Baseball: Main Street vs. Wall Street
Tigers v. Yankees (Main Street v Wall Street)
I love baseball. The late Ernie Harwell, Detroit icon, Hall of Fame Broadcaster and a friend of AJ's Cafe once said, "AJ, you don't go to see a baseball game, you take it in.." So profound, so true.. With all of the nuances and subplots, baseball is always high drama, even the sometimes seemingly "boring" pitchers duels...
A baseball purist can not help but appreciate the managerial mind games that go into every action of a baseball game. Each player is a "chess" piece to be maneuvered as best as one can guess to complete a successful "move."
And we fans, we have the luxury to follow a game called baseball that doesn't rush us through, leaving us to play manager as we see fit. We get to second-guess Jim Leyland (and do!) And we can hope, always hope that we beat those damn Yankees.
Really, why the Yankees? I mean who doesn't love New York, or New Yorkers for that matter? 9-11 aside, we have loved New York and its place in America as our big-city poster child for as long as I can remember. Why do we want to beat them so bad? Why do we want them to lose?
Those are two separate questions.
This is what I think.
Why do we want to beat them so bad? Because they've won a gazillion titles already. They have the bankroll from Wall Street that buys players with impunity. That mindset of "everything has a price, everything's for sale" is the overriding strategy. Yes, they still deal, cost analyze, scout...but, make no mistake, this is a corporatist warrior of a team...They will stop at nothing to buy whatever it takes to bring a championship and with it, all of the buying and selling power that it comes with. Viewer ratings translate to marketing and marketing translates to sales numbers and New York has the numbers. The Yankees are a link to all of that.
We Detroiters represent the rest of the nation. Those hard working men and women who clock in every day, putting their time in on a line somewhere, be in building cars, airplanes, computers, sofas, lattes, ....We want to beat them so bad because we need to remind them that we're the reason that you thrive in the first place; you forget that way too often.
Why do we want them to lose? Because, like in 2006, you seem to think that its yours for the taking. Sure, you'll talk the humble talk every team talks, saying you're taking nothing for granted, praising your opponent, blah, blah, blah... But when the cameras are off, when that one-on- one talk comes from Joe Girardi to his players....he's got his directive from today's front office corporate heads, legacies of the god of the entitled elite, George Steinbrenner, whose "humble" rise gave him and those who follow this mandate, ...This is NEW YORK, we are the YANKEES....this BELONGS to US! GET IT!
This is America's game, America's pasttime.
In 2006, those hard -scrabble Tigers...those underdog, assembly line Tigers, firmly said....no!
But these Tigers, these 2011 Tigers are not such underdogs. They represent a leaner, meaner assembly line that, make no mistake, would still like to remind those Yankees that, you may think that we owe you one...you peel back the onion of your marketing machine, your take away the speculative facade of appearance and uncover the real-real. This IS imported from DETROIT!
Its not the players, who are most welcome and appreciated, coming from all over the USA and beyond. It's not our own version of corporation, Mr. Mike Illitch, also my friend, who year after year build his legacy in thankful defiance of the asinine mentality that its financially wise to move out of our big-city rust belt town...
This is for the fans. It is for us that we want the Yankees to lose. Maybe these Tigers, transplanted Detroiters every one of them... care more about contributing to the grit and hard-working persona that is the very essence of Detroit as national representative to ordinary citizens.
Those tears from our tough, no-nonsense manager as he thanks the fans of Detroit could not be more sincere. They make us all feel so much like a big, loving family.
And the Yankees are pissed....There, there , you will still have your deals to make, your dividends to count, your entitled mantle that I swear every sportswriter takes a course in....We are Detroit, and we represent a nation of workers, that because we go to work every day, you have stuff to speculate on...
Go Tigers.
AJ O'Neil
9/30/11
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