Break out the champagne—which I'm sure they did back in Hal's mysterious, executive suite/panic room, deep in the bowels of the Stadium. The Yanks just passed a major milestone.
What did you think you saw last night? Yet another in a seemingly endless string of lifeless, badly played, incredibly boring games by a Yankees team that can't hit, can't field, can't run, and can't find a relief pitcher to save our viewing lives?
Nah!
You're not looking at the long game, the real game. The game that all of our corporate masters are playing with us right now.
You think the Nerd Reich out in Silicon Valley really gives a damn about Iran? Suckers! No, they're working on their big projects: converting all the money to their favorite crypto currencies, sealing off their favorite islands, preparing for the coup.
All Hal & Pal want is their own little corner in their own little room of that magnificent dystopia spreading out before us.
And thanks to us, they got it.
To them—and to that other, bizarre, two-headed minion, the RanTrost—the New York Yankees are an old-fashioned cash machine (and the brand name up top tells you what kind it is).
Last night, the Yankees once again broke the one-million mark in attendance. 1,009,904 fans, to be exact—in just 25 games. That's over 40,000 a game, despite the wretched weather that makes our boys look like lost little schoolboys down on the field.
Over a million fans by May 22nd.
Considering the average price of an NYY ticket (and I don't know if this is counting in luxury boxes), we're talking $106,039,920 ALREADY.
More than one-third of their oh-so-onerous payroll covered. By the end of May.
And that's not even counting all the overpriced rat dogs, souvenirs, and parking the suckers shell out for. It's not counting broadcast rights, or souvenirs bought away from the park. Or the ads that Hal let them stick on the pinstripes. Or the ones that rotate constantly on the incredibly dangerous signs in the outfield.
(But hey, that one already paid off double. It provided another of the injuries which will help Pal pretend next year that the 2026 Yanks just got unlucky with injuries, and all we have to do is run it—)
Oh, I know, I know. There are expenses. Unlike the rest of us here in New York, Hal and the Yankees have to pay some taxes. Which Hal doesn't let us forget.
Sure, it's kind of the equivalent of complaining about taxes when the states has built you two, magnificent homes to live in. But never mind.
The big win here is that the struggling heirs of George Steinbrenner will be set for the next nine or ten or twenty generations.
Meanwhile, the game on the field gets worse and worse, the effort expended by our heroes is more and more diminished, and the MLB game itself gets worse and worse.
Can't wait for the labor battle that blows it all up next year.
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2 comments:
Mr. Baker is doing us all a favor here by explaining to us, with as much gentleness and dark humor as he can, that baseball is no longer about the game of baseball. It is about turning a profit for owners and other shareholders. As much as I despised him, George Steinbrenner cared deeply (a little too deeply) about winning and putting a winning product on the field. His death signaled the end of the game of baseball, and his son's rise to the ownership of the Yankees signaled the beginning of the business of baseball, the Yankees in particular. Mr. Baker rightly calls us "suckers" for continuing to call for the changes this team truly needs, but will never get, because the game is not really the point anymore. America is now a country replete and infested with suckers of every sort, who lack the backbone or intelligence to resist being consistently taken advantage of by billionaires like Hal Steinbrenner and his ilk. 1,000,000 suckers continue to pay outlandish prices for a bad product at every level of the Yankee experience, and as long as the suckers will pay, Mr. Steinbrenner Jr. will happily continue to rake in the dollars. Same with gas prices, same with artificial intelligence, price gouging, and on and on. And at some point, when the suckers have been bled dry, the billionaires will retreat to their private islands and leave us to fight, armed with myths and righteous indignation, for the crumbs. This collection of Yankees is indeed the foreshadowing - or in fact may be - the crumbs we get now and in the future.
The Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Yankees management of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s balked at paying players the salaries they deserved (Hoss would know a lot more about that than I would). And then, the CBS deal.
I think the business of baseball has been with us for much longer than we might like to admit. This is just the latest iteration. We're older and more experienced, and the media has added a bit more transparency, so we see through any bullshit about "quality teams" and "competitive teams." I think when we were young, that went on more behind the scenes, and when it was held up to the light to some degree, we didn't want to see it. So we didn't.
The greed has become much more unclothed and our illusions went out the window with the assassinations, Kent State, Vietnam, Nixon and everything since. Ignorance was blissishness.
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