Bob Ryan Also Sucks –
Bob Ryan does have some
good qualities..
·
Does the dishes for you (with his tongue)
·
Sits around the house (so you can literally make that joke with friends)
·
Isn’t a pompous windbag (crap, I’m not good at lists..)
Today, Bob defends John Henry, who
is also starting to become a pompous windbag; though a much skinnier bag of
wind..
Bob also tries to make the
argument that we’re not as bad as the Yankees. In unrelated news, Bob’s looking
for a new rock to live under. If you have any tips, please email him at ryan@globe.com.
(Bob’s inanities in bold,
my classic zingers in plain.)
Ruling In Favor Of Judgment
That was the opposite of my life
sentence when I was on Judge Joe Brown. “Judgment in favor of
ruling!” (‘Cause I rule.)
FORT MYERS,
Fla. - What's more important in baseball, judgment or money?
Money. Unless the judgment is for more money.
The truth is that luck may be a
bigger factor in a team's short-term success than either judgment or money.
*cough* Devil Rays *cough*
If three-fifths of your
projected starting rotation goes down, what can you do?
Kill yourself. Try it, Bob!
But injuries are part of all
sports and a good team is supposed to insulate itself against the routine loss
of a starter as best it can.
Bob insulates himself every day. With Chalupas.
Bad luck can come in other
forms, of course (e.g., major illness),
(e.g., elephant attack)
(e.g., candy cane factory explosion)
(e.g., orangutan-knifing)
and sometimes a team's entire season is all about bad luck,
and nothing more.
Or maybe they just suck..
So that brings us back to
money,
Yay! Money!
which has been a subject of great discussion in this interesting
offseason. There's bad news on every doorstep, as we all know,
Bad news on Bob Ryan’s
doorstep: “Mr. Ryan, the candy cane factory exploded..”
and yet the
Don’t they know there are factory
workers dying in the streets? Who will I craft our fine American candy canes
now?!
This particular Red Sox
management has been very sensitive since Day 1 about not being confused with
their divisional competitors 225 miles to the south.
Well, maybe if they stopped
looking alike we wouldn’t confuse them! Damn honkies..
The Red Sox have money and they
are not reluctant to spend it. But they are aware the public has gradually
lumped them in with the Yankees as Evil Empire 1A, citing as Exhibit A the $102
million expenditure for Daisuke Matsuzaka. People out there in the Great Beyond
seem to think the Yankees and Red Sox are playing by the same financial rules.
Well the Great Beyond People can
go shove it.
The truth is the difference
between the Yankees' 2008 payroll and the Red Sox' 2008 payroll was
$75,691,542, which in itself was larger than the total payrolls of 13 major
league teams.
So yeah, we’re the
second-highest-paid team in
The Yankees are moving into a
new ballpark for 2009,
Ya don’t say..
and it will generate substantially more revenue than the old
one, which was a hybrid of two different architectural concepts, neither of
which had any emphasis on luxury boxes and premium seating, which are what
Yankee Stadium III
III?
(yes,
III) is all about. The new ballpark is one in which Joe Average will be
tolerated, but not necessarily embraced.
Well, Joe Average is a cheapskate
anyway.
I would stop just short of
saying that John Henry and Co. are obsessed with the
Yankees and their financial might.
Yeah, what’s wrong with those
guys? Stressing over their division rivals like that?
But I would say they have a
healthy concern about it.
Kinda like how Bob has a healthy
concern over whether they’ll be serving the Bloomin’ Onion that evening..
It came as no surprise,
therefore, when Mr. Henry made a reference yesterday to the effect that, to
ensure the hallowed "competitive balance" each league strives for,
baseball has reached a point where there should be a way to "put together
an enlightened salary cap" everyone could agree upon.
Seriously. John Henry has to shut his skinny gob. He’s made mention
of a cap only twice in his Sox career. Once this offseason, after the Yankees
bought the farm; and once in ’04 after the Yankees bought the gay farm. We’re
already unlikeable enough John, shut your piehole.
Wait. Is that the smell of
Donald Fehr's ears burning?
Thought I smelled burnt hair..
Now, baseball does have revenue
sharing, correct?
Incorrect.
No wait, correct.
Wasn't that the response to any
idea of a salary cap? Not enough, says Mr. Henry. "I think we've gone as
far as we can with revenue sharing," he declared.
He should make these declarations
from Mussolini’s balcony in
Sox CEO Larry Lucchino was
willing to expand a bit on the concept. "I'd call it a 'salary zone,'
" he offered.
“Better than a celery zone,”
quipped Ryan.
"That's a better term than
a salary cap. An enlightened form of a salary cap would have the Red Sox'
support."
“..and
would benefit them in every way possible..”
Alone among the Big Four,
Big Four, Big 82, The Big 162. Enough, Bob.
baseball has no salary cap. Once fairly easy to understand, they
have become absolutely unfathomable in both football and basketball.
Yeah, numbers are hard.
Teams in those sports have the
absolute need to employ capologists to do so much as
send out for lunch.
