Hey, I kid, I kid...not really. I was thinking tonight of launching yet another, seasonal query into "What's wrong with the Yankees??!" But then I figured...what's the point? (Spoiler alert: Cashman's an idiot, Hal doesn't care.)
So instead, I thought I'd go with this wild-eyed rant a multi-part, deep dive into why not just the Yankees but every New York area team now seems incapable of winning it all. Enjoy it as long as you can stand it.
It looked for a few moments, in our halcyon spring of 2024, that this was New York’s year in sports. The Rangers compiled the best regular-season record in the NHL, the Knicks suddenly looked like a contender, and the Yankees got off to a near-record start to the season.
The Knicks and Rangers burst out to a combined, 13-2 start in their playoffs. The Yankees were 50-22. Even the Mets were winning—while Aaron Rodgers gamboled like a 40-year-old colt through the Jets’ early practices. Cue Alicia Keyes!
Then it all went wrong—again. What happened—and why does it always happen? Just when and how did we become such a town of losers?
For the answer to that, we have to go all the way back, back, back...to 1957, the apex of New York athletics, when there were six, major-league teams in the city, in the “Big Four” of professional sports: baseball, football, basketball, and hockey. All of them well-liked, winning teams that brought home numerous pennants, championships, and playoff berths.
They played in a total of four different stadiums or arenas, all of which were at least 32 years old, built and maintained entirely with private money, and as beloved as the teams that played in them. Admission and concessions were cheap, tickets were readily available even for big games, and fans could see nearly all their teams play for free, on television.
Today, there are nine major-league teams in New York and environs, playing in seven different stadiums or arenas.
This is not an improvement.
The sad fact is that no New York franchise has won a title since the New York Giants’ miraculous upset of the New England Patriots, in the February, 2012 Super Bowl—and this does not look likely to change any time soon.
Yet every one of these nine teams plays in facilities that have been built from scratch or wholly renovated within at least the last 17 years, almost always with massive public assistance.
Despite such taxpayer giveaways, these interchangeable, cookie-cutter stadiums and arenas have purposely reduced the number of seats available, and driven the cost of all tickets and concessions well beyond the ability of most fans to afford them. Even watching at home now comes with a hefty price tag, and often requires subscriptions to several different cable channels and streaming services.
How did this happen?
How did team after team, in what is still the wealthiest city in the world and the most populous city in America—a city where many of these sports were invented, refined, or reached their zenith in skill and popularity—come to offer so little and demand so much? How did sports in the city of the “World’s Most Famous Arena” and “The Cathedral of Baseball,” become such a feeble joke?
There are many parts to this answer, including general trends of wealth and exploitation, in the U.S. and the city; in the grasping nature of modern sports and monopoly capitalism.
Above all, though, New York sports have been ruined by an unprecedented ascent of “nepo babies”—the unqualified and uninterested heirs to the thrones of many local teams—and “wealthfare,” public allotments and tax breaks bestowed in such enormous amounts that they have erased any real incentive to compete.
Posts
9 comments:
A valid assessment, Hoss. But you could say the same about almost all team owners, regardless of which city their team is based. And that city extorted into subsidizing a new stadium by those owners.
Oh, it's a theme I do develop, Carl! Thanks for reading.
Late stage capitalism is a bitch.
Sounds like 3rd world governments.
The corporates got involved...that's what happens in a Corpocracy...
Isn't that some sort of poop fetish.
If I remember correctly, the Yankees hired Randy Levine, a Republican, to be their President. He was formerly Deputy Mayor of Economic Development under Rudy The Drunk. Then, just a few years later, he was instrumental in having the city kick in substantially to help pay for the new stadium. What a coincidence! Of course, no party has a monopoly on honesty as old "20-20 eyesight" Governor Paterson was persuaded to kick in with tax-payer subsidized bonds. Subsequently, the state ethics commission imposed a record fine of $62,125 on Gov.Paterson for soliciting and accepting free tickets to the 2009 World Series from the New York Yankees. The panel said he knew he had broken the law and lied under oath to cover it up.
It's amazing how cheaply these crooked government officials can be bought. Congressmen are an even better bargain because they can be bought off for a few luxury box tickets to a Washington Commanders football game.
This reminds me of a 21st-century take on an old biblical adage:
"Feed a man a fish and he eats for a day; take a man on a luxury fishing trip and you own a Supreme Court Justice for life."
It comes down, mostly, to public corruption as Carl wrote above.
Post a Comment