I find myself rooting for the Yankees now, even though I live on the West Coast, even though I have no allegiances in New York, even though I can never remember whether it's Justice or Spencer in right field.

I live in a National League city, 3,000 miles away, but I had goose bumps on Soriano's game-winning home run, and I don't even know his first name. And I had goose bumps again when Sinatra's "New York, New York" came on, and I was proud of Guiliani and proud of the NYPD that ringed the field.

Now that the World Series is here, there is a whole extra week of this, and I and all of my West Coast friends firmly believe New York deserves it, and the Yankees deserve it. After what that place has been through the last six weeks, we want to see Joe Torre in his Fire Department T-shirt, we need to see Joe Torre in his Fire Department T-shirt.

But, along those lines, something else needs to be said.

We hate seeing Giants coach Jim Fassel in his NYPD hat! And we hate seeing defensive coordinator John Fox in his FBI hat!

The fact is, while we feel for New York, and want desperately for the storied Yankees to come through -- for all the right reasons -- we can't seem to muster up the same sympathy for the football Giants.

I was flipping back and forth the other night, between Monday Night Football and Yankees-Mariners, and for some reason, the Yankees came off as darlings, and the Giants came off as (I can't help it) insincere.

Not that the Giants do not feel for the NYPD and the Fire Department and the FBI, because I know they do. And I know their intentions are pure. But the New York Giants have been doing a lot of whining for the last 12 months, and, I'm sorry, but it's taken its toll. If you want to know how people 3,000 miles from New York perceive this football team, here it is: enough is enough.

We've been hearing for a year that the Giants get no respect. We heard it when Fassel guaranteed they'd make the playoffs last year, and we heard it leading into the NFC title game against the Vikings, and then again Super Bowl week. Fassel does it every time. When Marty Schottenheimer picked the Eagles to win the NFC East this year, Fassel did it again. "No one respects us!"

When the Rams got all the hype before their game this season, the Giants reminded us, "Hey, we're the ones who are defending conference champs!" It's one of the only ways Fassel has managed to motivate his team: the poor-old-us routine. And it's boring.

Now this week, after the loss to the Eagles, Fassel's gone to the measured, manufactured, calculated, "I'm ticked off" routine. He told the New York press he slept at the office Monday night, never went home. And that there could be lineup changes, and heads could roll. And there were insinuations that he'd take the play-calling power from offensive coordinator Sean Payton. And the back pages roared, "Fassel Furious," and so on. Puh-leeeeze.

Their next three games are Redskins, Cowboys, Cardinals -- practically automatic wins. But the coach keeps going to the well: the head-game routine. And the question we ask is, how long until his team tunes him out, doesn't buy in to all of this phoniness?

The fact is, we've figured that team out, and we don't exactly like what we see. I sat there Monday night, staring at their coach's NYPD cap, and their coordinator's FBI cap, and I couldn't help it. I couldn't get with their program.

Love New York. Love the Yankees. Don't trust that football team.

Tom Friend is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at tom.friend@espnmag.com.