Fall classic: the Yankees lose again…!

Author’s Note: On Monday night, in “The House that Ruth Built”, the New York Yankees showed themselves – for the third-consecutive year – to be the biggest and most expensive losers in the history of professional sports. But instead of searching my brain for new ways to express my schadenfreude, I shall pay homage to their phenomenal futility by merely reprising an October 2006 article – with modifications.

___________________

I’m not much of a Baseball fan. In fact, I pay no attention to the sport until after Labor Day – when Division Championships begin in earnest. And even then, I find highlights on ESPN SportCenter enough to satisfy my interest.

But the New York Yankees transcend sport. In fact, they make news almost as much for their behavior off the field as they do for their play on it. And, where some players on the team are covered in the media like Hollywood stars, their spendthrift boss, George Steinbrenner, outshines them all as the biggest celebrity in the Yankees organization.

After all, the drama Steinbrenner produces with his trading players and firing (or at least threatening to fire) coaches has become such a winter saga that it rivals the entertainment value of any soap opera that airs on daytime TV. And frankly, no game this playoff season could match the suspense Steinbrenner incited last week – when he declared that if the Yanks lose to the Indians, their beloved coach, Joe Torre, would be toast!

Talk about creating performance anxiety: in coach and players alike….

But no storyline in As the Yankees Turn provides more yearly fascination than watching Steinbrenner spend obscene amounts of money to lure the best players to New York only to have them play – during the critical October pennant race and World Series – as if they were bought with phony dollar bills (and were just giving him what he paid for…).

What Boss Steinbrenner’s money does buy: April through September.
What it doesn’t buy: October, which apparently isn’t for sale at any price — even for close to a quarter-billion dollars. [ESPN.com]

Of course, for those of us who can’t stand Steinbrenner’s money-can-buy-me-anything attitude, every October since the Yankees won their last World Series in 2000 has delivered unbridled glee.

For example, he acquired Alex Rodriguez (seen here, perhaps portending his fate…too) by assuming the fool’s burden of his unprecedented 10-year $252 million contract in 2003. Although, to be fair, he was not alone in thinking that this addition to a team already comprised of the game’s highest-paid players would make the Yankees perennial champions.

Yet the only return Steinbrenner has gotten on his investments (during the do-or-die playoffs) is a series of spectacular losses.

Therefore, it seemed the fulfilment of poetic prophecy when the Yanks (with a 2007 team payroll of $190 million) were practically swept out of the playoffs on Monday by the Cleveland Indians (with a team payroll of only $62 million) – after losing the best of 5 games 1 to 3. And the irony was not lost on me that this outcome virtually mirrored last year’s ignominious season ender to the lowly Detroit Tigers….

Of course, their loss immediately launched sports scribes and fans into what’s becoming a fall classic of handwringing about how a team of players who are paid so much can produce so little. Indeed, in this respect, the Yankees may be in the incipient throes of a curse that will surpass the one that plagued the Boston Red Sox with 86 years of playoff futility until they won again in 2004.

Meanwhile, the prospect of another 80 years without a World Series Championship may compel even some hard-core Yankee fans, so accustomed to winning, to change their allegiances to subway rivals – the New York Mets….