TPM is reporting that George Steinbrenner had a massive heart attack, and via twitter, there are multiple reports he is dead. He was 80.
*** Update ***
I’m informed one of the first people ESPN went to for comment was…. Dave Winfield. In fairness, Billy Martin is unavailable.
cleek
Costanza, where’s my Paisano’s calzone ?
twiffer
i thought he was already undead.
as a boston fan, all i can say is: fuck you yankees and sorry for your loss.
4tehlulz
Not dead yet, according to ESPN.
Face
Since he’s not dead, this isn’t quite as offensive:
Steinbrenner is a ruthless, asshole POS who’s fundementally skewed baseball and personally altered the one-time relative parity of baseball teams (Pirate fans notwithstanding). I dont wish for him to die but I wish he’ll recover with a new understanding on how negative his legacy will be….
Edit: Now ESPN says he’s dead.
flukebucket
@cleek:
Fuckin’ hilarious. That is exactly the first thing I thought when I read the post.
Keith G
I don’t care. I am tired of self absorbed “big shots”.
peach flavored shampoo
@4tehlulz: Now ESPN says dead.
4tehlulz
He’s most likely dead, but this kind of reporting leaves me wondering.
cmorenc
to warp a bit the famous lines spoken by the Munchkin Coroner from “Wizard of Oz”:
“Is he merely dead, or is he really quite sincerely dead?”
flotsam
First their PA announcer kicks, then big George…here’s hoping Rivera or Jeter close out the trifecta…
yellowdog
And now they’ll turn the All Star game into a god-damned Steinbrunner memorial.
All I can say is FTFY.
Neal
As much as I dislike his team (being a Rays fan), he’s done a lot for Tampa charities. I can appreciate that.
Tokyokie
The asshole who, with the eager connivance of Giuliani, transformed the House That Ruth Built into the House That Steinbrenner Tore Down.
PurpleGirl
@cmorenc: Hey, good reference. Have an internet
Yellowdog gets an honorable mention for invoking Steve Gilliard’s favorite mantra.
BenA
They already started venerating St. Steinbrenner on ESPN.. Seriously that company sucks.
Ash Can
@yellowdog: It’ll be tiresome, all right. I’ll have to remember to tune in after the 1st inning has started and keep the sound down.
ETA: Not to mention that when the AL inevitably wins yet again, we’ll be reminded every 2.8 seconds that this was Steinbrenner’s legacy, due to his spending the Yankees into the stratosphere and forcing the other AL teams, especially the ones in the Yankees’ division, to keep up.
Brien Jackson
@Face:
Fuck off.
The Moar You Know
I care why?
c u n d gulag
As a Yankee fan, I would summarize his reign this way:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…
flotsam,
WTF is wrong with you?
Cynicor
Steinbrenner died? That’s so sad. Hey, should I get a poppy or sesame bagel this morning?
Bruuuuce
@flotsam: Same to you, dude. I despise several sports teams, but that’s no excuse to wish injury to people, much less death. You, however, have earned a FOAD.
peach flavored shampoo
@yellowdog: my thoughts exactly. The sappyness, the over-the-top eulogies, the Yankee-themed bylines of this All-Star game will be stomach-wretching.
Suddenly…..poof!….like that, I can no longer watch the All-Star game. Which sucks.
Face
@Brien Jackson: And the true Yankees fan has come out of hiding. Good to see ya. May your team blow a 5 game lead on Labor day and Rivera blow out his elbow.
Brien Jackson
@Face:
Classy.
Mo be with you.
MattR
A shame that he is gone and I wish his family, friends and colleagues the best. But at the same time, there are very few people outside of NY and some of the other big markets who think that he was a positive influence on the sport as a whole.
Bruuuuce
@yellowdog: Bill Madden (sportswriter, also Steinbrenner’s authorized biographer) was just on local radio (WCBS-AM, NYC) and noted that Steinbrenner loved little more than upstaging the Commissioner’s events (especially Bud Selig), and has just done it one more time. If we’re lucky, we’ll only hear about him twenty or thirty times :-(
Brien Jackson
@MattR:
Anyone who doesn’t think Steinbrenner was, ultimately, a positive for baseball has no idea what they’re talking about.
Punchy
Speaking of AllStar games and Yankees, is this the first time that A-rod hasn’t started an All Star Game (when he’s been healthy), besides maybe his rookie year? I was stunned to see him not in the starting lineup.
4tehlulz
Oh Facebook...
MattR
@Brien Jackson: Bullshit. Steinbrenner had a huge part in building the game up, but he did it in a way that increased the separation between the haves and the have-nots which made it impossible for the have nots to compete on even terms. Teams like the Twins, the A’s, etc have to be run 10 times better than the Yankees to have the same chance of winning.
Basically, Steinbrenner had a huge part in doing to baseball what has happened to the rest of the country. Yet liberal Yankees fans decry the latter while applauding the former.
Tom Q
It always amazes me how, when it comes to Yankee-hating, generally progressive people become indistinguishable from the slimy toads of the right, with the things they say. Wishing a player death: class personified.
I’ve been a Yankee fan long enough to have seen Maris hit two of his 61 at the old stadium, so I don’t have a rose-colored view of George. He brought championships to the city in the 70s, but he also brought ugliness — demeaning players, making idiotic trades on whim as if he were the dumbest back-row fan who suddenly acquired power of ownership. Even good years for the team were diminished by his antics. It’s worth remembering that, when his banishment from baseball was announced, it was fans at Yankee stadium who stood and cheered loudly.
