Richard Kostelanetz
Yankee Imperialism (2004)
I've been both a NY Yankees fan and a native-born American all my life, the former since we lived around the corner from the Stadium, located then where it is now, when I was born. Though I can’t reverse six decades of allegiances, I can be amused by the utter vanity of the Yankees’ principal owner's continued attempt to illustrate the truth, no less for sports than for war, that money—not even money flowing from bottomless pockets—cannot always buy victory. Whenever a starting Yankee seems to falter (as everyone is invariably inclined to do), the team bosses simply go out and buy another starter, usually a proven veteran, who, since he is older than his colleagues, is thus more prone to injury, prompting the need to purchase ASAP yet another aging star. Every year the Yankee fan attending his first game for the season is shocked to find several new players, most of whose names were made familiar someplace else. One reason to avoid the sports sections of local newspapers is missing the flackery accompanying their arrival.
The Yankees budget for annual salaries exceeds that of any other team—indeed, the combined outlays of several other teams. Spending extravagantly and often carelessly they do, much like the Dubya administration, with a comparable lack of tragic sense. Since war, like sports, can’t be fully controlled, no matter how “strong” or rich any side is, a certain perverse pleasure comes to the observer, especially if anti-Yankee, from discovering all the ways that our military screws up and the Yankees lose—star hitters don't hit, the starting pitchers falter, the closers blow their saves, the other side simply bests them, repeatedly illustrating the truth mentioned before—a truth no less true in love, incidentally, but that’s another story.