Righting a WrongI could not believe my eyes. There I was at Shea Stadium. There were buckets of paint spilled all over the place as a result of righting a perceived wrong. Apparently some of the Yankee fan relatives of the ticket holders who had come in from the Bronx were bashing the Mets. They were very loud and persistent. All attempts to quite them down had failed as they became louder and more insulting with every breath. They said some of the vilest and most disgusting things one could imagine about Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman. Don't ask!
The Mets fans in section 31 could not take such vile language about pitchers whose blood was spilled on the Shea mound so that New York baseball could return to its glory. It insulted their sensibilities. They were beside themselves! How could any baseball fan talk this way about great players who devoted their lives to bringing a World Series to New York? So, a group (two or three) of zealots decided to do something about it. Justice demanded it! They brought a few buckets of paint from the construction area of the new stadium and poured it all over them.
Does this sound outrageous? ...spilling paint on people just because they were expressing their views? I think it does. They should have just let it go. In a few minutes it would have all been over. But, No... they had to debase their fellow human beings, ruin their clothes, and mess up Shea Stadium! Thank God it never happened.
That's right. I made it up. This scenario did not happen and could not happen... and will never happen. No Mets fan would ever do anything like this. No matter how upset they were at the kind of rhetoric I described. And believe me such rhetoric is extremely upsetting, especially in a Mets enclave like Shea Stadium.
But in the Yankee world things like this are happening right now.
Now, before anyone accuses me of bashing the Yankees again (and I am sure some people will, ignoring that my wife is a Yankee fan, my son is Brian Cashman, my daughter is married to Mariano Rivera, my rabbi is a Yankee fan, I am wearing a Yankees jersey and eating a Baby Ruth candy bar right now, and my screensaver is a picture of Yankee Stadium) ...I am not. Most Yankee fans would no more do this than would any Mets fan. But the difference is that time after time there are a small but significant minority of Yankee fans and only Yankee fans, that take it upon themselves to insult and attack those who choose to root for the Mets.
There are really no words to describe the arrogance, stupidity, and self righteousness of these people. They have decided that only their team is acceptable.
What are these Yankee fans doing about it? They are spraying their victims with paint colored like Yankee pinstripes. Where is this taking place? On Gun Hill Road and on Pelham Parkway.
And it isn't just individuals: "Last week Yankee fans arrived at a Modell's on Broadway and destroyed thousands of dollars worth of Mets merchandise with bleach."
All this because the Mets uniforms have players' names on the back.
If a comparable event, like the one I described above, would have been perpetrated by even a single individual in the Mets community, the condemnations would have been fast and furious. And the loudest among them would have been from Fred Wilpon. And it would have been condemned by all of the Mets leadership, especially Willie Randolph and Omar Minaya. There would have been no defense of it at all. No excuses made. None.
But where are the voices of the Yankee leadership that these fans are loyal to? Why is this not being condemned in the strongest possible terms? I don't mean lip-service with an explanation that begins with the words, "But you have to understand where they are coming from." I am talking about the kind of condemnation I am making right now.
Of course there will be many in the Yankee world that will condemn this. Even very strongly. And rightly so. But that is not enough. George Steinbrenner and Joe Torre must go to the authorities, work with them to find out who they are and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.
Right! When that happens I will be the first in line to congratulate them... right after I celebrate the Jets' Super Bowl victory.
posted on 10/26/2006
