Put an Asterisk By It

Okay, I don't know why I let myself even look. I tuned in to the last couple innings of the Series hoping the Phillies would give me reason to hope.

Nope, it's #27 for the New York Antichrists.

Thing is, just like national level politics and professional wresting, the whole thing is rigged. If assheads like George Steinbrenner's snot-nosed kids didn't abuse the antitrust exemption by refusing to even give a nod to parity, a robber baron owner of a team in an over-sized market couldn't buy the championship.

Look at football (though I think the cap is about to bite the dust and I don't think that's a good thing). They've made it a sporting event: small market or large market, they share the bulk of their revenues across the board, and also agree to limit total salaries so that a talented animal torturer like Michael Vick can only become rich beyond the dreams of avarice, but no richer than that.

27 World Series titles in, what, 86 years? That's better than one in four years. The only time the local team where I live won was 1985, that's 24 years ago. My team has an owner who is only obscenely wealthy and a near-the-bottom market size.

My favorite National League team, the Pittsburgh Pirates (I don't know why they're my team, I've never been to Pittsburgh, I just always knew I wanted the Pirates to win), has won five World Series going back to over a decade before the Yankees' first one.

Leave aside that baseball is a boring sport, lacking pace, adequate levels of violence, and scantily clad cheerleaders, the game is so stacked it's impossible to think of it as a competition. I hear names like Johnny Damon and I remember he was a Royals player, drafted and developed by our farm system. Unfortunately, the way the game is wired, as soon as he turned out to be the real thing, the Yankees were able to treat the entire Royals organization as its farm team and buy the guy up.

If there were NFL type revenue sharing and a cap, there'd be plenty of Yankees prospects on the Royals and other rosters, and a Yankee's world championship wouldn't sound like 'Oh, this again.'

And if juicers like Barry Bonds need an asterisk beside their names in the record books, shouldn't every Yankee's championship be marked as a purchased victory?