$209 Million is OK, but Somehow Emery Boards Provide an Unfair Advantage

Danelle walked by as I was sitting at my laptop earlier this evening and asked what I was chuckling about. "Red Sox beat the Yankees," was my reply.

It doesn't matter that it's only July. It doesn't matter that neither team is even in first place in the American League East. It doesn't matter that most casual fans are equally sick of BOTH teams. I think as long as I'm alive the Red Sox beating the Yankees will always be a Very Good Thing.

Let me pause here and try to dispel the notion that the Red Sox are "just as bad" as the Yankees. People often try to paint them as equally guilty of somehow buying their recent championships, mainly because they're both "big market" teams. The Red Sox don't even have the second-highest payroll in baseball. They're fourth behind the Tigers, Mets and of course the Yankee$. In fact, the difference in payroll between the two squads is a whopping $75 million. That's more than the TOTAL PAYROLL of 13 other teams, nearly half the league. The gap in spending between the Yankees and everybody else is so huge it just defies logic to lump any other club into the same category with them.

Mind you, I don't fault the Yankees for dishing out the salaries they do. The system allows it, and as a fan I would want the owner of my favorite team to do everything possible within the system to win. It's clearly the system that's flawed.

The Tampa Bay Rays having the best record in baseball to this point in the season and the 29th highest payroll is absolutely a great story. But why should the Rays and so many other teams have to start with such a huge disadvantage over other clubs in bigger markets or with more favorable economic situations? Sport is supposed to be decided on the field, and not influenced to such a ridiculous degree by the size of an owner's wallet.

Granted, being able to spend more doesn't guarantee you anything. Despite their huge payroll advantage, the Yankees haven't won a World Series since 2000 (that was SO much fun to type). But as I've heard some members of the sports media point out their ability to outspend the competition gives them a huge margin of error compared to other teams.

If the Yankees drop a ton of money on a pitcher who doesn't perform up to expectations -- or perhaps given their recent track record in this area (Brown, Clemens, Johnson, Pavano, etc.) I should say WHEN they do -- they can just go get somebody else. Most teams simply can't afford that luxury. When the Yankees can afford to pay more than anybody else to acquire talent, they end up with better players which puts them in a better position to win. The math really isn't that hard.

It's like everybody's running a 100-yard dash, and the Yankees get a 10-yard head start. Sure, they MIGHT not win. But given the option of being in their position or back at the regular starting line with everyone else, which would you choose?

That's why I prefer salary caps. The NFL has it right when teams in markets like Indianapolis, Denver (2007 notwithstanding) and Green Bay can be perennial contenders mainly because they make good personnel decisions and have good coaches. When teams can quickly turn their fortunes around by making a few good moves and not languish in last place season after season because they can't pay for top talent. When fans of every team can go into each season with legitimate reasons to be optimistic that this might be their year.

How a sport that is so obsessed with "the purity of the game" can focus so much attention on the unfair competitive advantages supposedly gained by things like cork and Vaseline but continue to ignore the payroll disparity elephant in the room is simply beyond me, and a disservice to all its fans.

This post was supposed to be about my long and usually disappointing history of rooting against the Yankees. I'm not sure how it took a left turn into the larger issue of labor models in professional sports leagues, but I guess that's all right.

Actually, everything's all right. The Red Sox beat the Yankees. :)

Fortunately He Couldn't Care Less About Dinger

One of our neighbors organized a trip to Coors Field to watch the Colorado Rockies play the New York Mets today. We have a pretty tight group on our street; a lot of us are about the same age, in the same place in our lives and have kids also about the same age.

The response was great -- eight families, 28 people total. We got a group of tickets together in the center-field bleachers, affectionately known as the Rockpile. Most of us took the light rail together and after baking in the 90-degree heat for the first couple of innings we got some relief from wind and cloud cover. We made it all the way to the bottom of the eighth inning, which isn't bad for a group with 13 kids between the ages of two and eight.

I was fortunate to go to a few major league games when I was a kid. They were always a really big deal, since they started with a three-hour drive whether we went to Boston or New York. I remember one trip to Fenway Park in particular. The Red Sox were taking on the Mariners, and my dad's bowling buddy Tommy Shramm came along. Just to bust my dad's chops he bought a Mariners hat and rooted for Seattle. I think the Mariners even won.

