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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Still haven’t gotten over that Jerry Kenney deal, huh.
* Most Yankee fans like the LA Lakers in basketball, they root for the Dallas Cowboys in football, the Detroit Red Wings in hockey, and will tell you that Rocky Marciano was the greatest boxer of all time. What all of these “favorites” have in common is that they are winners. These are the Cleveland area fans who just can’t accept losing, so they manipulate the system at a young age and root for traditional winners. Let’s face it, the Cleveland Sports Faithful have not had much to scream about for the past 50 or so years. However, the loyalty of a Cleveland sports fan is so much more praiseworthy to me than the local bandwagon jumping fans of teams that win.
* The argument that Cleveland teams refuse to spend money to keep athletes gets old. Just because the Yankees have so much more to spend does not mean that the Browns, Cavs, and Indians, do not pay well. Let me put it to you this way: When you play monopoly with your friends, give the Yankee fan half of the deeds and three quarters of all of the money that comes with the game. We will call the other players Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Kansas City, and Cleveland. They have what is left to divide amongst themselves. This is why baseball sadly needs a salary cap.
This debate has caused grief for many years. I have friends and relatives who are diehard Yankee fans. They will argue that George Steinbrenner spends money to assemble these All-Star caliber teams. I find it ironic that New York has not won a World Series for awhile. I also encourage those who surround me in pinstripes to go pay the $1,000 price to sit behind home plate at the New York Yankees new stadium. Sadly, some will.
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1. YR Denies Jesus Montero Posted: March 21, 2009 at 01:34 PM (#3109872)I've never heard a Yankee fan opine that Rocky Marciano, a very small heavyweight with a remarkably short reach whose championship defenses were against a weak field of fighters averaging 33+ years of ago, was the best heavyweight champion of the 20th century, much less the "greatest boxer of all time". I would guess most Yankee fans would be partial to Sugar Ray Robinson (173 wins in 200 fights) as the greatest all-around boxer, although I'd suggest Harry Greb (a remarkable 260 career wins fighting everyone from welterweights through heavyweights).
As far as the glamorous heavyweights are concerned, can anyone locate me a Yankee fan who favors Marciano over a prime Muhammad Ali or Joe Louis? For my Yankee-loving part, I'd take Dempsey to whip 'em all, but of course I've seen more film on Dempsey than most. Frankly, the hysterical overrating of the Massachusetts-born Marciano seems far more in line with the demented ravings of a Red Sox fan than the sophisticated analysis of a true Yankee.
And to hear this bunkum from a booster of the Cleveland Palookas? Why, that's just beyond the pale.
Oh there they go. There they go, every time I start talkin 'bout boxing, a white man got to pull Rocky Marciano out their a**. That's their one, that's their one. Rocky Marciano. Rocky Marciano. Let me tell you something once and for all. Rocky Marciano was good, but compared to Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano ain't sh*t.
Why Indians fans really despise the Yankees: 26 World Championships. A team wins so often, you get ####### sick of them, unless you're a fan of that team.
----Bob Addie, Washington Post, 1960
Now that's more like it.
And *that's* why Indians fans hate the Yankees.
Well, duh. But you'll note that my quote was from a scrupulously neutral source. It wasn't from Dan Daniel.
I didn't RTFA, but he seems to be talking about local Yankees fans (i.e. in the Cle. area),
not actual New Yorkers. I stand ready to be corrected if anyone bothers to RTFA.
Well, duh again. And never mind that I wrote the offending sentence with tongue in cheek to begin with, as I hoped would be clear by the context of this entire silly discussion. As if there's some special virtue or evil in rooting for one team or another, or as if there's some sort of a connection between rooting for the Yankees and thinking that Rocky Marciano was the greatest fighter of all time. How on Earth can you reply to something like that without slipping into parody and exaggeration?
Nobody hates a team because they win. They hate winning teams because of interactions with the segment of the fanbase that only roots for the team because they win.
The Yankees simply have a larger percentage of frontrunning ######## in their fanbase (especially outside of New York) than other teams because they've been winning longer and have better media penetration than any other team.
Remember the hullabaloo about LeBron wearing a Yankees cap. He grew up in Ohio in the mid-90s, so which are his favorite sports teams? Cowboys & Yankees. Of course. That's some front-runnertude right there.
I hate the Yankees because they win. Over time I've developed other reasons for hating them, but that one is at the core.
But I might just be weird...other than my primary rooting interests (Jays and Leafs) I generally root for losers and once they start winning I lose interest. I was a Broncos fan until Elway won his first Super Bowl then I stopped caring, then moved over to the Colts until the same happened.
Winners are lame.
See, here's what I don't get. There are a myriad of ways to decide which team to root for. Usually it's the team that plays in your town, or maybe its the team your dad roots for. But there are lots of people who have no such avenue to fandom - maybe you live far away from a baseball town. So who to cheer for? I'm sure plenty of people saw the Yankees of the late 90s and thought, hey, there's an appealing team with a strong history and a tradition of success. Plus, they have really good players, and the way they spend money tells me they usually will. So why not cheer for them?
What I'm saying is, I don't understand the idea that cheering for a winning team makes you less of a fan. I don't begrudge anybody for disliking the Yankees - hey, every story needs a villain - but I find the chauvinism of the suffering fan to be idiotic.
It's one thing to pick a team and stick to them. It's another to grab a hat of the successful team du jour, go to the local park and spend the entire damn day/night talking trash and picking fights with the local fans because said frontrunner has always been a fan, like forever.
In the late 90s at White Sox games, these were the Yankees fans. Now they're Red Sox fans, suddenly.
In the early and mid-1990s at White Sox games, these were Cleveland Indians fans.
The appropriate time to piss on Troy Aikman is when he is not on fire, as otherwise you run the risk of putting it out.
Unless you have the ability to piss some sort of flammable liquid. Then piss away.
This sounds like Cleveland Cav LeBron James.
edit - sorry, Teal and Black already made that observation.
It's fashion for these people, not fanship. Certainly not baseball.
But truth be told, it really it comes down to jealousy. This is an article that can be written with eight letters.
Oh, and I was at the ALDS game in Cleveland a couple years ago when LeBron wore his Yankees cap. I booed. A lot. The guy can root for whomever he wants, but he's got to understand that he's the public face of Cleveland, he's the most beloved person in Cleveland, and Clevelanders intensely love their sports teams. We don't like it when one of our own turns their back on Cleveland.
Yeah, I just assumed those 455 straight sellouts were comprised almost entirely of Yankee fans who bought season tickets just to secure seats for the 3-6 Yankee visits per season.
(B) It was a joke, dumbass.
Well, it wasn't funny, sunshine.
Fixed.
Uh, what now?
The fact that the Ravens won the Super Bowl just 5 years after Art Modell stabbed the entire city in the back is even more reason to suffer, not less.
I really don't know. It must be weird, to have all those fans on your side.
Yeah this is going to earn the old "Go #### yourself". Sorry man.
Not many people walk through Tower City these days besides the criminals and the destitute, which is why it is pretty much a discount mall. The Steelers garb is just catering to the low end clientele.
>>>but as a Steelers fan I am constantly amused by the "long-suffering Browns fan".<<
Farting in the bathtub amuses you also.
Fine with us.
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