To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.
~Conan the Barbarian
The Yankees bring home another World Series. 2009 looks better by the minute.
Completely unsurprising given the payroll differentials.
Actually quite sad if you ask me. Money can buy you championships consistently in baseball more than any other pro sport. Kind of a hollow victory when you spend 2 to 10 times as much as any other team.
I think the premiership in the UK is worse, but baseball is the worst for American sports. But hey, that is free market capitalism, is it not? Do you want some sort of rigid socialist profit-sharing or salary cap program?
I lived in NYC for 10 years and NEVER could I bring myself to root for the Yankees. Its like rooting against "Wild Thing" in Major League. Its like hoping the Bad News Bears lose. Its like supporting tax cuts for the rich.
"but baseball is the worst for American sports"
Actually more teams have been represented in baseball's playoffs than either the NFL or NBAs the last decade or so... It may very well have something to do with the sport, but baseball has hardly been dominated by the high payroll teams.
It's hard to imagine baseball without large payroll differences... In my opinion it would be a lot less interesting and would have a lot less potential. It would be like if the Bad News Bears didn't start off as underdogs... well who cares if they win?
I'm a Cleveland Indians fan. The Indians are a small market team, haven't won a series since '48 and have traded away two Cy Young winner's in the last two years because they didn't have a chance to sign them. I'm still glad to be an Indians fan. To win the Indians have to be smarter and better than everyone else(while the Yankees just have to not suck). Oakland is in a similar situation(Moneyball). I love rooting for an underdog and I love having underdogs to root for. If revenue sharing existed winning just wouldn't be as much fun.
???? "baseball has hardly been dominated by the high payroll teams" ????? Are you kidding? Look at the WS champions since the strike, all high payroll teams except one of the Marlin teams. Pittsburgh won the Super Bowl last year and the Pirates haven't had a .500 record in almost 20 years. Get real.
bullman,
In baseball the outcome of the playoffs is mostly determined by luck. The true measure of how "fair" baseball is is how many teams have made it to the playoffs it turns out a lot of baseball teams, both rich and poor, have made it to the playoffs over the last decade.
"the Pirates haven't had a .500 record in almost 20 years."
And they are a tremendous outlier... easily countered by pointing to the A's or Twins.
Baseball would suck without a villain, the Yankees provide that villain. That's my primary argument.
It's like rooting for the house in blackjack.
If only everyone had the same access to money and steroids...
Oh and Conan was most definitely not a yankee.
Conan was definitely a member of Sox Nation.
I think the Wheel of Pain is actually a better metaphor for the Cubs fan experience.
I'm a Cubs fan so does that make me Conan?
in reality, or at least as the story goes, this is attributed to genghis khan. naturally, a yankee fan.
anyway, perhaps megan would be willing to extend "Jane's Law" to sports fans. the evidence for doing so is rather strong, and very close to home.
Godzilla was a monster, and New York is once again Pedro's daddy. But Pedro don't care. A few years ago, he was sitting under a mango tree in October. In a few years he will again. This is all fun for him. As for the site of a cheating gazillionairre like A-Rod emoting on live TV about how much this, his first World Series appearance and win, means to him, I find it a little hard not to view it with an ironic eye. Seriously, who cares. Bring back parity and honest brokers, and I will once again tell my son that true heroes do walk the earth. But god, despite it all, I do love the game and will miss it until opening day comes around again, and hope springs afresh in my bosom. Maybe next year it will be better.
Megan, yuck. I can't believe you can root for a team with a $200 million payroll. You New Yorkers truly are ghoulish people.
They've been consistently killed for the rest of the decade, and I didn't see anyone else complaining. I grew up with the Yankees, I've lived through a bunch of droughts loyally, and I'm entitled to be happy that my team wins. You didn't hear me complaining that it wasn't fair when they got knocked out over and over and over again . . .
