Communist Baseball!

Given that it seems like good sense and America-first thinking will prevail and healthcare reform will be passed sometime soon, I figured it was time to address something that has been bothering me for some time. How is it that the great American past-time, the greatest sport to have ever been conceived by man, could fall prey to communist (really, socialist) precepts?

If we were to toe the line and quote the words of some of the past and present leaders of America and our economy (Reagan and Greenspan), we should all be living and dying with the belief that "government is the problem;" and, that "the markets will correct everything, even fraud." In other words, keep your hands away from the market and in a Maradona-esque way, the hand of "God" will always balance the scale and ensure fairness for all.

Profit-sharing

In 1923, the New York Yankees opened their own stadium at 161st in the Bronx and that same year they won the World Series. Back then, the Yankees were nowhere near being the wealthiest club in baseball. The teams of inner-America, of St. Louis and Cincinnati, Pittsburg and Chicago and Detroit were the original powerhouses of Major League Baseball. The New York Highlanders (from 1913 on the Yankees) were not founded until 1903. And success was not immediate with the first World Series victory only coming in 1923, 3 years after acquiring Babe Ruth.

Through a mixture of luck and great baseball, the Yankees would go on to win another 20 WS titles before hitting the drought of the 60's and 70's. In 1972, George M. Steinbrenner would purchase the team and an era that still lives today was born. Steinbrenner was a successful businessman who despite his promises that he would not interfere with the team, did interfere and has driven the team crazy and to even greater baseball feats: 7 World Championships have been come thanks to him and his teams.

And, then, Steinbrenner and the Yankees were penalized for their shrewd business decisions and for their greatness. Whereas other owners were cutting investment from their teams, keeping them as perpetuals losers never able to win pennants, Steinbrenner and his team were ever thinking of new ways to make the Yankees better. Mr. Steinbrenner wanted to please the fans and he new that nothing less than a World Series trophy would do.

We Didn't Buy Greatness

One fine day, in 1997, a bunch of whining really wealthy and cheap whitemen (and one woman) gathered to say it was unfair that the Yankees and other so-called "big market teams" were making so much money while they were losing so much money. In other words, these team owners were admitting that a) they were losers; and b) that they fans were not loyal and at best were fair-weather ones: "if my team is winning I will come out and watch but if not, then I won't...wah."

If I make bad business decisions, am I not to suffer for them? If my company is being mismanaged and poorly run and I lose revenue as a result, why should expect my well-to-do competitors, many who have wisely and freely invested in making their businesses better, give me hand-outs to make me more competitive? And then, when I win, it is because I am playing true baseball and when the Yankees win, it is because they "bought another World Series." To quote the 101st Airborne's acting commander Brigadier General McAuliffe when asked to surrender to the Germans at Bastogne: "Nuts!"

We Didn't Buy Nuttin!

The New York Yankees are the greatest team in any sport because their are the best at what they do. They play baseball. Yankee owners maximize the resources they have the best and this guarantees them a run almost every single year! Yet, despite the massive amounts of investment that is put into this team, we have not won the World Series 59 times. And, there have been droughts as long as 18 years! From 1978 until 1996, the Yankees were spending more than everyone else yet also losing more than most others.

Putting a winning baseball team on the field is not easy--ask the other 29 teams. Ask a Yankee fan. Yet, we, the fans, pay what we do and obsess the way we do, like many other fans, yet the owner of our team respects us and therefore invests in greatness for us. As a result, the whining, cheap capitalists, the first ones to beg for a tax-cut from the government and to change the toilet paper from two-ply to sandpaper in the men's bathroom, all to save a dime, sold their souls. These criers of capitalist conjecture with their "I love Barry (Goldwater)" tatoos on places seldom seen by non-loved-ones, went commie!

Marxist-Leninist Baseball

No one really knows what it says in these Marxist tomes lying on the bottom of the dustbin of history (today being the 20th anniversary of that system's almost total death), but one thing is for sure: if you take from the rich to give to the poor then you are exacting the same kind of revolutionary tactics which ruined the country struggling for life just beyond the window at my back: Russia, in other words. Penalizing people for being great, for working hard, for investing their money so as to make their lawns look nicer and their yards bigger, for example, is communist; it is socialist; it is not American.

Baseball, one of the finest things we have given parts of the world, so bizarrely became communist. What is even odder than that is that so, so many of the people who think Reagan a god and Greenspan a genius, never even blinked when their losing teams became the recipients of the distributed wealth of their greater, better and more successful breathren.

Having said this, I will say it again, the Yankees are the greatest franchise in any sport because they are the best at what they do: playing baseball and running their business. All the other recipients of our largesse can either pack their bags and head to China, the last beacon of communist rule; or, they can simply admit that the Yankees are great because they are great.

Say we bought it and you admit you are a commie.