Skinsjock said
There are a number of baseball fans who have a favorite team that despite their success over the years will continue to hope that their team wins each game they play AND for any team who is playing the Yankees
I used to be like that, and from even older reasons. I hated the Yankees because they won the AL pennant about 19 out of 20 years, from Dimaggio through Mantle, and won the World Series every year I can remember except 1957 (was a Braves fan for '57 and '58 series), one year when the Brooklyn Dodgers won, and once when the Giants beat the Indians.
Those were the years when the Yankees owners used the Kansas City A's as a farm team, and the AL was all about the Yankees. Pinstriped perfection. The richest team in baseball.
There was also all that business with Ruth and Gehrig and blah blah. In fact, when I saw my first game at Griffith Stadium ('53 or '54) I cheered when a bee got into the visitor's bullpen and stung Yogi Berra. (And Yogi is a truly fine person, so, Yogi, I apologize!).
Tat feeling took a long time to wear off.
Anyway, I dislike "The Boss", too, and so do all Yankee fans that I've met. They mostly think he is a bully, a team-destroyer, a blowhard, a whiner and a boaster...an owner who hired private detectives to dig dirt on Dave Winfield.
(In truth, though, I think the Angels spent more on free agents back thirty years ago. Steinbrenner continued to play the market throughout the'80s, and all he got was a team of greedy ex-stars who lost. I think Steinbrenner deserves to be "hatted" for his personality, but not for his spending. Even the personality can be surprising, which is why I mentioned Hondo. Steinbrenner hires older players to work in the organization, and, as Howard said, "Mr. Steinbrenner has been pretty good to me". A puzzle.)
The standing joke was that you could not play for Steinbrenner unless you were 34 and had last been to the all-star game four years earlier.
Offhand, I think the Indians have a better team because they have better pitching. That will change, as the Yankees decided to improve their farm system a couple of years ago. In spite of the bugs-outing, Joba Chamberlain is an awesome pitcher. Ther are some others
I think that Arod and Damon are the only free-agent field players, and neither seems to play well under post-season pressure.
Meanwhile, I still applaud Jeter, Posada, and Rivera, and enjoy Cano and Melky Cabrera, and remember the years when the Joe Torre Yankees won without a Big Star or anyone who hit 40 home-runs. Just good baseball.
Oh, and whle I'm thinking about the Indians, young Grady Sizemore should have been playing CF for the Nationals, and Omar Minaya, GM of the Mets, should be in jail for fraud. From Wikipedia:
A fan favorite in Cleveland, Sizemore was acquired from the Montreal Expos in 2002 along with Brandon Phillips, Cliff Lee, and Lee Stevens in exchange for Bartolo Colón and Tim Drew
Colon was in the last year of his contract, and Minaya, the employee of MLB running the Expos, had no intention of signing him. That is, Minaya
gave those players away. Argh!!!!!
I root for the Nats, and against whatever team employs Minaya. They are called The New York Mets.
(And Peter Angelos deserves some abuse for blocking baseball in DC for so long!)
I can't wait til they lose the series.
