Customer Reviews

Those Damn Yankees: The Secret Life of America's Greatest Franchise

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

It's hard to find anything to like about this book.

Not surprising, as author Dean Chadwin finds it hard to find something to like about, well, anything.

Chadwin's book is puzzling. While most works of non-fiction have a point - chronicling an era or person or event, informing about a topic, or editorializing on an issue - Chadwin seems to have forged ahead with little point outside the notion that the Yankees are not only the Great Evil of baseball, but one of the great evils of the world. If he could have pinned the first World War on the Yankees, he would have.

Space is allotted for diatribes on racism (the Yankees, you'll note, are a racist organization), homophobia (the Yankees have a special something that draws homophobes to the team, it seems), bad business (the Yankees are Enron and Standard Oil rolled into one) and New York politics (no, we're unsure how this is relevant to the team allegedly being chronicled, but darnit, Rudy is a bad guy). Chadwin makes it a point to tell us Steinbrenner is a bad guy (really?), that Yankee players are all tainted (they were, after all, Yankees), that most bad people around baseball can be traced back to the Yankees (he will bend over backwards to link bad behavior and the team), and that the so-called "bleacher creatures" represent Yankee fans as a whole (a bunch of loathsome, homophobic, racist drunkards, if Chadwin's book is to be believed).

Make no mistake, the author can write. His prose never bores, the pacing is good, and he can turn a phrase. Those looking for a tome that will help reinforce their Yankee hatred will relish in this book. It's certainly well put together.

For most readers, especially those looking for a good book about baseball or the New York Yankees, this will be a book you'll want to skip. It's about neither. It's about the author's politics.

Dean Chadwin's book isn't to be skipped because its target is the cherished New York Yankees - have at them, I say - it's to be skipped because it's little more than a lengthy rant without a point by a bitter man.

At least, that's how it reads. Once. Because it's not worth reading twice.

I've argued this point too often to defend it again here; let me just state it : Men are conservative. One result of this political bias is that, for the most part, sports coverage tends to be fairly conservative too. Sure, sports writers and fans may moan about player salaries and big market teams, giving themselves a faint patina of egalitarianism, but as a general rule, don't begrudge them the money much, and, for all the lip service given to competitive balance, are never happier than when great teams come along. Take Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls for example; you never heard a peep about the gazillion dollars that Michael made or about the fact that no one else had any shot at the title. Those years, during which the NBA hit its all time peak in popularity, will be remembered for the dominance of not merely one team, but one player.

Likewise, in those years where the NFL is truly competitive and small market teams have a shot at the Super Bowl, no one watches the games. The Rams vs. the Titans may have been a nice story, but no one followed it. Meanwhile, on most other issues, fans and journalists are positively reactionary. The trend towards old style ballparks, classic uniforms, and more traditional rules are all manifestations of a core belief that most sports were better forty years ago than they are today.

So it is a rather extraordinary thing when an author pens a sports book that can truly be described as politically radical. The Yankees are to Dean Chadwin as the Soviet Union was to Ronald Reagan--the focus of evil in the modern world. This book is a frequently funny, always splenetic, only sometimes ridiculous, tirade aimed at the racism, homophobia, exploitativeness, acquisitiveness, ignorance, intolerance, duplicity, and greed of George Steinbrenner, the fans, the athletes, baseball in general, and Rudy Guliani, and the other politicians who are so eager to spend public money to keep or lure professional franchises.

Personally, I grew up in Northern New Jersey, where there were only two kinds of people. Those who rooted for the Yankees/Giants/Rangers/Knicks were the worst kind of front running filth, the kind of people who would have remained Loyalist during the American Revolution, or, were they French (and they nearly were) would have been Vichy rather than Resistance. These people expected victory as something of a birthright, and weren't particular about how it was secured. The rest of us, though we liked to see our teams win periodically (the Mets in '69, '73, '86 seemed to have an adequate pace), actually did not peg our loyalties to championships--we stuck by our squads even at their most hopeless (and perhaps only a lifelong Nets fan can truly even comprehend the meaning of the word "hopeless."). Now I live in New England, root (as one must) for the Red Sox (though still a Met fan too) and have drunk deep at the well of Yankee hatred. So I thoroughly enjoyed the sheer venom that Chadwin spews in this book. It goes over the edge in certain places and some of his political beliefs are simply too absurd to be taken seriously, but he's right on the money about what a boondoggle all of this publicly funded stadium construction is, and the book is generally such a drastic change of pace from the glut of onanistic Yankee hagiographies we've been inundated with over the years that he deserves credit just for swimming against the hegemonic pinstriped tide.

