I am not lover of the New York Yankees. I don’t hate them or anything -- baseball is way too benign a human pursuit for me to muster hatred for any team -- but they’re not a team I’m likely to support in most contexts.
Part of this is because of my natural disinclination to throw my support behind powerful and successful people or institutions without a really good reason. The Yankees are baseball’s most successful franchise by a long shot, they know it, and they don’t need or want my support. I respect their success and there’s something I respect about that “we don’t care what you think” mentality, so I think we’re all OK with this arrangement. It’s an arrangement I think most non-Yankees fans have with that franchise. No one really bandwagons with the Yankees.
The 2017 Yankees have tested that stance far harder than any other Yankees team I can recall. They’re, for the most part, a super likable team. Aaron Judge, Didi Gregorius and young players like Aaron Hicks, Luis Severino and Greg Bird are a ton of fun to watch. CC Sabathia is authoring a pretty enjoyable third act to his career. There are far fewer big name, high-priced free agents on this club than on Yankees clubs past, and the ones who are there aren’t super critical to the team’s success. There’s just a lot more to like about this Yankees club than almost any other Yankees club. Indeed, it may be the most likable Yankees team in my lifetime.
But are they the most lovable team left standing in the playoffs? That’s the idea that Bill Madden of the Daily News advances today:
Anyone else buying that?
We have to rule the Cubs out, right? Nothing personal against them, but the defending champs are usually, by definition, not the most lovable team left. The only people hoping they repeat are Cubs fans. Everyone else without a direct rooting interest wants to see new blood, don’t they? I tend to think so anyway, but maybe I’m wrong about that.
The Dodgers are a tough choice because, while they too have a lot of good home grown talent, they are also a historically excellent franchise, even if they haven’t won a World Series in 29 years, limiting the bandwagoning. They are also perceived as a bought-and-paid for team in much the same way the Yankees traditionally have been. They likewise have a few players that a lot of people just sort of don’t like in Yasiel Puig, Chase Utley and some turgid-paced relievers people don’t tend to enjoy. Personally speaking there are a lot more Dodgers players I like and enjoy than not, but I don’t presume that most baseball fans will come around to that notion.
That leaves the Astros. This particular club can’t be considered underdogs given that they won 101 games, but they are still pretty new to this whole winning thing. They lost 111 games just four years ago. Some of their most important players -- Jose Altuve, Dallas Keuchel and Brad Peacock -- were on that team, so there is definitely some uplifting narrative drama there not unlike what we saw with the 2015-16 Cubs. They don’t strike out much which is refreshing in this age, aesthetically speaking. If you’re into larger storylines you can bring in Hurricane Harvey stuff to color the whole Houston experience, even if I’m usually not a fan of mixing up civic strife and professional sports success to create uplifting storylines.
I dunno. Maybe it’s dumb to try to cast any assemblage of professional athletes under a corporate banner as “lovable.” They’re entertainers whose skills and showmanship we can appreciate and enjoy without having to bring love into it, aren’t they?
But if we are going to ascribe “lovability” to these guys, though . . . who ya got?