But that seems a long time ago now. Age had withered the force of his personality even before the illness took him offstage; what tirades came seemed half-hearted. So it’s been easy to forget all that ugliness and concentrate on the team again — and, for NY fans, it’s been a great time of winning. (I’m aware of the financial dispartity that allows that, and fans from Pittsburgh or KC have a legitimate gripe, but putting that 100% on Steinbrenner is shallow analysis. Red Sox fans never seemed to have problems when their gazillion-dollar payrolls brought championships) I think Steinbrenner’s current image, among those too young to have experienced the ugly years, is far more benign, and even among some older folk he benefits from that great sentiment articulated in Chinatown (by way of Mark Twain, I believe): “Politicians, whores and ugly buildings all become respectable if they last long enough”
Brien Jackson
@MattR:
Steinbrenner pioneered selling rights to broadcast games to cable networks, and then pioneered team owned RSN’s, both of which have done more to increase the value of baseball franchises than anything else over the past 50 years. Add in the money teams are making from central television contracts thanks to the ratings the Yankees bring Fox and ESPN, plus the money they pay in revenue sharing and the luxury tax, and no figure in baseball has made as much money for his partners as Steinbrenner has, probably since Bam Johnson founded the American League.
maya
With all his money you’d think he might have bought himself some designated hearts.
Brien Jackson
@Tom Q:
Oh bullshit. I’ve got no sympathy whatsoever for progressives who would even flirt with the idea of endorsing salary caps. It’s completely ridiculous. On this front, the union hasn’t had a better friend than Steinbrenner, who nearly single-handedly cut the legs off of ownership plans to collude before they even had a chance to get off the ground by unabashedly going after free agents in the 70’s.
And so long as there are still player control periods, small market teams have no legitimate gripes whatsoever. Kansas City and Pittsburgh are a victims of bad management, not a lack of resources. Oakland is a victim of the owners’ own territorial agreements. And Minnesota is the victim of a greedy, penny pinching old bastard who wouldn’t put any of his substantial fortune into his team.
danimal
ESPN will be as unwatchable this week as it was last week during the LeBron debacle.
MattR
@Brien Jackson: So Steinbrenner has created X dollars of extra revenue for all other teams but has required them to increase their spending by significantly more than X in order to be able to compete. (ie. luxury tax. The Yanks paid something like $45 million last year. That is less than $2million per team. That is a pittance when you consider the Yankees payroll was $100 million more than 20 other teams last year)
The owner might be happy to have more revenues and higher franchise values, but I would argue that those two items by themselves do not indicate that the sport is better off, especially from the fans perspective.
Chinn Romney
I’ve been a life long Red Sox fan. I’ve also long been embarrassed by the ‘Yankees Suck’ crowd. It reflects the general lack of civility in the US these days I guess. And a decline in sportsmanship.
The Yankees might’ve been a collection of mercenaries, but on the field they always conducted themselves with a great deal of class. If you love baseball how can you really hate them? No, the Yankees don’t suck. Mean people suck, and we have them in spades up here, unfortunately. Some of them pretend to be fans, but they’re not.
Steinbrenner made for a fine villian, but he was a WWE cartoon villian, and I always had the impression he loved the role. The baseball world is a poorer place with his passing.
Mark
The whole issue of parity in baseball is a red herring. The sport is more popular than ever, and there’s no evidence that having a bunch of bad teams affects interest in a given sport (see any European soccer league.)
The way that the NFL and NHL and to some extent the NBA encouraged parity was to institute a salary cap and revenue sharing. But a salary cap is an income cap for players and a guarantee of revenues for billionaire owners.
While I understand that a level playing field is a ‘liberal’ value, so is the notion that labor should get a piece of the pie. Players should face a level playing field in terms of their ability to be paid what they’re worth. I don’t think a Pirates fan’s need to see a World Series in Pittsburgh should outweigh that.
Steaming Pile
@Brien Jackson: Well, according to the NYT, Steinbrenner bought the Yankees for $168,000 in 1973. Today that would barely crack a million dollars. The team is now valued at about $1 billion.
Martin
Sorry, but I can’t really sing the man’s praises. He fucked up baseball and was a general asshole, non-sporting proof being that he made illegal campaign contributions to Nixon which he was convicted of. Never happy to see someone pass on, but I’ll be happy to hit 80 myself. He had a better life than he deserved.
So long George, and FTFY.
Brien Jackson
@MattR:
The revenue tax doesn’t get paid out across every team. I believe 9 teams collected last year.
Florida is pocketing something like 20% more in revenue sharing and luxury tax money (of which the Yankees are the only team that has ever been hit) than they paid on their major league payroll. So yeah, I’d imagine they’re happy.
TheNickronomicon
As a Yankee fan (3rd generation, ~20 miles from the stadium on the Jersey side) George always prompted mixed feelings. On the one hand, he was an asshole and a jerk. He was surely an unbearable person in his private life and only barely tolerable in his public one. It’s hilarious that he got busted for illegally contributing to Nixon’s 1972 run, and the most regrettable part of that sorry episode is that it never made into Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the campaign trail ’72. But for all his bullshit George was the best owner in sports. His meddling, his bombastic and crazy press releases, his attitude–it was all because he wanted to win so badly. There are many owners who don’t seem to care very much if their team wins, but the Boss did. He sweated and bled over every game, he plowed vast sums of money back into the organization; he used every bit of leverage he could to put his team (and by that I mean, our team, my team) on top. I wish every owner were more like Steinbrenner that way, both financially and personally invested in the success of the team. He was deeply weird and far too crazy to be a product of our sleeker, blander, more corporate age. He was an evil bastard, but he was our evil bastard, and I owe a lot of the joy I’ve felt as a baseball fan to Big Stein and his efforts.
Brien Jackson
@Mark:
1. There’s no evidence whatsoever that baseball fans value parity. You can look at the ratings for the past two World Series, or the annual game-to-game ratings for Fox and ESPN national telecasts to see how fully the Yankees drive baseball’s television performance.
2. I’m not an expert on the NBA’s cap, but there is no evidence that the NFL salary cap does anything to increase parity, controlling for other factors (namely small samples and injuries). None. All it does is increase the amount of money owners are pocketing.
