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Yankees Fans Pour Beer On Me, Then Steal My Hotel Room

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The first part of the story is not one that many of you have heard before except in passing; I only trot it out when people challenge me on just how much I actually hate the Yankees (with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns). While most people assume from my sports teams (Sox, Celtics and Bruins) – and occasionally, strangely enough, my accent – that I’m from Massachusetts, that’s not actually the case. My parents, alone amongst their respective siblings, settled in the NY/NJ area before I was born. In a true triumph over my environment, however, I was raised as one of the Good Guys, a Sox fan, from birth. My earliest hats all had B’s on them, and my first ever baseball game was at Fenway during a summer vacation at my grandparents place on the North Shore [1]. And so it was that while we were back at home in NJ, my Dad happened to take me to a Sox/Yankees game at Yankees Stadium when I was maybe five years old, which in and of itself would have been fine. The issue was that as an innocent little five year old, I had no idea just how evil the Yankees fans were and therefore insisted on wearing my little Red Sox batting helmet to the game. To make a long and potentially boring story short, the very classy Yankees fans poured beer on me. When I was five.

In the years that have passed since that early childhood trauma, not much has changed regarding my distaste for the Evil Empire and its fans (although somehow a couple of them have managed to become friends of mine over the years). The rapturous events of last October have certainly soothed much of the pain of past Sox losses, as well as given me new ammunition to use against the Bad Guys, but overall I’m no fonder of Yankees fans than I was that afternoon at Yankee Stadium.

So imagine how I felt late last week when I was attempting to arrange a hotel room for this coming Thursday in Boston for a client engagement, only to discover that there were no available hotels in Cambridge. Nor in the North End. Nor in Back Bay. Nor indeed anywhere downtown. The closet hotels I could get, according to the travel agency, were all well out of the city, thus forcing me to take the red eye in that morning.

Who’s taking these hotels, you might ask? Who else? It was the damn Yankees fans. For those that are unaware, the Sox and Yankees are currently tied atop the American League East (after a big win earlier today), and it’s looking increasingly like this weekend’s Sox/Yankees showdown at Fenway Park could be a winner goes to the playoffs and the loser goes home proposition. In response, Yankees fans are reportedly flooding into the city to invade our park, snapping up all the hotel rooms in the bargain.

Anyway, I thought it was important to let you all know that the next five days might feature a few wild mood swings and some irrational behavior on my part, for which I’d ask your indulgence. In the meantime, I’m going to keep hating the Yankees fans; first for pouring beer on me, and then taking my hotel room.

[1] During this game, a kid sitting right next to me got hit in the stomach by a line drive off the bat of Jim Rice and had to be taken out on a stretcher.

8 comments

  1. "the very classy Yankees fans poured beer on me. When I was five."

    HAHAHAHAHA! That's soooo wrong… I would have loved to see it though. πŸ˜‰

  2. That last comment was me; my bad. I got a little excited…

  3. When Arizona beat the yankees a few years back, I bought their team hat to celebrate. Since I lived in Miami when they beat the yankees, they became my adopted team. meetings with the entire ny team i work with was a pleasure that year.

  4. Not to burst your balloon, but it's probably not just the Yankees fans in the hotel rooms. This is the start of "leaf peeper season" in the Boston area, IIRC. September/October used to be "avoid like the plague" months for when I used to travel out that way frequently.

    One time I came in to a meeting in Cambridge, and the only hotel was a Ramada in Norwood — 40 driving miles away. Would my now-ex let me share a room in a Cambridge hotel with a female colleague? NO! So Norwood it was. I knew it was going to be a bad night whe the sign behind the counter said "when paying by cash, please pay in advance".

  5. I feel your pain, grew up in a Yankees household, but have always been a sox fan…

    Try this: http://www.lacappellasuites.com/ It is a small place, tucked away in Boston's North End.

  6. What ? You don't like the Yankees. I am not your friend anymore. Oh wait, my bad, I hate them too. And I will be at Sunday's game (Schilling's pitching now) which might be (or not) the decisive game.

  7. Ryan: you're a monster πŸ˜‰

    John: it'd be better if you were a Sox fan, but hey, i'm with anyone who roots against the Yankees.

    Ed: true indeed, but in my experience living in Boston for a couple of years, most of the "peepers" are spread outside of Boston – in Western MA, VT, NH , ME and the suburbs of Boston. downtown's not a great place to be if leaves are your thing, even as a home base to strike out from. plus, it's more fun to blame the Yankees.

    Brenda: i never knew that…i feel for you. anyway, would love to try that place, but for this gig it's got to be an "approved" hotel. πŸ™

    Erik: you lucky dog! i'm trying to finagle a way to stay over and hit Sat's game, but no luck as yet. will let you know if i make it to that one. either way i'll be texting you on Sun πŸ™‚

  8. I watched all the games with my brother-in-law this past weekend. He is a Yankee fan and I am a Sox fan. I have lived in Boston since '97 so they have grown on me….I even started a sports site where most of the talk is about New England teams but we mix it up.. .http://www.bleachertalk.com/

    The Playoffs should be GR8 fun…anyone in Boston during the playoffs? Listening to Game 1 against ChiSox right now! on XM Radio…GO RED SOX!

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