Guilty Pleasures, Sports Edition

One of the fascinating things about sports is how uppity they can make people.  It's always, "LeBron James this, Cameron Newton that, F--- those guys!"  I'm guilty of it, too (as in, f--- the Giants).  Nevertheless, I always loved the Onion's classic t-shirt that said, "The sports team from my metropolitan area is superior to the sports team from your metropolitan area."  That just about sums it up, really, as far as fans are concerned.  Add in a dash of George Bernard Shaw's classic line about patriotism,* and you've got it covered.

* "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."

With that in mind, I want to talk about three little things that secretly please me in modern sports.  These three things, I think, you will probably hate.  Odds are, if you listen to any sports radio, watch any ESPN, or talk to anyone at the local bar about sports, you're going to be shocked at what I'm about to say.  So here it goes.

1) I'm glad Derek Jeter won the Gold Glove.

Seriously, I am.  I love it.  A healthy part of that love is irony, of course, but I still think it's awesome.  I mean, I'm an advanced statistics nut, and I know in my heart that either Alexei Ramirez or Cliff Pennington actually deserve the award.  But I don't really care.  Going into an off-season where the single biggest mythological figure in modern baseball - the guy fifty years from now everyone will talk about in the way they talk about Joe DiMaggio now - has to sign a new contract with the single biggest mythological team in all of sports, there's something fitting about redeeming a sub-par season with a Gold Glove.

Really, the Gold Glove has been a meaningless award for a long time.  Rafael Palmeiro won one in a year where he played DH some 120 games.  Who cares who wins the Gold Glove?  Derek didn't win it for fielding, he won it for being Derek Jeter, and I respect that.  No, I love that.

2) I'm rooting for the Miami Heat this year.

That's right, the Miami Heat, starring the most hated trio in basketball: LeBron James, Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade.  You know what, though?  I've watched a couple Heat games so far this year - more than I've watched Nuggets games - and just love watching these guys.  Oh, they'll have (already have had) their problems, but it's so much fun to see so much talent on the floor all at once.  The NBA is such a silly league already, so I'm not particularly worried about the Heat "ruining" the game.  On the contrary, I find this experiment - putting three superstars together and seeing what happens - fascinating and engaging.  I want to see it work.  I want to see the Heat win 70 games, and romp all over the Lakers in the NBA Finals.  I don't think that will happen, but wouldn't it be cool if it did?

Now most people will say no to that.  They want the Heat to lose, and lose hard.  They want LeBron to pay for his treachery and his admittedly absurd TV special.  But why?  Why do we have to hate athletes who make bad PR decisions?  Does it really matter?  Are they really role models for our kids (if so, are we really that bad as parents)?  I don't think so.  I, for one, don't watch sports for moral lessons.  Rather, I watch so I can see LeBron throw a perfect pass to Dwayne Wade for an oop from mid-court.  I watch to see a team rise up and win (and win big) even though everyone is booing them.  What better drama is there than that?  And how disappointed would even the most fervent Heat hater be if they failed to make the Finals?  Just like the Yankees World Series win in 2009, sometimes the bad guys have to succeed, because otherwise it's just bland old Lakers versus Celtics every year.

3) I like the BCS.

This is the worst one of all, but it's true.  If Auburn and Oregon meet in the Championship Game this year, I'll watch, and I won't shed a tear for Boise State or Texas Christian.  Don't get me wrong, I think those teams would be deserving foes, and could easily be the best teams in the country.  But the BCS isn't about figuring out who's best, it's about crowning a champion.  The exact same is true of a playoff.  If playoffs were looking for the best team, they'd be run very differently.  Rather, they're looking for a winner, the luckiest team, the team that does the right thing at the right time.

What I like about the BCS is how much more interesting it has made the last few weeks, and how interesting it will make the next few.  In a playoff system, no one would care whether Boise or TCU was 3 or 4.  Sure, there would be intrigue at the cut-off point, but isn't intrigue better at the top anyway?  In a playoff system, too, we often see inferior teams knock off better ones.  Isn't it a truism that the NFC and AFC Championship Games are usually better than the Super Bowl.  Isn't the World Cup Third Place game usually better than the Final?  So why make Oregon play Pittsburgh or Auburn play Virginia Tech?  Why not just cut to the chase?  Why not put everything on the table to start it out?

