When I moved from San Francisco to New York three years ago, I knew what I was getting into. I spent my childhood rooting for the SF Giants and focused primarily on the National League, but my father, a longtime Oriole fan, always told me to hate the Yankees and their obnoxious fans. 
I took his words to heart, but without a directly negative fan experience to relate to I never truly “hated” them. Sure, I envied their dominance in the late 1990s, but it never really encroached on anything the Giants were doing; we had the damn Angels to piss on for that. Being born and raised in San Francisco for my entire life had sheltered me enough from the “East Coast Fan” that, to that point, I honestly didn’t really care about the Yankees or anyone in New York. (I even rooted for the Yankees in the 2001 World Series against the Diamondbacks.) Sure the Mets had ended a very successful Giants season prematurely in 2000, but so had the Cubs (1999), the Marlins (1997, 2003), Dodgers (2001, 2004)and the Angels (2002). Out in SF it was all about hating the Dodgers and Cowboys.
Then I went to college in New England for the longest stretch of professional sports success in the region’s history and got my first taste of the obnoxious East Coast fan. Before coming to college, I pitied Red Sox fans, but was mostly apathetic. So they hadn’t won a World Series in a really long time – neither had the Giants since they moved from New York to SF. Then the Red Sox won in 2004, and you know the rest. The Pats, the Sox, the Big Three, the bravado, the arrogance, the entitlement – for an outsider with some sports baggage (Giants and Warriors, the crumbling of the Niners dynasty) it was unbearable. My hate ran deep. So when I decided to move to New York, I was bracing myself. I had friends from New York that were good people, but I assumed the worst. If Boston fans could easily develop into boorish louts over four years, how would decades of sports success manifest itself in New Yorkers?
Initially everything was fine. In fact, you could say that I found a lot of common ground with many New Yorkers with all of their Boston hate. There was the epic Giants-Patriots Super Bowl (as a Niner fan I couldn’t believe I was actually rooting for the New York Giants), and earlier that fall we rooted in unison as Tampa Bay dispatched the Red Sox in the ALCS. You could say that I not only tolerated New York sports fans, but actually kind of liked them. Our sports rooting interests rarely intersected in a negative way.
I can’t pinpoint where exactly things changed, but they did, and quickly. To be quite honest, I think I turned not because of anything New York fans did, but rather because of the way their teams were overhyped in the media. Anytime I turned on Sportscenter or Baseball Tonight, it was dominated by Yankee, Red Sox or Met coverage. They didn’t even bother making it subtle. One night on Baseball Tonight they made the analysts wear team jerseys because they were re-enacting some aspect of playing baseball, probably the hallowed virtues of bunting. One was wearing a Yankee jersey and the other a Red Sox jersey. Of course. Even a team as crappy as the 2009 Mets were routinely on FOX national broadcasts. I had fully braced myself for zealous local media coverage of the teams – that is to be expected – but the jock-riding by national media outlets was suffocating. I realize that ESPN and other major outlets just care about making money, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. (Or watch it, which I don’t anymore.)
Naturally, this brought me to the edge. And it wasn’t the 2009 Yankees World Series title that pushed me over that edge, nor was it the absurd over-hyping of the Rex Ryan Jets and Mark Sanchez, although that was close. Ironically enough, it was New York’s least successful franchise of the past ten years, the Knicks, and their pursuit of a potential free-agent-to-be. You might of heard about him.
Yeah, that guy LeBron James. Witness:
Now I know this is a cover of a magazine read by hipsters, artists, rich people, and people who try to look cultured on the subway (me). Despite the plea being written by Will Leitch, New York is not an authoritative voice on sports. But I think that this New York cover is more damning than you’d want to admit. It’s almost expected when ESPN New York (shockingly, ESPN.com didn’t suffice) pathetically runs a countdown clock on its homepage until July 1, 2010, the start of NBA free agency. It’s not all that surprising when a formerly reputable sports blog, The Big Lead, turns into a fan boy page wishing for a LeBron-Knick marriage. (Evidence here, here, here and here, all in the past month.) And we know that the drones at the Post and Daily News are going to write asinine articles claiming that LeBron needs New York; it’s their job to rile up the lowest common denomination. But when a New York culture magazine puts out the most blatant call to the King? That, my friends, is what Malcolm Gladwell would refer to as the Tipping Point.
While I can’t blame Knicks fans for wanting the greatest basketball player alive to play for their team, I can dislike what this courting has brought out in them. Aside from negatively overshadowing the NBA season and playoffs, the LeCourtship has revealed the sense of entitlement, superiority and self-righteousness that makes people hate New York sports fans, and the city in general. You know, that idea that New Yorkers deserve the best because, well, it’s New York!
Well screw that. I need to vent, and I’m sure there are plenty of others that would like to take NYC down a peg. I’m sorry New Yorkers: I love your city, but enough is enough.
Yank These: Mocking New York Sports since 2010 
