Someone is going to have the top payroll. How is that abusing the system? You don't know what the self-imposed cap ought to be, yet you blame the Yankees for spending more than their competitors. No wonder they abuse the system if you can't even explain what the parameters are.
As for the top payrolls, baseball almanac has the numbers for 2001:
Red Sox: $109,558,908 Yanks: $109,791,893Mariners: $75,652,500
Dodgers: $108,980,952
DBacks: $81,206,513
Mets: $93,174,428
Braves: $91,851,587
Nothing wrong with that, but they're not going to get any respect by winning that way, and when they lose like last year, it looks even worse.
Well, they might not get respect from you, but when you listen to what the other players say, the Yankees get a lot of respect. And if you think that losing a Game 7 to the heroic performance of Shilling and Johnson made the Yankees look bad, well, that's your opinion. It seems to me it made the victory so much sweeter for the D-backs because it was the Yankees, because it was Rivera. You dream of beating the best. The D-backs did it. Most teams still have a lot of respect for the Yankees. But I am sure you could beat them all by yourself.
Anyway, I believe there should be more balance. But you can't stop trying. There needs to be a set of rules for all teams to follow. Incidentally, go check out the salaries for 1998:
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/yearly/yr1998n.shtml Do you know that team payrolls for the top teams have almost DOUBLED since then? All of them.
Well, since you're being anal about this non-point, how about 20% (soon to be 25%) over the #2 team, which is in a group of a few other teams who are themselves way over everybody else.
As for the top payrolls, baseball almanac has the numbers for 2001:
I already posted the 1998 & 2002 team payrolls
Well, they might not get respect from you, but when you listen to what the other players say, the Yankees get a lot of respect. And if you think that losing a Game 7 to the heroic performance of Shilling and Johnson made the Yankees look bad, well, that's your opinion. It seems to me it made the victory so much sweeter for the D-backs because it was the Yankees, because it was Rivera. You dream of beating the best. The D-backs did it. Most teams still have a lot of respect for the Yankees. But I am sure you could beat them all by yourself.
What a silly thing to say. Let me restate this, since you're having such a difficult time grasping this concept...take away a few of the Yankee's better players and replace them with league average players so that the payroll is similar to the next teams below them (who, btw, are also way above the rest of the field)...are the Yankees as good as their competition? Hell no, they wouldn't even make the playoffs this year.
Conversely, I made the point about the Lakers winning titles with room enough to spare in their payroll to add the likes of Tim Duncan, Jason Kidd, and Dirk Nowitzki and there would still be 2 other teams right with them. Why shouldn't I respect a title earned this way much more than vice versa?