This isn’t about who we like. We know who we like. This is about everyone else, the vast majority of the country that won’t have a horse in the October race.
This is about “root-ability.”
We don’t really care about that around here, right? We put the “I” in “parochial.” You know that famous cartoon, of the New Yorker’s view of the world? It’s so funny because it’s so true. We had as much interest in the Giants-Rangers World Series as we do in English cricket scores. We watch New York-free Super Bowls for the betting boxes. We watch New York-free NBA Finals to see LeBron James gag. We watch the NHL Finals … well, if the cable box is stuck.
Most people who watch things like the baseball playoffs, though, aren’t tied to geography and history. They like nice stories. They like feisty upstarts. They like improbable endings. And, almost universally, they hate the Yankees.
Unless crazy stuff happens over the next month, we already know who the eight playoff contenders are going to be, so let’s take a step inside a vacuum, inside an impartial fan’s brain, and rank their root-ability, from least root-able to most:
8. Yankees: Look, take it as a compliment. When you lead the world in haters, it’s because you lead the world in championships, and who wouldn’t make that trade? Nobody hates the Padres or the Mariners. You don’t think the Mets would mind being even a little bit hate-able again? Unless you bleed pinstripes, it is physically, emotionally and mathematically impossible to root for a $200 million payroll. It just is.
7. Red Sox: Think of them as Yankees Lite.
The Sox titles of 2004 and ’07 caused more baby booms than the Blackout of ’65, only in this case what was birthed were instant-Sox fans who couldn’t tell the difference between Johnny Pesky and Butch Huskey. And let’s be honest: It’s just as hard to root for a $160 million payroll.
6. Braves: When you consider how little the city of Atlanta seemed to appreciate the staggering, uninterrupted 15-year run the Braves had from 1991-2005, it seems a little unfair that they have such a wonderful team again while Pittsburgh, Kansas City and Baltimore suffer. The more empty playoff seats, the firmer their place on this list is.
5. Rangers: Just what we need: another reason for Dallas-Fort Worth to feel smug and swaggerish. The Metroplex did us all a solid by snuffing the Heat in June. Accept the nation’s thanks and move along.
4. Phillies: They are an impossible team to hate, because they play the game the way you wish your team would play the game, no matter who your team is, and that’s the only reason they aren’t swimming with the Yanks and the Sox. Still, what they say about familiarity is true.
3. Diamondbacks: It’s a wonderful worst-to-first tale, but the fact is many still are bitter that they were a playoff team in their second year of existence and a champion in their fourth. Where is the pain? Where is the suffering?
2. Tigers: Because, let’s face it, who needs a bigger shot in the arm than Michigan? And because it never stops being funny that Jim Leyland thinks we don’t see him sneaking smokes in the dugout stairwell.
1. Brewers: For one thing, Milwaukee is one of the seriously underrated fun cities in the country. For another, Nyger Morgan might get thrown at in every World Series plate appearance. And it’s been 54 years since Richie Cunningham’s hometown ruled the baseball roost. It’s time.
WHACK BACK AT VAC
Richard Siegelman: The only worse pitcher than A.J. Burnett is the kid who came to New York/New Jersey as part of the MetLife stadium deal — “Good ol’ Charlie Brown.”
VAC: Let’s just hope neither of the landlords of that stadium are desperate enough to pick up C. Brown as a placekicker.
Tom Retmanski: I think you should be paying more attention to local sporting events on TV rather than watching “Mad Men.” David Cone and Paul O’Neill were born to be in the broadcast booth? Have you really listened to these guys? I long for the old days when there were just two guys in the booth who didn’t test your patience with non-stop chatter.
VAC: Let’s say we just keep Don Draper out of this, OK?
Brendan Roberts: My old man, a curmudgeon in every sense of the word, always said, “I could have been worse. I could have raised you a Jets/Mets fan.”
VAC: My old man was a Giants/Yankees fan. I somehow grew up Jets/Mets. I truly believe sometimes he wished I’d have rather run away and joined a cult.
Joe Murray: Dodgers fans are refusing to go to games trying to force Frank McCourt into selling. I watched the Padres game Wednesday afternoon, there were about 8,000 people in the park counting both teams. Mets fans should do the same. Watch on TV if you’re a masochist.
VAC: As depressing as an empty September ballpark is, that really is the only way fans can send a message.
VAC’S WHACKS
* This friends-and-family business model the Wilpons are adopting to replace David Einhorn’s zillions: How would that formula turn out for T-Mobile? Or, as some have noted, the clients of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, for that matter?
* Actually, charging fans to watch the fourth week of NFL exhibition games sounds like something Madoff would have dreamed up in his sinister fraud laboratory.
* My friend Pete Abraham of the Boston Globe tweeted this the other day, and I think it’s a splendid point: Robinson Cano and Dustin Pedroia are so relentlessly good that if the Yankees and Red Sox decided to trade one for the other, it would be hard for either side to complain about getting jobbed in the deal.
* If Joe Girardi is enjoying his job as much as he swears he is, why does he look like one of those time-lapse photo sequences you always see of a president starting from Inauguration Day until the day he leaves office?