Face
@Brien Jackson: Why does the average fan care about the value of franchises? Fans see that Steinbrenner used the unique power of the NY market to consistently and ruthlessly buy up all the best free agents, thereby increasing baseball salaries to levels that Pittsburgh, KC, and Montreal couldn’t afford. Thereby killing those franchises w/r/t any chance at postseason play.
So George allowed the bigger market teams to thrive, but singlehandedly killed at least 3 teams. And seriously wounded Minnesota, Oakland, and Toronto. Thus the reason he’s so reviled outside of the NE corridor.
I cant wait to see ESPN fellate the guy in some 3 hour precast special prior to tonite’s game. Actually, I can wait.
MattR
@Mark: There has actually been research done (mostly using European soccer leagues) that shows that leagues are more popular and successful not when there is parity, but when there is movement between the “good” teams and the “bad” teams over time. That is the problem that baseball suffers from. And that is why the NFL has boomed since the salary cap was added.
(PS. I will add that I am remembering this from a paper I wrote in college about 15 years ago which I dont have handy to find the actual sources of that research)
Brien Jackson
@Face:
I’m very well aware that the average baseball fan knows nothing about baseball’s labor rules.
Punchy
Now that’s just pure bullshit. $100 mill/yr (at least) from the YES network, something nobody could even approach anywhere else, let alone Kansas City. Tell me how that isn’t an enormous advantage. Really, a team can spend 9 figures more than a competitor?
Gimmie a fucking break, dude.
Brien Jackson
@MattR:
Is it really so hard to check these silly claims before just running with them? Baseball’s attendance and revenue is at an all-time high, it’s not “suffering” from anything.
Brien Jackson
@Punchy:
YES isn’t particularly relevant absent factoring in how much revenue goes back into baseball operations (not that much). As for Kansas City and Pittsburgh, they’ve been horribly mismanaged, there’s no particular way around that. Dayton Moore is an atrocious GM, and Pittsburgh’s ownership resisted young players for far too long.
demo woman
According to the Tampa Tribune “he wore his patriotism on his sleeve”.
Of course it helps when you have friends in high places.
President Ronald Reagan pardoned Steinbrenner for making illegal contributions to President Richard Nixon’s reelection campaign in 1974.
Brien Jackson
@Face:
How in the world are Minnesota and Oakland “wounded” by the Yankees? Oakland was winning 100 games a season at the height of the Steinbrenner years. Minnesota just opened a new stadium, their payroll cracked $100 million, they signed Mauer to a long-term extension that basically keeps in Minnesota for his whole career, and the value of the franchise is at an all-time high.
MattR
@Brien Jackson: Thanks for the correction. I know a whole lot more about the NFL’s finances than MLB’s. You will get no argument from me that there is an issue with small market teams getting money from the luxury tax and not being required to spend it. In fact the hidden secret of the NFL is that their salary cap also provides a salry floor. But even if the Marlins received 50% of the luxury tax money and spent it all on salaries, their payroll would still in the bottom 5 of the league. It might help them out a bit, but it does not put them anywhere near an even playing field.
Brien Jackson
@MattR:
Actually I don’t really have a problem with it. Unlike basketball and football, which farms most of its development out to a semi-professional cartel that forces the labor to work as indentured servants, baseball does the balk of its developmental work itself. So there’s much more to baseball operations than just the major league payroll. Most commentary doesn’t take note of that though, nor does it account for the fact that players work well below their market value during the team control period at the beginning of their career, which makes the bitching about how the Yankees do business completely ignorant. It’s mostly just an attempt to find some villain, when the real culprit is generally poor management by the other teams.
TheNickronomicon
@Face:
Montreal was killed by the owners–they let it wither on the vine. Blame Selig more than Steinbrenner for that one. Pittsburgh and KC have been badly managed for long stretches. Oakland? Oakland was one of the better teams of the early Aughts, consistently making the postseason for years. If not for a Jeremy Giambi non-slide they might have been the ones playing the World Series in 2001, well into Steinbrenner’s reign as the Cause of All Baseball’s Woes. Toronto is a different beast, but if Toronto is hurt by the Yankees they’re just as damaged by the Red Sox.
BTW–the Twins have been one of the best teams in baseball over the first half, until the last few weeks, and have consistently made the postseason as well into the 00s. The Rays have led the AL East for much of the season, and are easily within striking distance right now.
As for mismanagement, Yglesias was talking about the NBA the other day and said something that I think applies equally to down-on-their-luck baseball teams:
When we say “poor management” this is the dynamic usually at play.
Face
@Brien Jackson: So Oakland just grew tired of Zito, Mulder, and Hudson, and decided to let them go elsewhere? Nopes, me remembers that they all wanted contracts like the ones the Yankees were pioneering, and thus left for money.
Did Minnesota evict Santana? Nopes, he wanted a 9 figure contract that the Twins couldnt even come close to. Yeah, they signed Mauer, but that’s it. And that’s ONLY b/c they just opened that stadium with new revenue streams.
And I’m done arguing. Gots work to do.
MattR
@Brien Jackson: Again, you are looking at total numbers and not the team by team breakdown. In 2001, the median team drew about 32,000 a game in 2009 it was about 29,000. In both years there were 11 teams that drew under 25,000 a game. I have to work so I can’t do more detailed analysis, but it is not as simple as just saying that attendance has increased so everything is good.
The Dangerman
Add me to the Fuck Steinbrenner list (which could possibly explain how he died on the morning of the AllStar game, taking the Rockefeller Route).
He personifies what is wrong with America today; one can be a loud, obnoxious, boorish prick, but as long as one wins, that’s all washed away. Fuck that shit. He was a loud, obnoxious, boorish prick; Death can’t change that other than to silence him.
Brien Jackson
@Face:
Yeah, pretty much. Oakland beat the hell of their arms, then tried to flip them to other teams before the shit hit the fan. Keep in mind that all of them have had arm injuries since leaving Oakland, none of them have had the same level of success since leaving, and Mulder basically hasn’t pitched since he left town.
