Now summer is here, even if the calendar says otherwise. After some sneaked in opening days (I'm thrilled we play Major League Baseball in Japan; but when are we going to host Japanese teams at US ballparks?), now we can begin. And lest you get confused my little friend, when I say 'we" I mean (of course) the New York Yankees (I heard your sigh), and I understand it.
Please don't point at the scoreboard, or the standings or the calendar. I knew it's first week-but when you've rooted for a team, any team, your whole life, you have hopes and dreams. Actually, in Kansas City or Milwaukee, you have hopes and dreams. In Yankee Universe, you have expectations.
Fans are thrilled in Red Sox Nation, when their pitchers watch a game to the end or when the BoSox make the playoffs. We Yankees fans yawn. Our legion of detractors have figured us out: we not only expect to get to the World Series every year, we demand it. And we demand the team win it. And when they don't, and that happens more often than they do, despite being one of the most successful teams in major league sports anywhere on earth, we deride them for being overpaid choke artists.
That's what we practice during Spring training. You and your team's fans scout players and prospects. We look for scape goats and discuss grey clouds surrounding silver linings. We rant at the owners for not understanding you can't buy a championship team, but expect them to do exactly that every year. And if that post turtle with maximum attitude and minimal smarts, Hank Steinbrenner, needs Tommy Johns surgery on his check writing hand, get a reliever in there!
Unforgivably arrogant-and we know it. Come the last week of the season, you may have a measure of revenge if I don't offer a divisional playoff preview or crow over a starting lineup whose strength I believe ( = fervently hope) will be buttressed by the return of Dandy Andy who retired at the end of NOT last season but the season before. Sure, we'll have to have a new delivery service for our desserts, but that's a part of life, like learning how to lay down a bunt. Or not.
We Yankees fans are insufferable but you love to hate our team. I don't care if it's raining, or (gulp!) snowing-from here on out everyday is a great day for a baseball game. It's so nice, let's play two, but remember there's no singing in baseball (or at least there shouldn't be).
-bill kenny
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