Last week on the launch of ESPN New York, we got treated to a photoshop of LeBron James in a Knicks uniform. Now we have a story where Yankees president Randy Levine is calling out the Milwaukee Brewers’ owner for continuing to “whine” about not being able to sign Prince Fielder to a new contract because of how much money the Yankees pay their players.
Of course Levine decided his best course of action was to ask where the “hundreds of millions” of dollars in revenue sharing has gone. And so continues the seeming tactic on the launch of ESPN New York of baiting the sports web at large into debating with them. I am happy to do so on this topic, as the inequities of the game of baseball is one of my favorites.
First of all on the topic of revenue sharing, let’s get something straight. The Yankees have reportedly paid out about $175 million over the seven years since the program’s inception. The number that the Yankees pay is determined by revenue. Or is it? Well, this becomes like a conversation with Bill Clinton over word definitions. Define revenue. If the Yankees own part of their own TV network does all of that get included as Yankee revenue for revenue sharing calculations? Not hardly.
Yet still, the Yankees cry foul because someone calls them out for driving up the prices of players. As the infield of the Yankees including Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter, Mark Teixiera and Robinson Cano pull in more money between the four of them than the entire payroll of the Brewers combined. Shall we look at the size of the checks for the pitching staff?
Just like the conversation about LeBron it goes to show that ESPN New York, like the rest of the New Yorkers just don’t get it. They think New York is the most wonderful place in the world and in turn deserves the best of everything the universe has to offer. Yet again, they don’t understand who they are competing against in the grand scheme of things. The Yankees are not competing against the Red Sox and all the lower revenue teams that get handouts from the top earning teams in the league. The Yankees are a part of baseball, which is competing with the NBA, NHL, Nascar, UFC and the rest of the things in the world that compete for our discretionary income during the summer time.
Notice that I didn’t even include the NFL in that list? That is because baseball has already LOST to the NFL. Notice we don’t have these conversations during the NFL season. Yes, we have a lot of player movement each off-season and yes there are problems with the NFL, but you always feel like you are only two years of good drafting away in the NFL. You never feel like the dream is impossible in the NFL. In fact, you never feel that way in the NBA either. We know that first hand with the drafting of LeBron James.
In the NBA they even make it so teams can keep their best players by allowing the drafting team to sign for more years and higher dollar amounts. That system might be perfect too if it wasn’t for a certain website that consistently tries to find ways to take an equitable system and introduce relatively meaningless variables in order to get the best players in NYC. Then again, that story has already been discussed. I guess this is just the kind of content we should all expect from here on out from ESPN NY. I certainly thought they would be more careful with their launch so as not to appear to biased. After all, ESPN NY is awfully close to ESPN headquarters in Connecticut, right? Is ESPN NY just confirming the east coast / New York bias that most of us have been wary of all these years?