I remember the chant dimly, a Red Sox/Orioles game when I was seven or eight years old. It didn’t seem odd, or menacing, just slightly out of place. A few months later, when my parents took me and my brother to a taping off WWF Thursday Night Smackdown, it erupted again. Finally, when it burst out randomly in Faneuil Hall one evening, I had to ask. “Dad, why do people yell ‘Yankees suck’ all the time, even when no Yankees are around to hear it?”
I can’t remember my dad’s exact response, but it went something along the lines of this: those people are idiots, that chant is senseless, and it’s embarrassing that Red Sox fans–and Boston citizens in general–took it up as an unofficial slogan.
While it’s a regional example, the “Yankees suck” chant is an example of how we can all learn a lesson between uneducated hatred and spirited competition.