Santana’s been dealing with bone chips in his elbow since leaving Minnesota, his velocity is down by about 5 MPH on his fastball, and he’s currently one of the game’s most overpaid players. He isn’t even the second best starter on the Mets this year.
They’ve got Morneau signed to a long term deal as well.
Pohlad was one of the 3 wealthiest owners in baseball.
Brien Jackson
@MattR:
That’s more a factor of poor/declining markets than anything else.
TheNickronomicon
@Face: Thanks for the laffs. Zito *wasn’t* signed by the Yankees–other teams hand out lucrative free agent contracts too. Mulder and Hudson were traded. And how effective have they been since they left Oakland? What prospects came back to the team? Beane traded those two to get back prospects to keep the team competetive. Zito was signed by the Giants to a massive contract when the Yankees, turned off by his declining peripherals over the last couple seasons, didn’t seriously pursue Zito. The wheels fell off all three of them. (I look forward to hearing how the Yanks are at fault for that one, too! :))
The Yankees can afford to spend for free agents. Despite what some would have you believe, there are other ways to build a team. Team control over young players, plus the ability to sign extensions, plus the ability to trade players for more prospects, are the other tools at a GM’s disposal. Look at how the Rays are run. They’re a powerhouse on a low budget who have been competitive for years and will be for many more. They’ve gone from laughingstock to contender without any really big free agent contracts.
Mark
@Punchy –
22 out of 30 NL teams have won 90 games in the last decade (and SD and TEX had 89.) The teams that didn’t: CIN, PIT, WSH, TOR, KC, BAL.
Those teams don’t exactly lack for revenue.
1) Baltimore has won 90 games only once since they won the 1983 World Series, which is mostly due to a meddling owner.
2) Toronto hired JP Ricciardi, who was a colossal disaster as a GM, doling out massive contracts to mediocre players.
3) Washington hired Jim Bowden as its inaugural GM and gave him the cash he needed. Bowden is a buffoon and the results were predictable (well, perhaps not his DUI.)
4) Cincy has no shortage of money, but they too employed Jim Bowden as GM.
5) KC has meddling owners and two terrible GMs in the last decade.
6) PIT is a mix of both. They have little revenue, but they also had Dave Littlefield as their GM.
It is difficult to win with less money, but it is by no means impossible. Tampa is a great example. Hell, the Red Sox are a great example compared to the Yankees. When you’re operating on a limited budget, you need to be better at scouting and you need to mine free agency for bargains. You can’t – as Ricciardi did – just sign the free agent du jour to a huge contract and expect to succeed.
MattR
@TheNickronomicon:
No argument from me about this. My argument is not that other teams cannot compete, it is that they are constantly competing at a disadvantage to the large market teams.
As another example, the Red Sox are paying close to $25 million for their backup catcher, third basemen and a middle infielder. Very few other teams can afford to do this. So when Dustin Pedroia and Victor Martinez went on the DL, the Red Sox had quality options available.
Punchy
Nobody is saying this. But your margin of error has to be practically zero, which for all those teams listed, isnt the case. How do you blast the GMs of those teams without considering that they’re only allowed to draft/trade/sign players their teams can afford? Would you be calling Dayton Moore an idiot if he had signed ARod, Texiera, and Santana and made the playoffs? Likely not. But they couldn’t afford even one of those, let alone enough of them to win. So now he’s an idiot?
Whereas….the Yankees failed with Kevin Brown, Carl Pavano, Jason Giambi, etc., yet they can absorb all those massive contract boondoggles and still make the playoffs every year, because they can afford it. Hence, the disadvantage.
Nobody’s discounting that Minnesota has outplayed it’s salaries, but the minute even one of their major players goes down, they’re screwed (watch them finish 3rd in the AL Central with Nathan out). Just no room for error or injury, while the Yanks would merely trade for a new guy and keep going.
Money is almost everything, long-term, in baseball, due to the lack of a salary cap.
Brien Jackson
@MattR:
Not really.
Brien Jackson
@Punchy:
This gets repeated constantly, but where’s the proof for it?
Brien Jackson
@Punchy:
Oh hell, while we’re on the topic of inaccurate statements:
1. Brown was a Yankee for 2 seasons, and they only paid him about $15 million in total.
2. People seriously overstate the size of Pavano’s contract. They paid him $40 million over 4 years, which is a lot, but not massive by any stretch.
3. Considering the market at the time, Giambi’s contract wasn’t that outrageous, and people also forget that Giambi was phenomenal for the first few years of that deal.
They won the division last year even after Morneau got hurt and with Liriano persona non grata.
Howlin Wolfe
@MattR: As a Twins fan, I say, Here, here!, Matt.
Tokyokie
Steinbrenner amassed his initial fortune in the family shipbuilding business, and, according to David Cay Johnston, made enormous sums by bilking the DOD on defense contracts. (Wore his patriotism on his sleeve, my ass. His money quote was that he’d hire 10 lawyers for every pipefitter.) When he decided that Yankee Stadium, arguably the greatest sports venue in American history, couldn’t generate the luxury-box income he sought, he conspired with that dick-lick Giuliani to build a new ballpark on what had been parkland in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the Bronx and then scaled ticket prices so that only banksters could afford them.
Excuse me if I don’t find anything admirable about the bastard.
MattR
@Brien Jackson: Fair enough :) But the Red Sox thought they were quality options.
TheNickronomicon
@Punchy: Trade for a new guy? Like we traded for a new 3rrd baseman when A-Rod was hurt, or the new DHs and outfielders we acquired when Johnson went down and Granderson was out….?
