I Hate Your Team: AL Playoffs

It’s time for the playoffs and everyone on twitter has apparently decided that this is the “most lovable group of playoff teams” ever.

But what if I was to say that this is actually one of the least lovable groups of playoff teams ever? What if I was to say I hated these teams?

Let’s be honest, there’s a lot to hate about all of the teams playing for the World Series this year. We have both Los Angeles and New York, we have two cities that Christopher Nolan’s Batman blew up (Pittsburgh and Chicago), we have a CANADIAN TEAM, and of course we have two teams from the Worst State Ever™, Texas.

NL edition here.

Without further ado, I hate your team AL Edition.

Toronto Blue Jays

Most people on twitter appear to be Blue Jays fans due to it being 22 years since they last played in the playoffs and also due to Josh Donaldson being an all-around STRONG DUDE that is fun to watch.

But why should I cheer for the city that ran Phil Kessel out of town by body shaming him?

Canadians are overtly nice people, they’re basically stereotyped as being too polite, but that only extends to when they don’t think they’re better than you. Have you ever had an actual discussion with a Canadian? They quietly judge you like a character on Downton Abbey, the whole time thinking to themselves that Canada is better than the US because they don’t have crazy religious nuts and Universal Healthcare.

Congrats on not having 13 southern states populated by rural, toothless yahoos Canada! You smug George Clooney impersonators. You know what Canada doesn’t have? A single Super Bowl championship, they also don’t have any Heisman trophy winners or Rose Bowl victories. So their smugness is unwarranted all things considered, they can only beat us at not having Mississippi as a state and we can fix that with some classic American border drawing real quick.

The only good thing Canada has ever provided to the United States is Ryan Reynolds. Don’t get me started on RUSH. That math rock nerd band can Tom Sawyer their way out of here for all I care and by that I mean fake their death and escape to an island to find Injun Joe’s gold. Just get out of my life RUSH.

Canada is very confused right now because for the last two decades October has been strictly about hockey so for them to have another sport to pay attention to is frying their brains. Now they have to pay attention to baseball, hockey, AND whatever abomination they call football for the next month? Pack it in northerners, goal posts go at the END of the end zone not the beginning.

George R.R. Martin hates Canada so much he had his fantasy world build a wall blocking off the North from the rest of the civilized world and called Canadians “wildlings” or “white walkers” due to the fact they’re all extremely pale people who are probably the undead.

The only good thing about Toronto being in the hunt for a ring is Troy Tulowitzki deserves one but if his win comes at the expense of Canadians finding another reason to be quietly smug then is it even worth it?

I hate the Blue Jays.

Kansas City Royals

There isn’t a lot to hate about Kansas City, the city so nice Kansas forced Missouri to share it with them.

They have good BBQ, Boulevard brewing helped push the craft beer industry to the mainstream, it’s a thousand times better place to live than St. Louis, etc.

But the one thing Kansas City should honestly apologize for (apart from the Chiefs) is Tech N9ne. The weird rock-rapper has generated a name by getting an outrageous following. I was once tricked into a Tech N9ne show in Fort Collins and what I saw there will be burned into my brain for eternity.

As soon as I walked up, some 14 year old in juggalo face paint asked if I had any oxy to sell him. Look I’m going to be fully honest with you, I’m a suburban white kid, and even though I’ve been in more situations than most suburban white kids and have become more street wise than they usually are I’m still a suburban white kid. I don’t know what oxy even looks like, if I’m being totally honest I am calling it oxy because I don’t know how to spell the full word and am scared to google it in case my job checks my browser history.

So no, I didn’t have any oxy to sell this young teen with poor life decisions stacking up.

After we got inside, they had to fence off the underage kids from the 21+ crowd due to the fact the last time they had a Tech show at this establishment a 17 year old almost DIED from alcohol poisoning. Already this is a real winning situation I found myself in, I’m now stuffed inside a fenced area like a scene in Shawshank Redemption staring at a mass of teens in face paint and shirts that say “AMERICAN NIGHTMARE” or “STRANGE MUSIC” or swear words.

We wait around for like 45 minutes before a DJ comes out and starts playing really weird beats and all of the sudden everyone starts throwing water bottles and taking drugs. I’m mostly upset about the water bottles because it’s already hot in this place. Tech comes out in like a top hat and some suspenders with no shirt on and starts yelling at the crowd to get crazy.

Man, we already started throwing water bottles how crazy can you get?!

About halfway through his set, Tech stops the show because some kid got punched in the face near the front and is bleeding everywhere.

He’s ruining his juggalo face paint with blood and honestly I can see Tech’s concern because none of these people are clean and blood is an easy way to transfer hepatitis or rabies. The kid is escorted out and the show finished with no more drama. Although during the show, I went to the bathroom and as I walked in to a stall I found a pair of women’s underwear ripped on the ground and three used band aids.

I wasn’t having a very good time.

So apart from the Royals and good BBQ sauce, people know of Kansas City because of Tech N9ne and really that’s something that city should avoid mentioning.

Tech ruined Kansas City, I hope he isn’t allowed to celebrate a Royals win. I hate the Royals.

Houston Astros

Four time “Most Obese City in America” champion Houston puts a team back in the playoffs for the first time since 2005.

Houston has been a controversial team the last few years because their GM essentially tanked for four years in a rebuilding move that centered around statistics rather than traditional scouting. It wasn’t Moneyball per se, but the Astros drafted and scouted differently than a lot of their ML counterparts.

