The Y2K Interview: Alex Belth

(Note: The latest in our weekly Y2K-U series on college sports follows this post.)

A little something different for you all today. In previous interviews here at the site we've spoken with Mets fans, Mets bloggers, and New York area journalists. This time we're mixing it up a little bit.

Over the summer I attended a panel discussion featuring Matt Cerrone from Metsblog, Will Leitch from Deadspin, and Alex Belth, who runs a website I hadn't been familiar with at the time, Bronx Banter. Alex also writes for Sports Illustrated and has written a biography of Cardinals great Curt Flood.

As regular readers are aware, this is a Mets website. There are times, however, when we have occassion to talk a little shit about our crosstown rivals. But all of us here, we know Yankee fans. Chances are we've all got friends or relatives who are fans of the team. We can be civil.

So it was with a conciliatory spirit that I contacted Alex via e-mail and asked him if he wouldn't mind sharing his thoughts on blogging, journalism, the Mets, the Yanks, and more still. The result of our conversation follows below.

I'd like to thank Alex again for agreeing to participate in this interview, and ask that anyone who should feel compelled to respond on the comment board be respectful of his opinions.

Yankees 2000: What compels you to blog? How did you decide to become a Yankee blogger?

Alex Belth: I had gotten a job where I had access to the internet, this was in the spring/summer of 2002, and previously, although I’m part of the computer generation, I had been pretty slow on the uptake when it came to the internet.

That summer I started reading all these great baseball websites. A guy at work tipped me to the world of blogs. It started with me looking at them, but then you know, with blogspot.com you could sign up for free, so after a couple of months of reading these sites, I thought what the hell, it’ll get me into the habit of writing about baseball on a regular basis if nothing else.

I contacted a guy, John Perricone, who still writes “Only Baseball Matters,” and he was great, very encouraging. Helped set me up, taught me some technical a-b-c’s and I was off and running.

You worry at first about finding things to write about, but that’s the great thing about following or writing about baseball – it’s a year round thing. So whether the stories you write are self generated from your own imagination, or whether you’re responding to something you read in the papers, there’s always something to write about. Plus, I realized early on that there was a very democratic vibe about it all – you could use any angle, any approach that suited your sensibilities.

So I started Bronx Banter in the fall of 2002. I was looking for a hook. I wanted to find a niche, other than simply writing about the Yankees.

I’ve always loved reading in-depth interviews, whether it’s on musicians, artists, filmmakers. So what I ended up doing was conducting long interviews, Q&As, at first with celebrities because I had contacts in the film industry.

From there I developed an interest in interviewing writers. I interviewed Buster Olney, Roger Angell, Allen Barra, Tom Verducci and others still, and through that I sort of became known as the interview guy within a little corner of the blog world.

Beyond the interviews, I always thought, hey, with baseball blogs, the idea is community. The mission statement is to create a hang out for people from all over the world. And I’m always thrilled when I get a note from a reader in Japan or some far flung place.

Y2K: How do you find your work at Bronx Banter compares to your work for Sports Illustrated?

Belth: I’ve written for SI for a year now, been doing other freelance writing outside the blog, and I am more aware now than ever that there’s a difference between blogging and writing.

I don’t mean this pejoratively in any way, but blogging is casual, informal. I think it works best in a Deadspin format – posts that are short, punchy, and frequent. I’m not saying they all need to be like that, but that’s the nature of successful blogging. Like what David Pinto does on “Baseball Musings.”

With writing that appears in SI it’s different, you can’t be so lax. Even if I’m going to write something short and simple, say 1200 words long, for SI, I’m going to write three, four, maybe five drafts of it.

Writing for SI you’re also writing for a different kind of audience. You need structure, a lead, you need to make sure the readers don’t drift off.

Jake Luft is my editor, and he’s a terrific guy and a great editor. I think he gets a kick out of editing the stuff that I do vs. the stuff that some of the more traditional guys do simply because I’m not coming from a cookie-cutter journalism school mentality. He’s taught me a lot and has been incredibly supportive, and ultimately has made me a better writer.

Y2K: You walk the line between the old and new media. Are you ever faced with disdain by old media types?

Belth: It’s interesting because there’s such a sharp division drawn between the two, but it hasn’t been that big of an issue for me. Sure, some reporters have given me the evil eye when I’m in the locker room. I’m new, they don’t know me, and yeah, some of the older guys may have an attitude about it, but it hasn’t manifested itself to me, not in any kind of hostile way. I certainly don’t take that kind of stuff personally.

I think if you handle yourself respectfully and professionally you’ll get on just fine. That holds true in the internet world too. You treat guys on an individual basis. I think the prejudice against bloggers is out there, if that’s what you mean, but I don’t think you’d run into it unless you provoked it.

