The Best Money Can Buy: New York Yankees' 27th Title No Real Accomplishment

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As the New York Yankees rushed the field after the final out in the top of the ninth inning of Game Six of the World Series, cementing their victory and crowning them champions of the world again for the 27th time, I felt a little sick to my stomach.

I’d hoped like hell throughout the playoffs that someone would be able to knock off the “Best Team Money Can Buy.”

I watched as the Minnesota Twins failed to do it, thanks in large part to the atrocious umpiring in the series. I watched as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim couldn’t accomplish it, again, thanks in large part to the officiating from hell.

I then watched the World Champion Philadelphia Phillies try their luck at taking down the hated behemoth known as the “Yanks.” Again the umpiring was atrocious, but the Phils won the first game, and you got the sense early on in the series they could actually pull it off.

After all, the past six winners of the World Series had won Game One. Shouldn’t that be enough to guarantee the Phillies at least had a chance?

Apparently not. Apparently, money can buy you a title; at least occasionally.

It’s not like the Yankees have won the thing every year. Heck, baseball has been around for well over a century, and the World Series has been around since the Boston Americans beat the Pittsburgh Pirates five games to three (yes, it was a nine game series that first year, as well as between 1919-1921), and the vaunted Bronx Bombers have only grabbed 27 titles.

Still, that is an impressive number. In fact, it’s so impressive, it’s more titles than any other professional sports franchise in the Western Hemisphere has. That’s something Yankees fans will never let you forget; which is pretty much why I’m writing this rant.

I didn’t really want to write this article. As with any piece that’s a rant, the writer tends to come off as a jerk, no matter how diplomatic he or she is.

Whatever you’re ranting about, unless it’s something like racism, rape, murder, or torture, you’re going to find plenty of people on the opposite side of the aisle from you on the issue, and they’ll be reading your words as if they were penned by the devil himself.

I imagine Yankees fans will be doing just that as they read this piece, putting the face of Satan himself to their mind's eye view of me. Considering my pseudonym is Hotnuke, they’ll probably feel confident they’re right in that assessment.

However, let me preface this article by saying I have nothing against many Yankees fans. As someone who lived in New York for many years, I met quite a few of them, and some of them are the nicest people in the world.

That being said, I have a problem with a good many of them, and it’s encapsulated in my view of Flip Bondy’s piece on the New York Daily News website titled “New York Yankees Fans Can Gloat, then Float in Parade at Canyon of Heroes.”

In that piece he quotes a fan named Jon Z who states, “And so begins another dynasty! Fifteen more years of domination!”

Seriously. Does this fool truly believe he didn’t just make the biggest ass out of himself in the world with that statement? Fifteen more years of domination? I hadn’t noticed the Yankees dominating Major League Baseball over the past 15 years; perhaps I was asleep or something.

And that brings me to part of my point.

The Yankees have had the highest payroll in the Majors for as long as I can remember. In fact, they don’t just have the highest payroll, they have the highest payroll by a large margin. This year alone they spent well over $200 million.

Even before the year began the boys in pinstripes had more talent on their team than most teams in MLB can even dream of having: Jorge Posada, Robinson Canó, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Melky Cabrera, Johnny Damon, Hideki Matsui, Nick Swisher, Joba Chamberlain, Chien-Ming Wang, Mariano Rivera.

Then, to ensure they’d have an even greater chance at winning a title, they went out and spent another $400 million in contracts to bring in two of the best pitchers available in free agency (CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett) along with one of the best bats in the game (Mark Teixeira).

Talk about overload.

Yet, the Yankees had been doing this for nearly a decade without any success, falling by the wayside every year and giving their fans stomachs so upset they needed whole cases of Tums. I should know, as I witnessed it firsthand among some of my friends who are Yankees fans when my beloved Marlins took them out in 2003.

It’s driven them nuts, and this is evident by the fact some of them have gone out of their way to write pieces extolling the idea that MLB is better off with the Yankees in the World Series. In fact, some of them say baseball is better off if the Yankees aren’t just in the Fall Classic, but if they win it.

And they actually believe such tripe.

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