Well, there’s always Division III football.
I think a lot of non-fans of the jump-on-the-bandwagon teams (Yankees, Braves et al) are actually pleased to have a juicy target to root against.
Every time Tampa Bay beats the Yankees, an angel gets his wings. 
As a baseball non-fan living in Boston, it looks like it’s a heck of a lot of fun being a Yankees fan up here. We have a couple at the office and they seem to really get into the mustache-twirling villainy of it all. I kind of respect that approach. Last week with the Tom Brady Hat Incident was kind of hilarious.
(I support the Sox nominally and get excited when I’m told it’s time to, pretty much.)
Wow, just wow. Thank you for the rational words.
**Marley ** is around 23 or 24 years old, so he did miss the Bucky Dent Homer. I would consider Chambliss’ Homer ahead of Boone’s and maybe even Reggie’s 3rd of the night on the special October night. As far a games, the Perfect Games were incredible and there was also the July 4th no hitter by Rags against the Red Sox with Boggs making the last out. Then there was Guidry’s 18 strikeout game. At the time the most by a lefty in a game. That was the day the Yankees started the great comeback against the Red Sox. Boone’s Homer and Jeter’s November homer and Leyritz’s homer were all great modern moments. Boone’s was pretty darn special.
Jim
Raised by a dyed in the wool Yankee fan (my dad grew up in Brooklyn and rooted for the Yanks despite being in Dodger-Land), I root for the Yanks. Got to, it’s in the blood.
Question for those better informed about these things: why do anti-Yankees folks cite the amount of money the Yanks spend on their roster as a reason to dislike them? What team WOULDN’T spend on talent if they had the cash? You might disagree with what talent they choose to buy/develop, but having and spending $$$? I hear this all the time from Yankee haters, and all I can think is… “you’re jealous.”
I would love to bitch about how the Yankees buy so much talent, but when the Wings could do it in the NHL ,I kinda liked it.
No, that’s still a good example.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sports/sns-ap-fbn-raiders-moss-traded,0,6280405.story
So the Patriots actually are an example of a team that wouldn’t bring in an overpaid malcontent. Fairly paid malcontents? Sure, bring em in by the truckload.
Bear in mind that the Patriots have been way under the cap for the past few seasons. Their recent spending spree has simply brought up their payroll to a similar level as the rest of the league. Trying to compare them to the Yankees is disingenuous.
(As a Jets fan, I’m not particularly fond of the Patriots though I respect them greatly.)
ETA: $4.5 million is fair market value for a #1 starting wide receiver.
Yeah, what the hell was that all about? I didn’t get to see the game, and had to settle for reading about it afterward. I thought, “Who the hell is Josh Phelps?” I did like Johjima’s sarcastic comment after the game, though: “I guess he was just excited that he got a hit.” And I imagined Torre in the dugout afterward telling him, “You do know you’re gonna get drilled in your next at bat?”
As a Seattle Mariners and Seahawks fan, I can attest to how irritating it is seeing all these local kids wearing Yankees or Braves hats, or Cowboys or 49ers or Raiders jackets (though I suspect a lot of the Raiders “fans” are actually wannabee thugs). “Old” folks wearing Yankees hats? I cut them some slack because they probably got into the Yankees decades ago, when there were only 8 or 16 teams, none of them local. But then there are the guys (and gals) who want to sit in bars in Seattle team territory and talk about how the local teams suck, and go out of their way to root for whoever the local team is playing against. Then again, I was a Miami Dolphins fan in the early '70s, but that was before the Seahawks existed.
You’ve got a good memory - or else you checked my profile 
- I’ll be 25 in a week and a half. The Leyritz homer was probably on a school night.
I like the Cubs, so I equate baseball with heart-crushing blows and extreme hope, only to be dashed again. To me, that IS baseball.
Memory, in some thread about music, I was surprised by how young you were. I had originally assumed you were in your mid-thirties. You posted that you were only 22 and I was shocked as your music knowledge of ‘classic rock’ exceeded mine already despite my being 17 years older. So your age stuck in my memory.
Jim
Uuuh… because it absolutely gives them an unfair ADVANTAGE when it comes to the level of players they can sign and that advantage potentially exists not just for a position but extends across the field and rotation.
With footballl, they implemented the salary cap to keep things fair. With baseball, a large market team potentially has far greater funds to assemble talent than those with reduced support. Until revenue sharing or a cap’s in place, certain teams have a potential advantage. It’s that simple.
I doubt if many folks have anything against Yankee fans per se. Who wouldn’t cheer for a team that wins consistently. What do they have now, 25% of the Series victories? I love going to see them play because it’s like watching an All-Star team ever time. But is their monetary advantage fair? Heh, why heck no, not in any way, shape or form.
