Watching the Yankee$ win it all...

[Mad Mark]

...is like watching some sick, sadistic bastard stuff money into a puppy until it dies. I can't take this any more. There really isn't even much hope that they'll lose another game this season.

Nice trophy you bought there, $teingrabber Jr and Jr! Hope you enjoy it.

[scOtt]

IF the Dodgers can pull it off... I think they have a real mental advantage. Otherwise.... it's what I said in February.... Skanks spend half a billion, buy championship. Film at 11.

[Roy Firestone]

That every run, hit, good play and great pitch by the Yankees makes my blood boil.
They are a machine,and I wont deny their greatness.But I am so tired of seeing baseball dominated by corporate acquisitions.Im sick of big buck ballplayers all signing with the same team.
This isnt a ballclub.Its a multinational corporation.
Give me all the stats you want about how so many "small market" teams have won titles.Tell me how much the Orioles dont spend and dont want to compete with the big boys. its all true.
But everytime I watch the Yankees succeed, and they are in it every year, even if they dont always win it...it reminds me that baseball will never be on a level playing field without a salary cap.Its bad for baseball, bad for the fans and bad for me personally.
I hate those guys.

[scOtt]

I'm like chanting, Roy! Om. Om.

[Boy Howdy]

I totally agree with you, Roy, but I made peace with the situation personally by reminding myself that life is not fair. Life is not fair, and I don't use baseball to escape from life, but rather to see life dramas played out between the white lines.

When the Yankees falter, crumble and fall --and believe me, they will- trampling on their grave will be all the more sweeter.

[GoldGlove21]

Originally Posted by Roy Firestone

That every run, hit, good play and great pitch by the Yankees makes my blood boil.
They are a machine,and I wont deny their greatness.But I am so tired of seeing baseball dominated by corporate acquisitions.Im sick of big buck ballplayers all signing with the same team.
This isnt a ballclub.Its a multinational corporation.
Give me all the stats you want about how so many "small market" teams have won titles.Tell me how much the Orioles dont spend and dont want to compete with the big boys. its all true.
But everytime I watch the Yankees succeed, and they are in it every year, even if they dont always win it...it reminds me that baseball will never be on a level playing field without a salary cap.Its bad for baseball, bad for the fans and bad for me personally.
I hate those guys.

I agree Roy and even the argument surrounding why they are good for baseball is bad for baseball. Fans of the Yankees argue that the Yankees fans travel well and aid in selling tickets in other parks. They argue that the Yankees pay a luxury tax that makes it easier for small market teams to operate and make their teams better. In reality Toronto, Baltimore, and Tampa Bay are not aided in the least by the Red Sox and Yankees combined $350 Million roster of players. Those two payrolls combine for $30 Million less than the team payrolls for Minnesota, Tampa Bay, Oakland, Washington, Pittsburgh, San Diego, and Florida COMBINED! Over the last 5 years the Yankees team payroll has just about equaled the net worth of the Baltimore Ravens!

One of the main reasons why football has so many fans is because every team gets a chance to compete. There is 16 regular season games and 1 upset means that you just won 1/16th of your season. A little luck and you can make the playoffs. Baseball plays 162 games a year so there is so many opportunities for the good teams to rise to the top. There is very little parity in baseball. The Twins, Cardinals, Yankees, Red Sox, Angels, Dodgers, and Phillies were teams I expected to make the playoffs. Only the Rockies were outside of my best guess (I thought the Giants would be in). That is 7 out of the 8 teams picked by a baseball nobody. I can pick at least 6 almost every year! The Yankees have won more than a quarter of all World Series Championships and that my friends is bad for the game.

Ask the Royals if they would rather have the $3.5 Million a year they get from the Yankees or the 5 wins that the Yankees cost them every year and see what they say. It is just so much easier for the Yankees to fix the mistakes that push other teams another year away from real competiveness. Oh, Gil Meche didn't work out? Let's go out and give someone else $15 Million a year to pitch. A star player is getting old? Let's go get the best three free agents on the market. How about this for a rule? A team can only sign two players who make north of $13 Million a year per offseason. You can call it the Yankee rule, because NO other team does that on a consistant basis.

To add insult to injury, MLB waits this long before deciding to put international talent into the draft. In the past the Yankees could sign the premium free agents and sign the premium international talents. That will level the playing field a bit as long as MLB adopts some sort of real slotting system to deter agents from asking for large amounts of money to push their guys to the upper echelon teams. The Yankees have just used MLB's system against them and this whole mess (including steroids) is MLB's fault.

[24fps]

Originally Posted by Roy Firestone

That every run, hit, good play and great pitch by the Yankees makes my blood boil.
They are a machine,and I wont deny their greatness.But I am so tired of seeing baseball dominated by corporate acquisitions.Im sick of big buck ballplayers all signing with the same team.
This isnt a ballclub.Its a multinational corporation.
Give me all the stats you want about how so many "small market" teams have won titles.Tell me how much the Orioles dont spend and dont want to compete with the big boys. its all true.
But everytime I watch the Yankees succeed, and they are in it every year, even if they dont always win it...it reminds me that baseball will never be on a level playing field without a salary cap.Its bad for baseball, bad for the fans and bad for me personally.
I hate those guys.

