Saturday night, I sat with some friends at Clancy’s Bar on Dodge while the Yankees were putting the finishing touches on a 19-8 rout of the Red Sox in Game Three of the ALCS. My brother was wearing a Sox cap — even though both of us are dyed-in-the-wool Twins fans — and a stranger asked us the $56,000 question:
Are you really a Red Sox fan, or do you just hate the Yankees?
Of course, my brother and I are two of the biggest Twins fans on the planet, so the short answer to that question is “We just hate the Yankees”. This inevitably prompted my best friend Voss to ask “Why”?
Beyond the obvious, like the Yankees being evil and all, I was born hating New York. Yes, they are evil. This is the team that honored a truant with a parade — a kid who, while skipping school to attend a playoff day game in 1996 against Baltimore, interfered with a fly ball, turning an out into a home run. In any civilized sports city, these fans are beaten with sticks. In New York, they get a parade.
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