I’ll Be Cheering Robinson Cano

Sports fans are a bitter, rage-filled bunch.

They have long memories and short tempers.  Taking everything personally, they’re biased, easily offended, and reluctant to forgive.

They love to be angry.

Which, perhaps, is why Yankee fans, whom I count myself among, will boo Robinson Cano mercilessly throughout his return to the Bronx this week – the second baseman having bolted the Bombers this offseason for Seattle’s $240 million.

Because fans aren’t objective, and they don’t process irony.  Not even irony as absurd as a Yankee fan scolding a player for taking more money.  Why should it matter that the club’s recent history is built on a foundation of cash – that before the Yankees won their last World Series they spent over $400 million acquiring three players?  Why introspectively ponder the truth that for years, the Yanks’ offseason strategy extended no further than “make them an offer they can’t refuse…and that no one can possibly match”?

Well, because that may lead us to recognize the hypocrisy that is gladly reaping in the spoils of those offers that can’t be matched or refused, while criticizing a player who happened to take one that wasn’t ours.  Because we, if we thought about it for a second, would have to admit that though Starbucks-fueled, the Mariners’ money is just as green as the Yankees.  And that when they’re offering $65 million more of it, there’s no contest – that everyone would have gladly put on a Pearl Jam t-shirt and hopped on a flight to Seattle.  And that anyone who would say different is lying.

We’d be forced to admit that we weren’t personally slighted when Cano left, and though we want to be, we have no reason to be mad.

And maybe we should admit that.

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