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The US Yankees
by Streethawk McD.
Whenever the subject of baseball comes up, I tell people that I don’t care for the sport, but hate, hate, hate the Yankees. I look at the New York Yankees and the other teams in baseball and see a disparity that I find both unfair and repulsive.
Here’s a few stats for you: The Yankees have won 26 of 100 World Series. They have played in 39. In 2003, the Yankees have spent more on their roster than any other team, having a payroll costing 180 million dollars. The next highest team (the Mets) spent 116 million dollars. The median amount spent by a team was about 75 million dollars, far less than half of what the Yankees pay. The lowest amount spent (by the Devil Rays) was 31 million, which (if my math is correct) is 6 times less than what the Yankees pay! Six times less!
These stats lead me to believe that the Yankees have a somewhat unfair stranglehold on baseball. If you’re not a stat person, let me do this another way: Though I’m not a baseball fan at all, through cultural osmosis alone, I’m able to name a few baseball players. Here I go: Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig, Yogi Berra, Ted Willaims, Micky Mantle. They’re all Yankees! All of them! Okay, I’ve also heard of Cal Ripkin, Reggie Jackson, and Ty Cobb, but I have a point to make, and that point is that the Yankees and the other teams are not playing on an even playing field. If there are 30 baseball teams, and one of those teams wins a World Series every 4 years, you know that something smells rotten in the city of New Amsterdam . . .
With everything this team has going for it, I just love to see the Yankees fail . . . not that it happens often. I’ve never watched a full game of baseball in my life, until this year’s American League Championship series that pitted the hated Yankees against their rivals, the beleaguered and ‘cursed’ Boston RedSox. When the RedSox came back from losing the first three games in a best of seven series and stealing away yet another trip to the World Series by the Yankees – it was storybook. This was the kind of thing that you only see in movies. The Mighty Ducks. The Bad News Bears. Shao-lin Soccer. The Star Wars Trilogy. They all follow the same theme – the scrappy, quirky little guys doing the impossible and defeating the Evil Empire. When the RedSox beat the Yankees tonight, I cheered. My roommates cheered. How could anybody not cheer? The good guys won! The world is free! Balance was restored in the universe!
But (amazingly enough) this article isn’t about baseball. It’s about the United States. For a while now, I’ve realized that the United States is the New York Yankees of the world. We have the unfair advantage. We have more money than anyone. We have more guns than anyone. We have a psychological edge over everyone. We’ve been winning the ‘World Series’ just about every year since 1918 – the end of WW1. We are the Evil Empire.
Of course, I’m a fan of the United States. I’d love to see us win all the time. But I can also understand how the people of other countries feel about us. They look at what we have and what the rest of the world has, and feel like the scales of balance have been unfairly tipped. Throwing politics, economic repercussions, etc., etc. aside, how many people in other countries would love for the United States to suddenly stop being a super-power? A lot, would be my guess. I’m sure most people in other countries don’t wish us harm, but I think if the US suddenly became a third-world power, there would be world-wide celebrations. And it’s not necessarily jealousy (though that’s part of it). It’s mankind’s need to root for the underdog -- unless you happen to be playing him.
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