Columnist Dean Juipe: Yankees force antagonists to reconsider

Growing up in the Detroit area it was easy to dislike the New York Yankees. If the Tigers had a good team, the Yankees had a better one.

Yankee "haters" actually were scattered throughout the land, despising the New Yorkers in rival American League cities and barely tolerating them in smaller towns where information on baseball was limited to the sporadic wire report. The Yankees had a clearly defined image: smug, maybe even pompous, and pretentious to a fault.

They kicked sand in the face of their colleagues.

Their successes were unappreciated beyond the Big Apple. They won often enough that it was repetitive, if not sobering.

By the time George Steinbrenner took control of the club and made yearly attempts to construct "the best team money can buy," the Yankees had become a monarchy that had totally alienated its minions. They were the less-than-cuddly fat cats of professional sports.

To this day, they still have the highest annual payroll in baseball, a vault-breaking $64 million in 1998. They're the Have that steamrolls the Nots.

Yet sound the trumpets. Something has changed.

In terms of disposition, the current edition of the Yankees bears little resemblance to many of those in the past. These Yankees have savior-faire.

They're frisky and they're combative. They play hard and they're colorful.

They're also the most talented team in baseball.

And they're going to win the World Series, once they get to San Deigo or Atlanta and past the nuisance challenge of the Cleveland Indians in an American League Championship Series that is tied 1-1 heading into tonight's Game 3.

The Yankees are suddenly cool.

Even Teresa Wright agrees.

Teresa Wright?

She's the endearing lady, now in her 70s, who played Lou Gehrig's wife in the 1942 movie "Pride of the Yankees." The astounding relevance: Until this season, Wright had never seen the Yankees play.

Now she never misses a game and says she's having a "love affair" with the club after her midseason discovery that the Yanks are not only harmoniously affluent but textbook precise in the way they play the game.

She, like many others, became sold on their tenacity. They're a team of Larry Flynts: everyone a certifiable hustler.

In the year of the home run, the Yankees didn't have anyone hit as many as 30 yet they had nine players who had at least 10. Combine that offensive balance -- plus the experience that results from their typical player owning 3,000 at-bats in the majors -- with a dynamic, well-rounded pitching staff and New York was able to spread the wealth and finish the regular season with an almost unbelievable 114 victories.

Three more followed in a series sweep of the Texas Rangers in the first round of the AL playoffs, and the Yankees were up a game on the Indians in the second round until a 12-inning loss Wednesday that can at least partially be laid at the feet of an absurdly inaccurate judgment call by the home plate umpire.

But no matter how many co-conspirators the Yankees are apt to encounter, very few losses are likely to follow. They're superior to the Indians in every respect and whether their World Series opponent is the Padres or the Braves everything points New York's way.

It's just like the old days except these Yankees aren't the hedonistic bores of years past. They're refreshing.

This year the best team money can buy is also flush with pizzazz.

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