And so are you, YF, and so are you, attackgerbil, and so are you, kreug, and so are you, John-YF, and so are you, sam-YF, and so is every Yanks fan in the world. From Mike Lupica’s best article ever, titled “The New York Yankees have the best fans of any team in the world, not just MLB”:
And it occurs to me, and not for the first time:
There aren’t fans better than this anywhere in the world. This isn’t about whether or not you love the Yankees. This is about Yankee fans.
There are other baseball fans in other cities, of course, Mets fans in this one. There are fans who come out strong for teams who haven’t won the way the Yankees won, who don’t make the playoffs just about every year the way the Yankees have since Joe Torre first came to town 13 years ago and the winning came back to the Yankees and the Bronx.
But no fans have ever supported a baseball team, the most famous team in this world, the way Yankee fans support theirs.
This is so f*cking true. I’m sorry I curse when I get emotional. We’re just f*cking rock stars. All of us. Lupica’s tone is just right here. Think it over for a while. It’s so obvious: Yankee fans are the best. As Lupica writes, we’re the best fans of any sport, not just professional baseball. Think about how profound that statement is.
It means we’re better than NFL fans! We are better than soccer fans during the World Cup!!! We are better than a little league team’s loyal fans and those people root because they actually care for and love the players!
You know sometimes I have my doubts about myself. I’ll look in the mirror and say, Nick, you can be better. You didn’t help that elderly person across the street last week. You should eat more organic food. You should have showered this morning. The commute to work was painful for your fellow passengers. You haven’t done anything of significance in your life. What are you waiting for?
And then I realize I’m part of the greatest group of people in the world: The New York Yankee Universe of People Who Root for the New York Yankees.
h/t Baseball Think Factory
Joe Esposito, what are we?
28 replies on “Lupica: You, Nick-YF, are the best.”
That article highlights exactly why Yankees fans are NOT the greatest fans in the world.
The arrogance to assume that there is no one else who can possibly be as “good” a fan as a Yankee fan, and the cockiness to assume that anyone else needs to hear about how great they are.
As if there were some competition for fan-dom excellence. Mr. Lupica you’ve won the competition. Too bad it was a talent show with only one entrant.
And yes, I can’t stand it when the Red Sox fans show this side of themselves. It brings out the ugly.
-C
That article is like masturbation.
For the record, Mike Lupica is not an admitted Yanks fan. That fact makes this article all the more powerful.
Masturbation, Atheose? This is more satisfying.
What a stupid article, Mike Lupica. Nobody is arguing that the Yankees have great fans. They also haven’t had a losing record since the early 1990s and have a lineup loaded with stars. You really don’t think that these factors influence the fan base to come out to the ballpark? Data show that they do; it’s easy to be a fan when the team has exciting players and is winning. Much easier, in fact. I don’t think that makes a fan base “the best in the world,” it just makes them. . . well, like every other fan base on the planet. It’s just that no other team in sports has had the uninterrupted success in the kind of market that the Yankees have had.
(Also, Mr. Lupica, if Yankees fans are soooo much better than everyone else, how are you going to explain the empty seats behind home plate for so much of the season? High ticket prices? Sure, but the greatest fans in the world shouldn’t care about that. Money can’t keep them from cheering on their beloved team.)
“It’s just that no other team in sports has had the uninterrupted success in the kind of market that the Yankees have had.”
The cause does not make the effect any less real.
We are the best.
I knew I was the best at something, just wasnt sure what it was…now I know!
If its printed in the Daily News in must be true.
Look, its time to embrace the stereotype. Yankee fans are the greatest, most loyal, and loudest fans in the world. The rumors that that male Yankee fans are the most well endowed and that our lady Yankee fans are, well, also the most well endowed in their ability to feed children, are true. NY, NY is the greatest city in the world, the biggest skyline. If it is good for something to be big it is bigger and better in NY.
As a wiseman (probably from NY, where the wisest live) once said, “Don’t hate the messenger cause he speaks the truth”. Mike Lupica is that messenger. And the truth hurts, doesn’t it?
I’m convinced that Lupica’s article was dripping with sarcasm the entire time. That, or he was held at gunpoint by a time-traveling George Steinbrenner from the 1970s.
He’s a died-in-the-wool Mets fan. He HATES the Yankees.
loopy finally got one right…. ;)
“They have done this on either side of 161st St. They showed up 4 million strong across the street and they were just as strong this season, even if the numbers dropped in the new place.
— Just as strong but less numerable.– Yankee fans do more with less, Japanese manufacturing takes note, story in the business section.
“There are other baseball fans in other cities, of course, Mets fans in this one. If you live in NYC, you haveta be an YF or an MF. SF and his ilk just got served papers by Marshall Mike.
I read this article the other day and thought to myself…yes, a more accurate article may never have existed than this factual, objective piece of journalistic gold. I mean, everyone already knows this, right???
:)
P.S. under 4 hours…I’m taking a half day from work. LET’S GO YANKEES!!!!
Krueg,
Is that a name change? Is it wise in the middle of a post-season?
http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/NYY/attend.shtml
Offered without comment.
No, wait, I think I DO have a comment. Seems like there is a direct correlation between on-field success and how “great” and dedicated the fans are. 1984-1997 these great fans had a lot better things to do with their time, eh?
Regardless, and understanding this is all in jest, this is a funny f*cking post, great stuff Nick!!!
yes Joe…my name has officially changed. I feel good about the boys. While negative reinforcement worked WONDERS in the regular season, I’ve noticed that positivity has worked equally as well in the post-season to date. Therefore, the name change.