Moreover, I love the current Bowl system because it makes for fascinating matchups that last a whole month.  Hawaii vs. SMU, for example, would be so cool.  And, with a playoff, so irrelevant.  For all I care, we could get rid of the Championship Game and just do the old-fashioned matchups and end up with shared titles.  To me the point of college football is not who's Champion, but the process of getting there.  To me, the presence of 120 or so teams means that finding a single Champion is an exercise in futility anyway.  To me, the point is what happens on one play, in one game, and as a fan I don't ultimately care if that matchup is Oregon vs. Auburn, TCU vs. Alabama, or Boise vs. LSU.

I know I'm in an extremely small minority, and I readily acknowledge and agree with all of the complaints people have about the BCS.  They're a bunch of money-grubbing bastards, it's true.  But you still watch.  I still watch.  The whole country still watches, and, what's more, you love to complain about it, to speculate, to criticize.

Ultimately, I think all three of these guilty pleasures come down to the same thing.  We love to hate Derek Jeter (except Yankees fans, who love to love him), we love to hate the Heat, and we love to hate the BCS.  It seems to me, though, that the trip from "love to hate" to "love" is a short one.  It's just a matter of perspective, a matter of culture and counter-culture, a matter of seeing the bigger picture.  And hey, once you take a step back, take a deep breath, and think about it a little, you might find that your guilty pleasures are the same as mine.

All-Time Yankees Roster

The following the the final write-up from the two students in my sabermetrics workshop. They worked hard on it, and they should be proud of the level of analysis they performed. The write-up was coauthored by the three of us. Also, disclaimer, I'm not a Yankees fan, but they are :). Needless to say, this is probably the only time you'll see "Go Yankees" written in this blog.

*All-Time Yankees Roster*

By Rory Davidson, Tierna Davidson, and Paul Franz

Introduction

Do you think you have the best all-time Yankees roster? Well think twice and read ours. We have made our team through a series of numbers. Whether it is looking at OPS+ or ERA+, the numbers are very reliable (compliments of fangraphs.com and baseball-reference.com). Our team goes back to Babe Ruth, Lou Gerhig, and Mickey Mantle, all the way up to Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, and Mariano Rivera.

Method

OPS+ is a statistic in which they make the average OPS of the major league and make it 100 and then take another persons OPS and see how much better or worse a players OPS is. We used this stat to our advantage by looking the number and seeing if they are worthy enough, for example Babe Ruth’s OPS+ was 210 for his Yankee career, we thought, “Wow this guy is amazing lets put him up.” Of course we already knew Ruth would be on our team, but that was just an example. For pitchers we used ERA+ which the exact same thing as OPS+ but with ERA.
After we picked about 40 players we looked a little deeper into their stats and see if anything jumps out at us. Another thing we did was see if they had better seasons with another team, for example Roger Clemens was a Yankee for a period of time and did very well with them, but his prime was when he was with the Boston Red Sox so we decided to put someone else on the team.

Starters

Starting Pitcher - Whitey Ford, 1950-1967
133 ERA+, 55.3 WAR

Ford was the Yankees ace during the Casey Stengel era, leading the Yankees to no less than 8 World Series titles. There are fewer storied pitchers than hitters for the Yankees, but Ford measures up to the Berras and DiMaggios nonetheless.

Catcher - Yogi Berra, 1946-1963
125 OPS+, 62.1 WAR

As much has been written about Berra as any other player in Yankees history, thanks to a wit that lies somewhere between genius and savant. With a seemingly infinite collection of quotations to his name, Berra would be famous even if he weren’t one of the best catchers of all time. As it was, he was Joe Mauer before Joe Mauer: the All-American kid made good, with charm and the remarkable ability to hit and catch.

First Base - Lou Gehrig, 1923-1939
179 OPS+, 118.4 WAR

“The Iron Horse” was voted the best first-baseman by the Baseball Writers’ Association. Lou holds the record for the most grand slams. He played 2,130 consecutive games. That record stood for 56 years before Cal Ripkens Jr. broke it. Gerhig was also elected into the Hall of Fame in 1939. His life and career was cut short by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gerhig’s Diease), a horrible diesease in your nerves. He died 2 years after being diagnosed. He is a legend that will live on forever.

Second Base - Robinson Cano, 2005-Present
118 OPS+, 22.5 WAR

Second base was a very tough decision because the Yankees have not had very good second base-mans in their franchise, out of all of the second base players I had a very strong argument for the MVP candidate Robinson Cano. In only six years he has accumulated 102 home runs. Adding on to that amazing stat he has a career .311 batting average. Also he has been an MVP, won the silver slugger award, and runner up rookie of year. Our final reason to picking Cano as our starter was because we have a soft spot for Cano because he has helped our favorite team win a World Series.

