Resolutions of a Yankee Fan

We may be a few weeks into 2009, but considering that the baseball season won’t start for a few more months, it’s never too late to get into the spirit of the season and make some resolutions for the coming year.   As someone that watches nearly every game, in order to avoid an exponential explosion in my blood pressure and stroking out by the time I’m thirty, I’ve made a list of decisions that hopefully will allow me to enjoy the Yankees a little longer.

1.  Yankee Stadium is gone. Last April, when confronted with the proposition of losing this cathedral of sport, I imagined that by now I would have fallen into a tailspin of despair from which there would be no return.  Like Jack fromLost, I would have grown an unkempt beard, drank whiskey straight from the bottle, and wondered around to various Little League fields, grabbing strangers and yelling, “We have to go back!”  Luckily, I have yet to show up drunk to work, and have as yet avoided a crippling addiction to pain-killers.

In retrospect, I handled this loss extremely well.  Like some modern day Gary Cooper, I said my goodbyes in September and never looked back.  Ultimately, sports is a business.  Sentimentality doesn’t rule the business world, money does.  Jerry Seinfeld was right, we no longer root for players, or people, or tradition, we support the laundry.  All we can really do as fans is accept the fact that our first home is gone and move on.

2.  Accept Alex Rodriguez for who he is. To paraphrase Dennis Green: A-Rod is who we thought he was!  I came to this conclusion just this past week as I was watching a basketball game at the middle school where I teach.  With just under a minute remaining in the game and our team trailing by one, I stood by as an eighth grader spotted up from behind the arc and calmly knocked down a three that gave us a lead we would never relinquish.  This was the same kid, who as a sixth grader had almost effortlessly drilled a forty-foot buzzer beater to win a similar game.  When push comes to shove and that spotlight shines on a player, some step their games up and rise to meet the challenge of the situation; others swing at the first pitch they see, ground out weakly to third base, run around on their wives, hook up with aging pop singers, and turn to Kabbalah.

By this point, we know what we’re going to get from the Yankees’ third baseman.  He’s going to hit around .300 or higher, drive at least 30 homeruns and knock in at least 100 runs.  Most of those homers and RBI will not occur in big spots late in the ball game.  The positive for Rodriguez: baseball games can be won with a home run in the third inning.  Two-run doubles that change a lead from three runs to five can be just as effective over a 162-game season as walk-off hits.  With the addition of Mark Teixeira and the return of Jorge Posada and Hideki Matsui, maybe A-Rod will be able to avoid the spotlight a little more.  Either way, when it does find him, I resolve to not expect much.  It’s simply not in his genes.

3.  Eat better and exercise. This is on everyone’s list.  Right, CC Sabathia?  Let’s just say that I have no desire to root for a 500 pound pitcher in 2011.

4.  The Yankees are and will always be considered the villains of the MLB.  Accept it.  Don’t apologize for it anymore.  People love to hate the Yankees.  Ted Leavengood just wrote a great piece on the evils of the Yankee empire .  I’m not going to touch the argument that big payroll equals a championship.  Below is a list of World Series teams since the Yankee dynasty ended in 2001, the winners are in bold.  You decide how big a role payroll plays in winning:

2001    Arizona Diamondbacks    New York Yankees
2002    San Francisco Giants              Anaheim Angels
2003    Florida Marlins                   New York Yankees
2004    St. Louis Cardinals                  Boston Red Sox
2005    Houston Astros                        Chicago White Sox
2006    St. Louis Cardinals            Detroit Tigers
2007    Colorado Rockies                     Boston Red Sox
2008    Philadelphia Phillies        Tampa Bay Rays

As a Yankee fan the past few years, every signing or big money trade that splashed across the front pages left me with pangs of guilt. Was it right that year after year the Yankees could afford to max out their credit and reload their lineup with talent from the free agent pool, while once proud teams like the San Francisco Giants were forced to sign a washed up Barry Zito for seven years at a price of $126 million?  Probably not, but until Major League baseball implements a more equal form of revenue sharing or a strict salary cap (which will not happen until someone assassinates Donald Fehr.  If you’re interested, I know a guy that will do it for cheap…), the Yankees organization is playing by the rules.  For the fourth year in a row, the Yankees drew over 4 million people, almost doubling the league average.  Last year, they paid $26.9 million to the luxury tax and finished third in their division.  On top of all that, the Yankees consistently are among the top draws on the road, routinely finishing in the top five in road attendance.  People come to the ballpark to either see their team win or to be there when the Yankees lose.  Ultimately, the fact that the Yankees operate the way they do creates income for Major League Baseball and its constituents.  It’s the MLB’s version of trickle down economics.

For as long as baseball has existed, there have been two types of owners: those that are interested in turning a profit and those that are focused on winning.  The former allowed teams like the St. Louis Browns to be glorified farm systems.  The latter do what it takes to provide exciting and successful products for their loyal fans.  At the end of the day, the Yankees make a ton of money from the YES Network, record setting attendance, and their New York market, but funnel most of it back onto the field.  Conversely, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the once proud franchise of Honus Wagner, Pie Traynor, Roberto Clemente, and Ralph Kiner, recently signed the winners of an Indian reality show , both of whom had never picked up abaseball before the competition.  As a fan, I would rather have a GM devoted to winning, like Brian Cashman, whose tenure under the Steinbrenners  has taken fifteen years from his life, than one looking to turn a buck.I’m done with the guilt.  The Yankees are too important to the fabric of the MLB to feelguilty.  In fiction, be it comics, movies, or literature, the quality of the hero tends to be defined by the quality of his or her villain.  The rule goes that the more nuanced and menacing the villain, the better the hero. Batman has grown into such a great character over the years, because his Rogues Gallery of the Joker, Two Face, Catwoman, and Ra’s al Ghul (to name a few) is the best in all of pop-culture.  Captain Kirk had Khan and the Klingons, Luke Skywalker had Darth Vader, Sherlock Holmes had Professor Moriarty, Indiana Jones had the Nazis, Bugs Bunny had Elmer Fudd, and the MLB has the Yankees.  If that’s the case, baseball’s future is in pretty good shape.