- Jane Heller of Confessions of a She-Fan wrote a great article for NY Times Bats Blog about being a Yankees fan. Especially in a time when everyone wants to bitch and moan about the Yankees "crazy" spending (which actually isn't that crazy at all).
- Torii Hunter had these comments about the Teixeira signing:
"Man, that's crazy," Angels center fielder Torii Hunter said. "Those damn Yankees! They don't play around. When they're trying to win, they're trying to win. It's crazy. They just paid $27 million in luxury tax. That's like 27 dollars to them. They don't even care."
"They're scary. Their rotation is one of the best, if not the best, in the game, and now look at their lineup. They have A-Rod, Jeter, Teixeira, Hideki Matsui, Xavier Nady, Robinson Cano, Jorge Posada is coming back [from injury], Nick Swisher . . . golly, that's a nice lineup."
"That's going to be a dogfight, a pit-bull fight," Hunter said. "It's going to be pretty rough in that division. Tampa Bay has the confidence. Boston has won two championships. Toronto and Baltimore play you hard too. Good luck in that division."
"They've had the best lineup I've seen for seven years in a row and they haven't won it all," Hunter said. "They can still be beat. It will take dedication, hard work, and you've got to have heart. When you have that, you have a chance."
"They're the Beasts of the East," Hunter said. "The Evil Empire."
Please, no whining, crying, kvetching or moaning. The Red Sox had their chance. They have the money. They ultimately lost Mark Teixeira to the Yankees for maybe $1 million-$2 million a year, roughly 1 percent of their 2008 payroll.
Unhappy holidays.What a kick in the pants.
Spare me. You could have signed the guy for an extra $1-$2 million a year, but you decided to play chicken with Scott Boras and you lost.
"From the moment we arrived in Boston in late 2001, we saw it as a monumental challenge," Sox owner John Henry said in an e-mail to the Associated Press, in reference to competing with the Yankees.
"We sought to reduce the financial gap and succeeded to a degree. Now with a new stadium filled with revenue opportunities, they have leaped away from us again. So we have to be even more careful in deploying our resources."
"At the rate the Yankees are going, I'm not sure anyone can compete with them," Attanasio said in an e-mail. "Frankly, the sport might need a salary cap."Two things: 1) The Yankees payroll next year should actually be lower than it was last year, so stop your whining. 2) And good luck getting the players' association to accept a salary cap.
- Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle thinks the Teixeira signing is good for baseball. He also says Attanasio's salary cap comments are "silly talk."
- Steven A. Smith still thinks the Yankees should sign Manny. Chill Steven A. Personally, I think the Yanks are pretty much done, re-sign Pettitte and call it an off-season.
- Arne Christensen over at Dugout Central takes a look back at Billy Martin.
- The Yankees will be rolling back prices for the two exhibition games against the Cubs to 1923 prices. Bleacher seats will be a quarter a piece, and grandstand seats will be $1.10.
- Tom Kaminski of WCBS 880 took some more great overhead shots of the old and new stadiums. Notice the Christmas tree on the old Yankee Stadium mound? Nice touch Yankees grounds crew. (hat tip to River Ave. Blues)
7 Comments:
Nice touch with the Christmas tree on the old mound. Now let's get one on the new mound, too.
Mike
PS It would be nice to sit in the old dugout and just look at that Christmas tree for a while....
Thanks for mentioning my article on the Times' "Bats" blog. Glad you liked it.
I enjoyed reading all the other points of view, especially Torii Hunter's. He's lucky his team isn't in the AL East. He's got it easy.
The Yankees are PERFECT for baseball. Gives people someone to HATE and other smaller teams someone to look up at and play hard to beat. For all the money we have spent from 2001 and on.. We have no rings.
Marlins beat us strait up. Arizona beat us strait up. Tampa won the East. Went to the world series. NO ONE saw that coming. Angels have a ring. The phils have a ring. Boston for gods sake won two. How can anyone bitch about parody in Baseball. Money does not win it all, it helps, but its does not make the Yankees champions.. YET!!
No one would have felt sorry for us if the Red Sox landed CC.. or Tex. If I remember, didn't the Red sox land shilling..? How about Josh Beckett - How about dice K. Let go further back.. We were in on Manny when he left the Indians, he signed with the Sox. Let's all get a grip, play baseball.. and let the best team win.
A few thoughts:
1) There shouldn't be talk of a salary cap until there's a salary floor. The Marlins received (if I recall) around 50-60 million in revenue sharing, but their payroll was, what, 30M? Let's have some accountability as to where revenue sharing money is going before we institute a cap.
2) The Yankees should not trade anyone. If they start the season with Melky/Gardner in CF, and either Swisher, Nady, or Matsui gets hurt, where does that leave the lineup? Someone (who's not a decent hitter) would likely have to end up in the lineup every day. Either BOTH Melky and Gardner in the OF, or Duncan, or who knows. I know people don't like the idea, but I'd play Swisher, Damon, and Nady all in the outfield in some alignment. True, you sacrifice a bit of defense, but it's only for one season and the offensive benefits outweight the slight defensive negatives.
3) Henry needs to shut the hell up. This guy is a big market owner who pretends not to have the means to compete with the Yankees. Quit moaning. If you want to win, you spend the money. If not - if you want to profit more from owning the Red Sox rather than spend the money, then shut up. In the end, I don't think Teixeira's decision was as much about money as it was about not wanting to play for Boston. Too bad. They should sign Lowe. I hear he wants to play in Boston.
I could not agree more pinstripes. People need to stop persisting with the myth that the other 29 teams are some mom and pop businesses being run by some old couple in the corner of their stadiums, doing the books by hand, while the Yankees are Walmart driving them under.
People need to wake up to the fact that owning any major league franchise cost millions of dollars and only multimillionaires and multimillion dollar, faceless corporations can do this. Every major league owner is independently wealthy and chooses not to reinvest or put their own money in their teams; because they make their primary money elsewhere and owning a team is simply another tangible place to store this money for show on a portfolio.
Right you are, Pinstripes (at least on most of what you say). To me, Henry looks like a reject from "One Flight Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Looks like a real nut. At the very least he comes across as a jealous, whiney little kid.
Mike
I miss the old Stadium
:(
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