The idea that I'm supposed to stop rooting for a team that my family has been rooting for for almost a century because they win too much is odd anywhere, but particularly on the comments of a libertarian blog. Payroll or no payroll, they played great baseball last night. And I don't see why I'm supposed to apologize for one World Series ring in a decade.
I'm surprised at you. It's their second this decade.
That depends on whether you think the decade started in 2001 or 2000 . . .
I'd guess most teams would be happy to be consistently killed if it meant winning their division 7 out of the last 9 years.
In sports talk convention, the decade always begins on the year ending in 0.
Getting into talk about the Gregorian calendar and the significance of 1 AD is another topic entirely.
Congratulations on your family team winning the World Series. And I'm not asking you to apologize for that. But "consistantly killed"? Really? Look at this decade:
2000: win World series, third in a row and fourth in five years
2001: win fourth straight AL pennant; a bloop single away from winning a fourth straight World Series
2002: best record in baseball; upset by the Angels, who end up winning the Series
2003: best record in baseball; make it to the World Series, then upset by the Marlins
2004: three outs away from a World Series berth, but lose to Red Sox, who end up winning Series
2005: A-Rod wins MVP; lose in ALDS to Angels
2006: win AL East for ninth consecutive year; lose to Tigers in ALDS
2007: win Wild Card; lose to Cleveland in ALDS
2008: win 89 games; miss playoffs for first time since 1993
2009: best record in baseball; win World Series
I think it’s safe to say that almost any fan would want that track record for their team.
If you don’t believe me, ask someone who’s a fan of the Pirates, who just locked up their 17th consecutive losing season this year.
- Or try Kansas City, whose last time in playoffs was 1985.
- Or try Cleveland, who won their last World Series in 1948.
- The Cubs have their famous lack of World Series wins going back over a century, and longest in US sports history.
- The Phillies have won exactly two World Series since the World Series started in 1903.
- How about the Padres, who in their entire history have been in 2 World Series, and lost them both?
- They’re still doing better than the Astros, Brewers, Rockies and Rays, who have lost the only Series they were ever in.
- And they’re still better than the Mariners, Rangers and Nationals, who have never played on baseball’s biggest stage.
This is why you hear people who are not Yankee fans complain about entitlement. This is why people feel that the Yankees play by a different set of rules than the rest of baseball. You are a fan of the most dominating team in baseball over the last 15 years, and it’s not even close.
Look, you have the biggest payroll in the game, and by a significant amount. Denying it or trying to spin it just isn’t becoming. Accept it, bask in it, glory in it, wallow in it! You’re the Damn Yankees, the Evil Empire! The Yankees are the investment bankers of baseball. Hell, you wear pinstripes, just like the sharks at Goldman Sachs do!
Wonder what the “little teams” are doing this October to stay warm. Relax in the multi-million luxury boxes to watch your multi-million dollar players crush the pathetic competition, then go home enjoying the lamentation of their fans.
The other teams? And their fans? Let them eat hot dogs.
Well said - love the IB comparison
Lies, the 2003 playoffs were canceled! No one won!
Anyway, I can understand how someone could be a Yankee fan, I just wouldn't advise advertising that fact the day after they win the World Series.
all of this is true and reason that baseball attendance is shrinking, non-playoff TV ratings are low and it is no longer America's pastime. People want a competition, not a fait accompli.
Yes, but Goldman Sachs wins under Presidents of any party. The Yankees only win under Democratic Presidents. (Last Yankee win under a Republican President: 1958.)
In fact, the longer it goes from the time when a Democrat was President, the worse the Yankees do. They made the WS and lost in 1981, the first WS with Reagan, then failed to make the playoffs at all until 1996, with four years of Democratic Presidency erasing 12 years of Republican. They then won the WS every year but one until GWB was elected. They could still make (and lose) the WS in 2001 and 2003, but as the Democratic Presidency mojo went away, the Yankees did worse and worse, until in 2008 they couldn't make the playoffs at all.
