A dark day in the Yankiverse: Jeter is buying the wrong team

This isn't how it was supposed to play out. In a better, cleaner, finer - maybe a fairy tale - world, we would this day be anticipating a new Yankee epoch. We would raise our glasses of Utica Club to toast a franchise owned and run by a Hall of Fame player rather than an old-money, country-clubbing, trust fund prince and his human dust cloud of sycophantic detritus. 

Alas, it's not that world, and it never will be. You can live to 200, but the Steinbrenner family will never sell the Yankees. Some future generation of horse-loving golfers will always use the team as their parlor game and ATM. If fans don't like it, well, we can root for the Florida Marlins, right? 

In case you missed it, Derek Jeter and Jeb Bush - (there's a marriage I didn't see happening) - are cover boys on a $1.3 billion purchase order for the Marlins, a team that a) has the worst fight song in sports history, and b) in 20 years will need to play home games on a floating barge. Since retirement, Jeter has yearned to own a franchise, and we should be happy for him. The only sad part here is that the team he'll buy has a fish tank in the outfield instead of bronze plaques. 

Jeter's last cover as a Yankee.

Soon, we'll watch Jeter build his franchise - there are no guarantees here: Great players don't always make great executives - with the mere sight of him in the owner's box bringing gut cramps that not even the IBS lady can soothe. Meanwhile, we will be stuck throughout eternity with Food Stamps Hal, who can't decide if his goal is to win championships or shrink his payroll below that pesky luxury tax.

Okay, maybe I'm being too hard on Hal. The truth is, I'm sure he wants to win. I'm not suggesting Hal is stupid, or a bad person, or that I know more than he does. What I do know is that ever since he took the helm, gone is the Yankee bluster, the absolute obsession with winning, that his dad embodied. For about 30 years, old George made the Yankees the one team in baseball that valued winning over everything else. If he signed a free agent bust, it didn't phase him. He just went out and signed the next one. That created enemies among the owners, but George didn't care, because all he wanted was for the Yankees to win championships.

The owner we'll never have.

Hal has preferred to blend in. He takes off his shoes before entering. He orders what everyone else is having. He uses the right fork, and he takes his plate to the sink. He hasn't pumped up the Yankee payroll in several years, and today, the most bombastic, win-obsessed franchises in baseball are the Dodgers, followed by the Redsocks and maybe even the Tigers. Meanwhile, Hal pulls out his pockets, clutches his pearls and laments those terrible luxury taxes that he - a billionaire several times over - must pay. So sad. 

Soon, we will be regularly subjected to the spectacle of one of the greatest Yankees of all time sitting in a box with his beautiful wife and kid, as they lead cheers for the Marlins. As long as I live, this will never sit well. Never.