Just curious. I know there is a lot I admire about many Sox fans I am friends with, and many around here. There's a whole thread about what annoys you but do you all admire anything about Yankee fans?

The ones who are hardcore lifers: I admire their fellow lifer-ness.

A Yankee fan gave birth to me, which I thought was a fairly admirable move on her part.

Me: well, there's...uh...um...(voice trails off)

(sounds of crickets chirping. far in the distance, a dog barks)

Seriously, I don't actually dislike Yankee fans on a personal level, if that's what you're wondering. (Except for the obnoxious ones, but then I feel that way toward obnoxious people of all classes and categories.)
It's not like we're from opposing ethnic factions in Somalia and literally want to kill each other. It's just baseball.
Who knows? But for a quirk of geography, if my parents had decided to reside 75 miles south or west of where they did, maybe I wouldn't follow the team I do.

I admire the ones who park more then 2 blocks from the stadium for a night game.

Yankee fans who are baseball fans while being Yankee fans don't annoy me.

I have a good friend who was born and raised in the Bronx, talks about friends he grew up with in "the neigborhood" who are now wiseguys and he has always been a Yankees fan. He remembers well the dry spell and pain of the 80's. He's a New Yorker and as a fan I like him because he's a true fan of baseball who happens to like the yanks. Plus without his passion for his team and piling on me after 03 it made 04 so much more fun.

For me, that's the key. I'm happy to debate baseball with knowledgeable fans of all kinds, but the newcomer fans who suddenly showed up in 1996 annoy me. I admire Yankee fans who proudly wore the team colors through the mid-80s to mid-90s (and whose steadfastness was rewarded in 96-98-99-2000).

I can't think of a better fan tradition than the roll call the fans in the right field bleachers do at the start of every game.

I admire their passion.

i've lived in new england for 25 years and it has made me a better baseball fan. i've enjoyed the red sox in their good years, especially when the yankees were sucking.

living in pawtucket, i've seen a lot of future boston stars come through this town. it's hard not to root for players you saw before they became famous. i support them in their rookie years until they have passed the test, then drop them like a hot potato.

i think you have to admire the fact that yankee fans (outside of new york) are a lonely lot. there are so few of us, not just in new england, but everywhere in this country. the yankees are the team everyone loves to hate. my wife is a red sox fan and our dog prefers the bruins. i don't get it.

I admire yankee fans who know more about baseball than "Boston Sucks!!!11!1" and "Jeter is the SH!T!!11!" and respect me for being a Red Sox fan.

1. Only in contrast to others of their own kind.

2. This isn't even slightly true:


3. To some degree, though, out here in "the rest of the country," I think maybe we need each other. "We" being "the good kind of fans." I need another loudmouth, loves to dish it out but can't take it even a little bit, Jeter-loving windbag in my ear like I need a hole in my head.

But the Yankees fans who know baseball, and at the same time can handle the whole "the Yankees have a lot of championships" thing with some class - they're absolutely essential out here on the west coast. They're essential because, in the first place, good luck finding an Angels fan who even has a clue about the Angels. And if you do find one, that's all they know is the Angels.

So, by and large, it takes a Yankees fan if you want to have a conversation about baseball that isn't all "Yup." "Yup." "Manny's just being Manny." "Yup." "How about Ortiz?" "Yup." "Lugo's not really hitting." "Not too much." "Yup."

I know a couple Dodgers fans who know what's going on in the world. One Giants fan. A Tigers fan (and he was wearing the hat when they had the worst record in baseball, too, so all is well there). My friend who's a Cardinals fan isn't loser fanboy by any means, but we probably have better football conversations. That's it. Otherwise, it's a lot of Sox fans, a lot of Yankees fans, and a lot of people who just shouldn't be allowed in the same room as the word "baseball."

So I'm glad to know a handful of Yankees fans - for what we have in common as fans. It's not Yankee fan-specific - but just in terms of sheer numbers, the Boston and New York fans who fall under the broader "good fan" umbrella are easier to find, even on the other side of the country, than all the rest put together.