The Yankees can afford to pay a lot of money for players they want, but we should at least stay focused on the things that have actually happened rather than the strawbasemen they’ve acquired over the years. :)
More seriously, it was George’s penchant for trading away prospects for veterans that put the Yankees in a bind in the later Torre years. Whereas nowadays we can call up Cervelli or Pena or any number of young arms for the bullpen (all minor-league talent, from the same pool and with the same currency as every other team) if someone gets hurt, we didn’t have that option and it hurt us in the past. Free agent money is good, but a great farm system is better and provides a team with REAL flexibility.
Brien Jackson
@Tokyokie:
I don’t really understand non-Yankee fans who obsess over the new stadium, but whatever.
Punchy
.
Your NY bias is unreal. Take the $10 mill in 2001 money (I think when they signed Pavano) and adjust it to at least $12 million. Now name even 2 players from either the Royals or Pirates who make over $12 mill. Hell, the Pirates dont even have one player making more than $5 million right now. Wanna bet it’s becuase they dont make $100 mill from a home network?
So take your “it’s not really a big contract” shit that, yes to a Yankee homer, is like pocket change, but to a small market club, is a huge contract. Meche is currently making $12 mill and he’s sidelined, and you know why the Royals aren’t winning? It’s not due to their hitting, it’s the pitching. Loss of even one key player and these teams die.
gwangung
Management. Anyone who takes on a slew of former Mariners castoff can’t be considered that bright….
Howlin Wolfe
@Brien Jackson:
It’s suffering from some teams having the bulk of the talent, Brien. The fact that a team like the Twins can do pretty well against the same teams is a tribute to their system, but when you have a team that hits like the Yankees, it’s very unlikely the Twins will have 5 pitchers that reliably retire the Yankee lineup. It’s unlikely they’ll have even 2 such pitchers. Because they can’t afford the good free agents.
That is something you apparently don’t have to worry about, being a Yankees fan (and FOAD for being one). But it’s a reality, and your constant harping of the factoid above isn’t a counter-argument. It’s your Yankees flavored binky.
Screw the Yankees, the best team money can buy. Nothing makes me happier than seeing them go down in flames.
Brien Jackson
@Punchy:
No, it’s because they’ve got a bunch of players under team control. You really want to try to list all of the players making more than $12 million on teams that don’t have their own network? I mean, that’s every team other than the Yankees, Red Sox, and Orioles.
Also, that wasn’t the point, which was that the Yankees could make a “mistake” and survive it. There are plenty of teams doing well now with players making over $12 million while playing decidedly below that level of value.
Brien Jackson
@Howlin Wolfe:
Maybe, but that’s a matter of perspective, and it’s apparently a perspective that puts you in the minority, based on objective measurements.
Brien Jackson
@Punchy:
You know who never pitched 190 innings as a starter before he got signed by the Royals? Gil Meche. His best ERA prior to going to Kansas City was 4.48 as well.
You’re just proving my point about management.
Tokyokie
@Brien Jackson:
There seems to be a whole lot you don’t understand, given your Yankee-centric universe. But hey, fuck those poor people. And fuck those American taxpayers, too.
Or better still, fuck the fucking Yankees.
Punchy
Do you know why they had to pitch him so many innings? Because they had no money to spend on a quality bullpen. Because they cant afford a $200+ plus team salary and pay the set up guy $7 mill or so.
You’re just proving my point about resources and the ability to buy yourself a quality middle relief and set up man.
As others have said, you’ve never, ever known “your” team to be constrained by money; they just buy whoever the fuck they want. The rest of us are painfully aware of the athletic difference between your $24 mill Sabathia and a $2 mill Brian Bannister/Bruce Chen/(fill in anyone but maybe Grienke).
fucen tarmal
in fairness, if steinbrenner really wanted to leverage the nyc revenue advantage, he would have spent 100 million more on his farm system than anyone else could have dreamed of doing, and out scouted the rest of the league combined. he still left the door open, a smidge, buy spending the most money on the most perishable item, major league talent…if you think about it, the real question about the yankees is? why didn’t they win more?
but, because they had to compete, boston went all me too, and gouges the hell out of red sox fans in the process…frankly, since competitve baseball went the way of astroturf, and most of mlb is on the welfare with revenue sharing and luxury taxes, i don’t care if new york and boston fans pay for it all.
am
@Tokyokie:
I can’t think of anything less admirable about taking your personal sports grudge, attaching it to a noble cause, and trying to conflate the two of them.
debbie
I lived in NYC from 1978-1995, so I got to witness all the Steinbrenner fireworks up close and personal. I always thought he was overbearing and obnoxious, but compared to Dan Gilbert, maybe he wasn’t so bad. He certainly loved his team.
How ironic he dies on All Star Game day. He grabs for all the limelight even from the great beyond!
Brien Jackson
@Punchy:
What the fuck are you talking about? A) He pitched those innings for the Mariners, b) 190 innings isn’t a lot for a major league starter, it’s basically about average, if a little below for a top 2 starter. Your best 2 starters should easily cross 200 innings pitched, and an ace will get to 225+.
So what I’m basically to gather from this is that you don’t know anything about baseball.
Brien Jackson
@fucen tarmal:
Boston could probably reduce prices by building a new stadium, but there’s only about 36,000 seats at Fenway, so yeah, they’re gonna be expensive.
Brien Jackson
@Punchy:
Also, if you’re paying a set up man $7 million, you’ve got…a management problem.
John Cole
The reason the Pirates suck is severalfold. One, they simply do not have the money to compete. Two, they are horribly incompetent, and would not be able to compete if they did have the money. Three, like the Cubs, they have no incentive to compete, because they still make money.
vtr
@Tom Q: And I’ve been a Red Sox fan so long I remember Williams and Mantle hitting home runs in a game at Fenway in the late 50s. For all the hate toward the Evil Empire I’ve held, certain Yankees have always been favorites of mine, from Mantle and Berra to Guidrey and Munson to Posada and Jeter. I think this is called the Stockholm Syndrome.
The remarkable thing about George’s first years was how quickly he turned that crappy team into a winner. It’s ownership that matters. I’m looking at you, Pittsburgh.