BREAKING NEWS:
IF we don’t house the Halo’s this week in Anaheim, I MAY HAVE TICKETS FOR GAME 6 IN THE BRONX!!! Updates to follow…
“1984-1997 these great fans had a lot better things to do with their time, eh?”
I blame Rappin’ Ronnie Reagan and the first Bush…notice a spike in Clintons first year.
;)
Parsing those attendance figures further, it looks like the 1996 WS-winning team drew like shit, actually, for a WS-winning team. Maybe Lupica could have written an article about how a certain number of YFs are the greatest in all the universe, while the other few million of them are a bunch of bandwagon-jumpers!!!
;-)
It’s always the way. Of all the crazy Met fans I knew back in 1986, my dad is on of the only ones left.
Of course, he was a Mets fan back in 1961 when they were Amazingly bad.
Jesus, even the second-greatest baseball team of all time drew under 3 million fans.
“the 1996 WS-winning team drew like shit”
If you’ve ever seen the crowd that gathers every time I defecate you’d know that you’ve only made Lupica’s point here SF.
byline: Musical street musicians who play music because people like music play music near game to time inspire writer who takes a train.
–separate–
;-)
;)
:)
Let your words stand without an internet colonoscopy. “Internet Colonoscopy” — Trademark that shift now, yfsf!!! wait.. better get me some google…
They Truly are the greatest fan’s in the world… My favorite quote ever by a Yankees fan,
This was broadcast in NYC, by NBC, on the morning show One of the greatest ‘guy’s ever’ being interviewed by Matt Lauer… When asked on January first of 2005 “what was the best and worst moment of 2004”, He responded the worst moment was “When the Yankees Lost to Red Sox in the World Series.”
“Fan’s so Awesome their enemies will go blind from overexposure to pure awesomeness.”
So Awesome they don’t even know what games their team played…
Sorry Jonathan, but if you watched the entirety of the ’04 post-season it was abundantly clear that the ALCS was indeed the world series. See, being a superior YF I am able to read the intent of a fellow-YF without having to even ask him if that’s what he meant – or even know who he is. Indeed, we communicate through high-pitched squeaks and tongue-clicks.
Click-click-screeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEcccchhhh!-click-gurgle-gurgle-click
Tranlation for non-YFs: I sure hope Teixeira starts hitting again soon. Oh, and did anyone find the HiV-AIDS vaccine I invented last week? I lost it somewhere between scaling Everest and knitting sweaters for the orphans – them being poor unfortunate sox fans and all.
No apology needed… I loved the 2004 post season.
Being a native NYer, who lived in Bean Town for 5 years, and now lives in midtown NYC… The majority of the ‘real NYY’ fans are in the outer 4 boroughs. I wear my Sox Hat EVERY Day, and no one cares… I even wear my old Ramirez Jersey, and I barely get heckled.. Sad.
It’s always the way. Of all the crazy Met fans I knew back in 1986, my dad is on of the only ones left.
Of course, he was a Mets fan back in 1961 when they were Amazingly bad.
Uhh, the Mets’ first season was ’62.
“Offered without comment.”
easy to fill a minor league park with major league fare, eh sf?
;)
No, Nick-YF, you’re not the best — regardless of how we’re defining “fan.” And we may not be talking cause-and-effect, but we are talking correlation, and the evidence I mentioned does suggest to me that Yankees fans are good, but not the best.
I define “fan base quality” as a mix of intensity and dedication and I can think of a dozen college football and college basketball programs which draw more of both from their fan bases. (Best in baseball? You’d have a claim. Best in the world? Not even close!)
A colleague pointed out that Europe takes its soccer teams at least as seriously as we take baseball — doesn’t matter whether they’re winning or losing. Plenty of dedication there.
My point in bringing up all of the winning and the exciting lineup is that these things can exaggerate the quality of a fan base. It appears that Mr. Lupica, in fact, was duped into believing that Yankees fans are much better than they are because every Tom, Dick, and Harry is reacting positively toward what is almost certainly the best team in baseball. Take away A-Rod, Teixeira, and CC and replace them with, say, Adrian Beltre, Fernando Tatis, and Barry Zito, and the Yankees wouldn’t have won the AL East and Lupica wouldn’t have had an article to write.
So, best fans in baseball this season? Sure. Best fans year in, year out, in any sport? Nope.
“Take away A-Rod, Teixeira, and CC and replace them with, say, Adrian Beltre, Fernando Tatis, and Barry Zito, and the Yankees wouldn’t have won the AL East and Lupica wouldn’t have had an article to write.”
Those guys would perform differently with the support of the best fanbase in the world, not just mlb. You are simplifying the dialectical nature of yankee player performance and fan support. The players gain power from us and we, in turn, gain it from them and then they gain it from our newly gained powerful selves. The process is unending. So Zito would turn into CC. Beltre into A-Rod. Fernando Tatis would be Nicky Swisher.
So it’s really a chicken and egg debate, and the fans are the eggs.
or maybe the chickens.
Anyway, here’s a statistical breakdown of Yankee fans’ greatness:
RNLAV: 76.8
VORPISH: 155.8
DTYREV: 88.9
QUYT (Park Adjusted): .989
oFPBA: 17
Obviously, we’re talking historic numbers here. If you adjust for different eras, you have (maybe) Inwood Little League’s 1989 Chemical Bank (Sponsor) Team* fanbase in the discussion. But obviously, my dad’s growing indifference to baseball in recent years should tell you all you need to know about the fanbase’s true connection to the sport.
Hey, I don’t make up the stats. It happens that we’re pretty f*cking great.
*run by the director of the Apostle Funeral Home formerly on Broadway and 215th, right near Baker’s Field. The director, our coach, would come directly from dressing up cadavers to our practices. Best coach ever.