I decided to do something a little different with today's joke. I don't like the Yankees. I like the Yankees so little that I decided, it being the day of Game 6 of their 38th World Series (23 more than any other franchise in Major League Baseball history) and their 207th World Series game (111 more than any other franchise in MLB history), I would send reasons why I hate the Yankees.

I picked two good lists of reasons to hate the Yankees. I hope you enjoy them.

For those of you that are Yankee fans, you might want to wait for tomorrow's joke. You aren't going to like this much.
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From the November 1, 1999 issue of Sports Illustrated (I think): "The Team I Love to Hate" by Rick Reilly

Heard somebody grumble the other day that this year's New York Yankees are hard to hate. That statement is just so ignorant. Always remember this: No Yankees team is hard to hate, even these small-ball, Ken-doll Bronx Bunters.

That's why I'm coming out with my three-volume series, The 4,008 Best Reasons to Hate the New York Yankees, among them ...

1. They fired Red Barber.

2. They hired Steve Howe. A seven-time drug offender.

364. Rooting for the Yankees takes all the courage, imagination, conviction and baseball intelligence of Spam. It's like rooting for Brad Pitt to get the girl or for Bill Gates to hit Scratch 'n' Win. (This is why I'm proposing legislation that would allow only those born in one of the five New York boroughs to be Yankees fans. All others who root for the team will be considered overdog-loving, Eveready-chucking, bandwagon-hopping, fair-weather, brownnose, pucker-lipped human goiters and be required to turn in their pinstriped underwear or be tossed into the East River with only Chuck Knoblauch to throw them a life preserver.)

1,011. The Yankees are the only team that doesn't sew its players' names onto any of its unis. Like kids are supposed to memorize the roster after their bedtime prayers. Let's see, 3 is Ruth, 4 is Gehrig ... and 55 is Ramiro Mendoza.

1,312. Everybody is so charmed by Yankee Stadium public address announcer Bob Sheppard, with his teeth-clenched, perfect-diction English. He sounds British. Is he British? No, he's from Long Island! Why, then, does he speak like Thurston Howell III? Bunch of Yankees fans drunk on lighter fluid in the stands, screaming, "I paid a buck to see ya mutha naked, Rocker!" and the club has some guy on the P.A. making like Alistair Cooke. Fuhgeddaboutit!

1,500 through 1,850. Convicted felon and Lucky Sperm Club member George Steinbrenner III, the despotic Yankees owner, fills half of one volume by himself. For example, Georgie Porgie, as Boston Red Sox manager Jimmy Williams calls him, just elevated his vice president of player development and scouting, Mark Newman, over his general manager, two-time American League pennant winner Brian Cashman, because Cashman lost two arbitration cases last winter. And forgot to salute.

1,855. After every nauseating, soul-sucking Yankees victory, radio play-by-play man John Sterling bellows, "Yankees win! Tha-a-a-a-a-a-a Yankees win!" like a goat stuck on an electric fence. Hey, John, give it a-a-a-a-a-a-a rest.

1,856. After every nauseating, soul-sucking victory at Yankee Stadium, tens of thousands of tin-eared fans hang around and sing the Frank Sinatra standard New York, New York over and over, until you pray the ghost of Sinatra himself will appear on the DiamondVision, screaming, "Stop!"

2,651. The Yankees' payroll this year was the largest in baseball, by the GNP of Guam. If YANKEES WIN WORLD SERIES is worth a headline, so is BULLDOZER DEFEATS TULIP.

2,651. According to The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology, the word yankee was originally a "term of contempt." Isn't that great? The Yankees named themselves after an insult! It's like calling a team the Atlanta Rednecks or the Los Angeles Cokeheads. Iron that on your wife-beater.

3,199. In the spring after their 1996 championship the Yankees charged fans to have their pictures taken with the World Series trophy.

3,200. After they lost the 1976 World Series, the Yankees voted their batboys $100 shares. Their opponents that year, the Cincinnati Reds, gave theirs $6,591 each.

