Who Quits First: Yankees or Fans?

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

If Game 7 of the 2001 World Series was truly “The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty,” as proposed in a new book by former Yankee beat writer Buster Olney, then August 31, 2004 might well be remembered as the Last Night of the Yankee Bandwagon.


On that night, 51,777 fans packed Yankee Stadium to watch their team beat up on the sputtering Cleveland Indians. Instead, it was the Yankees who were the recipients of a 22-0 spanking, the worst in franchise history.


Since then, there have been no 50,000+ nights at Yankee Stadium. Instead, the drop-off in attendance has been noticeable, and at times shocking.


The next night, 10,000 Yankee fans decided to take the night off. A mere 41,000 came to the ballpark to see the Yankees bounce back, 5-3, behind Orlando Hernandez, the only reliable starter the Yankees have.


The following afternoon, a gorgeous late summer day and the last chance for city kids to see a day baseball game before heading into the new school year, the crowd was 37,963, the puniest since an April 29 game against Oakland.


Since then, the crowds have inched back – 44,000 for the series opener against Baltimore, 48,000 the next two nights, followed by a smattering for Monday night’s six-hours-delayed series opener with Tampa Bay – but it is clear that something is going on in the Bronx, and it is not good.


To paraphrase The Boss, when the going got tough, the tough got out of the ballpark.


Or, as John Sterling might say of the dwindling Yankee fan base, “It is high . . . it is far . . . it is GONE!”


For the first time in years, the Yankees are in a real fight. Their starting pitching is not only suspect, but short, now that Kevin Brown has punched his way out of the rotation. The Red Sox simply refuse to go away, or even to lose. In the regular season, the Yanks have shown a disturbing inability to beat any of the teams they might have to beat in October.


In short, Yankee games are meaningful again, and suspenseful. Nothing is guaranteed for them or their fans, in spite of the largest payroll in the history of sports. Neither the 26 championship flags hanging from the facade, the military slogans posted all over the clubhouse, the ghosts haunting Monument Park, nor the incredible sense of entitlement both the players and the fans wear like a badge of honor can help them now.


The 2004 Yankees are going to have to fight like hell to stave off failure, which to them is anything short of the world championship.


Never has there been a better or more compelling time to suffer the outrageous ticket prices, to buck the dismaying traffic on the Deegan and the Cross Bronx, to brave the search for a parking space in the shadow of the 161st Street train.


And yet, this is the time Yankee fans have chosen to take a powder. Is this really what lurks deep inside the gut of a Yankee fan? Jelly in the belly?


Or is it simply evidence of what many have suspected all along, that the Yankee fan base is heavily padded with frontrunners and be-seeners. The Yanks are going to win it all? I’m there. Oh, they might not even make it? With apologies to Michael Kay, “See ya!”


Because right now, that is certainly how it looks.


All season long, Yankee attendance has been phenomenal and until about a week ago, on a record-setting pace. They had sold the place out 36 times. Nineteen other times, there were more than 40,000 in the park. They packed the house for important games with Boston and for meaningless games with Detroit and Colorado. A total attendance of 4 million, roughly 50,000 a game for each of the 81 home games, did not seem out of reach.


And then came the 22-0 loss to the Indians and a real, live, sweaty-palms pennant race with the Red Sox. And suddenly, there were empty seats all over Yankee Stadium. Not just one or two, but big pockets of light blue interspersed throughout the expanse of white.


Where had the Yankee fans gone?


Certainly not to Shea, since the Mets gave up on their season long before their eternally-suffering fans.


Instead, it appears as though Yankee fans – of whom there seemed to be a whole lot fewer during the Dark Ages of 1981-1995 – are in the process of going back to where they were in the days of Bobby Meachem and Butch Wynegar and Ron Hassey, the days when Steinbrenner was insisting fans were afraid to go to his ballpark when in reality, they just were afraid to watch his ball club.


There’s nothing to be afraid of in the Bronx these days, with the possible exception of failure. Real Yankees, of course, do not fear failure. They only fear failing to try.


Yankee fans, however, are not to be confused with Real Yankees. As The Boss’s spokesman famously said the morning after the 22-0 loss, “Quitters never win and winners never quit.”


Unless, of course, you are a Yankee fan.


The New York Sun

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