The Sad State of the ABTY Fan

Yankees/Red Sox.

They've never played any good games over the years.

Bucky who?

Big Papi -- who's he?

Pedro and Zimmer? Nah.

DiMaggio...Ted Williams...Tommy Henrich...Johnny Pesky...

Thurman and Pudge and Spaceman and Nettles and Righetti and Boggs and Damon and Manny and all the way back to the Royal Rooters and "Nuf Ced" McGreevy and some guy named Ruth. Baby Ruth.

So, yeah, it's not like tonight's one-game playoff at Fenway Park will have any juice to it.

At least, not if you pay attention to the Mets "fans."

Oh, I don't mean the good ones, of course. The good ones talk crap to you and laugh with you and are fair with you. They realize there's more to life than hating the Yankees, which is sadly the priority of the other fans.

You know the ones. They're the ones who focus as much on loathing other teams as they do loving their own.

That's why I've long called those fans "ABTY" fans, meaning the Mets to them are Anybody But The Yankees.

They didn't know what to do when the Dodgers and Giants left so they elected to go with Anybody But The Yankees. Now that's been passed down to younger generations!

Fair enough but when taken to extremes isn't it sort of weird?

Oh, you can take a look around the interwebs for yourself and you'll find them. I don't even need to provide a link.

And should Mets fans hate the Yankees? Sure! It goes both ways. Sadly, I don't really care a lot about the Mets anymore (and was sort of liking these last couple of teams because de Grom and Alonso are impossible to dislike). But, as Rick Zolzer said to me on his (sort of our) radio show recently: "Nobody hates the Mets. People hate Mets fans."

I don't want that to be true.

Look, have at it. I won't be rooting for the Red Sox if they win tonight and I'll go online with my tail firmly between my legs to congratulate them if that's the case. And I can promise you I'm fairly certain there isn't a God* after the number of times the Patriots/Tom Brady has won.

*It's a joke. Sports has taught us that the sun does indeed come up the next day.

But I know people -- not gonna name names -- who would root for the evilest people ever (no, seriously, the evilest) against the Yankees and I can assure you they're not kidding.

Isn't that sort of a whacked priority?

Yeah, I think so also.

I get it. There are subsections of fans who will do a happy dance tonight regardless of who loses. The Red Sox have been at the top of the gold standard of baseball in the 21st Century. The Giants certainly deserve that respect also. The Yankees have been a constant presence, of course, but haven't had that level of success in this century.

Then again, save for 1965-1975 and 1982-1994 (give or take), the Yankees have been one of the most dominant sports franchises, dating back to 1921.

So I can understand people who hate them. Winning breeds contempt. It's easy to get sick of the Yankees and just as easy to be sick of Yankees/Red Sox. I can't stand the late-night national games with the two teams so I totally get it.

But why not watch a movie tonight instead? Or take a walk. Or visit friends.

There are other suggestions but this remains a family outlet.

There are myriad other ways to spend the night without obsessing over the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox via an abundance of foolish social media statements.

How about just hoping for the best? How about hoping for a good game? 

How about just saying nothing?

I realize it should all be in good fun and it is with so many others.

But, as I've been told by others, this is basically all that they have.

Sad.