3,911. For decades Yankocentric Eastern seaboard media -- like this magazine -- have overhyped Yankees players to exhaustion, so much so that six of baseball's 30 All-Century team members were Yankees, including righthander Roger Clemens, who currently is New York's fourth starter and can't get a Bic lighter out. Do you realize the Yankees have retired the jerseys of a .273 lifetime hitter (Phil Rizzuto) and a .257 lifetime hitter (Billy Martin)? What, no Bucky Dent (.247)?

3,989. Lovable Yankees coach Don Zimmer, who has had more hard objects bounce off his skull than Gilligan, was on the bench for the perfect games by Don Larsen (1956) and David Cone ('99) and never got off in between.

4,008. Hating the Yankees is an American tradition that has been honored throughout this century. Remember, nobody ever wrote a play called Damn Diamondbacks!
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From http://www.YankeeHater.com: "Fifty Reasons to Hate the Yankees"

1. George Steinbrenner owns the team. This is a man with the warmth of Pat Buchanan, the patience of Ross Perot, and the credibility of O.J. Simpson.

2. The Yankees honored a truant, Jeffrey Maier, whose interference transformed an out into a series-turning Yankee home run in the 1996 playoffs.

3. Yankee hype resulted in Joe Gordon winning the 1942 MVP award over Triple Crown winner Ted Williams. The "Splendid Splinter" led the American League in six offensive categories; Gordon led in one, most strikeouts.

4. Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak in 1941 is considered the record in baseball. Why is excellence over two months better than excellence over a season? (DiMaggio had 193 hits that season, sixty-four short of George Sisler's major league record.)

5. They make you envious. Their General Manager is thirty-five years old. Derek Jeter dates Miss World. Joe Torre has spent more than forty years in baseball. Steinbrenner did not have to go to jail following his felony conviction.

6. The Yankees retired Reggie Jackson's and Billy Martin's numbers. These two played a combined twelve seasons for the Yankees and hit .261.

7. Yankee fans are impossible to like. More than three decades ago, Roger Angell described them as "overdressed, uncomprehending autumn arrivistes." Today we would describe them as front-running boors.

8. Bucky Bleeping Dent, Red Sox killer and ersatz Yankee manager. In the worst-ever made-for-television movie, Dent played a football player who fell in love with a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader.

9. Their dynasty began because the Red Sox owner, Harry Bleeping Frazee, needed money to finance his theatrical ventures. We are not talking about hard work by the Yankees; this was Dumb Luck I.

10. Just before the end of the 1920 season, the Chicago White Sox were a better team with a brighter future than the Yankees. By the end of that season, the Sox were a shell of a great team. Eight of their stars were on their way to lifetime bans as a result of throwing the 1919 World Series. This was Dumb Luck II in establishing the Yankee dynasty.

11. After Mel Allen (whom the Yankees fired), their best known broadcaster is Phil "Holy Cow" Rizzuto. His biases would have earned him the nickname "Homer" but for the fact he hit only thirty-eight four-baggers during his thirteen-year major league career.

12. Role models like convicted felons Darryl Strawberry and Steve Howe have played for the Yankees.

13. As a Yankee, Don Zimmer has evolved from "the Gerbil" to a Grand Old Man.

14. Roger's explanations for his incident with Mike Piazza are as convincing as a politician referring to "no controlling legal authority" to justify his actions.

15. The Reggie! Bar was as hard to stomach as its namesake.

16. Steinbrenner, who was banned from baseball for life, got reinstated after three years. We hope whoever made this decision never gets on the Unabomber's parole board.

17. Yankee hype resulted in Joe DiMaggio winning the 1947 MVP award over Triple Crown winner Ted Williams.

18. Roger Maris, who had three great seasons, had his number retired. Are the Reds going to retire George Foster's number?

19. Yankee reliever Sparky Lyle wrote The Bronx Zoo, a 300-page whine about how tough life is when you're earning a large salary for pitching for a World Series winner.

20. Yankee tragedies are supposed to consume the nation. After Thurman "I won seven fewer Gold Gloves than Johnny Bench" Munson's plane went down, the Yankee faithful wanted the waiting period for Munson's Hall of Fame election waived. Tony Conigliaro, whose life was more tragic than Munson's, and who hit more home runs in far fewer at bats than Munson did, is forgotten outside of Boston.

