Don't Be Hatin' ...Dislike is probably more apt of word

This weekend's and next weekend's columns are somewhat of a foray into the world of two emotions, hate and love.

Which. I wonder, is stronger? By the time I finish penning this mini-tome, I just might have the answer.

Today's column will deal with hate, although I consider that a bit too strong of a word. I dislike a lot, but don't hate much because I'm not, by nature, a genetic hater. But we will use hate for the purpose of this column anyway.

Among the legion of Yankee haters out there, it would seem the primary reason for their collective hatred is simply that they are too successful. This is because people hated the Yankees long before George Steinbrenner decided that the best way to win pennants was to buy them. There is only one problem with that, which we will deal with straight off.

This is something former Daily Mail sports editor Joe Warren and I used to argue about. It all began when I practicall;y came unglued whenever the Royals drafted a Scott Boras client. To my way of thinking, he's always going to be trouble to a team without millions to flush down the toilet. The Royals, for instance.

Once Warren said to me that players ought to get whatever they can, which is not, I repeat, NOT, in the best interests of baseball. Sure, get all the money you can, then let the game go down the drain. It's like the difference in $25 million and $28 million. All the player is going to do with that extra three million is pay taxes with it.

If I was making $1 million and someone offered me $2 million to go elsewhere, the first question I'd ask is to myself is "Am I happy?" If the answer is yes, does that mean more money is going to make me even happier?

With the Yankees, though, I think a lot of it is ego, which is exactly why the Yankees aren't winning it all every year like they used to. You can have too many stars on a team. If you go out and collect stars everywhere, who is going to be willing to play a supporting role? Look at that roster and try to figure out which one is going to risk losing a few points in his batting average over a year to advance runners as they often do in the National League where you seem to have a different winner every year.

I learned to hate the Yankees decades before a lot of today's Yankee haters were even born. They were televised on the Game of the Week seemingly every Saturday on NBC. So many people down here in Nevada wouldn't drive to Kansas City for an A's game unless the opponent was, you guessed it, the Yankees. It was nice to see Mickey Mantle play, but you weren't going to get his autograph after the game. Oh, there were a couple Yankees who signed autographs. Moose Skowron and Jim Bouton for instance.

The first post-war World Series in 1945 featured the Chicago Cubs and Detroit Tigers. By the time the Cincinnati Reds appeared in 1961, each team in the original eight-team National League circuit had made it. That's eight teams in 17 years. In the American League, half that many had appeared. The Yankees won 12 pennants over that time.

Things have changed since 1969 as layer upon layer of playoffs have made it more difficult to get in the World Series. First, you play 162 games to get a chance to play five more. Win three and you still have to win four more to get in the World Series. Ridiculous and artificial is what that is.

What the Yankees do is simply go out and buy the parts they need to make a whole, but that does no good in the short playoffs where luck has a lot to say.

Look at Roger Clemens. George Steinbrenner sees he needs pitching so he peels off $25 or $30 million, $45 or $50 million, whatever it takes to get that arm for few games. All Steinbrenner knows is money when heart wins a lot of games.

One thing you can say about the old Yankees and the new ones. At least the old Yankees used to grow a lot of their players in the farm system. Of course, when one of your fellow league members, the Kansas City A's, acts as a big league farm team. Well, you know the rest. Somehow, it just doesn't seem right that deep pockets should trump knowledge of the game.

And so, the beat goes on, year after year. All things considered, I'd hate to be a Yankee fan. Instead of being ecatatic when they win, their fans expect them to win every year and are angry, rather than disappointed when they don't. That doesn't seem to be a lot of fun to me.

And speaking of hating, if you really want to know what it is, just ask a denizen of what is known as Red Sox Nation. In that country, just saying Bucky Dent's name without expectorating is tantamount to treason.

And if all that isn't enough, you can rest assured that New Yorkers hate you simply because you are not a New Yorker. They don't care if you're a Yankee fan or not if you live west of the Hudson River. That's kind of why I enjoy seeing them unhappy. As unhappy as they were in 1965 when their world fell apart and Yankee fans discovered what it was like to start on a road that ran into the same dead ends the rest of us have become familiar with for 12 years.. To Yankee haters, those were the good old days. The dead-Yankee dozen.