Say Hello To The Bad Guys

"You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your fuckin' fingers and say 'That's the bad guy'." - Al Pacino as Tony Montana, Scarface

It has become as customary a post-Yankees pennant tradition as a ticker tape parade down Manhattan's financial district. With every Yankees victory comes the cacophony of outrage. The chants calling for baseball to finally implement a salary cap. You see somehow, despite the fact that this is the first New York Yankees championship since 2000, the vast majority of baseball fans outside the Big Apple have pinpointed the pinstripes as all that is wrong with baseball. They spend exuberant amounts of money on star free agents, so therefore, they are making things unfair for the little guy. Nevermind the fact that the "little guy" has been well-represented in the World Series throughout this decade by small-market clubs like the Tampa Bay Rays and the Florida Marlins. Now that the Yanks have won their 27th World Series, they must be stopped.

The thought process behind a salary cap stems more from bitterness than from anything sensible. For one, the Yankees' payroll was actually lower this year than it was a last year, when they didn't even make the playoffs. Secondly, why is it we blame the teams and not the agents for these outlandish contracts? The agents set the price for GMs, so why not beat down Scott Boras' door for forcing teams into high stakes bidding wars for free agents? You think the Yankees wouldn't have loved to have A-Rod for about half of the damn near $300 million they coughed up to him last year when he re-signed? The Red Sox paid $51 million just to talk to Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsusaka. You think that was THEIR idea?

Now, Yes, with the contracts they gave to A-Rod and Jorge Posada last year as well as the ones they handed out to C.C. Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira, the case can certainly be made that the Yankees bought the title this year. But what about the Mets? They've done quite the spending over the last few years in bringing in Carlos Delgado, Carlos Beltran, K-Rod, Johan Santana and Pedro Martinez. What has all that gotten them? They couldn't even make the playoffs the last two years.

As far as leveling the playing field, how much do you think it will take to make contenders out of teams like the Washington Nationals or the Pittsburgh Pirates or the Baltimore Orioles? $60 million? $100 million? Why should big market teams suffer so that other teams that can't even pack half the house on any given day can make things a bit more competitive? You know why stars like Sabathia and Manny Ramirez go to big cities like New York and L.A? Because big stars want to play big games in front of packed crowds and bright lights. Nobody wants to hit moonshots in front of 7,000 people at The Great American Ballpark. Nobody wants to pitch a one-hitter with an entire upper deck empty. The Nats spent $45 million in an extension for talented young third baseman Ryan Zimmerman last year and then spent another $50 million on highly touted prospect Stephen Strasburg, and you know what, three years from now, they'll still struggle to bring in half of what Yankee Stadium brings in. The same people yapping about the need for a salary cap are mostly the same people who won't go to a ball game because either "the team stinks" or they "don't want to pay $9 for a beer". The beauty of baseball is that the games that matter most are played in big markets with large fan bases. Are you really clamoring for a Pittsburgh-Kansas City World Series?

Teams like the Milwaukee Brewers last year and the Oakland A's for many years have managed to be ahead of the curve by making a few shrewd moves here and there and relying on young, in-house talent to take them places. It's why the Brewers still managed to be competitive with Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder even while losing guys like Sabathia and Ben Sheets to other teams(or in Sheets' case, to injury). It's why the A's were able to win division crowns with homegrown talent like Barry Zito, Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson and then, when the time was right, swap out those guys for other young, inexpensive talent. It was a formula that made Billy Beane a household name.

The salary cap isn't a cure-all for discrepancies in the playing field. It isn't always a harbinger of parity. The NBA has had a salary cap for years and, yet, the same 4 or 5 teams are competing for the title every year. You can practically copy and paste the playoff teams from year to year. In fact, since 1999, 8 of the last 11 NBA Championships were won by either the Lakers or the Spurs, and that number could have been 10 of 11 had the Lakers handled business against Detroit in '04 and Boston in '07. So let's not make it seem like tossing an extra $60 or 70 million around will make contenders out of the San Diego Padres. Teams can win with short budgets. It happens every year. It's a contest of strategies: Big spending vs. farm systems. Sometimes, the little guy wins. Sometimes, the bully takes their lunch money.

Mike Greenberg said on his radio show with Mike Golic on the morning following the Yankees' World Series win that perhaps baseball is at its best when the Yankees stand tall as baseball's villains. Perhaps the Yankees are the epitome of the Scarface quote I opened with. Maybe we need the Yankees to be that entity to point the finger as a way to relieve our inadequacies as fans of other teams. Perhaps it's jealousy that makes those outside the Bronx see red when the Yanks see green. There will always be two sides to any philosophy. Some see money as the root of evil. Some believe greed is good. It's sports' immortal bend......

.......and I wouldn't have it any other way.