When thinking about why it's no fun to be a Yankees fan this season, it occurred to me that this is really an issue of identity. I took a philosophy class in college about the concept, and we considered the following example:

Let's say a ship (let's call it the Argo) were gradually replaced plank by plank as it got worn down, so that eventually the Argo consisted of no planks that were in the original. As long as the process were gradual enough, most people would still view it as the same ship. (There might be a controversy if someone dredged up all the old planks and rebuilt the original out of them, but let's leave that aside for the moment).

So for the most part, people can accept that a thing does not lose its identity even if it's undergoes gradual and eventually wholesale change.

But what if instead, they decided to knock out half the ship one year and completely renovate it that half with new parts and a new design. And let's say they did the same thing the next year to the other half (or third). Now, instead of a gradual "replace old parts as needed process," the ship is undergoing radical change and might not even look anything like the original two or three years later. Is it really still the same ship, just because the owner and name are the same?

Now imagine they dredge up the original planks (these weren't necessarily even worn out, but just scrapped when the owners decided to remodel) and the ship that looks just like the original were reassembled. Which is the Argo?

I don't think you can get a clear cut answer as to what constitutes identity, but the point is that people have a sense of it. At some point, significant and rapid change threatens to undermine something's identity and a thing is no longer what it was. In the NFL, there's change, but I think it's below the threshold for teams not being themselves. But in baseball, particularly with certain teams like the Yankees, Mets and Dodgers, the pace and materiality of the remodeling is at least up against that threshold and possibly beyond it.

If a team loses its identity, then it's just the front office's fantasy team held together merely by its name and location. I was going to say "venue," but in the case of the Yankees, that's different now, too.

The concept of identity is important here because fans identify with their teams. They say "we" beat Boston last night, and I like "our" chances. Once the identity of a team is called into question, then the emotional identification becomes more difficult to thinking people.|STAR| A name and a uniform is not enough. Let's say the Red Sox and Yankees swapped rosters wholesale this February. Would Sox fans just root for Jeter/Rivera/Posada et al. just because they were wearing the hometown uniform. (I doubt rooting for Sabathia or Burnett in a Red Sox uniform would cause much more cognitive dissonance than seeing them in pinstripes since neither play is identified with either team).

The bottom line is that we realize that there's a limit to how much change is possible before our team loyalties are undermined and eventually destroyed completely. Baseball should take great care to move further away from that limit.

|STAR| Obviously, if you blindly identify with a name, then it doesn't really matter who's playing for the team as long as they win. But mindless identification with a cause is a dangerous thing, and though it's harmless in sports, it's not a mindset you want to cultivate).