(Above: I took this in 1987 just before a Yanks-ChiSox game after having spent the day in the Wrigley bleachers. I love this photo as it captures the look and feel of my favorite ballpark–Old Comiskey Park. This place was so out of time it just felt like it had been there FOREVER, you know? You want ghosts? This place had the Blacksox and the first all star game and a lot of Negro League championship ball. Jimmy Foxx hit balls over the roof. Veeck patrolled the seats with the beer and the smokes and the stories. Losing this joint for the place that followed was a true loss. It was up there with Wrigley and Fenway, and, I suspect if the Palehose were better through the years, the romance would have been there and the place would still be standing and looking snappy like Fenway does now. Oh the vissicitudes of baseball.)
The latest craze among Yankee fans has been to bash the Mets non-stop about firing Willie
Randolph, because [chuckle], he is a YANKEE, get it? The Mets dissed a Yankee and for that, they must be made to pay. It’s the same thing that those 12-year old boy, homing Yankee fan writers at the NY Post have been doing–bashing the Mets relentlessly for days and days and days.
Listen up, I was a Mets fan who jumped ship when the Randolph era bungled its way into expensively underachieving year 3. Firing this clearly in-over-his-head, incompetent manager was a GOOD thing! A step in the right direction. Now, Minaya must go and the Wilpons, who preside over this joke, must sell. THEN, things may turn around and for less than the piggy payroll that they have going now.\
Was Willy fired in a “bad” way? Hmm…he was fired, right? And he gets to collect his 4 million dollars for sitting home? Then I don’t feel bad for him. The team that is STILL paying him all that money has the right to fire him. And the funny thing is that Yankee fans, who are supposed to be all incensed, don’t seem to recall 5 hirings of Billy Martin and Yogi fired after 16 games. It pissed Yogi off so much, that he stayed away from Yankee Stadium for 15 years! THAT’S OK, got it? That’s George being George. And when George fired Torre after losing to Detroit and then took it back–THAT wasn’t rude or demeaning in any way. But let the Mets fire a nicompoop manager and we are the bad guys. This is major Yank bias going on people. Don’t swallow this kool-aid.
Look, I’ve said it before, Willie is a gentleman and everyone’s idea of a very nice guy. But he isn’t a major league manager! And he had 4 years and the biggest payroll in the NL for most of it to prove to us what he could do. What did he do? Blew the series to the Cards, a ridiculously inferior team. The Mets could easily be wearing those 2006 rings. Then in 2007, he presided over a collapse that had people taking about the 64 Phils and 51 Dodgers. For Pete’s sake, he was lucky to collect another 4 million from the Stems! He should hold a press conference and THANK them! Why was he back? He clearly lost the team a LONG time ago.
So, Yankee fans, next time you want to CRY (your favorite sport when you’re not beating up on a 30 million dollar team with your 200 million dollar team) about this, YOU HIRE HIM! Yea, that’s right, YOU hire Willie, if he’s so darn good! Plug him in, pal, I’d like to see it.
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The other big Yankee Lie: Teams like the Pirates just pocket the revenue sharing and luxury tax money (Yank fans think this is THEIR money) and don’t spend it on the team and then finish in the 2nd division for 15 years straight. I heard this very comment from some grown men who should know better. All the Yank fans somehow have gotten this one from the mother ship.
Ok, I’m going to break it down for you. Here goes:
If a guy has a business and spends 50 dollars annually on it, and you hand him 10 dollars and tell him to spend it the next year and he spends somewhere around 50 dollars again the next year: How do you know he spent or didn’t spend, your money?
You ask him: “Hey, did you spend my 10 dollars on the business?”
He says, “Yes, those were the first 10 dollars I spent this year”.
How the heck could you ever dis-prove that? You can’t. No, no, you can’t. Stop that, Yankee fans. He says he spent it. What? You say that he should be spending 60 then? He tells me that he wanted to spend 40 and with your 10, he’s back up to 50 so thanks very much.
My point is, for those of you catching up, you can’t mandate how much another man can spend on HIS candy store. It’s HIS business. It’s HIS money.
Look at it from his point of view. He can spend 40 million and finish 5th or he can spend 50 million and finish 5th, ok maybe 4th, but his revenue stream will be the same. The extra cash isn’t enough to raise revenue streams because these clubs are in ridiculously small markets. They KNOW (and are right) that the extra money is basically THROWN AWAY. So you Yankee fans want to give a guy 10 million bucks and then tell him to throw it in the trash. Ain’t going to happen.
And you Yankee fans only want to give the guy the revenue share (well, you don’t want to give anyone anything, let’s be honest) so you can go out and spend 200 million and somehow claim that since they got 10 million to fight back with, then somehow what you do is sporting. What you do is horses**t–but it ain’t sports or sporting. It’s a rigged deck. A joke. An abomination. That guy in Pittsburgh is supposed to run out like a jackass and spend 10’s of millions of dollars and maybe, just maybe, every 10 years or so, he might make it into the playoffs where is sure to find, the Yankees–ready to bust him over the head with their 200 million dollar juggernaut. But somehow, that is the Yankee fan view of the world. Woo boy.
The only way to let the Yankees and teams like that (well, no team is ever really like that) spend the money generated by their ridiculously huge market, is to make them have to win more ball games. Adjust the standings for payroll. For every 7 million dollars over the league mean, you have to win 1 more game. Then, I’d say to Pittsburgh, sure, the 10 million in revenue share might make sense, but the way it is now? Stick it in the bank and tell George (and you’re not lying), “…sure, that was the first 10 million we spent this year.”