Tommy tragically passed away at a young age, I believe from brain cancer. But watching and listening to him and my dad jaw at each other during that game proved to be a good introduction to the fine art of talking trash.

Today was Taryn's first major sporting event of any kind in person, and she correctly identified what watching baseball was good for by falling asleep about halfway through. Zak was also four the first time he and I went and I managed to get him all the way to the end of the game with the lure of different concessions. "Just six more outs and we'll go get ice cream, Zak." We went again when he was five and he was done by the fifth inning that time. Then we were blessed with the opportunity to get to see game four of last year's World Series together.

Zak knows I like the Red Sox and has always been somewhat partial to them himself too because of it. When he was just a year old Derek Lowe of the Sox was the starting pitcher for the All-Star Game. I raced home from work, put him in his Red Sox onesie, grilled up a couple of hot dogs and we ate them together while we watched the start of the game.

The week before the World Series game he said to me, "Daddy, I still like the Red Sox. But I think I like the Rockies a little bit more..." I laughed and told him that was fine, and he could cheer for any team he wants. He already had a Rockies hat, but we went out that afternoon and got him a t-shirt with Troy Tulowitzki's name and number on the back and a hooded purple sweatshirt to go with it.

The fans in our section were great to him, high-fiving him whenever the Rockies did something good (which wasn't often). I told him how special it was that he was getting to see his first World Series when he was only six years old and another guy in the section said, "I'm 66 years old, and this is MY first World Series!"

He decided he had to go to the bathroom during the seventh-inning stretch, of course. The only time during a baseball game that the men's room actually has a line. And six-year-old boys don't give you a lot of warning when they have to go. So he's doing the pee-pee dance at the end of the line when some guy up ahead of us notices his distress. He shouts, "Hey, we got a little kid back here!" and the line parted like the Red Sea to let him to the front. Not sure if that would happen in many cities besides Denver.

When Jonathan Papelbon struck out Seth Smith to end the game and clinch the series most of the Red Sox fans in attendance congregated behind the visiting team dugout. I didn't think the newly minted Rockies fan needed to have his nose rubbed in it, so we just watched the celebration from our seats for a few minutes before heading home.

Zak was more interested in goofing off with his buddies today than actually watching the game, but that's fine with me. The social aspect of sports is part of their immense appeal, even when you're in second grade. He did pay more attention than I thought, though. He said tonight that the best part was when the Rockies hit a home run, which is how they scored their lone tally.

Unlike Tommy Shramm, I didn't buy a Mets hat to taunt him. He's probably still a little young for that sort of induction into talking trash.

But if the Sox and Rox ever meet in the Fall Classic again, all bets are off.

Thanks, Mike Piazza

Former catcher Mike Piazza retired a couple of weeks ago. He's widely regarded as one of the best hitting catchers of all time, but I'll alway remember him for another reason.

My dad was a huge Los Angeles Dodgers fan. He grew up in northern New Jersey when they were still the Brooklyn Dodgers, and after the team moved to California he continued to follow them.

When Danelle and I moved to Dallas in 1992 I started to follow the Texas Rangers. They had a good young catcher named Ivan Rodriguez. Piazza came up late that same season with the Dodgers, then in 1993 he went on to win Rookie of the Year in his first full season.

Neither my dad nor I could resist a good sports debate, so we'd regularly argue which of the two was better. Like most sports debates, there was almost no way to really decide on a winner. Piazza was a great hitter, especially for power, while Rodriguez was tremendous defensively and excelled at throwing out would-be base stealers.

The debate never grew old, even after we left Dallas and moved to Denver in 1997. Then my dad passed away from a heart attack in the spring of 1998.

A few months later I was driving to work when I heard on the radio that the Dodgers had traded Piazza to the Florida Marlins. The first thing that crossed my mind was how I needed to call my dad and ask him how great he thought Piazza was NOW. The mighty Dodgers didn't even want him any more! Finally, an edge in the great debate!

Then I remembered that I couldn't do that.

I knew my dad was dead, of course. I wasn't in any sort of denial or anything. But right then was when it really hit me.

So good luck with whatever else life holds for you, Mike Piazza. And thanks for always making me think of my dad. :)