Shortstop - Derek Jeter, 1995-Present
121 OPS+, 70 WAR

Derek Jeter is obviously the best shortstop choice in the Yankees roster. He won the Rookie of the Year in 1995 and was the only player to win the All-Star Game MVP and the World Series MVP in the same year. He was selected as an All-Star ten times and he won Silver Slugger and Golden Glove awards on four occasions. He has a .317 career batting average and team captian for the Yankees since 2003. Finally, Jeter is the all-time Yankees hit leader, passing Lou Gerhig in 2009. He still plays for the Yankees and continues to break records.

Third Base - Alex Rodriguez, 2004-Present
147 OPS+, 40.2 WAR

Alex Rodriguez is considered one of the all-time best players. Pretty good. Joining the Yankees in 2004, he was the youngest player to ever hit 500 home runs, breaking a record previously set by Jimmie Foxx. Though he used steroids from 2001-2003, he has stopped using drugs and continues to play for the Yankees as a phenomenal third baseman.

Right Field - Babe Ruth, 1920-1935
210 OPS+, 149.6 WAR

A huge no-brainer!!!!!! Babe Ruth is the best player of all time. There is nothing else to say for the greatest player ever.

Center Field - Mickey Mantle, 1951-1968
172 OPS+, 120.2 WAR

Mantle’s story reads like a Greek tragedy. The All-American boy with a broad smile and all the talent in the world saw his career and greatness always overshadowed by the history against which he was pitted. He was an infamous alcoholic, his playing career was continually marred by injury, and while he continued to march bravely out into center field, his knees could barely hold him as his career went on. It is stunning, then, that he put up the kind of numbers that he did in his career. One wonders what might have been.

Left Field - Joe DiMaggio, 1936-1951
155 OPS+, 83.6 WAR

“The Yankee Clipper,” or “Joltin’ Joe,” has been immortalized in song and popular culture, of course, but he also kicked off what would become 30 years of dominant performance from Yankee center fielders. Joe was so good - the truest of the “True Yankees” - that fans met the rookie Mantle, who would replace him, with great skepticism. We decided to leave Mantle in center, because, in the end, he was an even better ball player than DiMaggio (who we assume could handle the transition to left field alright).

Designated Hitter - Reggie Jackson, 1977-1981
148 OPS+, 16.9 WAR

The original “Mr. October” didn’t play with the Yankees for long, but he forged his legacy in the five years he spent in pinstripes.

Closer - Mariano Rivera, 1995 - Present
205 ERA+, 51.4 WAR

As we all know this was another complete no-brainer with Mariano Rivera’s record setting 205 ERA+ and that he will be holding the saves holder in 2 to 3 years.

Starting Rotation and Bullpen

Starting Pitcher - Lefty Gomez, 1930-1942
125 ERA+, 43.2 WAR

Lefty Gomez was overshadowed, in his career, by the careers of Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio, but he - along with Red Ruffing - was one of the aces and star pitchers of the first Yankees dynasty.

Starting Pitcher - Red Ruffing, 1930-1946
119 ERA+, 49.7 WAR

Red Ruffing was a converted outfielder, who changed positions after losing four of his toes in a mine accident. Odd as it sounds, the change probably helped Ruffing, who didn’t have to compete in a stacked New York outfield, and instead went on to become a hall of famer and one of the best pitchers of his era.

Starting Pitcher - Ron Guidry, 1975-1988
119 ERA+, 44.4 WAR

One of the few modern starting pitchers on the shortlist of great Yankees, Guidry won a Cy Young and was runner up for an MVP in his dominant 1978 campaign, when he went 25-3 with a 1.74 ERA. The Yankees won the series that year, behind Guidry’s stellar season, and the pitcher went on to anchor the Yankees staff through the 80s.

Starting Pitcher - Waite Hoyt, 1921-1930
115 ERA+, 47 WAR

Hoyt is probably better known as the longtime announcer of the Cincinnati Reds, but before his broadcast career he was the ace of the first Yankees World Series winning team.

Starting Pitcher - Andy Pettitte, 1995-2003, 2007-Present
114 ERA+, 42.3 WAR

Pettitte has been an amazing pitcher for the Yankees in his career. He has contributed to 5 of the Yankees World Series. Along with 5 World Series he has a 114 ERA+ and a 3.97 ERA.

