Don’t worry, no surprise, I have always been a Yankee fan and thus always had to acknowledge the hatred.
Personally, I think football got more boring when the salary cap went in. I enjoyed the universal hatred of Dallas as a Giants fan.
It is a weird dynamic, though. I have a friend who lived in Tampa for a few years, and during last year’s playoffs I was able to talk to him about Rays vs, Sox pleasantly, in great detail with literally no hostility. He had a great bunch of players, his team’s story was a feel-good story, I wished him well, he wished me well, etc.
But when Wang went on the DL last year, we were both pumping fists in the air, going “Yes!” And Posada going down was a high-water mark for both of us.
And yet I can talk baseball in Fenway during a Yankees-Redsox game with no problem. We usually seemed to be able to talk baseball with no problem. Right now the Yanks went out on a shopping spree and it gives all the haters a chances to gnash their teeth and bitch about the Yanks. So sit back and enjoy it.
Besides how can anyone have a hatred for the Rays?
Is it weird? It’s just resentment, even though the resentment has outlasted the factors that brought it into existence.
The Yankees are not in the same place as the Mets or Red Sox. Those teams spend a lot, but they’re not comparable to the Yankees; their payrolls are at the end of a curve, and are in and amongst other high payrolls like the Tigers. White Sox, Cubs et al. The Red Sox spend a lot, but they’re not out of line with the league. The Yankees are off the curve, and are now at the point - and might be the first team ever - where they can spend their way to a winning record without regard for the wisdom of their decision making. Everyone talks about how they had a bad 2008, but they were 89-73; if that’s the worst year a team has, they’re essentially never out of contention.
If there was a salary cap at $150 million - it doesn’t have to be ridiculously low - the Yankees organization would, by necessity, be completely different. Look at last year’s team as of April 1 and subtract $57 million (and no fair pretending you know who’ll get injured.) Would they go 89-73? Could they have retooled for 2009 without just buying up players? Or would they have to do it the old-fashioned way, with a good farm system and savvy trading? They could spend the other $57 million on scouts, medical staff, development, marketing; I’m not even talking about profit sharing, so they can keep that money, just not use it to buy Sabathia and Teixiera.
Find, so let baseball plan to phase in a cap over the next 4 years so the Yanks have a chance to prepare for the new rules. While we’re at it lets drop this silliness of a luxury tax by that point. Make Pittsburgh and other owners earn their profits by trying to compete. (Actually I think $150 million will be under the luxury tax limit in 4 years.) I’m sure the Yankees owners won’t mind pocketing the extra money.
I still think what some of the cheap smaller market teams do are worse for baseball than anything the Yanks have done.
This pretty much sums up my feelings on the issue.
The whole exercise has just become so demoralizing, with superstar after superstar heading for the Bronx. It’s so predictable and depressing that i can’t even get any fun out of hating the Yankees. I couldn’t even take any real pleasure at them missing the playoffs this year, because i knew it was partly due to injuries, and that they would simply pull out an even bigger checkbook at the end of the season. My feelings towards them now are more akin to a sigh of resignation, and a determination to change the channel whenever they appear on the television.
Yes, i get angry at owners of small-market teams who are happy to make profits without doing anything to make their teams competitive. And i would like to see the rules changed so that these teams don’t get rewarded financially for being crap. But the spending spree in New York this off-season has just put the cherry on top of my disillusionment.
All i can hope for, now that the Yankees’ appearance in the postseason is basically guaranteed, is that the element of uncertainty and luck that is so often a part of 5- and 7-game series prevents them from winning the whole thing.
I can’t think of another year when the Yankees took the biggest prizes like this, but if they’re successful in 2009 and after, it’ll be a reward for spending their money better than they did in previous years - and that goes for next year’s expiring contracts as well - along with some improved player development. In addition to Chamberlain, I haven’t given up on Cano, Cabrera or Kennedy, and I hope the team gives them time to rebound and develop, respectively.
What would that be?
I mean, are you saying the Pirates are TRYING to lose? There’s no evidence of that - they’ve been trying to rebuild the team for 15 years, just incompetently. There’s no doubt that some teams will be stupidly run, and in any event, in 15 years just by sheer chance you’re going to have one or two teams who just suck because too many things went wrong for them. But all that is fine; teams that are stupidly run deserve to lose and sooner or later they fire the stupid management and perhaps get smarter bosses. Bad breaks even out over time. But a system whereby the Yankees can simply buy up all the players to this ludicrous a degree presents a systematic advantage that can’t be made up for.
What’s the solution to this? Hard to say, but I’d start by thinking outside the box and suggesting New York needs one or more new ball teams.
Not to answer for him, but I think it’s awful when teams dump salaries and ship off good young players because they don’t want to pay them. The Marlins clearly have developed some outstanding talent over the last decade, but watching them tear World Series teams down practically overnight is depressing even as a non-fan. Last year I thought I heard their payroll was so low they turned a profit from revenue sharing alone.
Marley23, I think you answered for me quite well actually. My only point was some teams just pocket the profit sharing and luxury tax money instead of even trying to field a competitive team.
It is still a team game to some degree. Sometimes they get a lot of clubhouse troubles that sabotages a teams progress. The Yanks have bought big time teams before and failed. I am not ready to declare them the champs.
Then the playoffs are a bit of a crap shoot. You can not buy good breaks and luck.
You are right about the playoffs, and i alluded to this in my previous post. But for that reason, the really tangible measure of a team’s success is making the playoffs. That’s the goal that management has considerable control over when they put a team together, and the measure by which a club’s long-term success should really be evaluated. Sure, fans want the whole enchilada, but the fact is that you can only even compete for it if you’re in the playoffs.
