Posted on 09/28/2011 9:38:31 PM PDT by SMCC1
Drama all around.
Hey! How ‘bout a little love for the long-suffering Brewers?
“And if you apply your , the Yankees are doing nothing wrong.”
###
What specifically are my “own business rules and sense of competition”?
Yes, technically the Yankees are doing nothing wrong, they are just leveraging their huge market size into a vastly asymmetrical and unfair payroll asymmetry, because MLB ALLOWS them to.
MLB does not provide a level STARTING playing field for its franchises yet somehow continues to get away with it.
The Yankees are undeniably a special franchise and their owners should reap the fiscal benefits of that fact. THAT is capitalism.
HOWEVER, in the spirit of fair play and for the good of MLB, they should NOT be allowed to bring that UNFAIR fiscal advantage onto the field.
“And if you apply your , the Yankees are doing nothing wrong.”
###
What specifically are my “own business rules and sense of competition”?
Yes, technically the Yankees are doing nothing wrong, they are just leveraging their huge market size into a vastly asymmetrical and unfair payroll asymmetry, because MLB ALLOWS them to.
MLB does not provide a level STARTING playing field for its franchises yet somehow continues to get away with it.
The Yankees are undeniably a special franchise and their owners should reap the fiscal benefits of that fact. THAT is capitalism.
HOWEVER, in the spirit of fair play and for the good of MLB, they should NOT be allowed to bring that UNFAIR fiscal advantage onto the field.
But they have to split that market size with the Mets.
Well, that aside, are you also good with the huge payroll advantage that teams like the Yankees are allowed to bring to the table?
No one is begrudging the Yankees their capitalistic success in their own market vis a vis the Metropolitans, it is the distortion of the fundamental concept of an initial level playing field for all teams.
You do realize that when the Yankees were winning World Series regularly in the late 90s/early 2000s, they were doing it with mostly home grown players....they have usually failed when trying to buy their championships.
It takes talent to blow a 10 1/2 game wild card lead in a month.
Funny, even in say in 1996 for example, they still enjoyed a payroll asymmetry which gave them nearly double the payroll of 50% of the other teams in baseball.
http://www.baseballchronology.com/Baseball/Years/1996/Payroll.asp
Regardless of which type of players ultimately allegedly contributed the most to their wins in that era, is it right that they are allowed such an advantage?
Further, speaking of homegrown talent. Teams like the Yankees, in addition to being able to simply spend through any player acquisition mistakes they make (an inefficiency most teams do not enjoy), the Yanks do not have to worry about losing superior players who merit a pay increase. Say a team wanted to snatch a young Mariano Rivera away from the Yanks. Easy, outbid them. That doesn’t even happen, because the vast majority of teams can’t even come close to going toe-to toe with the fiscal firewpower the Yankeees are allowed to use, so they don’t even try.
From a strictly competitive baseball standpoint, do you think the Padres really wanted to let the ascending A. Gonzalez go to the Red Sox?
Here in St. Louis, whenver we have a top quality player approaching free agency we have to look over our shoulder at whether this particular player is a need for the Yankees or Red Sox. Albert Pujols being the current case in point.
Of course Red Sox fans (even me), perhaps like fans in other cities, change their speech patterns depending on the outcome.
“We won!” OR
—
“Did the Sox win?”
“No, THEY lost...”
Even looking at the schedule and saying the last 7 of 10 games were against “worst team in baseball”, I knew it wasn’t a given. The Sox seemed to wake up a bit at the end
but a team with its backs against the wall—Tampa Bay—
showed “you gotta have heart” and ultimately won. Even
if in some ways they were playing vs. Scranton-Wilkes-Barre.
Maddon is a real character and there seems to be youth—
and desire—on the Rays.
I got over it...and I have seen spoiler situations before.
Sometimes the Red Sox have played spoilers themselves.
Same with Pats indeed, as many had predicted a 19 win
season when all is said and done, and everyone’s on the bandwagon from the diehard fans to the gossip gals at the Boston Herald who obsess over Brady’s hairdo and how cute his toddler son is.
Rick Pitino on sports talk radio (locally): “the fellowship of the miserable”. Right now Boston has 2 FM sports talk
stations (93.7 and 98.5) and in this case FM means Fellowship (of the) Miserable...
Rookie Vance Worley picked up a lot of the slack left by Roy Oswalt’s injury-plagued year. Looks like Charlie Manuel is going to use Oswalt as the 4th starter in the playoffs. His velocity is coming around. Worley earned the spot, but Oswalt has a record as a money pitcher in the playoffs. Tough call, but Charlie knows pitching.
That “Greatest Team Ever” thing went right out of the window the first series of the year, when the Rangers used their pitchers for batting practice.
Tell me about it...I used to attend games at D.C. Stadium to watch Frank Howard and the gang when I was a kid. Win a World Series? Still waiting... :-)
The Twins? The Mariners?
And now, my co-worker can focus all his passion on his "greatest football team ever"!
The one the Bills hung out to dry last weekend? ROTFLMAO!!
45 ESPN "experts" picked the Red Sox to get to the World Series this year. What happened, 'experts'? Now the political experts are picking Milt Romney to win it all in 2012. Uh, oh...
MLB: How the Night Was Won (Interesting timeline by ESPN)
I am still breathless over the results of the AL and NL Wild Card races last night... Incredible night!
Yes ... though in terms of playoffs:
I do remember some playoff series that had games at the same time ending around the same time and you’d flip back and forth between ESPN and ESPN 2 as both crucial games
finished up...
I remember some times like the Mets or was it the Reds
losing out on a league championship because of a bases loaded
walk in bottom of the 9th...
Hubby and I were madly flipping between NESN, YES and ESPN and ESPN2. What a night.
Of course the AL Wild Card race was the one we were most paying attention to...
"We play too many night games on getaway days and get into places at 4 in the morning. This has been my toughest season physically because of that. We play a lot of night games on Sunday for television and that those things take a lot out of you. ... They can put the Padres on ESPN, too. The schedule really hurt us. Nobody is really reporting that."
-- Adrian "Godzalez" (Gonzalez) via Extra Bases
Cry me a river, Yo-Adrian...
That's an understatement. Fans arrive in the third inning, leave during the seventh inning stretch and couldn't tell you the score (or who the visiting team is) for a cash prize.
Oh gosh, please start breathing again, please!! Heh heh.
Yes, it was a super-dramatic finish. As we listened to the Dodgers' last game last night (won vs. D-backs), the announcers kept us posted minute by minute to developments in the Red Sox game and the Rays, as well as the Cards game and the Braves. It all came down at about the same time!!
Lots of fluke-y stuff has been happening in baseball, or should I say more than usual.
I’m an original True Blue L.A. Dodgers fan. Having said that, and considering our 3rd place finish (altho terrific second half), and considering who the Brewers will be playing I say: GO BREWERS!!!
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