Relief Pitcher - Rich “Goose” Gossage, 1978-1983
179 ERA+, 18.2 WAR

Gossage was one of the first “closers” in baseball history, amassing a now unimpressive 310 saves (151 with the Yankees). In Gossage’s time, most of these were two or three inning affairs, as his 533 innings in 319 appearances with the Yankees suggest. In his brief time with the Yankees Gossage was good enough - with an outstanding 179 ERA+ - to warrant inclusion in the All-Time discussion.

Relief Pitcher - Sparky Lyle, 1972-1978
148 ERA+, 14.4 WAR

Lyle’s WAR total is unimpressive, but he was a work horse for the Yankees, pitching over 700 innings in relief in his seven seasons with the club. He picked up 141 saves at a time when the statistic wasn’t recorded, and struck out twice as many as he walked.

Relief Pitcher - Dave Righetti, 1979-1990
127 ERA+, 23.3 WAR

Righetti started his career as a starter, winning the Rookie of the Year award in 1979. He was later switched to relief thanks to a glut of starters on the Yankees roster in the 80s, where he continued to shine as a replacement for Goose Gossage. As a minor leaguer, Righetti was acquired by the Yankees in an ill-fated trade by the Rangers for, it turned out, a past-his-prime Sparky Lyle.

Backups

Catcher - Jorge Posada, 1995-Present
125 OPS+, 45.7 WAR

Like Yogi Berra, Jorge Posada is the rare catcher who can hit. We chose Posada over the also-deserving Thurman Munson because Posada has managed to continue as a top-level performer well into his late 30s. Of course, we don’t know what Munson would have done had he not died in a tragic plane accident, but Posada has been every bit as good in his career, and he has anchored the latest Yankees dynasty.

Second Base - Tony Lazzeri, 1926-1937
121 OPS+, 46.6 WAR

The only second baseman in the discussion besides Cano played alongside Babe Ruth, routinely hitting 10-20 homers a year at a time when no one (except his slugging teammate) was hitting much of anything. Lazzeri’s Hall of Fame entrance took a long time thanks to suspect defense, but his offensive ability, especially for a second baseman, is unquestionable.

Left Field - Charlie Keller, 1939-1949
152 OPS+, 42.4 WAR

The best Yankee you’ve never heard of, Keller lost some of his best years to World War Two. Even so, a stunning .410 OBP and .518 SLG speak to his skill as a hitter. One can only imagine an outfield consisting of him, DiMaggio, and George Selkirk (who narrowly missed inclusion on this roster). No wonder the Yankees won all those World Series.

First Base / Designated Hitter - Jason Giambi, 2002-2008
143 OPS+, 21.8 WAR

The “Giambino” earned his nickname with a series of outstanding performances for the Yankees earlier in this decade. For someone as high-profile as he is, Giambi is actually one of the most underrated sluggers of his era, thanks to his amazing ability to get on base. As a Yankee Giambi’s OBP was .404, stellar even when not coupled with 30+ homers a season.

First Base - Don Mattingly, 1982-1995
127 OPS+, 39.8 WAR

Immensely popular, Mattingly never looks as impressive on paper as he is in people’s memories. Even so, his career 127 OPS+ is nothing to laugh at. Being a first baseman without a ton of power in the late 80s and early 90s works against “Donny Baseball,” especially because the generation following him hit more homers than any other, but his overall skill with the bat (and glove), along with his spot in Yankee-fan hearts, means that he warrants a spot here.

Right Field - Roger Maris, 1960-1966
140 OPS+, 27.9 WAR

No player was more polarizing in his time. As he and Mantle chased the Ruth’s hallowed home run record in 1961, Maris was subjected to the best and worst that fans have to offer. What often gets lost, however, in the Maris story is what a good hitter he was, period. His 61 homer season was staggering, and probably at least in part due to luck, but it was hardly a total fluke. Maris had led the league in SLG the year before, after all, and had hit 39 homers. He has been kept out of the Hall of Fame thanks largely to a short career, but he definitely warrants inclusion here.

Conclusion

After reading our thoughts, you probably know why our roster is the best. Not only did we do deep research, but being Yankees fans we know a lot of the players. If we were to go into even greater detail, we would write paragraphs upon paragraphs about each player. But we didn’t want to bore you (we hope we didn’t) out of your minds, so we did the main factors of each player. If we were to do a different team, that would be a different story. First, the Yankees are so much better than other teams... GO YANKEES!