But as soon as a Democrat was elected, they win the WS.
They've won the WS over half the time under Carter, Clinton, and Obama. Under Ford they only made the WS in 1976, a month before the election that it was clear Carter would win. However, Ford was still President so they lost.
Yeah I don't see how the Yankees "got killed" consistently, winning the division every year except one! Megan - face it you support the Evil Empire.
Conan is plagiarizing Genghis Khan:
“The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears, to clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters.”
Actually, he's directly plagiarizing Harold Lamb's novelization of Genghis Khan's life: "Nay," responded the Kahn, "to crush your enemies, to see them fall at your feet - to take their horses and goods and hear the lamentation of their women. That is best" (107).
Lamb, presumably, took his inspiration from M le Baron Constantine d'Ohsson's 1824 work, "Histoire des Mongols," where he attributes a (French version of) the quote that you've reproduced to Tchinguiz-Khan. And the good baron lifted it from Jami al-tawarikh, an early fourteenth century chronicle composed by an Iranian Jew who converted to Islam as he rose to serve as vizier of the Il-Khanate. The entire scene - including the reply about the falcon perched on the wrist - is included in the original account.
There's a lesson here for Yankees fans, should they care to learn it. The mighty stand atop the world, reveling in their victories, delighting in the discomfiture of their opponents. But today, the Khanates are no more. Dynastic successions are difficult things.
Good luck with Hank.
Conan's version is better--and he wasn't one of history's worst mass murderers...
Being a mass murder is a plus in this case, proof you practice what you preach.
One should bear in mind that Conan never had ice-cream.
But I'm with McArdle on this one: suck it up! It's pretty amusing to see libertarians channeling all their repressed solidarity toward underdogs... in sports.
Speaking of underdogs, have you seen the President of Brazil's reaction when won the bid for the Olympics?
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/sports/2009/10/02/sot.brazil.lula.tears.cnn.html
The beauty of sports is that it's the one notable field of human endeavour where irrationality is not just allowed but encouraged. I mean, come on, I'm a Leafs fan - if there's a better definition of self-inflicted misery than that(with the exception of the Cubs), I don't know what it is.
Of course, it doesn't matter. Yeah, the Leafs lose and will keep losing, probably until the year after I die. But I don't really have to care too much. I'll lament it, but I'll keep rooting for the home team, even if the home team is a bunch of money-grubbing fools who make their living by lying to the fans about how much they want to win. Why? Because they're the home team. I don't want or need a better reason.
Similarly, I make it a policy to hate on the Yankees. Not for any good reason - hell, in an objective sense, they're a magnificent team with a historical record anyone but the Canadiens should be jealous of. They've been a first-rank team for the bulk of the last century, in a league that was 16 teams at its smallest, not 6. Yeah, it's not the most inspiring method of winning("spend the most, hire the best, win"), but it's been successful and effective. I don't dislike them for their performance on the field, nor for their attitude. It's just pure tribalism and resentment. They're not my team, and they're better than my team, so to hell with them. I remember being in a room full of 20 people watching the 2001 Series, and 19 were cheering for the Diamondbacks. None of us were from anywhere near Arizona, we were just hoping the Yankees would lose and the funny new team would win.
i only ever really turn on baseball during the world series and i must say, the "season" has too many games - should be best of five - and i am very disappointed by the fact that i could probably best 80% of both squads in terms of most fitness tests, apart from strength - lots of adipose tissue for a bunch of professional athletes - consider by comparison how much golfers have improved since 2001 (many guts are gone, most work out daily, with intelligent cross-training, etc.)
I think it was John Kruk who once said, "I'm not an athlete, I'm a baseball player."
For the most part baseball is a game of skill more than of athletic ability. Maybe you could run faster/longer than some of the player, but I can guarantee you couldn't hit a pitch from a major-league pitcher. Even those who can won't make it if they can't do it consistently. (And even the best in the world only succeed about a third of the time.)