Get rid of the unbalanced schedule, and I can deal with the rest.

[George]

Any decent human being loathes the Yankees. (The only exceptions are Bronx natives who support the home team.) Yankee fans are the same kind of people who rooted for the Roman Empire to defeat Spartacus, who cheered when the Inquisition burned witches alive at the stake, and who were delighted when the Russian army clamped down on those pesky Hungarians. Yankee fans are appalled by the story of Moses leading the Jewish slaves out of Egypt or the U.S.A. hockey team beating the Russian red machine at the Olympics.

My psychological problem is that I care about the Orioles and MLB. It's completely stupid. MLB is not a level playing field. Anybody who thinks otherwise is just kidding themself. A sane person would ignore the farce of MLB competition.

The remote chance that David will slay Goliath must be the irrational reason to follow the standings. That's always a possibility because of the luck that is intrinsic to the game.

If I can't root for the O's during the playoffs, than I can cheer on any other team playing against the Yankees.

Individual games can be interesting and competitive. Even the worst team usually wins about 40% of their games. I want to watch the great plays some Orioles players make during a season. Thus I will continue following the O's and try as best I can to avoid dreaming about winning a world series.

[scOtt]

Originally Posted by 24fps

Get rid of the unbalanced schedule, and I can deal with the rest.

That only rids us of like 12% of the problems in baseball...

[RShack]

Too bad Fay Vincent got himself fired. Had he stayed Commissioner, he would've fixed it somehow. He even banned Steinbrenner for life for the sleazy gambler thing. But then Bud and a few others ganged up and fired him, and arranged to have Bud replace him. That was the end of having a Commissioner. Bud promptly un-banned Steinbrenner, and it's been downhill ever since. It's like watching Wall St. run the economy if you ask me. Wall St and Yankee Stadium are less than 10 miles apart. I actually like NYC, I like it that it has all the excesses of society in one place. But there's a couple of these excesses that aren't good for everybody else because they've got it rigged.

[scOtt]

Originally Posted by rshackelford

Too bad Fay Vincent got himself fired. Had he stayed Commissioner, he would've fixed it somehow. He even banned Steinbrenner for life for the sleazy gambler thing. But then Bud and a few others ganged up and fired him, and arranged to have Bud replace him. That was the end of having a Commissioner. Bud promptly un-banned Steinbrenner, and it's been downhill ever since. It's like watching Wall St. run the economy if you ask me. Wall St and Yankee Stadium are less than 10 miles apart. I actually like NYC, I like it that it has all the excesses of society in one place. But there's a couple of these excesses that aren't good for everybody else because they've got it rigged.

Sadly, but in the strangest way reassuringly... that's not the first time a commish has been hired this way. They come and go. Just like King Bud eventually will.

[24fps]

Originally Posted by scOtt

That only rids us of like 12% of the problems in baseball...

I'll take it.

My comment was meant to address the Orioles' problems in the AL East which are fundamentally different from, say, the Giants' problems in the NL West.

The rest of baseball can take care of itself, the AL East is stupidly out of whack IMO.

[Orioles West]

Originally Posted by Roy Firestone

But everytime I watch the Yankees succeed, and they are in it every year, even if they dont always win it...it reminds me that baseball will never be on a level playing field without a salary cap.Its bad for baseball, bad for the fans and bad for me personally.
I hate those guys.

Oh, I understand and completely agree.. I give a very similar speech about the topic the same time every year, and have included the BoSox over the last several seasons as they are able to buy almost as much as the damn Yankees.

That said, my favorite line from the Clint Eastwood movie, The Unforgiven, "Deserve has got nothing to do with it."

More true in baseball than most aspects in life.

All that aside, in a weird way, it is good (at times) to have evil to cheer against in this world. Some of my favorite days of the summer are Bird victories over the pinstripes. If the Angels can't stop them, then I will temporarily adopt the Phillies to slay the evil empire.

I hate 'em too.



-Don

[JimDH]

Give me the old days with the old reserve clause still in place. That will keep the Yankees from dominating.

[bird watcher]

I am rooting for the Yankees to win it all in embarrassing fashion.

This may be the only way that the truly ridiculous nature of the whole thing gets exposed to the otherwise blind masses.

Having read on this very site that the yankees haven't really been successful because they don't have a ring recently, boils me more than anything. It is like sticking your head in the sand and not seeing the obvious. That excuse will be gone when they win the world series. I hope they win multiple titles too.

That is of course unless the Orioles have a legit shot at things which won't happen unless AM and Peter Angelos suddenly go on an out of character spending spree.