The New York Yankees announced the signing of Mark Teixeira to an eight-year, $180 million deal.  Teixeira joins pitchers C. C. Sabathia and A. J. Burnett under the tree as part of a Yankees holiday spending spree.

Most in the baseball press have projected the Yankees into the 2009 World Series and have decried that the Evil Empire is pricing out small-market clubs and is buying their way to their 27th championship.  Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio is whimpering that baseball needs a salary cap, despite the fact that his team won one more game than the Yankees — and a wild-card playoff spot — with 40% of New York’s payroll.

What these same people conveniently fail to mention is that a) Mark Teixeira may not be all that and a bag of chips, and b) even if he were, that’s hardly the point since the Yankees had the highest payroll (and arguably most talent) in baseball last year (~$222 million) yet only managed to stagger home a mere three games above fourth place in their division.  Moreover, since some current contracts have expired (Jason Giambi, Mike Mussina, Carl Pavano), the Yankees total 2009 payroll will likely be less than what they spent last (successful?!) season.  Still the clamor for parity continues.

A few writers suggest that baseball has already achieved quite a bit of parity, as eight different teams have won the past nine World Series — and eight different teams have played in the last four World Series.

All this “salary cap” and “fairness” rhetoric obscures the real issue.  It is not whether there is parity in baseball, it is that people do not really want parity.

A lot of people hate the Yankees more with every dollar Steinbrenner spends…and isn’t that great?  We feel strongly about the Yankees — both for and against — because of their past successes of excess and their utter failures.

If it weren’t for teams like the Yankees, there wouldn’t be underdogs.  Who better to establish a dynasty…and to have their dynasty ended?  Who better for an underdog to beat?

Fans remember dynasties.  Baseball has its Big Red Machine and the Bash Brothers A’s.  Football has its ’70s Steelers and its ’80s 49ers.  Basketball has its ’60s Celtics.  Nobody remembers when there is a different champion each season.

The opposite is good for the game, too.  Is it not more fun to cheer for the Cubs precisely because they have not won the World Series since 1908?  Doesn’t baseball lose more than a little something when we can no longer harangue Red Sox fans with taunts of “NINE-teen FOUR-teen”?  “TWEN-ty SEV-en” doesn’t sting nearly as much.

Enough of this parity hogwash.  Our pussified society has degenerated into a we-don’t-keep-score, everybody-gets-a-trophy arena of .500 “competition.”  The last thing we should want to see is thirty mediocre teams slogging to 81-81 records.

Let us instead celebrate the glory of dominance, drink in the sweetness of the upset, and embrace the loveable losers waiting ’til next year.

The average price of a Major League Baseball win exceeded a million dollars in 2008.   The league cost per victory was $1,185,897.

The New York Yankees had the worst return of investment as each win cost them over $2,500,000.  Expect more of the same in 2009 with the signings of Mark Teixeira and C. C. Sabathia.

The Florida Marlins enjoyed the best bang for the buck at just over $300,000 per win.

The 2008 World Series champion Philadelphia Phillies paid more than twice as much per win than the runner-up Tampa Bay Rays.

Payroll figures from the Chicago Tribune.

The Quad Cities River Bandits have made no secrets about their desire to enhance the quality of life in the community. On Monday, the club took this commitment to the next level by jumping into the political arena and publicly endorsing Bob Evans, the River Bandits’ Director of Baseball Operations, to fill Illinois’ vacant Senate seat formerly held by President-elect Barack Obama.

“This is a chance for the people to have their voices heard,” said River Bandits Vice President and General Manager Kirk Goodman. “Bob is a lifelong Illinois resident, a fan favorite of many people in the Quad Cities, and he knows his home state as well as anybody. Moreover, the people of Illinois can benefit tremendously from the great value associated with River Bandits baseball.” (more…)

Former Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis died last week at the age of 63.

The outspoken pitcher was perhaps best known for tossing an eight-walk no-hitter against the San Diego Padres in 1970 while under the influence of LSD.

A 1999 charter inductee to the Baseball Reliquary, Ellis refused to take shit from anybody:

Perhaps Ellis’ most startling act occurred on May 1, 1974, when he tied a major league record by hitting three batters in a row.

In spring training that year, Ellis sensed the Pirates had lost the aggressiveness that drove them to three straight division titles from 1970 to 1972. Furthermore, the team now seemed intimidated by Cincinnati’s “Big Red Machine.”

“Cincinnati will bullshit with us and kick our ass and laugh at us,” Ellis said. “They’re the only team that talk about us like a dog.”

Ellis single-handedly decided to break the Pirates out of their emotional slump, announcing that “We gonna get down. We gonna do the do. I’m going to hit these motherfuckers.”

True to his word, in the first inning of the first regular-season game he pitched against the Reds, Ellis hit leadoff batter Pete Rose in the ribs, then plunked Joe Morgan in the kidney, and loaded the bases by hitting Dan Driessen in the back. Tony Perez, batting cleanup, dodged a succession of Ellis’ pitches to walk and force in a run. The next hitter was Johnny Bench.

“I tried to deck him twice,” Ellis recalled. “I threw at his jaw, and he moved. I threw at the back of his head, and he moved.”

At this point, Pittsburgh manager Danny Murtaugh removed Ellis from the game. But his strategy worked: the Pirates snapped out of their lethargy to win a division title in 1974, while the Reds failed to win their division for the first time in three years.

Dock Ellis had a 12-year career record of 138-119 and was a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates 1971 World Series championship team.  Toward the end of his baseball career, Ellis counseled jailed drug addicts and continued doing so after his retirement from the game.

Dan Rosenheck at The New York Times writes that the Baseball Hall of Fame should change the rule requiring candidates to garner at least five percent of writers’ votes to remain on the ballot.

The article attempts to reveal a so-called flaw in the Hall of Fame election process.  On the contrary, Rosenheck exposes the farce that is the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA), whose members do the actual voting.

How is it that support for Jim Rice and Bert Blyleven has “increased to 72.2 percent and 61.9 percent last year from 29.4 percent and 14.1 percent 10 years ago”?  Rosenheck admits that the players qualifications have not changed but does not question the illogical mindset of the BBWAA writers.  Instead, he contends that other “worthy” players — who could not even get five percent of the vote — are unfairly eliminated.

Poppycock.  Rather than doing away with the five percent rule, the Baseball Hall of Fame should do just the opposite:  A candidate gets one year to get the 75% of the vote required for election.  Period.  None of this 15 years of “getting better with age” crap.  If a player is (not) good enough five years after retirement, that player is not going to be any better (or worse) a decade and a half later.  (Egregious oversights can still be corrected by the Veterans Committee.)

This rule change would have the additional benefit of making the BBWAA writers more accountable.  Deserving players would gain unanimous acceptance rather than having some jackass writer or two hold out “on principle” or to make a name for him- or herself.

Rather than further enabling the dysfunctional BBWAA, we fans should demand that the Baseball Hall of Fame should go further to prevent marginal and mediocre players into their hallowed shrine.