Becoming the Yankees

William Rhoden:

The door is open for the Red Sox, with a rich baseball tradition and a high payroll, to replace the Yankees as the team the nation loves to hate ... The possibility is there for the spending: no more just missing the brass ring, but rather grabbing that ring season after season. But does Red Sox Nation really want to do this?

Vince Lombardi’s exhortation that winning is the only thing, in retrospect, has caused unimaginable heartache and blues. It sounds good but is probably antithetical to inner peace.

Look around. The pursuit of winning has tempted some of us to break rules, tear moral fiber, take performance-enhancing drugs and jettison a manager who failed to lead his team past the first playoff round for three consecutive years.

I would ask Boston fans whether they really want to see their team do this. Do they want a franchise whose ethos is that winning titles is the only thing?

Here's the problem: I understand where Rhoden's coming from, and there's no question that I look at the Yankees and their fans and feel more than a little pity for them, trapped as they are in a cycle where the ordinary joys of having a winning baseball team are overshadowed by a grim win-at-all-costs mentality. But I'm not sure what the Red Sox organization is supposed to do to avoid this fate: Yes, they should avoid signing unlikeable mercenaries who can't perform in the clutch (ahem, Kevin Brown), but overall I think they have an obligation, having grown financially fat off the dollars generated by a passionate fan base, to plow that money back into the team on the field. (This was always something you had to respect about Steinbrenner: He was crazy and horrible and tyrannical and all the rest, but you always knew that he was in it to win baseball games, not to get rich.) And if you do plow the money from a passionate fan base back into the team, and do so intelligently, you're going to have the chance to grab the brass ring season after season - which in turn creates the sort of unreasonable expectations that the Yankees currently labor under.

Rhoden raises the spectre of the Sox signing Alex Rodriguez this winter as an example of what turning into the Yankees might mean, and I take his point - but look, if the Red Sox ownership has the chance to sign Rodriguez for an amount that makes sense given the team's resources, what should they do? Not sign him, out of some sense that it's bad form to want to win as much as the Steinbrenners of the world? Surely not. Yes, they should consider the character of the team as well as its rotisserie value; yes, they should spend more money on the farm system than on free agents (more Pedroias, please, and fewer Julio Lugos); yes, they shouldn't adopt Steinbrenner's star-chasing obsessions when the stars in question are passing their primes. But if you're the custodian of a franchise like the Red Sox, the trap of high expectations is one that you have to be willing to step into, even knowing what it's made of baseball in the Bronx.

Comments

Signing a guy like Rodriquez is exactly the point. Its big money for as you say rotisserie value. He is not a leader in the clubhouse or in the playoff run. Now big money for a Jeter is completely another story (even though he admittedly is not as purely talented as Rodriguez).

Its the difference between A. spending money to build a cohesive team and once and in a while making the big purchase because it truly is a team oriented opportunity and B. spending money because you have it just so you don't ever miss any opportunities. Put it another way its living next to the rich neigbor who buys really good stuff when he needs it and the rich neighbor who has everything just because he can afford it.

Posted by Tom | October 22, 2007 12:38 PM

Signing Rodriguez would be a mistake. Never winning a World Series title was the catch 22 for him when he sold his soul to become the best baseball player alive.

Posted by Matt | October 22, 2007 1:57 PM

The problem for the Red Sox is the same as for the Yankees, with the great disparity in Revenue and thus payroll being the best team in Baseball is meaningless.

What makes sports work is everyone playign by the same rules. In the NFL the Patriots have a real sense of accomplishment because they win by beating everyone else at the same game, every team is operating under the same rules.

There is a line from an old Humphrey Bogart movie where a rich playboy who inherited his wealth tells another rich guy who also inherited his, but thinks he is superior to the playboy, "turning 100 million dollars into 110 million isn't work, it is inevitable, turing 100 dollars into 110, now that is work"

The Sox have reached the point where you can say winning when your payroll is $175 million and every other team except the Yankees is under 100 million is meaningless.