Over 162 games, a team of very good players will generally rise to the top. Sure, once October comes around all it takes it a bit of luck, or a couple of amazingly good or amazingly bad performances, to determine the outcome of a series. Even Billy Beane has said “My shit doesn’t work in the playoffs.”
But i can almost guarantee you that, barring long-term injuries to important players, the Yankees make the playoffs in 2009. I’ll eat my proverbial hat if they don’t. You can make all the appeals you like to “clubhouse troubles” and the need for team chemistry, but i’m not buying it. Hell, even in their first year out of the playoffs in a decade, a year apparently considered something of a failure by their fans and management, they *still *managed to win 89 games.
Your proverbial hat won’t do, mhendo. We want you to eat an actual hat, preferably a standard MLB Yankee cap, whose brim is particularly tough eating, or else shurrup about “eating one’s hat.”
This is a hijack, but I really hate callers on sports talk-radio shows who “guarantee” this or that, like we’re supposed to be impressed that some anonymous bozo has guaranteed something. What does that mean, even? We can track him down somehow and get what back now that his guarantee is in effect? When a player does it (and far fewer have in recent years) at least he’s humiliating himself if he doesn’t come through, and he’s providing bulletin-board material to his upcoming opponent in any event.
Anyway, I’m going to be rooting hard for the Yankees to lose games, suffer injuries, and maybe if we get really lucky to Munson or Lidle a player or two, which always makes for a cool story. Did I mention that I hate those fucks? And if I get really lucky, see another big year for Yankee injuries (nothing would be sweeter than to see Captain Intangibles blow out both knees on Opening Day, that over-rated, lionized blowhard) and see them piss away another fortune while insisting all season long that “the Yankees will play better than this, it’s just a glitch,” like they did all last season. BWAHAHAHA! The arrogant assholes.
Well, in my case what it means is that i’m using the more colloquial sense of the word “guarantee,” which generally seems to mean something like “I think this is extremely likely to occur, and will be incredibly surprised if it does not.” That’s the sense i want people to take away from my prediction that the Yankees will make the playoffs in the 2009 MLB season.
Next time, perhaps i’ll “warrant” it. Would a warranty make you more or less annoyed than a guarantee?
I hate the Yankees as much as anyone, but wishing death upon them is significantly out of line.
I also don’t think the Yankees are prohibitive favorite. Boston will bring nearly the entire cast and Tampa has more players likely to get better than get worst. The Yankees have guaranteed themselves a shot at contention, but 90+ wins still could mean third place.
Obviously not.
Man, I know you really dislike Christmas and all, but this seems really over-the-top even for you. Besides while he might be over-rated and he is clearly lionized, I don’t think even can fairly claim that Jeter is a blowhard. He is far from a braggart, boastful or even talkative person.
Well, my less provocative version of the above post (I’ve had dinner since then, and am less worked up now) is that a few aeronautical mishaps would level the playing field (and maybe an apartment building or two). If the Yankees, thanks to a beneficent God, were to have oh, say, 50 million or even 100 million dollars’ worth of talent eliminated (and I don’t really care whether it’s eliminated via plane crash or inexplicably lousy play, though the former makes for better tabloid coverage) , I’d say some semblence of order had been returned to the AL East.
Truly, I’d prefer to just root for my team to win the division, but mostly what I do is root for anyone except the Yankees to win, and by any means necessary, just in the interests of fair play. And it’s not just that the Yankees outspend the other teams, it’s the obscenity of the margin by which the Yankees payroll is bloated beyond any other team’s wildest dreams. It’s actually unpleasant to harbor such resentment against a baseball team, and I’d like to dial it back, but this isn’t baseball to me. Sure, sometimes we get lucky and the Yankees totally suck hairy moosecock, like last year, and didn’t I love that, but mainly it’s knowing and dreading that they’ll make the playoffs easily and then just hoping they run into a hot team that gets a few well-pitched playoff games. That isn’t very much fun at all.
And from my reading of Jeter’s mind, I can safely say he’s far more full of himself than he lets on, Jim. If you only knew what he’s secretly thinking, you’d hate him, too.
When I was a kid, there used to be a board game called “Challenge the Yankees,” where one side would be the Mantle-Maris-Ford era Yankees and the other side (I think) would be an All-Star team composed of other MLB teams. The implicit idea was that if all the other teams combined their rosters, they could (maybe) compete with the Yankees of the early 1960s. Now it’s gotten to the point that that’s literally so.
Let’s suppose that the NBA had decided that this inequity would be desirable, and so allowed one team to be formed that was an NBA All-Star team, and every other team (minus its best player or two) would compete with them for a championship. The season would end with this team’s record at about 76-6, and the excitement, apart from games not involving this All_Star team, would come when your team was with 10 points in the fourth uarter, and you;d be rooting madly for them to get very hot and swipe one of the magical handful of games that the All_star team would lose to an ordinary NBA team. In the playoffs, the goal would be to make the finals and earn the right to get your asses kicked by the All-Star team. In your wildest dreams, you’d think that maybe you could even win a game in the finals. When you’d lose the finals 4 games to 1, your city and your team would celebrate with champagne and tickertape.
This absurd scenario would still, in some senses, be worth following to some fans, though many would complain about the inequity of such a pre-ordained system. While not quite so absurd, this is what following the AL East has become, and I would really rather have a strict cap on salaries to prevent this system, in which all I can do is impotently hate the Yankees’ guts, from prevailing.