Throw the Yankees, Mets, and Red Sox All Out!

In his article "Mets In, Yankees Out," Jack Ocean exuberantly celebrates the Yankees loss as good for baseball, and rightly so. I - along with most of baseball America - cannot stand that arrogant franchise and their wanton disregard, their annoying fans for sound baseball economics. However, his article suffers because at the same time he denounces the Yankees, he cheers for the Mets, a team who should be thrown into the similar bad-for-baseball vault.

Actually, let me expand that last sentence. The Mets, Yankees, and Boston Red Sox - along with their arrogant, obnoxious fan bases - should all be chucked into a bottomless void. Simply put, baseball is better when the Northeastern teams do not win.

Why, you might ask? Three simple, easy-to-remember reasons. Money, media, and "my God, can you believe their fans?"

With respect to money, the Yankees have the highest payroll in baseball by a large margin. The Red Sox, despite the influence of smart-General Managing from Theo Epstein, are in second, and lead their nearest competitor by 17 million dollars. The Mets have the highest payroll in the National League. See a pattern?

Each of those three teams has derived its recent success directly from going out, trading for the highest-priced players and paying for the best free agents. The Yankees went out and snagged Randy Johnson, Mike Mussina, Jason Giambi, Alex Rodriguez, Johnny Damon, and countless others. For the Red Sox, Manny Ramirez came via highest-bidder free agency and Curt Schilling joined the club as the result of a lopsided salary dump. The Mets these past two offseasons turned themselves into a contender by shelling out for Billy Wagner, Carlos Beltran, Billy Wagner, and Carlos Delgado. How Oceano can rip on the Yankees for signing high-priced players, but not the Mets, is beyond me.

In fact, the Yankees have more "home grown" key players than the Mets or Red Sox, but let's not let that split hairs. All three of these teams' economic actions are bad for baseball. When the Mets go out and give ridiculous contracts to an overrated Carlos Beltran or a 40-year old Tom Glavine, it skews the value market. In an arbitration-based system, this makes it harder for the smaller-market clubs to compete.

And baseball simply works better when there are a diversity of teams able to win the title (the NFL works the same way). Want to know when baseball suffered, attendance-wise? Across the board, numbers were low in the 50s and early 60s (which caused many of the team movements). This was during the heyday of the rivalry between the Yankees, Giants, and Dodgers, and the Red Sox were not shabby either. Baseball's biggest popularity is arguably in the inter-strike period from 1982-1993, when almost every team except the Yankees and Red Sox did something noteworthy in their history. Baseball works better when there is parity, and the northeastern big spenders prevent that.

Furthering the fuel of the anti-Northeastern fire is the East Coast Sport's Network and others like it. I understand that many journalists have spent significant time in New York and/or Boston, but throw the rest of us a bone. There are thirty teams in major league baseball, yet the predominant coverage on Baseball Tonight and in newspapers like USA Today seems to be on the Yankees and Red Sox. I will concede that the Mets are second fiddle here, too, but they still receive an advantage because of where they play. The last two years, the best three best teams in the American League have played their baseball in the Midwest, but you would not know that by watching ESPN.

The network gave almost no coverage to the 20054 Chicago White Sox until the All-Star break. Oh, that's right, they were too busy salivating over Manny Ramirez. Whenever one of the northeastern triad play each other, the rest of the baseball world stops in their eyes. I understand they are rivalries, but so are the Dodgers-Giants and Cubs-Cardinals. They, of course, do not receive the Yankees-Red Sox coverage because they are not in the Eastern Time zone. Therefore, when I hurl these three teams into an abyss, Bill Simmons, Buster Olney, and Steve Phillips are all going with them.

Finally, to the rest of baseball, northeastern fans are egotistic and have massive delusions of grandeur. They think the rest of the baseball world actually cares about their teams. They also make the biggest fuss over every little setback another one of the teams has. For the rest of us, their banter back and forth looks akin to schoolchildren arguing on a playground. In fact, most of Oceano's article has the tone of a jaded middle schooler laughing at a classmate who got kicked in the testicles.

Additionally, their entire fan bases are, to put this nicely, odd to the rest of baseball. When I went to Yankee Stadium for the first time, there were people booing Paul O'Neil and saying things about his family in the first inning for no apparent reason. I asked, but no one gave me a definitive answer. When I switched boroughs to go to Shea Stadium, I saw the most passive-aggressive fan base I'd ever seen, and the whining nature of Boston fans for years and years leaves little to be desired.

For their obnoxiousness, free-spending economic habits, and tendency to hog every minute of national television time, I hereby root against the Yankees, Mets, and Red Sox in all situations. Yes, Jack Oceano, I hate the Yankees, too. I also despise your team and the jerks from New England. A pox on all your houses. You're bad for baseball and you all need to lose.