Why I Hate The Yankees But Love Tiger Woods

And no, this isn't about his affairs. It's about the following paradox: I am a passionate Tiger fan, but I hate the Yankees. What's more, I hate the Yankees in large part because they are so dominant, so dynastic. But isn't Tiger Woods in a certain sense the Yankees of golf? Shouldn't I, therefore, either dislike both or neither? Well, no, I think I have an answer as to why this is not the case.

I've had this thought before, obviously, and I've had an answer before. The answer was that to achieve the kind of domination that Tiger Woods produces in the game of golf requires an unbelievable amount of pure individual skill. This could also in a sense be said of tennis, or of any individual sport. In baseball, on the other hand, for a team like the Yankees to be so dominant requires very little skill of any kind, in a certain sense. There are always going to be better players in a league, and any team with the resources and the will to acquire a great many of those players, and more of them than any other team, is going to do very well. Witness their starting rotation this year: Sabathia, Burnett, Pettite, Vasquez. They simply have unlimited resources, and they use them ruthlessly. The only resource Tiger Woods, or Jack Nicklaus or Bobby Jones or Ben Hogan, could call upon to pull off their feats was pure talent, and/or hard work depending on your philosophy of skill.

But now I think I have a different answer, and it is I think a stronger claim because it says not only that it is acceptable to root for dominant golfers but that there is a particular tendency to root for dominant golfers. It came to me watching Phil Mickelson yesterday afternoon. He had muddled through twelve holes of his first round, playing okay at -1 for the day and -7 overall, but he was losing touch with leader Lee Westwood who was at -12. But then he stepped to the par-5 13th hole's tee. His drive caught the left-hand trees but came out in the fairway, and he then carved his second shot to about ten feet and rolled in his eagle putt. Then on the par-4 14th he crushed a drive 305-ish and had 139 into the green; using a pitching wedge he hit a literally perfect shot, and I do mean that: it went in. From 139 yards away. Eagle-eagle. The 15th is another par-5, and one of the easiest holes on the course, so he was aspiring to do three consecutive eagles, something which (as far as we know!) has never happened. His drive, however, was blocked to the left and stymied by a stand of trees, forcing him to lay up by chipping through the trees. No matter, he thought, I'll just hole out my 89-yard wedge shot! After all, after the pitching-wedge hole-out on the last hole this looked positively easy. But he tugged the shot well to the right and had to settle for a six-inch tap-in birdie. A bogey by Westwood meant that in about thirty-five minutes he had picked up a net six shots on the lead and was now leading the championship.

So what's my point? The point is that this is, among other things, a purely objective feat, and it was essentially impossible. I mean, hell, just sinking the pitching-wedge was statistically impossible. To do so sandwiched between an eagle at the previous hole and a near-pitch-in eagle at the following hole, on Moving Day Saturday at the Masters, and in just such a situation that it moved him perfectly from almost out of contact with the lead to Leading, just defies possibility. But it happened, and here's the thing: it wasn't particularly random. He was just playing that well. The shot into 13 was just beautiful, and I can tell you that the shot into 14 was a perfect swing, a perfect shot, and was dead-center from the moment it hit the green. And quite honestly, I half expected him to sink his wedge at 15: that's how well he was playing. I would've been stunned if he had been outside of three feet, and I did actually think for a minute that he had done it. He created this absolutely impossible stretch of golf with pure skill. For half an hour, Phil Mickelson was playing better than it is possible to play.

There's another guy around right now who does a lot of that, playing better than it is possible to play. Like rope-hooking a ball thirty yards from the trees to an elevated green and setting up a birdie. After he had eagled the previous 580-yard uphill narrow-greened par-5. Like hitting a six-iron from a fairway bunker over a water hazard to an absolutely dangling pin, and making the shot. Like winning four major championships in a row, at a combined 25 strokes (including a playoff!) and being a combined 75 strokes under par!!! And, at the end of this process, holding the to-par scoring records for all four major championships. Being the only guy ever to get to -20 at a major. Winning at least six straight tournaments not once, not twice, but three times. How about winning the United States Open Championship on one leg over five days and ninety holes, wincing after every 300-yard drive down the middle? And using three eagles, two of them requiring lengthy putts and one of them coming after a drive that sailed fifty yards to the right? And hitting a massive hook from a fairway bunker on the wrong effing fairway just to stay in the tournament, and of course sinking the twelve-footer over bumpy greens that came within a millimeter of staying out. And oh yes, let's not forget winning his first professional major championship start by, let's see, twelve shots, and setting a host of scoring records in the process. After shooting 40 for his first nine holes. And, I think most impressively of all, The Chip, from a literally impossible position on a literally impossible angle from a collared lie that literally stopped short of the hole before falling in. On Championship Sunday. When he looked like he was about to blow his first-ever 54-hole major championship lead. With millions watching worldwide.

