I'll answer both your criticisms as slowly as I can, because I know you don't read fast. (Rim shot).
1. The term "rim shot" is not a metaphor. It has nothing to do with basketball. It is a reference to when a comedian makes a joke and the drummer gives the drums a "rim shot" to emphasize the humor-- similar to a sign that flashes "applause" to a studio audience-- it tells the audience the joke is over and it is safe to laugh. I said "rim shot" because I made a pun about Clemens being a "strike" against the Astros in the playoffs (strike meaning both a penalty in general and a pitching term for a penalty against a batter). I said rim shot to call attention to a bit of wit I accidently hit upon. Like the opening senetence above.
2. I don't like basketball. It's a minor league sport, and boring and unathletic as hell. But I don't think people who cheer for the Knicks and Nets should be casting aspersions.
3. Last years LCS was not a payoff-- I'm not saying all Yankee wins are fixed. They have had chamionship teams. But if you look at the '99 LCS, or the '96 World series, or Don Zimmer throwing the pennant in '78, or The Dodgers/Yankees series in the 50's, and couple that with the fact that baseball has had gambling woes embedded in its history, you realize that, with the Yankees as the perennial winners, sad sack gamblers are likely to bet on a sentimental favorite (re: Dodgers of the 50's, or Sox or Cubs) because "they're due". This is a bookie's dream--people who don't bet with their brains, but with their hearts. As long as the Yankees are winning, the bookies will collect. Now you can see the consistent blown calls of the above series in a whole new light. Mistakes happen. But they do not always benefit the same team every time--unless they're not mistakes at all.
I could point out the Yanks' owner as of now has been suspended from operations for shady dealings with underworld types---and he's in shipping, an industry constantly being probed for underworld connections.
I'm saying that one incident is an accident, two are a coincidence, but more than that is an investigation. Or should be.
4. The do have a crappy stadium. Visit most ballparks, and you have a well-kept, neat stadium in an area the club controls and cleans so as to make it fan-friendly. The stadium is a grey block eyesore as seen from highway going by it, it's falling apart (remember when the roof fell in less than 10 years ago?), its paint is peeling, and its neighborhood looks like a 1980's vision of what all of New York is like-- dangerous, drug-infested, violent, run down, poor, and dirty. Let me put it this way--on an off-day, you can find people around Camden Yards, or Fenway Park, or Wrigleyville, or Pac Bell-- because they're nice neighborhoods, there are shops and restaurants and dance clubs and bars the team leases, and neighborhod is safe. Baseball and non-baseball fans go there for non-baseball reasons. No one hangs around Yankee Stadium on an off-day--unless they're up to something illegal.
5. Not every series is fixed. That's a point to which I'll stick. But there's always some gambler/owner who'll muscle in on the underpaid, overabused umps and "make 'em an offer they can't refuse". It doesn't happen every year, just like every celebrity accused of a crime didn't always do it. But money talks. too many coincidences aren't coincidences anymore.
6. The Yanks paid the Dodgers to move out because of the unthinkable: they were more popular than the Yanks. They were the darlings of NY--they'd gone from "dem Bums" to "Our Bums". They integrated first-- and the african-american population of NY and NJ began to find allegiance with them. Brooklyn was a family neighborhood with a lovely park that people loved--the Yankees were in a run-down ghetto with a grey slab embarassment (still are). But Walter O'Malley wanted a cheap stadium deal and some sweetheart payoffs. So the Yanks arranged the deal--and sent the Giants as well, because, as a National League franchise also openly recruiting blacks, they were a threat as well. That gave the Yanks NY all to themselves. Baseball approved the deal because it wanted to expand, and what better way to generate interest than sending a championship team and its rival? We don't send scrubs overseas to promote baseball internationally--we send all-stars.
As for the Mets, the Yanks resisted expansion, but relented, only to demand a team not be on the Upper West Side (Giants) or in Brooklyn (Dodgers). Why? Easy. They were ethnic neighborhoods, and they could rival the Yanks again, because thye're the "neighborhood team". But the Mets are in Queens- for all intents and purposes, a suburb. Their are no close ethnic neighborhoods-- there are ethnic neighborhoods in Queens, but too far away from the park. If the Mets were in Brooklyn or Manhattan, they'd equal the Yanks in popularity (the new "Our Bums"). Queens is too antiseptic and remote to engender too much loyalty- although the rule is, people born in NY cheer for the Mets, Jerseites cheer for whoever is winning, and people from outside the Tri-state cheer for the Yanks.
7. Arguing the "neighborhood is better than it has been in 30 years" is akin to saying "there are fewer deaths from AIDS nowadays" or "their are fewer suicide bombing deaths in Israel this year than last year". That just calls attention to how much WORSE it must have been in the 70's-- there must have been open crack vials on the seats and murders happening in the dugouts. The neighborhood has gone from Fort Apache-esque disarray to Shinbone run by Liberty Valance. That's not much of an improvement.
8. Of course the Yankees have high attendance. Ny is a baseball friendly city, and it's trendy now to be seen at a baseball game, and Yankees are winning. Duh. Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco can all boast attendance improvements for these reasons, and Yankees have a larger stadium than the Cubs, Sox, or Giants, so, naturally, they would have the highest attendance. In fact, it would be more embarassing if they didn't out draw those teams than it is a point of pride that they do-- given all the above circumstances, they should.
9. Yankee stadium isn't filled with baseball fans--it's filled with drunks and boorish losers. All parks have their share, but most are family friendly, regelated the worst to the bleacher. In Yankee Stadium, the more of a neanderthal you are, the better your seat. Fenway, as a direct contrast, would never chant the kind of low-class remarks the Yankee Stadium does-- the few drunks who did would be escorted out by security. In Yankee stadium, the boorish drunks ARE the security.
10. Paranoid Delusions? Stolen Rationality? If anyone is paranoic or irrational, its a Yankee fan. Constantly insecure about HIS teams positioning (do you own the team?), fearful of anyone disrespecting the GREAT legacy of the Yankees (this legacy is discussed in my previous post), irrational to the point of violence in the face of a disagreement on HIS team (see And your point is, poonani, and Karim Garcia), delusional to the point of believing a teams winning percentage and World Series titles reflects on his own personal self-worth...well, you get the point. Like a common crimminal, the Yankee fans will be the last people to figure out they (and the team they root for) are the bad guys.
It's actually kind of fun to poke a sharp stick in this chihuahua's eyes. Ah, well. Just watch the carnage if the Yanks don't take the series. They'll be therapy bills the likes of which have never been seen in NY before this winter
. Of course, Yankee fans are generally too obtuse and foolish to actually take these things into account.