October 24, 2005

YANKEES WILL CONTINUE TO CHEAT BASEBALL SYSTEM

      I just can’t get past the hypocrisy.  How can Yankee fans sit in the stands and clench their hands together in prayer as their team is on the verge of a loss?  How can they look for divine intervention when their baseball franchise thumbs their collective noses at the baseball system of which they are supposed to be a member?  The New York Yankees care about nobody but themselves.  They don’t care about fair play, they don’t care about competition, they don’t care about the game of baseball, and they certainly don’t care about deities (outside of George himself).  They only care about themselves.  How else to explain a franchise that plays the game of spoiled rich kids—the one with the most toys at the end wins.

       There are a growing number of fans of ABTY (Anybody But The Yankees) and each year they become more vocal at this time of the year.  The loud noise you heard a couple of Mondays ago happened, not coincidentally, at the same precise moment that the Yankees were eliminated from the playoffs.  Baseball fans everywhere roared with approval—and not because the Angels won.  The Yankees lost.    Sure most fans develop a distaste for teams that win year after year.  It was the same way back when the Montreal Canadiens were winning Stanley Cups, or when the Dallas Cowboys were always in the NFC final, or when the Los Angeles Lakers were winning three consecutive titles.  I still despise the Lakers--can’t stand Kobe--and the Cowboys--don’t like Jerry Jones—(though I despise the miscreants from Minnesota more), and the New York Knicks—another major spender, and they have that ego-driven destroyer of teams Isiah Thomas.  Sorry, Canadien haters, I was born in Montreal.  The Yankees, however, bring out more negative passion in me than any other team. The reason for such hatred goes beyond the team’s constant success. 

       Simply look at the financial aspect of the game.  The Yankees spend far beyond the maximum allowed under the new luxury tax rules (approx. $125 million).  Last season their payroll went past $200 million.  Look at the other playoff teams and their payrolls.  If you add the St. Louis Cardinals and the San Diego Padres you get the Boston Red Sox.  Add the Cards, the Padres and the White Sox and you get the Yankees.  That’s three playoff teams, from good size markets, that add up to just one Yankee club.  They are the only franchise that ignores the luxury tax system (the rules were actually instituted to try and keep the Yankees in the ballpark of most other clubs).  In this year’s playoffs they had three pitchers—Kevin Brown, Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright on the disabled list.  The combined annual salaries of those three players are about $34 million or more than the entire team salaries of Tampa Bay and Kansas City. 

       The excuse, or rationalization, is that the Yankees don’t care about anything other than winning.  That means that they don’t care about the game of baseball.  What would happen to this franchise if they were forced to field a team using the same payroll as the Cardinals?  Or, giving them a bit of a breather, the Red Sox?  They certainly couldn’t field an infield that is paid more than $60 million annually.  How competitive would this organization be if they played by the rules?  They might have to actually think and plan rather than simply outspend.  To say that the Yankees management is brilliant in that they have fielded a playoff club for eleven consecutive years is improper.  Brilliant is how the Oakland A’s continue to field a playoff calibre club at less than one-quarter the cost of the Yankees.  

       There is far too much money in New York, and the organizations that play out of that city are not the wisest of spenders.  The Rangers have been an expensive laughing stock in the NHL for years.  The Knicks pay nearly $200 million annually on salaries, roughly one-third of that is luxury tax penalties under the far more strict NBA system, and they continue to be a league bottom-feeder.  The Mets’ payroll is in excess of $100 million and they can’t even stay with Washington (formerly the Montreal Expos). 

       The answer…more teams in New York.  Put two more baseball teams in that market and have four teams split the large pie rather than two.  Then we will see just how smart King George and his worker bees really are.  Of course that won’t happen.  King George doesn’t believe in sharing.