There is no justifiable reason to root for the Yankees.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:25 PM on October 23 [39 favorites]

I may be a Giants fan, but why are the Dodgers worse than the Yankees? The Yankees are the rich man's team (well they all are, but the Yankees are the 1% of the 1%). At least with the Dodgers, it's a California team.

Fuck the Fisher family forever though.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 12:27 PM on October 23 [9 favorites]

Yikes. Does this person also pull for the AL in the All Star Game? You root for your league in the World Series if your team doesn’t make it. Always.
posted by Huggiesbear at 12:30 PM on October 23 [8 favorites]

You root for your league in the World Series if your team doesn’t make it. Always.

And you always root against the Yankees.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:31 PM on October 23 [18 favorites]

Unless you’re a born and bred Yankees fan.

=D
posted by khrusanthemon at 12:34 PM on October 23 [1 favorite]

Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for small pox.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:34 PM on October 23 [13 favorites]

The best post I saw about this was "This World Series will really divide the Dallas Cowboys fanbase"
posted by escabeche at 12:38 PM on October 23 [13 favorites]

My favorite team in baseball has always been, now and forever, whoever is playing those Trolly Dodgers.
posted by wmo at 12:48 PM on October 23 [1 favorite]

Offensive use of second person, all runners advance one base.
posted by JHarris at 12:50 PM on October 23 [2 favorites]

At least with the Dodgers, it's a California team.

I’ve also generally held to this philosophy, that one might as well root for the regional rival in the finals against the other division/side of the country. But it’s not like the opposite take doesn’t have an internal logic - how often as a Giants fan do you have reason to think about the Yankees, even, compared to the Dodgers?

The first approach is fun if you’re visiting East Coast relatives, though.
posted by atoxyl at 12:51 PM on October 23 [1 favorite]

Any Giants fan that cheers for the Yankees over ANY other team has lost the plot. The only people who can cheer for the pinstripes and retain any dignity are those born in the five boroughs.
posted by PresidentOfDinosaurs at 12:55 PM on October 23 [4 favorites]

The first approach is fun if you’re visiting East Coast relatives, though

Although in this case if they are the right age they might still have some fondness for the Brooklyn Dodgers…
posted by atoxyl at 12:57 PM on October 23 [1 favorite]

You root for your league in the World Series if your team doesn’t make it. Always.
posted by Huggiesbear

Ew. No. My AL team's rivals are all also in the AL and I want them to lose. At worst I find NL teams annoying.
posted by The Notorious SRD at 12:59 PM on October 23 [1 favorite]

Come on, even if you aren't a Dodgers fan, seeing arguably the greatest baseball player since Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron win a World Series is a pretty special thing.
posted by mark242 at 1:04 PM on October 23 [9 favorites]

I’m a Braves fan, so I honestly don’t care who wins.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 1:05 PM on October 23 [2 favorites]

Is there some way that both teams can lose? Asking as a Dbacks fan.
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 1:08 PM on October 23 [6 favorites]

I was a dyed-in-the-blue Dodgers fan when I was younger, back in Lasorda's days. Now they seem like the west coast Yankees: they gobble up expensive players and if you don't have the budget to compete, woe is you.
Ohtani is always fun to watch, though.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 1:09 PM on October 23 [4 favorites]

I'm not a Giant fan, but I fully subscribe to what the article is talking about, because I am a Padre fan.

There is no justifiable reason to root for the Yankees.
Except that they're not the Dodgers and they have a chance to humiliate the Dodgers.

And you always root against the Yankees.
Unless they're playing the Dodgers and they have a chance to humiliate the Dodgers.

You root for your league in the World Series if your team doesn’t make it. Always.
Unless it's the Dodgers.

