Getting What You Deserve
Posted: November 4th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 93 Comments »
“Mr. Steinbrenner deserves another championship.”
– Joe Girardi
One of the kinder compulsions of human nature is to soften the edges of people at the end of their lives. We strain to see their good side. We make them sympathetic. It was this way on both sides of the aisle with Ronald Reagan and Ted Kennedy at the end of their lives. It is this way with aging bank robbers and sports stars and rock stars and hit men and saloon singers. Age is the great equalizer.
And so, one of the background songs of this World Series is that it would be heartwarming and emotional if the Yankees win another one for the Boss. Only nobody calls him the Boss anymore or King George or Lord Steinbrenner or convicted liar. He is Mr. Steinbrenner now (or the less formal “George” if you have known him as long as Derek Jeter). He is venerable now. He is a grand old man of baseball now. He is esteemed. And Mr. Steinbrenner deserves another championship.
Deserves. Think how much of a national joke that verb would have been had Girardi said that about Mr. Steinbrenner even five years ago. Deserves. George Steinbrenner has won six World Series championships in his 27 years of owning the Yankees — twice as many as any other team since he took over in 1973. The six championships admittedly is more than the two suspensions he received from Major League Baseball — one for making illegal contributions to the Nixon campaign and the other for paying someone to dig up dirt on Dave Winfield* — but it is also significantly less than the 24 managers he has had run the Yankees.
*That someone is Howard Spira who, it seems, is ALWAYS labeled as a “small-time gambler.” It’s always “Small-time gambler Howard Spira,” or “Steinbrenner gave $40,000 to a small-time gambler named Howard Spira.” Was this really his job? Did he have a business card with “Small Time Gambler” on it?
Yes, Steinbrenner teams have won six World Series titles, and 11 pennants, and he has made hundreds of millions of dollars, and he has treated countless people like jerks — so many that he was a regular character on Seinfeld. So you wouldn’t expect a verb like “deserve” to follow Steinbrenner around at the end of his life. But he has gotten old and sick, and nostalgia sweetens the old wars and takes the edge off the old grudges. It’s one of our better traits as people, I think.
Of course, it can get silly too. You hear this all the time now: All Mr. Steinbrenner ever wanted to do was win. This is the praise the pours in for Steinbrenner. He was about winning. He just wanted to win. He was like a fan … winning was everything to him. So true. Of course, the same could be said of pretty much every successful person in history. Napoleon wanted to win badly.
You hear this too: Steinbrenner, unlike other owners, put his money back into the team to make them winners. This has truth in it, though there is a caveat: Steinbrenner (by virtue of owning the biggest team in the biggest city) had a lot more money to put back into his team. And, whether it was by design or simply a stroke of good fortune: The more the Yankees win, the more money the Yankees make. And Steinbrenner made plenty on the Yankees through the years. He didn’t exactly put ALL of his money into the team. It ain’t a charity.
I don’t say this as an attack — he’s a baseball owner willing to spend a lot of money to get the best players, and that’s really what fans want. Anyway, I like Steinbrenner and have for a long time. I like him because I like outsized sports characters and Steinbrenner has always been that. He has been excessively generous and excessively obnoxious and excessively successful and excessively flawed — always to excess. It is said that Steinbrenner was a huge pro wrestling fan, and you could see how the rules of pro wrestling have marked his life. From my younger days as a wrestling fan, I believe the rules are as follows:
1. The only records that count are the ones involving bank accounts.
2. Never hit anyone with your hand when there’s a metal chair within reach.
3. If the referee didn’t see it, it didn’t happen.
4. Winners win, losers cry, and the only champion is the one with the belt.
5. Masked men never get the girl.
Steinbrenner ran the New York Yankees that way. If he could have hit a few players and managers with metal chairs, he would have done just that. The team won championships because of him, and the team derailed because of him. He was the force of will behind the tense Bronx Zoo teams of the 1970s, and he was the force of will behind the bloated Yankees teams of the late 1980s, and he was the force of will behind the dynasty Yankees of late 1990s*, and he was the force of will behind many of the overpriced Yankees teams this decade. He has paid the biggest contracts, and made the biggest demands and thrown the biggest fits and thrown the biggest champagne parties too.
*Many believe that the great Yankees teams of the 1990s were built when Steinbrenner was more or less out of the picture … when he was on suspension and the team was given the freedom to build from within. I don’t know if this is true — it SOUNDS true but lots of things sound true.
But it’s that word: “Deserves.” Mr. Steinbrenner DESERVES another championship. Of course, Joe Girardi works for the Boss, and so it behooves him to say such things. The thing is, I think a lot of people — certainly a lot of people in New York — feel the same way, feel like it would be fitting, even touching, for Old Man Steinbrenner to win one more time, to taste the champagne again in his winter years.
It looks likely now that the Yankees will win. The Series is not over, and the Phillies are tough, and I do have this feeling that Andy Pettitte will get raked tonight on three days rest. But the Yankees are certainly in position to win one more for Mr. Steinbrenner, and if they do, sure, a lot of people will be disgusted and will despise Steinbrenner and his family one more time for having the most money and the biggest payroll and the best team. But I suspect that a lot of people this time around — including people who have spent their lives despising George Steinbrenner and the Yankees — will feel a nudge of nostalgia, a small involuntary hiccup of approval for the old man who has been baseball’s biggest character for almost four decades. These are the quirks of getting old.
Funny thing: I once saw a longtime professional wrestler in a restaurant, and we talked for a few minutes, and I asked whether he preferred being the good guy or the bad guy — he had been both a baby and a heel many times over the years. He considered the question carefully. Good guy or bad guy. Baby or heel. Finally, he shrugged and said something like this: “What’s the difference? It doesn’t matter if the people love you or hate you. As long as they feel strongly.”
George Steinbrenner has made people feel strongly. Does he DESERVE another championship? For that I think of another quote, this one from Clint Eastwood in “Unforgiven.” Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.
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Poor George, such a deserving & sympathetic fella
Go Phillies!
