Why New Yorkers Loved Watching Yankees Lose

In what New York magazine’s Joe DeLessio calls “one of the best nights of baseball in recent memory,” the Red Sox completed an epic late-season collapse with a loss to the Baltimore Orioles, officially ending Boston’s playoff hopes. What made the night so memorable for New Yorkers, though, was that it was a loss by their Yankees that officially clinched the Wild Card spot for the Tampa Bay Rays. The result: Yankees fans, for just one night, allowed themselves to root against the home team. That might seem like a violation of baseball orthodoxy, but DeLessio lays out the case for why it was OK. For one thing, it was the Boston Red Sox, the most loathed team in the Big Apple. What’s more, the overhyped 2011 Red Sox were expected by some to be “greatest team in Major League history.” And, of course, there’s the matter of retribution for the 2004 season, when the Sox came back from a three-game playoff deficit to beat Yankees and eventually win the world series. “This doesn’t exactly make up for 2004,” DeLessio writes. “But that the 2011 Red Sox will forever be remembered for one of the sport’s biggest September collapses is pretty wonderful.”