You could best 80% of the players in the world series? I think you exaggerate a bit.
Baseball players work out a lot. The "guts" you see tend to be on three types of players: pitchers (who have very little responsibility besides throwing well, but many/most of these are in quite good shape as well), catchers (who have very little responsibility besides throwing well and blocking well), and DH/Pinch Hitter types (who have very little responsibility besides hitting well).
The vast majority of position players are quite fit.
I admire the skill of the Yankees. I just wish they had better competition. Pedro Martinez made the game a lot less interesting than it could have been.
"Wow! My team spent $88 millon more on players than the other team, and WE WON!!"
All Yankees fans are front runners.
We Mets fans know how to root for a team that spends $149 million on payroll and loses 92 games.
That takes character.
That quote always makes me sad. Robert E. Howard's Conan, as opposed to Dino De Laurentis's never acted like that. While REH's Conan was chauvanistic, he didn't abuse women or wish to see them hurt. He was, in fact, very protective of them.
What is best in life?
To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and then comfort their women.
Hmmmmm, not as catchy.
Depends on whether you mean comfort or "comfort", I suppose. But of course, that version is a little too creepy to quote as often as the real line has been quoted.
When the subject of people hating America, I always use the Yankees as an analogy to explain it. Most people in the world hate America in the same way non-new yorkers hate the Yankees, for similar reasons (too rich, wins too much, fans too obnoxious, undeserving of its success), and with about the same level of intensity (mild annoyance on average).
As a fellow Yankee fan (who also inherited my affiliation with the team), I refuse to feel bad that unlike the Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, and Mets, the Yankees found a way to turn their presence in NYC into a source of ongoing revenue.
The Phillies currently play in the largest MLB market with only one team (NYC has two teams and has approximately twice as many people). The fact that the Yankee fan base (and therefore the team's average revenue and marginal revenue per playoff game) is much larger isn't some sort of inherent and unchangeable advantage. It's a result of owners who cared more about winning than short run profit, players who succeeded, executives who designed products that the fans wanted....
Grudging congratulations. Baseball is still the best sport in the world, IMO, because it is a team sport in which everything is determined by individual skills - a pitcher either makes his pitch or he doesnt, the batter hits the hanger or he doesn't, the third baseman snares the shot down the line or he doesn't - whatever happens can't be blamed on a teammate. This is also why baseball has the unique salary structure - these people have phenomenal, very rare skills and they should be paid whatever the market will bear. Complaints about Yankee payrolls are BS, smart spending is more important than gross amounts. People forget that the Rays won the AL last year with a miniscule payroll and the Twins almost always make it into the playoffs without spending very much. Meanwhile, for the past decade the Yankees have wasted millions on people like Giambi, Pavano, Randy Johnson, Kevin Brown, Kyle Farnsworth, Clemens, and ARod (too bad he was on this year's team) who couldn't win championships. Happily, this Yankee team doesn't feel like a dynasty the way the late 90s teams did, so I'm looking forward to next year already.
>>whatever happens can't be blamed on a teammate.
Sounds like someone who never played baseball. But there is less team play, that's true. Why that makes it a better team sport, I don't know. That seems weird, but to each his own.
>>Complaints about Yankee payrolls are BS, smart spending is more important than gross amounts.
Yankees are consistently off the charts in terms of the inefficiency of their spending/wins. Simply put, they spend pretty dumb, but spend so much more than everyone else it doesn't matter. The kind of mistakes they've made with free agents recently would cripple most teams for years, but here they are with another championship.
The Cleveland Indians, Minnesota Twins, and I think Oakland A's are consistently run far more efficiently in terms of wins/payroll including playoff wins. It's a little skewed, of course, because while NY consistently stacks a probable championship team by buying all the players, the nature of baseball means you're not going to win commensurate with that. You just can't have a 140 win season, which is what their payroll would predict. Boston is I think the only really large payroll team in the last 10 years that has performed at or above it's payroll. Maybe the Angels too. Can't remember.
