The New York Yankees: arguably the most popular team in all of baseball. But to many baseball fans, the most hated combination of letters. Yet there are Yank fans everywhere; all around the world, in all fifty states of America, and every one of the ten provinces and three territories of Canada.
     Try walking down the street of a MLB city without seeing the oh so popular logo of the Yankees on a hat. Well if you have become a fan of New York in the past five years or so, I’d question your reasoning for your recent love for the Yanks. Your favourite player is either A-Rod or Jeter too right? Because reality is, if you asked a Yankee hater who their least favourite player is, they’d say A-Rod or Jeter without blinking. Any non-Yankee fan surely has at least a little respect for the careers of Rodriguez and Jeter but would prefer the players who stay out of the limelight and refrain from bringing the drama to the field.
    Face it, most people who truly like Mr. Rodriguez are Yankee fans. And you know why that is? Because Yankee fans do not care how they win as long as they do. And if that means dishonestly hitting 600+ homeruns thanks to the juice- So be it.
     But the real question is, why not like the Yankees? I mean it would be so easy to. Go ask that group of Yank bandwagon jumping fans that rebel from the hometown MLB team. It’s the simple fact that every year you can count upon New York to be near the top of the American League East. And to Boston, Tampa, Baltimore and Toronto fans, just pray that the Yanks have an off year. But who has been consistently in the playoff for the past decade? You got it. I mean a playoff without the Yankees is pretty much a baseball travesty. People love being fans of teams that constantly win; I guess it makes them feel like winners themselves instead of bandwagon jumpers real baseball fans don’t care for. So I guess when the Mariners begin to dethrone the Yankees every year we’ll all see those New York hats replaced with the Mariner’s compass. I wouldn’t be surprised.
     But let’s not forget the most popular reason to hate the Yankees-their love of blowing their budget and trading for every other team’s marquee players. Well at least fans can sleep easy not having to guess where the highly coveted free agents at the end of the season will go. Did anyone really think Jeter and Rivera would sign with any other team?
     And apparently they have one of the best farm systems in the league. Like anyone would ever know considering all the prospects will probably never get the opportunity to throw on a Yankee jersey but only to be shipped off to a team in rebuilding mode for their best players. That’s how they got Curtis Granderson from the Tigers after all.
     At the end of the day, we love to hate the Yankees. Or rather, we hate to love the Yankees. But no baseball fan would ever admit to love the Yankees. But they resemble and help create the best part of baseball. I mean what’s baseball without rivalries and who is the ultimate rival for just about any team? New York.
     But today we won’t confess our inner love; we’ll just continue to blame the Yankees for anything unfortunate that happens to our favourite teams. We’ll blame them for every win, blame them for every loss, blame them for every free agent signing, blame them for every marquee trade, blame them when our team misses the playoffs, blame them for every conniving way they find to win, blame them for every non sell-out, blame them for every black out, blame them for this, blame them for that, might as well blame them for rain delays. We can blame and hate them all we want but the reality is, they’ll just continue to win.

“If you dream hard enough, you really are part of the team”

-Sydney