10/07/2005

Go Yankees???

Posted by Brandon |

Sitting at dinner at BJ's Brewhouse in Oxnard tonight, I couldn't believe what I was doing. With every television in the joint tuned to the Yankees/Angels playoff game I found myself, along with a handful of others, openly clapping when the Yankees scored their runs. Earlier in the day, I found myself rooting against the Red Sox. This is a complete 360 degree turn from every year previous to these playoffs. So what could possibly make me change direction so drastically?

First of all, I rooted against the Red Sox for this simple reason. I think their fans need to be humbled or else they will end up being no better than Yankee fans. In fact, their arrogance over the last year was reaching Yankee proportions. I am a Seattle Mariners fan first, then an Oakland A's fan and then a Red Sox fan and yet I had to root for them to lose just to get their hardcore fans to chill out a bit. Maybe their loss today will bring them back to earth and they will once again be lovable.

So why then would I root for the Yankees? Simply put...I hate the Anaheim Angels! I hate the Anaheim Angels so much that I have become a Yankee fan solely on this basis and just for this series. There is nothing about the Angels that I like, except for Vladimir Guerrero, that guy is a stud.

I attended an Angels game earlier in the season and was frustrated beyond belief with the idiocy of the fans throughout the stadium. It was a beautiful July 4th evening and the place was filled to the brim with the whitest, whitey-white group of people that I have ever seen. There were more minorities at a game at Fenway Park that I went to a few years ago than at Angels Stadium on this day. And this is greater Los Angeles, home to how many millions of Mexicans? Well, apparently, they were all stuck at home doing the gardening for these WASP-y sons-of-bitches.

Angel Stadium is like a big gigantic mall that happens to have a baseball diamond in the middle but with crappier, more expensive food. It is one of the least interesting, least genuine, least exciting ballpark that I have ever been in, and I grew up going to games at the Kingdome. It's a nice place watch a game once you get to your seats, but other than that there is nothing unique or interesting about the stadium at all.

When I got to my seats after finding myself a below average meal, I got the privilege of sitting behind this man...


Let's just call him Clappy, the Amazing Clap When Nobody Else is Clapping Man. All night long, he sat there with his family, barely saying anything but constantly clapping. But this wasn't any clapping. It was that clap where you typically try to get others to join in with you. It starts very slow, one clap, two claps, three claps and gradually it gets faster and faster. Well, Clappy didn't quite get that. He would do it, but all at the same speed and then when anyone would join him he would stop. Or when the same thing was being played on the PA, he would refuse to join in and just sit on his hands. And he did it whenever he pleased, not when the situation warranted or when someone might join him in clapping. He just did it at random intervals every few minutes regardless of what was going on.

And don't even get me started on the rally monkey. I think Angels fans root for their team to be behind going into the seventh inning just so (A.) they can bitch about their team being crappy and then go totally bi-polar when something good happens and (B.) they can see the goddamn rally monkey. Everybody in the ballpark went crazy whenever the monkey appeared on the Diamondvision (I have to admit it was kind of cute, the first 100 times I saw it that night) waving their $35 rally monkeys in the air and cheering louder than ever before.

A boring setting for baseball filled with snowy white, right wing, Christian Coalition, bi-polar, least knowledgeable, Orange County natives who bitch and moan and then go crazy when the rally monkey shows up. All of these factors lead me to yell at the top of my lungs...Goooooo Yankees! Damn that feels weird and yet, against these Angels, it feels so right.

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