The only thing bigger than the bandwagon of Yankee hating fans is the bandwagon of Yankee loving fans that helped start off the phenomenon in the first place. The New York Yankees are probably the most hated team in all of sports. The Lakers are fairly hated in the NBA, the Patriots are by far the most hated franchise in the NFL (though this is a recent trend) and hockey does not seem quite popular enough to have a team rise to the status of Public Enemy. Still, if there is one sports team in the world that seems to draw hate for even existing regardless of its actions, it is the Yankees. There are many reasons for this.
Them getting Babe Ruth for basically a stick of bubble gum and some change from the Red Sox certainly did not help matters. Sure, it was a shrewd move that paid off brilliantly for them, but to the rest of the league the perception that they do not "home grow" their talent was born.
They simply get their players from other teams.
Of course, the Yankees have grown a lot of their own talent, from Bernie Williams, Alfonso Soriano, Jorge Posada, and Nick Johnson to many others. And the perception of them as a team that "buys Championships" was certainly not born overnight and something you never heard muttered at nearly the clip during the Great Depression that you have these last ten years or so.
Jealousy is undoubtedly a factor. Twenty six championships leads to that. But the truth is that the past fifteen or so years the Yankees have enjoyed a huge competitive advantage and finally started validating the perception that they are baseball's "Evil Empire."
What hope does a small market team like the Tigers have against the Yankees? None, and yet each season we go through the motions anyway. The lack of a salary cap hurts any chance for parity in this league and it is teams like the Yankees which have the most to gain.
They have been buying division championships for the past fifteen years. They may not have won it all recently but they get themselves a great shot every season by spending money like it is going out of style.
They already have five All Pro outfielders? Hey, why not add one more this offseason, in case one of the others gets injured? Sure, that is four or five more than almost every other team has, but hey, the Yankees are rich, so why not?
This is a monster the league created with its adoption of the "soft cap" some years ago. A soft cap means that teams like the Yankees which have the money to afford it can pay a "luxury tax" when they go over the cap. Basically they can bribe the league so that the cap does not apply to them. Other teams can do this as well but since the Yankees are in a big market city they have the funds from the start and the popularity built in to pay a tax small market teams could not even dream of affording.
Hard to cheer a race car on when it is a Ferarri going against a bunch of cheap pintos, no?
It is so bad the government could probably apply its anti-monopoly laws against this team and have more success than it had against Microsoft. However since baseball allows this transgression by its very setup and the player's union does not look like it is going to accept a cap anytime soon... these Yankees might be here to stay.
Of course it is more than their success and the riches that bought it. Many people have a natural backlash against "celebrity teams", one reason why teams in LA are almost always unpopular to one degree or another. Like LA, New York is filled with celebrities and has one of the world's brightest spotlights trained right on it. Stars like Jeter are dating singers like Mariah Carrey. They have a general manager in his early thirties who is now a celebrity himself. Steinbrenner did not have to go to jail even after his felony conviction. Etc, etc. All this just adds to the pot.
But the real reason they are hated is their success. The Redskins in the NFL try to buy their way to success as well but their constant failure makes them a laughingstock instead of a hated team. However, were they to ever succeed using these techniques people would hate them. Sports fans do not like reminders that this is a mercenary business. Home grown talent and equality on all sides prevents that perception from taking hold and implies a sort of purity in the process that fans can respect. One corporate superteam outbidding all competitors and adding almost any player it wishes at will is a stark reminder of that great truth in professional sports that all fans love to hate: In the end money can buy anything, even glory.