The End Of Yankee Hating

The End of Yankee Hating

On the field at Yankee Stadium on this cool sun-dazzled afternoon, it was hard to imagine that once upon a time almost everybody you knew hated the Yankees.

They were loathed in Brooklyn. The Giant fans despised them. The rest of the United States prayed for their humiliation. Someone at the time wrote, “Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for United States Steel.”

The hatred was expressed in various ways. Fistfights, knifings and shootings were sometimes part of the discussion, which wasn’t simply about geographical loyalty or the frosty arrogance of the Yankee style. In Brooklyn, some of us insisted that it was also a moral debate. In the late ‘40s and through much of the ‘50s, the Yankee management was racist. Or so we thought. Certainly, eight years passed after the arrival of Jackie Robinson in the majors before the Yankees allowed Elston Howard to don their uniform.

We who had Robinson, Campanella and Newcombe on the roster, to name only three African-Americans, thus saw the Yankees for what we thought they were: a team built for suburbanites and members of country clubs. Even if we lost to them with heart-wrenching regularity, we were certain we were their moral superiors.

After the Dodgers and Giants lammed to the West Coast, the Yankees still did not get either allegiance or respect. When Rudy Giuliani first ran for office, some of this old contempt rose again among aging and unforgiving Brooklynites. Giuliani revealed that he spent his early days in Brooklyn as a Yankee fan. This was viewed as a definite sign of potential weirdness. Just the other day, he admitted that one of his earliest memories involved a threat by Dodger fans to hang him from a tree. He was, he says, about five years old at the time. No wonder his family swiftly moved to the suburbs.

But all of that crazy passion seemed as far away yesterday as the Eisenhower Administration. The old hatred of the Yankees seems to be gone.

Who, after all, could hate Willie Randolph, who is a coach now? He’s from Brownsville, not many blocks from the street where Mike Tyson grew up. But even today, he displays the control and restraint that marked his days on the playing field. His baseball intelligence will someday make him a manager. But I’m sure there’s another reason why Joe Torre wants him on the club: in a thousand small ways, day by day, and by example, Willie Randolph teaches the young athletes about becoming men. Not just stars. Not just wealthy celebrities. Men.

And watching the young men yesterday, who in their most bitter hours could hate such ballplayers? There was Bernie Williams in the batter’s cage, making baseballs soar into the cloudless sky, looking at once intense and effortless. He looks exactly the way a ballplayer should look if he listens to Sabicas play guitar (as Williams does): rhythmic, lyrical, explosive.

Who would waste six seconds on hating Tino Martinez, who slashed balls around the grass, and then told a cluster of reporters, his voice modest, when asked what the Yankees have to do: “Just go out there and try to find a way to win four games.”

And who wouldn’t want a son to be like Derek Jeter, no matter what uniform he wears? With his combination of fielding and hitting, he’s the best shortstop I’ve ever seen in New York. He’s a talker and a charmer, and women love him while men admire him. God bless his days, and nights.

They’re just a few of the reasons why hating the Yankees is now an old movie, a yawn and bore. Paul O’Neill is another reason, and he’s starting to hit again, and you hope that at some point in this series, we’ll see him smile again. Andy Pettite is a reason, as is El Duque, and Mariano Rivera. I love looking at Luis Sojo, too, because he has the only face on an active ballplayer that looks older than mine.

I don’t know when the change came. The Yankees of Reggie Jackson started the great shift in loyalties; they behaved more like Dodgers than Yankees. But among the reasons for the shift from Mets to Yankees was Don Mattingly. Even Met fans recognized him as a great player, one of the purest hitters since Stan Musial. But his body betrayed him, and he played almost six seasons with a bad back. The team never quite got there, and yet he never dogged it. His career was like the lives of most New Yorkers; you try your very best, and usually come up short.

The change happened somehow in the mid-1990s. The Yankees started bringing in what my friend Mike Lupica calls “the quiet guys”. Management didn’t dictate the permanent shift in the style, from swagger to quiet professionalism, but it happened. Joe Torre was a perfect manager for such an assembly of gifted young men.

At the same time, the greatest immigration wave in a century was moving through New York. The new arrivals from the Caribbean and Mexico, Asia and Russia, cared nothing for the antagonisms of fifty years ago. They never heard of Mickey Owen or Tommy Henrich. They didn’t care about Lopat and Page, Raschi or even Righetti. They were here now. They put on the Yankee caps as if they were citizenship papers. New York has given them more victories than they could ever have had in the Old Country. New York gave them jobs, places to live, schools where their children could learn to read and write and maybe even go to college. So they followed a team that’s a winner because they were winners, too, some of the time. As their children surely would be winners, here in America, which is to say, here in New York.

So the games will now begin, and there’s a euphoria in the town that some of us have not seen since we were young. I went the other night to the Yankee souvenir store on 42d Street, and it was jammed. Thirty-one people were on line at the cash register: men and women of all colors and ethnicities, speaking English and Spanish and Korean and some languages I could not recognize. You heard laughter, and saw smiles, and picked out common nouns: Bernie. Jeter. Tino. Pettite. It’s time to play ball.


