Talk Bronx New York

Much has been made about this year’s World Series champions, the New York Yankees, and their astronomical payroll. Many critics point to the estimated $208 million the Yankees spent in player salaries in 2009, and claim the “Bronx Bombers” simply “bought” the World Series championship. While it’s true that the Yankees far outspent any of their opponents this past season, it’s hard to argue with the results: they are baseball’s best in 2009.

With this in mind, we’ve decided to take a look at World Series champions over the past 10 years and analyze whether big bucks can buy World Series success.

The Yankees have spent big dollars throughout the decade, and it’s paid off with playoff appearances in nine of the past 10 seasons, and four World Series appearances, but you’ll never believe how much they actually spent to get there. With the likes of A-Rod, Jeter and CC, the Yankees were able to bring the World Series championship back to the Bronx for the first time since 2000. The Red Sox have matched the Yanks as far as titles, and have kept up with New York in spending as best they could. It took a group of “idiots” and the greatest series comeback in postseason history to reverse the Curse of the Bambino in 2004. Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

The 2009 Yankees had an overall payroll of $206.8 million, nearly 50 percent higher than that of their closest competitor

 The aroma that one perceived, as one walked off the field and inside toward the home clubhouse in the moments after the Yankees had won their 27th World Series on Wednesday night, was strong. It was one part expensive perfume, and one part expensive champagne, and it was unmistakable. It was Eau de WAG.

The area in between the Yankees’ dugout and their clubhouse usually functions as an indoor batting cage, but on this night it served an arguably more important purpose. It was a holding pen for the players’ wives and girlfriends — their WAGs, in the current parlance. As their husbands and boyfriends conducted the first few minutes of their post-championship bacchanal, team security sensibly kept the WAGs out of the clubhouse — “Someone could get hurt in there!” — and they hugged each other and took pictures of each other and took sips from plastic cups, as they waited for things to calm down just a little. They included in their number Joanna Garcia, a guest star on Gossip Girl and the girlfriend of Nick Swisher, and Minka Kelly, a cheerleader on Friday Night Lights and the girlfriend of Derek Jeter. Kate Hudson, Alex Rodriguez’s steady, was not subjected to the confines of the holding pen — she starred in Bride Wars, after all — but she was around.

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

This has to happen. Pedro Martinez has to take the ball in the Bronx tonight and cut and curve and quick-pitch the overhyped Yankees hitters into knots. He has to lick those long fingers and throw those 76 mph high changeups and put the entire tri-state region into a palpable state of panic.

He has to beat the Yankees tonight, force a Game 7 and hand some smart tabloid editor the chance to make backpage history. Pedro has to glare in at Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez after punching them out in a big spot, and his photo has to appear tomorrow with the obvious headline:

The Man Who Stares At Goats.

This just has to happen. Pedro has to knock them out with his sheer force of will, just like George Clooney does to the real goats in those incessant TV commercials. This whole thing has unfolded like some kind of corny baseball movie. Only we don’t know how this one will turn out. You can go to the movies tonight, but I have news for you: Michael Jackson dies in the end. Pedro vs. the Yanks? We don’t know what’s going to happen.

All we know is that, for drama, for fun, for pure entertainment value, the Phillies have the perfect guy on the mound. Pedro has been called a lot of things in his brilliant career, but how about this for a first: best bargain in baseball. Commissioner Bud Selig ought to hand Martinez a bonus for all the eyeballs he will attract tonight. The Phillies signed Martinez for $2 million. For the record, the Red Sox [team stats] paid about 10 TIMES THAT for the worthless pitching trio of Brad Penny, John Smoltz and Takashi Saito. Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

Pedro Martinez of the Philadelphia Photo | Pedro Martinez of the Philadelphia Phillies speaks to the media during a press conference at Yankee Stadium. (Nov. 3, 2009)

This will be Pedro’s 19th career start in the Bronx, including postseason action.

 Even Andy Pettitte and Derek Jeter discussed it  late Monday night, when it became apparent this World Series would return to the Bronx. The participants themselves are not oblivious to when they’re taking part in great baseball theater.

“Just how strange is this, after all the battles with him being in Boston?” Pettitte said, detailing the nature of his conversation with the Yankees’ captain. “I know I’ve faced him a bunch of times. I don’t know about the playoffs. I can’t really remember that.

“But in the course of a regular season, and big series, and stuff like that, and then to come full circle, this many years have passed, him with the Phillies and me back over here and stuff like that, it’s going to be neat.”

Need we even introduce the mystery person of whom Pettitte speaks? You of course know that it’s Pedro Martinez, set to start for the Phillies tonight in World Series Game 6.

Looking, with his team trailing 3-2 in games, to keep the Yankees from going up the same Canyon of Heroes to which Pedro could not lead the Mets.

Martinez, as he often does, credited his God, to help him “actually have such a long career go full cycle around. Actually be able to compete once again in a World Series, on one of the biggest stages. Just see two old goats out there doing the best they can and having fun with it.” Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

The New York Yankees are hoping to wrap up the World Series against the Phillies in Philadelphia Monday night. But if they lose Game 5 and have to go back to the Bronx to finish up the series, they really should get some of the fans from Sunday’s Yankee Stadium game-watching event into the ballpark. Because the Bronx backers at that event - local fans who were just happy to be in the stadium to cheer on their team- were far more enthusiastic and happy to be there than most of the postseason crowds at the stadium so far.

I went to the game-watching event with fellow Faster Times writer Jon Lewin - he’s the Met fan counterpart of Subway Squawkers, our New York City baseball blog. Barbra from Manhattan, one of our readers, joined us (she took the photo of the last pitch of the game, seen at left) .  Somewhere close to 10,000 or so Yankee fans were also at the event, where we watched the game on the 100-foot video screen.

The stadium officials let us sit in the field-level seats at the new ballpark, in front of the moat. We got to sit on the third-base line, right by the visitors’ dugout. So we finally got to see what it was like to luxuriate in comfortably cushioned box seats with wooden armrests. Seats were great, cup holders not so much. Two of us suffered overturned soda casualties thanks to poorly-designed holders. At $6 for a Sierra Mist, that hurt! Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post