I’m glad to see you’ve moved on in regards to the Yankee Stadium debate — I’m a bit disappointed to see it go; other civilizations preserve their greatest buildings, we tear ours down and build “better” ones. That’s another discussion, but the point is not to get attached to material things. The big thing isn’t that Yankee Stadium is being torn down, it’s that you’ll still have the memories of the great times you had there.

If anything, the whole “tear it down or we’re leaving” argument exposes its frailty when you apply it to the Yankees. Who in the world would ever consider moving the Yankees from New York? To think that would be possible shows that for as great as we think baseball is, it can ultimately be uprooted at somebody’s whim.

The Yankees don’t irritate me at all – they play by the rules as far as I can tell. No matter how much they spend, or how big of a stadium they build, they still have to go out and play all 162 games, just like the other 29 teams, and they can only have 25 guys on their active roster, and a 40-man roster like everyone else. They don’t get four strikes or get to walk after three balls – they don’t push the fences in when they hit or push them back when their opponents hit. They have to play the same game that everyone else does.

What does irritate me – albeit less and less – is those fans who claim superiority over other fans because they put on the pinstripes, or any team’s hat for that matter. I’m not trying to say that you can’t be proud of your team, but remember that at the end of the day, the guy next to you in the other team’s hat wants the same thing you do – to simply have a good time at the game and hope his team puts out a good enough performance to get the win, most likely while forgetting about his own day for a couple hours and getting distracted by a wonderful game.

And as far as competitive balance – it sure looks like there isn’t any, but at the end of the day, each club gets to build its team as it sees fit and is able to do. For some that will be through spending large amounts of money, for others it will be by scouring the globe for the best talent and outworking everyone else to get them in your camp.

No team – not even the Yankees – is invincible. Everyone can be beaten provided strategy is thought out and the players are ready to execute that strategy at game time.

-Pat Lagreid
BaseballOnMyBrain.com