So many great moments, it becomes hard to rank them. I remember Rags game - we were getting ready to go out, but we kept saying “We’ll go when someone gets a hit”. You know how that turned out. Ended up celebrating the game more than the 4th (plus I was too young to really go out at that time). Also watched Guidry’s game and Jackson’s smashes, but I missed Chambliss’ HR. Can’t catch every game. 
In some of the more infamous incidents, I attended the Oriole/Yankee brawl when Strawberry dove into the Oriole dugout. My wife’s company has season tickets 6 rows behind the ‘W’ on the visitor dugout, and we had the tickets that night. We saw Straw charge, leap, and disappear, not knowing what was going on under us. I also watched when Martin told Reggie to bunt and that whole debacle. There are more, but I can’t recount them all at work.
The joys of baseball.
lieu, I agree that the lack of a revenue cap does give big spending teams an advantage during the regular season. The depth a large salary can give you helps over the 162 game grind. Come the post-season, though, the payroll is little advantage. You can buy pennants, but not championships.
Which is little consolation to generations of Boston fans.
Of course, the Choke made up for it, a bit.
I agree it’s no guarantee of a championship. That formula’s too complex to be solved by abundant coin alone. But given your druthers would you rather field the players that $194.6 Million bought or those purchased for 15M? The Yankees were $72 Million above their nearest rival last year and over 2 1/2 times above the median (Baltimore, 72.5M). That’s one heck of a discrepancy.
D_Odds, I’m only a fan of the game and not a student. Where does the advantage dissappear to in post season play? How does high priced talent suddenly become a non-issue come the playoffs?
Well the proof is in the pudding. When the Yanks were only among the top 5, they won 4 out of 5. The team was well constructed as well as near the top in salary. Since they went on the Roto-League spending Spree and left everyone behind, the have won the Division every year but have no Championships in that same 5 year period. I am not sure about the 2001 budget and I am leaving it out.
Baseball dynasties require careful building, luck and it sure helps to have the money. However, the money guarantees nothing. In the nineties, Dodgers, Atlanta, Baltimore, Red Sox and the Mets all spent comparable amount to the Yanks. A different team had the highest payroll from year to year. The Yanks had 4 World Series wins and the Braves one. The other 3 added up to none.
Jim
Even talent gets hurt, or needs a day off now and then. Money means you can buy talent and depth at every position. This makes a difference over the length of a season. In a playoff series…not so much. On any given day, and all that.
In addition to the competitive imbalance lieu discussed, the Yankees overpay the players, which artificially inflates the free agent market, thus pricing otherwise attainable free agents who the Yankees don’t even want out of the reach of smaller market clubs. It’s not just the Yankees who do that, though.
Someone mentioned football’s parity. There is still debate over the merits of that; some people decry the cap era as watered-down mediocre teams while waxing nostalgic for the days of dynasties. (The Patriots helped to quell that talk, but it still persists.)
One of the primary reasons that the NFL has a salary cap is because Wellington Mara agreed to it. He recognized that without the Green Bays of the world, his New York Giants wouldn’t have anyone to play against. So he agreed to the salary cap, effectively signing away loads of extra profit he could have made and championships he could have won. George Steinbrenner is no Wellington Mara. Plus baseball is not football; you can turn a profit with 10,000 attendees at your baseball games because there’s so many of them. With football you pretty much have to sell out your stadium every game. (Which most of them do, thanks in large part to parity.)
No matter what your sport is, if you don’t enforce economic parity, whatever team(s) are local to New York City will have a nigh-insurmountable advantage over everyone else. The NYC market is just too damn big.
To quote Marv Levy:
Depth is great, until you have to use it.
So please explain where all the Championships for the Rangers, Knicks and Mets are? These are NY teams like the Yankees. They all over spend. The Knicks and Rangers as badly as the Yanks. No results that I have seen. Your argument sounds very logical but has a big hole in it. Actual results.
Yes the Yankees overspend, but other teams have and do overspend without results. When the Yankees went completely nuts, they have failed to take home the Championship. I do not think the NYC really do have the “nigh-insurmountable advantage over everyone else” that you believe they do.
Jim
Only being in the top 5 in spending somehow disqualifies them as having enjoyed a financial advantage over the league as a whole? I can see 4 other teams that’ll agree with that assessment and 25 that’ll say “Huh?”
While the Yanks are the current Midas progeny, no matter which teams it is that have the biggest purse, they’re in an enviable position. Until all are afforded the same potential pool of players, the field is tilted. Yes, some will overcome the advantage through luck or remaining healthy or getting hot at the right time but you’d be hard pressed to call having the most money to spend, sometimes by several multiples, anything other than an advantage.