I admit I kind of admire Yankee fans. I don't really know how you care about a free agent "team" like that, but it is a testament to a special kind of devotion. Oh, and I hope they all die too.
I'm not a Yankee fan. I just think the belly-aching about the Yankees' payroll is BS. The Yankees aren't really a "free agent team", and they actually have a pretty high degree of consistency in their personnel, higher than teams like the Red Sox or the Angels. Interestingly, several of the key players in this year's championship are products of the Yankee farm system - Jeter, Posada, Cano, Rivera, Pettite, Chamberlain, Hughes, Cabrera. Yankee spending not only goes towards free agents, it also goes towards retaining home-grown talent, something that less affluent teams are unable to do.
I once heard Theo Epstein talking about money and winning. You figure that it takes 95 wins to make the play-offs. For the Yankees, they can spend enough that they should be able to have 95 wins every year. For other teams, the best that you can shoot for is being able to do it 3 out of 4 years, because you have to re-build periodically - the Yankees don't have to do that because they can just plug in new free agents while they are developing young talent. For teams just below the Yankees, like the Red Sox, Angels, Dodgers, Phillies, etc., they can try to maintain winning seasons even while they are rebuilding, but it is unlikely that they will be able to win 95 games and make the play-offs during a rebuilding year (like the Red Sox in '06). For the poorer teams, that is probably impossible to do and they will have to go through some pretty bad losing seasons while they are rebuilding, as has often been the case with the Marlins and the Indians. Nevertheless, well-managed teams like the Twins and the A's prove that you can still shoot for the goal of making the playoffs 3 out of 4 years even on a much smaller payroll. Looks like the Rays might also be trying to fit into that model.
The pathetic teams are (1) the ones like the Mets and the Orioles that ought to have plenty of money but consistently spend it foolishly, and (2) the ones like the Royals and the Pirates that immediately trade off talent and don't bother to go through the process of building teams capable of making the playoffs.
Losers, Weepers
I am a Viking fan myself:
Rape, Loot, and Burn,
in that order. :)
In Japanese Besu-Boro,
the winning team eases up,
so as not to embarrass the
losing team, and fans.
Q: Watch team sport,
or participate in
individual sport ?
Baseball sucks. It's boring and the deck is heavily stacked for a few teams.
http://www.getlisty.com/preview/2009-mlb-team-payrolls/
Conan and Ghengis had nothing on this Maori war chief. He taunted the preserved head of his enemy:
"You wanted to run away, did you? But my war club overtook you: and after you were cooked, you made food for my mouth. And where is your father? he is cooked:- and where is your brother? He is eaten:- and where is your wife? There she sits, a wife for me - and where are your children? There they are, with loads on their backs, carrying food, as my slaves."
Page 100 of Lawrence Keeley's War Before Civilization
But just remember - humans should shun technology and industry and live in harmony with nature.
You think the quote is more humane if you substitute "cooked" by "microwaved"?
No, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find me a culture that practices large-scale microwave-based cannibalism.
Hey Megan, next time I have the urge to be obnoxious on in the comments, I'm going to remind myself that you're a Yankee fan, and then I'll try to stfu.
GO YANKS!!
What happened? I thought Obama was odds on favorite win the World Series.
Oh, go to hell. I don't hate the Yankees, who are at least talented and professional. I hate their fans, as exemplified by this post. The stupid hoo-yeah-fist-bump-eat-their-raw-livers attitude in the body of a Long Island guido loser. Everything people dislike about New York.
The Yankees winning titles reminds me of why I don't like MLB anymore. I would much rather follow tennis.
As sorry as I am to do so, I’m afraid I have to stick up for the Evil Empire. There are two myths/stereotypes that deserve to be cut down to size. For this purpose, I use MLB’s record of team records (2001-9) and Cot’s Baseball Contracts (2000-9) for team salaries. I also did a bit of checking on draft and trading records (the latter only for the Phightins’ and the Empire).
