You seem to know your Yankees baseball - I’ll give you that, but another thing I don’t like about Yankee fans is that they are Yankees fans not baseball fans. I will watch and enjoy a game between the Angels and the Mariners and be happy. Too many Yankees fans will only watch if the Yankees are playing.
*LOL* - You are right that I will only watch the Yankees, and only during the playoffs - but that is simply a concession to the busy life I lead - I have ZERO time (or desire) to watch television anymore. I found that as I have gotten older my mind has become more and more focused on the things I want to accomplish in my art, my hobbies and my business - to the exclusion of the more frivolous pursuits of youth. Because one is more and more aware of the limits of time as the decades pass.
However, when I was younger, and had more time to spend (or “waste”, if I am using my current perspective), I would watch any baseball game, anytime. My favorite baseball memories are of the games I attended at Wrigley Field during the years I attended school in Chicago in the mid-1980s. It is simply the best ballpark I have been to for watching a game - not a bad seat in the house.
I would often sit in the bleachers a couple of rows behind Bill Veck, who spent his twilight years attending Cubs games and chatting with the fans. Should have worked up the courage to engage him in conversation. Boy he lived through baseball’s “Golden Age”. And he was quite a character.
Memory is a tricky thing - its true that the Messersmith case created modern free agency - but that was a couple of years after Steinbrenner bought the Yankees, not before.