Teams I Hate

[Centerfield]

Ranked.

1. Kansas City Royals. Still too fresh. I've heard Kaufman Stadium is really nice but the thought of going there makes me want to barf.

2. MFY's. For obvious reasons.

3. Atlanta. Spent a decade losing to them. Now it looks like they'll be good for many years.

4. St. Louis. 1985. Yadier Fucking Molina.

5. Washington. Recent nemesis. Though there have been only a few years where we were good enough that it made a difference.

6. Dodgers. 1988. Utley.

Everyone else I'm just whatevers.

[MFS62]

Centerfield wrote: Ranked. 6. Dodgers. 1988. Utley.

1. 1958 O'Malley (Ptui)

Oh, the MFYs are a given.

Later

Edited October 8, 2018 by Guest

[Benjamin Grimm]

1. Yankees.
2. (tie) Marlins, Phillies, Braves, Nationals.
3. Everyone else.

[Guest d'Kong76]

KANSAS CITY - Eh, Mets played like crap in the WS. I've largely wiped the slate.
YANKEES - Loathe them, although a good therapist/interrogator would likely reveal it's the fans not the team.
ATLANTA - Annoying racist fucks, chop this.
CARDINALS - Kind of admire the franchise and it's history. Birds on the bat is easily my favorite non-Mets uni.
DODGERS - They don't bother me so much, although there are times I'd like to slap the late-blooming leprechaun upside the head.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I hate the Yankees, and can learn to hate anyone else

[seawolf17]

Hate is a strong word. But here's my order.

1. MFYs
2-3. Braves/Nats (tied)
4. Cardinals
5-6. Marlins/Phillies (tied)
7-8. Red Sox/Cubs (tied) - I'm over the mystique. Over it.
9. Dodgers - Just because.
10. Royals - if I wasn't at Game 5, they'd probably be lumped in with the rest. But it's still too fresh.
11-16. Pirates/Reds/Giants/Rockies/Diamondbacks/Brewers - the murky middle of the National League.
17. Padres - I don't know why I've always had a soft spot for the Pads. My least-unfavorite NL team.
18-26. Whatever other AL teams there are.
27. Twins - Mostly because of the local AAA connection, I guess.
28-29. Blue Jays/Rangers - I have good friends who are Rangers fans and others who are Jays fans, and I'd love to see them win something.

[G-Fafif]

1. MFYs

Everything else is situational, relative, conditional.

I can disdain any other team for a series or a season or a generation, but I can also drop a grudge if the moment moves me. Found myself admiring the 2011 Cardinals despite despising the 1985, 1987 and 2006 Cardinals. Couldn't hold 1969, 1984, 1989, 1998 and whatever passions arose in the heat of 2015 against the 2016 Cubs. I'm still down on the Royals and Utleys for 2015, but if they were to come up against the MFYs, I'd put those respective weeks of enmity aside in common cause, as I did grudgingly for the 1999 Braves (though mostly I ignored that World Series) and 2009 Phillies. Once upon a time, I couldn't forgive the Red Sox for daring to attempt to defeat the Mets at their pinnacle, but sooner or later you have to appreciate a bigger picture.

Mets-Nationals was never much of a rivalry, but I did find myself happier that they fell out of the 2018 race than I was distraught over the rising fortunes of the Braves and (for a spell) Phillies.

[Centerfield]

Look at these fuckers with the Tomahawk Chop. Still don't hate them?

[Edgy MD]

MOST SUSPICIOUS COMPOUND FANZ

1. Yankees-Raiders
2. Yankees-Cowboys
3. Yankees-Manchester U.
4. "I like Miami in football and Duke in basketball"
5. Sox-Pats if you live outside of New England. GtFO.
6. Celtics-Conor McGregor if you live inside New England. StFU
7. Bulls-Bears.
8. Glascow Rangers-FC Barcelona (Eurodouche)
9. Giants-Notre Dame (unless you actually went to Notre Dame)
10. Cardinals-Blues

Cardinals-Anybody, man.

[seawolf17]

Edgy MD wrote: 7. Bulls-Bears. 10. Cardinals-Blues

These are from the same city, though. That's legit.

[Ceetar]

In 2010, Harper told reporters, per The Washington Post, about how he got his Cowboys fandom from his father, while adding that he’s also a fan of the Yankees, the Lakers and Duke basketball.

[Edgy MD]

seawolf17 wrote: Edgy MD wrote: 7. Bulls-Bears. 10. Cardinals-Blues These are from the same city, though. That's legit.

Not above suspicion!

Really, "Yankees-Mets" deserves to be high up on that list. What are you, a politician?

[seawolf17]

Edgy MD wrote: Not above suspicion!

Maybe, but the suspicion comes when all your teams are out-of-area "winners." If you grew up in Chicago in the 80s and early 90s, how could you not be a Bulls/Bears fan? Now, if you're my age and you're from NYC and you're Bulls/Bears fan, well that's a horse of a different color.

