I'm a Yankees fan. Can't help it. Was raised about 35 miles from Yankee Stadium. Boilerdowd is an anti-Yankees, anti-Cubs, anti-Cardinals fan. Handy, when you want to dig your friends' teams. He also likes the Red Sox when they win.
But this isn't about our handsome co-editor.
It's sucked being a Yankees fan for a while. The team's been boring, actually, winning games in recent years, but also being (painfully) obviously not a championship-caliber team.
Their players also went from being hard to dislike in the 90s (early-era Jeter, when he had certain joy for the game, Bernie Williams, Tino Martinez, David Cone, Rivera, etc.) to being easy to dislike, even for fans of the team (surly players, cheaters, etc.). There was no joy. The Steinbrenners had made it a win or you suck situation. Winning a World Series would have brought relief rather than joy and that sucks. And so the winning stopped.
Now, though, things seem fun again. Sure, there's a lot of payroll. Blah, blah, blah. I don't want to hear any more about how the poor midwestern teams can't add payroll as the White Sox add Peavy and the Cards add Holliday, etc. Just shut it.
I happened to be in the NY area this whole weekend and that Yankees-Sox series felt like it meant a lot to these guys for the first time in a long time. Not that it hadn't been important before, but there was a feeling of morose-ness among the guys. The Sox weren't the punching bag Sox anymore, so it was less fun.
But now it's fun again, because the Sox are good and won't roll over. And neither will the Yankees. And my team is enjoyable and seems to be having fun again. That's all I wanted.
And to crush Boston.