At least with the Dodgers, it's a California team.
A carpet-bagging NY team. I'm a fan of one of the true California teams.

how often as a Giants fan do you have reason to think about the Yankees, even, compared to the Dodgers?
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
posted by LionIndex at 1:11 PM on October 23 [7 favorites]

My wife and I live in Los Angeles. During the Free Palestine protests a couple months ago she bought a Dodgers hat as a part of the zebra strategy of being indistinguishable from the other people in the crowd so that anyone targeting protesters would have difficulty identifying her individually. Somehow, this hat has made it into a regular part of her wardrobe.

My wife knows even less about baseball generally and the Dodgers specifically than I do, and I am WILLFULLY ignorant on the subject, but because she's been wearing the hat around town locals keep coming up to her and talking about the Dodgers. It has been a fun couple of months watching her verbally scramble to keep her low-stakes fraud hidden.

Unrelated, but when my brother (who grew up with me here in Los Angeles) was getting married he made a bet with his fiancee (who grew up in the Bay Area) that they would fly the flag of whichever team won their upcoming series over the wedding. The Dodgers won and my brother proudly flew our local flag over the gathered families.

I don't want to blame their subsequent divorce entirely on this, but I imagine it certainly didn't help.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 1:13 PM on October 23 [6 favorites]

The only people who can cheer for the pinstripes and retain any dignity are those born in the five boroughs The Bronx, Long Island, or Westchester.

FTFY
posted by Jon_Evil at 1:14 PM on October 23 [8 favorites]

I'm both a born-and-raised New Englander whose familial Red Sox fandom goes back generations and a person who's called the Bay Area home for the last 15 years.

You'd be forgiven for thinking I might have complicated feelings about this World Series but honestly this is a no-brainer: GO DODGERS.
posted by jesourie at 1:24 PM on October 23 [7 favorites]

A carpet-bagging NY team. I'm a fan of one of the true California teams.

Okay technically you have something here I suppose but then it’s literally just you and the Angels, no?
posted by atoxyl at 1:26 PM on October 23 [5 favorites]

I will say that it's nice to have a matchup that is a no-bones-about-it Certified Big Deal. Yanks/Dodgers? Judge/Ohtani? Legit star power.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:26 PM on October 23 [3 favorites]

Okay technically you have something here I suppose but then it’s literally just you and the Angels, no?

Absolutely. It's pretty much all we got. **crying**
posted by LionIndex at 1:28 PM on October 23 [1 favorite]

seeing arguably the greatest baseball player since Babe Ruth or Hank Aaron win a World Series is a pretty special thing.

Mike Trout? No, he's happy on the Angels, even if they haven't sniffed an AL pennant the whole time they've had him. Proof positive that having a single stand-out player does not guarantee a post-season.

I was a mere babe in arms the last time the Mets won a Series. It would have been nice to see that again.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 1:32 PM on October 23 [3 favorites]

Yes you can walk to LA MetroRail after Dodgers games. It's all downhill and takes 25 minutes, and you have to cross a freeway.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:35 PM on October 23 [1 favorite]

Having just watched the Dodgers bring the Mets' magical post-season run to a screeching halt, I think the Yankees are going to get absolutely PUMMELED in the World Series. The Dodgers right now are playing baseball better than any team has all season. Even when they're terrible, they manage to win and make it look effortless.
posted by KingEdRa at 1:36 PM on October 23 [2 favorites]

.

El Toro
posted by Omon Ra at 1:38 PM on October 23 [5 favorites]

I don't really care about baseball but I am pissed that we were robbed of a subway series. The energy around town in 2000 was fucking astounding.
posted by phooky at 1:39 PM on October 23 [3 favorites]

Yes you can walk to LA MetroRail after Dodgers games. It's all downhill and takes 25 minutes, and you have to cross a freeway.

Basically any time the Metro brass suggests that riders do something they manage to reveal that they have never themselves ridden the Metro.

If every announcement from LA Metro included an oath on penalty of perjury that the speaker had actually done the thing they're suggesting it would be a very different city.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 1:45 PM on October 23 [4 favorites]

And speaking from experience here, no matter how much you love either the Dodgers or Yankees, please be careful about the deals you make with God late in the series.