Let’s be honest though, sportswriting is a very competitive world. It’s easy to blast tabloid writers in New York for their commentary, but it’s hard to blame them when that’s what their editors are demanding. I have admiration for a lot of what those guys do. Which is not to say that I don’t disagree with a lot of the analysis that I read in the mainstream papers, but I don’t think they are all crackpots either.

Y2K: Give me your perspective on the Mets-Yankees rivalry. Do you think it’s as important for Yankee fans as it is for Mets fans?

Belth: Probably not, if you’re going to speak in generalities. The rivalry does exist, but it’s kind of strange, it can be anything you make it, it can mean nothing to you or it can mean everything.

The teams share the same town, so naturally there will be some rivalry. Plus, when you have a team that has been as successful as the Yankees have been for the past hundred years, they are just going to attract rivalries. There were fierce rivalries, of course, between the Giants and the Yankees and the Dodgers and the Yankees, but none of it could compare with the Dodgers-Giants. For me, that’s the way I feel about the Mets and Yankees.

Yankees-Mets can’t compare to Yankees-Red Sox, or, for the Mets, Mets-Braves I guess. In those games you’re actually fighting for something tangible, your standing in the division, the chance to make the playoffs. Again, the Yankees are a team that is going to naturally attract rivalries. Heck, every team in the American League pretty much hates the Bombers.

That said, I don’t want to say Mets-Yankees is a fake rivalry – it’s not. It works because you’ve got Phil and Morty who work together 365 days a year and someone’s gotta have bragging rights, you know?

But I think it’s much more about the fans than the players themselves. Yeah, the organizations are probably into it to a certain extent – Steinbrenner always had a hard-on for the Mets – but I don’t think the players really care too much.

Also, the fact that the two teams play six times a year dulls the rivalry as far as I’m concerned. It’s too much. I’d rather them play one series a year, if they had to play at all. But it’s a huge gate attraction so we know interleague is here to stay.

The way I feel about the Mets personally, I can’t root for them always, but there are times when I can. The truth is that I could never root for them to do better than the Yankees, and for that reason, I rooted for the Cardinals in the NLCS.

I also published a book about Curt Flood earlier this year and so I had a vested interest in St. Louis playing Detroit – a rematch of the ’68 Serious – that had nothing to do with the Mets.

That said, I know enough great Mets fans that if they won, I’d at least be very happy for them.

I have a prejudice against the Mets, but at this point my love for the game outweighs those petty prejudices most of the time. Like when Endy Chavez made that catch, I said, “Aw, hell, if they win this, god bless them, that was catch was ill.”

The way I feel about the Mets in a given year depends largely on their personnel – if I like a lot of their players, like I did this past year, I root for them. Love Cliff Floyd, Carlos Delgado, David Wright, Willie.

Y2K: Mets fans are convinced that a sizeable majority of Yankee fans are fake somehow, that they don’t really care, that they’re fans for social reasons. Do you find this criticism is justified?

Belth: Well, definitely on some level, but look, New York is a front-running town by nature. Yeah, we have great, loyal fans too. But let’s not kid ourselves, there’s lots of bandwagon cats here. In the 80s all those people were out at Shea because the Mets were winning. Now they’re Yankee fans.

The fact is that one of the things that a true, rational, decent-minded Yankee fan has to deal with is a segment of people who are totally spoiled by success. The owner [George Steinbrenner] has always tried to preach this entitled to win attitude, and because they’ve won so much, the fans have picked that up.

I’m a fan of A-Rod, but he gets totally dogged, and I think a lot of the intensity behind that is generated by these people who ignore his overall performance, which is still amazing, because he’s never won a ring. As if winning a ring were as easy as snapping your fingers!

Y2K: So I take it you didn’t want to see A-Rod traded?

Belth: I want to see him hang out here; I want to see him hit a home run to win Game 7 of the World Series. I want to see him do well here.

If anything, his tendency to press in certain situations, to over-think situations, I think it makes him more sympathetic. He was always so perfect, almost like a cyborg, but with this bit of vulnerability he’s shown, it’s something I can identify with. He’s not perfect – I get that!

Sure, he might be a tough personality to warm-up to, but I don’t bother with that stuff so much. I know he works his ass off and tries really hard. If the guy has failings because he’s trying too hard, well, that’s something I can be sympathetic with.

If he had the disposition of Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez would be the best player since Willie Mays. But he doesn’t, and that frustrates a lot of Yankee fans. For me though, it makes him more accessible.

Y2K: Talk about the state of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry. It seems to me that it’s lost a little steam since 2003-2004. Do you agree?

Belth: I don’t know that it’s lost steam; if it has, it’s only because it was going from a pretty high voltage. Between Game 7 in 2003 and then the Red Sox’ comeback in 2004, it was at the kind of peak like it was in the late seventies or back in 1948, ‘49.

