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Missing the point, again, about the Yankees winning another World Series.
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CC Sabathia reacts to latest column whining about Yankees buying WS title.
Three of the most hysterical, knee-slapping, laugh out loud moments of mirth witnessed recently.
1. WAC Commissioner Karl Benson’s statement about the Boise State Broncos: “They certainly have established themselves as a credible, legitimate, bona fide top 10 team.”
• No offense to the coaches, players, fans and the guy who dipped too deep into the mushrooms just before suggesting a blue playing surface, but the day a college football team makes a run at the National Title playing such powerhouses as Hawaii, Bowling Green and Tulsa is the day Megan Fox announces her intention to join a convent.
2. Actress Sarah Jessica Parker on life with her two surrogate-born daughters around the house: “I love the smell of diapers; I even like when they’re wet and you smell them all warm like a baked good.”
• A hand up now from the parents of every newborn who wakes in the morning, takes a deep breath and immediately thinks, “Mmmmm, croissants!”
3. Sports reporters, writers, commentators, hangers-ons, haters, whiners, weasels, wheezers and geezers falling over themselves to be first in resurrecting the age-old standby about buying a title when a certain team wins the World Series.
• It’s one of those stories always hanging around in the folder marked “Pre-Vacation”. Others waiting to be used when inspiration is lacking include “Pete Rose & The Hall of Fame”, “NFL & Guns: The Case of (Insert Player Name Here)”, and “Best & Worst Sports Movies of All Time”.
And there they were, the very next morning after the Yankees proved they were the best team in baseball by defeating the, as I heard one breathless reporter call them, “the gritty, earthy and tenacious Philadelphia Phillies”.
Hmm. Must have missed one of those story titles in the back of the folder. But I digress.
Yes, the NY Yankees did indeed buy their World Series Championship. They used their considerable fiscal clout to outspend, out hustle, and out promote themselves to every star player they could find as the one team that could win it all. If the Yankees weren’t a baseball franchise, they would be a group of businessmen determined to spend insane amounts of cash in a drunken spree designed to win the fight. And of course prove to detractors and foul enemies that they don’t need no stinking permission to keep writing checks paid for by the working class man and woman.
For some reason I have this urge to book a trip to visit Washington D.C. Oh well, I digress once again.
To slam the Yankees for buying a World Series title is comparable to chastising lions in the wild. Those feasting on anything too slow, too cumbersome and lacking in intelligence. The easy prey that fails to learn how to mix intelligence with a better use of their surroundings to either not be devoured whole or, when possible, use what is at hand in the wild to turn the hunter into the hunted.
Let’s put this into baseball parlance.
Certainly the Yankees have more money than several Third World nations. By the time you read this, the American economy may have taken just enough of a hit to allow certain States permission in seeking subsidies from the Steinbrenner family.
But all they are doing is what the game allows them to do. And they do it better than anyone else.
Instead of these predictable gas bag comments about buying a World Series, isn’t it long past time for these picky pundits to task those teams that are much more objectionable to the game? Those who take the money and run to the nearest Cayman Islands bank account instead of at the very least trying to mount a decent cover-up?
Every team in Major League Baseball receives revenue sharing cash from their fat cat brethren. Every team also receives a hefty chunk of broadcast television revenue. There’s a boatload of green heading each owners way in the form of memorabilia and souvenir sales. Let’s not forget local broadcast revenue, local advertising and sponsor sales, promotional considerations, Government kickbacks (allegedly, of course, as the lawyers would want it couched to avoid the inevitable summons), and oh yes, let us not forget the least amount of money they receive, that in often gouging fans for those higher end tickets.
And I didn’t even cover the stadiums many of them are handed by bamboozled lawmakers who allow themselves to be robbed by relocation gunpoint. With your tax dollars, lest we forget.
Where is the righteous outcry from these (quite often jealous or playing to the crowd that loses to the Yankees) commentators and fans about the masterful competitive fraud of the Kansas City Royals? The arrogance of the Florida Marlins, who ever with a brand new stadium being built with someone else’s cash refuses to upgrade the team until the stadium is open for business? The brilliant destruction of the Baltimore Orioles by Peter (“Is that check for me?”) Angelos? The brutal back of the hand given every single season by the Pittsburgh Pirates? Or the complete and utter embarrassment that is the Washington Nationals, who could even give greed and hoarding money a new reputation in and around D.C.?
I am not a Yankees devotee. Simply one who tires every single season of the same old drivel and sucking up to every single fan that hates, despises, loathes or just plain doesn’t like the Yankees.
Real winners don’t need a teething ring every time they lose. Real winners and honest ownership decides to do something about it.
Be smart. Be creative. Be aggressive.
And stop being greedy robber barons that thrive on the blood and guts of true fans.
As for stories about the Yankees buying another World Series title, how about some originality cheese with that whine?
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