Why Baseball Doesn't Need a Salary Cap

In the wake of the 27th World Series title for the New York Yankees, baseball fans all over are crying again that the sport needs a salary cap. How dare the Yankees spend their way to victory year after year? How dare baseball allow the poor Royals and Pirates to be little more than AAA teams for their big market competitors in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and Chicago? Baseball, the argument goes, needs to be more like basketball and football, which have great competitive parity because of their salary caps. Except, that's not really true. There are a number of holes in the "MLB-needs-a-salary-cap" argument, and I hope to point out as many as I can here, but perhaps the most obviously absurd is the "basketball and football have a salary cap, and therefore have parity" argument.

Consider the NBA. Since 1999-2000, there have been 10 winners of the NBA Championship. The following teams have won the NBA Championship:

Los Angeles Lakers - 4 times
San Antonio Spurs - 3 times
Detroit Pistons - once
Miami Heat - once
Boston Celtics - once

The Lakers have also lost the Championship twice, meaning they have represented the Western Conference 6 times in the last 10 years, and as you probably noticed, San Antonio represented the West 3 of the other 4. Parity? I know that the Western Conference in the NBA is considered extremely strong, every year, but that does not mean there is much parity. Conference Championships may be a crude measure, but the larger point holds, I think: the salary cap does not stop the Lakers from being a force almost every year.

Lets look at the NFL, too. Since 2000, again, there have been 9 Super Bowl winners. They are:

New England Patriots - 3 times
Pittsburgh Steelers - 2 times
Indianapolis Colts - once
Baltimore Ravens - once
Tampa Bay Buccaneers - once
New York Giants - once (beat New England)

Even without the numbers, I think it's pretty easy to look back and think about the "good teams" of the last ten years in the NFL. New England has been competitive repeatedly, despite the lack of a salary cap. It is notable, of course, that there have been many good NFL teams that come from small markets (unlike in the NBA, where being a big-market team is, interestingly, almost as important as it is in baseball), but the main point here is that a salary cap does not ensure parity. Consider, in the NFL, the other side of the equation as well. More and more teams are habitually terrible, much like in baseball. The Detroit Lions, for example, have been a laughingstock for almost a decade.

Why is there not, actually, parity in these major sports? The salary cap is almost a non-entity in the equation, and in the NBA, in particular, it actually serves to help large market teams. How is that possible?

Basketball, like baseball, generates a huge portion of its revenue from ticket sales and local TV coverage. That means that, once a large market team gets rolling, it stands to make way more money than a small market team. The Minnesota Timberwolves may be successful for a year or two - and were - but it was unsustainable because there simply aren't enough T-Wolves fans out there to allow the franchise to rake in the dough from advertisers. The Lakers, on the other hand, have an enormous fan base, and their success translates not only into slightly higher ticket sales, but massively higher advertising revenues from local TV coverage.*

*Actually, in basketball, the import of TV money is even greater than in baseball. Baseball stadiums are huge by comparison, and each venue hosts 81 games in a season. Basketball has a shorter season, with fewer games, and much smaller arenas. That means more TV viewers, plus a schedule that emphasizes night and weekend games to ensure fans can watch a much higher percentage of the season than the baseball faithful can.

Why is TV revenue so important in a sport with a salary cap? Because higher revenues means higher profit, which means more money to invest into the team. Because the salary cap restricts the amount of money that can be invested directly into players, that extra money gets invested into facilities, better trainers, superior scouting departments, high-tech gizmos, and - if they happen - shady dealings. The Lakers, because they cannot spend more on their roster than the Thunder can, reap instead the huge advantage of spending more on supporting their roster. In a salary-capped league, this also means that player retention is better: who would want to leave the perks of Lakertown for Oklahoma City, especially when OKC can't pay you any more than the Lakers can, anyway?

In the NFL, this is less of an issue because revenues are more equalized (by virtue of weekly national coverage). Nevertheless, there is an important lesson in the lack of parity there, too, because it shows how important non-player personnel can be. Management - especially general managers and scouts - play a vital role in the success of a baseball team. This is also true of NFL teams, where the Head Coach has tremendous influence on the outcome of a game. Consider the Patriots: are their players so superior to those of other NFL teams, or is their success more a result of Bill Belichick? The analogy with baseball is imperfect, because baseball managers contribute very little to a team's success, but the point is that there are places other than players to spend money.

Were baseball to adopt a salary cap, there would be two major outcomes. The first is that the massive profits that baseball teams enjoy would be directed into the hands of owners, and away from players. Players are an easy target, and we often decry how awful a society must be to pay these whiny 20-somethings millions of dollars to hit a ball with a stick, but that misses the point. A salary cap doesn't change the amount of money that goes into the MLB, it just changes who sees that money at the end of the day. If players can only make so much, owners make that much more, and if there's anything worse than a society that makes millionaires of men who hit balls with sticks, its a society that would rather make billionaires of the men who hire those millionaires.