Sending out for Bill Parcells’ lunch
requires a three-week notice and an empty oil tanker. That’s why he took a job
near the coast.
Football? They'll cut a guy who makes $1.50 because next year his
salary cap hit will be $11 million. OK, I exaggerate. But not
by much.
Yeah, Jay Feely makes $1.60.
Basketball? Once upon a time, I was hip to "base-year
compensation." Sorry. No longer. It hurt my hair
too much just thinking about it.
Hair? I thought that was white cotton candy he kept nearby
just in case.
I don't think hockey has these
problems, but hockey always operates on a simpler basis, doesn't it?
“I mean, the sport’s run by
Canadians. C’mon..”
OK. The Yankees have a lot of
money.
Money good.
But shouldn't the question be,
"What good has it done them?" Last time I looked, they had not won
the World Series since 2000.
You just got Bob Ryan’d,
Their payroll has continually
escalated in the past decade, finally exceeding the once unimaginable $200
million level, and last year they wound up further away from a championship
than in any year since 1993, which was the last full season they did not make
the playoffs.
Ha, they suck..
Perhaps they needed some better
judgments. Perhaps they need to start developing their own players, rather than
poaching everyone else's.
But have you ever had Poached
Teixieria (sic)? It’s delicious.
While the Red Sox and Rays have
benefited greatly of late from home-grown talent, the Yankees have not
developed a star player since their system bubbled up Derek Jeter, Mariano
Rivera, Andy Pettitte, and Jorge Posada, circa 1995. That, by the way, was the
Gene Michael era.
The man who blessed
The Yankees say things are
changing. Joba the Heat? OK, fine. We'll see.
Is that seriously his
nickname? Good God. Bob Ryan couldn’t come up with something that stupid..
Money or
judgment? We give you the
fa real
was put in the hands of the perfect manager,
A lesbian?
and we all saw what happened.
Yeah, they caught an
exhausted/banged-up Sox team and lost to the Phillies. Whoopty-shit.
Their idyllic circumstance
won't last forever. In time, those kids will all need to be paid, and the Rays
will wind up losing people. But no one will ever take the accomplishment of
2008 away from general manager Andrew Friedman, manager Joe Maddon, or owner
Stuart Sternberg, for that matter.
Well, no wonder they had the
second-lowest payroll in the League! (Racist.)
As to John Henry's larger
point, right now baseball has an eight-tier payroll structure, as follows. I'm
using 2008 rounded-off numbers:
1. Yankees - $209 million
2. Mets, Tigers, Red Sox -
$134m-$138m
Guh. Poor
3. White Sox, Angels, Cubs,
Dodgers, Mariners - $117m-$121m
Worst team in
baseball. How to be,
4. Braves, Cardinals, Blue
Jays, Phillies - $98m-$102m
That’s like $68m-$72m in Canadian..
5. Astros, Brewers, Indians,
Giants, Reds, Padres - $73m-$89m
6.
7. Pirates, A's, Rays -
$44m-$49m
8. Marlins - $22m
Hanley Ramirez - $21m
And Peter Gammons reports that
the Marlins think they can win the National League East
this year.
Well, he’s never been wrong..
The
“They were?” – Red Sox fans.
The Astros were there in '05.
“They were?” – White Sox fans.
The Tigers made it in '06,
before they became big spenders.
“They did?” – Cardinals fans.
Spend less money than the Sox
& the Yankees and you can go to the World Series and lose sometimes!
Since the Yankees last won the
World Series, 12 other teams have made Series appearances. And it's not like
the Yankees weren't trying:
No, no. They weren’t trying.
Jason Giambi, (Steroids)
Kevin Brown, (Walking Injury)
Hideki Matsui, (SARS)
Johnny Damon, (Down Syndrome)
Carl Pavano, (Lost at sea)
Randy Johnson, (Killed by confused KFC employee)
Bobby Abreu, (Finally came to his senses)
and Roger Clemens (Match
made in Heaven…by Hitler.)
all came to
Oops, almost forgot A-Rod.
I wonder, if A-Rod’s orange face
got too close B-Ry’s pink face if my retinas would explode..
Put me down as a judgment guy.
The Rays are proof that a perennial loser can become a winner if put in the
hands of the right people.
/racist joke
The reason there's absolutely
never any hope in
Cut to Royals-Pirates 2009 World
Series.
Anyway, I'm not exactly sure
what an "enlightened salary cap" is or what a "salary zone"
means.
Or what “vegetables” are.
I just know that our guys spend
a lot of time worrying about the rich guys in the
"There's an old adage that
money can't buy you love, happiness, or the American League pennant," said
Lucchino with a smile. "We're going to be testing that adage this
year."
Bob Ryan thought he said “cabbage”
and fleed in fright.
Bob Ryan is a Globe
columnist. He can be reached at ryan@globe.com. 
~~~
Overall, not Bob Ryan’s worst fare this year. A lot of, “Hey, we’re not as bad as the other guys,”
which can get annoying. But at least he didn’t slurp any players this time.
Just John & Larry..