Intangibles

Not since 1995.

Agreed. I probably talk more baseball with Sox fans than any other team. I have as many Sox fan friends as Yanks fans. Both teams have some great fans and some complete fools who don't know a walk from a balk. I know 'die hard' Sox fans who wouldn't know who Marty Barret was, much less Todd walker. Same deal with Yanks fans, I know some who couldn't tell me who was at short before Jeter - and you have about 37 choices there since Tolleson left!

A lot of people only became fans because of 1996 and 2004 respectively. They are generally annoying and not very baseball savvy. They're easy to pick out though. I think watching a team lose for a while creates a certain empathy and camaraderie among fans of all teams. Having been a Yankee fan through the 1980's I could sympathize completely with Sox fans pre-2004. Quite honestly I think the Sox and Yanks, in general, have the most knowledgeable (about baseball in general) and loyal fan bases in baseball.

i hate to generalize but i think we're talking about an east coast thing here. phillies fans are diehards. same for the mets, yankees and red sox. chicago's a good baseball town, i guess, but the bears do rule. same goes for pittsburgh with the steelers. some of the midwestern cities like KC and Minny and Milwaukee are just filled with nice people who aren't passionate about the sport. st. louis fans know their baseball but rarely criticize their team and its players, although JD Drew changed that perception slightly last year.

i don't know much about the west coast except for what i see on Extra Innings but I sense Rominer is right on the money.

BTW, the yankees drafted kevin romine's son last week.

this thread was a good idea, jamie.

One thing I miss about living in CT is that baseball is a main sport vs low priority sport. I remember hearing Mike and the Mad Dog one day talk about baseball towns, meaning they loved baseball over other pro sports in their town. I think their thoughts were that'd only include, NY, Boston, St. Louis and Chicago now that the Bulls are Jordon-less.

I now live in Lubbock, TX home of Texas Tech and Bobby Knight and I don't care too much about them but I have to know a little to keep up with local chatter. Thankfully, my senior pastor is a long-term Cubs fan so we talk baseball almost everyday.

I agree, the Right Field "Roll Call" is a great baseball tradition.

I admire the fact most Yankees fans are obsese and thus make slowmoving easy targets...

I kid. I respect most anyone who loves baseball.

Nothing really, aside from the fact that New Era blows them constantly by making more hat designs than any other sports franchise, some of which are the ugliest pieces of shit for a bandwagon Yankee fan to wear just because it "matches my XXXXL shirt".

Nah, I do admire the long time fans - makes for great conversations all in all.

My best friend is a Yankee fan and I have always admired the fact that he loves the Yankees every bit as much as I love the Sox. I can remember him taking me to Mickey Mantle's in NYC and seeing him act as if he had just entered a house of worship. I admire the passion they have for their team because that does not exist to this degree in many other fan bases.

I mostly admire that he called me the night the Sox beat the Yanks in the 04 ALCS. That wasn't an easy call for him to make, I'm sure.

is it possible we actually need each other? now that the stakes have been raised so high in this new century, we probably understand the pressures on each team better than people who root for the phillies or cubs, etc.

that doesn't mean we can't hate the other team. it's just that as fans we may understand one another better than we think. these are, after all, the two richest franchises in baseball, not only in money but history and tradition as well.

Nope, those calls were not fun at all. Worse for me was having to stop on the way out of game 7 to grab a program for a Sox fan buddy of mine. Gave my stub to another friend who would appreciate it far more than I ever would.

There is something to admire, and I do. I am fairly certain that I would not be big enough to do either one of those things (buy the program or give the stub away). I do recall getting a couple of congratulations e-mails. (I can't remember if they were after the ALCS or the World Series.) Regardless, I admire Yanks fans that did something like that. That's pretty big under the circumstances.

Here's the thing.

When the Yankees beat the Sox in '99, I got big, blue IMs all day long at work from a "friend"/ co-worker in the east coast office. This is what the IMs said:

Yankees!!

Yankees!!

YANKEES!!

