The No Class Yankees

He’ll cheat without scruple, who can without fear.”  Ben Franklin

 

Yankees were at one time the “classiest” team in baseball.  It’s what I liked about them.  Short haircuts.  No facial hair.  No names on the back of the jerseys.  It was often said of the Yankees that they were all business – they came to your park, beat you in baseball and left.  Very professional.

 

That’s changed.

 

I’m not complaining about the money spent on mercenaries to build dream teams.  That fits well with the free-market, capitalist ideals I love so much.  The bought player is reminiscent of the romantic western gunslinger riding from town to town, hired by the local sheriff to handle the bad guys he can’t. 

 

Besides, since the coming of free agency every team buys the best players they can.  The Yanks do a pretty good job of raising and keeping home grown talent anyway, like Jeter, Posada, Rivera and Pettitte.

 

What has me irked (for starters) is the Yankee treatment of Pedro Martinez, and the organization is at fault for allowing people to bring the “Who’s your daddy” signs and display them (pox on the New York Post for doing the same).

 

In 2004 after losing a game to the Yankees, Pedro Martinez said this:  "They beat me. They're that good right now. They're that hot. I just tip my hat and call the Yankees my daddy."

 

Permit me to interpret for those of you who went through the New York City school system:  Pedro was being humble.  He was being a good sport.  He was paying the Yankees respect and a compliment.  If Yankee fans and the New York Post don’t realize that, I ask, who’s your English teacher?

 

So what is the reaction of Yankee fans and the NY Post to someone who is being humble and complimentary?  Rub his nose in it!  Humiliate the guy!  Demoralize the man who pays you a compliment! Good grief.

 

Interesting message they’re sending to youth baseball.  Next season when the Little League team I coach lines up after a game to shake hands with the other team, instead of saying “Good game” I’ll have them be like Yankees and ask each player, “Who’s your daddy?”  Maybe we’ll get covered in the Post.

 

Yankee fans and NY media this week sank to the lowly depths of acting worse than Philadelphia Eagles’ fans, who notoriously booed and threw snowballs at Santa Claus during a halftime show.

 

The other thing irking me is that the Yankees are, for the past decade, a team littered with cheaters.  CHEATERS!  That’s right – steroids are CHEATING. The Yankees who profited from them were CHEATING CHEATING CHEATING.

 

Clemons. Pettitte.  Giambi.  Rodriguez. Neagle. Knoblauch. Grimsley.  Stanton.  Justice. 

 

The men named in steroid reports are accused of cheating to win, no differently than if my Little League team was to cork their bats.  While some of them juiced for others teams, several of them were juicing for the Yankees the year they won the 2000 World Series.

 

Steroids are like a government stimulus/bailout/cash for clunkers deal all rolled into one:  It’s against the regular rules, it gives you an artificial performance spike and you pay for it later.

 

The problem is the Yankee cheaters are not “paying for it later.” A few wrist slaps here and there, but their records stand – records achieved against men who followed the rules.

 

Major League Baseball moralizes with Pete Rose over a bet.  How dare they?  How dare an organization that spent half its life not allowing black men to play but allowing cocaine junkies to play moralize with anyone?  I’ll take Pete Rose as a player and role model over the juiced Yankee cheaters any day.

 

After the Barry Bonds steroid scandal broke, we were rooting for Alex Rodriguez to take back the home-run crown.  I’ll never forget the look on my little boy’s face when we heard the news that Alex used steroids, or the way he said, “Oh no, not A-Rod.”  I must admit to less shock – I should have expected cheating from a man who showed only Clintonesque fidelity in marriage.  Why should I think he’d be true to the fans?

 

What an awful message to kids that in the same year A-Rod was suspended for prior (2003) steroid use he gets a World Series ring.  Cheaters prosper.

 

For years baseball wrongfully used an asterisks in the record books for the wrong reason against Roger Maris.  Until they do the right thing and use it against the Yankees and the rest of baseball’s cheaters, I’ll just keep calling them cheaters.

 

We have now placed our faith and hopes with someone new to clobber the home run record and make baseball pure again.

 

We need a hero.   We root for the hero and he’s not a Yankee.

 

He’s Albert Pujols.

Comments

[RDM]

Or Joe Mauer.