It is necessary to loathe the Yankees. And while it is not necessary to read this book in order to summon the appropriate loathing, it certainly helps. The next time some Billy Crystal/Bob Costas type wells up when talking about how the best day of his childhood was that day at the Stadium when Mickey hit two, grab this book and turn to pretty much any page, it will surely help quell the nausea.

GRADE : C

There are really only three ways to take this book. Love the Yanks = hate the book; hate the Yanks = like the book; or, prefer an opinionated, well-researched, theoretical, political, interesting, polemical treatment of baseball over the usual insipid drivel = love the book.

What an incredible book! I was enthralled with the shady dealings and secret sordid details of the Yankees and their fans. It was refreshing to see an unbiased opinion from an immensely talented writer. I have been a baseball fan since I was a little girl and I was mesmerized by the amazing season the Yankees had last year. When I read Mr. Chadwin's book, I was shocked and appalled at how much wrongdoing has occurred within the Yankee organization. The bigotry of the Bleacher fans and the sexual harassment incidents leave me with a bad taste in my mouth about the Yankees. I thank Mr. Chadwin for helping me open my eyes to the prejudice and discrimination that run amok within the Yankee organization.

Whether or not it is the author's intent, this book is more an insightful portrait of New York city in the height of the Giuliani era than a critique of the inarguably great and graceful 1998 Yankees. "The City" itself steals the show as the protagonist of Chadwin's narrative, making plain for insiders and outsiders alike, the level of inequality, hypocrisy and social lunacy that most New Yorkers take for granted or simply learn to ignore.

It's the saddest of all when an author parodies himself while attempting to wax philosophical and moral; it's like a manager kicking dirt on an umpire. He offers nothing new (Yanks have more money, Steinbrenner is evil), offers no insightful nor thought-provoking solutions or even fresh perspectives (people have been talking about European football's relegation system for decades and they'll never use it because owners will never accept it). What he and others with his stubborn mindframe about baseball's ecomonics either conveniently leave out or address only glibly is that Major League Baseball is business. Money. Some businesses succeed, others fail. May not be fair (and I am not advocating it is) when it comes to our beloved sport, but this is a capitalist country. Why should our nation's pasttime be subject to any different rules. In the end, the author comes off like the kind of bitter, rancorous, inebriated Red Sox fan you'd meet in an airport bar: all rhetoric.

By the way, he also says the Yankees have the worst fans, obnoxious, drunk and boorish. Must not have been out to Shea yet.

The author, while clearly skillful in his use of language, yet shows an unmistakable bitterness against Giuliani and the Yankees, while presenting an unconvincing case for his convictions. I was surprised at how shallow his sentences were in content, though composed in rather sophisticated style. He has a gift with words but his thoughts are not coherent, with passions evidently more ruled by a personal contempt for the Yankees and those who rule in New York than anything genuinely factual about the team or the city's leaders. It is one thing to truly expose the faults of those who succeed; it is quite another to simply hate them because they succeeded. The former may be a public service, but the latter is nothing but petty jealousy. The latter is what I found in this disappointing book.

The author, while clearly skillful in his use of language, yet shows an unmistakable bitterness against Giuliani and the Yankees, while presenting an unconvincing case for his convictions. I was surprised at how shallow his sentences were in content, though composed in rather sophisticated style. He has a gift with words but his thoughts are not coherent, with passions evidently more ruled by a personal contempt for the Yankees and those who rule in New York than anything genuinely factual about the team or the city's leaders. It is one thing to truly expose the faults of those who succeed; it is quite another to simply hate them because they succeeded. The former may be a public service, but the latter is nothing but petty jealousy. The latter is what I found in this disappointing book.

Chadwin hates the Yankees (as do I) but his book tends to wander all over the place. He can't seem to decide if the Yankees are evil, all of baseball is evil, or if it's just Rudy Giuliani's fault.

He seems to like baseball, but it's hard to tell. He also hasn't noticed that you can find homophobic, racist fans in New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, or any other major league city. That's just the nature of many sports fans.

Yankee bashers are nothing new, with their perennial rantings about how unfair things are because the Yankees have known such great success over the years. Most Yankee bashers though were willing to at least give due credit to the accomplishments the Yankees made on the field last year. Unfortunately, the author of this book is determined to express his bitterness in the worst way possible that he's determined to belittle even the great on the field accomplishments of the team, at one point saying David Wells's perfect game was an easy one (as though perfect games are somehow different?) and then saying once again that the Yankees keep buying championships etc.

Mr. Chadwin's book is nothing more than sour grapes galore from the kind of person who can never accept the fact that like the Montreal Canadiens in hockey and the Boston Celtics in basketball, the Yankees became the best because they earned their way to the top. It is ultimately as worthless as the similar tracts of an earlier generation like Bob Marshall's abysmal "Diary Of A Yankee Hater."