I made a deal in the middle of Game 7 of the 2016 World Series that didn't turn out so great. Real monkey's paw kind of shit hit on that one, less than a week later.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:48 PM on October 23 [6 favorites]

MLB changed the DH rule in the National League exclusively to let Ohtani sign with the Dodgers and for that I'll never forgive him 🤷 also he looks like a character from MLB The Show what gives him the right to be so perfect?
posted by muddgirl at 1:53 PM on October 23 [1 favorite]

Is there some way that both teams can lose?

^This^
posted by thivaia at 2:00 PM on October 23 [2 favorites]

MLB changed the DH rule because pitchers can't hit anymore, were getting hurt running the bases, and the Players' Union saw it as a de facto way to replace 15 low-paying last-man-on-a-roster jobs with 15 new higher paying full-time positions.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:01 PM on October 23 [5 favorites]

Go look back at our previous baseball threads. I'm a die hard Red Sox fan and continue to be despite having lived in LA for nearly 30 years.

This is about as uncomplicated as it gets for me, short of the Red Sox appearing in the Series. I want Ohtani to get one ring and I want Mookie to get another (damn you John Henry for forcing that deal).

If Martians landed on the Earth and said "we want to play the New York Yankees to determine the fate of humanity. Yankees win, we hop into spaceships and leave you riches galore for the betterment of humanity. We win, we will enslave the whole of the Earth." I'd still root for the Martians, if for no other reason than Yankees fans would, somehow, in a miraculous act of violation of the laws of physics become even more insufferable than they already are.

The Angels deserve relegation to Single A for wasting both Trout and Ohtani. Promote the Lake Elsinore Storm, they'd at least try to win.
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:04 PM on October 23 [6 favorites]

As someone whose husband has literally jogged to/from Dodger Stadium from Koreatown, nobody is freaking walking to/from Dodger Stadium. There's no sidewalk for half the distance, and you'll be directly competing with drivers trying to exit the area for the same road space. I can't believe LA Metro suggested walking to Metro with a straight face.

As a born-and-bred East Bay kid who spent 20 years in Boston, including living four blocks from Fenway Park the year they finally reversed the curse, I was rooting for the Mets. Now I'm rooting for the meteor. But if that meteor could entertain us by spitting fire at John Fisher's heels for eternity while he runs through a minefield of Legos, I'm pretty sure the entire world would appreciate it.
posted by Pandora Kouti at 2:07 PM on October 23 [4 favorites]

I 100% subscribe to LionIndex's thoughts on this. It would be unthinkable to ask say a Red Sox fan to root for the Yankees, this is not much different save for the league and coast. My only reservation is that it is a true joy to watch someone who is head and shoulders above the rest of the world at what they do and marvel at just how good they are, but in this case it comes with complicated feelings, cos really why does it have to be for the Dodgers?

(I will say It's been a tough few years as a Bay Area sports fan that's mildly indifferent to football)
posted by TwoWordReview at 2:09 PM on October 23 [2 favorites]

There's been noise about bring the DH to the NL since well before Ohtani. It's still an abomination, but not specifically his fault. Why does he need to DH, anyway? Too much wear and tear playing the field every day?

I appreciate the correction that Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan grant the Mets, not the Yankees, as birthright. But what about Staten Island? Geography would suggest blue and orange but character factors would point elsewhere.

And Rancho Cucamonga deserves promotion more than Lake Elsinore.
posted by PresidentOfDinosaurs at 2:18 PM on October 23 [3 favorites]

Why does he need to DH, anyway? Too much wear and tear playing the field every day?

He's a pitcher, so he wouldn't be playing the field every day. Amazingly, in addition to being the only member of the 50/50 club, he's a legitimately great pitcher and isn't pitching this year because he's recovering from Tommy John surgery. Just your typical "well, I can't pitch and bat all season so I'll just have to do something else no one else has ever done" kind of season. He's insane.

