Local Man Rooting For Yankees To Make Playoffs Just So He Can See Them Lose In Them

Findlay, OH. (Aug. 28) - Baseball fan and Findlay resident Matt Garces, according to friends and family, desperately wants the New York Yankees to qualify for the playoffs, hoping beyond hope that the storied franchise can make up a seven-game deficit in the season's final weeks.

The reason? So Garces can see the Yankees "go down" in the post-season.

"The Yankees haven't missed the playoffs since 1994," Garces told his brother, Mark, the other day at dinner. "They haven't won the World Series since 2000. I love it when the Yankees make the playoffs and lose. It rocks," Mark Garces told reporters of his 24-year-old brother's remarks.

Mark Garces, 22, said that Matt's sentiments are that "it's just not the playoffs without the Yankees in it, under-achieving and being upset by a weaker opponent." Mark said his brother reveled in last season's charge, in which the Yankees played superbly after the All-Star break and made the playoffs as the American League Wild Card. Then, to Matt's delight, the Yankees were eliminated by the Cleveland Indians in the Divisional Series, 3-1. The year before that, Matt threw a party after the Detroit Tigers beat the Yankees, 3-1, in the ALDS.

"He just hates the Yankees so much," Mark said. "It goes back to when he was a kid and we went to an Indians game, and the Yankees won in extra innings. That, plus, well, who DOESN'T hate the Yankees, outside of New York?"


Matt Garces, shown during his 2006 party after the Yankees lost to the Tigers in the playoffs


Mark Garces says that his brother is in "scoreboard watching mode", tracking the Boston Red Sox -- who lead the Yankees for the Wild Card spot -- and going through all sorts of rituals, hoping the Red Sox will lose and the Yankees can overtake them.

"He was up all night yesterday, crafting a crude Mike Lowell voodoo doll," Matt's father Richard confirmed. "He now has voodoo dolls of almost all the Red Sox starting position players. In September he'll work on the pitching staff."

Richard Garces says that Matt holds no ill will against the Red Sox.

"It's not an anti-Boston thing, just a pro-Yankee thing -- until the playoffs," Matt's father said.

Mark said that his brother has gotten "accustomed" to seeing the Yankees fail in the playoffs and/or World Series, and considers the team's fall failures of recent years "comfy and cozy."

"Matt says that it just won't be fall without the Yankees crushing their fans' hopes in the playoffs," Mark said. "That, and he hates Rudy Giuliani."

"That's another story," Richard Garces said of the Giuliani thing, rolling his eyes. "You don't want to hear it."