things that anger me

I get so tired of hearing people bitch about the Yankees and their payroll and how they are everything that's wrong with sports (not to mention America, dammit!) and how they just prove that baseball needs a salary cap just like the NFL and the NBA because those leagues have parity and in MLB the Damned Yankees can just buy championship after championship.


Now, don't get me wrong...I don't like the Yankees.  I don't like the Yankees because of the over-praising of their players (especially Cap'n Jetes) and the disproportionate amount of coverage they receive in purportedly national media outlets (yer damn right I'm talking about ESPN) and because of their legions of fakey bullshit frontrunner fanboys (now I'm looking at you, LeBron) and because their existence means I have to listen to Tim McCarver talk.  But I have a major problem with people making the Yankees into the Ultimate Financial Evil.  


Joe Posnanski, formerly of the KC Star, a guy whose writing I generally enjoy quite a bit, wrote this article (which he himself describes as a "screed") for SI.  Now, having spent the bulk of my morning reading the article itself, not to mention the 235-and-counting comments on the blog, I've worked up a good froth over the whole subject.  I know, I know...who cares, right?  But apparently I was up for a little indignation.  


The bulk of the arguments on this topic made by Joe et. al. seem to break down into a couple of main categories:


1. Baseball needs a salary cap so they can have parity just like other sports.
2. The Yankees have an unfair advantage over all other teams.
3. It is impossible, under the current rules, for any other team to be truly competitive so long as the Yankees are allowed to continue operating this way.
4. Shut up and stop whining (Yankee fans only).


Now, I'm no economist, but here's how I see these issues:


1. Baseball needs a salary cap so they can have parity just like other sports.
     
     Let's go to the dictionary.  Parity is defined as "the quality or state of being equal or equivalent."  In the context of sports, this means that all teams start on an equal footing, and everyone has a chance to win.  So from this, we should infer that, logically, those salary-capped sports should have more winners, right?  And since there can only be one winner each season (except in college football!), we're talking about champions.  So let's look at that.  In the three major professional sports, here are the numbers of champions over the past 10, 20, and 30 years:


MLB: 8/14/19
NFL: 7/12/14
NBA: 5/ 7/ 8


Qua?  So MLB, with all of its non-parity, leads every time period on that list.  More than the vaunted NFL, and around double the numbers of the capped NBA.  The cap-creates-parity argument just doesn't hold water.


2. The Yankees have an unfair advantage over all other teams.


     This argument generally leans on New York being the largest media market EVER and, therefore, having the most available fans.  I guess I can't really argue with that...it's a fact.  They have the most people in their city.  Whether that's fair or not...I don't know.  It just sort of is, right?


3. It is impossible, under the current rules, for any other team to be truly competitive so long as the Yankees are allowed to continue operating this way.


    Now this is where I start to go a little nuts.  People at all levels, from the casual fan all the way up to the owners themselves, like to trot out this complaint all the time.  "We're in a small market...we can't compete with the big boys."  I really think this is just flat-out bullshit.  Let's start from the top:

• Every team in MLB is owned by an obscenely wealthy person or persons.  At least 8, and probably 10 principal owners, are billionaires.  Among the 400 richest people in the country.  The wealthiest of the wealthy.  The others are all fantastically wealthy beyond all but the tiniest percentage of Americans' wildest dreams.  Let's use the team who seems to be most frequently cited as a poor small market team as an example.  Many, many commenters want to complain about how the Twins can't compete with the "big boys."  In fact, they were in such dire straits at one point that they were considered for contraction by MLB.  That mean ol' man, the Commish, wanted to tear Minnesota's heart 'n' soul right away (never mind that in that instance, the team's own owner offered to be contracted).  They had some fairly remarkable success based on some good decisions and a lot of luck, but were never able to get over the hump...because of money, of course.  Because their small-market status meant they just didn't have the funds to truly compete.
• However...the year before he died (2008), Twins owner Carl Pohlad was ranked by Forbes as the 102nd richest person in America with a net worth of THREE-POINT-SIX BILLION DOLLARS.  In 2002, the year he offered to contract his team, he was ranked 87th with $2 billion!  And yet he cried poor and cried poor about how the poor little Twins just couldn't compete and they couldn't possibly add payroll and even got himself (well, his heirs) a free stadium.  I mean, I guess you don't become a billionaire by being frivolous with your dough, but that's absolutely ridiculous.
• People (writers and fans mostly) like to vilify Steinbrenner as The Great Evil.  Sure, he's a pompous ass and an overbearing jerk and a convicted (but later pardoned!) felon.  But he dedicated himself to building the Yankees into a juggernaut.  He bought the team for $10 million...and they are currently valued at more than 100 times that amount.  I'm pretty sure most fans would kill to have so dedicated an owner.
• The Yankees get a huge revenue boost from their local tv contract, which is significantly more than the revenue other teams receive locally.  But Steinbrenner and the Yankees made that happen for themselves by starting their own network.  I don't understand why this is worthy of scorn; it seems like a pretty fucking brilliant business strategy, if you ask me.  In fact, there's one other MLB team which owns its own network...the Red Sox!  Two massive, well-marketed teams who have developed a nationwide following.  Sounds like good business.  And any well-run team could employ this strategy.  The poor, put-upon Twins made an extreeeeeeeeeemely half-assed attempt to start their own network in 2004, but it folded after a few months.  But can you imagine if they had put the money in to do it right?  They could have sold that channel to cable subscribers in 6 states!  They could have built a following of millions!  But they cheaped out, fought over the price with suppliers, and gave up.

4. Shut up and stop whining (Yankees fans only).

     You shut up!  Just kidding.  But Yankees fans are jerks.  Not all of them.  The posers, though.  They're jerks.

So here's the thing.  Yeah, the Yankees have the most money.  But they've also made good decisions (and, admittedly, the bad decisions can be mitigated by more money).  I don't understand why the average American sports fan is always willing to leap to the defense of the billionaire or almost-billionaire who owns their team.  

Is it the same reason that poor people want to repeal the estate tax (you know, because of the American Dream Syndrome that causes everyone to think that, at any time, they could suddenly be a billionaire theirownselves and boy, they sure wouldn't want the estate tax then!)?  

Is that why the majority of the public inevitably sides with management over players in a sports strike or lockout?  Because people think they could become billionaires (and then buy a team!), but there's no way they could become a professional athlete?  I always thought it was rooted in racism, that white sports fans would always side with white billionaires over black millionaires, but maybe it's more about the power of possibility.

That's a bit of a ramble, but I think my point is this: don't be pissed at the Yankees for spending (and winning!).  Be pissed at the owner of your favorite team for hoarding his own billions and keeping his own team on the outside looking in.