by Hank Brockett
10/8/01
Like the Incredible Hulk on a roid rage.
Plenty of other words can capsulize one’s feelings about baseball’s domineering monolith, all quite profound and all very true. These are the words of great anguish, and the feelings that spur great thoughts and great works of art. The Yankees can make you cut off an ear and think nothing of it.
The Yankees wield power over baseball bleeding hearts like an ice cream man through streets of drooling children — children not allowed, by mother’s orders, to eat any delectable sweets. So the children grind their teeth at the increasingly annoying song signifying the truck’s arrival, trying to ignore the sweet man’s popularity.
Those teeth never stop grinding.
Two games into the 2001 World Series, and most baseball fans don’t have much more enamel to grind. The New York Yankees, baseball’s juggernaut and a symbol of the American juggernaut, plow through hopes and dreams every year in a unique kind of fall harvest.
All those teams, all that devastation. The victims line up as card-carrying members of the anti-Yanks: the 1996 Braves, the 1998 Padres, the 1999 Braves and the 2000 Mets. And through it all, Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter poses and prances, smiling over the carcasses of fans he sucked life from.
Jeter fields groundballs and hits home runs in my nightmares.
These are the words of a St. Louis Cardinals fan, but any fan could say such words. In these desperate times, an Orioles fan is an Indians fan is a Diamondbacks fan. We’ve unionized our thoughts, our feelings and our emotions. The Yankees must lose. THE YANKEES MUST LOSE!
But maybe the Yankees shouldn’t lose.
You see, New York and its considerable big-city might wield sentiment now, like its arsenal needed another weapon. With each strikeout, bunt and run, most of New York dances in the streets (the Mets fans remain quiet). They wear the hats of the NYPD and FDNY, and offer the city the great distraction from Sept. 11. It’s enough to even forgive the gratuitous Mayor Rudy Giuliani shots during telecasts.
So instead of anthrax scares and somber remembrances, baseball fans immerse themselves in the trivial rivalries and pastimes. And we cheer the timeless aspects of sport and baseball that never spoil or fade. No matter what, close games will need a ninth inning, a hero and a goat.
That means much softer vile this fall as the Diamondbacks and Yankees run around the bases and swing wooden sticks for kicks, and that certainly is saying something. Most baseball fans, at least true baseball fans, love the theory of the upstart. Dynasties are precious for magazine-makers and creatively bankrupt T-shirt makers, but the true thrills come from the new teams and new faces.
But with the Yankees’ dominance, as unhittable as a Roger Clemens fastball, we see the same ugly mugs year after year after year. If Bernie Williams lankily jaunts across my television one more time, I may just go loco.
And comments like these seem so weird, so out-of-place and so right when others try to make the World Series into both more and less than it really is. Yes, the event represents the sporting world’s ultimate showdown — with a slow pace building up to classic crescendo. But in a realm where Sept. 11 just means another date in the pennant race, baseball and the Yankees offer a true chance to let life go on.
I still hate the New York Yankees ... with all due respect and admiration.
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