No sympathy here. Enjoy that championship you paid hundreds of millions of dollars for an All-Star team to win to win (while only beating the Twins by one or two runs in the first rd of the playoffs).
Enjoy that brand new stadium that was paid for by taxpayers who couldn’t dream of affording a ticket.
Enjoy your time on top. Heavens allowing, it won’t last long.
Circle me, Larry David.
Steinbrenner has been baseball’s biggest character for OVER three decades.
And, while he never minded having the biggest payroll, he really didn’t like paying the biggest contract. Big contracts, sure, but I recall — and I’d have to check, but won’t — that until the Yankees obtained Rodriguez, they actually had not held the biggest player contract for a long time. Stein didn’t like setting that sort of precedent (or maybe he felt burned by the Winfield deal, which may have been the largest of its time).
I’m just hoping for a Game Seven. I’d prefer a Phillies title because I consider “back to back” a better story than “27!” or “win one (more) for George”, but however it ends is fine with me.
“The thing is, I think a lot of people — certainly a lot of people in New York — feel the same way, feel like it would be fitting, even touching, for Old Man Steinbrenner to win one more time, to taste the champagne again in his winter years.”
Not *this* Yankee fan. I don’t want it for George, I want it for me (and to torque off the legions of haters).
As a Royals fan, watching Damon and Ibanez play for their respective teams, doesn’t my team deserve another championship? We find talent, develop it, and then ship it off to the highest bidder.
My favorite reply to any request to resolve a dispute I don’t care about is to say, “I feel strongly both ways.”
Mike:
Do the Royals really ship their players off to the highest bidder? Dye for Neifi Perez… Beltran for Mike Wood, Mark Teahen and John Buck… and so on…
“Weighing in at 800 lbs and hailing from Parts Unknown . . . The Stein Brenner!”
The Yankees are never going to be the plucky underdog or the team that overcame adversity, or the courageous “nobody believed in us!” team. They’re SUPPOSED to win the World Series every year. Thus, they can never exceed expectations–only meet them. They can never have quite the same surreal exuberance that, say, the Rockies or Twins would experience had they managed to win World Series this year.
(Warning: armchair psychology ahead) As a result, they need to get their emotional “drive” from another level of fluff that’s different from what other teams would think about. It’s what you have to do when you’re always heavily favored. Otherwise, you’d have to accept that you are merely mechanically blowing away inferior competition rather than “playing for something.”
“I don’t deserve this. To die like this.”
“Deserve’s got nothin to do with it.”
BANG.
If only the Royals had an owner who didn’t tolerate mediocrity…hell, I would take mediocrity given the current state of the Royals. Give me a season within 5 games of .500 and I would at least not be as PO’ed as I am now as a fan. They have the most clueless GM and field manager in MLB, who on top of their stupidity, proudly display an arrogance as if they have been successful in the past, which of course is as far from the truth as is possible. David Glass is the Bozo the clown of team owners. It’s as if he wants to keep the Royals from winning so he hires the most inept, clueless buffoons to assure that the team will never threaten to make the playoffs. As long as the fans come out on Fridays to see the fireworks after a Royals loss his wallet will be OK!
My business card has a subtle off-white coloring, a tasteful thickness to it, and oh, my God…it even has a watermark…
JoeP wrote: “a small involuntary hiccup of approval.” …I think I feel that way, maybe. But it wouldn’t because of, or for, George Steinbrenner. It’d be because I like Joe Girardi. It might also be because I think the Yankees are an interesting (melo)dramatic story this year: ARod’s travails, wondering if CC Sabathia and Texeira would succeed on the big stage, following Johnny Damon, wondering if the renewed focus on pitching would help, etc. I don’t feel the story for Philadelphia other than with regard to their repeat possibility—always an accomplishment. – TL
As much as the idea that Steinbrenner “deserves” another championship is repugnant to me, it’s not nearly AS repugnant as the idea that Yankee FANS “deserve” another championship, as if rooting for the team with the highest payroll and the most championships and SUFFERING through NINE WHOLE YEARS since the last one somehow makes you a better person than fans of other teams. You know who “deserves” a championship? Indians fans. Tigers fans. Pirates fans. Padres fans. Rockies fans.
Think he’d settle for just getting his eggplant calzone everyday for lunch?
What George “deserves” is another collapse. I’m telling you Girardi’s excessive button pushing, culminating in the three man rotation out of fear, is going to end very badly for the Goldman, Sachs of baseball. Pettitte is going down in flames tonight and Sabathia will be making back to back short starts tomorrow. The only questions to me are who do the Phillies start tomorrow night and will he be up to the task?
@ Josh #16- What about Cubs fans? That’s my own selfish vote of what fans “deserve” a championship.
I was in the ballpark for Games 1 and 2 and I can tell you that the Yankees lame effort to push the win-for-George angle has fallen hilariously flat.
They’ve been running these “Win It For The Boss” pieces between innings on the scoreboard, with those words written in florid script that looks straight out of the Children’s Miracle Network Telethon. The pieces are obviously cut to evoke a huge cheer from the live crowd but they have been greeted with utter silence.
This comes on the heels of George being trotted out at last year’s All-Star Game to near-total indifference from the patrons.
At best you could say Girardi has been a good soldier with this stuff; at worst he’s been something of a stooge. Either way Yankee fans generally ain’t buying it.
Nobody deserves to win a championship. If somebody deserves to win then by definition everybody else deserves to lose, and how can that ever be the case?
Certain sports figures deserve our respect, even if we haven’t always rooted for them. They deserve to be recognized for their talent, their effort, their sportsmanship.
George Steinbrenner is not one of those people.
