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Can you imagine Massachusetts issuing a Yankees plate?
By adamg on Sun, 04/17/2022 - 11:47am
Spotted in the Boston Common garage today.
Neighborhoods:
Free tagging:
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Comments
Wow, I would never have
Wow, I would never have guessed this was legit
http://www.plateshack.com/y2k/New_York5/newyork5.html
I've often thought the
I've often thought the commonwealth could bring in a fair amount of revenue by charging an extra $50 for a "YANKEES SUCK" plate.
OK, if you owned that car....
...would you park it in the Bronx? NFW.
Hopefully, this guy lives waaaaaaay upstate.
Still, I'm shocked that plate even exists.
Please...
New Yorkers wouldn't care less about some Red Sox logo on a car, a hat, a shirt or anything else for that matter. Sox fans in Boston freak out way more about the Yankees than Yankee fans do in NYC. That's the difference between a large cosmopolitan city and provincial Boston.
Still true today?
Since 2004, the Red Sox have been more successful than the Yankees in the AL East, and they have beaten the Yankees in each of the last three postseason contests where they met.
In my experience
New York is way less hostile now. I remember being at the game where Joba infamously threw at Youk twice, and there was a legit like 10 on 10 NY vs. BOS brawl in the upper decks. Game I went to last summer, nobody even paid attention to Sox fans on the subway and I didn’t see any hostility in general. I’ve also never seen a spontaneous Red Sox Suck chant break out against a random team at Yankee Stadium.
Even in Boston now, it’s mostly clowns down from New Hampshire who tell people they’re from Boston, or kids who aren’t even old enough to have experienced the Curse, who have something to say to me when I show up in Pinstripes.
Poeple from NH? Identifying with "Taxachusetts"?
Have I fallen through a wormhole? Does Spock have a beard in this universe?
Things have changed
My observation is that Yankees fans, at least the ones who attend the games, and the ones I work with , do in fact care. This has been a gradual change in the last 10-20 years.
The Yankees fans now chant "Boston sucks" (not Red Sox sucks) at Yankees games. That is a fairly recent development.
They were chanting "Boston sucks" in 1978
Ah, the days when you could watch baseball games on an ordinary TV set, without subscribing to anything...
Newburgh is upriver from New
Newburgh is upriver from New York City, but not very far upstate.
Plus
There's way, way more to be frightened of in Newburgh than crazed Yankees fans.
When does MA get a new plate?
Other states seem to update their design more frequently.
About 30 years now!
The current Massachusetts red-on-white plates have been issued for passenger cars since around 1991. They were used earlier for special plates such as taxis, commercial vehicles, etc., starting around 1985 or '86.
There are current campaigns
There are current campaigns for new plates, but you have to get a minimum number of people to commit to one before they'll even make them. It's hard to build momentum when you have to ask people to preorder something that might never get made, or might happen in five or so years.
You’re missing the point
You are talking special plates, not the standard issue ones. Since 1991, New York State has had 4 different standard issue plates. Pennsylvania had plates with a Quaker reference, then 2 different websites (though www.state.pa.us probably will still get you somewhere.) Meanwhile, unless you donate some money to a special cause every 2 years, you are sporting plates with a long disused advertising slogan if you have a Massachusetts registered car.
Long story short, the Massachusetts license plate is long overdue for an overhaul.
Some do
Others --- well, Vermont.
Bring back
Bring back the green plate.
Can I imagine it?
Sure. In fact, I see no reason we shouldn't be issuing Yankees plates to those who wish to identify themselves as such, with a more than modest vanity plate fee applied. Seems like an all around win.
What's so unusual about this?
What's so unusual about this?
Don't most states have an option to create group plate series at a slight premium on registration? All you need is to register a group with them that's something non-offensive, and guarantee a minimum number of orders to make it worth their while to run off the plates.
-
This is a different category than a vanity plate or a state alternate plate series.
People up here don't realize
People up here don't realize most of the antipathy from NY sports fans is internecine- Rangers-Islanders, Giants-Jets, Knicks-Nets. etc.- Believe it was Bob Ryan who once noted that Red Sox fans aren't even the worst Yankee-haters out there with that title going to Met fans
That's probably because...
...it's been a few decades since Boston had a second major league baseball team.
It was rarely competition (on
It was rarely competition (on either side) in the Boston sports market for the last few years of that era. Certainly nothing compared to the slightly-artificially-stimulated demand (and more successful on-field product) of the last few decades.
My father lived and worked in Boston and Brookline in the early 50s, and recalled it being a time when he and his roommates would have supper back at the apartment after a work day and decide spur-of-the-moment to go to the Sox (or Celtics... or Bruins) home game that night. Just mosey on over - plenty of tickets available at the box office!
Issue any plate people want
If state makes a profit and it's not offensive,
Sportsball
The sportsball team from the nearest city I claim
As my heritage is better than the sports ball team from the nearest city you claim as your heritage.
Specialized plates are dumb
And yes, I know I'm in the minority here, but...
The role of the license plate is to aid in identifying the automobile, from all sides, by both people and machines.
Anything that takes away from that is problematic. The allowing of old green and white plates takes away -- there is no front plate. The allowing of both 1 and I, as well as both O and 0, take away from that, because of ambiguity. The allowing of extra graphics on the plate does not generally help. Sure, at close distance, you can read "Red Sox" or "Save the Whales" or whatever, but at distances where it's possible but hard to read the plates, not so much in my experience.
To say nothing of the reality that the folks who personalize their car the most -- stickers, custom plates, shit hanging in the rearview mirror -- are more likely to drive like jerks.
https://scienceblogs.com/purepedantry/2008/06/17/road-rage-correlates-wi...
This certainly matches my experience. The folks who treat their automobile like a tool drive more safely; those who treat it as an extension of their personality drive like tools.
OK, off my soapbox. Thanks for listening.
If they made plates with RFID tags...
... this would all be moot. The cops could identify the car without having to read anything, just like the Mass Turnpike gantries read EZ-Pass tags.
Back in 2019
...I was riding the Red Line early one morning, and I noticed several other passengers wearing Yankees caps. For a moment I wondered if I was riding on the wrong subway.