CerebralDebris

Ah, schadenfreude … “A malicious satisfaction obtained from the misfortunes of others.”

Yep, that’s the stuff. The sweet, sweet taste of the New York Yankees sucking. See, I live in New York, but I spent my formative years in Massachusetts, and those are the years in which sports allegiances are formed (with the exception of college allegiances, but I only pay attention to college sports of any kind when SU men’s basketball is actually doing well in the tournament). As a result, my sports allegiances lie mostly with the New England region of the country, which has made it a pretty amazing decade thus far. Three championships and a fourth SuperBowl appearance for the Patriots, a championship for the Celtics, and two championships for the Red Sox (after an 86 year draught and a curse and blah blah blah, no less).

Now, granted, the Celtics essentially bought their championship, and the Red Sox have the second-highest payroll in baseball so it’s not like they were exactly a team full of scrappy underdogs … but it’s not like that’s uncommon in sports, either. Spending a crapload of money and assembling a power team for a couple of years is actually much more common than putting a team together through a combination of smart drafting, key free-agent signings, and an equal focus on stars and roleplayers, though that’s exactly how the Patriots did it. Also they cheated, but I don’t really care about that, since every team in every sport is doing all kinds of unethical crap in order to win. The Pats got caught, paid the price, and moved on (probably right back to videotaping signals).

I’m not one of those arrogant Boston fan jackasses who thinks we’re entitled to win things. I was actually quite happy to see the Colts win a SuperBowl, and I would love to see Phoenix get over the hump and win an NBA championship. I am aware that I root for “the bad guys” whenever I root for the Patriots, just as most Yankees fans are aware that their team is pretty much uniformly despised by everyone who is not, in fact, a Yankee fan. Winning does that to teams. No one hated the Patriots until they were good. No one cared. The Yankees have been the best overall team in sports for the past 100 years, and that’s why everyone hates them.

Anyway, the point of all this is that as a Boston fan, I take enormous pleasure in seeing the Yankees perform poorly. In fact, largely the only reason I pay any attention whatsoever to baseball during the regular season is to see whether or not the two teams are going to end up in the playoffs or not, and whether the Sox will have to go through them to get to the World Series. This year, it is very much looking like the Yankees will not get in at all, which makes me happy. In some ways, it makes me happier than the fact that the Red Sox probably will make the playoffs, which is a bit odd, but it’s true nonetheless.

Then again … perhaps it’s not a bit odd after all, because if there weren’t a lot of people who take malicious joy in the misfortunates of others then hey, I guess the term schadenfreude wouldn’t exist in the first place.