And they say they don't try to buy championships

[The Brain]

<marquee><font size=+2 color=red>WARNING! Incredibly long post following... people with attention deficit disorder should read in small doses... WARNING!</marquee>

Originally posted by Flock of Moosen
See, this is where we have different tastes. I for one love to see new teams in the hunt every year. I got so bored watching the the Yankees, or the Lakers, or the 49ers and Cowboys winning every damn year. While you may consider a new team every year mediocrity, I consider it good, even competition. I love going into a new season not having a clue who is the team that has the best shot at winning a champioship, but before it was always \"Can't wait to see yet another 49ers/Cowboys NFC Championship game again this year.\"

Here I gotta strongly disagree. Some of the greatest rivalries in sports have been created when one team had what the other did not. The old Yankee-Giant, Yankee-Dodger, and Yankee-Red Sox (hey, it's not my fault the Yanks are so freakin' successful) rivalries.

Or how about Magic Johnson and Larry Bird? The NBA would not have become the popular sport it has were it not for Boston and L.A. trading championships for an entire decade. And even before them, no one semed to mind Boston winning some 8 titles in a row, during the old Bill Russell and Bob Cousy era. It was something for every other team to aspire to: knock off the top dog. Isiah Thomas finally did that to both Bird and Magic, and it was wonderful to see. Then Michael overcame Thomas and the Pistons after years (<i>years</i>) of trying, and became basketball immortality.

The Yankees of the '20s, '30s, '40s. The Celtics of the '60s. The Cincinnati Reds "Big Red Machine" of the '70s and '80s. The Oakland A's of the late '80s, when MacGuire and Canseco were like Maris and Mantle, and Eckersley ruled the 9th inning like Mariano does today.

The San Francisco 49ers under Montana; the '90s Cowboys under Aikman-- even the Buffalo Bills of the early '90s, making it to the big game year after year, although they always came up short. The Edmonton Oilers under Gretzky and Messier. Muhammed Ali owning the ring, decades before Tyson and Jones Jr., and decades after guys named Dempsey, Tunney, and Louis.

<i>Every</i> sport has an instance (or more) where one team or man ruled the roost, and everyone wanted to be the guys who knocked them off. To even think that the very nature of sport would be better off with constant turnover, instead of one or two models of <i>consistency</i> for everyone to hunt, is obscene.

If you want that to be the case, then we might as well abolish the actual season, and start picking a team name out of a hat, then just hand them a trophy. You would get the same amount of randomness in the winner. If you still need to actually witness a "game" at that point, it can be completely pre-scripted like pro wrestling.

Let me just clear something up so you don't think is a solely bash the Yankees type deal because it's not. I would feel the same exact way about this situation if it were the Red Sox, the Braves, the Mariners, or the Giants doing this. It just so happens that George Steinbrenner and the Yankees do it far more than the other teams and at this point in time it is far out of control.

Steinbrenner and the Yankees do <b>it</b> far more often. What is <b>it</b> exactly? If you mean take risks by aggressively going after players, and by performing standard business techniques in order to keep a competitive product on the field, then yes, I agree. Contrary to what you might seem to believe, they don;t do anything underhanded; they play under the exact same league rules. The Yankees just have more <i>cajones</i> to go after what they require to win.

Major League Baseball needs to get and hand on this and quickly before <b>no one else has the slighest chance of competing</b> because believe me if it keeps up Uncle George will have 9 All-Stars out in that field every game instead of the 5-6 he has now. Deny that all you want, but everyone knows it to be true.

Am I missing something? Is every other GM in the league holding onto little ceramic piggy banks, while Steinbrenner is the only who owns a Fort Knox-sized vault? That's nonsense. All I see is that everyone faults Steinbrenner for using the exact same <i>aggressive business</i> tactics that would have someone named Trump applauded down on Wall Street. As I've said before, at least "The Boss" gives a damn in putting a high-quality product on the field each and every year, rather than trying to cut corners like most owners do.

OK, yes, it helps greatly that he has a team in the #1 media market, where he can negotiate high-revenue TV contracts. But try and remember that the Yankees were <i>once owned by the CBS TV network</i>, and were only worth $10 million when they were sold to him back in the early '70s. Something tells me that the guy would have still succeeded using this model, even had the team been located elsewhere.

The money he has spent on them in all this time since... <i>is his own</i>. Not money from some "revenue-sharing" deal, or courtesy of a "luxury tax". No, that's money that goes to teams that play on the cheap, like Cincinnati and Kansas City. People in those cities should be far more concerned that their team owners and GMs are taking that money and <b>not</b> putting it back into the team payroll to improve personnel, than they should concern themsleves with what a George Steinbrenner is doing. It's owner apathy in such places like Cincy and Milwaukee (Bud Selig fans, take note of what he did to that franchise under his ownership), and in Montreal-- hey, they had to sell the team back to the league office because they were fucking it up so much-- that is the true poison in baseball. Not the owner who cares about his team winning, and the bottom line of winning.

Remember playing sports as a kid? I won't speak for anyone else, but I know damn well when I was growing up and playing I never thought to myself \"Hey, if I get good enough at this sport I can make millions of dollars.\" It was all about having fun for me.

I think you're just unique, then. I'm sure every kid growing up has emulated one of his favorite players during a game, and wanted to be that player, with the money and fame, cars, women. You think kids in the '50s looked at DiMaggio, and didn't wish they could be the one playing in fron of 70,000 at Yankee Stadium in October, and marrying Marilyn Monroe? Come on.