December 18, 2008
Yankees, Now Hated More Than Ever
By Steven StarkThe banks are in peril. The auto companies are about to go under. A new poll shows that roughly two-thirds of all Americans say they have taken a recent financial hit.
Meanwhile, the New York Yankees spend $250 million on two pitchers with more to come.
Welcome to the Bronx Bombers, soon to be the most hated team in sports by a country mile.
The word among the commentariat is that baseball is recession proof and besides, fans only care about winning, not spending. “Historically, baseball has been recession resistant,” the New York Times quotes Donald Fehr, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. Meanwhile Richard Lapchick, president and chief executive of the National Consortium for Academics and Sports says, “I think that the public in general does not care about the athlete’s salary.”
Besides, isn’t it part of baseball lore than when told he made more than Herbert Hoover, Babe Ruth replied that he had a better year than Hoover did?
Yes he did. But this time it’s different.
Though the Yankees have rarely been loved outside of New York, they’ve rarely been all that hated either – except in Boston, of course. After all, there was a certain class that came with being associated with a winner and that team, the pinstripes and all. And, after 9/11, there was a way in which the Yankees became America’s team, as they proudly persevered into the post-season in the wake of tragedy.
Now all that is being undone, unwound as quickly as Lehman Brothers, whose emptying halls once housed many Yankee fans. Clearly the Yankees have the money to spend, armed with a new stadium and a great cable deal – though once those who are laid-off stop paying their cable bills and those once solid auto companies stop advertising, cable deals won’t look nearly as good as they once did.
The problem, obviously, is one of proportion. And yes, class.
Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal has not been alone in noticing that there is a fresh spirit in the land of what she calls “rectitude chic.” There’s “a new or renewed sense of national shame,” she wrote. “The new mood seems to involve a new modesty, and something a little more humane.”
Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe wrote something similar. “How Can We Buck This Trend?” his column was headlined. “There really was a time when professional sports were affordable and democratic,” he complained. “It was not necessary for the average person to be wealthy, connected, or fiscally irresponsible to attend a playoff game, never mind something in the regular season.”
What the Yankees have done may be legal. But it’s straight out of the playbook of the era of excess for which we’ve begun to pay our penance. The team has made these deals, of course, at the same time they’ve asked for several hundred million more in public bonds to pay for cost overruns on the new stadium. Meanwhile, the good citizens of Gotham are being asked to ante up with increased taxes on Ipod downloads, sodas, cabs, buses, and many other items to cover an increased budget deficit.
Will even they cheer the $161 million 300-pound man? Maybe, until he loses his first game. But around the rest of the country, there’s a growing realization that times have changed. No one expects sports teams or athletes to take a vow of austerity. But if you’ve still got it, you don’t flaunt it. Not anymore.
Heckling, hissing, booing, you name it. A Bronx cheer will take on a whole new meaning. All the Yankees better get used to it. That’s what they’re going to hear on the road and then even at home, as they slowly become the symbol of everything that got us into trouble in the first place.
And to make it all into a neat parable, they won’t win it all anyway. This is no way to build a team. Gordon Gekko be damned: Greed is no longer good.
