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Yankee Doodle Ghastly
By: Alex Anderson

The weather turns brisk.  The ground freezes and my nose begins to run.  It can only mean one thing.  Spring is here.  Yes, spring semester of college.  Which means that soon it will be spring training in major league baseball.  I of course am getting especially excited about this, because, well I’m a fucking loser.  Yeah, I still like baseball.  Sure, football replaced it as our national pastime an indeterminate amount of time ago, but let’s face it.  Let’s all just for one moment, face the fucking facts.  And the facts are:

1.      Nearly 613,000 children ages 6 to 21 have some level of mental retardation and need special education in school (Twenty-fourth Annual Report to Congress, U.S. Department of Education, 2002).

2.      A mere 1 person ages 0 to 210 gives a fucking shit about whether or not something is or should be deemed our national pastime, let alone argue over which is the favorite of said nation, and even then, that person was a girl (Alex Anderson Annual Report to People Reading this Article Right Now, Psychonoble.com, 2007).

So keeping those all important facts in mind, I am going to proceed with giving my analysis of why sooner or later, we’re all fucked.  I know what you’re saying, “Alex why are you so worried about that asteroid the size of Texas that is hurdling towards our Earth? NASA totally has it covered, they’re sending up a team of drillers who are both really good at what they do (drilling) and also heartthrobs with effervescent charisma.”  Well, I can’t argue with that it seems to be the perfect solution.  But that only solves one problem.  The nagging and perplexing obstacle that is hurdling toward another MLB World Series championship is of much more concern to me.

“What obstacle is that Alex?” Said the same guy who previously set my concern of inevitable Armageddon to rest by suggesting we blow up a mega huge asteroid by landing on it, drilling into it’s core and leaving a shaken up bottle of Seven Up inside in order to split it in two.

Well creepy guy obsessed with half-rate Bruce Willis flicks, I’m talking about the New York Yankees.  I’m talking about the team that takes advantage of its major-market location more than any other team in the history of teams.  I’m talking about the team that has an incessant and insatiable thirst for post-season triumph.  I’m talking about the team that will go to any length to get a team that can win a championship right now, this fucking second, regardless of whether or not the season has even started yet.  I’m talking about the team that has a history of trading away major league quality talent for an overpriced veteran bum who has a history of accomplishment and a future in doubt, for the chance at winning immediately.

Remember that last sentence, not because it has any relevance, just as test to your short-term memory encoding capabilities!  Now, for as much as I hate the New York Yankees, who have been proven by scientists to be the devil’s progeny, I do have a soft spot for a small portion of their collective personality.  That being the horrible team transactions that come as a necessary and previously thought unavoidable consequence to trading away the talented youth of an organization.

For those unfamiliar, in all sports (but specifically baseball), talented youth of any franchise is of the utmost importance and priority.  Success comes with talent of all ages, but if a team can lock up a highlight reel of athleticism at a tender age, they have a chance at not just being good for a couple of seasons, but being good for a long fuck time.  Being good equals money for owners and also the satisfaction of winning, which has to be of some importance to people spending millions of dollars to get a team in the first place.

And so it is that good owners in many sports are the ones that make good calculated transactions in order to get a combination of youth and talent at a decent price.  The problem with baseball (which arguably, isn’t a problem) is that owners in big markets (the ones where the team will always have good attendance and more money flow, namely the coasts and Texas), can turn a profit while spending considerably more than the owners in smaller markets.  And as such, can afford to make less calculated and at times extortionate moves that in some leagues would be both a financial and on field death wish, because there is in effect, no cyclical forces in Major League Baseball that will turn gross overspending into something that will come back to kick organizations and owners in the ass.

So, while I do loathe the fact that the teams in smaller markets (like my Minnesota Twins) have a harder time luring big-name talent than say the larger market teams; I do enjoy watching these same large market teams shoot themselves in the stubs where their feet used be, before they were shot off by themselves, over and over again, by making the preppy but ill-thrifty-conscious transactions that define their organizations.  These usually read in papers something like this:

The New York Yankees have acquired Barry Bonds from the San Francisco Giants in exchange for Doug Mientkiewicz, a minor league pitcher and a player to be named later.  The Yankees will pick up all of Doug Mientkiewicz salary for the upcoming season.

Later it becomes public knowledge that the minor league pitcher happened to be Cy-Young winner Johan Santana and that the player to be named later was a guy that is basically Doug Mientkiewicz’ clone.  So if you’re keeping track the Yankees gave away two Doug Mientkiewicz’s and an outstanding pitcher for the expiring contract of an old bum that will hit a lot of home runs (Barry Bonds).  Now that exact trade didn’t happen, but similar deals have in the past.  Keeping with the hypothetical story here… The great thing for the Yankees is that they ended up winning the World Series that year.  The bad thing for the Yankees is that they gave up the players that made up the Giants team that beat them in the World Series the next year and will have a good chance at beating them again the next year, because of how young and good they are.  Meanwhile, Barry Bonds has his homerun record and is retired and petitioning with the Pete Rose to get into the Hall of Fame, to no avail.  Proving that baseball actually is cyclical in at least some sense, the great players on the Giants that are still making beans (that they were told were magical), will eventually lead to them leaving for more money, probably with who else, but the New York Yankees.

