Enemy Perspective

Life isn’t easy.

You work your ass off. Your bills are too high. Your credit card company has you on speed dial. Your bank apparently makes up new fees just for you. You haven’t gotten laid in four weeks, but you’ve been laid off twice in four years. Your car is a homing beacon for meter maids.

And to top it off, you live in the city that’s home to your baseball team’s rival.

Oh wait, that’s my life.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Boston. It’s way better than New York. Boston has big-city culture with a small town feel. New York is… well, New York.

So my baseball team plays about three hundred miles to the southwest, and I spend my days living behind enemy lines. I’d say it only matters during the season, but when it comes to baseball, there’s no such thing as an off-season in Boston.

Sure, there are worse things I could be than a yanks fan. In fact, in Boston, the “most hated people” list looks something like this:

1. Sex offenders
2. Murderers
3. Yankee fans
4. Terrorists
5. Common criminals

I wish I was kidding. But actual blood relatives of Osama bin Laden live here. And no one really seems to mind.

Yankee fans? We’re not welcome. Maybe it’s because it is the best rivalry in sport and the tension is infectious, or maybe it’s because Yankees fans rubbed in 86 years of futility just a little too hard. (Guilty!)

When I tell a Bostonian that I’m a Yanks fan, a look crosses their face like someone took a shit in their shoe. I’ve literally had girls in bars turn around and walk away. (I tell myself it’s because I’m a Yanks fan, anyway…)

They don’t take kindly to my folk in these parts. Especially not at Fenway.

It is a cathedral, a living homage to the talent, passion and skill of some of the greatest players every to walk on this planet. In the same way I like Boston more than New York, I like Fenway more than Yankee Stadium, if only slightly. It is more unique, has a little more character. And it’s smaller, which makes it, ironically, more intimidating. Like you packed 38,000 friends into your living room to watch the game in HD.

It may be a cathedral, but the language at Fenway would make a priest’s ears bleed.

I’ve gone to a lot of Yankee games at Fenway, and I think I’ve attended just about all of them clad in some kind of Yankees gear. I’ll do the same when the Yanks come to Boston for the second time after what Joe Torre called “a taste” earlier in the month.

Even though I write for one of the few publications that wouldn’t censor anything I wrote—in fact, David Portnoy, the managing editor, told me, “There’s nothing that can’t be published in Barstool”—I won’t reprint some of the names I’ve been called. (One rhymes with “bunt” and another with “mucking grassnole”)

Of course, I could deserve it. I’m the kind of guy that bought a Rodriguez shirt after the Sox failed to sign him a few years ago, and promptly wore it to the first Yanks game at Fenway.

Amazingly, I’ve never gotten into a fight while at a Yankees game—I’m not stupid enough for that—because I know that it’s possible to cheer for a team without being a complete jackass, something that more than a few sports fans don’t seem to grasp. But I also follow a few simple rules that are essential to surviving the bleachers while wearing Yankees gear:

1. Wear a shirt, not a hat. You wear a hat, you’ll never see it again, and you’ll probably end up in handcuffs if you try to get it back.
2. Don’t look anyone in the eye. Seriously, treat fans in the bleachers like you would a gorilla in the wild. In fact, don’t look at or talk to anyone.
3. When the Yanks do something good, don’t jump up and down. Unless you’re a girl with big jubblies, which I decidedly am not. You can clap and cheer, just don’t overdo it.
4. If you yell at a player, it had better be a Yankee.

I do a lot of that last one. I’m what you could call a high-demand fan. If you put on the Yankee uniform, you had better be good. I do expect to win, and every game. I know it’s not possible, but there isn’t a team top-to-bottom that has more talent on the roster, so I expect to win. And when my team sucks I’m pretty damn vocal about it. (If only my TV could talk.)

You have any idea how frustrating it is to not cheer out loud when your team does well? Let me tell you: it sucks.

But I love the game and my team, so I’m willing to hold back, and risk possible mental abuse and bodily harm to watch my team play, even if it means I’m surrounded by angry gorillas (and I seriously mean that in a “respect” way—it’s your job to make Fenway inhospitable… I just wish it was more about the actual players and not about the fans.). It makes life interesting, and makes me a better fan. I can probably tell you as much about the Sox as you can, and definitely can tell you more about the Yankees, because that’s how I’ll get your respect.

There’s nothing like walking into Fenway with a Yankees jersey on. I’m a little kid at heart, so I love any stadium. But when you do it like that, it’s an adrenaline rush. You’re the enemy. My buddy Tim—a Sox fan—and I went down to New York last year for the September series, three games of Yanks and Sox. The first day, he didn’t wear his Sox stuff. He was unsure of the reception he’d get. I kidded him about it, but I could understand. The next night he wore it, and got some choice words shouted in his direction. “I know how you feel,” he said. Good times.

But it also matters what jersey you have on. I wouldn’t wear a Jeter shirt, even though he’s the player the team counts on the most. Jeter shirts are for chicks. I also don’t want to hear “Jeter sucks” a million times. Damon, also for chicks. I wouldn’t wear a Randy Johnson shirt, because I just don’t like him. Matsui’s on the DL for three months. And I have retired the Rodriguez jersey, because quite frankly, until he does something in the postseason, he doesn’t deserve my praise or my loyalty.

I thought about the Rivera shirt maybe, because the last player who will ever wear #42 is also the best closer of all time. But instead, I’ll be clad in my #23 Mattingly shirt when I climb those steps to the top of the bleachers. I’m gonna go old school. As a Sox fan told me one time I wore it in the bleachers, “If you don’t like Donnie Baseball, you don’t like baseball.”

I guess Sox fans do know a thing or two about the Yankees, after all.