[Edgy MD]

There are different types of suspicion!

[Benjamin Grimm]

Like if an old friend I know stops to say hello?

[Edgy MD]

Perfect example.

[Frayed Knot]

My biggest suspicious involves peeps with no connection to a college -- either as an alumnus or via locality -- who are "fans" of that college's sports teams.
Just admit that you latched onto them because they win all the time and would change your 'loyalty' in a heartbeat if and when that program (why is it a 'program' and never just a team?) takes
a turn for the worse.


Actual radio caller I heard a bunch of years back in a Brooklyn accent so stereotyped that it seemed made up: Yo Mike & Dawg, how do ya t'ink my Soonahs are gonna do dis year?

Yeah, YOUR Sooners. It's obvious from your voice that you're not from Oklahoma. I'm just as positive that you didn't attend U of Oklahoma, are quite unlikely to have ever been to the state
of Oklahoma, and are no better than even money to be able to spell Oklahoma . And yet you claim them as yours. Couldn't have anything to do with the fact that they were on TV many
Saturdays during the '70s and '80s (when far fewer games overall were televised) which gave you the ability to walk around with your chest puffed out 8 weekends out of 10 crowing about
how 'your' team won, now could it?

Grow the fuck up!

[dinosaur jesus]

Yankees. And it's not hate, exactly. Hate's a tribal thing--your people vs. not your people. And I'm not a New Yorker, so I don't have a strong sense of Yankee fans being another tribe (or of Mets fans being my tribe). Mostly the Yankees just annoy me, the way a lot of teams do. But more so, because they're better, and you have to hear more crap about them.

There are other hates, but they don't last. I used to hate the Pirates, but twenty years of losing took the edge off.

[Centerfield]

My biggest suspicious involves peeps with no connection to a college -- either as an alumnus or via locality -- who are "fans" of that college's sports teams. Just admit that you latched onto them because they win all the time and would change your 'loyalty' in a heartbeat if and when that program (why is it a 'program' and never just a team?) takes a turn for the worse. Actual radio caller I heard a bunch of years back in a Brooklyn accent so stereotyped that it seemed made up: Yo Mike & Dawg, how do ya t'ink my Soonahs are gonna do dis year? Yeah, YOUR Sooners. It's obvious from your voice that you're not from Oklahoma. I'm just as positive that you didn't attend U of Oklahoma, are quite unlikely to have ever been to the state of Oklahoma, and are no better than even money to be able to spell Oklahoma . And yet you claim them as yours. Couldn't have anything to do with the fact that they were on TV many Saturdays during the '70s and '80s (when far fewer games overall were televised) which gave you the ability to walk around with your chest puffed out 8 weekends out of 10 crowing about how 'your' team won, now could it? Grow the fuck up!

I don't think it's the case anymore, but certainly in my generation (and generations before) if you come from a small town, you had no choice but to root for a bandwagon team. I grew up in Syracuse and the surrounding area. Everyone watched and loved Syracuse University basketball and to a lesser extent, football. These were our only local teams. But outside of that, we were limited to whatever teams played on TV.

Baseball was the easiest. We had two channels that played baseball. Channel 9 (Mets) and Channel 11 (Yankees). Everyone picked one or the other. And baseball was always on. I think that's why I'm a bigger fan of baseball than any other sport.

Not many people were NBA fans, and basically it's because we got 1, maybe 2 games per week. CBS would always air the Celtics, Lakers or Sixers. Everyone was a fan of one of these teams. The other teams weren't on TV enough for you to get to know them with any regularity.

Football was even worse. We would get whatever game was aired regionally. Sometimes it would be the Jets/Giants. Other times it was the Bills, other times it was the 49ers or Miami, or whatever team was good that year. There would be just a handful of games on any Sunday (usually both playing at the same time on different channels). If you saw the Jets in one particular week, you might not seem them again for 3-4 weeks. I think this is partly why I never became a big NFL fan. Later on when the Bills got good, they became kinda the local team, but by then I was older and I guess past the age where one falls in love with a team.

[smg58]

Yankees first, then the Dodgers (can forgive Royals for playing better than us, can forgive the Cardinals for getting the big hit when we didn't, but Utley deliberately hurting somebody and then getting awarded a base he made no attempt to actually touch? Plunking Nimmo repeatedly until he gets hurt? They'd rank below the Yankees if not for Clemens.)

Then whoever is the team to beat in our division. Which means the Braves have just displaced the Nationals.

[Frayed Knot]

Centerfield wrote: ... certainly in my generation (and generations before) if you come from a small town, you had no choice but to root for a bandwagon team. I grew up in Syracuse and the surrounding area. Everyone watched and loved Syracuse University basketball and to a lesser extent, football. These were our only local teams.

Which is why I mentioned locality, as well as actually attending the college, as a legit reason for being a fan.
It's the others I'm calling bullshit on.

