The Yankees play the Braves starting tonight, and whenever that happens, I get seriously bad flashbacks . . .

I was in my second year of law school in the fall of 1996 and I had a professor that semester who would just go on and on and on about the Yankees. He'd use them as the example of greatness, in much the same way people used to use Cadillacs (e.g. "Goldman Sachs is the New York Yankees of investment banks," etc.). I cut him some slack because he was in his early 50s, which meant that he grew up at a time when the Yankees won all the time and such comparisons made sense. Because of his age, he could be forgiven for overlooking the fact that the Yankees hadn't won anything in close to 20 years, and had only been in the playoffs once in the previous 15. The way in which he clinged to the past was kind of cute and endearing.

But then the Yankees started working their way through the playoffs. My Braves -- the reigning World Series Champions -- were too, and despite a big scare from the Cardinals in the NLCS, I and many others expected them to coast easily to another title. My professor, high on New York's run, noticed my Braves cap in class one day and decided to taunt me a bit. Asking me how I'd feel when the Yankees thrashed the Braves. Asking me if I'd need a couple of days off from class to recover from the epic beatdown that was to come. When I realized that he was looking for someone to jaw back at him I obliged, and for a couple of days two or three minutes of class was taken up with our smack.

When the Braves put the hurt to the Yankees in games one and two, my professor backed off. I, however, amped it up. I talked about how unlikely it was for a team -- especially a green and untested team like the Yankees -- to come back from a 2-0 deficit. Especially when they'd have to beat Tom Glavine, Steve Avery, John Smoltz and Greg Maddux -- in that order -- to do it. I was a total ass about it, really, and that would have remained the case even if what happned over the next four games hadn't happened.

But it did happen. Oh, God, did it happen, and to this day I can't think about that World Series without shuddering, partially because of just how epic was the Braves' fail, but even more so for the complete lack of humility and grace I displayed in the runup to it all. To my professor's credit, he only rubbed my nose in it for, oh, three weeks afterwards. When I got my A in his class, I couldn't help but wonder if pity was just as much at play as performance. Since then I've done my best to blot the memory of 1996 out of my mind, and I've succeeded to varying degrees.

But then a blogger like Jay at Fack Youk goes and starts what looks to be an excellent series reviewing the 1996 and 1999 Yankees-Braves World Series, and the bad memories start flooding back. Not so much for 1999 -- every Braves fan just sort of knew on some level that the Yankees would kill us -- but for that awful, awful 1996.

He has Game one up right now. Since I knew it would have a happy ending I managed to make it through it. By tomorrow morning he's going to have Game Four posted, however. I can't decide if I'll read it yet. It's been over 12 years so you'd think I could handle it by now, but I'm not sure I can. Maybe I'll email Jay and ask him to move Game Four up to this evening so it will be a little more acceptable for me to take a belt of scotch or something before diving in.

Anyway, Jay's series should be enjoyable for (a) anyone too young to really remember the details of the 1996 Series; (b) Yankees fans; and (c) masochistic Braves fans. As for the rest of us? Well, whatever doesn't kill us only makes us stronger, and the 1996 Series hasn't killed me. Yet.