So why, this year, more than any other am I concerned about the loathsome Yankees hurdling toward another MLB World Series Championship?  Well, to put it as frankly as a Bronx running seedy Italian might, they’ve wised up.  They’ve fucking wised-up.  And now, we could all be screwed.  The one oversight of the beautiful formula of MLB parity that I drew up above was that we here in the smaller markets take the Steinbrenner follies  and overspending for granted.  Nowhere does it say that the larger market owners are obligated to make horrendous transactions.  So it becomes clear that with a little bit of rationality and composure, the Yankees could actually have the best of both worlds: bright young athletic prospects and the gaudy statistics of the overpaid veterans.

And I hate to break it to you world, but they’ve realized it.  Just take a look at some of the completely uncharacteristic and thereby smart as hell moves that the Yankees have made recently.  First of all on November 10^th of last year, they traded away 18 year veteran Gary Sheffield, a 38 year old beast who in his prime was as good as anyone, but who made $10,756,171 in this last year (probably a bit much), for right-handed pitchers Humberto Sanchez, Kevin Whelan and Anthony Claggett from the Detroit Tigers.  Who the hell are they?  They’re the two Doug Mientkiewicz’s and the Johan Santana.  To be more precise Humberto Sanchez is one of the top rated pitchers in all of minor league baseball, he’s built like C.C. Sabathia and his “stuff (what people close to baseball say in referring to one’s ability to make good pitches)” is just as beastly, all that at the age of 23.  Not bad, they traded away a big contract and got a nice youngster in return, but wait!- that’s not all, TELL ‘EM WHAT ELSE THEY’VE WON JOHNNY – well Kevin Whelan is another top prospect in the minor leagues and has good enough “stuff” say the scouts, to become a major league closer.  The other guy, Anthony Claggett, has had a great minor league run and looks poised to be a quality middle reliever in the big leagues – not exactly your run of the mill Doug Mientkiewicz (yes, I like saying that name a little too much).

So with that trade, it is easy to see why I am a little upset.  But recently, if you can imagine this, it got worse.  The news broke that the Yankees will trade away another 18 year veteran, this time a 43 year old pitcher, Randy Johnson, to the Arizona Diamondbacks.  Who will they get?  According to reports, relief pitcher Luis Vizcaino, a guy at the absolute brink of the pinnacle of his career, entering a window of about 4 years that could be outstanding.  Not to mention minor league right-handed pitchers Ross Ohlendorf and Steven Jackson, and shortstop Alberto Gonzalez all who have predictably respectable and maybe even luminous futures ahead of them (I didn’t want to analyze every prospect for sake of repetition, repetition.)

It is easy to say that I have no right to complain.  That George Steinbrenner can start wheeling and dealing if he so chooses.  That it was bound to happen sooner or later.  That there is nothing at all that can be done about old George getting his wits about him.  And that I cannot really refute.  However, I do have one more lone beef (as Eminem might rightly state it) with the whole situation.  That is that the teams on the other end of the deals still have free will.  While it is tempting to get that one big name on their team, they have to back down from the table.  They have to remain cool, calm, and yes the hat trick- collected.  My plea:  Stop making good short-term deals you idiots, so that the Yankees don’t run over the whole league for the next decade.  Small market owners could cross their arms and say, “harrumph!”  Then prattle off something, about needing to make deals with the Yankees regardless because they have a monopoly over most of the young talent as well, which is why they went there in the first place.  My rebuttal would simply be that there are other sources of these supposedly scarce resources, in other big markets who still have no clue as to what George is up to.  Look at Boston and Toronto, spending like mad they are.  Idiots.  They’re just poor-man’s versions of the titan of Big Apple baseball.  Steal their talent while you still can!

In closing, Detroit (those poor souls) think that they’re on the verge of World Series and as such, just traded away their future for a shot in the next two years and Arizona just traded away their youth for a guy that they had not even three years ago and let go, because I guess at the time, they didn’t need one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball.  Ugh.  So that is why as I prepare for another grueling semester of shitty full-time school and work, I stand petrified and appalled by the baseball transactions around me.  As if it wasn’t enough that the hated Yankees have a bright future with their stockpile of talent and a team that could win the Series already, it seems that they have their eye on Roger Clemens and just recently signed none other than, Doug Mientkiewicz (no seriously, they did).  The summation of it all is terrifying.  I am left with no choice but to sing my dreadful song of lurid detail…

You’ve  kicked me in my sacred cup,
You’ve engaged in violent sodomy.
Yankee Doodle please let up,
Yankee Doodle ghastly.