Daniel J. Brush - New York Yankees: An Interactive Guide to the World of Sports: Sports by the Numbers

M ost of the time, if you are a fan of a sports team, you root for that team. You cheer for that team. Maybe you wear a sweatshirt with their logo on the front, or a hat with team colors splashed prominently on it. If you wander a little close to the frenzied fringe, perhaps you paint your face in the appropriate hues.

Sports fans, they care about their teams. They care deeply.

And then there are Yankees fans.

Yankees fans, Derek Jeter told me once, with a look of wonder swimming in his eyes, belong in a separate category all their own.

OK: we know what youre doing now, if you happen to reside in a distinctly non-Yankee precinct of this country, in which there are many. You are rolling your eyes. You are shrugging your shoulders. The Yankees take themselves so seriously, and their fans take themselves even more seriously, and this is all supposed to only be about baseball games, right?

See, thats where youre wrong. And thats what you miss out on if you dont fall under the umbrella of Yankee fandom. There is responsibility attached to being a Yankee fan. There is a sense of history, and a sense of belonging. What others see as entitlement, Yankee fans interpret as an almost sacred kind of duty, one that reaches across generations and stretches all the way back to the Harding Administration.

When you manage the Yankees, says Joe Torre, who managed them with great distinction for 12 seasons from 1996 through 2007, you arent only managing this years team, youre managing for 1996 and 1977 and 1956 and 1941. You arent only managing players, youre managing ghosts. And I suspect thats what it means to root for the team as well. Its a fascinating thing.

That fascination has likely brought you to this book. If you are a Yankees fan, that makes perfect sense, because what youre going to find in the coming pages is an absorbing collection of facts, of figures, of trivia, and of history. Some of it youll already know, because Yankees fans are nothing if not ardent students of history. Much of it will add to your knowledge. Some of it will surprise you. All of it will delight you.

And if you arent a Yankees fan?

Then you are proving the very point that all Yankees fans make whenever they present their valedictories for why the Yankees are the most important team in American sport. Because even if you swear to loathe the pinstripes, even if the thought of a 27th championship banner flying high above the Bronx someday makes you somewhat queasy, you certainly understand the Yankees. You certainly appreciate them, even if you may be slow to use that word.

For it is impossible to tell a tale of baseball across the last century and not include the Yankees. Similarly, it is impossible to be a fan of the game and not be, even silently, even cryptically, a fan of who the Yankees are, what theyve done, the excellence theyve maintained, fairly regularly, for 87 years.

The Yankees matter .

But you already knew that. Youve already started perusing this wonderful book. And soon, youll dive into this wonderful yield by the good folks at Sports by the Numbers and you will lose yourself in baseball, in history, in numbers, and in the New York Yankees. I envy you. I cant think of a better way to pass the next couple of hours. Enjoy.

Mike Vaccaro
Sports Columnist
New York Post