Thing is, the Yankees-Red Sox have ebbed and flowed so much over the years. There have been long stretches of deadspots. But this is still a pretty active period for the rivalry, even if it’s not quite where it was in 2003/04.

Y2K: What are your thoughts on the state of the Yankees heading in to 2007? Do you like the offseason moves they’ve made? Do you feel there’s work left to be done?

Belth: I’m feeling pretty damn good, dude, I think they’re a really good team, and I think they’re a real enjoyable team. I like a lot of the personalities there, and it’s been interesting to watch as Cashman’s shown a tremendous amount of restraint this off-season. As a Yankee fan that’s fun even because it’s a relative novelty.

Look, there are five Yankees in baseball: the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Dodgers, the Mets and the Cubs. Those are the biggest teams who can spend the most money and who shouldn’t suck for any long period of time. They can buy players and they can buy management, smart baseball people who know how to run a team. That’s the curse of the Cubs – horrible management.

To their credit, the Yankees have tons of money and they seem to have a plan. I don’t know that Cashman is a genius, but he’s got a plan.

I’m psyched about Andy being back. When he left I wasn’t sad. I didn’t think he was a bum, but at a point I didn’t have that same love for him that I had for a guy like Bernie or Mariano. But now he’s back, and I’m happy. Go figure.

Y2K: Did you want to see someone else manage the team in 2007?

Belth: Nah. Look at Torre, can you believe he’s lasted as long as he has? He’s 6000 in manager years under Steinbrenner. When you consider Steinbrenner’s track record with managers, Torre’s streak is almost as impressive, or if not as impressive then at least as improbable, as DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. For that reason I want it to go on as long as possible.

I think he’s got flaws as a manager, but as a personality the guy is endearing and likable, an old pro. He’s a native son come home who’s had a ridiculous string of success.

Y2K: The Yankees haven’t won the World Series since 2000 over the Mets, what has that been like coming on the heels of the enormous late-90s success?

Belth: You talk to some Yankee fans and they make like those six years is like the Indians not having won since ‘48. New York’s full of self-absorbed people, and that’s just one manifestation of it.

For me, one of the hardest losses I ever experienced, one where I felt physical pain, was when they lost to the Diamondbacks in ‘01.

But you know how I could nurse myself from the pain? It was by reminding myself that they had won three years in a row before that. Dude, that’s history. And then I thought, ‘How do Red Sox fans feel? I don’t have an inkling, man, not a clue.’ It made me feel blessed to be a Yankee fan.

When you’re a Yankee fan, it’s not as if you have to search selectively for great championship memories even if they lose one year in the World Series. That’s a privilege.

People like me and a lot of those fans who read Bronx Banter, we don’t want to abuse that privilege. To abuse that kind of power just makes for obnoxiousness. It’s rude, it’s easy and it’s not attractive at all. In the fake Yankee fans you see a lot of that; they latch on to something, the Yankees’ success, to make themselves feel better than someone else.

For me though, I was really too young to remember ‘77 and ‘78 too clearly, so it took until I was 25 years old to watch a winner. I appreciated the hell out of those great years in the late nineties and I still appreciate the winning team the Yanks put out each year even if they don’t end with a title.

Y2K: What do you think the Yankee teams of the past 6 years have been missing that those late '90s teams had?

Belth: Luck. Some of that is luck that they created. They had a collective personality in the late '90s that was extremely driven; there were a lot of red asses on that team – competitive, self-motivated guys, guys who were opportunistic grinders.

I remember some of those years, you’d think they were the best nickel and dime team ever assembled. They’d get you with two hits, two walks and an error. If a team made a mistake at any time late in the game, the Yankees would stick it to them.

I remember watching that great team in 1998 and thinking, this is fleeting, this won’t last forever, and sure enough it didn’t. It’s not supposed to, either. That’s what makes it so special.

That all said, it’s unfair to judge the Yankees of the past 6 years against those teams. Those were championship teams, and championship teams, even Yankee fans should remember, don’t come along all that often.

Y2K: Do you lend any credence to the idea that the Yankees are cursed? That their postseason failures are directly related to their boundless free agent splurging?

Belth: Oh no, only because they’ve done that forever. The whole rivalry with the Red Sox isn’t so much about the trade of Babe Ruth, it was because by 1923, when New York won its first title, half the roster consisted of former Red Sox; the Sox sold half their players to the Yankees.

The Yankees were created to be a symbol of New York, a true one. Over the years they’ve been compared to US Steel and Microsoft, they buy their way to power, they’re bullies, the big Republican machine, etc. – and that holds true. That’s not all they are, but the generalities remain true to a certain extent. I know a lot of liberal Democrats who root for the Yankees too.

