I always thought George Will had a keener eye when it came to baseball, as opposed to his pompous political prognostications; but here he marries the two nicely. Never thought of the New York Yankees as a liberal basket case before, but here goes:
The Yankees' payroll of $206.4 million is 2.4 times the Tigers' payroll. The Yankees' third baseman earns 68.7 times the salary of the Mets' all-star third baseman (Alex Rodriguez, $25.7 million; David Wright, $374,000). The shortstop makes approximately what the Marlins' team makes (Derek Jeter, $20.6 million; Marlins, $20.68 million).
New York, the world's financial capital, takes money very seriously. And New York has been the intellectual epicenter of political liberalism, which has consistently preached, and has consistently disproved, the efficacy of pitching large sums of money at social problems. In the city where America's welfare state was first imagined and implemented, the entitlement mentality bred by the welfare state includes the assumption that the Yankees are entitled to be in the World Series, which they have not been since - gasp - 2003.
Remember when welfare was phased out; and rather than our streets teeming with the starving masses, we got lots of people gainfully employed instead? Perhaps the Yankees, just as a social experiment, should see how their GM would compose his team with a payroll cut, say, nearly in half?
Naaah...never would happen! Like all limousine liberals, New Yorkers would complain about how the cuts shouldn't be directed at their services (or team, in this case) and how it was an outrage and how the whole city would suffer a tremendous, immoral loss. And if the Yankees did win it all with a reduced payroll? Credit everything but the economics, and blame Bush for the bad years...
No comments:
Post a Comment