Brien Jackson
@fucen tarmal:
What I don’t really get is that the Steinbrenner era has been much more competitive than the pre-free agency period when the owners literally owned the players, scouting was slim, etc.
Owners are still good at propaganda I guess.
TheNickronomicon
@Howlin Wolfe:
There is absolutely nothing that has prevented Twins ownership from investing in their team like Yankees ownership has. Nuh-thing. Is their media market going to produce less money than the NYC area? Yep, it is. But that’s no excuse for utterly failing to even *try* to compete, as Pohlad has done for years. If he had spent his time and money investing in the team, they probably still wouldn’t have landed Sabathia–but they might have landed John Lackey, or another quality free agent. Your problem isn’t with the Yankees, or even the rules that allow them to do it; your problem is with owners too lazy, selfish, or stupid to play the game properly.
Brien Jackson
@TheNickronomicon:
Since Pohland died and his kid took over, they’ve loosened up quite a bit. Anyway, most of this is just total bullshit. for one thing, the Yankees don’t put YES revenue into the baseball operations (or if they do, the amount that’s transfered is a fraction of a %). For another, much of the Yankees payroll is inflationary; it’s money they have to pay above market value just because they’re the Yankees and it’s known that they have it.
Moreover, go to Baltimore the night before a Yankees series sometime, then go to all 3 Yankees games, and tell me how bad for the Orioles the Yankees are.
Punchy
@Brien Jackson: I’m sorry you’re unable to make a cogent response. I assumed, since Meche is on the DL due to shoulder issues, that since you quoted a low number of innings pitched (190) with Seattle, you were trying to imply the Royals overpitched him in ’09 b/c their manager was poor. My point was that the Royals were forced to pitch him ~120 pitches/game b/c they had no bullpen.
WTF Seattle had anything to do with this, I cant understand. And by quoting his average ERA, you’re reinforcing that the Royals can afford no better than average talent on the FA market due to money disparities.
And I know a shitload about baseball, so please STFU about that.
TheNickronomicon
@Punchy:
Most of the better bullpens in the league (as the Yankees had last year) are home-grown. Relief pitching is extremely volatile from year-to-year, and the 2009 Yankee plan was to mix and match arms from the minor league system to have the hottest pitchers available to the major league club. NYY and BOS’s best relievers have been home-grown. Papelbon, Rivera, Roberts, Bard, Melancon, Coke, etc. are all products of the farm system. Even Damaso Marte was acquired via trade (with the Pirates, and the centerpiece that went to Pittsburgh is doing pretty well for them). Flexibility is key to a good bullpen, and if you have limited free agent resources then blowing them on a single reliever is a stupid decision.
Punchy
But $15 million for a closer is good money spent? Or is it just that the Yankees could pay him just whatever the fuck he wanted?
You’ll never grasp this ludicrousness b/c you’ve never had your team denied a player due to money issues. Every other team in the MLB aside from maybe Boston has. And it’s largely your goddamn owner who so inflated the salaries so quickly through the late 90s and early 00s.
TheNickronomicon
@John Cole: Lately they’ve been acting in a more responsible manner. The new management team is trying to build up like the Rays did, which is the smart way to go about it. Littlefield et al. seemed to want to make big, bold moves in a bid to suddenly and dramatically swing fortune their way, and it failed every time. (See the quotation from Yglesias above!) Rather than try to win the division this year, they’re building for 2012 or so, and I’d love it if they could pull it off.
Paul Moeller
Who’s gonna fire the managers now?
Brien Jackson
@Punchy:
No, I’m pointing out that the Royals overpaid pretty wildly for Gil Meche. Which is basically on the level with other things the Royals do. Dayton Moore is a comically inept general manager who’s most known for continuing to mock the statistical analysis general managers are using now, even as he’s awful, and the ownership not only isn’t firing him for being incompetent (and proudly advertising his incompetence), they signed him to an extension. That’s why they’ve been so bad for so long. It’s not that hard to figure out.
Brien Jackson
@John Cole:
The Pirates spent 10 years avoiding actual rebuilding, opting for a strategy of bringing in aging but reasonably well known veterans who were role players at best to try to sell tickets/merchandise. It wasn’t a recipe for winning at all, but it did work for the bottom line.
gwangung
No, he isn’t. Are you sure you know baseball?
Well, coulda fooled me…
Face
Translation: you had no chanace at all in landing the best, but you may have gotten someone above average, so it’s all the same. Because above-average talent over 162 games is so much the same as having the absolute best player over the same span.
Spoiled Yanks fans will never see this b/c they’re conditioned not to.
Brien Jackson
@Punchy:
No, it’s not. But letting Rivera go would be bad for business, and so he can pull it out of them. That’s a big part of why looking at payroll is basically useless in baseball, rather than looking at the market value of their rosters.
TheNickronomicon
@Brien Jackson: You have it all wrong! The Yankees bought up all the best GM talent and Moore is the best the Royals can afford! Except that Cashman sucks, of course, since any monkey could fling money into a free agent pool and come up with a World Series winner! If it weren’t for the Yankees sapping the precious bodily fluids of the rest of MLB’s teams….
Brien Jackson
@Face:
When is the last time the best player in baseball was also the highest paid player in baseball? Christ, the Yankees don’t even have the best player in their division. Nor is the best player in the AL East making $1 million this year.
People really need to become more familiar with baseball’s labor policies if they expect to be taken seriously.
TheNickronomicon
@Face:
Absolute best is a relative term, and by no means a fixed commodity. Do the Rays have the absolute best pitching staff? No. Are they within two games of the Yankees with half a season to go, with a more than decent shot of taking the division? Yes; yes they are. If you’re convinced that you need the *absolute best* in order to have any fun watching the game, or even to be competitive, we’re coming from two very different places in our appreciation of baseball.
