The Mabley Archive: A field of dreams hating the Yankees

In 1988, when longtime Glenview resident Jack Mabley brought his column to the Daily Herald, he made a couple of requests: 1. Let him keep his ugly, old green chair. 2. Launch an edition for his hometown. He kept the chair. And now, more than a decade after his passing in 2006, his second request has been granted. This column is from Feb. 17, 1997.

Ah, there's good news today. The New York Yankees are in trouble, big trouble. This time the taxpayers aren't going to bail them out.

I am a Yankee hater from way back. I hate the Yankees even more than I hate the Michigan fight song or the organ at the United Center.

One of the joys of sports is the luxury of hating something. It is an escape valve for emotions that we direct at inanimate objects and symbols, and not at people. It doesn't hurt anybody, and it lets us blow off steam.

Maybe hate is too strong a word. My feeling about the Yankees might be more accurately called intense dislike, or loathing, or repugnance, or detestation, or abomination. (Envy? Don't mention it.)

Why these strong negative feelings? Because the Yankees always won. Because they swaggered. Because New York writers regarded anything west of the Hudson as cow town. Because the Yankees came to Comiskey Park and humiliated our White Sox year after year. Because we didn't have Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig or Phil Rizzuto or Mickey Mantle.

There's an upside. We don't have George Steinbrenner, the Yankee owner and one of the most unlikeable men in baseball. (We have Jerry Reinsdorf, but that's another story.)

Yankee Stadium is falling down, and the baseball team is going to have to find a new home.

Could I hate the Newark Yankees, or the Hoboken Yankees? I doubt it.

I used to hate Notre Dame football because they won so much. Now Notre Dame loses just like other mortals. Now I admire Notre Dame for its high standards and won-lost record.

Maybe we Yankee-haters, which means all real White Sox fans, can learn not to hate the Hackensack Yankees. Just another baseball team.

A concrete-encased steel beam fell from the roof into seat 7, Sec. 22, last week. Fortunately the seat was unoccupied.

Yankee Stadium is in a grungy section of the Bronx.

Steinbrenner hates the location.

The big money in baseball today is in the luxury boxes and the corporate ticket buyers. Steinbrenner detests subjecting his bankers and business honchos and promoters and other moneyed classes to enduring this trip to ... ugh, the Bronx, with all those poor people staring at them.

Steinbrenner wants his pal, Rudolph Giuliani, mayor of New York, to build a luxury stadium on the west side of the city. The cost would be between one and two bilLion dollars.

Steinbrenner's money? No. Guiliani's money? No. Taxpayers' money? You bet. Taxpayers who wouldn't be able to afford tickets to the luxury stadium.

What's the alternative? Probably New Jersey, which has the space and may have the suckers willing to subsidize the ballpark.

Or they could move completely out of the New York area. The Giants moved. The Dodgers moved. Baseball owners follow the money.

Already there is enormous resistance in New York to again subsidize Steinbrenner.

How about Des Moines? No, those Iowans are too smart. Memphis? Maybe. Jacksonville, Fla.? Could be.

One complication in all this business is our need to find another sports organization to hate, or dislike, or whatever.

We need this emotional outlet. The Green Bay Packers were a pretty good target until they lost the Super Bowl this year.

Every other team in sports trades players so much they're hard to target.

Maybe we should settle for loving the Bulls, who are soon to join the ranks of lovable losers.