One winter morning last year, I came downstairs wearing my Yankees varsity jacket for the first time while my father was preparing to leave for work. Upon seeing the jacket, he paused to give me an odd stare, then asked where I’d acquired it.
“I dunno. I thrifted it,” I half-heartedly replied. My dad just laughed. “You don’t know anything about the Yankees,” he replied, chuckling more and leaving it at that. I was surprised that he didn’t say anything else; although his fondness has somewhat faded with time, my dad has been a Red Sox fan since childhood.
If you didn’t already know, the clash between the Yankees and Red Sox is one of the most storied in all of sports. Their intense rivalry has spanned across generations, so my choice to wear the jacket despite my dad’s conflicting fandom was undoubtedly ironic. However, that very fandom is arguably just as unorthodox.
My dad didn’t grow up in Boston or even in New England; he grew up in New York. More specifically, he came up in a small town in upstate New York, and right when the Yankees were in the midst of another era of dominance.
When he was born, the Yankees golden age of the 50s and 60s was in its twilight years, but he witnessed back-to-back Reggie Jackson-led world titles for the team in ’77 and ’78. The Red Sox on the other hand, were barely decent through that period. They boasted only two post-season appearances, both resulting in losses, and one courtesy of the Yankees.
I never understood his choice of team at first. Why wouldn’t you choose your home state’s powerhouse team over a mediocre one from a place you’ve never been to? It should’ve been a no-brainer.
The Yankees were the uber-successful big-market behemoth, and Boston was a franchise long removed from their best years. They hadn’t won a title since 1918 up until that point, while the Yankees had won 22.
My dad describes watching the Red Sox get pummeled by the Yankees year after year as a kid. With their best players often leaving for bigger contracts and brighter lights, the Red Sox were the perennial underdog. However, that was exactly why my dad loved them. They represented him.
For context, although my dad’s town was full of immigrant families just like his, he was still one of the only Chinese kids in his entire small town. His upstate New York suburb was a melting pot of Irish and Italian immigrants, part of families who had been there for generations. His family, on the other hand, was fresh off the boat.
First-generation immigrants displaced by China’s Cultural Revolution, my grandparents came to the United States as refugees in a new country. Even after having kids and establishing careers, they never truly assimilated into American culture. My dad’s household was a cultural island in a predominantly white community. They were the underdogs, just like the Red Sox.
On hot summer afternoons, my grandfather would string up grotesque cuts of meat in the backyard, not caring a lick about the neighbors’ inevitable judgment. My grandparents simply didn’t understand American customs or mannerisms, nor made a concentrated effort to. People took notice.
When my father was 10 years old, he came home to see “F***ing Chinks” painted across the face of their house. My dad remembers my grandfather trying for weeks to scrub away the spray-painted letters, but they never fully faded. Instead, the words remained as a reminder that the Huangs didn’t truly belong.
Nowadays, my father affectionately refers to his childhood friends as the “big white guys”; a contrast to his own standing back then as the token “little Chinese kid.” Due to how he looked and where he came from, my dad was always playing catch-up. Boston’s situation at the time was simply a microcosm of my dad’s own disadvantaged position in the world. They represented the little guy.