21. Two words: Jim Leyritz

22. After the 1976 Yankees won the franchise's first pennant in twelve years, they were swept by the Reds in the World Series. Steinbrenner complained of how this loss to the greatest team since the end of World War II was a "personal humiliation."

23. The Kansas City A's were effectively a Yankee farm club. (Would you believe they sent Roger Maris to the Yankees for four spare parts?)

24. The Babe Ruth Story might be the worst sports movie ever made.

25. Howard Cosell rhapsodized about Mickey "the CAT-a-lyst" Rivers, Reg-GER-oo, and Chris "the Silent One" Chambliss when the Yankees were on Monday Night Baseball in the 1970's.

26. ABC called it Monday Night Baseball, but in practice it was The Yankee Game of the Week.

27. Above-average feats by ordinary Yankees make magazine covers.

28. Thanks to Yankee fans, Chris Chambliss's trip around the bases after his 1976 pennant-winning home run was more of an adventure than getting out of Saigon.

29. Steinbrenner, who has the Mona Lisa of ballparks, has demanded that New York City build him a paint-by-the-numbers stadium with luxury boxes.

30. Larry McPhail, the Steinbrenner of his time, made it impossible for Hall of Famers Joe McCarthy and Bill Dickey to manage the Yankees.

31. Steinbrenner and five-time Yankee manager Billy Martin made up and broke up more frequently than temperamental high school sweethearts.

32. A Yankee fan's contribution to baseball chat rooms is limited to "Red Sox suck" and "1918."

33. The Yankees exiled their greatest legend, Babe Ruth, to the 38-115 Boston Braves. They let stars like Frank Colman and Roy Weatherly wear Ruth's #3 before retiring it.

34. Yankee co-owner Del "Mr. Baseball" Webb

35. Yankee General Manager George "Chuckles" Weiss

36. Yankee backup catcher Charlie Silvera played in 227 major league games and one World Series game. Somehow, he was on six World Series winners, while Ty Cobb was on none.

37. Bill Mazeroski got the key hit in three Pirate wins, hit the World Series-winning home run, batted .320 and watched Yankee Bobby Richardson get named the MVP of the 1960 World Series.

38. Either the Yankees of the 1960's were a cliquish gang who slammed windows on kids wanting autographs as described in Jim Bouton's Ball Four, or...

39. Bouton is a liar, in which case the Yankees issued a paycheck to a big-mouthed malcontent who had a 4-15 record in 1965.

40. Joe DiMaggio was voted baseball's "Greatest Living Player" largely because that noted baseball expert, Paul Simon, wrote a line in "Mrs. Robinson" about him.

41. Free enterprise is free enterprise, but there is something terribly wrong when Luis Tiant is pictured in a Yankee uniform, holding a hot dog and saying "It is great to be with a winner." I blame the Yankees.

42. Wally Pipp could not play with a headache.

43. In the 1930's and 1940's, the Yankees would not allow radio broadcasts of their games.

44. You had to cheer for someone in the Billy Martin-Ed Whitson fight.

45. Shane Spencer had a few great weeks and the New York media compared the start of his career to those of various Hall of Famers. Earth to Spencer fans: baseball is a game of streaks. Hurricane Hazle, after a six-game major league career with the Reds, hit .403 in forty-one games for the '57 Braves. Within a year the twenty-eight-year-old was gone from the major leagues.

46. No matter how often I remind myself that he has a family and probably visits sick kids in hospitals, I cannot like Tino Martinez.

47. The Yankees have helped cause the exorbitant salaries in baseball. Can I buy a ticket on the installment plan?

48. Ron Blomberg was baseball's first designated hitter. There is something preternatural about a Yankee holding the distinction of introducing an odious concept.

49. Jerry Coleman, whose malapropisms ("Folkers is throwing up in the bullpen") as a Padres announcer are legendary, is a former Yankee.

50. Hillary Clinton, who knows less about baseball than she knows about the upstate New York town of Glens Falls, claims to be a lifelong Yankee fan.