I still find non-students/alums treating the local college team as an equivalent to a pro team to be an oddity, but I understand that it's a bias from having grown up outside of NYC rather than
outside of Syracuse, Columbus, Louisville, Tuscaloosa, etc. College sports would be much better if they stayed more confined to the colleges but that horse left the barn a long time ago.

[Fman99]

I hate the fucking Yankees and their fans and their history and their stadium and their players and their uniforms and their mascot (oh wait, they don't have one, they are humorless hateable fuckdicks) and their every other damned thing.

OE: OMG and their broadcasters! Dare I forget.

I hate the Cardinals too, the "Yankees of the NL," even before Yadier F. Molina showed up.

[HahnSolo]

Teams I hate:

The Yankees.

I’m sure in another ripple in time there’s a most-hated Met opponent other than the MFYs, but not in this world.

[bmfc1]

1. Nationals
2. MFYs.

Living in the Washington area, I see MFN gear every day and it makes me sick (I note that their hat color is similar to MAGA hats). I know many MFN fans and each one, in his fandom, is a dope (I say "his" because I have a female friend who has season tickets and she is not a dope, just misguided). They know nothing about baseball and have no passion for the game. After 2017's playoff failure, I asked one how he was doing and he simply said something about saving money on more playoff tickets and onto next year. You're supposed to suffer and if you don't suffer you are just in it for the beer. I know MFY fans who understand baseball and care about their team beyond the cliche of their greatness. This is not true for Washington fans.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I disagree with the notion that you have to suffer.

I don't suffer, and I don't drink beer!

[Centerfield]

Frayed Knot wrote: Centerfield wrote: ... certainly in my generation (and generations before) if you come from a small town, you had no choice but to root for a bandwagon team. I grew up in Syracuse and the surrounding area. Everyone watched and loved Syracuse University basketball and to a lesser extent, football. These were our only local teams. Which is why I mentioned locality, as well as actually attending the college, as a legit reason for being a fan. It's the others I'm calling bullshit on. I still find non-students/alums treating the local college team as an equivalent to a pro team to be an oddity, but I understand that it's a bias from having grown up outside of NYC rather than outside of Syracuse, Columbus, Louisville, Tuscaloosa, etc. College sports would be much better if they stayed more confined to the colleges but that horse left the barn a long time ago.

Right.

Sorry, I didn't explain myself well at all. I am a big fan of the Mets. Always have been because baseball was my favorite sport, and Mets games were always on. I am a Syracuse fan, to a lesser extent, but still a big fan, and that's because of the area I grew up. I am a very casual Celtics fan. Basically, I don't watch unless I happen to be in Boston, or they make a playoff run. But in the 80's, I loved those Larry Bird teams. Celtics-Mets would have been a suspect combo back in the mid 80's, but really I didn't have a means to be a fan of any team that wasn't good.

CBS played one, maybe 2 games each week. So you saw the Celtics, Lakers, and Sixers regularly. So you picked one of them and ran with it. Other teams existed, basically, to be the Washington Generals to one of these teams. By the late 80's, cable TV arrived, and Knicks and Nets games started airing. By the 90's the NBA moved to NBC, and it was basically Michael Jordan, week after week.

And clearly it's different now, but if a fan is in his 40's or older, and didn't grow up in a metropolitan area, it's very likely that his choices were limited to good teams because that's who was on TV.

[Guest 41Forever]

I don't hate or even dislike other baseball teams -- except the Yankees.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I hate the Yankees, and root against the Mets' division rivals for pragmatic purposes.

I'd rather see Manny Machado stay with the Dodgers than go with the Phillies because there's more of a danger in the Phillies being good than in the Dodgers being good.

[metirish]

I despise the MFY's and actively root against them , if I see one more douchebag in da Bronx wearing the 27 patch jacket ...ugh....I am rooting for the Brewers to win....but really as long as the MFY don't I am happy.

[Frayed Knot]

Centerfield wrote: And clearly it's different now, but if a fan is in his 40's or older, and didn't grow up in a metropolitan area, it's very likely that his choices were limited to good teams because that's who was on TV.

Yup. It explains Yanqui fandom (and will for many years to come), also the Celtics/Lakers, and Cowboys/Steelers (plus, once upon a time, the Raiders)
It's just more palatable to me when that kind of thing occurs with a pro team where there's no local connection as opposed to doing to same with a college team.
I find middle-aged guys, whether it's fans or the talking heads on ESPN, attempting to latch onto the youthful spirit and tribal inclusion of a university that has nothing to do with them to be borderline creepy.
That asshole who thought it was a good idea to poison the trees at Auburn wasn't some drunk kid but a guy in his 50s or 60s who's hitched his wagon to 'Bama because it's Alabama and because the athletic
exploits of teenagers he's not related to make him feel better about himself. Grow the fuck up, dude!