For the record: Ponder this next time Hal pleads poverty

Last week, Forbes estimated the value of the New York Yankees at $3.7 billion, nearly a billion dollars more than the second most valuable baseball team in America, the Dodgers.

That doesn't take into account the Steinbrenners' personal wealth from selling their majority shares of the YES network, several years ago, to Rupert Murdoch.

Each family member is certainly a billionaire, probably several times over. They will never in their lives feel the slightest financial pinch. To call them "super-rich" is an understatement. They are not the 1 percent. They are the .0001 percent. 

This doesn't make them evil. It does not make them our enemy. They were born into this wealth, and that's all they know. 

But whenever Harold Zieg Steinbrenner - known as Hal - laments the need to cut salary and avoid those horrible luxury taxes, we simply must remember that he is merely playing a parlor game for his own amusement. 

If Jacoby Ellsbury's contract is a waste of money, it's not the player who should be booed. 

If the Yankees are not competitive, it's not the players who should get booed. 

Just sayin'...