I'm a Red Sox fan but I'm also a baseball fan too and the Red Sox thru their payroll have become a version of 'Yankeelite' IMO. The Sox were always a big market team but there was enough disparity with their payroll (as compared to the yankees) where I could root for the home team with only a slight guiltly feeling. Traditionally their payroll was comparable to the Mets, Orioles, and Dodgers. Now with a payroll of $170M+ I find it really difficult to take interest and can't argue against fans that take issue with both the yankees and sox as being bad for the game.
If you look closer... you'll see the Dominican Republic, mexico, Japan, Canada, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and probably a good many more places being represented. Mexico is next on the docket to get a franchise I think.
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Being a yankee fan is so easy. Everybodys a fan of the Yankees cause they win a lot. Even people in places that have an MLB team! Homers they aint. Deserters, they are. IF theyre not supporting the local ball club.
Ive much more respect for those clubs who DONT buy championships like the Yankees, perennially, yet contend and win them by lower league management and player cultivation instead.
I'd bet too, if they could, they would however.
Growing up I was always a Big Red Machine fan. Their farm team was in my area and they were too, during the off season, or Grapefruit league play. Thereafter it was the Mets, Dodgers, and in the 90s, the Braves. Wanna talk frustration lets talk Braves baseball. Sorry cub fans, I do feel your pain.
For that matter, any real fan of baseball would be a fan of the senior league not the juniors. I much prefer a game where EVERYONE puts a bat in his hands. Thats not how the team in my area plays, so Im by default a junior league rooter. Neither do I go to the games and wear some other clubs colors and root for them. Its too bad teams like the Yankees & Sox, were relegated to the AL when baseball decided to split up the burgeoning territory. Yeah. Too bad.
If you have a team even if it just plain sucks it is your team. Dont be a traitor and show up only for your fav or perhaps, displaced former squad. Fair weather fans are a dime a hundred. Despite the team, amongst all the rhetoric and casual loyalties, theres the game itself! A great ball game does not require some former allegiance to one side or another, to be great.
Its going to be very interesting this year . Very interesting indeed! The Yankees even with CC may well come up short in spite of him and Jetter! Funny to say that with 40+ games to go, but the Yankees arent the only team which can worry you, or contend outright for the title.
The saddest thing now is the demise of Big George S. George did things both to & for baseball and his area of residence. Some quite incredible things in fact. Folks should take note of that where George hung his hat was always on his short list when it came to giving back and being supportive of it. Publicly and anonymously. Mr Steinbrenner devoted himself to each area of his life his family, his enterprises, and his home town . Even though that area had another team in place in recent years. On the occasions I had to speak with him, one to one, he never seemed pressed for time, nor anything but interested in me and the topic (s) we discussed. Hes surely going to be missed around here.
Dan -- I too was a kid listening to that series on a transistor radio, in Coney Island, Brooklyn, NY. If I recall correctly, in the three games the Yankees won they scored something like 16, 12, and 10 runs, while the Pirates scored near zero. The games the Pirates won were nail-biters, won by margins of 1 or 2 runs or so.
The climactic seventh game was back and forth, and I believe it was tied at 9 when Mazeroski hit his walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth. I believe it is still the only World Series ever played that went seven games and ended with a home run.
All told, one of the most memorable series ever played, regardless of which team one was rooting for.
Al I was 9 years old and lived in Pittsburgh at the time. We listened in the classroom on transistor radios when they first came out. Too bad the owners don't want to win anymore. Dan
Lost interest in baseball way back when they went on strike. I don't care much for football either, now that I think about it. But congratulations are in order.
Very happy here, as a long-time Yankee fan. Albeit exhausted, from three series worth of tense games, many extending late into the night.
Two comments re the perennial accusation that the Yankees buy their championships:
1)There are innumerable examples of teams that have spent a lot of money and gotten very poor results. Just look at this year's Mets, for starters.
2)If every team spent equally, and if each organization was run equally well (or poorly), then on average each of the 30 teams in baseball would win a title once every 30 years. That would seem to be an unlikely way to boost the sport's popularity (and its tv revenues), considering how much larger the fan population is for the teams from the major metropolitan areas.
Elizabeth -- Derek Jeter is still single! :) He's also (very deservedly) the team captain.
Yes, Yes, the Yankees bought another world series.
And MLB wonders why baseball, which used to be america's number one sport, is now america's number two sport, (WAAAAAYYYYY behind the NFL), and quickly sinking to number three behind the NBA. (And for me, they are number four, because I prefer hockey to MLB). Sad, huh?....
If you don't care for the cost of a championship, don't blame the Yankess for investing wisely. Blame all of baseball. Starting with the owners, whose practice of collusion empowered the players to resist a salary cap to satisy their own personal greed over the value of the game itself, while the fans fuel it all with their money. The Boss is just playing by the rules. BTW, I don't see the other franchises returning their share of luxury tax revenue in protest.
it just goes to show ya... Spend enough money and you can have about anything. I am glad however the Phillies lost.
Would have prefered to see the Rays win, but Kazmier held them back and so did major injuries... then the Angels & Cards tanked. So by default "yayyy George!".
Hoepfully some new pitching talent is on the horizon for the Rays next year, and maybe, Upton will grow up. Another pitcher worth his salt, along with no major injuries, and the Rays can get back into it.
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