An article in the Wall Street Journal last week caught my attention. Brian Costa writes about the contrast between crowds in Baltimore and New York,
For Orioles fans—and for the people here who had long since stopped identifying themselves as such—this was a reawakening. They hadn’t seen playoff baseball in 15 years, hadn’t even seen a winning season. But now Baltimore has something that New York has lost, at least where Yankees fans are concerned.
It’s sheer giddiness at simply making the playoffs. It’s the delight that comes with every postseason moment—the good ones, sure, but also the rest. Cities starved for entertaining baseball know this: Feeling a little pain in October beats feeling nothing at all.
That is a hard-earned perspective, and not one you’d prefer to learn the way Baltimore fans have had to. But when you lose it, as the Yankees and their fans undoubtedly have, playoff baseball can become pretty joyless.
The Yankees regard a championship as the destination and anything short of it an intolerable embarrassment. In Baltimore, and in most cities outside New York, the journey is the destination.
Remember 1996? There’s been a lot of nostalgia the past couple of days about that year, the last time the Yankees and Orioles met in the playoffs. Most of it has focused on Jeffrey Maier snatching that home-run ball at Yankee Stadium. But something even more memorable happened that year.
New York fell in love with the Yankees again. Yes, a championship mattered, and the Yankees won one. But the mere possibility created a certain energy well before Wade Boggs was riding around on the back of an NYPD horse.
Joe Posnanski wrote something very similar here.
Is there something to this? Despite narrowly making the playoffs with a rag-tag, pieced together team of walking wounded, and advancing to the American League Championship Series against a tough team, a lot of Yankee fans (myself included) are exhausted. The Yankee hitters are frustratingly bad right now, and pissing away a lot of really good pitching performances.
But when you take a step back and think about this, its insane. 26 teams aren’t playing baseball right now, but the Yankees are. They’re still very much in the series against the Tigers, despite overcoming extreme hardship. Raul Ibanez has treated us to some mind-bending, insane postseason moments that we’ll still be talking about years from now.
I live in Washington DC, and most of my friends are transplanted New Yorkers. For awhile, they all continued to support the Yankees. But over time, all but me became primarily Nationals fans. They all said that being a Yankee fan was exhausting, because it was the same story with the same cast every year: the Yankees win 95 games. Maybe they go deep into the playoffs. Maybe they don’t.
I’ve had a little of this myself, but with another sport. The New Jersey Devils hit rock bottom during the 2010-2011 season. After two decades of consistent, nearly uninterrupted dominance, the Devils were the worst team in the league for the first half of the season. They eventually got back on their feet, but missed the playoffs by a significant margin. It was a painful, jarring season that no one expected, even with a fairly miraculous comeback from the cellar in the second half.
All that made the 2011-2012 season sweeter. The Devils were a solid playoff team again, complete with some new young pieces and re-energized veteran players. They made the playoffs, and eventually lost in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Living out of town, I went to a few games that year around the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. The games were fun and the crowd was excited, but nothing was particularly extraordinary about the Prudential Center. That all changed in the playoffs.
Saving my vacation days, I held out going to Devils playoff games until the Eastern Conference Finals against our hated rivals, the New York Rangers. The experience was insane. The place was as loud, involved, and energized as any hockey arena that I’ve ever been in. I’ve been to Devils-Rangers playoffs games, game 7 of the 2003 Stanley Cup Finals, Montreal Canadians games, you name it. But this atmosphere was just positively insane. After seeing hundreds of Devils games, it was my favorite ever. The best part? Everyone sitting near me told me that it had been like that for the whole playoffs.
Do I want the Yankees to lose? Absolutely not. But we, as Yankee fans, need to find a way to recapture that kind of joy of watching the sport. The Devils lost in an embarrassing way in the Stanley Cup Finals to the Los Angeles Kings, but I don’t sense that it erased how much fun that playoff run was to Devils fans.
Expectations are the enemy. We expect the $200 million Yankees to win the World Series every year. Therefore, anything less is a let down. We need to learn to enjoy a season where they lose in 6 games in the ALCS; enjoying the journey over the conclusion.
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6 Responses to Does Winning All the Time Get Old?
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TIQ IQ
This is pretty much how I feel. I grew up becoming a Yankees fan with the late 80′s early 90′s teams. I listened to my father talk about the late 70′s teams and how great the Yankees history was, but all I ever saw in the late 80′s and 90′s was a losing team. When ’96 rolled around it was easily the most amazing season of baseball I ever watched and that still stands today. I can’t think of anything (on a baseball field) recapturing that moment again.
