Stadiums:
I hate hitter's parks, can't stand them. While there has obviously only been one season played at the new Yankee Stadium and many will argue that the sample size is not big enough, I feel pretty comfortable saying that it's going to be favorable to hitters, that right field "porch" in particular. If you've ever watched a game at Citizen's Bank Park you know that the ball flies out of there, even after they moved the fences back a few years ago. So you can assume (and you'd be correct) that I hate how both of these stadiums play. Aesthetically, I think they both look ridiculous. CBP is one of the new breed of "quirky" stadiums that feature what I find to be an artificial type of charm. NYS has so many ads in the outfield that it almost resembles a minor league park. While I haven't made it out to NYS yet, I have been to a few games at CBP and it's a pretty enjoyable place to watch a game despite the presence of Phillies fans. I've actually been able to go there and wear Mets stuff without incident for the most part. This, combined with the fact that a 16 oz. PBR costs you $9 at NYS swings this category in the Phillies favor, though I admit I can't judge NYS very fairly.
Edge: Phillies
Most Obnoxious Players:
Not even sure where to begin with this one, so let's first narrow down the candidates on the two teams' World Series rosters (all caps for players I find particularly reprehensible):
Yankees:
Jorge Posada
Derek Jeter
Robinson Cano
JOBA CHAMBERLAIN
Phillies:
JIMMY ROLLINS
SHANE VICTORINO
BRETT MYERS
Despite the fact that I've hated the Yankees much longer than I have the Phillies, those three Phillies players make this decision particularly easy. As I've become a more knowledgeable baseball fan over the years (thanks to the plethora of information available on the Internet) what I've realized is the players I can't stand the most are the ones who are, in my mind, hideously overrated. Joba, Victorino, and Rollins all fall in this category, particularly Joba and Rollins. Joba has really done nothing in his career yet I still see people walking around wearing "Got Joba" t-shirts. Rollins had an on base percentage below .300 this year (just awful) and stole an MVP from David Wright in 2007 solely because he made some stupid comments before the season. I don't really need to explain Jeter and Posada, but at least they're good (ok, great) players. As for Victorino, he's a dirty player and talks a lot of shit about the Mets supposed dancing in the dugout for a guy who spends about 20 seconds on top of home plate every time he scores.
And then you have Brett Myers. As much as I hate Joba, J-Roll, & co., Myers is the worst of all. This is a guy who beat his wife. Unacceptable. He might be the most despicable player in baseball.
Edge: Yankees
Oh, and before I get away from Brett Myers, this:
Managers:
Tim Marchman wrote a much more interesting piece about the differences between these two managers than I ever could in a million years. Surprisingly, postseason has made me think that Girardi is a worse manager than Manuel. His over-managing has hurt the Yankees in many spots.
Edge: Phillies
The Fans:
This is a big one. I'm not really sure where to start. I guess we can talk about the difference between Yankees fans and Phillies fans. After the Phillies dropped the second game of their Division Series against the Rockies I received a call from one of my Phillies fan friends. He wanted to let me know that he wasn't worried. I told him he shouldn't be, the series was tied and the Phillies were the better team. I don't think it was my friend's intent to annoy me. Contrast this with when I was sitting around watching the Giants game a couple Sundays ago and I mentioned how if the ALCS were to go to seven games, the Yankees would play at the same time as the Giants. Immediately all the Yankee fans in the room informed that there was no way the series would go seven games. That is the difference between these two fanbases in a nutshell. Phillies fans haven't quite reached the point where they expect to win (unless it's against the Mets) while it didn't take long at all for Yankee fans to get back to that point. Who am I kidding though, both groups piss me off.
There is one edge that Phillies fans have over Yankee fans in this series though. They don't expect Mets fans to root for their team. I've heard from multiple Yankee fans about how I have to root for the Yankees because they're from New York and the Phillies are a division rival and blah blah blah. All I can say to that is fuck you. If there's one thing I don't appreciate (and there isn't one, there's many) it's being told who I should root for. It's bad enough that I have to make a decision one way or another, I don't need the same Yankee fans who have been giving me shit for years telling me what I should think.
Edge: Phillies
This, combined with the fact that I want to wrap this up brings us to...
The Verdict:
A couple years ago another friend of mine who is also a Mets fan were being grilled as to why we hated the Yankees so much. It's a fair question that my friend had a great answer to: we went to high school from 1998-2002. Not only did the Yankees win three world series in this time, the Mets were pretty decent most of those years, resulting in a lot of back and forth between Mets and Yankees fans. We would constantly hear about how much the Mets sucked (even when they didn't actually suck) and get asked why we rooted for the Yankees. Yankee fans had the upper hand the entire time obviously, the low point being the Mets losing to the Yankees in the World Series.
Some other things that swing this in the Phillies favor are the fact that Philadelphia already broke it's championship "curse" last season. If they hadn't, this would be a much more difficult decision. Also, when you get down to it, the Phillies are the third most popular team in that city. The Eagles are definitely number one in that city and the Flyers (they're all white and gritty!) are number two.
I should also add, that despite how much the Phillies and their fans can't stop chirping about the Mets (seriously, the obsession is kind of ridiculous) and how they choked away the last two seasons, in my eyes the Mets were more responsible for that then anything else.
You might ask me why not just boycott the series and avoid watching it? My response is that I just can't do that. I've only successfully boycotted one World Series in my lifetime (1999 Braves Vs. Yankees) and that was mostly due to having my heart ripped out more than any other sports team when the Mets lost in the NLCS. I'm a big baseball/sports fan, I have trouble pulling myself away. I'm also kind of a masochist.
So yeah, barring enough rain to cancel the World Series, I'm rooting for the Phillies.
I'm going to go take a shower now.
No comments:
Post a Comment