The Socioeconomic Series

By Joel Stein

I wish I weren't a Yankees fan. Not because I'm sick of the incessant, mind-numbing victories or the thousands of dollars I've won in small friendly wagers over the decades--wagers that are all more than seven years old, in case anyone from the IRS reads this column. No, I wish I were something more noble, like a Reds fan, because the Yankees are an arrogant, elitist organization that I don't want to be associated with. The main thing holding me back is that I'd wind up in conversations with losers from Cincinnati, Ohio.

This World Series may have seemed as if it was an inter-New York rivalry, but it wasn't. Once again it was the New York Yankees vs. the team the rest of America is rooting for, which just happens to be from Queens this year. Queens is a place most Manhattanites never visit, although we are told good things about its Chinese food.

Even though the words New York are in front of their name, the Mets are not urban. In fact, they are the hokiest team in baseball. Their mascot is some horror-movie reject with a smiling baseball for a head, cleverly named Mr. Met. When a Met hits a home run, a sizable, but not actually big, apple bobs up from something that looks like a magician's hat. The stadium opens in centerfield to display a huge, distant U-Haul sign. Airplanes from neighboring La Guardia Airport fly overhead every other inning. Then there is a poor approximation of fireworks that I'm pretty sure is actually just two kids tossing up bottle rockets and running away. Two kids who very well may be doing it to prevent Mr. Met from getting any closer.

I should be a Mets fan. I identify with their culture. I appreciate how deep into the Bachman-Turner Overdrive canon the Shea Stadium deejay can dig. I have bitten my palm, Squiggy-style, over the throngs of big-haired women who have the Mets logo airbrushed on their nails. And I get pumped up when Hawaiian-born Benny Agbayani comes to bat and the scoreboard flashes, without any offense intended, HAWAIIAN PUNCH.

But my father, who grew up in the Bronx, took me to Yankees games. He is one of those tough Yankees fans who liked the Yanks aspirationally, because many lived the glamorous, drunken, bar-fighting, womanizing lives he wanted to lead, and then did after he got divorced.

Growing up, I tried to be a humble Yankees fan, preferring the yeoman efforts of Willie Randolph to the braggadocio of Reggie Jackson. I had a terrific vocabulary as a kid. The Yankees gave me confidence that I sorely needed as a bookish, freakishly shy child who was secretly desired by all the girls in his class.

The reason I can't get myself to switch allegiances, as I so successfully did with newsweeklies the day I got this job, is simply because the Yankees win. You can either join the phony, rich, successful people, or you can sit at a second-rate stadium listening to You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet and being bitter. This is America, where rich people's sons get to run for President or put together expensive baseball teams, and sometimes, if they're lucky, both. And even if it's just from the bleachers, I want to feel like a part of that.