Yankees Envy a New North Side Passion

By: Chicago Sports Review

They’re easy to hate, but often easier to envy.The Yankees and Alex Rodriguez deserve each other. Each is rich and needy, but maintain one significant difference. The Yanks display remarkable loyalty to fans, and a good product. A-Rod has showed a sincere sense of selfish ambition and disloyalty to those who’ve cheered for him. Now that’s over, pleasing Steinbrenner is his only job now.

A match made in dollar heaven and parity hell? Even moderate sports fans could offer up the likely suspects without much of a hint.

The magnitude of this trade is obvious on the field, with the Yankees now sporting a batting order with incredible balance and power. The financial magnitude is staggering, with the team payroll in the range of 200 million dollars a season. With a 25-man roster, the average salary for a Yankee is inching close to 10 million dollars a season. Last year, Tampa Bay played the season with a payroll not exceeding 20 million dollars. Parity?

It’s amazing too, because this was a reactionary deal by the Yankees. A-Rod is essentially filling a hole. Only one team in the world can afford a 200 million dollar plug for a whole that had barely taken on water.

We use plumbers putty to plug a small leak, the Yankees use concrete fashioned out of ground diamonds. Complain at our cheap methods too, because the reality is constant.

Financial disparity has always been present in baseball. If you haven’t come to terms with this, you may still be smarting over the sinking of the Lusitania. The Yankees, however, have created this disparity Smith Barney style: through investment. They earned it.

At its core, the difference is less monetary and more philosophical.

The ultimate distinction between the Yankees and every other organization is the initial willingness, and now the clear capacity, to make poor judgments in the front office, throw millions of dollars away, and simply move on without the financial consequences any other team would deal with painfully.

Even their Band-Aids are gold coated and diamond studded. So too, we are often reminded, are their 26 World Series rings.

In baseball, and pro sports in general, bad investments can haunt (the rest of us) for years. Griffey Jr. in Cincinnati, A-Rod in Texas, the list goes on. And depressing as it may be that a team like the Cubs, drowning in profits, do not operate with a market vigor that the Yankees do, the magnitude of the Yankees deals make even free-spenders look like, well, the Cubs.

The greatest distinction between the Yankees and other teams is their lack of willingness to buy into the mantra that a bad investment will have a damaging effect, and could curb future free-spending. The Bombers have made bad moves, or ones that simply turned out poorly, surely more than most teams. But this is because they make big moves in the first place. If a move doesn’t work, (Aaron Boone), they find a viable, and often expensive solution. (Alex Rodriguez)

Face it, the Yankees are America. They’re rich and they spend. They butt their heads in, but they demand, and get, results. And they take financial risks, and reap astonishing financial wealth. The result? Power, success, loyalty from fans, and envy and alienation by others who seek baseball’s thrown.

Oh my God, does that make the Cubs, like, (gulp) the French? Well, we do shower after games.

The sad thing is comparing the Cubs to the Yanks is not like comparing Nigeria to the U.S. In the Cubs case, the money exists, the willingness to go to that next level does not.

Other GM’s work under tight payrolls and some have had marginal success. Most teams treat the bottom line like the ultimate gauge of fortune. The Yankees treat the standings in this manner, and have become the highest valued team in pro sports because of it. Remember, this near billion-dollar franchise was purchased by George Steinbrenner for 10 million dollars not even thirty years ago.

Inflation aside, the growth numbers still remain staggering. So too, do the amount of World Series the Yanks find themselves in. Cubs fans know this all too well.

Does the Tribune?

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