The Yankees are also smart, they make a lot of money and they spend a lot of money. That’s not the worst thing that could be said about a team. Steinbrenner will go down as a historic force in baseball because, yes, he’s been a total embarrassment at times, and yet he’s helped the Yankees win six championships in 30 years.

Say what you want about him, but he’s cared to put a winning team on the field, even at the cost of being ugly about it. He’s a terribly ugly loser too. There was a point in the late eighties when I believed the Yanks would never win again until Steinbrenner moved on. As much credit as Torre gets, George deserves some too, no matter what you think of him personally.

When Steinbrenner goes, you’ve really got to wonder how they’re going to survive the transition. Some people say they’re already making the transition. They say Steinbrenner’s older, more hands off, Cashman’s more hands on – and that’s all true to an extent, but you never know what’ll happen when he goes.

Look at the Dodgers when the O’Malley’s sold the team, they lost their identity. The Yanks are the big, bad money-spenders, but over the last 30 years, we’ve have the cool, calm professional types that marked the organization too – Bernie Williams, Mariano Rivera, Willie Randolph, Ron Guidry.

Y2K: As a fan of the team, does it bother you that the Yankees spend almost $80 million more than their closest competitors, or do you think people make too big a deal about it?

Belth: No, it doesn’t bother me. You know what? You gotta learn to stop worrying and love the bomb if you root for the Yanks.

If you’re really gonna love the Yankees – and let me preface this by saying that I’m a left wing guy, and that I’ve had liberal guilt about it when I was younger – but that’s what the Yankees are, and they’re still my team. It’s not my money, and I’m happy if they spend it on the team.

The Yankees have outspent teams by an increasingly large ratio over the last six years, but they haven’t won any World Series titles. They put themselves in great position to contend for it every year, but it hasn’t bought them the rings.

And that’s what’s so disappointing about those fans who feel a sense of entitlement when it comes to winning. Winning it all. They simply assume that the Yankees could keep winning at the clip of the late 90s. But in doing that you’re disregarding the laws of baseball, you’re disregarding how winning three years in a row just doesn’t happen very often. If you dwell on what the recent teams haven’t done, you’re kind of missing out on what those championship teams were about.

The Yankee players in the 90s, and Torre, truly appreciated how hard baseball is to play and win, and because they so often expressed that, and because they had that respect for the game and how hard it was, it was so gratifying to see them win so much.

Even when they did finally lose, they went down with such valor, they defended their 3-years title to the end, and to get it wrested from them, the Diamondbacks had to beat Mariano in the 9th inning of the 7th game.

People feeling entitled to win every year don’t appreciate how special it was to get it when they had it. It’s a hard thing to reconcile. For me, I can appreciate that, hey, even in a year when the Yankees make the playoffs and lose, they’re still making me happy 90-100 times a year when they win.

I’m fine with Jeter saying a season is a failure if you don’t win the World Series, but as a fan, you’re doing yourself a disservice if that’s your attitude. The world is not so black and white. You’ve got to learn to live in the gray area.

Y2K: Like the Mets, the Yankees will be opening a new ballpark in 2009. Needless to say, Yankee Stadium has a certain historical cachet that Shea Stadium doesn’t possess. As a Yankee fan, how do you feel about the Stadium no longer being The House That Ruth Built?

Belth: It’s gonna be sad to see the old place go, but it’s a part of life, especially in New York. I can’t tell you how many stores and restaurants and buildings from my neighborhood have changed four or five times over. As a New Yorker you get used to the shock of a place that’s gone that was there your whole life.

And look, ugly and nasty politics aside, the Yankees aren’t moving to New Jersey – they’re still in the Bronx. I’m sure the new place will take a lot of getting used to, but I also don’t doubt it’ll be a lot like when you get a new haircut. It looks real funny at first then the next day you can’t remember what your old haircut looked like.

Some people will bemoan that it won’t be as great as the old place, but New Yorkers have so much character and energy, and we’re the ones that make a place great.

I expect that the new park will be a lot more synthetic, a lot more geared toward spending dollars. It’ll be crassly commercial, more tailored toward high rollers. But what else is new?

You know what? I’ll bet the seats will be real comfortable, even if there a lot fewer of them, and, sure, the the sightlines will all be different. But the Yankees will still play there, and they’ll still be wearing the pinstripes, and for me, that’ll be enough.

Y2K: Thank you for speaking with Yankees 2000.

- A.F.O.M.G. (afomgy2k@gmail.com)

(All pictures occur courtesy of mlb.com aside from the first two, which appear courtesy of alexbelth.com and thenrym.com, respectively, and the picture of Curt Flood, courtesy of nndb.com)