Posted by Eric K | October 22, 2007 2:27 PM

Tom: Rodriguez is the best player in baseball. He performed well in the playoffs when he was with Seattle. Jeter's performance in the playoffs this year was quite poor and slightly worse than Rodriguez's. Rodriguez may or may not be a decent human being, but many great players are not, and the anti-Rodriguez talking points you're repeating have been created by sportswriters long on rhetoric and short on facts.

I agree wholeheartedly with Rod. I can (just barely) remember the last years of the Bird Celtics and am currently experiencing the Brady-Belichick Patriots, and no one in New England that I know of considers those bad things. Rhoden's one good point is that (as Belichick has proved) the desperate urge to win can lead to cheating, but that doesn't apply only to winning teams. If anything, teams that never win might be the more desperate ones.

Posted by James Kabala | October 22, 2007 3:30 PM

James,

Rodriquez hit one home run in last 3 years of playoffs and has not batted over 300 since 2004. If you take away this year, your baseline for your statement that all the media is wrong, its hard to find a series when Jeter did not hit over 300. He hit over 500 last year I believe. The reason the sportswriters dig in is because there is at least a little to it, whether you want to admit it or not. Does not mean he is not a great player, it means there are intangibles that he does not have or has not yet shown.

Posted by Tom | October 22, 2007 3:54 PM

Cripes, I'm a Yankees fans who doesn't even LIKE A-Rod, so I hate to defend him... but if the Red Sox can afford to sign him, and Alex is willing to go to Boston, they'd be CRAZY not to take him.

You can talk about "clutch" play all you want (I happen to think there's no such thing, that over the long run, guys perform in the clutch almost exactly as the do the rest of the time), but let's face facts: the Yankees were a deeply flawed team this year that would not have made the playoffs at all if Alex Rodriguez hadn't had a monster year. He carried the team on his back almost all year.

I think he's going back to the Yankees, but the Red Sox would be well advised to go after him if they can afford it.

Posted by astorian | October 22, 2007 5:47 PM

Actual Lombardi quote: "Winning isn't everything; the will to win is the only thing." So, different meaning.

I kinda understand what he's talking about, but in a way, its already too late. When the Sox were down 3-1, some friends and I were discussing it, and I said something like, well, we got Beckett tomorrow, then Schilling at home in Game 6, and anything can happen in Game 7. Still, if we can't turn the ALCS around, we won the AL East for the first time since 1995, we swept the Angels and outlasted the Yankees---all and all, an extremely successful and enjoyable year. It was clear this was not a sentiment that was agreed with by others.

As for A-Rod, as a Red Sox fan, they shouldn't sign him. First, they're committed to Lugo for 3 more years at 9 mil per, and no one's taking that contract. Also, it would just feel wrong...as if Karl Rove switched parties to be Hillary's chief of staff, and Democrats were asked to get behind this.

Interestingly, when I saw the title of this post, I thought it was probably about the Patriots. Obviously, they don't spend more than other teams, but if you want to talk about a team that is ruthlessly committed to winning, that's them. When Brady was asked which Super Bowl win was his favorite after beating the Eagles, he commented "the next one. Always, the next one." (So Brady is more like the Lombardi of legend than the real Lombardi is). And though the NYT is asserting today that the Sox are probably all roided up, we know that the Patriots broke the rules to gain an advantage. I think they're closer to being the Yankees.

Posted by JoshA | October 22, 2007 6:20 PM

the yankees are the greatest franchise in baseball. no team will ever be them , how can you compare a T-bone steak to ham it's just not right. the yankees have more wins, the looks and more A list celebrities and everyone envies them. no one hates the red sox or even jealous. when the yankees win people take notice, when the red sox or any other team wins it's like another tennis match no fun at all.GOD bless the stars in stripes.

Posted by heaeven | February 29, 2008 4:54 PM