The New York Yankees: The worst Baseball team money could buy!

Admittedly, I’m not a big 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 to such a degree that they make news almost as much for their play on – as for their behavior off – the field. And where these players are covered in the media like Hollywood stars, their spendthrift boss, George Steinbrenner, outshines them all as the biggest celebrity in the Yankees organization.

Indeed, the serial saga of Steinbrenner hiring and firing players and coaches has become a soap opera as popular (especially amongst New Yorkers) as any that airs on daytime TV. And no storyline in this (As-the-Yankees-Turn) drama is more fascinating than watching him spend obscene amounts of money each year 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.

Of course, for those who revel in this storyline (as I do because I can’t stand Steinbrenner’s money-can-buy-me-anything attitude), every October since the Yankees won their last World Series in 2000 has provided unbridled schadenfreude. After all, despite buying players like Alex Rodriguez (left) – by assuming the fool’s burden of his unprecedented 10-year, $252 million contract for him to join a rooster already filled with the game’s highest-paid players, including Derek Jeter (right)) – the only return Steinbrenner has gotten on his investments (during the do-or-die playoffs) is a series of spectacular losses.

It was to our delight, therefore, that this October proved no different. Because just last weekend, the New York Yankees (with a team payroll of $195 million) were virtually swept out of the playoffs (1 to 3) in the first round by the Detroit Tigers (with a team payroll of only $83 million).

Of course, their loss immediately launched sports scribes and fans alike 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 rival the one that supposedly plagued the Boston Red Sox with 86 years of playoff futility until they won again in 2004.

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

New York Yankees, George Steinbrenner