It’s hard for me to shit on guys like JETER, RIVERA, POSADA and PETTITE who are products of the Yankee farm system under Gene ‘Stick’ Michael and not simply overpaid free agent freeloaders like Ghey-Rod. I was upset that Ghey-Rod was getting a ring because I felt like he didn’t deserve one since he is such a hump in the postseason.
RAFI ‘StatMan’ KAM pointed me to the Sabermetric value called the OPS+ which all the roto-fantasy GM’s are gaga over. The addition of slugging percentage combined with on base percentage adjusted to the fields a player visits gives you the OPS+. It’s a nifty little stat when you want to generate a value for players like Ghey-Rod. Barry Bonds pwns this statistic along with Babe Ruth and Ted Williams.
Ghey-Rod’s 2009 postseason has been the first one where he hasn’t sucked major ass but he still isn’t the star that some of the other less heralded Yankees were. Players like Jeter, Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui are way cooler under pressure. When I reviewed the Ghey-Rod player card I was surprised to see that his BA (batting average) was over .350 for the playoffs.
Ghey-Rod is finally a World Series champion and I can’t take that away from him. He’ll enjoy the parade up Broadway this year and possibly several more before his career is finished. One of these days I may even come to appreciate his Sabermetric statistics (I doubt that). Meanwhile, the rich keep getting richer. Damn Yankees.
Love the Bronx, despise the Yankees, from Randy Levine on down and ** all ** the goddamn Steinbrenners, including blithering George (who held the BX hostage for 30+ years when, in fact, he wasn’t going ANYWHERE), who like goddamn Reagan, deserves A LOT worse to blither off into the sunset…
That said, this might be useful for “Stadium Status”–
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/11/series_returns.php
No surprise at all, of course, but it never hurts to enumerate the lies, which # is A LOT bigger than 2-fucking-7.
Willis,
I have been working a drop around in my mind about how much money Team Bloomberg and Team Steinbrenner really spent on their underwehelming victories. I’ll def want to pull out some graphics to illustrate the similarities.
My first and only visit so far to the new stadium intimated to me how much it reminded me of a mall instead of a ballpark. The game on the field is a second or even tertiary option to all the other timewasters and attractions built into the stadium. People watching the baseball game on a flat screen while dining at the Hard Rock Cafe inside of the stadium was the biggest affront to my sensibilities.
The new Yankee Stadium does not care about beisbol.
eff the american league…hire some black people…a lil factoid for u. 1960 to 1970 9 out of the ten mvps for the all star game were black n.l players. fuck baseball. we get no love in that sport even though we hold all the records. let the spanish speakin african slaves play that bullshit…we’re done with it.
Ive been a yankees fan since I was a kid. I was also a huge ALfonso SOriano fan. some people may say Im crazy but, even with all the hype A-Rod was getting, I thought that Soriano was a huge loss for the Yankees. I feel like the Yankees bought him just to avoid having to face him. Soriano was a great player. He fell off a little bit but I still follow him till this day. This Yankees team made history this year. I hope Jeter, Posada, Mariano, Pettite, Tezeira, Matsui and Swisher all stay Yankees. As A yankees fan, a baseball fan and sports fan I do feel like there is a such a thing as spending too much. keep balance. not everything is fair, but why shouldnt baseball be?
MLB has been as deplorable as the NFL in integrating Blacks into decision making posuitions for their league. Black faces scare away the corporate dollars is the popular refrain
mercilesz, until the shorties return to the stands in the innercity (do they even have stands at baseball fields in the innercity anymore?), brothers will continue to work on their handles and TD dances.
And as long as the little DR mami hails my man wearing cleats….and lil Becky plays catch….and lil Akiro anime…
u r wrong about the yankees spending. you assume that cuz they spend the most that they are somehow bigwigs. Even the smallest market teams are making billions (trillions?), the yankees just spend more money on the players. While the yankees do have more revenue and it is easier for them to spend the money they do, these ‘smaller-market’ teams like kc or tampa have access to the same amount of money to invest in their team. Don’t fall for the propaganda of ”the poor small market team”. They all have money, they choose to pocket more of it, and not to invest as much in their own team. Steinbrenner was getting free agents when they weren’t winning; he chose to put the team first.
fredMS – c’mon
The Yanks dropped the GDP of a small island nation on A-Rod and CC.
The Yanks have so much YES money to throw around and they have all of the bank bailout money going into the corporate suites, so there is no way a small market team can keep up.
…which still doesn’t explain why the Cubs can’t ever get it together… but that it is different story.
fredMS,
KC and Tampa don’t have multi-billion dollar facilities that were funded by the taxpayer. The Yankees new stadium uses $1.75b of taxpayer dollars.
Sure they can afford to field a team of multi-millionaires if they are shaking down the taxpayers for over a billion dollars.
Have you been to the new stadium? Can you afford to go there?
i don’t care about baseball anymore but i love making money off it.
Dallas, thank you so much for the kind words. In this city of 2 teams, it’s so heart warming to see the other team express their joy in bringing the title back to NYC. And how could any self-respecting Mets fan root for the Philthys anyway? Disgusting. I guess you guys were stuck between a rock and hard place.
A-Rod’s the man. Enough with his choke status already. He came through, won a ring and will one day be in the HOF. PEDs or not, the dude is talented. A retard? A lunatic? Yes. But he’s a Yankee and I root for my team.
How can you call Yankee Stadium a mall instead of a park while Citifield aka the Shea-k Shack has more of an amusement park feel than the Cathedral. Why shouldn’t you be allowed to buy a $300 signed Jeter baseball in the 4th inning? The Shea-K centerfield area is full of everything to distract from what’s on the field (Not a bad thing I guess). Between the whiffle ball field, the 2K9 kiosk, pool dunk stand, beers of the world and the best food in the building, people spend the majority of their time there. AND YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE A CLEAR LINE OF VISION TO THE FIELD. You need to watch the game via huge screens. At least in Yankee Stadium, no matter where you are, the game on the field is only a step away. And whoever goes to Hardrock during a game is a dickhead anyway.
As a Mets fan living in Philly, this series was my worst nightmare. However, no self respecting New Yorker would ever root for a Philly team so I had to cheer for the Bronx Bombers. As long as Philly lost, I’m good.
And yes, they’re overpaid.
@ dp, im not sayin the yankees aren’t extremely privileged with funds. but these ‘small market teams’ are able to compete, they choose not to. First off, bigger contracts doesnt mean better players, but even if it did, they very well could sign a big free agent; it would just be a riskier investment. these small market teams are not as poor as they would have you believe.
FredMS,
I don’t think you really read what I said(wrote). The Yankees received a wild sum for their building to be built from public funds. If a team in a “small market” wants to match up with this type off facility they will hold their taxpayers hostage or relocate their franchise
Where did I say that small market teams were withholding monies?
*shrugs shoulders*
$14.
The cost of one blue-collar bleacher seat at the new Yankee Stadium.