New Yankee Fans Are Coming

As a 31-year-old, it’s very simple for me to explain my case as to why or how someone from California becomes a fan of a team on the other side of the country. The surprising thing to me is that every baseball fan who was born in the year 1992 like me isn’t also a Yankee fan. Let’s take a quick look back. The year is 1996, and I’m just learning or seeing that the sport of baseball exists. The best team in baseball and World Series winners are the Yankees. In 1997, it's my first year of Little League, the Yankees were in the World Series but lost. In 1998, I entered my second year of playing and started to learn about players. Who’s the brightest young star in the game? Derek Jeter. Oh, and the Yankees win the World Series again. By 1999, I’m now starting to form my own opinion about some things, and one of them is that the Yankees are the best team in baseball. Thankfully, they backed me up by winning the World Series again. The year 2000 was a big deal, a new number at the front of our year for the rest of our lives; nothing will be the same. Well, except for the Yankees winning the World Series again.

Like I said in the beginning, I don’t know how every kid my age didn’t end up a Yankees fan; I mean, it’s all I knew. The Yankees winning the World Series went together to me as much as peanut butter and jelly. It wasn’t just that the Yankees were winning; it was that the Yankees also had some of baseball's biggest stars all on the same team, performing at their best. When looking back on it, it was the most perfect storm the sport of baseball has ever seen.

The year is now 2024, and the Yankees have not won a World Series in 15 years. They’ve had a changing of the guard with Derek Jeter finally ending his career in 2014, and since then, the Yankees have kind of just been another team.

I know the season just began, and I’m not saying they’re going to win the World Series. What I am saying is that looking at this year's team, the Yankees have a similar feeling to that of old. They got a superstar and team captain in Aaron Judge. They’ve got a promising young homegrown shortstop in Anthony Volpe, and two veteran superstars in their own right in Anthony Rizzo and Giancarlo Stanton. On the mound, they have Gerrit Cole leading the staff, giving a similar feeling to when Roger Clemens was the ace. Marcus Stroman and Nestor Cortes remind me of Mike Mussina and Orlando Hernandez. Three starting pitchers with three completely different styles. To top it all off, the Yankees also have Juan Soto, who is as much of a superstar as any team could ask for.

I believe that this current Yankees team is a recipe for young baseball fans to start forming opinions on which team is their favorite, and the New York Yankees are finally giving a lot of different options to choose from. The only thing that’s missing is a World Series. Mark my words, if the Yankees win in 2024, we’re about to see a lot more little mes running around on baseball fields, and I’m looking forward to it.