I wasn’t going to write anything about the Yankees, but I have to. I can’t take it any more. Are people seriously excited that the Yankees won the World Series? A true baseball fan can’t be happy for them….right? The World Series trophy cost $201.5 million this year. Let’s be honest. Since MLB doesn’t have a salary cap, we do not have the right to complain. If the Yankees want to spend more money than the Marlins, Padres, Pirates and Nationals combined, then they have the right to do so. I know all the Yankees fans will say that the Sox have the 4th highest payroll at $122m, but that is an $80 million difference! Take away Sabathia ($15m), Teixeira ($20m), Matsui ($13m), Burnett ($16.5m) and Rivera ($15m) and let’s see how they fare in the playoffs. I also don’t understand the comments like ‘we had good team chemistry’ or ‘this is a special group.’ No kidding! You have the best players in the league on the same team! And the result….a $201.5 million trophy. Congrats!
I still can’t get over what happened at Fort Hood yesterday. There are always some crazy news stories, but this one is almost unbelievable. I visited a friend of mine (Couture) at Ford Hood a few years ago. I met some awesome people while I was there and I hope all of them are OK. It’s sad to say, but I’m glad my friend was safe in Iraq yesterday and not at Fort Hood. What has the world come to!?
My friends from work decided to go to Fuddruckers for lunch today. Even though I wasn’t eating, I went with them for the ride. Has anyone ever been to Fuddruckers? I felt like I was in the dirrrty south. It was absolutely disgusting! I’m not trying to be a health freak or anything, but everything you order there is basically a heart attack on a plate. One kid (you know who you are!) got a 1/2 lb burger, a regular coke, fries and brownie. For lunch! Someone else got a burger and then smothered their fries with melted nacho cheese. I couldn’t believe it. I listened to them moan and groan on the way back while I was eating my apple. To be honest, I was kind of jealous. I would bathe in a tub of nacho cheese right now………….with fries.
Mike's Marathon Blog 
I spoke to Barry three days ago and he informed me that all his buddies, currently stationed at Ft. Hood, are fine, which is a huge relief. Anywho good luck man with all of this shit.
The unabated and unforgiving question that remains with the Yanks, however, is would it be this much fun to hate them if their spending habits were more Padre-like?
Since 2000, we, as Red Sox fans, have enjoyed an amazing run of expensive pinstripe futility. It began when Mo Rivera gave up that bloop single to Juan Gonzalez in 2001, continued through Josh Beckett and company dominating them in the 2003 World Series, “The Steal” and Big Papi bringing us back from the dead in 2004, sustaining throughout a delightfully bizarre run of big name free agents pouring in from everywhere and anywhere, all the while Brian Cashman convincing the media every bad move he made (Kevin Brown, really?) was Steinbrenner’s fault and not his own. Imagine if they had signed Vlad Guerrero instead of misanthrope Sheffield in the winter of 2003? The story Cashman has you believe is he wanted Vlad, but the boss had a personal relationship with a suddenly rejuvenated Sheffield (HGH) and demanded he be inked immediately. (If this had been Theo, the guerilla suit would have come off the hanger and he would not have returned until he was assured all baseball decisions would be made by him and not some executive snake-oil salesman like Larry Luchinno or Hal Steinbrenner) At the start of the World Series in 2003, the Yankees payroll ($181M) was almost $120 million richer than the Marlins ($63M), which made it that much more fun to watch when a team of teenagers managed by a crusty geriatric hired halfway through the season beat them in the house that Ruth built in 6.
That is what made it so fun to hate the Yankees during this time. They were a corporate, unfeeling all-star team made up of overpaid hardball divas more concerned with the size of their bank accounts than winning. Jeter couldn’t hide his disgust for the people around him. Think back to the late 90s Yankees; the dynasty Yankees. Yeah I hated Chuck Knoblach and remember fondly the amazing run he had of not being able to throw to first base from 15 feet away, but did you really hate Scott Brosius? Mo Rivera? Bernie Williams? Maybe you did, but not in the sense that you hated Randy Johnson, A-Rod, and Kevin Brown. As Red Sox fans, it became way more fun to hate these guys because they weren’t true Yankees. They were mercenaries for hire, the French Foreign Legion of Major League Baseball. Imagine that. We were deciding who was a true Yankee and who wasn’t. We won two titles. The earth had truly stopped rotating on its axis.
Then the 2009 Red Sox came along. Created in a Bill James laboratory, they were methodical at best, boring at worst. They looked like an American League version of the 2004 Cardinals. I’m still not sure Jason Bay and JD Drew have been formally introduced. Touted as a blue collar team by the sycophantic Boston sports media, no one but Youk and Pedroia looked the least bit concerned after a loss. Watching the Angels bench compared to ours in the ALDS was a perfect microcosm of the season. It made me long for the days when Trot Nixon would throw a bat at a pitchers head because he thought he remembered this guy hitting Nomar two years ago in a spring training game. The Angels looked like little leaguers, hanging on every pitch. The Sox looked like they were wondering how hard it would be to get a tee time at Pebble next week. We have become, to a degree, the mid-00 Yankees that we all hated so much.
The 2009 Yankees weren’t exactly the 2004 Sox, but lets admit that they acted more like a baseball team than we did and in the process, shed the reputation of being an all-star team that didn’t care about winning. The $200M payroll finally paid off and if you think it is bad now, it will only get worse. Wait until Jason Bay and Roy Halliday are in pinstripes. Hope Clay Bucholz is better at pitching than he is at stealing laptops.
How did it come to this, forced to watch Kate Hudson celebrate number twenty seven while we hope Lars Anderson starts hitting bombs so we can move Youk back to third and have someone to protect V-Mart in the three hole next year? Did someone say Manny? Yes, please.
hahahahahah hahhaha the last sentence.. hahahaha