Get rid of the Yankees not the Twins!

[Up-State]

http://espn.go.com/columns/ratto_ray/1275394.html

The bottom-feeders aren't the problem

By Ray Ratto
Special to ESPN.com


Over the last few weeks, our pal Bud Selig has been cuffed around pretty good into the public and virtual prints, either for being dim, crazy, evil or just plain weird.


Perhaps Bud Selig is looking at contraction from the wrong end.
After all, you are known by the company you keep, and he spends way too much time with baseball owners. It's enough to give a normal person the creeps.

But let's be fair here. Selig may only be attacking baseball's perceived problems from the wrong end.

He sees contraction as a clear solution to, well, something, right? Yes.

He sees the problem as being teams that spend far beyond the level of their partners, correct? You go, Bud.

So he wants to take out teams that don't generate enough revenue, got it?

Well, no.

It seems clear to any linear thinker that Bud is being asked to attack the problem from the wrong end.

What needs to be done in the area of contraction is to lop from the top. The Yankees. The Dodgers. The Red Sox and Diamondbacks and Mets and Braves. They're plainly spending too much on their playing personnel and must be destroyed for the good of society.

We know this is what Bud would much rather do because of the way his own team, the Milwaukee Brewers, are run. And it is Bud's team despite his protestations that his daughter Wendy is in charge, because Bud still holds the largest numbers of shares in the team. The shares might be in a blind trust (which means that nobody is blind to this arrangement, and explains why Bud has so much trouble engendering trust), but they exist nonetheless.

The Brewers lay low in the salary lists, in part because the team doesn't generate a lot of revenue, and is also up to its neck in outstanding bank loans. We can only assume that this is the way Bud wants his franchise run; otherwise, it would be the Brewers rather than the Twins on the contraction list, new stadium or no new stadium.

Thus, if every team were operated like the Brewers -- trying to keep costs in line, not working the upper end of the free agent market, finishing in the lower half of whatever division they happen to be in -- there wouldn't be these frightful disparities between the haves and haven'ts.

And since, by Bud's calculations, there are fewer haves, it makes more sense to take them out than to pick a haven't here and a haven't there.

In other words, the Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox, Mets, Braves and Diamondbacks.

Those are the top six teams that don't get it. They spend liberally, some to better effect than others, but their interest in the product on the field is clearly detrimental, plainly out of step with the "new" model ball team.

In addition, four of those six teams don't have new stadiums with which to create fabulous new streams of revenue in the Milwaukee model. Fenway Park is almost 90 years old, Yankee Stadium 78, Dodger Stadium 40 and Shea Stadium 38. This inexcusable architectural sloth can't be countenanced in the modern era, and these teams cannot continue to cruise on the backs of the hard-working and properly frugal teams who are saving baseball for all of us.

And finally, these are the teams least interested in progressive talent-leveling concepts like revenue sharing, salary caps and other initiative depressors. George Steinbrenner, for example, wouldn't blink a bit if he never had to bring the Royals, Tigers, Devil Rays, Blue Jays, Angels, Rangers, White Sox or Twins into town ever again, nor would he miss the road trips to Kansas City, Detroit, Tampa, Toronto, Anaheim, Arlington, Chicago or Minneapolis.

George, in short, is not a team player. He's not helping at all.

Neither, for that matter, is Rupert Murdoch, or whoever ends up owning the Red Sox. And let's not even start with Jerry Colangelo, who owns the Diamondbacks and whines about little things like being forcibly moved to the American League minutes after winning the World Series.

Such ingratitude must be dealt with on the administrative level.

But it won't be. Bud prefers to lead on the basis of a thousand paper cuts rather than one swift and well-aimed blow.

Or in this case, six. The ones who are out of step with The Plan. And if that won't do it, then the next targets would be the Orioles, Cubs, Rockies and Indians. Eventually everyone will be on the same page, revenue/expense-wise -- that is, if Bud is willing to take the one bold step and whack the split ends rather than the stalk.

We eagerly await developments.

Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.
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I can't tell if this guy is being sarcastic or is actually in favor of contracting the Yankees.

He did put alot of thought behind it and he does write for espn, the anti-yankee network.

[B5andYankeeFan]

Can't the law provide exceptions for killing assholes like this?

Yeah... contract the Yankees, the team with the richest history in sports. Anti-Yankee ESPN Scumbag.

[Up-State]

Originally posted by B5andYankeeFan
Can't the law provide exceptions for killing assholes like this?

Yeah... contract the Yankees, the team with the richest history in sports. Anti-Yankee ESPN Scumbag.

Is this guy actually thinking this crap out load? I thought it was just me. I almost fainted when I read this horsecrap.

Does espn have editors over there or what? Or do they just let these morons write whatever pops into their tiny brains.

[DannyAlmonte]

Great idea, let's eliminated the Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox, Mets, Braves and Diamondbacks, aka the teams with the best fans and highest revenue, that keep baseball alive. What an idiot this guy is, I am glad he is not the commissioner of baseball.

[wexy]

If this guy thinks that Yankee Stadium is "architectural sloth"
we know he's an idiot who probably thinks the Vet is a wonder
of the world.

[KMac]

I took the article as a joke and actually thought it was pretty funny.

[YanksRockMan]

Originally posted by wexy
If this guy thinks that Yankee Stadium is "architectural sloth"
we know he's an idiot who probably thinks the Vet is a wonder
of the world.

It should probably be the Trop.

[YankeeFan00]

Originally posted by KMac
I took the article as a joke and actually thought it was pretty funny.

Me too, he couldn't have been serious nobody is that stupid.

