A 2017 Meme: "These Yankees Are So Easy To Like"

So I've had a draft post sitting around for months, in which I collected media mentions about how the 2017 Yankees were supposedly "so easy to like".

The claim is nonsense, of course. But if a few baseball journalists say something, other writers will quickly and unquestioningly mimic it, and, before you know it, the absurdity has seeped into the culture and acquired the status of "truth". But we can forget all about that now. The Yankees are officially unlikeable again.

First, Ryan Chichester (SB Nation) gives us the lie:

Somehow, the Evil Empire persona softened, and gave way to a Yankees team that was viewed as a young, gritty group that may even be (dare I say it) somewhat likable by…