Spectator sports bore me. Or worse. Basketball's presumed attractions mystify me; abnormally tall people running back and forth throwing a ball in the hoop. Who cares? I mean, beyond those tens of millions who succumb to March madness? Hockey is basketball played on skates, with alarming assaults and flailing sticks thrown in. Football, as we Americans so chauvinistically call it, is incomprehensible to the uninitiated and so brutal that that victory seems to go to the teams with the fewest injured. I loved playing real football -- as the world knows it -- but watching a game is a personal cure for insomnia ... although, it must be admitted, 99.44% of the world clearly disagrees with me. But there you have it.
But baseball! There's a game! One to be savored, full of intricacies and fascinations for the most discerning of fans. Well, okay, maybe not, but still, I confess to an inordinate fondness for the sport. But even there, the political influences; a populist heart must lead any conscientious fan to an intractable antipathy for the New York Yankees. Save for those few benighted souls who hail from Gotham, how could anybody respect a team which so perfectly exemplifies the arrogance of wealth?
Over the past 13 seasons, the Yankees have lavished nearly $1.6 billion on their players, an amount far in excess of any other team. The imbalance is so severe that just one Yankee pinch hitter from Thursday's game (he didn't even play yesterday) is paid nearly a third of the combined salary for the opposing team.
Yet here's the rub: the Yankees barely reached the playoffs this year, and have done about as poorly for the past two years. As I write, they trail their comparatively impoverished (stress the word "comparatively" -- no contemporary major leaguer has any grounds for financial complaint!) two games to none in the first round of the playoffs despite a payroll over three times their opponent's, and stand in danger of being ignominiously dispatched tomorrow night into the netherworld of the off-season.
Better, it's not just the Yankees this year. Which populist amongst us cannot be smiling because not only is the team ranked 22nd in payroll (Cleveland) leading the team ranked first, but the team ranked 23rd (Arizona) is leading a team with a payroll 62% greater (Chicago) and the team ranked 26th (Colorado) is leading a team paid 66% more (Philadelphia) ... and in all three cases, the David is leading its Goliath two games to none (Colorado and Arizona have subsequently swept the Phillies and Cubs).
Baseball. There's a sport.
Note: this was originally posted on ketches, yaks & hawks 7 October 2007
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2 comments:
No no no no: hockey is SOCCER with skates. And big shorts. And fewer teeth.
And is utterly incomprehensible to a native Californian (and don't bother telling me that there's some team with muscular ducks in the town where I grew up)
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