On Wednesday night, astronaut Dr. Garrett Reisman threw out the ceremonial first pitch of the Sox-Yankees game. This was the next step in the Steinbrenner’s plans to compete with Red Sox Nation and institute Yankee Universe as the dominant superpower in the imaginary political sports world. The Steinbrenner family wants to show the world that it is not the Red Sox who are THE baseball team, but the Yankees.
What a load.
I am in no way attacking the Yankees or their fans. The Yankees are a storied franchise that have consistently played hard to win and have knowledgeable and passionate fans. Say whatever you want about the payroll, but the Yankees always want to win and have players and management that are willing to do what it takes to accomplish that.
But Yankee Universe is a sign of desperation in all the wrong areas. It shows that the Yankees are obsessed with defeating the Red Sox in all aspects of the game, not just what occurs on the field. The ownership not wants to outdo the Sox by regaining championship form, having a better farm system, marketing their players more, and gaining fans overseas. And let’s be realistic, the Sox want to outdo the Yankees in all of these places too.
But that is not a part of Red Sox Nation or Yankee Universe. Those are organizational concerns, things that fans have no control over and what Hank Steinbrenner is doing is trying to forge an already identifiable fanbase into a cheap and stupid catchphrase, simply to attack the Sox.
Red Sox Nation did not come about because the ownership thought it up at a marketing meeting. I would say that the Nation came about after the 1967 Impossible Dream team. That team brought about new fans and a renewed sense of pride in a historic franchise. Only later on did the fans themselves decide that this sort of dedication to a single team transcends a simple love of the game. Red Sox fans feel a sense of togetherness, or brother and sisterhood. They felt that the struggles that the Sox went through were their own struggles, the losses they had were their losses, the grief and the heartbreak and years upon years of disappointment was shared across the minds of every Red Sox fan. Nobody was an individual here, they were united in a single goal: to support this team together, no matter how bad the times may be.
Yankee Universe is a marketing ploy, plain and simple, and the first pitch from space was simply a means to gain attention for Steinbrenner’s new assault at the psyche of the Sox. The problem with this is that the Steinbrenner’s see Yankee Universe as a real, physical entity, something you can reach out and actually feel, or see, or touch. Yankee Universe presents itself to you, you don’t search for it yourself. That is what is wrong here. The real Red Sox nation, the one that doesn’t involve membership cards, ticket giveaways or autograph signings has been around for so long within the fans. You will never see a leader of a country throw out a first pitch or reenactments of great battles for liberty that created such nations. It’s not that literal.
Red Sox Nation may not be perfect and lately, it is becoming a bit more commercial. But it wasn’t created by someone who desperately wants to knock down his rival any possible way that he can. Red Sox Nation just is. It is, it has been and it always will be. Yankee Universe just, well, isn’t real.
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