Damn Yankees

Packed inside a care package we recently received from Don's brother Steve was a surprise, a first edition of the book The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.

The stage play and movie, "Damn Yankees" starring the fabulous Gwen Verdon, were based on that book.

The same day my friend Peggy sent me an article from the website FiveThirtyEight, "America Has Spoken: the Yankees Are the Worst."

There was no musical accompaniment, but the song was the same: The New York Yankees are the team Americans most love to hate.

As a former Brooklyn Dodger fan married into a clan of Yankee supporters, I had a satisfying chuckle and then sat down to read the old book. Having seen both the film and the stage play, I knew the story — a retelling of the Faust tale — but I'd never read the book that led to such great songs ("Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets," "You Gotta Have Heart," etc.) and dancing.

No question but that the book is dated after all these years, but then I noticed something. It came out in 1954, and 1954 was the only year between 1949 and 1964 that Yankees actually did NOT win the American League Pennant. Hmmm. Did author Douglass Wallop know something we didn't? Had he perhaps met Mr. Applegate, the surrogate Devil?

But then the little twist in the Devil's tail (or tale?) hit me in the face: as Joe escapes the evil one's clutches, Applegate implodes as he realizes that the only team he hates more than he hates the Yankees has won the National League pennant and will face the newly-victorious Washington Senators in the World Series: the Brooklyn Dodgers.

So much for my self-satisfied chuckle.

Instead, I retreated to the article Peggy sent to discover that the French are right: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Plus ca change. .

And so the Yankees with their exciting young players and strong season are still the Damn Yankees. Too much money, too arrogant, too New York say baseball fans around America.

But wait. There's more. The Yankees are also the most loved, or at least, liked team in America. How can that be?

Well, it turns out there are just more people who know about the Yankees than any other team, so while they have a huge fan base, fans of every other club unite in hating those "Damn Yankees."

Still, how can you hate a team that inspired such terrific songs, although to be fair, it was the hapless Washington Senators who got the best of the music.

Still, they wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for those damn Yankees. I mean, when was the last time someone wrote a song about the Seattle Mariners, one that you would sing in public, that is?

You just gotta have heart.