Attention New Yorkers
This:
DOES NOT equal this:
If you really think the Patriots losing by three points to a team they beat by three points in the regular season in one game compares to blowing a 3-0 series lead with the best closer in baseball history on the mound with three outs to go after 86 years of dominance, then you’re either a completely delusional Yankee fan grasping at straws or a football-centric neanderthal that probably believes NFL players don’t take steroids only baseball players do. It’s not the same. It does not “balance out” the recent rivalry between the two cities. The Big Apple is still home to the biggest choke in the history of American sports.
Small aside: I don’t think I quite realized the level of vitriol against the Patriots until after they lost. I knew everyone hated New England, I was just taken aback by the amount of schadenfreude. People are REALLY soaking in the loss. Hey, as an avid hater of Yankee baseball and Duke basketball, I get it, I think I was just surprised it reached that level.
I think the Pats are now just as hated as the late-90s Yankees were — maybe even moreso — but I don’t think it will stay that way. Eventually, the Patriots’ good times will come to an end and they’ll go back to being just another NFL team. The Yankees will always be the Yankees, detestable since the early ’20s for their bullying of every other franchise in baseball at some point.
A lot of it has to do with the fans. The common accusation hurled at Pats fans is that they are arrogant and think it’s their “birthright” to win the Super Bowl every year. That’s a byproduct of success in general, but also of the way Boston sports suffered for so much of the 20th century — Celtics excepted. This is just another reason why no one will ever be more hated than the Yankees. I mean New Yorkers have the whole “birthright” mentality down, but those fans actually believed that ghosts, curses, mystique and a drunk, dead baseball player were on their side in addition to their bloated payroll up until 2004. It doesn’t get any worse than that.