Don't Fear the Dark Side

Unless you’re a die-hard Yankees fan, chances are you hate them. Why? You may say, “All the Yankees do is buy their talent; they never develop any of their own players.” Well, let’s look closer…this is short list of key players that have been drafted by the Yankees and have contributed to their championships.

Andy Pettitte
Mariano Rivera
Jorge Posada
Derek Jeter
Bernie Williams

Alfonso Soriano was not drafted by the Yankees, but they were the first team he played for in the MLB after starting his career in Japan, so you can either count him or not. You may say that this is a short list of players that was combined with other “bought” talent and you may be right, but the superior talent that these players possess cannot be overlooked. Now you might say, “No other team stands a chance because the Yankees huge pay scale dominates free agents.” Perhaps, but the Yankees have only been in the fall classic once in the past seven seasons. Only winning one in the past 10 years, they have given plenty of other teams the chance to get a championship.

Now don’t even try to say the casual baseball fan likes it better when the Yankees are losing. Since 2004, only one individual World Series game had more than 20 million viewers. The 2009 fall classic between NY and Philadelphia had two games of over 20 million in that series alone.

Now with these statistics and numbers I’ve thrown at you, you may assume that I am a huge Yankees fan. Quite the contrary, I have no loyalty to the “evil empire of professional sports.” But many people hate the Yankees for the wrong reasons. A team dominating a sport is no reason to hate it. They do what every team wishes they could do; they play the business side of the game as well as they play the sport and they do it better than anybody else.