The Least Surprising News Ever

Stop! We interrupt your normal broadcasting day for some breaking news -- Yankee fans are criminals. The New York Times has gotten off its ass and starting reporting the news that we, the people, were already quite familiar with. Take it away, Manny.

A curious phenomenon has emerged at the intersection of fashion, sports and crime: dozens of men and women who have robbed, beaten, stabbed and shot at their fellow New Yorkers have done so while wearing Yankees caps or clothing.

No mention of Randy Levine, but I'm sure that's coming later in the article. Proceed.

But Yankees caps and clothing have dominated the crime blotter for so long, in so many parts of the city and in so many types of offenses, that it defies an easy explanation. Criminologists, sports marketing analysts, consumer psychologists and Yankees fans have developed their own theories, with some attributing the trend to the popularity of the caps among gangsta rappers and others wondering whether criminals are identifying with the team’s aura of money, power and success.

No easy explanation? Fah. Like Chris Rock said, "Whatever happened to crazy?" Yankee Fan is just a lunatic, that's all.

“It’s a shame,” said Chuck Frantz, 57, the president of the 430-member Lehigh Valley Yankee Fan Club in Pennsylvania. “It makes us Yankees fans look like criminals, because of a few unfortunate people who probably don’t know the first thing about the Yankees.”

Cough ** criminal owner ** cough.

The Yankees organization declined to comment for this article.

Oh I'll be they did. Which is a shame. I was hoping for at the very least a little Baghdad Bob-style fun. "Yankee fans are good upstanding citizens. It is the New York Times that attacked us with their cruise missiles." Etc.

One criminologist said the trend might be a result of what could be called the Jay-Z effect.

Uh oh.

The rapper Jay-Z has worn a Yankees cap for years — on his album covers and in his videos — and has helped turn the cap into a ubiquitous fashion accessory for urban youths (“I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can,” he boasts in one song).

I do not like where this is going.

Criminals might be wearing Yankees merchandise not because they are fans of the team, but because they are fans of the cocked-hat look popularized by Jay-Z and other rappers, said the criminologist, Frankie Y. Bailey, an associate professor at the University at Albany, who is writing a book about the role of clothing and style in criminal case.

“He wears it and makes it look cool,” Ms. Bailey said of Jay-Z and the cap. “It’s almost like the Yankees have acquired a kind of street rep, a coolness.”

How dare you blame Young Hov for these tragic circumstances, sir. Have you no decency? No decency at long last? And besides, Jay-Z really doesn't really have that much connection with the ...

Jay-Z, Eminem Joined By Kanye West, Beyonce, Others at Yankee Stadium

Crap.

Thankfully, the article helpfully clarifies that this whole Yankee crime wave long predates "Big Pimpin'."

And Yankees caps hold a distinguished place in the annals of crime: the man who robbed more banks than anyone else in American history wore one. Edwin Chambers Dodson, known as the Yankee Bandit because he wore a Yankees cap and sunglasses during most of his holdups, robbed 72 banks in Southern California in the early 1980s and the late 1990s.

Ah, closure. To sum up for the kids, Yankee fans are armed, usually with incredibly foul body odor, and are extremely dangerous. They're out looking for easy marks, and they have no scruples to speak of. They might let Mariano hang onto his wallet, but he's basically the only one. Don't yourself become the next Kenny Williams.

- Cheddar Ben