However, what has really zapped me is the younger generation of fans who talk so negatively and come of as so entitled with this team. They never experienced cellar dweller teams, only experienced one season without the post season. Its not their fault, I mean I wouldn’t trade the last 18 years of Yankee baseball. But I would love to have that ’96 feeling again.
I grew up with the early 60s Yankees and the family tradition that they were always a great team, so I suffered through the bad years from 1965 through 1975 before they re-emerged. One of those teams finished last. When they won the pennant in ’76 on Chambliss’ walk-off HR, I was not that grieved when they were swept by Cincinnati, especially since my then favorite player (Munson) hit over 0.500. 1977 and 1978 were their own rewards. By then, I was expecting championships, so the three-game sweep by KC in ’80 and choke of a 2-0 lead to the Dodgers in ’81 stung. Then, until 1995, the doldrums returned. However, the way they lost to Seattle (blowing a 2-0 lead, including a large lead in Game 4) soured the accomplishment of making the playoffs. The run from 1996-2003, especially 1998, spoiled me again, although I could stomach both 2001 and 2003, especially the latter since they came back on Boston. Then 2004 struck, and nothing has ever been worse. Since then, my goal for them has been to win the pennant, but only 2009 satisfied, with the World Series as a bonus. This year’s team is mediocre, and I am satisfied they did not make new history by losing the 10-game lead and the division. This year’s playoffs are a bonus, and I would have liked to have seen some celebrations after clinching the division and then beating Baltimore. I am disappointed by the way they are losing to Detroit, inexplicably horrible hitting, but can stomach a sweep. I would also like to see some emotion (anger) when they whiff or leave men on base (Piniella would have broken a water cooler, Billy Martin maybe some noses), not this seemingly complacent acceptance of their futility. Yes, much of the joy is gone, but the team itself seems not to have any, not just the fans. Sadly, some (much) of this comes from Jeter (5 rings) as captain, who does not seem to relish just making the playoffs (Rivera and Pettitte also have 5, but seem quieter by nature; Posada was more vocal [and he, too, has 5]). I also follow the Nats, but the way they lost Game 5 soured what should have been a great season. A 10-0 blowout would have been easier to take.
Maybe that’s what I’m feeling when I want to dump Arod, not resign Cano, not resign Grandy….just start over and rebuild. I don’t think Cano deserves an Arod or Puljos contract.
How about Arod to the Dodgers for Crawford?…both have 5 years left with arod making 7 million more a year.
Or Arod to the Marlins for Reyes?…Jeter to third with that bad ankle.
I never really understood the participation trophy mindset of “at least they made it!”
Eh, the expectations are always going to get ratcheted up once a team has had some success and it’s no different with the Yankees than with any other team that’s won a lot of division titles but few WS over a long period (like the 1990s Braves).
Back in the day, it used to mean something to win a league championship or a divisional title. Now with the expanded playoffs the regular season is becoming about as meaningful as the NHL or NBA regular season. The two wild card scheme only makes the regular season significant in terms of avoiding a severe penalty for not winning a division – it does nothing to restore the prestige and fan satisfaction that used to be attached to it.
When the WS was a one-week (or less) affair it didn’t overwhelm the regular season as much as the post-season does now. I’m sure more than a few Brooklyn Dodgers fans got tired of losing to the Yankees in the WS back in the 1950s but on the whole their enthusiasm didn’t really wane (at least not until after 1955).
The post-season is now so long that losing in the preliminary rounds seems like thin gruel to most fans, especially if you’ve been there before. I think this has been a successful Yankee season irrespective of how the post-season turns out but I understand why other folks won’t see it that way if the ALCS is the end of the road.
The analytic side of me is thinking this isn’t the fans losing interest as much as it’s the fans with the means to go to the playoff games not having the interest to begin with.
It’s a shame, but unless you have a 25-game season plan or better, you’re not going to get tickets for the playoffs through the Yankees. Many of these playoff tickets are snatched up by corporations and used to entertain clients. I know a vendor took a dozen people from my firm to a game last series, and none of the people who went were baseball fans!
This is why Yankee Stadium has “fans” with the corny signs with phrases spelled with FOX or TBS. Why when the other team hits a home run, the Yankee “fan” catching the opposing homer cheers and holds up the ball for everyone to see. Why “fans” clear out of the stadium before the game is even over. Why idiot “fans” interfere with Yankees who are trying to catch a foul ball, and why you have “fans” singing “Hey Hey Goodbye” to Swish. Hell, I even heard someone ask “Is Posada injured” during the Baltimore series!
They’re just not fans, and it’s gotten this way because the Yankees are more than a sports team. The Yankees are a brand now. I’ve had season tickets since 1994…a time when the crowd taunted you for leaving the game early. My, how times at Yankee Stadium have changed.