There are 30 teams in Major League Baseball; two leagues, three divisions within each league that yield a division champion, and two wild card spots that yield one wild card team. There are the good teams, and the bad teams, but the way baseball is set up warrants the possibility of the dark horse to appear at any point across the span of the 162 game season. Your team does not have to have the MVP, nor do they need to have the best record to make the playoffs and potentially wreak havoc, case and point: The 2015 New York Mets.

However, what is consistent of teams that get to fill the stands through the middle of October is an edge, a desire that radiates from both the players and the fans who know something magical is happening. The current generation, my generation of young New York Yankee fans were spoiled and tricked from birth; made to believe that it was sensible to never plan a vacation in October because they Yanks would just always be there. 17 years removed from 1998 season and what was arguably the greatest team ever to take the field, the tides have most definitely turned.

The arrogance of “The Empire” began to grow, as the dynasty of the 90’s added 4 championships to the already staggering 22 time World Series Champion resume of the Yankees. It goes without saying how great of a time this was to root for the bombers, as fans from all over would sell out both Yankee Stadium or wherever they played on the road. At this point, we as fans were not just excited, but we were confident, and carried that “yea, we’ve been here before” swagger that few other teams could match. By 2000, the postseason became the scary “a” word that always comes back to haunt you, assumed. Fans began to sit on the laurels of the team, figuring that they would never have to scrap to be mentioned among the top teams in the league ever again.

As a fan of the game of baseball, the 2000’s was a fantastic decade of competition across the league. Even though I had to sit there and watch Boston not only break the curse but add an addition championship to their collection, watching the next age of players and teams develop was exciting. There were the few consistently relevant teams, some being the Yankees (which made the time enjoyable), the Red Sox (which did not), and the Cardinals; but surrounding them was a contingent of teams that made the game interesting, such as the Rockies, the Tigers, and the Phillies. The Bombers were only able to capture one title in this ten years, a number most teams would relish in; but for us, the same fans that cruised through this decade bragging about the past one, it was not enough to hold off the apparent decline.

So here we are, three years removed from our last playoff win, and 6 from our last World Series appearance. Unfortunately, the “we” that I have continued to refer the Yankee fan base with has changed drastically. Those who were the fans of the winning have vanished, seeing no reason to pay absurd prices to watch a team that cannot even reach a Championship Series. Along with them are the braggers, who will post to their social media pages at the end of the season a message across the lines of “Hey man, 27, that’s all that counts, we’ll be back next year," and then refuse to a watch a game of the next season because baseball is boring. On top of that are the fans that were born in the post dynasty era, the 10 to 15 year olds who only know about how great their team used to be, refusing to accept the mediocrity the Yankees have fallen into. In the midst of it all are passionate fans, who enjoy watching the team each year regardless of the year before, or what is predict of the coming seasons. Those who bring the edge that many ballparks circulate regularly, because they believe in what “could” happen during the beautiful and timeless game that is baseball. Unfortunately, their presence has been overshadowed by those who posed for so long.

There is an expression among baseball fans that goes a little like, “baseball is like church; many attend, but few understand." This encapsulates what has happened to the Yankees and their fan base. It has been populated with upper-class individuals who attend Yankee games as an attribute to their wealth, fans who refuse to move on from what the team used to be, and fans who refuse to educate themselves on the team’s current status; which to other baseball fans is obscenely obvious. All of this, because we took our foot off of the gas thinking that no one would ever catch us. I love the New York Yankees, and would do incredulous things to see my team rise to the top yet again, but there would be no resolve for the status of the fan as the posers will resurrect to make the Yankees SEEM like the greatest fan base in baseball. The truth is, the Yankees need a drought, just long enough so that no fan, player, or member of the Steinbrenner family ever feels that anything is “assumed." Maybe then, the league will rally around both the fans and the team come their magical October run. Aside from that, you root with us or hate us; because the Yankees are still too relevant for anyone to decipher the real fans from the fake fans.