YANKEES!!

YANKEES!!!

YANKEES!!!!

YANKEES!!!!!


I got pretty the same in 2003, in email form.

So I had no interest or desire to make any effort to, you know, be classy and ever say congratulations for a Yankees victory. It has nothing to do with being "big enough." It has to do with a sizable faction of Yankees fans preempting any possibility of sportsmanship.

This would of course fall under the other Yankees fan thread. But that's the thing with the bad ones: It's not that they love a different team than I do (unless they are FROM MASSACHUSETTS, in which case I just can't respect that). It's not even that they don't know a whole lot about baseball. It's that they can't just win and enjoy it. It's all about the Yankees somehow creating for them some sacred right to be arrogant, to taunt, and to generally be an a**hole.

When the Sox won in '04, though, I did keep my mouth shut. No emails. No phone calls. No taunting. Never got any congratulations, of course. Oh no. When it came up much later, though, it was just "We can't talk about that. It's too painful." Yeah. Well.

So, back to the "flip side," my first response in here was "only in contrast to others of their own kind." That's what I mean. GONM's best friend (and who knew, one's right hand could be a Yankees fan while the rest of you was all Sox), and Jamie, and anyone else who did it: making that phone call was good for the health of "Yankee nation" (or whatever it would be called), even if it hurt a little.

my best friend at work stepped between me and a red sox fan during Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. i was keeping my mouth shut while consuming some guinnesses at a local bar/restaurant when Giambi hits what appears to be a good shot to CF off Pedro. the guy behind me stands up and says "popped him up!" TV camera then showed ball going over CF fence. i turned around and said, quietly, "some popup." factor in the beer consumed and we were soon facing off before my friend stepped in. an inning later, the guy and his friend were gone. my red sox friends stayed till the end. i paid the bar bill all by myself.

The stub thing was borderline spiteful actually. It was more of a 'get this thing out of my house' mindset. I am glad she has it because I would have tossed it anyhow; even if it is a nice painful reminder when I see it framed with the Globe front page.

Honestly; it is real tough to not be friendly with Sox fans living in CT, so many close friends cheer for them and have for years. We go back and forth but it is all in fun, there's a mutual respect.

See, that's where you and I differ. I equate the 'roll call' with a bunch of petulant 7-year-olds shouting 'pay attention to me' How about taking your seats and actually watching the game? That's a pretty good fan tradition. They ought to try it for a change.

I'm calling bullshat here.

Your Sox gal friend is obviously very hot and you figured, since the Yanks had already lost, no harm in getting a little action out of it.

Actually, I really like the "roll call". I was in the bleachers at the Toilet a few years ago (in neutral colors; it was a NYY-KC game) and I sat in the middle of the fans pounding out the "call".

I actually smiled; it's a really cool tradition. So, if I had to pick something I like about Yankee fans, it was fun to sit in the bleachers, root quietly for the Royals, and experience that. They also did some "Knock Knocks" while I was there, and I was surprised at how well they have that down.

But they still smelled bad, got really drunk, and acted like assclowns, so don't think I grew a sensitivity here.

Haha! Never considered using it to get some action. Probably a mistake! You're right on one count though, she is cute - just married to a good friend!

Someone posted this in the "Giambi Agreement Expected Soon" blog entry comments over at Peter Abraham's LoHud Yankee Blog.

I think it's the most clear-eyed assessment of Yankee fans by a Yankee fan I've ever read by a "regular" of a given Yankee blog/message board (he probably would have been accused of being a Red Sox troll or promptly RO'd if he'd posted this at nyyfans.com ) .

no

I second that!

AS an outsider i of course cant talk about living in the heat of the state. But i have been in the bleachers at the toilet and sat there for the roll call in my neutral clothes. I thought it was a cool idea even the taunting of the guy behind me wearing a red sox cap was classy. I mean they even offered him 25$ for the cap.

I grew up in New Haven Ct. Most of my friends were Yankee fans. As Luchhino called New Haven in his 2004 victory tour of New England "New Haven is the tip of the Red Sox Nation spear" or some such BS...

