For a lifelong Mets' fan and Yankees' hater whose first home as a baby was a few miles from Shea Stadium, it's all about the year to which you refer when talking Yankees. After the 1977-78 Yankees won titles, which wasn't unfathomable to a 10-11 year old, even though that was the Mets' darkest time (Seaver trade, last place, no free agents of any kind or many good prospects), it wasn't any longer about the building of a champion so much as the signings of big money and the trading of great prospects. That's when my hatred grew. The Dave Winfield signing was the first straw. The trading of Jose Rijo for Rickey Henderson was another blow. When the guys who I actually liked moved on to other teams or retirement (Reggie, Nettles, Guidry, etc.), it became easy to hate the NYY. When they choked in the 1981 Series against the Dodgers, it was glorious. When Mattingly led the league in batting, followed closely by Winfield, but the team had NO pitching, it was laughable. When the Mets were crowned in 1986 and the Yankees were going nowhere, I gloated. When I moved permanently to California in 1989, the Yankees were dismissable as the Mets declined. By the time of the Cone trade, it was easy to move on literally and figuratively as a Mets' fan, though I never REALLY moved on. When Jeter, O'Neill, Pettitte, Rivera, and Bernie surfaced, it was a new kind of Yankees that resembled the way the Mets had built their teams. When they added Daryl and Dwight, and later Cone, you had conflicts because you liked those guys and loved them as Mets. I was happy for Gooden getting his no-no. In 1995, I didn't think the Yankees had any chance, which they didn't really. The 1996 team SHOULD have lost to the Braves, but we all know how Jim Leyritz changed everything in the World Series and brought the NYY their first title in 18 years. One felt the collapse of 1997 coming, but it was hard to deny the NYY their 1998-1999 dominance. The Mets had them in game one of 2000, but they let it all slip away thanks to Paul O'Neill's unbelievable at bat against Benitez in the 9th. That brings us to the last seven leaner years. Aside from two miraculous comebacks in 2001, they should have been swept by the D-Backs in that WS, but the Yankee Stadium mystique still surrounded the team that year, even though it was all over but the shouting. In that season, then 2002 and 2003, one sensed that they didn't have that magic anymore of making no errors, getting clutch hits, and playing invincibly in "da Stadium." Those playoffs were nerve-racking since the Mets were not in contention, and the Yankees losing was all you had to go on. After the nail-biter of 2001, it couldn't get any better than that, could it? '02 and '03 were both very good to watch and having the hateable Giambi as the goat was just good enough to make those losses satisfying. Of course, nothing could top the collapse of '04 to the Red Sox. For a lifelong Yankee hater who has paid his dues, that was the ultimate. The nail in the coffin was the Sox breaking their curse. That was even more of an anxiety-ridden Yankee playoff to watch than 2000 or '01, and it was worth every moment of games 4-5-6-7. Still hard to believe. Honestly, even though their earlier failures were great, that choke was extra special - the A-Rod slap, the homer that didn't happen being called correctly - in Yankee Stadium of all places. The only place in sports harder to win than YS was the Boston Garden in the 1980s. As nervous as I was watching the 2004 Red Sox series, nothing could compare, and in a sense, the Yankees haven't come close to living up to that series. It's as if something went out of their mystique balloon that year. Of course, age and curious signings have caught up to them too, but the '05 loss to the Angels, the '06 loss to Detroit and this year's loss to the Indians were, dare I say, not even threatening. Let's face it - they went quietly each of those three years with no real challenge to the teams they faced. Plus, barring an upset this year, those teams who beat them are not even champions. Yes, the Yankees have made the playoffs thirteen straight years and yes, they have contended like no other team during that stretch. But ultimately, since the team puts all its marbles into winning a title every year, that's all that any anti-Yankee fan considers in the long run. Every team except one has to lose at some point every season, and thankfully, again, that team is not the Yankees. As a footnote, some signs point to the 13-year run finally ending. It took a miracle turnaround for them to right the ship this year. One wonders what unforeseen moves they can make in the near future before their captain and finest player in several decades gets lumped in with the has-beens who currently riddle the roster.