I really used to despise the Yankees back in the days of Nettles, Rivers, Reggie and Munson and company. They were an arrogant and despicable bunch of jerks and it really ticked me off to see them win.

This current group of Yankees is a much nicer bunch, at least from what we can see from afar. Sure, they still have the arrogant Steinbrenner family as their owners, but most of the team is personable and hard to hate.

I thought maybe this new feeling was just mine, but then I spoke to my father. Now for most of his 88 years, my dad has spent his time rooting for the Red Sox and against the Yankees.

He hated Casey Stengel and Joe Pepitone and Jason Giambi. Didn't matter what era it was, he couldn't stand those New York teams.

So I asked him his feelings this year, when the Yanks polished off the Phillies and won the World Championship.

What he said surprised me. He said he reacted to it "very mildly," because he "expected it after seeing the team they had."

Yes, he did mention that they have more money than anyone else and that allows them to go out and buy what they need, but it didn't really seem to bother him that much.

Then we got to what I think might be the crux of the matter. My father said of Derek Jeter, "he is really great. He is a gentleman and he plays the game right and I admire him a lot."

That is pretty much how many of us feel about Jeter, and that is why we do not get quite so upset when his team does well.

Derek Jeter represents the Yankees and Jeter is a class act. In this day of spoiled and over-paid ballplayers, Jeter is a throwback.

He plays hard, he never attempts to take much of the credit and he puts his team first. That is how the game is supposed to be played, but seldom is anymore.

Oh, and one other reason perhaps, why we don't feel quite so upset when the Yankees win the title. The Red Sox won two of them, in 2004 and 2007, so at least we got a taste of what it feels like.

Congratulations Yankee fans. You had a great year.

* * *

Last week, after the Yankees won, New York Congressman Eliot Engel, who represents the Bronx district, got up in the House of Representatives with a Yankee hat on and said that he wanted to take two minutes to congratulate the team for their victory.

He admitted that he was breaking a House rule by wearing the cap, so he quickly took it off.

A Republican congressman named Jason Chaffetz, from Utah, which obviously has no baseball team, jumped up and objected.

Rep. Chaffetz whined that he didn't want to waste time talking about baseball.

He wanted to talk about healthcare.

Politicians are such opportunists. Engel was making sure that his voters in the Bronx knew what a Yankee fan he was, so next election they would be sure to vote for him.

Chaffetz, whose party had eight years to do something about healthcare, used the opportunity to interrupt Engel, so that everyone would think that he spent every minute of his waking hours working on a healthcare plan.

Politicians are such opportunists. They really are pathetic.