Still Proudly Obnoxious

It's been a good year for a lot of baseball fans, which for more than a few of us means the Yankees are having an awful year. However it seems that the loyal fans of the Bronx Bombers have not taken to their recent diet of humble pie. They remain unbowed and as throughly obnoxious and rude as ever. How rude? It used to be rumored that New York City cabbies were all required to be Yankee fans. (I personally believe it.) Anyway the Washington Post has this slightly humorous article for those of us who miss the perpetual baseball wars in the Big Apple or who are just happy to dish out a little well deserved crow.

FLUSHING MEADOW, N.Y. -- It takes a special kind of mook to turn up at Shea Stadium, home of the New York Mets, wearing a Yankees cap when the Yankees aren't playing there. Michael Bredamus is that kind of mook.

After a recent Mets game, Bredamus could be found ambling out of Shea beneath his prize possession: a hat with the two-letter insignia of the Yanks. His team was in Baltimore, and the Mets were playing the St. Louis Cardinals. Bredamus showed up anyway, and stopped for a moment to give a brief master class in the art of annoying Mets fans.

"As long as you keep your mouth shut, you're fine," he said. But he couldn't help himself, or maybe he was being ironic. Surrounded by Mets fans, his voice started rising. "As long as you don't mention anything about how the Yankees are great, how they won the 26 championships. Twenty-six championships. As long as you don't talk about that, it's not a problem."

"They won't be playing in September," during the postseason, taunted a Mets booster.

"Two championships!" Bredamus fired back. "That's what the Mets have. Two!" This is a wretched year to be a Yankees fan. The team with the fattest payroll in baseball is nine games out of first place and widely considered a long shot for even a wild-card berth in the playoffs. On the field and off, everyone has a diagnosis -- the team is old, the pitching stinks, the players don't care. There is consensus only about the misery.

If it were any other squad, the rest of baseball would simply snicker. But this is the Yankees, whose historical success and strutting have made them arguably the most reviled team in American sports, and these are Yankees fans, undoubtedly the most loathed in the country. A snicker won't do. This calls for belly laughs. This calls for tankards and fiddles and torch-lit dancing. This calls for bunting and floats. We must savor this experience. We must pile on now, while the piling is good, because if history is any guide, the Yankees will rise again -- and when they do, their fans will be insufferable.

Living dangerously: Yankees fan Michael Bredamus wears his team regalia at Shea Stadium.

Read the rest here