Houston fell off the fattest city in America rankings but still pulls in over the national average at around 34% of residents being obese. I don’t want to sit around here and body shame people but Houston also leads the country in the number of fast food restaurants and is a city that is practically built to destroy fitness.

Houston doesn’t just get a little obese either, there’s a reason the public transit system there is bad and it’s because the idea of a subway train being derailed by a 600 pound guy eating his fourth whopper is a rea legitimate fear there.

I live in the Midwest now and truth be told most people are a little chubby up here but that’s mostly because it gets so cold in the winter you have to keep a little extra or you freeze to death on your walk to the liquor store.

Being fat in Houston is a literal “F You” to the weather. It’s hotter when you’re fat; you basically have seventeen sweaters on at all times. Which means Houston is also the sweatiest city in America which means, by default, it is the smelliest city in America.

These smelly fatsos think they can gain sympathy from me just because their math nerds got lucky? Nu uh pals, I take my rooting interests seriously. You want me to cheer for your preferred costumed strangers? Come at me with some real, legitimate reasons beyond “we smell bad and eat too much but our short second baseman is good.”

New York Yankees

I’ve already trashed their Queens Borough counterparts so I’m already primed and ready to go on New York hating.

The Yankees are baseball’s most successful, most valuable team. They’re MLB’s Real Madrid. The problem with a team being that successful and valuable is that you go to just about any place in the country and there’s some dude in a Yankee hat trying to convince you Paul O’Neill should be given a statue in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio.

I went to Disney World one time and the amount of Yankee fans wearing Yankee attire every single day of the visit was enough to make you want to cheer for the Cloverfield monster.

Just like with the Mets, I’m obligated to bring up the subway train to Yankee Stadium. You take the 4 to get to the Bronx and even though I hold the opinion that ALL numbered trains in New York City are bad, the 4-5-6 lines are actually the worst trains to ever exist.

I used to have to ride the 4 every day up to work in Upper Manhattan and every day was a new adventure and a look into how garbage human beings are. One time on the 4, a small child was screaming at the top of its lungs as though it was being murdered by paper cuts and a homeless man was standing on the other side of a full car shouting “SHUT THAT DAMN BABY UP”. To top it all off, the train stopped due to “train traffic” or something, I couldn’t understand the conductor because they shout into the microphone and their words are unintelligible. A lot of trains in New York are modernized; most Brooklyn bound lines have a robot voice that is very clear. But if you’re going anywhere else it’s a train from the 80’s with a shouting conductor and doors that close in 18 seconds trapping you on board to the next stop.

So I’m stuck on this train with a hobo yelling at a baby and I think to myself, “this is why people hate New York City”.

I love that I waited a day to do the AL because yesterday the Yankees fan base had a real deal meltdown after CC Sabathia DEFIED the long held idea of sports being the most important thing on Earth and checked into a rehab facility for his alcoholism.

Despite addiction being a disease that can kill you, Yankee fans decided that CC pitching for their team in the playoffs was much more important than his health. Much like players should be forced to play while they’re going through treatment for anything, CC shouldn’t stop pitching just because he’s an alcoholic.

Doesn’t CC understand sports come FIRST in Yankee town? Does he not get it? I mean for the love of God, you think Reggie Jackson would’ve checked into rehab rather than hitting three home runs to win a World Series? No, he wouldn’t have. It’s pretty much guaranteed Derek Jeter broke up with Minka Kelly because he wanted to win a World Series. That’s a way bigger sacrifice. Why couldn’t CC just put in one more month of killing his body slowly for the chance at a ring? Selfish, as usual.

New York doesn’t deserve any more titles, I hate the Yankees.

Texas Rangers

The team George Bush built is back in the playoffs, which is a rousing success for anyone that loves shooting guns and yelling some crap about Jerry Jones.

We can admit this team is probably garbage, right? Like the only reason we have to deal with the Rangers in the playoffs is because Billy Beane angrily traded away all of his good players and the Angels still haven’t engaged Project River where they clone Mike Trout 24 times and fill an entire roster with him.

The problem with some of these garbage teams that sneak into the playoffs on the back of other bad teams is they sometimes steal the pennant, which is ten times more annoying than them just getting into the playoffs and getting swept quietly by more well-rounded rosters.

The Rangers also introduced this monstrosity this week for the playoffs: a cotton candy hot dog with sugar mustard.

Look at this abomination and weep for the fall of man as science has gone too far.

I’m all for crazy food and I understand Texas is in a competition with itself to find the fattiest, most disgusting thing it can and stuff it down their throats but for the love of God can you please wait for just a second on this processed pile of garbage?

Hot dogs taste great and whenever I hear people try to inform me what the ingredients of hot dogs are, I shove a sparkler and an American flag in their mouth to shut them up from disgracing the good land of the USA.

But I won’t stand for this. This is too much. This is like when you say you like a band and then all your friends tell you about bands that sound like that band but they all sound like hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup clogging your arteries and killing you by age 50.

Finally, Texas is the number one exporter of country music, a crime that no apology can atone for. The thing about country music is that it is 99.8% bad. By my calculations there have only been three good country songs in the entire history of America. Garth Brooks’ “Baton Rouge” and Eric Church’s two jams “Sinners Like Me” and “Springsteen”.

Outside of those three songs, there has never been a good country song and I think that’s about an objective a statement as you’ll find in this article.

Texas, you’re the worst. I hate the Rangers.

I hate the AL playoffs.