Steinbrenner was a bully, a blowhard and a criminal…his presence would not be tolerated for a New York minute, let alone venerated, if he were not a wealthy man. Sportswriters like to backtrack and create novelistic narratives for the things that happen in sports, so we have the narrative of Steinbrenner as the tyrannical owner whom we must respect and admire because of his success. But’s it’s not an accomplishment to spend money. And it doesn’t make compelling journalism. So create the legend if you have to. But all Steinbrenner had was the wherewithal to have a lot more darts than anybody else to throw at the board. It’s no surprise that some of those were bullseyes, or close. What is more amazing is that despite his financial advantages, the yankees missed the playoffs from 82 to 94. The list of high-dollar, high-profile free agents who have underachieved in pinstripes is quite long. The success of the Jeter/Rivera/Torre era is attributable to the unique characteristics of those guys….and to whoever distracted Steinbrenner with shiny objects so that, while still spending all his millions, he didn’t feel the need anymore to be the front and center focus of the Yankees every day.
Josh brings up a good point.
The notion that somehow a team and fan base that has the largest payroll and has won 26 W.S. championships “deserves” a championship is rupugnant and a slap in the face to all baseball fans.
It’s bad enough that Yankee fans come out of the woodwork like cockroaches during this time of the year, and most wouldn’t know the difference between Mickey Rivers and Mickey Mouse. But having to hear that they “suffered” because the didn’t have “Xavier Nady” makes me want to vomit.
This team has $800, 000, 000 dollars, nearly a Billion, wrapped up in only 4 players!!!! A-Rod, C.C., Jeter, and Texiera. There’s only a few teams in baseball that could even keep 1!! of those contracts.
There’s about 120 professional sports teams out of the 4 major sports and not one of them has the competitive advantage the Yankees have.
Also, this notion that Steibrenner somehows puts “his” money into the team is laughable. Seriously, you think Steinbrenner would rather give 3 million to a middle reliever than his own children???
“Sorry honey, I’d love to give you that 3 million dollar gift but I have to give it Damasco Marte this year.”
The money comes from the “team” not Steinbrenner’s personal bank account.
Joe, I gotta ask, who was the wrestler that you talked to in the restaurant?
On the other hand, as Pos correctly notes, Steinbrenner is an excessively generous man. A good college friend of mine who lives in Tampa* told me that when reporting large charitable donations, the media there will sometimes make a point of saying “anonymous and not George Steinbrenner,” since he’s given so often people begin to assume it’s him.
* Tampa, FL… not Tampa, KS.
I’m a Mets fan, myself. (My joke for this WS has been “Yankees vs. Phillies: Whoever wins, WE LOSE.”) I have no particular love or hate for the guy – he was colorful and outsized and bombastic and impatient and all the rest. But generous also, and that’s important.
That’s why I think we should be factual about Steinbrenner – he promotes strong opinions and it’s easy to be unfair one way or the other. For example, the assertion that he bought the current roster the way one would hire an army of Hessian mercenaries. Untrue. A good many of them are homegrown, including key players like Posada, Jeter, Cano, Joba, and of course Mariano. (Pettitte, too, if you want to credit the Yanks for originally signing him as an undrafted prospect.)
Second, to say four players are getting $800 million combined is entirely misleading unless you add that it’s for the entire life of the deal, over however many years. Even then, given the possibility of trades and such, the Yanks may never actually pay out all that money. The Red Sox, for example, could pay four guys a total of $80 million for one season and still have $45 million for the rest of the roster. The Mets could do it. In theory nearly every owner could do it, including the tightwads, if they decided “Screw it, I’ll risk losing a ton of dough this year – flags fly forever.” A great majority of them don’t because they lack the outsized drive that motivates George Steinbrenner… but they COULD if they wished. They simply don’t wish. (And given the economy now, more of them will be more unwilling than ever.)
The Yankees have a huge competitive advantage – they are the most marketable and profitable and are owned by a gentleman who takes full advantage of those assets. But (and this is key) without Steinbrenner, those assets would go begging: in fact he helped create many of them in his 36 years up top. Remember that he bought the Yanks on the relative cheap: they had a bad roster and a crumbling stadium in a lousy neighborhood. Had he been timid the team may have hit the skids for an extended stretch the way many once-proud franchises have… Pittsburgh, KC, Cincinnati (for the most part)… ‘79, ‘85, and ‘90, and that’s it for those three franchises in three decades. The freakin’ Marlins have more titles in the past 30 years than any of those three teams.
Sorry to go on, but there are plenty of real reasons to dislike Steinbrenner, and no good reason to invent others.
Say what you will about Steinbrenner and I’m no fan of the Yankmees but George cared more about MLB and the game of baseball than MANY other owners during his reign in NYC. He supported the luxury tax but only complained when other teams found it expedient not to use that extra income for player contracts.
Plus, he liked his calzones if/when Kramer could get them to him on time…
What #24 said …
I think it would be easier to be a heel. Getting people to like you (me) is tough.
Nightfly: really? A rich guy making large charitable contributions? That’s unusual?
Also, this notion of the Yankees rich tradition of home-grown talent merits a huge asterisk as well – guys like Cano, Cabrera, Rivera, Bernie Williams, Wang, El Duque, Contreras, et al were not signed through the traditional amateur draft. They were signed as amateur free agents. Another way the vast resources give the Yankees a competitive advantage. You can throw around a heck of a lot more money on prospects when you have so much more to begin with (and this has long been the less-reported Yankee advantage.) If you trotted out the homegrown Yankees on the current roster who came up through the system via the traditional amateur draft you’d have Jeter, Posada and a whole bunch of pitchers the manager is terrified to use.
If true free agency hadn’t come along when it did, I’d bet Steinbrenner wouldn’t have half the titles he has today.
Why should we give Steinbrenner any credit for trying to buy his way into heaven after a life of being an unadulterated bastard? The guy was a complete prick in every business deal of his life, a fact he flaunted openly. Hell, the guy proudly made beer ads about what an asshole he was. And now he deserves a seventh ring because he’s in failing health and gives some charities a few grand of his many millions? No, sorry, it doesn’t work that way.
George Steinbrenner is the only guy in America who could make Billy Martin look like a sympathetic character. Now that takes some real d-baggery.
I know it’s nigh impossible for New York haters to sympathize with the Yankees, but can we drop the bad planning = 3 man rotation thing?
