Lee spurning gives Yankee fans a taste of what it's really like to be a sports fan

Yankee fans finally have a faint reminder of what it is like to root for a real baseball team.

There seem to be very few Yankee fans left who still remember and appreciate how special 1996 was, when the Yankees won a world championship they had to wait for; that was the product of patience with young players, shrewd acquisitions made with baseball skill rather than financial might, togetherness and good decision-making in the dugout.

I never stopped appreciating how magical that run was, because by the time it happened, it was happening to a franchise that felt snake-bitten, even if not to the same degree as other recent first-time-in-eons champions such as the 2004 Red Sox or this season’s Giants.

By the time we got to 2009, the Yankees had morphed into something that could never produce a moment that sweet again. You could feel happy for the individuals for their special moments: Johnny Damon for his sweet double-steal in Game Four, Hideki Matsui’s MVP slugging, or even Alex Rodriguez’s long-awaited star post-season. Fine – he’s a cheater. He’d be a cheater without that performance. Might as well get a little glory while you’re at it. He can deal with its diminished meaning.

You could not, however, tell me that 2009 was “magical.” There is nothing magical about blowing every team away with money every single off-season, guaranteeing yourself a spot near the top of the standings every year and just waiting to see in which year the stars aligned to produce a championship.

I’ve been a Yankee fan for 32 years, so when the last out of the 27th championship was recorded last fall, I let out a loud, hearty “YEAH!” And instantly I knew one thing: I didn’t mean it. It was forced. You’re supposed to scream like that when your team wins the World Series. Then again, that’s supposed to be a moment of ecstasy.

It wasn’t. 1996 was. It was, for the same reason that this fall’s title was ecstasy for Giants fans: not just because they hadn’t felt that feeling before, but because they had no idea if they’d get another shot at it anytime soon.

That’s how it was for Yankee fans in 1996. Like Sisyphus, sports teams are forever rolling boulders up hills. When the season ends with no championship, as it does for all but one team per sport every year, it rolls all the way to the bottom, and you don’t know if you’ll ever get it even near the top. When the Yankees lost in the ALDS in 1997, we had no idea what was coming the next six years. We knew we’d better savor our precious 1996 title, because we might not get another shot soon.

Now, when the boulder rolls back down the hill, it stops on a ledge pretty darned close to the top. The Yankees have so little pushing to do. Which means, as in 2009, there will be far less glory in the accomplishment when it happens again.

But the boulder rolled a little farther down Monday night, when the Yankees lost out on their chance to acquire one of the best pitchers in baseball for the second time in three years. Cliff Lee’s signing with the Phillies is a good example in ways that transcend baseball. Someone demonstrating that there is something other than money that is his greatest priority shouldn’t be a novelty, but it is, and Lee has done us all a favor by reminding us.

He also has put Yankee fans in a position where they might, just might, get a new taste of what it truly means to be a sports fan. It means you take an interest in your team’s young players. It means you watch them grow and mature, and when they show you that they are not yet the stars you want them to be (Phil Hughes?), and they don’t win when you need them to, you don’t just show them the door and buy someone else’s proven players.

Where would the Yankees have been had they cast aside Bernie Williams, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte after the Yankees lost to Seattle in such heartbreaking fashion in 1995? Surely they could have dealt all three for someone else’s stars and tried to win with more established players such as Juan Gonzalez, Ken Caminiti and Pet Hentgen. I mean, after all, why wait? We’re the Yankees. We have a mission statement that says we must win the World Series every year or consider the year a failure.

What a bunch of nonsense. Does any of you even remember 1993? Do you remember how much fun it was to go to the Stadium that summer and see a team that had had four straight losing years (something no Red Sox fan under the age of 45 has ever experienced) finally start to win with a group of young, homegrown players and castoffs shrewdly acquired from other teams? Do you remember the Stadium speakers blasting “We’re Not Gonna Take It” after every win, because the team actually seemed to be fighting back against the odds? What odds are the Yankees fighting now? The odds against their not contending? Please.

Perhaps Ivan Nova, Phil Hughes, Joba Chamberlain, Edwin Nunez, Brett Gardner are Greg Golson are on the cusp of being the core of a future Yankee winner. Maybe Austin Romine, Jesus Montero and Dellin Betances are going to join them in a year or two. I’m willing to wait, and I’m willing to take a chance that they will all fail, and the Yankees will finally experience a real dropoff.

Harold Reynolds put it perfectly this morning on MLB Network. Now the Yankees will have to do things creatively, instead of just spending money, Reynolds said. I hope they’ll do it.

If the Yankees win this year, it will be because Andy Pettitte came back and continued his wonderful career. It will be because Phil Hughes got even better with the training wheels taken off and gave the Yankees a consistent season. It will even be because some pitching guru in the organization helped A.J. Burnett straighten himself out. There is accomplishment in these things.

Where is the accomplishment in spending more money than anyone else can hope to spend to put the two best lefthanders in baseball in your rotation? Where is the glory in winning when there is almost no chance of losing?

But since the Yankees now must operate at so much higher an economic plane, with their absurdly expensive stadium and its absurdly expensive seats, there can, of course, be no chance of losing. There can be no risk of the Yankees having to be patient with young players. They cannot allow one seat to go unsold, which might happen if they operate like any other team.

The Yankees' boulder must always start two feet from the top of the hill.

It wasn’t always this way. Too bad most Yankee fans can’t remember – and will never know again – what it’s like to stand with your team as it stands with that boulder at the top of the hill, drinks champagne and rejoices in pushing it all the way from the bottom of the hill.