Fans are fanatical.

Steve Politi tears down some low-hanging fruit:

"Still, since Yankee fans love to consider themselves among the smartest and most engaged in professional sports, it’s only fair to point out the naïveté of what happened in the first inning Tuesday night."

Do Yankee fans really consider themselves this?

Or is it just something that sportswriters claim Yankee fans consider themselves?


"That was when those fans went from merely bitter to downright dopey."

Neither.

Perhaps the loss of Cano should have caused an emotional response from Yankee fans in general, but he was simply never a huge draw.


"That was when Robinson Cano, for the first time in his Seattle Mariners uniform, trotted to his familiar spot at second base and was serenaded this throaty chant from the once-adoring Bleacher Creatures: 

'You sold out! You sold out! You sold out!'

It was loud, it was rehearsed, and even if Cano said later that he didn’t hear it, it was all you could do not to run out to left field and check to see if the beer sales were abnormally high."

It was cold outside, so beer sales were likely abnormally low.

From a Yankee fan perspective, Cano sold out because he joined a team that wasn't the Yankees. Fan psychology is not very complicated.


"Forget, for a moment, that the fans were sitting in a stadium that cost $1 billion – a giant ATM that George Steinbrenner built to replace a baseball shrine that once sat across the street.

Forget, too, that this is a franchise built on the backs of players who, for decades, have left other teams for the nine-digit contracts that only the Yankees were willing to pay. Jason Giambi. Mark Teixeira. CC Sabathia.

Forget, finally, that the team spent nearly $500 million just this offseason on players, including $153 million on Jacoby Ellsbury – who, it should be noted, received a warm reception from the team he left, the hated Red Sox."

That is a lot of things to forget and I'm finding it more difficult to forget since you just reminded me.


"This, on a dreary night in the Bronx, was cold in every way. Cano – who had nine elite-level seasons in New York, won a championship in 2009 and was an MVP-caliber player on a bad team last season – received as rough a reception as anyone can remember for a returning Yankee player."

Get a grip. The booing was mild and good-natured and the real insult is when a returning player is completely ignored, which is what happens most of the time.


"Instead, when CC Sabathia struck out Cano swinging to end the first inning, the crowded cheered wildly. It happened again when he grounded to first, where Teixeira made a soft toss to Sabathia to record the out.

That is, when the first baseman with the $180-million contract tossed to the pitcher who opted out three years into a $161-million contract to sign a new $122 million contract."

Right.

They are our sellouts because they are currently wearing the Pinstripes.

We root for a piece of laundry, as Seinfeld would say.

The fans are not as foolish as you seem to think. They understand how their team was constructed. They understand the payroll advantage the Yankees enjoy. They understand that most players would take the money and run.

They weren't engaging in a philosophical dissertation. They were just having some fun at the ballpark. Good times.