The Yanks lost two 19/20 game winners this year. Mussina and Wang. Sabathia has been slighly better, and Burnett has been slightly worse, but it’s not as if they bought the entire league. The payroll did not increase in 2009.
This is why teams like the Philllies could go out and make major acquisitions mid-year, and the Yanks couldn’t. They are virtually maxxed out for payroll.
JoeP: “He was like a fan … winning was everything to him. So true. Of course, the same could be said of pretty much every successful person in history. Napoleon wanted to win badly.”
I love that sentiment. I would have replaced Napoleon with Hitler, since many readers might not know or care that Napoleon was out for world domination, but I realize that Hitler references are considered unseemly in debating.
Anyway, I’d have more sympathy for Steinbrenner if he was having to watch the World Series from on a 13″ TV on the island of Elba or perhaps in some bunker.
Nah, I’d still want the Yankees to lose.
Russ, Russ, Russ…. “Lost Mussina”?? He retired. And they went out and bought 35 wins to replace him. True, Wang was unfortunate, but c’mon…
Yanks maxed out? That’s an arbitrary concept, at best.
Since you were on a Political Philosophy kick the other day, deserts are a fascinating topic with a clear tie in to sports. I’d recommend John Rawls (a big baseball fan, by the way).
Wow, to all the Mike’s who posted before me, seriously, what the hell are you guys talking about?
George was ALWAYS front and center. He was that type of a person, someone born and bred for NYC’s spotlight and for greatness. He fit the platform to a T.
He was ever present and in Joe Torre’s grill during the 90’s even AFTER they won in 96 and 98.
You mean to tell me money buys championships?
2009:
Talk to the Mets (2nd highest)
Talk to the Cubs (3rd)
Talk to the Astros (8th)
Talk to the Mariners (1oth)
Yes, those are ALL championship calibur teams.
Yet you neglect the fact that Philly is 7th on that list.
It has nothing to do with payroll it has to do with talent and signing the right guys to stick with the team and perform under pressure. Obviously those teams that I listed are doing a great job at competing.
How much money you make or spend has nothing to do with your win-loss record.
“How much money you make or spend has nothing to do with your win-loss record.”
That’s like saying how tall you are has nothing to do with how good you will be at basketball.
It doesn’t mean everything, but it means a whole hell of a lot.
Norm Cash Singers (great handle, btw) – I’m not sure I buy (pardon the pun) the need for an asterisk regarding amateur free agents and the Yankees. They could have been saddled with a bunch of Hideki Irabus as easily as Mariano Rivera – in fact, including Contreras on your list kind of highlights this. It’s an advantage, but it still needs good scouting and good player development to capitalize. Even Cabrera and Cano have been hit-and-miss: fine this year but sometimes terrible in the past. For all we know they may revert to terrible again.
It may not be a surprise to you that a rich guy gives a lot to charity… but neither then should it be a surprise that he was a cut-throat businessman. I know it was Paul White who pointed that out, not you, but I bring it up because many want to demerit him for the negative and refuse to credit him for the positive. There are plenty of rich folks who squander it all on themselves and give little or nothing back, after all.
FWIW I don’t think he deserves a title, and the idea is absurd. If that were the case then the Phillies would be obligated to throw the Series. It’s repugnant, yet because media love their plotlines, they have no trouble furthering that of the venerable, frail, beloved owner hoping for one last championship as the sun sets, disregarding the implications. I’d be inclined to be offended if I were a Phillie, even if Steinbrenner was a lovable, harmless old teddy bear instead of an incorrigable s.o.b. with a mean streak.
I’ve been a Yankee fan through the whole Steinbrenner era, and I’ve always loved the guy. Not personally, but because he’s done so much to make the Yankees winners overall,d espite a truckload of bad decisions.
Here’s a story that doesn’t prove anything at all, but I like to tell it. In 1986, the Yankees were. as a team, on the way down, and they had to suffer through the Mets winning the World Series that year. Some co-workers of mine and I decided to attend a game in September that year, and sent away for tickets quite a while in advance. One of us was a die-hard Oriole fan who got a kick out of laughing at Steinbrenner and the Yankees.
As it turned out, that night the Yankees were out of the race, and the Mets could clinch the NL east title with a win. The Oriole fan friend was watching the scoreboard and told me how the Yankees were so classless that they probably would take the Mets score off the board so they wouldn’t have to show them winning the division.
Instead, when the Met game was over, the scoreboard went blank, and then the entire line score of the Mets game went up on the screen, with a note congratulating the Mets on winning the division.
And we got a gift: free tickets for everyone in the stadium to one of the last three Yankee home games of the year, as a thank you to fans loyal enough to come see the Yankees even though the Mets were champions that year.
It’s hard to hate someone who does things like that. It even makes up for having to watch Steve Kemp.
The Yankees have the highest paid player in the game, the highest paid pitcher in the game, the highest paid reliever in the game, the highest paid catcher in the game, the highest paid 1st baseman in the game, the highest paid 3rd baseman in the game, and the highest paid shortstop in the game. They also have the 3rd highest paid 2nd baseman in the game, and Matsui and Damon are tied as the 9th highest paid outfielders in the game. I think a high payroll has a wee bit to do with the Yankees success.
Speaking of owners, when is age going to get around to softening Al Davis’ edges? Sure he looked pathetic last year during the Lane Kiffin firing, but pathetic doesn’t mean sympathetic.
I have no patience for people who think billionaire owners “deserve” things any more than anyone else. Especially so if those people pinch run for their best hitter, who isn’t even that slow anyway.
I don’t believe God cares about baseball. I have doubts that God is really all that concerned about earthly “justice”. I certainly doubt that God has a sense of humor (though the ostrich does make me wonder).
But I’ll change my mind on all three counts if, in some manner, God intervenes and prevents the man who has done more damage to MLB than anyone in the game’s history from living long enough to see another Yankees championship.
THAT is what this man “deserves”.
Give Dayton Moore the Yankees’ budget, and let Trey Hillman manage that roster, and they would still win. It’s not like Cashman and Girardi are rocket scientists.
“So you wouldn’t expect a verb like ‘deserve’ to follow Steinbrenner around at the end of his life.”
