Growing up on Long Island I went a little against the curve and followed the Yankees instead of the Mets. I always wondered about the voracious anger and querulousness observed towards the Yanks and their fans. It always vexed me with how angry people can get, anyone want to venture a guess?
Here’s a recent thread that might shed some light on the subject:
It’s a reaction against perceived entitlement. The Yankees have far more pennants and world championships than any MLB franchise. Thus, to many Yankee haters, Yankee fans seem to go about like winning the World Series every year is their team’s birthright.
And in the eyes of any number of fans, they bought those pennants. They money-whipped whoever they needed to win, and that was that. This irritates no end those who still remember baseball as America’s Game, not Rich People With More Money Than Most Countries’ Game.
So your saying they only won because they could buy the best of the best players? Or that they purchased winning in another way?
They bought whoever they needed at whatever position was weakest.
If I Ran Baseball there would be serious, serious limits on trades during the season. Like “only during the first 3 weeks” limits. Call it the “Run With Who Ya Brung” Rule. If you don’t have depth in your farm system and your top pitchers all go Dixie, too bad. Better luck next year.
Well said, but I don’t remember it every truly being like that…
Neither do I. 
We can dream of a better world.
Personally, I’m just fucking sick of seeing them. I swear, next year ESPN is gonna get them to play all 162 games on Sunday nights, and televise them all. I think Jon Miller covers more Yankee games than Giant games.
ESPN is the main reason I hate the Yankees. The Yankees would choke hard against (then) weak teams like the Blue Jays and the Angels but Joe Morgan and Jon Miller would still talk about every single player like they could shit gold. Oh, there were other games going on between teams that had fine players… but how about those Yankees?! Sunday Night Baseball became (still is?) unwatchable.
The Subway Series games in particular make me laugh-- they talk about them like they’re the greatest we’ll see all season, perhaps ever, forgetting that no one outside New York really gives a damn.
Hey, this Sunday night on ESPN! Yankees! Mets! Red Sox! They’re all facing three teams of no real consequence!!!
We love showing these three teams!!!
!!!<----for good measure.
The Yankees have always been hated in some parts of the country, however I think it reached its current levels because George Steinbrenner bought the team and shortly thereafter free agency started to become a major factor in the Major Leagues. Steinbrenner was reviled both for bad decisions as well as having deep pockets and going after top free agents.
The Yanks have always had one of the best budgets and traditionally they had a really powerful farm system that a lot of other teams couldn’t compete with, back before the way players were distributed as amateurs was redone. However until the Steinbrenner era that didn’t stop Yankees players from being incredibly popular. When I was a little kid, Mickey Mantle was popular all over. From what I understand Joe DiMaggio was too, a few years earlier. Everyone knows Babe Ruth put more seats in the stands than probably any professional ballplayer before or since.
My wayback machine takes me back when the Yankees were a very good team. The Philadelphia Athletics were a weak team. Whenever the A’s bumped into a player with talent ,he went to the Yankees for practically nothing. We had to compete with a team with advantages way back then.
Then Srteinbrenner comes in and spends a fortune trying to build a winning tradition. It was very bad.
When the Red Wings did something similar in Hockey ,it was always done with a sense of fair play and competition. Not so the Yankees.
And this wouldn’t bother me as fans of EVERY team think “this’ll be our year!”
What pisses me off is that most aren’t Yankee fans any more than it’s fashionable. They’re loud and proud about “their team” when the buy a Championship and nowhere to be seen when they struggle.
I take that back. Actually you CAN see them…they’re wearing Red Sox hats now. :rolleyes:
Why the apostrophe?
Cause they ain’t the Redsox.
Am I the only one who thinks the OP is expressing curiosity over the phenomenon of Yankees fans being hated just as much as the team? 'Cos from where I’m reading, it look like most people are answering the question: “Why are the NY Yankees so hated?”
Personally, I can’t be bothered using up my precious energy in caring about the NY Yankees, much less hating theim or their fans, but I can understand the impulse. To me, the San Francisco Giants are (well, were) the equivalant of Satan, so anyone who was a fan had to be a devil worshipper, right? Who likes a devil worshipper?
FWIW, I sat next to a self-described “Angels fan” at the Giants game tonight who asked me, “Oh, you don’t like the Angels?” and “Do you guys have a rival?” And yes, she rew up in southern California.
Not that this really has anything to do with anything, it was just a crappy game and I’m bitter.
Isn’t this the point of the OP? Because the Yankees have won so much and are typically in contention, they are easy to root for from a casual fan’s perspective. So “true” baseball fans tend to look at johnny-come-lately, opportunistic fans with disdain. It just so happens that, by conventional wisdom, many casual fans are Yankees fans due to this.
With the Red Sox doing so well in '04, they acquired a number of casual fans. It’s true for any winning team. The Patriots couldn’t buy fans back in the day but now they are a dynasty, it is easy for casual fans to clamber on board…
Every team has “true” fans and “casual” fans - but perennially successful teams like the Yankees probably have more casual fans than, say, the Royals. But it is a spectrum, not black and white, with a whole lotta gray in defining who is True vs. Casual…
Yankee fans of the NYC variety are hated because they think the Yankees, like anything else NYC-related, are inherently superior to anything else because they are from NYC. This not only dead wrong, 180° wrong, but annoyingly arrogant and obnoxious as well.