Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Those Damn Yankees

October, routinely, is the most hateful month of the year for me. From the earliest part of the month to around Halloween (how ironic) I experience some of the most pure hatred I can muster. Who, you say, could be the recipient of my ire? No one else fits the bill but those dreaded New York Yankees. Satan's brood.

From my earliest memories of childhood to today, the Yankees have ellicited such animus from me that I often wonder why it is so strong. True, the Dodgers are my favorite team, I bleed Dodger blue, but this kind of venom is pretty much reserved for those who have done things unseemly and vile. I can only tell you that my villification of them is quite irrational. I can't seem to find one thing that they have done over and over that makes me despise them so. Everything except....win. And even so, they went through a period of wretchedness that defies that explanation. They haven't won coming on four years, even though they have been there. No, it must be something else. Something...within me.

Yes, the Yankees have nothing to do with it, really. It's what they do tome. They remind me of something deeply insufficient about myself. The part of myself that finds nothing but fault with me. The part of me that has yet to get that which I deem mine. The part of me that has lost and will always lose, no matter what the perception is. The part that believes in my own inadequacy. There is a perfection to the Yankees. They have attained the world. They are on top of it. The rest of us pleebs are down here. Money is certainly a major issue, but it's more about power. It's more about the real aspect that kills me...New York itself.

No matter how hard I try, I will never be a New Yorker. Even though I have lived in New York and my father's family is from there. To be a New Yorker is a state of mind. My father has it. My uncle has it. I don't got it. It's a form of street spirituality that respects guts and moxy, along with brains and brawn. To be a New Yorker means your particular form of humanity costs more, is worth more, than the regular flock of sheep. It is the heighth of civic arrogance and they let you know it. it is about the world. Making one's way in it and communicating to you from the perch of its primacy. And it is earned.

But, the truth is, I know that I have not earned that right. I haven't joined that club, or been admitted. New Yorkers, or rather Yankee fans, inhabit this illustrious place. Met fans simply take the double R. Dodger fans take the 101. Angels fans, the 405. This is an outgrowth of arriving in the world. It is this same chutzpah that shocks and awes Hollywood agents into the very real and correct belief that New York actors are worth more than others. They are. It's just the shakes of being toughened up by the Darwinian process of failing in the Apple.

I know that loss. I tried it for five minutes over twenty five years ago and wasn't made of that kind of skin. I came back to Los Angeles. The only place that has an allure greater than New York, which New Yorker's daren't admit. It's the one place that scares the Yankees, really. There's no there there. That freaks an apple dweller more than the Yankees losing.

So this hatred is quite sublime. It is quite hot. It stems from knowing that I am a second class citizen under the heel of those who have been anointed the great metropolitan nobility of Manhattan. Forget about it.

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