And that’s true, I guess. Money doesn’t always win championships, and the little guy always does have a chance, but money spent against that chance diminishes it a little bit with each dollar spent. With the gauntlet having been thrown down in Tampa, everyone expected the Yankees to respond. They’ve responded not with a gauntlet of their own, but by nuking the entire site from orbit, as they say.

It’s the only way to be sure.

The main reason the Yankees failed to make the playoffs last season was pitching. Their number one starter, Chien-Ming Wang, was lost for the season, and while Mike Mussina went 20-9 for the Bombers, the rest of their starting pitching was either hurt or, not to put too fine a point on it, terrible. In response, the Yankees dropped $161 million on C.C. Sabathia and followed it up with another $82.5 for A.J. Burnett. Some folks have questioned the Burnett signing, citing his history of injuries, but the fact remains that the Yankees spent nearly one quarter of a billion dollars for the best two pitchers on the free agent market.

Today the Yankees went a step further, signing the best hitter on the market, Mark Teixeira, to an eight-year deal worth around $180 million. That brings their spending total to over $420 million this off-season (in second place are the New York Mets with around $37 million committed), making The Onion’s fictional story “Yankees Sign Every Player In Baseball” somehow more plausible. Rolling into a new stadium next season funded in part by the city of New York (don’t worry, the mayor got a luxury box out of the deal), the Yankees are in the unique position of batting their lifetime .303 hitting All-Star second baseman ninth in the lineup.

Don’t hate the Yankees for this. They’re only working within the system established by Major League Baseball and allowed to continue by people who own baseball teams because they like to look like big shots and couldn’t care whether their team has a legitimate chance to compete so long as the checks roll in. The Red Sox would do it too, if they could, as would the Mets, the Mariners, and even the lowly Pirates.

Hope you enjoyed your time at the top, Tampa Bay.

• The Rays just beat the team that I root for (although this is true)
• The Phillies fans have suffered longer without a championship (although this is also true)
• Rays fans are a bunch of bandwagon hopping opportunists who don’t deserve a championship team (although this is unbelievably true)¹

No, the reason you should root against the Rays is because a Rays championship allows the Players Association and big-market clubs like the Red Sox, Yankees, Cubs, Mets, etc., to perpetuate the myth that parity exists in Major League Baseball and that there’s no need for a salary cap. Now, if you’re a fan of a big market club, go ahead and root for the Rays. But if you’re a fan of baseball, and would like to see some sort of equality in baseball, where every team has a legitimate chance to compete, even if it’s just once every few years, root for the Phillies.

¹ If you doubt this assertion, go ahead and watch Game 1 of the World Series and look at the fan base. Try to find somebody with Devil Rays paraphernalia rather than just Rays. The team changed its name this season, and there’s no one in the stadium wearing stuff from previous years. Add that to the fact that the Rays have finished last in attendance every years since 2000 (when they finished 13th out of 14th), and what you have is a whole bunch of bandwagon jumpers, or as we call them around here, pink hats.