The second result of a salary cap would be a redirection of the resources of a team like the Yankees into other markets. Already the Yankees enjoy a tremendous advantage in amateur development, facilities, training staff, and foreign scouting. Imagine if they could spend only $100 million on player salaries, and could re-direct that extra $100 million they'd be saving towards their minor league teams and foreign scouting departments. Imagine the clubhouse they could build for their players. Imagine the vast competitive advantage they would enjoy in almost every other aspect of the game. It's impossible to know just how a salary cap would actually work, but if the NBA is any indication, a salary cap would not keep the Yankees from enjoying the same kind of dynastic power that they already do, and that the Lakers enjoy in the NBA.

Of course, the Yankees already are a perennial power - along with their huge-market cohorts, the Boston Red Sox, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Los Angeles Angels (of Anaheim, I'm told) - which is what has everybody so up in arms. The illusion of parity in baseball is really just the parity of the playoffs. A seven game series is too short to determine the superior team in baseball, where a superior team may win 55% of the time (compared to, say, in the NBA, where the superior team wins 70% of the time). The Yankees and Phillies could have played their recent World Series 100 times, and the Yankees may have won 60 of them. Now add in two more rounds of the playoffs, including a 5 game long series at the start (which increases the odds for an inferior team). It's no wonder the Yankees hadn't won the World Series since 2000. But remember that they made the playoffs every year in between but one.

This, it seems, is the problem that gets everyone so worked up, the problem that a salary cap would, in theory, fix. But whether parity is even desirable or not is an important question that many sports fans forget to ask. While a competitive game is certainly fun, how much would College Football fans enjoy the sport if UNLV and Mississippi State had as good a chance to win the National Championship every year as USC, Florida, or Ohio State? I would argue that - because of graduation - College Football has more parity than almost any other major sport in this country, and yet it is the lack of parity sport wide (or the parity, you might say, at the fairly large upper tier) that makes the sport so engaging. That and the allegiance every alumnus has to his respective alma mater. But TCU graduates still like watching the National Championship, even if they never expect to get there.

Of course, we expect better of baseball, where every team is supposed to "have a chance." This isn't top-heavy European soccer, after all, where the top leagues are dominated by a small handful of elite teams, and the rest fight to avoid relegation. Baseball is about hope and justice and the American way, and stuff, right? Except it's not, really. Baseball is largely about money - at least on the National scale - and it is good money for the league if the Yankees are competitive each and every year. So let them be! Baseball, for the true fan, isn't about World Series victories anyway. It's about summer afternoons at the stadium, rooting for the home team whether they are 60-30 or 30-60, up by four runs or down by eight. It's about a hot dog and a beer in the bleachers, a heckler insulting himself more than the opposition, the drama of the pitcher and the batter, and the wonderful statistics all of that produces. It's about arguing with the guy in the row behind you who you've never met whether Seth Smith is better than Brad Hawpe (he is), and whether the Rockies are a better pitching team than hitting (they are), and whether Clint Barmes sucks, despite all his home runs (he does).

Baseball is too long a haul, each season, to be about championships. The Yankees fans for whom a season without a World Series is a failure are missing out on something. There can be tremendous joy in watching your team exit in the first round of the playoffs, simply because it was a good season. There can be tremendous joy in finishing last, too (just look at the '93 Rockies). I don't mean to deny that there is frustration in losing, and I wouldn't suggest that you want your team to be a failure, but real baseball fans show up in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh and Kansas City every year even though they know their teams aren't any good. Why? Because they want to watch baseball, pure and simple. Wins and losses be damned. Baseball is the closest sport to poety there is, and poetry is as much about losers as it is winners anyway, if not more so.*

*Consider this Tennyson poem, for example. Or anything Greek.

If there is something wrong with baseball - with the Yankees and the Red Sox - then a salary cap is a terrible solution. I don't know what the 'solution,' is, but I do know that it has to address, not the output of the Yankees, but the intake. Creative, intelligent people will always know how to use their superior resources - should they have them - to their advantage, and no amount of restricting that resource usage will stop the Yankees. Eliminating the resource advantage? Sure, but how are you going to do that? And do you want to anyway? On some level, I was glad the Yankees won the World Series this year; there's something right about it. Let them win five more in the next decade, let them be champions, and be desperate and incredulous when they aren't. Just let me watch baseball, and I'll be happy.