Quote:In Baseball, Rich Get Better
by Daily News' Mike Lupica

Raul Mondesi came first, in another week that was good for the Yankees and bad for baseball. Then came Jeff Weaver of the Tigers, a strong young guy from the Tigers. Mondesi is young himself, only 31, and had already hit 15 home runs for the Blue Jays, which means he might hit 20 more for the Yankees.

When it was just Mondesi, George Steinbrenner said, hey, what's the big deal, this was the same as the Yankees getting Johnny Mize and Enos (Country) Slaughter in the old days.

Steinbrenner now has a payroll that goes past $135 million with the acquisition of Weaver early yesterday morning. But he sounds like just another Yankee fan who believes nothing that has happened or will ever happen at the Stadium has anything to do with money. If you even suggest otherwise, you are accused of Yankee hating. I hear that one, from Yankee broadcasters especially, all the time. But then, this is officially a company town, at least where the Yankees are concerned.

If you don't love the Yankees, you hate them, and to even suggest that Yankee business isn't good for the baseball business is viewed as blasphemy.

"They're only playing by the rules" is another one you hear all the time. It is a way for people on the air who constantly carry Steinbrenner's water not to talk about whether those rules, which may get blown sky high if a strike comes to baseball soon, are really any good for what used to be the national pastime and is now Steinbrenner's.

So Steinbrenner gets right out there, after Mondesi and before Weaver, and says that getting a player like Mondesi because of a Toronto salary dump is the same as Mize coming to the Yankees when he was 38 and Slaughter doing the same at 39. Mize played 13 games at the end of the ‘49 season, came off the bench for years, never hit more than 14 home runs for the Yankees in a season. Slaughter, when he got here, played 69 games and got 125 at-bats.

Obviously, comparisons to players like Mondesi and, now, a kid like Weaver, are perfectly appropriate.

"The Yankees have always done it this way," Steinbrenner says.

No one has.

It is why what the Yankees do these days looks so vulgar to the rest of baseball, even as it is cheered — or cheerleaded — around here.

Rightfield needed work. They get a former All-Star and add nearly $12 million to the books over the next couple of years. The pitching staff is getting a little old, they didn't really believe in Ted Lilly even as he was hailed by some of the Yankee broadcasters as the new Whitey Ford, and so it is upgraded with Weaver. Weaver makes $4.15 million next season, then $6.15 million the season after that, then $9.15 million.

"He's signed through 2005 to a deal that fits well into our budget," Yankees general manager Brian Cashman says early yesterday morning when the deal is announced.

What budget?

There is no budget. There are no restraints. "This is a sure sign we're dead serious," Cashman says, as if there were waves of doubt crashing out of the Bronx that the Yankees were just sort of serious. They are dead serious. You bet. In an economic system in baseball that needs to be changed or just shut down.

So again, a first-place Yankee team is just the first draft of the season. It is no longer even interesting to point out that baseball never worked this way in the old days that Steinbrenner clumsily tried to evoke the other day. Or that the other major sports — ones that work a lot better than baseball — don't allow you to re-tool without any concerns about budgets, real or imagine. You're just a Yankee hater. You're not with the program. You're told on the radio that the Yankees aren't breaking any rules, as if anybody ever suggested that they're breaking any rules.

Baseball can't continue to work this way. It needs to be fixed, in a big way, and that might mean shutting it down — again — in a big way. I love it when I hear that the Yankees have won all these titles and played in all these World Series because of the homegrown talent. Sure they have. And Clemens, Wells, Mussina, Giambi, $20-million setup men like Steve Karsay, David Justice, Denny Neagle, Raul Mondesi, now Jeff Weaver — they're just part of the chorus.

We'll hear now that the Yankees are done with the second draft of their first-place team. Not if the Red Sox don't go away. You know there's more players out there who would fit perfectly into the Yankee budget. Whatever they're making. Raul Mondesi feels like a Yankee veteran already.

Quote:Floyd, Dempster headline proposed Expos-Marlins deal

MONTREAL -- The Montreal Expos, rumored to be in their final season of play, are apparently trying to make the most of it.

Baseball officials with knowledge of the situation have told ESPN.com's Jayson Stark that the Expos and Marlins have agreed on the principal players to be swapped in a potential deal that would send outfielder Cliff Floyd and pitcher Ryan Dempster to Montreal.

The deal is not done and won't become official until it is approved by Major League Baseball, which currently owns and operates the Expos.

In exchange for Floyd and Dempster, the Marlins would receive right-hander Masato Yoshii and left-hander Graeme Lloyd and prospect package headed by pitcher Josh Karp, who was Montreal's No. 1 pick in 2001.

Expos general manager Omar Minaya told Stark that nothing was done yet, and that he was going to meet later Sunday with Marlins GM Larry Beinfest.

If the deal, which is subject to Major League Baseball allowing the Expos to take on additional salary, is finally completed, it comes on the heels of last month's acquisition of pitcher Bartolo Colon from Cleveland.

It would be Floyd's second tour of duty of Montreal -- he played six seasons there before going to Florida.

Saturday, Floyd just wanted the deal to be over.

"I'm just tired of it," Floyd told The Miami Herald. "I just hope it's over quick."

The Expos entered Sunday's action nine games behind Atlanta in the NL East, but 5½-games behind Arizona for the wild card.

"(The Expos) are a good team. ... They are getting better," said Floyd, who prefers not to play on artificial turf because of past knee problems. "Things aren't what you would like to see in terms of revenue and fans, but you're talking about my knees, something that can shorten my career."

Floyd's contract states he can block trades to six teams, but Montreal is not one of them. Floyd reportedly took the Expos off the no-trade list last offseason, never considering the Expos to be in the playoff hunt this season. The Expos might not be done. ESPN's Peter Gammons reports that pitcher Brad Penny is very much available. Other "names" being mentioned: All-Star second baseman Luis Castillo, first baseman Derrek Lee, outfielders Preston Wilson and Eric Owens, catcher Charles Johnson, reliever Vic Darensbourg and right-hander Julian Tavarez.