I think there's been a push to have the DH in the NL for a long time but it finally got brought in during the Covid shutdown, ostensibly because a team might not have their full rotation or bench with Covid restrictions. Whether that's the real reason is up for debate.
posted by LionIndex at 2:25 PM on October 23 [1 favorite]

I'm surprised at the skepticism, of course there was a lot of discourse over many years about DH in the NL but Ohtani, or rather NL teams wanting to compete for Ohtani in free agency is in hindsight almost certainly the reason why the MLB owners finally agreed to the rule change in 2022. The same year the MLB literally created the "Ohtani rule" allowing pitcher/DH's to stay in the game after they were done pitching.
posted by muddgirl at 2:30 PM on October 23 [1 favorite]

Permanent rule change in 2022, temporary rule change in 2020 for Covid; after which the NL had a higher league batting average than the AL for the first time since 1972. It's not just Ohtani.
posted by LionIndex at 2:33 PM on October 23 [2 favorites]

One other thing that gives the Dodgers a bit of mo going into the series is the reaction to Fernando Valenzuela's death. He's getting a recognition ceremony at Dodger Stadium prior to the game. He was a big part of the org for years.
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:37 PM on October 23 [2 favorites]

I grew up in the East Bay, raised as a Giants fan, so hating the Dodgers is practically built into my DNA. I slowly changed my loyalty to the Angels after several years of living in Southern CA as an adult, most of them in Orange County. The transition was easier than I thought since hating the Dodgers is still a large part of the fan experience.

I hated them even more when they signed away Shohei Ohtani from the Angels (not that I was so delusional to expect him to stay). I think I described it here once as watching your ex-girlfriend make out with your worst enemy.


Truly, the only thing that can make me root for the Dodgers is what is happening now. There is no conceivable circumstance where I will root for the Yankees.
posted by The Gooch at 2:40 PM on October 23 [4 favorites]

Anyone who complains about the DH should be strapped into a chair with their eyelids held open, Clockwork Orange style and forced to watch endless footage of the last few years of MLB pitchers hitting.

Your memories betray you. It wasn't all Jake Arrieta hitting homers, Madison Bumgarner slapping hard singles to the gap, or even Kyle Hendricks and Adam Wainwright dropping done perfectly-executed bunts.

Mostly, it was at-bat after at-bat of demonstrations of what happens when someone is physically gifted enough to hit a baseball but does not spend hours a day, 300+ days a year practicing that skill.

They were fucking terrible. It was miserable to watch.

The expansion of the DH also means we have gotten fewer players shoehorned into LF or 1B who seem surprised to even own a glove.

The DH ain't great, but it's better than what we had. Weirdly the thought I keep coming to that would have been better would have been 8 man lineups; pitcher doesn't hit and no one hits for him.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:46 PM on October 23 [3 favorites]

He [Fernando Valenzuela] was a big part of the org for years

He still was a big part of the org. He was a Spanish-language broadcaster for Dodger-affiliated KTNQ starting in 2003 until the start of the playoffs when his health started to really decline. If you listened to a Dodgers game in Spanish, either in LA or via AM-radio's tendency to skip at night, then you probably heard him.
posted by toxic at 2:51 PM on October 23 [3 favorites]

But wasn't a big part of the joy of pitchers having to hit, that there was the added strategy requirement of when do you pull your starter? Do you keep them in and risk a terrible at-bat for the sake of 1 more inning? Plus having a Madison Bumgarner really meant a significant advantage in offense, aside from the bonus spectacle for the fans!
posted by TwoWordReview at 2:53 PM on October 23 [4 favorites]

But if you're a sicko like me, the pitchers being awful hitters was the entire point. If you've got a pitcher who's doing great in a game but you have a rally going in the 4th inning and his spot is coming up in the lineup, what do you do? Potentially kill the rally by getting an automatic out or put in a pinch hitter and go to your bullpen way earlier than you want to?

