The New York Yankees are coming off a disappointing season and an even more disappointing postseason. They lost both the division and the ALCS to the Tampa Bay Rays. The only bright spot in the postseason was that the Yankees blew away the Cleveland Indians in the ALDS by sweeping them. The ALCS ended going all five games with Mike Brosseau getting the deciding run off of New York Yankee closer Aroldis Chapman, who had nearly hit Brosseau in the head in an earlier game.
The two teams, Yankees and Rays, have become rivals in recent years; the two teams really don’t like each other after numerous run ins and bench-clearing incidents in past years, highlighted this year with the Chapman Brosseau incident. Chapman was suspended for 3 games, that won’t be reviewed until the coming season.
In 2017 the Houston Astros cheated in the ACLS in the series that the Yankees lost in six games. The Yankees also think they cheated in the 2019 ALCS again, but was not proven by MLB like the 2017 season was. So it’s clear to any Yankee fan that we don’t like the Rays or the Astro, abeit for different reasons.
Those New York Yankee fans who are still engaged as the postseason progresses have some pretty strong feelings about who should win the ALCS and who advances and wins the 2020 World series. Realizing these strong feelings, I thought I would poll several Yankee fan groups on Facebook. First, I asked now that the Yankees are out of it, who would you like to see win the ALCS.
236 respondents indicated that they really didn’t care who won now that the Yankees lost. Nevertheless, Yankee fans expressed their strong disapproval of the Astros in this pole. Yankee fans still hold the Astros responsible for their loss of the 2017 ALCS. They voted in the poll to hope that the Tampa Bay Rays will win and advance to the World Series 784-36 for the Houston Astros.
The Yankee fans held to their dislike of the Astros and Rays when asked who they would like to win the 2020 World Series. Again, there were a lot of Yankees fans that didn’t care who won (251), but with a wide majority, they wanted the Dodgers to win the Championship (764) with only 204 for the Atlanta Braves. Only 136 respondents wanted the Tampa Bay Rays to take it. Not one single Yankee fan wanted the Houston Astros to be victorious.
I left the poll open to allow other additions to my questions. Most of all of those comments I can’t repeat here. One of the milder comments was that the person hoped the Rays and Astro’s team buses collide on the way to the stadium. Several didn’t answer the my questions but responded in both cases that anyone should win, as long as it wasn’t the Houston Astros.
The poll’s outcome shows that Yankees fans would rather a National League team win the World Series than their foes in the American League. It also shows that Yankee fan’s hatred of the Houston Astros has not diminished with a season passed.