“Yankees are number1 ! Yankees are number 1! Wooo! Suck it Red Sux!”
Oh, wait, that wasn’t the point of the story. The point of the story was that this is a “curious phenomenon.” And a troubling one too! If not, the Times wouldn’t have consulted “criminologists, sports marketing analysts, and consumer psychologists.” Could this be . . . .a disturbing trend?
Must be, because one of the “experts” in the article blames Jay Z, who -- you may or may not realize -- occasionally wears a Yankees cap. Even gives the trend a name: “The Jay Z Effect.” I think anyone who lived through the awful “big ass clocks around the neck” crime spree from 1989 and the and The Great Hammer Pants Heist from 1992* knows how serious this is.
Or, you know, maybe this is just a b.s. trend piece that, at the most, unwittingly identifies a correlation between criminals being on the young side and youth culture wearing a lot of sports gear these days, with the Yankees just so happening to be the most popular team in the city.
OK, that’s being cynical. This is the Paper of Record, so there must be something to this. But maybe it’s not about the Yankees. Maybe the real disturbing trend here is the increasing unpopularity of skiing, based on the clear fact that there are far fewer ski mask-wearing crooks today then their used to be.
And you know, if they’re going to go with skiing, if they tried hard, they could even throw in a global warming angle too . . .
*Props to Jay Destro for the Hammer Pants line. He’s dope on the floor and magic on the mic.