Actually, I can think of quite a few things that he deserves–just that almost none of them are appropriate to print here. Except this one: he deserves to watch his moneybags team choke one last time. Ditto for that Fredo of a son of his, Hank. The worst people on Planet Sports. And cheering for the team they own is like rooting for the lions to eat the prisoners in the Roman coliseum.
@Mike (#35)
In the general sense, no, the biggest payroll doesn’t guarantee you a championship. But it also allows you much greater leeway when you make a mistake.
The Yankee way (and nowadays, the Red Sox way) has been simple. Outbid everyone for the big-name free agent or foreign prospect. If they don’t pan out, dump them and go find the next one.
For about 97% of the rest of baseball, if you misfire on a big-money signing, your budget and payroll are hamstrung for years to come. For the Yankees (and 1-2 others), it’s just another speed bump.
I’ve read enough stories about Steinbrenner that I can see what good and charitable things he’s done in his life, but this idea that he “deserves” another World Series title is laughable.
#42 JimCrikket: Are you speaking of Scott Boras? Why would he really care about anything but the bottom line….$$$$$$$$?
Joe, you took a silly throwaway statement by Girardi, who’s just trying to say something nice about his boss, and turned it into a vehicle to attract all the anti-Yankee whining your bitter, small-market, small-time audience can muster.
Congratulations. With this post you have proven that, as a writer, you are indeed capable of shooting fish in a barrel.
Matthew 19:24
Since you referenced Reagan, let me state what I have come to realize recently:
It is the Yankees who are “the focus of evil in the modern world.”
And as far as wrestling goes, its “face” or “baby face” not “baby”.
“Give Dayton Moore the Yankees’ budget, and let Trey Hillman manage that roster, and they would still win.”
Um no. Ridiculous and inaccurate.
Maybe he’s a bastard (maybe no maybe?).
But as an owner he’s been perfect. He builds the brand, makes the money, then spends the money. And there isn’t another owner that wouldn’t do the exact same if they could, nor is there another owner who hasn’t benefited GREATLY from it.
“the man who has done more damage to MLB than anyone in the game’s history”
Okay, seriously? Comisky and the Black Sox, collusion against black players, Selig allowing PEDs (and the subsequent PED hysteria) to get out of hand, Jeffrey Loria…
I wouldn’t mind Steinbrenner if he owned any other team, regardless of his behavior. It is my personal opinion that the Yankees are evil, and have corrupted everyone associated with them, not vice versa. I hated the Yankees long before Steinbrenner took over and long before they started buying enormous contracts.
I hear they are naming a bridge after Jeter.
@James
I never said George deserves it. The man deserves to live the rest of his days peacefully and loving his family that he has left his entire empire to.
You forget about how terrible many of these big names were with us. Kevin Brown? Sterling Hitchcock? Randy Johnson? Javier Vasquez? Carl Pavano? Chen Ming Wang and Xavier Nady are still $11.5 million in dead weight we’re carrying around.
A ton of $$ is coming off the books this year, I’m sure we’re going to re-sign Hughes and Joba to decent deals and maybe go after Holliday but that’s about it for free agency with us this year.
I don’t have a personal grudge against George. He appears to be typical of most MLB owners. Rich, egotistical and narcissistic. He’s played the system to perfection and provided his fan base with the thrills of a showman in the mold of PT Barnum.
Joe, my plea to you is to write about the bigger story. This year is another in a long string of farcical MLB seasons where baseball fans across the country are relegated to watching 6 or 8 of the same old teams get to the playoffs & WS. NY, Philly, LAA & LA Dodgers don’t exactly bring to mind Cinderella. No, Joe. It’s time to walk out on the ledge and write a story that matters. One along the lines of how poorly the sport has been run by Bud Selig and the owners over the past 15 years, selling their baseball souls to Fox & ESPN, looking the other way on steroids & the still gigantic chasm between the haves & the have-nots, for the almighty dollar. Since 1995, there have been 120 playoff teams and to date, only 3 teams with a payroll of less than league average have made the WS and only 1 has won the WS. Baseball likes to tout the Minnesota’s & A’s & now the Rays & Rockies. But the fact is that while they might be built to win in their respective divisions, they aren’t built to compete in the playoffs. Oh, sure you’ll have an 83 win Cards team or a Rays team come from out of nowhere every once in a while, but it is being extremely disingenuous to use these few & far between examples as proof that the sport is anywhere near parity. The sport is fixed. Not fixed in that they’re cheating. Fixed in that the system is designed to cater to the teams with the most money. An in-depth expose into the nature of the sport in the 21st Century by a writer for SI would really be something that many, myself included, would be grateful to see. Baseball fans need someone to keep the fire alive because the sycophants at ESPN, largely ran by eastcoast biased reporters hailing from markets like Boston, Philly & NY, aren’t going to rock the boat as long as they’re the beneficiaries of the system.
Clearly, there is no “deserve” in baseball or sports in general. If there were, there would be many fans on the north side of Chicago, Cleveland and even KC that would have had their thirst quenched long ago.
What the fans “deserve” is a sport that is worth following.
@Mike
And your point is…? Even with all that dead weight on the roster, they still found enough money to sign Sabathia and Teixeira to game-changing deals.
For almost every other team in baseball, just one of those dead weight deals would kill their chances for years. With the Yankees, it’s ho-hum, how much do we need to get the next guy?
My point is that money doesn’t guarantee you a championship, but it allows you to cover up a lot of mistakes.
Best blog comments in a long time.
47: If the time ever comes that I hear just one Yankee fan argue for a level playing field, so that a Yankee championship might actually mean something, and so the fans could root for something besides Goliath over David, I might generate a sliver of respect for them, and a glimmer of hope for the sport.
54: So right on.
The Yankees winning is a liberal conspiracy! Don’t know if this has been mentioned, but the last time the Yankees won a World Series with a Republican president in office was 1958 with Eisenhower.
1961-62: Kennedy
1977-78: Carter
1996, 1998-00: Clinton
2009: Obama
Steinbrenner deserves nothing but contempt.
