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Yanks are back to being the Yanks

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1Yanks are back to being the Yanks Empty Yanks are back to being the Yanks Sat 13 Dec 2008, 12:35 am

Sarah

Sarah
Admin
Admin

You vomito them.
You hate them.

You're talking about them, you're texting about them, you're blogging about them, you're e-mailing about them, you're sticking your chest way out or you're disgusted or you're worried or you're amused or you're ... you're ...

The Yankees.

It's like old times again in Major League Baseball.

No other team in worldwide professional sports -- not Manchester United in English football, not the Dallas Cowboys in American football -- has a stronger and longer tradition of evoking two equal and opposite reactions from fans quite like the New York Yankees. It's because of weeks like this one, at a time when the game is not being played on a field but over power lunches and in public debate.

The Bronx Bombers closed up the Winter Meetings by signing the top starting pitcher in this year's free-agent crop, CC Sabathia, for seven years and $161 million. Then they pounced on the No. 2 free-agent starter out there, A.J. Burnett, who has preliminarily agreed to five years and $82.5 million. Boom. Boom.

There is no reason to believe they are done yet, either. Maybe they will re-sign Andy Pettitte, whom they want but not at the $16 million he earned in 2007 and '08. Maybe they will sign Derek Lowe or Ben Sheets, now at the top of the remaining free-agent crop. They have the best overall player in baseball, Alex Rodriguez, who plays for the largest salary. They have the franchise who sells so many jerseys, Derek Jeter. They have a new Yankee Stadium coming in April, the stuff of dreams.

Plenty is wrong in the world right now. But Britney Spears is back on top and the Yankees are back to being the Yankees, at least in raising your emotions.

What the Yankees don't have right now is a consecutive streak of postseason appearances. That vanished in 2008. The Yankees had gone to the playoffs in 13 consecutive years. This year, they watched as the Tampa Bay Rays, of all teams, rose up out of nowhere, and not only had their first winning season, but also made it to the World Series. The Yankees were not the American League Wild Card, either; Boston was.

"You kind of took it for granted around the Yankees that there was always going to be baseball in October," the great Yankees lefty Whitey Ford said 20 years ago.

What the Yankees don't have right now is a World Series trophy of any recent stature hanging around the offices. In October 2000, they were handed a 24-inch-high Tiffany-made trophy featuring 30 flags, one for each Major League team, with latitude/longitude lines symbolizing the world, and 24-karat vermeil stitches representing those on a baseball. Etched on the base are the words, "Presented by the Commissioner of Baseball," along with the signature of Bud Selig.



• Burnett reaches deal with Yanks
• Revamped staff starts with CC, A.J.
• Burnett moves on; Jays move on
• Braves resume winter without A.J.

Where did those days go? That was the third consecutive world championship for the Bombers, and the 26th overall, the most among major professional teams. The fourth in a row was stolen with Luis Gonzalez's hit against Mariano Rivera in Arizona in those tense and unforgettable times. In those days following 9/11, as baseball saw its first November, there was an unprecedented solidarity between the Yankees and seemingly all Americans; even those who annually hated the guys in pinstripes found themselves pulling for them in 2001.

It is another winter's respite in the national pastime, and once again, the Yankees leave you no choice but to fall into one of two camps. It is so hard to find anyone who is indifferent. This writer's son, a Cardinals fan, seemingly insulated from concern about a club over in the AL East, with enough to think about on campus, sent a text from college right after Sabathia's news broke: "cc yanks o no."

You might have either sent one or received one something like that.

If you vomito the Yankees, then you have to vomito the swagger from the front office. You might not be 100 percent sold on the durability of either frontline starter they just nabbed, but you look at your new stadium and your marquee talent and you think eight consecutive seasons without another world championship is long enough. You can't customize that new Sabathia jersey fast enough at the MLB.com Shop, and you're sharing the sentiment of Hall of Famer Goose Gossage, who said in a New York appearance on Thursday that "you can't get enough pitching." You look forward to a competition for rotation slots next spring, so different than last spring's youth march.

Can you imagine how crazy it is going to be in the rush to get tickets for the Yankees' first home opener at their new place on April 16 against the Indians? Fortunately, they have scheduled an exhibition series there against the Cubs on April 3-4, giving people a chance to see what baseball feels like in the new Cathedral.

From now until then, it is going to be a constant argument. Yankees fans are going to tell you that they just got back to the postseason, and possibly to the World Series. Non-Yankees fans are going to cite a trend that towers over any other trend in modern Major League Baseball: Competitive balance. It's everyone's game.


The fans of Philadelphia just got to enjoy that parade that they had waited for season after season since their 76ers won the NBA Finals in 1983. You eagerly note that the Rays were just the latest example of all comers taking over the autumns of your life. The Rockies got to the World Series in 2007. The Kitty's ended a 22-year Fall Classic drought appearance in 2006. The White Sox won it all for the first time in 88 years, when they dispatched the World Series newbies from Houston in 2005. Let the Yankees spend all that money, you say; clubs with modest payrolls are finding a way lately.

But spending is no issue so far, and the headlines have been breathtaking this week. With Chien-Ming Wang and Joba Chamberlain coming back, adding Pettitte, Lowe or Sheets would mean a serious fight for jobs in the rotation among guys like Phil Hughes. Mike Mussina went out on the top of his career, retiring with 20 wins.

"We obviously have a need to improve our starting rotation, period," Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said. "It's not just one -- it's more than one. My intent this winter is to try to improve the club obviously any way I can, but the main focus is going to be the rotation."

The Yankees seem like they are determined to do whatever it takes to be in position to end the drought of postseason appearances at one year. Should they even make it back to the World Series for the first time since losing to Florida in 2003, there would be a strong likelihood of Jeter having another shot at being Mr. November. The season is starting later than ever, and it could end almost a full week into November.

By then, maybe the world already will have changed. Maybe the economy will be better. It will be a full year after the election of Barack Obama as the U.S. president. Maybe there will be another Yankees parade, coming up the Canyon of Heroes, where the sidewalk along Broadway is paved with tributes to past parade heroes like Dwight D. Eisenhower, Winston Churchill and Jesse Owens.

You vomito them.

You hate them.

The Yankees are back.

The Yankees are going to bomb.

You wish your team had their pockets.

You're glad your players don't have that pressure.

It is a crazy world right now, but it feels a little more normal for some reason now that the Yankees have had this kind of week.

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