Coach's Corner

Hate's not a bad thing. For sportsfans, it's a bonding thread. As dogs must bark, as cats must meow, sportsfans will hate. We do it with a disturbing (to the non-sportsfan) passion. The non-fan can't relate. These Chardonnay-sipping joggers tend to while away perfectly good Sundays with friends and family. In denying a core part of their humanity, these unenlightened citizens miss much joy. Last January, I found myself in a densely crowded, smoke-filled room upstairs from a bowling alley. The chamber was filled with television sets, a hopping bar, and a male/female ratio of about 17-1. Most of the guests were wearing Pittsburgh Steeler jerseys. The intoxication rate was 100%. The minimally life-sufficient air was laced with the most vile of obscenities. Filthy toasts were offered, each and every one a plea for the most dire of physical afflictions to alight upon the Steeler opponent.

This was a Pittsburgh Steeler Super Bowl party, an affair just a notch up the social ladder from a Hell's Angels spring bash. Today, Steeler fans hate the Cowboys but probably no more than they hate the Oilers or the Browns. The better question is, why am I there on this icy, sleety, mid-winter night? The bowling alley is far from the warm house where my cuddly, cold, and wet boxers are huddled forlornly in their dog house. Yet I sit, swilling beer, chatting up the Steeler Fan Club president, encouraging in a most uncharacteristic way the most barbaric of Steeler toasts. Here I am, with no Pittsburgh affiliation whatsoever, among pure friends. I stand in this bowling alley and I'm not alone -- out of hatred, pure and simple. I want to be around people who, if only for one night, hate like I hate.

Oh, lord! Not another anti-Cowboy screed. No, sportsfans, no siree! This is about the New York Yankees. Once upon a time, the Yankees were the most reviled team in the world, the progenitor of the Dallas Cowboys. The Yankees of mid-century possessed all the odious characteristics most of today's civilized world finds so repugnantly obnoxious in the Cowboys. They came to represent, in their pristine white-and-blue pinstripes: the rich. The conservative. The smug. The Wall Street bankers. The upper rungs of New York dinner society. All images they embraced and nurtured. The rest of the city had the Dodgers and Giants. Worst of all, the Yankees won and won and won. They won with the savage and brutal ease of a monster truck crushing a Pinto. Most American League summers were over by early August. I wasn't an American League fan, but from an early age I acquired a real and passionate dislike for the Yankees.

Alas, even Attila the Hun got feeble, sick and died. Time passed. The evil empire was overrun by barbarians from Kansas City and Oakland. But for a brief resurgence in the late Seventies, the Yankees became too pathetic to hate. Now, after 15 years' absence, here are the Yankees, still playing in Yankee Stadium, still wearing the pinstripes, in another World Series. Yet the bile won't rise. The new Yankees sports stories of down-and-out past superstars Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry (both of whom, incidentally, I've hated with venom) now good, sober, and clean citizens of Gotham. We have the heartwarming story (told and retold) of the lovable manager who toiled a lifetime in the majors, finally participating in his first World Series. Then, the manager's terminally-ill brother rooting from his hospital bed, like in The Babe Ruth Story where choirboys sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" as the Babe (William Bendix) expires in his hospital cot. There's the clean-cut superstar centerfielder and the rookie-of-the-year shortstop. The Yanks '96 are littered with nipple-erecting tales of redemption and good will. Even old Boss Steinbrenner (a straight-line ancestor of Jerry Jones), except for some perfunctory meddling and carping, has managed to keep in the background. The Yankees have become fuzzy bunnies.

I tried this theory out on my father. You must know this man is a grizzled survivor of a lifetime of bitter defeats and humiliations, with not a victory to crow about, at the hands of the Yankees: He's a Red Sox fan. He remembers -- as if they happened in his living room last night -- insults, errors and slumps at disastrous times, a half-century ago. As the ultimate irony, he considers Yankees fans, whom he views as a lifeform so far down the evolutionary chain as to be as yet unnamed, heaping abuse on Roberto Alomar in the spitting incident to be as obscenely ironic as Hitler chastising Mussolini for being too harsh on his gypsies. Asking the old man to buy into this theory would be like asking Sitting Bull to share a brandy with Custer. Viewing this hated enemy basking again in Series glory only served to rip from his hardened hide the scabs of a lifetime. The sentiments spewed forth as I tried this hypothesis.

He's the exception. Yankee-hating has lost its edge. I repeat, there's something to be said for hate. Yes, I can be repulsed by Jane dozing on Ted's shoulder -- Ted rocking to the Macarena is difficult enough. The tom-tom-beating, tomahawk-chopping Atlanta crackers can be wearisome. Still, no real hate. This is going to be a difficult Series. n