Gotta agree with James – Mike just torpedoed his own argument. A lot of the guys the Yanks have overpaid over the years – Johnson, Vazquez, Pavano – would have been the marquee guys on a lot of other teams based on the salaries they made. Those contracts would have killed a lot of clubs.
They bought the right guys this year, but don’t pretend they would have competed if they couldn’t have opened their chequebooks for Teix, Sabathia, Damon, Matsui et al or taken on A-Rod to provide salary relief, then paid more than any other team would have offered to retain him (and Jeter, and Rivera, and Posada…)
Hell, go back to their last playoff team, in 2007, and they managed to win 94 games despite spending:
- $20 million on a DH who played half the season and racked up a 108 OPS+
- $14 million on a bad defensive outfielder who was below league average with the bat
- $28 million (pro-rated, for a bit more than half a season’s work, so we’ll call it $15 million) for a five-inning starter with a 107 ERA+
- $11 million on a starter who posted a 5+ ERA (87 ERA+)
- $16 million on another starter who managed a 4+ ERA (110 ERA+, which is fine, but not worth the money)
- $10 million on another starter who managed to pitch two games
- $10 million combined on Igawa and Farnsworth
That’s about $96 million worth of guys who came nowhere close to earning their salaries. For that money, you could have had the 2007 incarnations of Giambi, Damon, Clemens, Mussina, Pettitte, Pavano, Igawa and Farnsworth, or you could have had any of 21 other teams (and in some cases two entire teams.)
Luckily for them, they had about $100 million more to spend that year and made the playoffs as a result. They spent over $50 million more than the next-highest team (the Red Sox, who won the series that year.)
Lest my last comment be seen as sour grapes, congrats to the Yanks for winning the World Series.
Congrats also to Transformers 2 for being the top-grossing movie of 2009, and to the local Wal-Mart for pushing 29 smaller stores out of business.
You’ve all earned it!
It’s bad enough that Yankee fans come out of the woodwork like cockroaches during this time of the year, and most wouldn’t know the difference between Mickey Rivers and Mickey Mouse.
The correct entomological analogy you were looking for is the ants from the movie “Them!”
New York fans are actually considered among the most savvy in baseball, but don’t let that slow you down. “M-I-C… see you at the victory parade!”
Last time I looked, the US was a capitalistic country; fiercely so, in fact, despite recent hiccups. I’m guessing no one visiting this site would have it any other way.
One tenet of capitalism is that you’re allowed to spend your money in any way you choose. This applies to saints and sinners alike. You’re also allowed to spend money that you control even though it’s not actually yours.
Something else inherent in capitalism is a worker’s right to sell his labour to the highest bidder. Other freedoms give the worker the right of free association and the right to hire someone to act on his behalf. (The free association bit is one area where the United States historically lagged behind the rest of the capitalistic world, shamefully so in many cases.)
Put ownership and labour together in these circumstances and the current situation of the Yankees will arise with the same certainty as the sun every morning.
If it wasn’t the Yankees, it would be some other organisation. Even if the entire ownership were made up of skinflints there’d be grizzles about how the Dodgers, maybe, with their ridiculous $8 million payroll were making it impossible for the Brewers, Twins, Mariners and so on, who were hamstrung by their $3 million budgets.
And I don’t see any comments on here about how huge salaries in American baseball are stripping talent from poorer countries, depriving the citizens of Puerto Rica, the Dominican Republic and Panama of seeing top-class ball players. Signing a player from Mexico is applauded; signing one from Milwaukee is a crime, it seems.
As far as Steinbrenner goes, he’s a complicated figure. I love Joe but I thought it was unfortunate he only covered part of who Steinbrenner was here. Steinbrenner is a guy who fired Billy Martin tons of times, but how many times did he hire him back? Some guys who worked for George will tell you about how awful he was, he’d fire people at the drop of a hat, scream at people, etc. Other guys will tell you about how he kept people on the payroll who served no purpose, just to be nice. Being a Yankee fan, I hear all the stories. I hear how guys would get screamed at for nothing, and then I hear a story about George paying the full hospital bills for an employee who got very sick. Last week I heard a story on MLB Home Plate about someone who, when he was 8 years old, went to his first ever baseball game. Sitting in front of him was George Steinbrenner. Steinbrenner turns around, says hello to the kid, and then invites him and his mother up to his suite to watch the game.
Is George a saint, of course not, but he’s a human being. He’s not some monster like he’s often made out to be outside of New York. He’s a series of contradictions, like most human beings are. But one thing you can never say about him is that he doesn’t care about putting the best team on the field. And I’m sorry, you guys can complain about the Yankees payroll all you want, but I find it more than a bit ironic that you guys will attack an owner whose primary concern is putting the best team on the field even if he takes a monetary loss while defending owners who walk away with a profit to line their own pockets while their teams suffer. Maybe it would be good for baseball to have some kind of “salary cap”, maybe not, but I will never, ever agree with you guys that baseball is better off with more owners who care more about the bottom line and how much money they can make as opposed to more owners who care about the baseball team they own. You might not think that’s what you’re trying to say, but it seems to me that by bashing and mocking Steinbrenner while defending owners who don’t spend on their team, you’re doing just that.
I’ll give you though that assuming most of you guys are KC fans, I at least respect the salary argument coming from you guys, although I wish someone could make the damn argument without acting like everything the Yankees ever accomplish is meaningless because “they haz the monies”. I want to smack someone everytime I hear a Red Sox or Mets fan complaining about the Yankee payroll. Yankees are “worse” but the Red Sox and Mets aren’t THAT far behind, comparatively.
Wow, having read the comments, a few of you guys are awful people. Hate the Yankees all you want, feel that Steinbrenner has hurt the game all you want, but those of you who wished he died before tonight so he couldn’t see the Yankees win should be absolutely ashamed of yourselves. Get over yourselves. It’s a damn game and whether you agree with him or not, everything Steinbrenner did was because he loves the Yankees and he wanted to see them win, even if it cost him monetarily. The game could use a hell of a lot more owners with that attitude than these owners who pocket money and don’t spend on their team. Hate what he did, by all means, but wishing death on him makes me disgusted to even respond to the same post as a few of you.
