TWO LOSERS

Ten years ago they were bigtime winners and looked the part. Ted Turner was the embodiment of a swinging, swaggering billionaire with ideas springing from his brain like coins falling from the pockets of a pair of pants hung upside-down. His all news channel, CNN, was prospering and when he made a speech, everyone leaned forward and listened intently.

And ten years ago, George Steinbrenner beamed as the Joe Torre era began, and the Yankees, no longer the Bronx Zoo curated by Billy Martin, started to run the table of playoffs and World Series. The Boss had a sign put up in his office: Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way. And when he spoke, everyone trembled.

Nowadays, Ted Turner makes a speech equating Israel’s self defense and Palestinian suicide bombers (“That’s all they have”) and yawns punctuate his bombinations. Last week he spoke of the American flag. In his opinion Old Glory should not be in the background when the news is being broadcast. Translation: Strict neutrality should be observed; the North Korean flag shouldn’t be there either.

Especially at Fox News, which regularly cleans CNN’s clock. No wonder its staffers are delighted every time Turner finds room in his mouth for a boot or two. The reasons for Fox’s success are quite clear: they are not insipid, their anchors are not full of self-important pieties, and their founder does not make a fool of himself at every inopportunity.

As for Steinbrenner, he might as well wear a garment reading “I Spent $213 Million And All I Got Was This Lousy Tee Shirt.”

According to The Boss, even though his NY Yankees won 96 games in the regular season, they were beaten in the post season by the Detroit Tigers and therefore constituted “a sad failure”in his eyes.

The best team loot could buy bombed bigtime for reasons that are quite clear. Merely purchasing the contract of a player, demanding that he shave his beard (Johnny Damon), or that he play a position that is not the one he was trained for (Alex Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield) or that he miraculously return to his youthful self (Mike Messina, Randy Johnson) is not the key to victory.

So these two bigtime losers, Turner and Steinbrenner are not entirely without their merits. In these days of depressing headlines and political smears, laughing matter is hard to find.

This is a pretty silly article, at least in terms of lumping Steinbrenner and Turner together. It's kind of hard to point to the Yankees' string of success over the last 11 years as a "failure." Most U.S. sports franchises would love to be in a position where a first-round playoff exit is considered a "failure."

It's also worth noting that the relationship between payroll and playoff performance is often misunderstood. The benchmark for the Yankees' "success" this year -- as far as their $200+ million payroll is concerned -- is not the team's ability to win a World Series, but their ability to draw 4 million fans during the regular season. This is important because for baseball teams -- as Yankee fans have discovered in recent years -- the formula for drawing 4 million fans is not the same as the formula for winning a championship.

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_101006/content/rush_on_a_roll.member.html

RUSH: It's now official. The New York Yankees will not fire Joe Torre. Joe Torre will come back for the final year of his contract to manage the New York Yankees at $7 million a year. You know, the Yankees kind of remind me of the Democrats -- and the media that cover the Yankees remind me of the Drive-By Media that cover the Democrats, in this sense. Every season the template, the prism through which Yankee baseball is covered is: "They gonna win it all. They gonna go to the World Series. They got the best talent money can buy. They've got the most expensive payroll. They've got the biggest stars -- and it's only a matter of getting to October. It's a fait accompli."

Now, the fawning Yankee sports media will really dump on them during the season if they lose here or there, and they'll dump on individual players, but the whole city of New York -- I know this. I have lived there eight years. There is this expectation that the world is not right if the Yankees don't win and that the season is irrelevant and may as well not even be played if the Yankees don't win, and it's sort of like the Drive-By Media covering the Democrats today. "They're going to win the House and Senate every year and every four years they're going to win the White House, and if they don't, there's something wrong with the world order, something just out of whack. Why, they've got the best talent! Why, they've got the best people. They've got the Ted Kennedys and the Chuck Schumers and the Nancy Pelosis and the Harry Reids! What is wrong? Somebody is stealing these elections from them! Somebody is out there screwing with the Democrats."

Now, the sports media in New York doesn't go that far when the Yankees lose. They blame the Yankees. They blame a few players on the Yankees, whereas the Drive-By Media will never, ever blame a Democrat for doing anything wrong. But in terms of the sports media bubble in New York, if the Yankees don't win... It's not this way for any other team there, by the way. It's not this way for the Mets. It's not this way for the Giants. As a matter of fact it's just the opposite for the Jets. The football season is not normal unless the Jets finish in the cellar -- and when the Jets start doing well, there's something wrong. Of course, the New York Islanders, that's the toughest cover in sports, in terms of media. They're out there on Long Island. But the Rangers haven't done much lately since they last won the Stanley Cup (1994). The Giants, there is no expectation that the Giants have to win the Super Bowl or the football season is meaningless, but when it comes to the Yankees in baseball, it's just like the Drive-By Media covering the Democratic Party nationally. So, essentially, the New York Yankees have rehired Howard Dean for next season. (Laughing.)

I'm just kidding. I love Joe Torre. I'm just trying to make an illustration. Torre is a class guy.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.