But he has ZERO understanding that the statistical structure of baseball makes predicting the winner of a couple short series impossible. The Yankees can buy themselves a daunting statistical advantage during the regular season, but all that does is buy them a couple extra ping pong balls in the MLB playoff lottery. This is because a baseball team inherently cannot have much more than a 65% or 70% chance of winning a game against another reasonable team. As opposed to the NBA or NFL, where a team can have a much higher chance of winning.

In short, the use of a playoff system to choose a winner in MLB is asinine. The regular season and the playoffs are two completely separate competitions.

In the short term, I would guess the loyalty to a winner that had been there forever wouldn’t change, but in the long term, when suburban Dad has the choice of a 20 minute stress free round trip to the New Haven Royals for a ML game or a 2 hour stressful round trip into the city for a Yankees game, he is taking the youngsters to see the Local 9.

And in 20 years, the Yankees wouldn’t be Kings of the Greater NY area anymore.

Truly amazing how much nonsense you can pack into one paragraph. Some highlights:

“it’s mainly Steinbrenner $$$” — Well, I suppose that’s perhaps partially true if you consider the tax revenues of NY State and City to belong to Boss George. However, they don’t; they belong to the taxpayers. Aside from the hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds being spent to “improve the neighborhood” (i.e., make it as nice as possible for Yankee fans coming from NJ by enabling them to totally bypass the community on their way to YS), the City has engaged in all sorts of fishy deals to alter tax assessments, grant tax-free bonds, etc. Here’s two articles to get you started:

http://tinyurl.com/64zpax
http://tinyurl.com/582kbv

If you don’t like those, here’s a link to all 25,000+ articles found by Google when searching “new Yankee Stadium”+funding:

http://tinyurl.com/8jrhst

“If the Yankees moved out of the Bronx and took their cookies over to New Jersey, you could have shut off the lights in that part of the world.” — I have to say, I am torn between being more upset about your ignorance or your implied racism. Either way, you obviously know nothing about the Bronx or its residents. And, having lived in both places, I would say the world would be much better served by having the lights shut off in NJ than in the Bronx. As Archie Bunker so aptly observed, “Nobody wants to live in New Jersey, but somebody has to.”

“Buy the umbrellas on the street corner when it starts to rain, they only open once and don’t close!” — I will take this as hyperbole, but even the crappiest umbrella I ever bought on the street opened and closed multiple times (perhaps not on multiple days, though).

“With the extra money you save you can buy some bleacher seats in the new stadium.” — If you’re lucky and they aren’t sold out, since all the other seats are ridiculously overpriced ($2,500 for one seat for one game in the “Rudy Giuliani” seats is the most egregious example).

A friend has had box seats a few rows behind the Yankee dugout for a number of years. In 2007, his seats cost $150 per game. In 2008, because it was the last season in the old stadium, they went up to $250. In 2009, if he wants the comparable seats in the new stadium, they will cost $850. Yeah, I guess George has no advantage over his fellow owners.

It seems to me that the current system is in place because it is exactly the system that MLB wants. They want the most powerful teams to be in the largest centers. They want the high-profile players to be in the high-profile markets. They want the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Dodgers and Cubs to be in the playoffs every year. If you listen carefully, you can probably hear them weeping when the World Series is between two small-market teams. Weren’t the television ratings dismal for the Rays-Phillies series? What does it do to your sport’s image if nobody watches its marquee event?

Is it even possible to argue that MLB wants a level playing field? I’m pretty sure that the last thing they want to see is a Kansas City Royals-type lineup in pinstripes or Dodger blue. Biggest markets, best teams; that’s the formula for the best financial return. It would be an absolute disaster for baseball (financially) if the six biggest markets had terrible teams. As for the smaller markets, they’re basically the lettuce on the deli sandwich aren’t they? They’re there to fill out the league (and to take a run at the brass ring once every twenty years or so, when the planets are alligned).

Playoffs, yes. Series, no.

And please don’t get me started on the fact that Citigroup is about to spend $20 million/year for 20 years to have the Mets’ new stadium called “Citi Field” after telling us how desparately they need a multi-billion dollar bailout from the American taxpayer.

Christopher –

First of all, the new stadium isn’t really being paid for entirely by the Yankees (see the article linked to by Melody). A significant amount of it is being paid by the taxpayers (such as me).

Second, part of the infrastructure “upgrades” is a brand-new Metro North station at Yankee Stadium. Are you arguing either (a) the City of New York should/would have built that stadium anyway without the new stadium, or (b) the City of New York has no other infrastructure issues that are more pressing than those around the new stadium?

As a resident of NYC for over 30 years, either or both of those contentions are just plain silly (and wrong). To name just one prominent example, straphangers in NYC would be infinitely better served by a 2nd Avenue Subway than by a new commuter rail station for Yankee Stadium (just ask anyone who has to take any of the Lexington Avenue lines in Manhattan).