After A-Rod's summer of discontent, Yankees fans deserve boos
Major League Baseball recently announced big news: Overall attendance is on pace for a record in excess of 75 million.
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| A-Rod learned to ignore the unreasonable Yankee fans. (Getty Images) |
Wait a minute. Sorry. Got a word wrong in that sentence.
The Yankees have the worst fans in baseball.
There. Much more accurate.
You know what this is about. It's about the same thing every story on the Yankees has been about all season. This is about Alex Rodriguez.
For months, as his batting average sank and his error tally rose, Yankees fans booed A-Rod. It got to the point where daily game stories out of New York focused on two equally compelling story lines: Yankees vs. Visitors, and Yankee Stadium vs. A-Rod.
And then A-Rod got hot. It started on the last day of August with three hits, bled into Sept. 1 with two home runs, and has continued for two weeks. Yankee Stadium can't get enough of A-Rod now. He's their guy. After Jeter of course. And the steroid-user. And Matsui. A-Rod's fourth, though. And fourth is special.
This is no defense of A-Rod. He's not a pitiful creature. He's a grown man with a great life and an enormous salary, so he'll get no tears because he got booed.
Instead, let's laugh at Yankees fans.
Look, Yankees fans, if you've really hated A-Rod for most of this summer, then hate him. Hate him for making more money per game ($158,532) than most people make in a year. Hate him for questioning Derek Jeter's leadership in that infamous Esquire interview of 2001. Hate him for being better looking than you, for having a prettier wife than you, for taking off his shirt this summer in Central Park.
But to hate him for the sin of struggling on the baseball field? That's dumb -- and more than dumb, it's counter-productive.
And that, Yankees fans, is why you're the worst fans in baseball.
