I once heard an old line about the difference between Yankees fans and Mets fans.

The Yankees can go 100-62 and all the Yankees fan wants to know is what happened in those 62 losses.

The Mets can go 62-100 and the Mets fan is happy that they manged to win 62 games.

Not sure if the thing still applies to Mets fans, but, for many Yankees fans, it’s still all about having high expectations.

Same as you, Steve. The losses hurt more than the victories are joyous. Part of the problem is high expectations. When they win, it’s “wipe the brow, phew, at least they won. They’re SUPPOSED to win”. When they lose it’s “OMG, what’s wrong, this cannot be”. During prolonged losing streaks I actually force myself to avoid the scoreboard, thereby getting a decent (not great) night’s sleep. I fully realize that baseball is only entertainment…..but I admit that the fortunes of the Yankees greatly affect my daily existence. I’m one big sourpuss when the Yanks lose.

2004 stunned me, but like I mentioned before, it was the law of averages evening out. How many times over the years did the Yanks break the hearts of Red Sox fans? From Babe Ruth to Aaron Boone, the record has overwhelmingly been in the Yanks’ favor.

1995 hurt more, because of Mattingly, 2001 hurt more than 1995 & 2004 combined. It really would’ve been nice from a karmic standpoint, if the Yanks won the series in 2001. And having a 3-2 lead going back to AZ, especially with the way they won games 4 & 5, AND Pettitte and Clemens (with Johhny Wholestaff backing Clemens), I thought the Yanks would be able to pull it off.

redbug wrote:

Yankee fans have bought George’s dictum of a season is a failure w/o a WS win.

Yes, but this isn’t a recent phenomenon. Steinbrenner has had a “WS or bust” dictum since he bought the team. All the moves he made, the money spent, the ill-advised trades, the managerial firings, were with that dictum in mind.

butchie22 wrote:

It had nothing to do with the law of averages ,mate. Mo closes that 4th game , The Yanks go play the Cards. He needed to be lights out and wasn’t.

Which speaks to the law of averages. For all the times that Mo was lights out, eventually there would be a time that he wasn’t.

Yankee fans have bought George’s dictum of a season is a failure w/o a WS win. Yes, ’04 was awful. Worst ever. Followed by ’01. But, the rest haven’t bothered me. Short PS are crap shoots, aided and abetted by Arod who can’t hit in the clutch when it really counts.

So, I just enjoy the fun of getting to see almost all the games from April through Sept. And a bonus if they play some more in Oct. Baseball is the greatest in that there’s a game almost every day for 6 months. 162 games. No other sport comes close. I’m bummed on the few days when there isn’t a game.

I feel privledged to have seen so many of my favorites play for such long periods in Yankee uniforms. Jeter, Mo, Jorge, O’Neill, Cone, Mattingly, the end of Mickey’s career. I spent a good part of my life watching and listening to Phil.

Winning the WS is great but it’s not the be-all and end-all. ’96 was my favorite WS win, in part, because it had been so many years since the last one, and because it wasn’t expected. Start expecting it every year and your bound to be disappointed. And maybe that’s why you feel the way you do now, Steve.

OnceIWasAYankeeFan wrote:

What say we don’t talk about “stuff that leaves a mark”, OK?

LOL

@ John ONeil: John – thanks for a great post. Glad someone else knows where I’m coming from here!

Steve,

As someone said earlier, very thoughtful post – one I can relate to on many levels. I have been a Yankee fans since 1971 but did not live in NY full time until 2000. I still caught a lot of games in person, on the road and at home including many of the playoff games from 96 forward. Moving from California to NY in 2000 made it possible for me to watch every game live from the start. Even when Directv started showing games out of market in the late ’90s, a 4pm Pacific start limited me to catching the end of the game or watching the replay. I was an early fa of watching the game on the internet, which back then was like watching a teletype machine.

I also soon realized that my mood was dramatically impacted by what happened in the game. And after the run we had from 1995 through 2000, I really expected a win almost every game. Being able to watch every night and read every morning made it much worse.

Since losing game 7 in Phoenix, I have battled with the obsession. I frequently “watch” games on MLB gameday (like I used to in California) even when I am home and can flick on YES. It is less stressful for me. I DVR the game and check to see how we are doing online before watching the action on TV. Even my wife, who suffered when my mood went south after a loss, said that it wasn’t healthy to like a team so much you couldn’t watch them.

So I think I can relate to the scar tissue you have built up which may dampen the joy of a Yankee win.

But I confess that the comment regarding “Red Sox syndrome” is also probably closer to the mark that you may realize. I know it is with me. In some lucid moments of self reflection, I realized that if I set the threshold of happiness with the Yanks at World Series win, I was set up for failure. In fact, even expecting a pennant or a division series win was a high bar. I didn’t want to start sounding like my Sawx friends who required years and years of built up followed by crushing let down to become so pessimistic.

In addition to the expectations set by our wins, a lot of the Yankee “win the Series or else” comes from their budget. But since our run through 2001, look at the number of different teams that won the seies. Look how they won – what their strengths were, and how many people would have picked them to be the winner in August let alone in March. Its clear that even with money and organizational smarts, putting a championship team together is only partially within the control of the team itself.

So I have tried to change my definition of success. Last year, I was prepared to miss the playoffs provided we focused on building a team of players I wanted to root for, especially home grown talent. I was dissappointed when we made a brief pre-trade deadline run and became buyers instead of sellers at the deadline. How would our bullpen and starting rotation look today with Karstens and Ohlendorf still in the organization – either to actually play or as resources to trade? Hindsight is twenty twenty I know but had we really realized we were out of it, we would not have gone for Nady. So in the end, I was doubly disappointed last year – no playoffs and no progress towards a better team for 2009.

This year, I am afraid, is more of the same in many ways. We added three huge contracts stars who will be given zero margin for error. They join the highest paid athlete in the sport – a player already hard to root for and skilled at making it worse. So far, it has worked well, better than I expectred. But I have no idea what will happen in the last two months of the season. That is not surprising – I don’t think any serious fan of any MLB team can be confident what is going to happen to their team.

So I will cheer the wins, really cheer the progress of players who could be the future core of another great team and chalk up the losses to the fact that a great team does it 4 out of 10 time they play. I will curse Girardi for playing Ransom, for resting A-Rod during day gays when he can actually hit ball instead or at night, and cheer loudly when Cano walks.