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I find this story hard to believe. No matter what's happening in the standings, the Red Sox are Yankee fans' No. 1 hated team. The Mets come second. Seattle, and specifically Ichiro, are not even on the radar.

I wouldn't exactly call a team which tied the all-time season wins record and which came thisclose to knocking the Yankees out of the pennant off the radar. And if you consider that there isn't a club in baseball whose fans don't include a small contingency or two of Tree People, I'd have been surprised if such contingency among the Yankee faithful hadn't singled out Ichiro Suzuki for that kind of, er, tribute.

Finest moment I have ever seen of Yankee fans: The night George Steinbrenner was suspended from baseball over the Dave Winfield affair. The news broke early during a game between the Yankees and the Tigers at the Stadium, as the Tigers were about to come up to hit. A swell of applause and cheering broke out in the seats far down the first base line and picked up slowly, growing around the rim of the park, turning into a standing O that lasted about ten minutes. Nobody knew what was going on - it sure wasn't for the Tigers, who were just as befuddled as anyone. The Yankees came up out of their dugout to look and they couldn't figure it out. Then someone put two and two together - there had been Yankee fans carrying portable radios in the park in case the news came out during the game, which it did. The news hit radio before it could have reached the Yankee television booth or the press box. It was the sound of about fourteen years of Yankee fan frustration blowing the cork off and letting go. It wasn't quite as clever as what a Met fan did on an opening day in the early 1980s expressing his frustration with the willfull neglect of the team (this was before the era of the Davey Johnson-Darryl and Dwight-Gary and Keith Mets), but it was very touching in its way. (The Met fan to whom I just alluded - having a little fun with an angry football Giants' fan tow-plane banner, Fifteen years of lousy football: we've had enough! - waited until the top of the first on opening day was over, then held up an exquisitely painted sign: Fifteen minutes of lousy baseball: we've had enough!) On the other hand, I think nothing would ever match the Cub fan on Opening Day, 1980 in Wrigley Field: As soon as the Cub pitcher threw the first pitch of the game, up went the sign: Wait Till Next Year!

I have a terrific essay which was published in Newsweek as a companion piece to its cover story about Steinbrenner in July 1990, "The Most Hated Man In Baseball". The issue hit the stands, as it turned out, the very week Steinbrenner got his timeout. The companion piece in the magazine was called "A One-Man Error Machine," by George F. Will; he subsequently republished it as "George Steinbrenner: An Acquired Taste" in his book, Bunts: Curt Flood, Camden Yards, Pete Rose, and Other Reflections on Baseball. Among other things, Mr. Will had this to say about the Yankee condition in 1990:

Then Whitey Ford was pitching and Yogi Berra was catching and Mickey Mantle was belting the ball out of Yankee Stadium's ZIP cose...and the memory of man ranneth not to when the Yankees were other than awesome. Now the Yankees are the worst team in baseball. Look to your nonlaurels, Atlanta Braves - the Bronx Bumblers have captured baseball's booby prize. And the Yankees' owner, George Steinbrenner, is the worst problem on the plate of the commissioner of baseball, Fay Vincent, who must think the Devil is plaguing him...The commissioner's power is unconstrained, other than by the commissioner's prudence. And it is unappealable, unless the commissioner acts more capriciously than any commissioner ever has. The sweep of the "best inerests" clause generates pressure to use the power. The pressure often comes from people impatient to use fiats to cut through complex problems, sweeping like a scythe through procedural niceties. Nothing matches the impatience of a baseball fan fed up with his team's owner. No one is as fed up as Yankee fans.

What a difference a decade plus two makes.

I wouldn't exactly call a team which tied the all-time season wins record and which came thisclose to knocking the Yankees out of the pennant off the radar. And if you consider that there isn't a club in baseball whose fans don't include a small contingency or two of Tree People, I'd have been surprised if such contingency among the Yankee faithful hadn't singled out Ichiro Suzuki for that kind of, er, tribute.

I respectfully disagree. It's not that I don't think there are a few Yankee fans capable of being so tasteless (they did chant "overrated" when the Yanks beat the Mariners in five games in the playoffs); it's just that even though Seattle won 116 games, they will never be on the radar for Yankee fans the way the Red Sox and Mets or even the Orioles are. Part of it is geographical,and part of it is historical; facing the Yankees may be the biggest series of the year for Mariners fans, but the reverse is not true for Yankee fans.

Anyhow, I asked several Yankee fans today if they had seen any such Ichiro items, and all of them said no, with one of them using the same term as me -- that the Mariners were not even on the radar!