But, given the way the game is now, I think the universal DH's time had come - with pitchers barely getting past the 5th inning anyway and batting averages down across the sport because pitchers are selling their Tommy John souls for higher velocity, the loss of the strategic element isn't a big deal any more, if it ever was.
posted by LionIndex at 2:56 PM on October 23 [4 favorites]

I'm a third-generation STL Cardinals fan on my mom's side (baseball fandom is For The Ladies in my family) but now living in SoCal I am delighted to just deliriously root for this incredibly talented Dodgers team. Yes, they're a big market team with an ungodly amount of money to spend, but man is it fun to watch Ohtani and Edman and Hernandez (x2) just be incredible at what they do.
posted by pantarei70 at 2:59 PM on October 23 [1 favorite]

I'm coming around to the idea of the "double hook" rule change proposal. Basically, at the point where you pull your starter, you would also lose your DH. The idea would be to motivate managers to try and get more length out of pitchers, and to provide a backdoor way to reintroduce the strategy stuff that was involved with double switches, etc.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 3:06 PM on October 23 [4 favorites]

I’ve walked from Chinatown to Dodger stadium, and from Echo Park neighborhoods to the stadium. I wouldn’t do it with small kids or with someone who has even mild mobility constraints or weak ankles. So, I agree, it’s not an amazing suggestion for a broad group. But for the able bodied, mildly tipsy, childfree attendee: walking is actually pretty great! So much faster than getting stuck in all the traffic, and free!
posted by samthemander at 3:11 PM on October 23 [1 favorite]

Born and bred Yankees fan from Central New Jersey, and you ain't changing my mind about where Yankees fans should come from. That said, I care more about good baseball in the WS than anything else. And for everyone complaining about the Yankees spending money to get the best players, isn't that what the Dodgers did?
posted by mollweide at 3:58 PM on October 23 [1 favorite]

A) Anyone who thinks the NL should have the DH is wrong, not just because the strategy of when to pull the starter is fun but also because pitchers being terrible at hitting, decried upthread, is in fact hilarious. I'm a Red Sox fan but was deeply amused in 2004 when Pedro Martinez would go up to the plate with his very red bat wearing a windbreaker and just try to have a go of it. It's always good fun in my book to watch impossibly skilled athletes make fools of themselves.

B) The morally correct answer is still and will always be to root against the Yankees.
posted by lhputtgrass at 5:15 PM on October 23

The Giants moved from New York to San Francisco the same year the Dodgers moved to LA.

They were bitter rivals before they moved (since like 1883!), so this could be seen as a continuation of that tradition more than an act of disloyalty to the National League or California.
posted by jamjam at 5:23 PM on October 23

I'm coming around to the idea of the "double hook" rule change proposal. Basically, at the point where you pull your starter, you would also lose your DH. The idea would be to motivate managers to try and get more length out of pitchers, and to provide a backdoor way to reintroduce the strategy stuff that was involved with double switches, etc

That's an interesting idea - I'm not sure if things would play out exactly like that, but it'd be fun to see how it worked. I don't know how most NL teams are utilizing the DH position - currently the Dodgers are using the old AL model of "guy who's a liability in the field but is a ferocious hitter" and their DH is almost always the same dedicated guy in the mold of Papi or Edgar Martinez, but I don't know that all teams do something like that rather than having a platoon of guys the way the Padres have. Having to switch out the DH wouldn't have a huge effect on the Padre lineup like it would the Dodgers; they might switch the guy out anyway in the game if the opposing pitcher is relieved by someone that throws lefty instead of righty (or vice-versa). On the pitching side, I think there's a mix of managers pulling pitchers out to avoid the 3rd time through the order penalty, but there's also some preservation going on with not wanting to wear pitchers out - would managers want their pitchers to not throw as hard so that they could last longer in the game (and not injure themselves in the long term) at the cost of some effectiveness?
posted by LionIndex at 5:31 PM on October 23

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