Yankeetorial: Why baseball needs A-Rod

Last Sunday, my favorite football team, the Giants, did not play. They were busy practicing to crap the bed on Monday night.

Normally, without a Giants game, I'd spend Sunday afternoon like everybody else in Syracuse - chopping off a frostbitten finger, or freeing plows from snow drifts. But last week, I had a fallback: The Dallas Cowboys.

I hate the Cowboys. I hate Jerry Jones. I hate Tony Romo. I even used to hate Roger Staubach. What kind of bile bag could hate Roger Staubach? A guy who watched him shred our defense for 11 years. That’s who.

Football doesn't tells you to root, root, root, for the home team, 'cause if they don’t win, it’s a shame. Football tells you to fight. If your team loses, it’s Defcon Four in the parking lot. 

Recently, the TV Gammonites were predicting a crisis for the NFL, which had enough bad publicity to sink a Kardashian. There was Ray Rice’s video cold-cock, and the Abu Ghraib photos of Adrian Peterson’s whupped kid, plus that nasty little 30-year cover-up of brain damage due to concussions. Still, the NFL hasn't lost one fan, aside from maybe that Dallas guy who died of Ebola. And the reason is simple.

In football, once your fave is banned for, say, a triple homicide, you always have somebody to loathe.

Which brings us to the recent World Series between the KC Royals and SF Giants. If it didn't go seven - the last game drew a respectable 13.7 million viewers - TV ratings would have hit all-time lows. There was nobody to hate.

How can you pushpin a Buster Posey doll? The Royals? I can’t even dislike them, much less work up precious spittle.

To regain prominence, MLB needs someone to hate.

It needs the Yankees.

I speak not as a Yankee fan, but as a patriot - a caring supporter of the game.

MLB needs to cut this bogus luxury tax crapola and let the Steinbrothers buy an honest championship. 

Last season, we were not only a slappy team, but we were a slappy villain. Because of the retiring Derek Jeter, our worst enemies couldn't even hawk up the necessary phlegm to make games interesting. Considering how nicely the Redsocks treated us at the end, we might even have to rethink our hatred for Boston - which is wrong, people, goddammit, IT IS WRONG!

Fortunately, there is a tunnel at the end of the light.

Alex Rodriguez.

Imagine the ratings next October, if A-Rod leads the Evil Empire into the playoffs. Instead of towels, they'll hand out pitchforks. 

Let's go baseball! Halt these anti-A-Rod hysterics, before somebody actually does something stupid, like release him. There's money to be made. It’s time to wake up and smell the bile.