Yankee Hubris

[Pat Kelly]

Great summary in the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/sports/baseball/24araton.html

The Yankees probably went too far on this one and we probably haven't seen how this one will play out fully yet...if Tex had gone to the Red Sox this becomes a baseball and Boston only story...a team and front office that are media darlings and at this stage get a pretty free ride. This offseason and spending by the Yankees will become more symbolic as it takes place in a city at the center of the financial crisis.

This comment by the writer (Harvey Araton) sums it up best.

To quote John Sterling, the Yankees win, thuhuhuhuh Yankees win! Of course, on the field, they have not won a playoff series since 2004, and a World Series since 2000. Do their off-season expenditures speak of prudence or panic? Probably both.

And while they certainly deserve praise for addressing their personnel needs, delivering the goods, it is difficult to comment on the Yankees with the baseball blinders on, without acknowledging that in the world of economic pain that has set upon the country, their audacity and gluttony tends to make the stomach feel queasy.

And this calls it like it is:

If there is a deep recession with budget austerity, it is news to the Yankees. While they spend like an OPEC nation when oil was trading at $140 a barrel, they continue to hit the city for sweetheart treatment, most recently for another $259 million in tax-exempt bonds on top of the $940 million they were already given. Their two stadiums stand as reminders — at least until one is gone — of precious parkland taken, yet to be replaced and probably never to the specifications that poor Congressional district had before.

It is all about power for the Yankees, like a big batting practice show with fireworks after every drive into the upper deck. They get what they want, with their money or the taxpayers’. The figures defy the recession, or reason.

The Yankees just received a bill from Major League Baseball for $26.9 million (for a grand total of $148.5 million in the six years since the luxury tax was created to exert some control over big-market spending, or 90 percent of the total tax). They shrugged the tax off and handed Teixeira $180 million.

The pinstriped express rolls on, in excess.

[Scrat1]

They just signed Kevin Cash too! $700,000! Do their pockets reach to down to the dark dark depths of Hades?!

http://blogs.nypost.com/sports/st/archives/2008/12/yanks_sign_cash.html