The bad taste of last year that most certainly lingers on A-Rod’s taste buds will ultimately be a lose-lose situation for Yankee fans. However, they will have earned any misfortune that befalls them.
Booing the home team never helps that team play better. Is it a coincidence that Philadelphia, home of the most notoriously non-supportive sports fans, has one of the worst records of success in professional sports? Philadelphia has a representative in each of the four major sports (baseball, football, basketball and hockey) and plays in a major television market. Yet Philadelphia-based teams have won no championships since 1980 and only nine in their nearly 300 seasons of competition in the four major sports. Most athletes are not begging their agents to send them to Philadelphia — and with good reason. Those athletes know that in a city where Hall of Fame third baseman and former Phillie Mike Schmidt can be booed, anyone can be booed. There the Philadelphia teams sit, mostly undistinguished.
Cubs fans, and any others who follow their example, can boo the home team all they like. It is perfectly within their rights as ticket holders. But they will only succeed in encouraging more of the poor play that caused them to boo in the first place. Even a child knows that good consequences don’t come from bad behavior. In sports, as in life, you don’t get dessert by refusing to eat your dinner. However, maybe Cubs fans are already enjoying their dessert. Now that the White Sox and Red Sox have won World Series titles recently, Cubs fans have no competition for at least one title, “Longest World Series Drought Suffered.”
Article comments
1 - nicolas
i think that booing just to boo is stupid, but if i pay my money to go to a baseball game (especially at some of the exorbitant prices that are out there) and a supposedly elite player (like zambrano) does not perfrom at an elite level, then i am justified in showing my displeasure with his lack of performance.