I am a Red Sox fan, and I hate it when people shout "Yankees suck!".
Don't get me wrong. I hate the Yankees. It brought me joy last night to hear they were bounced out of the playoffs. They are the team that people love to hate, especially in New England. The difference between my hatred of that team and the hatred from my fellow Red Sox fans, it would appear, is I hate the Yankees out of respect. They are a great team and a worthy adversary.
I attended a party last night at my school, Plymouth (NH) State University. Word got out quickly that the Yankees were out, which provided a feeding ground for these two stereotypical Red Sox fans: drunk, ignorant, more focused on hating the Yankees than rooting for the Red Sox, and appear to know little about the actual game of baseball. Almost immediately, they find this guy wearing a Yankees cap and start hassling him about the loss with quotes such as "F*** the Yankees", "Sox are the best team!", "We kick your @$$!", and, of course, "Yankees suck!".
How bad is it for Red Sox fans like me that this is the stereotype. Let's analyze the idiocy here: the Yankees were bounced out of the playoffs, while the Red Sox suffered the worst September collapse to miss playoffs. The Yankees have a manager, and the Red Sox currently do not. The Yankees have 20 more World Series Championships. The only thing the Red Sox have for 2011 edition of the rivalry is they won the season series 12-6, but unfortunately nobody will remember that.
I am not going to bat for the Yankees here, but what I am trying to do is point out that my fellow Red Sox fans need to smarten up ten-fold. I have been a Red Sox fan since 1999, when my dad took my brother and me to Fenway Park for a game in which Pedro Martinez struck out 16 Atlanta Brave's in a complete game victory. I admit I also participated in this irresponsible "Yankees Suck" chanting at first, but I quickly realized how stupid and immature it was. I was done by 2002, the year I turned 12. Since then, I have been embarrassed about being a Red Sox fan on countless occasions, but it was never the team that made me turn red.
It is not only the fact that the Yankees do not suck that make this practice utterly humiliating for the fan base, but also the situations when the chant takes place. The chant would be at the very least understandable if it were limited to games where the Red Sox were beating the Yankees. I hate that I have to say that this is not the case, as the chant has no boundaries whatsoever. It happens at games in which the Yankees are beating the Red Sox. It happens in games in which the Red Sox are not even playing the Yankees. Hell, I have heard the "Yankees suck!" chant at Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins games. It is not even contained to the correct sport! Idiots.
The "Yankees suck" chant, among other behaviors of stereotypical Red Sox fans, makes me wonder what I am saying by wearing my Red Sox cap. I hope I am saying that the Red Sox are my favorite team, and I enjoy to see them win ballgames and championships. I am worried that the red, old-fashioned 'B' now stands for "I just hate the Yankees. I don't know anything about baseball, I just want to get hammered and yell obscenities about the Yankees". This cannot be what being a Red Sox fan is about.
The best solution to this problem is to, well, stop the chant. However, I know that this is illogical because, at the moment, Red Sox fans in general are illogical. So I propose the next best solution: separate these idiots from the fan base. Rather than Red Sox fans, we should call these people "Yankee-hater hats". These will be the people who are only Red Sox fans to be obnoxious towards the Yankees, and also to be obnoxious in general. They should be considered equivalents to the "pink hats", due to the fact that they probably know as much about baseball as the other. Maybe then Red Sox fans can just be Red Sox fans.