@##%^*! Yankees

I'm going to start off by saying that this post is by a biased writer. I'm a Boston fan. I was lukewarm growing up and then got really into Boston when I was living in Connecticut. I lived just to the north of the Munson-Nixon line where it can get real divisive between Yankees and Red Sox fans.

So the Yankees now have Alex Rodriguez (I don't like ARod; he has a name). Of course as a Boston fan, this irks me to no end. I disagreed with the idea of going after him in the first place. Maybe Manny was unhappy, but if he is, you go after an outfielder. Nomar is good enough that you don't need to throw him out in favor of someone a little better, more hyped and a lot more expensive. Then the deal falls through and the Yankees suddenly have Rodriguez show up on the radar. Would they have gone after him if Boston hadn't tried, probably not. Idiots.

Several sports writers have been going on how this is a good thing for baseball. That baseball is best when the Yankees are strong. I don't really agree with that. Is it better when you have a team to hate like New York or Atlanta? Sure. We love the underdog and love to hate the really good team. But you can't tell me that its a good thing when any one team dominates the sport to a point where it starts to suffocate. When you start to see the same team all the time and the result never changes, people get tired of it.

I do give the Yankees teams of the late 90's their due. Those were great teams, but they were also home grown teams. Paul O'Neil, Scott Brosius, and several other names that people just don't remember anymore. These were good players, not great players, who worked their way through the ranks and united as a team. They suffered the terrible defeats of the early and mid 90's and then started geling. But players started retiring and they were replaced by highly paid stars. New York seemed to be the place to go to grab yourself a ring before you retired (see LA Lakers, Colorado Avalanche, and Detroit Red Wings). Now, you have a northeast black hole where high-priced, over-hyped players come to die. I include Boston in this, because they have to keep up with the Yankees. So they grab Curt Shilling and pursue Alex Rodriguez, which started this whole rant.

Now someone is going to point out that in the past three years, the big spending Yankees and Red Sox didn't win the world series, so it really isn't a bad thing. Its true, they didn't. But the Yankees did make the 2001 and 2003 series and could have won them both. Because they've been on the cusp, it continues to fuel the idea that they just need one more player, one more player. So the small market teams are left in the cold. You grow good talent, but right when its ready to go, some big market team sweeps in and steals it away. So we constantly give ourselves pats on the back for how good teams like Minnesota and Kansas City do and then smile politely when they fall just short again to the big market clubs.

The only people who want dynasties are the fans of those teams. I personally think parity is a very good thing. Does it dilude the sport a bit? Yes, but I'm willing to take a year or two of average play once in a while, if it means my team can get itself back on its feet and have a realistic shot of being competitive next year. I don't see that in baseball. The Yankees, Red Sox, Giants, or Braves may not win the world series this year, but I think the trend is only going to get worse, until we see total domination by just a handful of teams. Basketball has already moved in that direction and baseball is close behind.

So Mr. Rodriguez, you can now have your cake and eat it too, but be warned, decay and death are on the horizon.