Rocket

From the “things I never thought I’d do” file: rooting for the Yankees. I grew up hating them. I still hate them. That one team so dominates baseball, and pretty much always has—they have been in 40%, and won over 25%, of all World Series—is an indictment of the major leagues, if not the sport itself. And they beat the Red Sox in almost unspeakably cruel fashion, this year and pretty much every year.

The Marlins are equally hateful, the lucky johnny-come-latelies who somehow ended up at the big dance with Chicago’s girl. So in part I am rooting for them to lose.

But mostly I’m rooting for the Yanks for sentimental reasons: I want Roger Clemens to go out a winner. If not in the literal sense of winning his last game, at least to end one of baseball’s great pitching careers in some way other than in a roomful of petulant losers and unpopped champagne. In my formative teenage years, after Yaz retired, Clemens was baseball to me. I’d like to see him go home with a ring this time, the way he should have in 1986.

This it, though: last one. After this year, no more champions from NYC until everybody else has a chance to catch up.

Filed under: culture/sports