So we are a month into the baseball season. And I am moving to New York City.
Well sort of. I'm moving too close for comfort. As a life-long Phillies fan, I always imagined that I would live, work, and die in Philadelphia, watching my beloved Phillies. But the reality of my career makes that a pipe dream that I won't soon realize. I am a privileged person though. As almost all of my friends and colleagues point out, I get to spend my days amongst the greatest baseball "fans" on Earth.I'm never really sure if people are referring to Yankees fans, Mets fans, or the several hundred hold-over Dodgers fans in New York City. It's a unique dynamic though, as Yankees fans will boast and brag to me all the time. I'm sure you can imagine what a delight the last six months have been, in the shadow of the Yankees' improbable six-game World Series win over the Phillies.
I have learned some things in the three years that I have lived here thus far. For instance, there are three types of fans in New York City:
1. Yankees fans pretending to be baseball fans
2. New York fans that inevitably become Yankees fans in October
3. Dodgers fans that root for the Mets because they refuse to root for the Yankees
I'm not sure which type of fan is my favorite, but I do recall with fond memories, the ramblings of a confused New York fan last year. We were discussing the major New York sports teams and baseball obviously came up first.
"So are you a Yankees fan or a Mets fan?" I asked.
"Well, both," she said rather decisively.
"Really?" I asked. Any true fan knows that you can be only one or the other.
"Yeah," she said. "I watch whichever team is winning that night."
"Ah," I said. There was the rub. A true, unabashed front runner. "So you're a front runner then?"
"No, I always root for both New York teams!" she declared.
"So what if the Yankees and Mets played in the World Series? Then who would you root for?"
"Well, whichever team wins, of course!" she said jubilantly.
"Of course."
And that is the essence of the beauty of the New York sports fan. Well, a confused one at least. Most fans are a lot more polarized. And not surprisingly, the vast majority of the ones seen in public root for the Yankees. But still, the similarities among the New Yorkers is at least held together by a lack of general knowledge of the sport.I couldn't help but laugh a little today, when I was first inspired to document this lack of knowledge. Another colleague of mine simply asked, serious and straight-faced, "Albert Pujols plays first base, right?" This was just one of many hysterical instances when New York fans masqueraded as baseball fans. But at this moment, when this poor Yankees fan asked the most innocent, ridiculous question of all time, that I realized that it was my duty to record all of these absurdities in some way.
But it wouldn't be enough to simply single out the hundreds of thousands of ignorant New York fans without adding my own agenda. And since I am a self-proclaimed, die-hard Phillies fan, I decided to toss in my own Philly opinions on the New York state of mind like fuel on a fire. It's nothing you haven't heard before, but it's still entertaining.