Anyway, I have very close friends who are NYY fans. My best friend is a good fan, we used to go to Sox Yankees games and keep our mouths shut during the game and then rip each other to shreds on the way home...

We're passionate fans of great franchises...I was basically attacked as a 12 year old in Yankee Stadium by a 30 year old drunk, because I was wearing a sox hat...He didn't hit me, but he got right in my face and started jawing at me about how it was disrespectful to wear that $hit in the house that Ruth built.

To counter that, I was at a game in San Diego where a Red Sox fan(drunk) sucker punched a padre fan, caving in his eye socket. Yeah, they were jawing at one another , but the punch was just wrong.

So, both sides have their good fans, both sides have a-holes. Of course there are good yankee fans...several on this board...

The fact that, purely on the vocal/boisterous crowd, that the fans can turn a dump like Yankee Stadium into a place where you have to see a game, at least once in your life. Instead of dumbass thundersticks, rally monkeys, "terrible" towels, and artifical crowd noise pumped through the speakers at other stadiums, the fans solely take responsiblilty for trying to rally their team and such. Even watching on Tv in October, a game at yankee Stadium is much different/exciting than, say a game in Colorado or Arizona, purely because of the crowd.

Pinstripes have an overall slimming effect.

That would do me wonders.............

This is the kind of Yankee fan I do like: Whoever does this website.

Replacement Level Yankees Weblog.

Heavy on SABR, but always interesting.

I guess I have to give them a lot of credit for being so loyal to a team that hasn't won this century.

Seriously, what has always amused me the most is their misguided sense of superiority. A few months back I was in a hotel lobby wearing a Manny shirt and a guy wearing a Pigs shirt spotted me and said something like "I wouldn't want him on our team."

They've been more disgraced than any other team by the steroids scandal - but they wouldn't want Manny. They're too good for that.

They gave multiple opps to Strawberry, an habitual drug offender, a solicitor of a hooker, a tax cheat and a wife abuser - but they wouldn't want Manny. They're too good for that.

The owner's a convicted felon who's been suspended twice - but they wouldn't want Manny. They're too good for that.

I'm not going to defend that moron. Just wanted to say there are plenty of good guys on the Yankees that I have rooted for over the years. When you get a jerk, whether it's Billy Martin, Jim Coates, Reggie, Mel Hall, Strawberry or Clemens, you swallow your pride and keep rooting for your team. I don't really care what other people think about some of the bad character guys who have played for the Yanks over the years. I stand by the good guys, and there are way more of them than the bad guys.

And as for Steinbrenner, John Henry is very thankful George told him to hang on to his Yankee stock for a couple extra years because the price went way up and John made a big profit when he finally cashed out. Henry considers George a generous and eccentric man. The Boss was mean-spirited in the first 20 years of his ownership. I believe he has made amends, and secured his legacy as one of baseball's most impactful owners of all time, over the past 15 years. Good guy or not, George helped make the game of baseball what it is today. for better and for worse.

Sadly, there is a segment on both sides of the fence that love to participate in the "our fans are classier than your fans" debate which generally goes nowhere other than a bunch of loud and angry posts. I'm not sure I'd want Manny now only because there really isn't the need, but I was one person who wanted the Yanks to go after him when he was a free agent leaving Cleveland. I think Yankee fans and Sox fans have far more in common than they do different. I lived in Florida for 15 months and let me tell you, going to a Marlins game down there is like going to a golf match. Quiet. And no intensity. I missed the intensity of the northeast baseball.

I also lived in Florida for a while and even during the Marlins' good spell, that place was the worst place I've ever been to to watch a baseball game.

Me too. I was at the Yankees/Mets game last night at Shea and my only problem is fan incidents in the stands and to be honest I dont know why it happpens. In my opinion, its just a game and any kind of teasing is in good fun. With that said, we had several Yankee fans around us and despite them cheering heavy for there team and they were very nice to us. Which is a shock because the NY based Yankees fan are not too friendly.