Myth 1: Salary determines wins.
If Major League Baseball were an efficient marketplace, there would be a strong correlation between salary and regular-season wins. Linear fits indeed show that wins and salaries are related, but the strength is questionable – the salary vs. wins graph has an average r-squared of 0.28.
Let’s make a couple comparisons. Given the average standard deviation of number of wins for a team in a season is 11.9, that means that the expected variation in wins due to salary is 11.9*SQRT(0.28) = 6.35 wins. In a 162-game season, the expected random Gaussian error is 6.36 wins. Hmmm. . . those two things together don’t account for the variation in wins! Let’s throw in an extra factor – call it “other” for everything that isn’t in-game luck: injuries, market inefficiencies, manager and front-office decisions, etc. “Other” accounts for, on average 7.84 wins. Not really a big win for salary supremacy. You could argue that the Yankees “bought” 23 wins compared to Cleveland in 2009 (3.6 standard deviations in salary), but the Yankees also won 38 more games than Cleveland.
By the way, I cheated a little bit on the salary comparison. I used the opening-day salaries for the next year as my salary comparison (so 2008 wins would be compared to opening-day salaries for 2009). This largely reflects in-contention teams acquiring high-priced help in the middle of the season, so it isn’t that big of a cheat. If one uses same-season salaries, the r-squared drops to 0.22.
Myth 2: The Yankees buy talent rather than developing it.
The second big argument against the Bronx Bombers is that they’re a bunch of mercenaries, bought or traded for rather than recruited and developed. I haven’t done a full survey of the majors, but let’s just compare the Yankees (2009 salary $207M, $68M higher than the second-richest Mets) to the Phillies (2009 salary $128M, fifth in the majors, still $36M higher than the MLB average). At least locally, the Phillies have the reputation of being a team that develops most of its own players, with a sprinkling of outside talent every now and then.
Of the 40-man roster, the Phillies scouted 15 when they were outside “organized baseball” and kept them in the organization until the present day. Of these 15, 11 were acquired via the draft and four (Ruiz, Bastardo, Naylor, and Escalona) as “amateur” free agents from non-draft countries. On the Yankees, 24 of the 40-man roster were so acquired (14 via the draft and 10 as “amateur” free agents). Note that this accounting regards Matsui (a Japanese professional) as an “amateur” free agent.
Of the starting eight position players on each team, four on each team came up all the way within the organization (Ruiz, Howard, Rollins, Utley, Jeter, Posada, Cano, and Cabreara). Both teams developed most of their own relievers and acquired a majority of their starters from other teams (Hamels, Happ, Chamberlain, and Petitte were drafted by their current team, although Petitte has wandered around the league in the mean time).
Of their acquisitions, neither team is really bottom-feeding. The Yankees acquired seven of their players immediately from the seven teams with 2009 payrolls less than $70M; the Phillies, three. I’m not feeling terribly sorry for those Marlins, A’s, and Rays. By contrast, the Yankees acquired four from the top-ten payroll teams (the Mariners, with payroll $99M, were tenth); the Phillies, thirteen (the Phillies got a lot of players from the Mariners and Dodgers).
What good does it do to compare one rich club to another? They’re both full of mercenaries, acquired only because they can afford them and other teams can’t, right? Well, let’s run another comparison that I happen to know off the top of my head. In the days before free agency became popular (with the corresponding payroll explosion), twelve of the 1980 Phillies’ 25-man roster were developed all the way through the system. In 2009, the Phillies’ number was nine. Yes, it’s a bit of a decline – but that’s arguing that players like Manny Trillo and Shane Victorino (both Rule 5 draftees) weren’t “real” Phillies. Oh, and the Yankees? Twelve of the 26 on their World Series roster (Cabrera was replaced due to injury) were “developed” rather than “bought” – thirteen if you count Petitte