E-Mail This Article to a Friend A New York state of mind Getting to the bottom of New Englanders' hate for the Yankees BY CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

So what is it about the New York Yankees ball club that stirs such passions in the breasts of Red Sox fans everywhere?

This is too complicated task to explain in the short amount of space we have available here, but suffice it to say that not many rivalries in the wild, wild world of sports are prolific enough that they can spawn a coffee-table book about the two teams’ intertwined relationship (Harvey and Frederic J. Frommer’s Red Sox vs. Yankees: The Great Rivalry).

Frankly speaking, though, a lot of the venom and dislike that Red Sox fans wear so proudly stems from jealousy, pure and simple. Oh, they surely don’t like to hear that, but rightfully or wrongfully, Sox fans harbor anger against the Yankees because the New Yorkers are patently successful and the Red Sox are less so. It may be the fabled curse, it may be lousy personnel decisions, and it may be limitless payrolls, but one franchise has a stunning collection of championship hardware in its trophy case(s), while another can only highlight divisional championships and the occasional pennant over the same period.

Consequently, Bostonians are bitter about the success that the Yankees have accumulated and the lack of same that their own team has celebrated, and how they’ve handled it as polarized groups says a lot about the two fandoms. After all, is it even imaginable that a New York City newspaper would have contemplated putting together a Red Sox Haters’ Guide? I think not. And while New York fans certainly have the capacity to be obnoxious, cocky, and even mean-spirited when it comes to dealing with Boston fans, the comparable malice that Boston fans spew toward their New York counterparts is significantly more hateful and dishonorable.

So we’ve gotten that out of the way: Boston fans don’t like the Yankees primarily because they’ve won too much, and it’s undeniably true that the balance of success has always been heavily tilted to the side of the Yankee-Stadium residents. Over the course of recent generations, the rivalry’s been more along the lines of aspiring placekicker Charlie Brown versus sinister ball-holder Lucy Van Pelt; it’s Boston Bruins (five Stanley Cups) versus the Montreal Canadiens (24); it’s the "Average Joes" versus "The Bachelors" for the hand of the fair maiden.

But there are some legitimate gripes that one can indeed utilize to rationally engender enmity towards the New York Yankees. For many, it’s a personal thing: minor annoyances about certain players and staffers, or maybe it’s just certain characteristics or moments in history that tend to get Sox aficionados riled up. Perhaps it’s the apparent bad luck that trails the home team, while all the breaks continually seem to fall the visitors’ way; other times it’s just the way Yankee fans brag and bluster about their team when in fact New York baseball fans are among the most spoiled and pampered of any group of fanaticos outside of Real Madrid.

Either way, there are a lot of things that stick in Sox fans’ collective craw, and if this ain’t the forum to point them out, what the heck is?

• How is it that throughout the Yankees’ history, they have always had some of the superstars of the game playing for them? In the first half-century that elapsed between the time New York won its very first world championship, in 1923, through 1973, the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown enshrined from that era such revered names as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bill Dickey, Joe DiMaggio, Phil Rizzuto, Mickey Mantle, Tony Lazzeri, Earl Combs, Lefty Gomez, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Waite Hoyt, and Red Ruffing. In all, 14 Hall-of-Famers played for the team during that period. The Red Sox? Three — Bobby Doerr, Joe Cronin, and Ted Williams. How about retired numbers? Twenty-three Pinstripers have been so honored. Yet if you look up at the façade under the giant BUDWEISER sign on the right-field grandstand at Fenway, you’ll see all five of Boston’s: Doerr (1), Cronin (4), Yaz (8), Williams (9), and Pudge Fisk (27). And let’s not even talk about the championship discrepancy (well, since you asked, it is 26-0 since 1923). Sure, this may be an example of sour grapes, but no other major-league team is even close in any of these categories, so Bostonians are in good company.

• A lot of fans grow up as baseball fans loving a particular team, but almost as many develop an early dislike for a franchise. For many New Englanders and a special contingent of New Yorkers, that has been inbred at an early age, and it was fairly easy to see why. Putting aside the Yankees franchise’s history of winning, let’s take the way they always turned up their collective noses at their crosstown rivals, whether it was the New York Giants, the Brooklyn Dodgers, or, since 1962, the Queens–based New York Mets. No baseball fan of any of these three teams could ever root for the Yankees, too — that would be a sacrilege of the highest order. And if you didn’t develop a loathing for the Bronx Bombers simply because they were an intrastate rival, it was certainly easy to detest them based on their broadcasting teams on radio and TV. Long before he was the genial host of This Week in Baseball, radio guy Mel Allen for 25 years was the homiest of homers, making up excuses for the Yankees while oftentimes denigrating the "lucky" opponent’s good fortune. Allen was soon followed by the likes of former Yank shortstop Phil Rizzuto, who not only had the audacity to copy the legendary Harry Caray’s trademark "Holy Cow" call, but also was extremely biased in his supposed disinterested call of Yankee broadcasts. Through the years, a steady stream of similarly pro-Yankee rooters has come and gone through the booths, and these days there are few more annoying voices to Red Sox fans than the New Yorkers’ AM radio team, John Sterling and Charley Steiner. While Sterling’s velvety-smooth baritone starkly contrasts with the high-pitched nasal tone of the Sox esteemed play-by-play voice, Joe Castiglione, it is Sterling’s patented calls that Sox fans are sick of hearing ad infinitum: "It is high, it is far, it is gone!," and "Tha-a-a-a-a-a-a Yankees win!" Granted, Boston’s radio and TV teams aren’t exactly neutral either, but they limit their rooting interest to raising (or lowering) their voices at crucial moments during games, rather than editorializing, rationalizing, and over-promoting.

• The fan base: Red Sox fans are certainly not innocent bystanders when it comes to obnoxious behavior, but for anyone who knows a Yankee fan, hearing them moan about the four long years since the team’s last championship makes it sound as if the fan base has been wandering in the wilderness with Moses for the last 40 years. After all, the only Sox fans who would likely have any recollection of what it is even like to witness a baseball championship in Boston would likely be at least 96 years old. Anyone younger is still waiting.