Punchy
For at least the 3rd time, your Yankee homerness is obvious. 1) the reason why they had to “overpay” to get Meche is precisely becuase they are the Royals, perennial losers. Nobody wants to play for the Royals unless they’re “overpaid”. See Kendall, Jason, Guillen, Jose. But you wouldnt see this, being that your team, for as long as you’ve lived (likely), has never been spurned by someone needing more money. Thus, the Yanks overpay b/c they want to, and therefore drive up the salaries for other teams who cannot afford it.
And you’re blaming the Royals 20+ years of inability to compete with the big spenders on the fact Moore’s been the GM for just 4 years (and didnt even have a hand in the ’06 draft)? Wow.
Chinn Romney
@Paul Moeller:
You’re in for a treat if you haven’t been introduced to George’s charming and gracious son Hank, who took over operations last year.
Punchy
And do you know who’s likely to own Longoria, Price, Hamilton, Cliff Lee, etc when they become free agents? I wont say for sure, but I can say with 100% certainty who wont. I can say with absolute certainty which teams will never, ever sign a player over $18 mill/year, while other teams are nearing the $30 mill/yr/player mark….
I agree that “best talent” doesnt always mean best paid (and yes, I understand that early contracts are disgustingly undervalued), but the Yanks would not have signed Texiera to a 20+ mill contract if they thought they could get $5 mill replacement to do the same hitting. And Texiera would not have played for the Royals for that same $20 mill he got from NY.
Brien Jackson
@Punchy: @Punchy:
Well that’s a tautology if I’ve ever seen was. Personally, I wasn’t aware that the Royals were required to acquire Meche (or Kendall, or Guillen, or Betancourt, or Jacobs, etc.) in the first place, let alone required to overpay for them.
Again, you’re just totally oblivious to the existence of the team control period. How about you stop replying for a while, go to the Google machine, and do some research on how the baseball market actually works.
Brien Jackson
@Punchy:
Price, Longoria, and Hamilton will probably sign extensions with their present teams to buy out 3 years or so of their free agency period, then hit free agency when they’re around 30, where they’ll command deals that will cover only 2 or 3 years of their primes and probably leave them overpaid at the end of the deal.
TheNickronomicon
@Punchy:
Then the Royals are stupidly managed for trying to build a team through free agency, rather than the farm system.
Why does nobody want to play for the Royals? Their money is as green as any other team’s money. Nobody wants to play for the Royals because the team is going nowhere–and it’s going nowhere because it’s built with a bunch of 2nd tier free agents. If they had built up another pitcher or two to go with Greinke, another couple of hitters to go with DeJesus, they’d be able to compete in that division. If they’re competitive, they can attract a Jim Thome-type *piece* or two to *complement* the home-grown core and make a run. Instead, they’ve followed the Pirates route and tried to build the team through free agency.
brantl
@flotsam: Jeter’s a decent guy, that’s shitty.
brantl
@Brien Jackson: It just shows that he was a dick. And he was a dick. He and Billy Martin deserved each other, two of the biggest pricks in baseball.
asiangrrlMN
@Face: I will just add that the Twins opened a new stadium by forcing one county (Hennepin) to pay for it. In other words, welfare for the billionaire. Then, fucking Pohlad cut loose Santana and Hunter after PROMISING (yeah, right), that he would use the monies he saved by not building his own stadium (without the retractable roof, which will need to be added because this is fucking Minnesota), so fuck him.
I am not glad that Steinbrenner’s dead, but as a non-Yankee fan (and I was a Yankee fan at one point), I certainly believe he personified many of the problems with baseball as it’s currently run. The fact that he was going to cut dental benefits to Yankees employees to save a few bucks was the straw that broke my back.
@brantl: I agree with you on this one. Jeter has always been a class act.
brantl
Steinbrenner was the kind of dick who would hire, then fire, Billy Marten, repeatedly. ‘Nuff said.
Face
@asiangrrlMN: That new stadium looks incredible. No reason to put a roof on it IMO, but then again, MN in late October could be a sub-freezing snowstorm mess. I think they were better off dumping Hunter’s salary and putting that towards Mauer (who is a freakin stud), but they made a mistake letting Garza and Santana go. I think they felt Lariano would be the next Santana.
TheNickronomicon
@Face: Losing Garza was a bummer, but they were right to think that Santana was going into decline. At least they got prospects for him, but I don’t follow the Twins closely enough to know how good those guys have been for them.
And, FWIW, I don’t think MN is significantly colder during the baseball playoffs thans NY or MA is, and the cold’s never stopped the teams that play there.
twiffer
@Punchy: see “the mets”.
Brien Jackson
@TheNickronomicon:
If by “lose” you mean “lose to free agency,” they didn’t lose Garza. They traded him, along with Jason Bartlett, to Tampa for Delmon Young, a more highly touted prospect with an attitude problem the Rays didn’t want anymore.
scarshapedstar
He died in a car crash along with Justin Bieber.
TheNickronomicon
@Brien Jackson: Ahhh, thanks for the correction. I clearly do not follow the Twins very closely. :)
Brien Jackson
Actually Steinbrenner and Winfield buried their hatchet years ago, and have actually been pretty decent friends for the past few years.
gorillagogo
My god are Yankees fans insufferable. You can’t make the common sense assertion that the Yanks’ ability to grossly outspend every other team gives them an edge without some dork chiming in with asinine rationalizations about how other teams would win too if they weren’t so fucking stupid. It’s not enough that their team grabs all the best players and wins the most championships, they have to give us the “who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?” routine too. Christ.
fucen tarmal
@Brien Jackson:
its not just the absurdly expensive game day experience, its also the rights fees on tv, and every thing else.
i disagree that this era of baseball is more competitive. sure an occasional team gets in the playoffs, and that is in thanks, largely due to twice as many teams playing in the playoffs as 20 years ago, and four times as many as 41 years ago…the lions share of playoff appearances are still distributed amongst a select handful, while the rest have an occasional run.
i’m a reds fan in pittsburgh or was, even with the reds flirting with contention and first place, i can’t bring myself to care…baseball in the 80s and early 90s seemed like a time when anyone could build a winner. they had free agency then, even in the 70s 60s teams at least contended more often, or could.
