An Open Letter to our Owners

Hank and Hal Steinbrenner
General George M. Steinbrenner III Memorial Field
Tampa, FL 33614

Dear Sirs,

After watching the past couple of games against Anaheim, Boston, and Tampa, teams that we will have to beat if we want to even make the World Series, everybody can see clearly that our team is in the crapper. Becoming a Yankees fan used to mean you are the ultimate winner-picker; unless you lived in an hour and a half radius of the Bronx, your other favorite teams were probably the Lakers, Canadiens, and our partners-in-crime, er, concessions the Dallas Cowboys. Now, it's like putting your life savings into the Dow Jones. You’re just asking for trouble. Our bandwagon is falling apart faster than IKEA furniture. And the question us diehards are left to deal with is “What the hell is happening?”

Is it the players? Tex’s batting average hovering around the Mendoza line? CC pitching like Sir Sidney? Our bullpen that makes even Mets fans cringe? Girardi and Cashman’s mistakes? A-Rod for just being A-Rod?

But as the old Italian proverb goes: the fish smells from the head down. Think about that for a little while…now think about the Yankees. Boy, do they really smells right now.


First off, the team sucks; there’s no better explanation of this. We are grossly inferior to the Red Sox, and if we were on their level, we wouldn’t have lost 5 in a row to them. Our team has sucked for the past few years because we always have a glaring weakness despite our massive spending. We spent a shitload of money on Johnson, Brown, Igawa, among others, and every postseason from '04 on, our rotation were a question mark. Ditto with Farnsworth, Gordon, and Quantrill in the pen. Last year, it was A-Rod, Abreu, and Giambi, all making over $15 million whose woes at the plate with runners in scoring position cost us a playoff spot.


Sure blame Girardi for just not being ready to manage the Yankees. He’ll be a fine manager in a few years when he has some more experience. Heck, it took Joe Torre three horrendous stints until he found how to effectively manage a team. But now, he's not the manager we thought he would be. And Cashman must go. He’s made far too many personnel mistakes over 8 (and there's a good chance it's soon to be 9) really long years without a ring. He must pay with these mistakes with his job.

But the team on the field isn’t the only thing that stinks. Our new crib (to be known from here on out as “Gitmo North” because of the torture Yankee fans go through when they watch this team) is much like our team: overpriced, overdone, and when push comes to shove, it just doesn’t feel like home. It's a lot like how the ’01-09 Yankees aren’t the ’96-’00 Yankees. Same unis, no mystique, no aura, no soul, no heart. Gitmo North is about as nice as A-Rod’s 2 MVPs in Pinstripes. Sure, those seats behind home plate are probably worth $2,600 with all the amenities that come with it; but common-sense supply and demand logic should tell you that if nobody has $2,600 to spend to go to a baseball game in this economy. Especially when it means alienating a lot of your diehard fans because they now can't afford seats. The first thing Terry Francona noticed when he walked out of the dugout of Gitmo North was the how he didn’t feel how the seats were on top of him and his team anymore. Cause Heaven forbid a little home-field advantage from rowdy fans other than the fortunate few who kept their money away from Bernie Madoff sitting those $2,600 seats.

But the Yankees don’t care about that. They’re too busy faking out those loyal fans when it comes to rain delays or the $9 12-ounce beers at Gitmo North. Randy Levine did a terrific job with city and state government to get the stadium built, and it even included a detour to Mark McGwire’s old friends in Congress. But everybody could see just how conniving, scheming, slimy, and shallow Levine’s true character is after watching his performances. There’s no way that a front office headed by him is going to keep inviting fans back to Gitmo North. When your face of the franchise is Randy Levine, you just look bad. And a bad image like the one Randy Levine is giving the Yankees is gonna hurt the Yankees in the long run, especially when they can’t sell the millionaires on their $2600 seats.

Now that we’ve established that the business side of the Yankees sucks, as well as the actual product on the field, we come back to our original question: “What the hell is happening.” And our answer lies in that old Italian proverb I told you to ponder. This debacle is not just Cashman’s fault, or Girardi’s fault, or Randy Levine’s fault, or A-Rod’s fault (even though nothing that has happened to us yet is A-Rod’s fault). The fault lies with the heads of the franchise: Hank and Hal. Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb. It’s Hank’s chirping on a yacht in the Gulf of Mexico, 20 miles off the coast. It’s Hal’s inability to be like his old man and be an effective leader. It’s Hank making an ass out of himself and the franchise he now represents by saying how Red Sox Nation is b*llshit (even though after five games against them, they’re anything but). It’s Hal saying, “Well, Brian’s done a decent job, we’ll give him a few extra years to see if his luck changes…” when his old man would have had Cashman unemployed faster than you can say Pavano.


The brother’s inability to lead will be the downfall of this franchise. Mark my words, in 5 years, we’ll be looking at the Steinbrenner brothers like Knicks and Rangers fans look at the Dolans, boo the very mention of them like Blackhawk fans when they hear the name Dollar Bill Wirtz, and shake our heads in disgust every time one of them opens their mouth like Oakland Raider fans when Al Davis holds a press conference. So my plea to you brothers is this: sell the team. SELL NOW!!!!!!!! Before you completely destroy the great American professional sports tradition that is New York Yankees Baseball. Please, think of the soon to be 9 year old children walking around Manhattan who haven't seen a Yankees World Championship. Think of the children...

Yours Truly,

The Ghost of Championship Teams Past