Ugh. I’ve hated this whole “win one for Steinbrenner” thing since I first heard it a few days ago. Like you said, he has how many championships? Since when does the person with the most anything ever deserve to have more just because he already has the most? That’s sick to me. So sick, that it tarnishes this World title in my eyes. That’s the dumbest rallying cry…especially for a team that doesn’t need motivation to win.
That being said, I do think the Yanks actually deserve the Championship, because any team that played so good that they beat everybody…deserves one.
Also, Steinbrenner is awesome for throwing money back into the team and having some fire in him. I haven’t liked him at times, but hey…nobody’s perfect and I don’t know many people that I think always do the right thing.
Justin @ 59 is my winner.
“Lest my last comment be seen as sour grapes, congrats to the Yanks for winning the World Series.
Congrats also to Transformers 2 for being the top-grossing movie of 2009, and to the local Wal-Mart for pushing 29 smaller stores out of business.
You’ve all earned it!”
The 2009 Yankees are the Transformers 2 of Baseball.
> You know who “deserves” a championship? Indians fans. Tigers fans. Pirates fans. Padres fans. Rockies fans.
Senators II/Rangers: 1961-2009, no WS appearances
Angels: 1961-2009, 1 WS appearance (W)
Colt .45s/Astros: 1962-2009, 1 WS appearance (L)
Pilots/Brewers: 1969-2009, 1 WS appearance (L)
Expos/Nationals: 1969-2009, no WS appearances
Mariners: 1977-2009, no WS appearances
I don’t feel that the “recent” expansion teams should be eligible for this list yet; but if they are, then the Rockies *have* been in the WS in only, what, 14 years of existence.
All other recent expansion teams have also been in the WS at least once.
And I don’t include the “non-recent” (1961-1977) expansion teams who have been in more than one WS (Mets 4, Royals 2, Padres 2, Blue Jays 2) in my list.
And shouldn’t the Cubs be on the non-expansion “been a long, long time” list?
To the people who think the Yankee’s championships aren’t valid because they spend the most money, wouldn’t this hold true for EVERY time the team with a higher payroll beats a team with a lower payroll?
Since the Phillies had a higher payroll than the Dodgers this year, doesn’t that mean the Phillies “bought” their ticket to the World Series? And before that, they bought their ticket to the NLCS by spending more than the Rockies?
@st #54.
Get off your high horse about the story that needs to be written. That story is has been told to death. It is mindless drivel and Joe wouldn’t write that story because he is not a bitter hack. You (and you’re not alone) talk about parity being fair. Parity is not fair. Fairness is the teams with the most fans and the most $$ being able field the best teams… anything else would be UNfair.
If you want to watch parity in baseball, go watch the LLWS, oh wait the US has too much of an advantage… go watch HS baseball, oh wait i forgot that the larger school districts ruin it for everyone else…. go watch the College World Series, because there is no competitive advantage for large schools like UT and LSU there.
You say “The fans deserve a sport worth following.” I think the ratings for this World Series will tell you what you don’t want to admit to yourself: The sport is worth following BECAUSE of the Yankees.
… and speaking of “deserving” a championship. Your shitty little town and your incompetent money-hoarding owner don’t even deserve to have a team, let alone win a World Series.
Ol’ Joe Stalin, all he ever wanted to do was win.
But seriously, Boss Steinbrenner is a doddering old man who is oblivious to what ‘he’ just won. His toadies and cronies should give it a rest.
I want to preface this comment by saying I’m not knocking the Yankees for the way they run their business. They play by the current rules and they make the most of their advantages.
But it’s time to stop talking about small-market and big-market teams. When you look at the Yankees payroll, their stadium revenue, their cable revenue….they are running a different business than even the teams that we typically think of as “big-market”.
It’s the Yankees and everyone else now and I see no reason why it’s not going to be that way until and unless there are fundamental changes in the next CBA.
#57 Pauly OH, good observation. Overall the Yankees have won 20 of their championships with a Democratic President and 7 with a Republican.
Coolidge: ‘23, ‘27,’28
Hoover: ‘32
FDR: ‘36,’37,’38,’39, ‘41, ‘43
Truman: ‘47, ‘49, ‘50, ‘51, ‘52,
Eisenhower: ‘53, ‘56, ‘58
Kennedy: ‘61, ‘62
Carter: ‘77, ‘78
Clinton: ‘96, ‘98, ‘99, ‘00
Obama: ‘09
The U.S. is a bizarre country.
Only in the U.S. would a convicted felon Billionaire who was twice suspended from baseball for ethical reasons be considered a “sympathetic” figure.
Like Bob Dylan said, “Steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you a King”
It’s idiots like Arob up there (#68) who make me think, every time I see the crowd at Yankee Stadium on TV, “So…many…douchebags.”
Decorum prevents me from sharing what I think Arob and his ilk deserve.
@Darin #73
Decorum = calling me a douchebag?
Why dont you address one of my points instead of resorting to name calling.
I love the “capitalism” argument.
OK, for all the Yankees fans who will not recognize that the inherent advantage in the larger number of people in the NY area over, let’s say, Kansas City, means that you will always have more money, then let’s do the capitalism thing and move some of the small market teams into the NY metro area.
Hello, Newark Pirates. Hello Manhatten Royals. Hello Brooklyn Marlins. And Hello New Haven Reds.
When that local market is split up 6 or 7 different ways and the revenue slowly dries up, I expect the Yankees fans will see that Capitalism isn’t all that great.
#75, great point Brent.
What the “capitalist” argument people fail to mention is baseball is the only sport that is exempt from anti-trust exemptions.
The NY area could definately support a third team but the Yankees and the Mets and the rest of baseball would never allow it.
The Pirates would have a much better chance to compete in Newark than in Pittsburgh.