Brien Jackson
@fucen tarmal:
So it seemed more competitive when the Blue jays won consecutive titles, the A’s and Twins dominated the AL, and the Braves were starting a run of 14 straight division titles? But not a point where Tampa Bay is great, Minnesota owns their division, the NL West has had near constant turnover in their division, and the Mets and Cubs are basically disasters even with their money?
Karen
I’m a native New Yorker from the Island who’s been living in Maryland since 1988. I’m a huge Mets fan and so is my father. We hate the Yankees with a passion. But my condolences regardless. Even if the Yankees are the team with the most expensive players.
Jay
Come on guys. There’s no one right answer here. There are NUMEROUS factors that go into winning and losing, obviously. There isn’t a single reason that clubs don’t compete.
For instance, I find it equally naive for small Twins fans to complain that they couldn’t buy more players (because Carl most certainly could have…just like he could have built a stadium with his own damned money 15 years ago…instead of running the team like a used-car salesman) as I do Yankees fans thinking that George throwing money at players didn’t have any effect on the baseball market as a whole. Both have had an effect. Also, the Twins let Ortiz go…that was dumb…and until this year, the Garza/Bartlett for Young trade seemed pretty lopsided too. And instead of pooling money for ONE good free agent signing, they’ve spent the last several years singing scrap-heap garbage and reclamation projects like Tony Batista, Rondell White, Sidney Ponson, Brett Boon, Adam Everette, Mike Lamb…etc. That was also dumb. But they also could not sign Torii Hunter or Johan Santana to deals due to the inflated salaries of the larger markets. Certainly not the Yankees fault, and it’s clear that those non-signings may have proven serendipitous, but it does not change the fact that increased spending without regard has certainly done damage to teams who watch the budget. Like I said, there are TONS of reasons clubs win or suck. It ain’t just one thing.
But what i don’t get is: WHY is it that Yankees fans cannot grasp how much easier it is for their club to be successful? Do they REALLY think that the Yankees ability to pay for any and every player (hell, they were dealing for Cliff Lee up and until he signed with Texas and they don’t need any rotation help this season. And don’t say “well that would be for prospects, not cash”…because an ability to sign free agents makes the necessity of “prospects”…especially non-pitching ones…a little less important) isn’t a significant advantage over other relatively successful teams that have to pick and choose the talent to whom they’re going to extend large paychecks? That’s asinine. What’s the over-under on Cliff Lee being a Yankee next year, despite the fact that they already have an established rotation? How about the odds on whether he’ll sign a deal with the Twins…who need a TON of help with their rotation? You can’t compare the two.
Also, free agent signings and veteran players make a HUGE difference when you consider that “success” is a relative term. Sure, the Twins have dominated their division for the past 10 years and have made it to the post-season on a regular basis. But the fact of the matter is, they haven’t had the top to bottom talent that the Yankees or Red Sox have had (through either free agent signing or simply KEEPING the talent that they’ve developed) and, therefore, they’re an early exit each year. Tell me if losing in the first round of every post season is “Success” to the Yankee fans? If not, then why is it “success” for other clubs? Does money not help fill the needs for a deep post-season run?
I’m not a Yankee fan. I think the money HAS become an issue with parity and competition. And I don’t like it. But I’m not foolish enough to think that the reason clubs like KC struggle is only because George made it impossible.
TheNickronomicon
@gorillagogo:
You’re totally right–disregard all evidence to the contrary! Everyone knows the only way to build a baseball team is to buy players in the free agent market, and that the league makes sure that only the Yankees have enough money to buy anyone. There’s no draft or anything, the Yankees get all the best players, they’ve won every world series ever, and the Tampa Bay Rays are not now nor have ever been competitive. They don’t have any money, so they have no chance of winning the division or going to the World Series!
You’d probably feel less butthurt if you actually read the thread, instead of complaining about strawmen. Nobody denies money is an edge, but money without brains gets you the Cubs. Brains but no money gets you the Rays. Which team do you think has a better chance to win it all in the next couple years?
TheNickronomicon
@Jay: Thanks for the sanity, Jay. I may be biased, but I don’t think the money is a huge issue, and I’m not sure how to fix what issue there might be to it without also destroying the good things about the free agent process. I have yet to read anything more constructive than suggestions to implement an owner-enriching salary cap. As a union man and the son of a couple generations of unionized workers, I really love it when the MLBPU (mainly millionaires, granted) tells the owners (mainly billionaires..what was that Chris Rock line? Shaq’s rich, but the guy who signs his paycheck is *wealthy*) to suck it.
Which is, I guess, my point. If Big Money is a problem in baseball, what suggestions do people have for fixing it? All of the whining and butthurt about Teh Yankeez Buyin Mah Menz comes off looking like sour grapes without some ideas for straightening it out.
ChrisB
Didn’t want to say anything negative about Steinbrenner on the day he died.
It’s now Wednesday.
I felt considerable sadness when Bob Shepard passed away, as I often do when I hear of someone’s passing or the end of something I grew up with.
I felt completely cold when I heard of Steinbrenner’s death.
fucen tarmal
@Brien Jackson:
the fact that the a’s could have a 1peat dynasty, is something to consider, as is the blue jays putting together a talent laden roster albeit under achieving for about a decade before that, the braves had a nice run, aided by the split in divisions, but remember they were gawful in the 70s and 80s. all of the teams you mentioned, and the reds, brewers, pirates,orioles, even the expos though they failed hard at cashing in, detroit, minnesota, kansas city, there are others, all these teams were able to build a contending exciting team, at least for a few years, in a relatively compressed time.