	The End of Yankee Hating On the field at Yankee Stadium on this cool sun-dazzled afternoon, it was hard to imagine that once upon a time almost everybody you knew hated the Yankees. They were loathed in Brooklyn. The Giant fans despised them. The rest of the United States prayed for their humiliation. Someone at the time wrote, “Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for United States Steel.” The hatred was expressed in various ways. Fistfights, knifings and shootings were sometimes part of the discussion, which wasn’t simply about geographical loyalty or the frosty arrogance of the Yankee style. In Brooklyn, some of us insisted that it was also a moral debate. In the late ‘40s and through much of the ‘50s, the Yankee management was racist. Or so we thought. Certainly, eight years passed after the arrival of Jackie Robinson in the majors before the Yankees allowed Elston Howard to don their uniform. We who had Robinson, Campanella and Newcombe on the roster, to name only three African-Americans, thus saw the Yankees for what we thought they were: a team built for suburbanites and members of country clubs. Even if we lost to them with heart-wrenching regularity, we were certain we were their moral superiors. After the Dodgers and Giants lammed to the West Coast, the Yankees still did not get either allegiance or respect. When Rudy Giuliani first ran for office, some of this old contempt rose again among aging and unforgiving Brooklynites. Giuliani revealed that he spent his early days in Brooklyn as a Yankee fan. This was viewed as a definite sign of potential weirdness. Just the other day, he admitted that one of his earliest memories involved a threat by Dodger fans to hang him from a tree. He was, he says, about five years old at the time. No wonder his family swiftly moved to the suburbs. But all of that crazy passion seemed as far away yesterday as the Eisenhower Administration. The old hatred of the Yankees seems to be gone. Who, after all, could hate Willie Randolph, who is a coach now? He’s from Brownsville, not many blocks from the street where Mike Tyson grew up. But even today, he displays the control and restraint that marked his days on the playing field. His baseball intelligence will someday make him a manager. But I’m sure there’s another reason why Joe Torre wants him on the club: in a thousand small ways, day by day, and by example, Willie Randolph teaches the young athletes about becoming men. Not just stars. Not just wealthy celebrities. Men. And watching the young men yesterday, who in their most bitter hours could hate such ballplayers? There was Bernie Williams in the batter’s cage, making baseballs soar into the cloudless sky, looking at once intense and effortless. He looks exactly the way a ballplayer should look if he listens to Sabicas play guitar (as Williams does): rhythmic, lyrical, explosive. Who would waste six seconds on hating Tino Martinez, who slashed balls around the grass, and then told a cluster of reporters, his voice modest, when asked what the Yankees have to do: “Just go out there and try to find a way to win four games.” And who wouldn’t want a son to be like Derek Jeter, no matter what uniform he wears? With his combination of fielding and hitting, he’s the best shortstop I’ve ever seen in New York. He’s a talker and a charmer, and women love him while men admire him. God bless his days, and nights. They’re just a few of the reasons why hating the Yankees is now an old movie, a yawn and bore. Paul O’Neill is another reason, and he’s starting to hit again, and you hope that at some point in this series, we’ll see him smile again. Andy Pettite is a reason, as is El Duque, and Mariano Rivera. I love looking at Luis Sojo, too, because he has the only face on an active ballplayer that looks older than mine. I don’t know when the change came. The Yankees of Reggie Jackson started the great shift in loyalties; they behaved more like Dodgers than Yankees. But among the reasons for the shift from Mets to Yankees was Don Mattingly. Even Met fans recognized him as a great player, one of the purest hitters since Stan Musial. But his body betrayed him, and he played almost six seasons with a bad back. The team never quite got there, and yet he never dogged it. His career was like the lives of most New Yorkers; you try your very best, and usually come up short. The change happened somehow in the mid-1990s. The Yankees started bringing in what my friend Mike Lupica calls “the quiet guys”. Management didn’t dictate the permanent shift in the style, from swagger to quiet professionalism, but it happened. Joe Torre was a perfect manager for such an assembly of gifted young men. At the same time, the greatest immigration wave in a century was moving through New York. The new arrivals from the Caribbean and Mexico, Asia and Russia, cared nothing for the antagonisms of fifty years ago. They never heard of Mickey Owen or Tommy Henrich. They didn’t care about Lopat and Page, Raschi or even Righetti. They were here now. They put on the Yankee caps as if they were citizenship papers. New York has given them more victories than they could ever have had in the Old Country. New York gave them jobs, places to live, schools where their children could learn to read and write and maybe even go to college. So they followed a team that’s a winner because they were winners, too, some of the time. As their children surely would be winners, here in America, which is to say, here in New York. So the games will now begin, and there’s a euphoria in the town that some of us have not seen since we were young. I went the other night to the Yankee souvenir store on 42d Street, and it was jammed. Thirty-one people were on line at the cash register: men and women of all colors and ethnicities, speaking English and Spanish and Korean and some languages I could not recognize. You heard laughter, and saw smiles, and picked out common nouns: Bernie. Jeter. Tino. Pettite. It’s time to play ball.