Also, Sport leagues don’t fall into a “capitalist” example. If that were the case you could never have a team in Green Bay or Memphis or Portland, New Orleans, Charlotte, Oaklahoma City, Sacremento or lot of other cities in North America.
#76 should read:
Exempt from Anti-Trust Violations.
Parity and MLB
My solution for the Yankee problem – assuming Selig can’t get any effective revenue sharing in place – would be to allow franchises to relocate wherever they wish. Greater New York area has, say 10 times as many customers as Kansas City, for example? Then why not let any owner decide to move his franchise to that seemingly more lucrative market? After all, I’d be willing to bet that the ratio of McDonalds in greater New York versus greater KC is far larger than the ratio of Major League teams in the same markets (2-1).
if you want to use capitalism as a rationalization of being an a-hole, fine
just keep in mind, there is nothing about capitalism that says i have to enjoy the attitude of such a-holes
the adage “If life gives you lemons, shut up and eat your damn lemons!” does nothing to remove the sour taste from our mouths.
@62
“I hear how guys would get screamed at for nothing, and then I hear a story about George paying the full hospital bills for an employee who got very sick….”
I’ve also heard about lots of guys who beat their wives and then they’re sorry and take them out to dinner and buy them flowers. Steinbrenner’s acts of charity are commendable, but don’t erase the fundamental essence of his character as a baseball owner: a bullying, destructive force.
As to those who argue that in America, a business should be able to spend as much as it wants, you clearly do not understand the economics of major league baseball….
Major League Baseball as an entity can spend as much as it wants to compete with other entertainment providers, but within major league baseball, there have to be rules that help maintain a viable level of competition among teams. That could be a salary cap, a luxury tax, a free-agent draft, veto power over the movement of franchises, veto power over selling player contracts for cash, revenue sharing of ticket sales, revenue sharing of TV and radio rights. One could argue about the wisdom of having any of those restrictions, and about how far to go with those restrictions, but it’s clear that if baseball had none of those restrictions, the competitive balance would be so far out of whack as to make the game uninteresting for most people. One Harlem Globetrotters vs. Washington Generals game can be entertaining, but subjecting a fan base to 162 of those games would not be. The Yankees need to have partners, other comparably talented teams to play, to have a viable business, unless they want to become like the Globetrotters and barnstorm the world in a series of one night events. I guarantee you Alex Rodriguez wouldn’t be making $30 million doing that.
I’m with Brent @75 and John Q. @76. Whatever you think of the idea that Yankees fans are savvier about baseball than the average baseball fan (something I highly doubt; note, for example, the neverending deification of Jeter for his “leadership” and “intangibles”), it’s clear that many of them are pretty clueless about how “capitalist” baseball actually is.
Also, ARob @68 & 74 – if you’re going to write things like “Your shitty little town and your incompetent money-hoarding owner”, it’s pretty hypocritical to run down another commenter for “resorting to name-calling.”
‘Course I’m respectable. I’m old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough
@John #81
“Your shitty little town” was obnoxious and unnecessary, and i probably shouldnt have written that, but in the next breath i didnt claim to have decorum as 73 did.
It’s trite at this point to compliment Joe on a helluva piece, but that’s exactly why I’m leaving this comment.
If the Yanks dominating baseball is just good ol’ American capitalism, then why doesn’t the government build WalMart $750M Megastores while giving them exclusive rights to 10s of millions of people?
What baseball needs is for teams to have to pay for their own facilities, and for there to be expansion/franchise movement to the extent the market will support it.
New York City is also a better place to live than anywhere else in the country. Esp. on fall afternoons. Best. City. Ever.
I’d love to have a third team here. Send the Dodgers back to Brooklyn. Open arms, I tell you.
Don’t you people have hometowns? How can you castigate Yankee fans for loving their hometown team–esp. when it keeps winning for them, which, after all, is sometimes what sports teams are supposed to do.
Move to New York! Make this your hometown! Live a little!
The bar scene at the end of “Unforgiven” might be Clint’s best scene ever. Can anybody think of a better one?
Michael @86
Remember 1/3 of the people in the New York area loves the Yankees, 1/3 hates the Yankees, and the other 1/3 could care less about baseball.
I don’t think he “deserves” it. If I want anyone to win one, it’s A-Rod. That’s right, I felt a tinge of positive feeling when the highest paid player in history got his championship.
And Matsui, too. I don’t dislike him.
[...] “Mr. Steinbrenner deserves another championship.” – Joe Girardi [...]
JohnQ @88
I don’t think about that third third. They scare me.
We get it, Joe. You don’t much like the Yankees.
But the guy has Alzheimer’s, is slowly dying and is in a wheelchair. That doesn’t make him a good person. But that doesn’t mean you should make fun at him.
That karma will bite you in the ass. Also, you should sit where you’re supposed to at the World Series.
Gene Autry deserved to win a title. He paid for those Angels year after year, and so many strange things went wrong with those teams (not to mention premature deaths) and it wasn’t until after Autry died that the Angels finally won the World Series. George Steinbrenner may have owned the team for as long a time, but he got his rings, plenty of them. And Los Angeles Kings fans deserve their hockey title (if only Marty McSorley had been using a legal stick late in the third period in the one Stanley Cup they reached), having been in that league forever without success. Same with the Detroit Lions.
Or you can say there is no deserve, which many have and I agree with. Steinbrenner certainly bought his title, and by paying more than anybody else he not only earned the most money in baseball (the rich get richer) but he also put himself in the best position to win. But I don’t think “deserve” applies. If anything, Steinbrenner deserves to lose. He is at the forefront of owners fighting revenue sharing, which has led to parity (and massively improved television ratings) for the NFL and the NBA. So what those folks saying Steinbrenner deserves his title are really saying is that New York deserves a title, because being in the biggest city in the coutry all but guarantees the most revenue with which to pay for the most expensive players. I disagree. I think Steinbrenner has been bad for baseball as a whole (although not baseball in New York) and baseball is lagging further behind its major competition because of Steinbrenner.
But it’s not as though my opinion matters. Those who have the gold, make the rules.