less fielding a championship caliber team. This despite having some of the highest payrolls in the sport. But since the team is good again, folks are falling back on tired old tropes about money equaling a World Series.
Even during the dynasty era (1996-2000) the entire core of the team was based on home grown players like Jeter, Posada, Rivera, Williams, and Pettitite. Throw in some great trades for Martinez, O'Niel, Brosius, and Nelson and you've got yourself a World Series contender. But sure, reduce a great farm system and great front office work to "Damn Yankees always buying championships."
Again you rarely hear this sort of ahistorical nonsense when the team isn't good. From the 82-94, the team never even sniffed the playoffs despite having huge payrolls every year. And yet this sort of argument was never made then. I wonder why that is.
In recent years, the team has been trying to reduce payroll and field a competitive team. Thus far, they've been successful. Of course, that only makes the latent Yankee hate intensify.
1
Baseball needs the hated Yankees ... just like Star Wars needs Darth Vader. Good stories need a bad guy.
But this is an ancient story. The author need only recall the ancestors of his Orioles. Did Browns fans ever really have a reason to hope? Or the Senators?
18
This article makes me very sad. In the 1950s, when I was a mere child, my father and I were rabid Yankee fans. Already grossly successful, they were not yet the horror they are today. One year, my dad and I decided we'd go to every single double header in Yankee Stadium. We succeeded. I had a picture of Mickey Mantle on my bedroom wall. I said good night to it every bedtime. Once, we went to a party, and a Brooklyn Dodger, a live one, was there as some kid's parent. He talked to me. He convinced me I should try to root for the Dodgers. I tried and failed. Today, the way the Yankees are, I'm sure he would have succeeded, if, that is, my father and I had even been Yankee fans to begin with, which I doubt.
23
You know, for some of us who grew up in New York & New Jersey, the Yankees are simply the home team. Like true fans anywhere in the country, if you grew up watching them, you root for them for no matter where you wind up in your life.
The present Yankees team happens to be a young, team-play-oriented bunch of diverse, low-ego guys mostly in their twenties, who support each other on and and off the field in a way that makes you ... smile. And feel the warmth of camaraderie. They're not a bunch of show-offs. They're not monsters. In short, there's a joy to watch, and to be happy when they win.
Can we just have that?
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"I hate the Yankees because MLB does not have a workable salary cap system...which enables rich teams to buy championships. The good news is that the Yankees have only won one World Series in the past 17 years, which given their tremendous advantage over the other teams is a disastrous failure."
If that advantage has failed it's not an advantage. So, you hate the Yankees for having an advantage that, in your own words, has failed to pan out. Hmm...
Re: buying championships
Yes, seeing as the other teams pay their players minimum wage, right? Ugh. Spurious AND ridiculous!
Tom Barrett:
"I hate the Yankees because MLB does not have a workable salary cap system...which enables rich teams to buy championships. The good news is that the Yankees have only won one World Series in the past 17 years, which given their tremendous advantage over the other teams is a disastrous failure."
If that advantage has failed it's not an advantage. So, you hate the Yankees for having an advantage that, in your own words, has failed to pan out. Hmm...
Re: buying championships
Yes, seeing as the other teams pay their players minimum wage, right? Ugh. Spurious AND ridiculous!
1
Funny, well written, and silly. No doubt by someone who has hated the Yankees his whole life.
I have loved the Yankees since I was a wee girl growing up in NY suburbs. 1955. My Dad told me about the Yankees players...Yogi! Who could hate a team with a player named Yogi! Been a fan ever since.
Yes, the Yankees win a lot. Yes, sometimes they rent expensive players for a season or two, but I remember in the George Steinbrenner days when other teams had near-billionaire owners who siphoned money from their teams, paid low salaries, and refused to put money back into their franchises. George had many faults (Trump looked up to him; two bullies......), but he loved winning, and when something happened that revealed a needed improvement, he did it. The great teams of the 1990s came up from the Yankees farm system, when George had to sit out due to legal troubles and couldn’t interfere; the heart and soul of those teams were not purchased after already reaching stardom.
So go ahead and hate the Yankees. Baseball is a sport, it is not foreign policy, social justice policy, or anything else. It is what it is. Unless we have come to the game as adults, we pretty much feel about it as we did when we found it as a child. We still love (and hate) those same teams.....
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