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| From | "Sager, Greg" <greg.sager@bankofamerica.com> |
| Subject | Re: F Sox |
| Date | Mon, 01 Nov 2004 02:33:13 -0600 |
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Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 14:49:38 -0400
From: "John L. Micek" <jlmicek@mindspring.com>
To: <audities@smoe.org>
Subject: Re: F Sox
Message-ID: <02fc01c4bde8$0bccf3e0$d8b1bc3f@TRIBUNE.AD.TRB>
Dave:
Greetings from Harrisburg!
As a lifelong Yankee fan, I've been hearing for years about how the Yanks
are ruining baseball with their free-spending ways, and the argument just
doesn't hold water.
Oh, it holds water, all right ... just keep in mind that there's a couple of
small leaks in the bucket. ;-)
There are two recent examples of why:
1. The Oakland As have among the smallest payrolls in baseball, yet their
economic model has enabled them to become one of the most competitive teams
in the game. As we saw this year, big spending does not always equal
results. Smart spending does.
True, and the same goes even more so for the Minnesota Twins (aka "America's
farm team" for their knack for developing good young players who then either
choose to or are forced to depart for economic reasons). But these are
exceptions. Small-market doormats like the Pirates, the Royals, the
Ex-Expos, and the Reds are the rule. Not every team has a GM as astute as
Billy Beane, nor the luck for drawing into an inside straight the way that
Oakland did with their fantastic young starting rotation (which'll soon
dissolve via free agency, anyway).
2. The Florida Marlins, a small-market team similarly situated as the
Pirates, have gone to the Series twice in the last decade. Eventually,
everyone gets their turn.
Florida won because their spendthrift owner Wayne Huizenga ("America's
garbageman" -- he's the billionaire behind Waste Management) grossly
overpaid his roster, considering the size of his market and the
less-than-baseball-crazy fan following in Miami. Once he realized that the
team was hemorrhaging money, he disbanded that WS roster and Florida dropped
like a stone in the standings. Last year's run to the world championship,
while much more improbable, resulted in the same sort of downscaling.
I recall reading somewhere that even the worst teams are still going to end
up winning more games than they lose (The Tigers excepted, of course), and
pretty much everyone is on the same level of competition.
Not true. If you look at the cumulative records of each of the 30 MLB teams
over the past decade, there is a large discrepancy between the winners and
losers -- there's a consistent clique of winners and a consistent clique of
losers. Unfortunately, there's a correlation between payroll size and
membership in those cliques -- with exceptions, of course.
The game remains beautifully random. Despite the Yanks' domination for the
last few years, I vividly recall the years in the 1980s and 1990s when the
Yankees remained well out of the post-season.
Not all that random, really. The whole point to Steinbrenner's overspending
is that the Yankees can afford to make big gambles and absorb big mistakes
that other teams can't. The fact that the Yankees have been in the playoffs
eleven straight years and won five of the last seven AL pennants has little
to do with the astute scouting and minor-league player development that the
Bronx Bombers were known for back in the day, and it has everything to do
with the fact that the team can afford to throw good money after bad players
and shrug it off without suffering any consequences.
Anyone watched the Chicago Bulls lately? I'm not saying I want that to
happen to my beloved Yanks, but it doesn't take much for a dynasty to
crumble. Everyone gets their turn.
In the case of the Yankees, it'll likely take a salary cap for their dynasty
to crumble. No matter how many mistakes GM Brian Cashman and his associates
make, they can still write off those wasted salaries -- and go out and
purchase players who will fill the holes left by those mistakes, as well as
the megacash superstars like Sheffield, Giambi, and A-Rod (and, likely,
Beltran and the Big Unit in the near future).
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 13:46:34 -0500
From: "Billy G. Spradlin" <bgspradlin@cablelynx.com>
To: audities@smoe.org
Subject: Re: REDDD SOXXXX!!!!
Message-ID: <auto-000072258752@cablelynx.com>
You might be right - but the Cubs and Sox have already gone to the World
Series, 1948 and 1959.
1945, actually, for the Cubs. The Houston Astros were seventeen years away
from being launched as a franchise. Hiroshima was still a smoking ruin. "Rum
and Coca-Cola" by the Andrews Sisters and "Sentimental Journey" by Les Brown
were playing on the giant standup Philco radio in grandma's front room. A
new Studebaker fresh off the showroom floor cost $600. And in 1941 my
soon-to-retire dad was four years old. He wasn't even old enough for me to
be a gleam in his eye. ;-)
De rigueur Audities power pop reference: I'm absolutely loving "Love's Sick"
by HotSocky from the latest Not Lame sampler. In other words, the sampler's
doing exactly what it should do: Making me want to run out and buy the album
from which a particular song from the sampler is culled. Score one for Bruce
B.!
De rigueur keeping-up-with-the-discussion reference: Sly and the Family
Stone kick gluteous maximus -- and any other hindquarter body part named for
a Roman general. "Hot Fun In the Summertime" is one of my all-time top ten
warm-weather songs.
Gregory Sager
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