Sabathia, Teixeira, and U.S. Steel...and Bach

Over at Bronx Banter, Diane Firstman runs down pretty much all of the reaction to the Teixeira signing from the usual scribes.

And Alex Belth blogs it best:

“I hope they lose every single game,” Pat Jordan said to me when I called with the news a few hours later. Both men, incidentally, are Republican, but they are also both rebellious, outsiders, self-made men. They aren’t the kind that get off rooting for US Steel.

Yet here I am, a New York Liberal, and yet US Steel, that’s my team. I used to have guilt about it, for years it worried me. Then I grew up. What’s the use feeling guilty? You have accept what is. Professional baseball isn’t a game. The Yankees are out to win, every year, forever. Isn’t that why Ban Johnson created the Highlanders in the first place? They will spend whatever it they have to spend. They pay a big luxury tax in return. They might offend everything you stand for. So be it. I get it.

I like being a Yankee fan. If Yankee fans are cursed by anthing, it is the teams’ ruthless ambition and unyielding arrogance. The curse for a rational-minded Yankee fan is that you are rooting for the front-runner, the bullies. And if you are overly neurotic you will question what that says about your moral fiber. So, we listen to other fans ridicule our team as something less-than-wholesome, something corrupt.

As far as curses go, it’s not so bad...

Oh, and by the way, another New York Christmas tradition is under way: WKCR's Bach Fest. Listen.