I'm talking, of course, about Tiger Woods. My point is that I think there is something very intensely satisfying about watching these great players go beyond what ought to be possible. In golf in particular, I think this is multiplied by the fact that we, or at least those of us who play golf, know exactly how impossible what they're doing is, because we try it ourselves, and don't do it. Most of the time. I've hit a few shots that felt like that same kind of thing, and I've certainly had a few rounds of my own like it. Examples would be the 54-degree wedge from the thick rough on the slope of the cart-path at the 10th hole at Blue Rock Golf Course from about twenty feet below the green that I hit with my fullest of swings, losing my balance in the process, and knocked it to four feet (I missed the putt), shooting 39 by using 10 putts (and sinking putts of 10, 4, 13, 12, 6, 13, and 3 feet), and the two times last summer when I played six holes at even par. Sure, that wasn't stretching the bounds of what's absolutely possible as much as Tiger or Phil can do routinely, but it was pushing the boundaries of what I can do, and some of it felt pretty extraordinary on an absolute scale.

But watching people like Woods, Mickelson, etc. play golf the way they do, watching them hit literally perfect shots time after time after time in impossible situations, it feels like they're calling down miracles, and that they are doing so with their own skill and not by any sort of fluke. And that is simply amazing to watch. And the players with the best chances at doing that sort of thing are, of course, the best players, and particularly the greatest players (there is a difference, and I think this is part of it). So I root for those players because I want to see them creating miracles. I want to see Tiger Woods win the Grand Slam. I don't bother rooting for someone else to win the grand slam, because no one else alive today could do it. (This is, incidentally, part of what I think I don't like about Steve Stricker. He doesn't create very many miracles. It's somewhat inherent in the straight-and-narrow style of playing golf.) Smaller miracles, like holes-in-one or a stretch of golf like what Phil played, can be done by anyone, even (on an adjusted scale) someone like me, and I almost always enjoy seeing it, unless it's someone like Rory Sabbatini that I flagrantly dislike.

And in baseball? Is it a miracle of this sort that the Yankees won four out of five World Series? No, not hardly. It's not even really a miracle in this sense for Roger Federer to win his 15 majors in such dominant form, because he has the advantage of getting to be better than his opponent. In golf our miracles have to be purely objective, just us against ourselves and the course, and that's a battle where you are always at a disadvantage, no matter who you are. Now, there are similar things in other sports. That through-the-legs shot of Federer's would count, and it was pretty damn amazing. I think that watching a perfect game would count, pretty obviously; from what I hear, Doc Gooden in 1985 created miracles every five days. I think pitchers are more likely to do this than hitters, though I can think of another couple of Mets examples that are position players: Rey Ordonez throwing a ball behind his back while lying flat on the ground, and getting the out, and Jose Reyes at the 2006 All-Star Game standing on first base with Pudge Rodriguez catching and Barry Bonds batting and everyone in the entire stadium knew that, even so, he was going for the steal, and he went, and it wasn't even close. I think that kind of thing is slightly more unpredictable in baseball than in golf, though it's fairly unpredictable in golf as well. And I will admit, it is impossible to deny how good Mariano Rivera is, and so I respect him (though I resent him, and I don't root for him to create miracles!). But The Yankees, as such, cannot tap this source of amazingness. For a team to win 110 games does not count: all that means is that they were much, much better than the rest of their league and (especially) division, which can be stated just as accurately by saying that the rest of their league and (especially) division were much worse than they.

Now, to be fair, I was ecstatic when I saw that Sabathia's no-hitter bid yesterday fell short. Why? Wouldn't that have been a miracle of the sort I'm discussing here? Well, yes, but of a relatively limited sort: no-hitters happen several times in every season. And while I have an explanation here for why this kind of phenomenon shouldn't make me like the Yankees, I also have other reasons for disliking them: their monopolistic, hegemonic attitude toward the business of acquiring players (and accordingly their dynastic dominance, something I also disliked in the Braves of the nineties and early naughts), their tendency toward fascism, their arrogance, etc. And so, if there are going to be half a dozen no-hitters this year, why should the Yankees get any of them? After all, the Yankees suck. (Morally speaking, of course; even I can't deny that they are, in the aggregate, good at something, playing baseball or winning championships or something.)

Meanwhile, it's Championship Sunday at Augusta and Johan Santana is pitching for the Mets, and Jose Reyes is making his first not-his-first-start-in-eleven-months start. Let's see some miracles!