The World Series: A Series of Internal Conflicts

Make no mistake about it, I consider myself a Yankee hater first and foremost.  I'm a Yankee hater with the deepest of malice.  I look at Red Sox fans like  half-haters because they have an excuse.  When you play a team 18 times a year and you've been playing them that often for a century, you're going to have built up quite a rivalry.  When you constantly brawl, and that one team is the one team standing between you and your goals of a World Series, you have a reason for hatred.  When you don't win a championship for nearly nine decades while your division rival wins dozens, that's a reason for hatred.  Red Sox fans' hatred for the Yankees is totally explainable and rational.

My hatred really is not.  I'm a Braves fan for crap's sake.  I don't know where it came from, but I am simply naturally predisposed to hate the pin stripes.  Brace yourselves because I'm about to go all Montgomery Brogan "25th Hour" on you.  I hate New York.  I hate the city and how dense it is.  I hate how you feel claustrophobic when you're there because it's like all the buildings are right on top of you.   I hate the sports teams.  I hate the J-E-T-S and their obnoxious loudmouth fans.  I hate the Giants and their GEEEEEE-MEN bullshit.  I hate the New Jersey Devils.  I hate the Knicks.  I hate the Mets and how they never measure up to their expectations.  And I especially hate the Yankees.  I hate the pin stripes (other teams where pin stripes).  I hate how they act like their franchise is a step above because they don't allow long hair or facial hair.  I hate Steinbrenner and his being a loud asshole at any and every opportunity.  I hate their half a billion dollar payroll.  I hate Jeffrey Mayer.  I hate that they have more championships than any other team.  I hate Andy Petitte's fat nose.  I hate Joba's double chin.  I hate The Captain, and who the fuck names their kid Melky?  I speak Spanish and that name is still retarded.  The Spanish language doesn't even use the letter K.


Get it?  I hate the Yankees.


All of what just went before is going to make what I type now seem ridiculous and likely a bit unbelievable.


I LOVE that the Yankees are back in the World Series.  Maybe it's because I grew up in the '90s and I associate my childhood with the Yankees winning the World Series.  Maybe it's because the hype surrounding the Yanks in the Fall Classic is way better than the Detroit-St. Louis, Houston-Chicago, Tampa Bay-Philadelphia World Series combined.  That's possible...


But no, what really makes me love the World Series back in Yankee Stadium (be it New or Old) is September 11.

I was 14 years old when those towers came down.  I still get teary eyed watching footage of it all, because it takes me back to a place where I was so emotionally exposed that I still feel the aftershocks of it eight years later.  I think we all were.  I think we all do.  With the Yankees back in the World Series, I get a flood of memories back from that time in my life.


I remember being the first sporting event in Henrico County after September 11.  I was playing JV football for Douglas Freeman High School.  September 11, 2001 was a Tuesday, and by the time our game was supposed to start on Thursday night, we'd heard nothing from anyone, so we just tried to play like it was a normal day.  We took the field against the Highland Springs Springers, and I may be exaggerating, but I think for the first two quarters things were silent.  People had absolutely no clue if they could cheer, if it was OK to be playing, if it was even OK to be watching.  We won the game, and we still felt like we lost, because we were still staggering from the effects of 9/11.


Baseball was off for days.  Football took time off.  Replays of the event played nonstop on 24-hour news channels like we all thought if we watched it enough it would just reverse itself and never have happened.

But (and I'm still a bit from "9 Innings from 9/11" that documentary is too good not to echo), when baseball in Yankee Stadium came back, all those feelings we felt on the football field on 9/13, and all the fear we couldn't over come for months (and the fear that some still can't overcome) went away for a little.  Rudy Giuliani gave the thumbs up, a bald eagle flew through the sky, George W. Bush threw a strike, and we all cheered not the Yankees, not the Diamondbacks, but we cheered baseball and we cheered just to cheer.  Just to feel normal again.


So tonight, as I sat in my apartment in Lubbock, TX as a college graduate and a young professional, I watched the armed forces chorus sing God Bless America and I got chills all over again.  Up and down my body like it was 2001.  I sat there in absolute awe, and re-entered the mind of the scared 14 year old that I was when the towers went down eight years ago.  But that lasted for about 15 seconds as I remembered all the things that I felt every time I watched Irish tenor Ronan Tynan sing God Bless America in front of a packed house in the Bronx.  I felt that American pride that can only come when watching the best team in the truly American sport of baseball play in a baseball cathedral that for me, as someone who has only seen it on TV, looks and feels just like the old one.


Football has overtaken baseball in America.  But be that as it may, the Super Bowl is a kitschy, overblown pop culture distraction compared to the World Series and all of its tradition and dignity.  It reserves a special place in the memory of every sports fan not unlike that reserved for Augusta or Mickey Mantle.


And I may hate the Yankees with every fiber of my being, but it's damn good to see them back where they belong.