Hating the Yankees: It’s the American Way

It’s delicious irony that it seems more American to hate a team called the Yankees.

The New York Yankees just ousted the Philadelphia Phillies to win their 27th World Series. And, let’s be honest, no one was terribly surprised.

During the Revolutionary War, when Yankees were still colonial rebels, the American cause became the consummate underdog story. The now-legends of these undermanned American armies, facing better-trained, better-equipped British troops, form the underpinning of our collective American psyche.

As such, underdog stories permeate everything that comes of our culture: every single sports movie, obviously, but consider also the small rebel squad that drives Star Wars. Or the short, hairy half-man-half-runt who saves Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings.

As Americans, we love underdogs.

The New York Yankees, in any of these situations and as they did in this World Series, represent anything but the underdog. They’re everything we’ve been taught, from our youngest days, to hate.

They’re the Big Business, money-grubbing capitalist in a high-backed leather chair chomping on an imported belvedere. They’re the Imperial Empire, the unstoppable evil, and they’re certainly—despite being Yankees by name—the disciplined, precision-trained British Redcoats, armed with all the newest in weaponry and technology.

In baseball terms, that means they’ve got the cash to dole out gigantic salaries. I’m certain it’s redundant to detail the magnitude of the Yankees’ payroll, so I’ll be quick. Alex Rodriguez made $33 million this year, outearning the entire Pittsburgh Pirates team (at $25 million). Derek Jeter and Mark Teixeira aren’t far behind, at about $22 million and $21 million, and the Yankees’ $208 million exceeds the league’s next highest by a full third.

The result of that is that positions 2-8 in the Yankees lineup all hit more than 20 home runs this year. And one of the two that didn’t was Derek Jeter.

Every other team in Major League Baseball, then, stacks up as an underdog against the Yankees. From my vantage point, it’s about as rewarding to be a Yankees fan as it is to root for Goliath—it’s a lose-lose situation, as his expected victory almost isn’t worth celebrating and being slain by the under-sized Israelite is recognized by everyone as a colossal failure.

Cheering for the underdog (it’s possible to make a case that the Phillies weren’t the underdog, but it’d be full of holes) often means years of frustrating oppression, but it makes the eventual victories that much sweeter and more memorable. Like it was to see the Yankees lose in the World Series in 2001 and 2003. Like it was last year when the Bronx Bombers didn’t even make the playoffs.

Like it was in 1783.

From a strictly economic standpoint, however, the Yankees are anything but un-American, and the salary caps and controls implemented in other sports have instead a striking socialist flair. The Yankees are following all the rules, even if we don’t like it.

Capitalism holds for capital to be privately held, and for the facilitating of transactions between two agreeing parties. If the Yankees are willing to pay a player an unimaginably large salary (plus pay the luxury tax implications if necessary), and the player wants to play for the Yankees, then the transaction of money for services ought to take place.

There are already several other market-restricting controls in place to promote parity in baseball—giving the worst teams the first picks in the draft, revenue sharing, and redistribution of luxury tax dollars—and really, rightly so. A true open market of major league baseball franchises would result in an unwatchable imbalance, much the way Microsoft dominates the software market and Google dominates online search. Coke and Pepsi compete openly in the soft drink market, but MLB needs to have thirty teams with at least some competitive balance, not just two.

In short, it’s effortless to criticize the Yankees for their big-wallet approach and accuse them of buying a World Series title. But when it all boils down to it, that’s what we’d all do for our own teams if we could

And it wouldn’t feel unfair to us at all.

One of those underdog battles in the Revolutionary War  took place in New York, and has plenty in common with this World Series finale. On August 27, 1776 the Continental Army, led by George Washington, went up against the British in the biggest conflict of the entire war.

All the classic underdog criteria were in place. It was the first time the Americans had fielded a real army, and their 10,000-strong force was doubled by the British 20,000. The colonists had an angle, though, as their superior positioning gave them a chance—a shot at standing their ground even against the British juggernaut.

But this story doesn’t end like Remember the Titans, or Glory Road, or Rudy. The British pounded the Americans, killing 300 and capturing 1,000 while only losing 64 of their own men. The British took New York in a blowout victory.

The Americans were forced to retreat, all the way back to—you guessed it—Philadelphia. Like the poor Phillies.

While we’d love everything to end with a Disney heart-warming finish, the truth is that scrappy, righteously-motivated underdogs still get squashed most of the time. So even while New York relishes their freshly-minted World Series title, go to sleep tonight knowing that it’s okay to hate the Yankees.

It’s patriotic. It’s your civic duty. It’s undeniably American to like the underdog, even though they can’t always win.

Damn Yankees.

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