[B5andYankeeFan]

Danny's right. Know what we should do... get rid of teams that play in cities where baseball is not much more than a big joke to the rest of us, anyway. The Mariners and the Diamondbacks.

[nicky_d]

Sarcasm is a form of humor, and is used extensively as a literary tool........For all of you who were actually angry over this article, that's what you get for cutting English class..........

[andy14]

You all don't ACTUALLY think he's being serious?!?! There are about a million and one sarcastic articles out like these on contraction and they all make me crack up. He's so obviously bashing Selig here. I, personally, thought this was a really funny article. But that's just me...

[NYYFAN]

It's a joke and at the same time reflecting on the problem of high revenue vs low revenue teams.

Lets face it, it's a real problem. Just not our problem...

[KLJ]

Originally posted by nicky_d
Sarcasm is a form of humor, and is used extensively as a literary tool........For all of you who were actually angry over this article, that's what you get for cutting English class..........

i couldn't agree more.. this article is funny as ................... only proves that some people here just like to be pissed off at anyone outside the family..

[Up-State]

It is sarcasm, but it's also funny how much the Yankees are always centered-in on any baseball discussion.
here is another of Ray's articles that I love:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Yanks haven't changed; we have

By Ray Ratto

It has come to America's attention that the New York Yankees are now America's team. This comes as something of a surprise to the Yankees, of course, given that they have changed very little in the last five years.

The notion of the Yankees as freshly lovable is understandable given the events of a month ago. At this point, there's nothing wrong with finding a reason to cozy up to a grand old institution like the Yankees.

But it also shows that the Yankees haven't changed a bit, while we have changed plenty.

Take, for example, Derek Jeter. He is no different now than he has ever been, but that one moment in Game 3 of the divisional series against Oakland has suddenly turned him into a national icon of sorts.

Even in Oakland, the common wisdom is that Jeter took the A's out of the series with that single flip, even though the facts suggest otherwise. In beating up the A's for blinking, the Bay Area perspective is that everything turned on Jeter, when it was Oakland's own ridiculous performance in Game 4 that buried the A's.

But hey, people want easy explanations in these uncertain times, and the Yankees are as simple a concept to understand as there is.

For those who see that money is the solution to all baseball matters, well, the Yankees pay more than anyone else.

For those who believe that adversity is the crucible that makes a champion, the Yankees fit that bill, from Joe Torre's personal and family health issues to the World Trade Center outrage.

For those who like the one-man-defines-an-era theory, there's Jeter. For those who like the one-unsung-hardnose-defines-an-era theory, there's Paul O'Neill. For those who think pitching explains everything, there's Mike Mussina, Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera and Roger Clemens.

See? The Yankees find a way to fit every preconception you can offer up, and they've been doing it for six years now.

The Yankees offer comfort to those seeking it mostly because they're the brand name of the time. You think baseball these days, you think the Yankees. You may flirt with Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire, or Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn, but come October, all there is, is the Yankees.

They are the equivalent of the "Best New Musical Group" Grammy winner that, in fact, has been together for 10 years. They are telling us more about us than they are about themselves, because they told themselves everything they needed to know in 1996, and again in 1998, 1999 and 2000.

Of course, their series with the Mariners is still in the nascent stage, which means that their reputation is still in play. The Mariners want to be the new Yankees, the improvement on the 1998 model that was the improvement on every model preceding it.

But their shaky series with Cleveland, and their routine dispatching in Game 1 of the ALCS, put the Yankees back front and center. They have, through rep alone, marginalized the Braves, Diamondbacks and Mariners as interlopers, even though this may be the most vulnerable Yankee team of the last six years.

There are story lines still to be played out, of course. There is sentiment in the top left corner for Ichiro Suzuki, Hit Master. In the bottom right corner, there are the Braves who never die. In the bottom left, there are the D-Backs and their two-man pitching staff.

But the Yankees just, well, look the part, and there is a sense that people want someone to look the part as much as possible these days.

That wasn't always true. The Yankees were the team everyone liked to hate because they were, well, the Yankees. That's a familiar stance for them as well. They have been the Yankees for a long time, after all.

The Yankees haven't changed. Everyone else has.

So the Yankees' challenge is to maintain the look they have worn for the past five years. That, they're up to. They may not win the World Series, but if not, they'll know why.

If they do, though, people won't have the energy to hate them, just because they only have so much room for that emotion these days. The Yankees serve merely by being the Yankees.

Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.

[penguin4]

There's a genre for these type of sarcastic articles. It's called "satire."

Gosh, some people can't see the word "Yankees" used in a negative context without taking it personally! Meanwhile, if the same type of article used the word "Red Sox" in its place, they'd completely see the humour in it. Go figure.

[Shel]

Originally posted by nicky_d
Sarcasm is a form of humor, and is used extensively as a literary tool........For all of you who were actually angry over this article, that's what you get for cutting English class..........

I'm not quite sure what was funnier...the article itself or those first few indignant responses to it.

[jpao89]

As for the original article, it was sacarsm. I read Ratto's stuff regularly on ESPN.com and have read some of the chats with him. He is mostly sarcastic. Anyway, the point he was making was a great one. Namely, Bud Selig wants to make baseball better by making the best teams worse. Bud Selid wants to make all the teams no better than the least common denominator. Of course, before he does that, he wants to eliminate the worst of the worst so that the least common denominator will no longer be the Expos, but the Brewers.

In a way, Ratto was lauding the Yankees etc. for striving for excellence on the field wihile the other owners are striving for purely profit. I have always wondered, are the Yankees sucessfull due to their money, or do they have money due to their success?