Hideki Matsui, Johnny Damon become free agents

77. Posted by J P Thu Nov 12 5:28pm EST Report Abuse
If you are world champs, which countries did you beat?

Canada - Toronto Blue Jays.

If you are world champs, which countries did you beat?

If you can afford to own a team...you should be able to afford to put the best team on the field that you can to compete...most can do this...they CHOOSE not to...that is their problem...and that of their fanbase who still support them...look at Baltimore and the tight wad down there...yet the fans keep coming...I do not be grudge a player all the dough they can get...especially since people are paying to see them play...people don't pay to see the GM....i figure the players get a just share...the team gets better , (theoretically) because more money is generated. What would people want to have happen...a salary cap...where do folks think the money would go...it would go (as it does now,in some cases) right into the pockets of the owners... not so in New York...someone (george) had the good sense to know that if you put a great team on the field...they will come...love thwe Yankees...or hate them...they will come...and do...at every ballpark in the USA.

To Sure it is.

You are a god. That is all

To Brian C,

That was brilliant. I won't lie the ending of that comment was cool as hell! Thanks for stating so eloquently what so many of us Yankee fans feel.

Sure it is- I've never heard anyone say it better. If the Yankees were to trade away all their high priced players and field a team with a $30M payroll next year people would hate them. If they go out and sign Lackey, Bay and Holliday this winter they are going to be hated. If they stand pat with who they have they are going to be hated. I gave up long ago trying to reason with the haters because they will always invent an excuse to hate the Yankees. They say the Yanks sold their farm system and develop no players when as you stated 56% of the roster is home grown. They say we have all the money while other teams are poor when as you showed that there are 6 other owners with more money than Steinbrenner and 3 others very close to his worth. Don't hate us because we spend to win. Don't hate us because our farm system has produced numerous hall of famers. Don't hate us because free agents want to come to NY because they want a WS ring. Hate us because we are the World Champions.

why do people cry about dum s--- the yankees r #1 and thats all that matters so to all you bums out there go take a ride on a rolling dougnut. and befor i 4-get WHO'S YOUR DADDY PADRO. thanks for that 4th win and for are 27th ,you the man.

I am quite tired of hearing all the loopy anti-Yankee people complaining about payroll. Hey, whatever it takes to make yourself feel better that the Yankees are the 2009 world champions and whichever team you chose to root for has been playing golf for almost two months then go for it. However, here a few tidbits to consider:

Billionaires who own teams:

1. Theodore Lerner 3.2 billion Washington Nationals (#1?! You must be joking! Awesome season they had- Yankees in reverse)
2. Sam Zell 3 billion Chicago Cubs
3. John Malone 1.5 billion, Atlanta Braves
4. Drayton Mclane 1.4 billion, Houston Astros
5. Michael lllitan 1.4 billion, Detroit Tigers
6. Carl Lindner 1.4 billion, Cin Reds
7. GEORGE STEINBRENNER 1.3 billion, NEW YORK YANKEES (7th? Nah! Couldn't be! Impossible!)
8. John Fisher 1.2 billion, Oakland A's
9. John Hennry 1.1 billion, Boston Redsox
10. Tom Hicks 1 billion, Texas Rangers

So sue the guy for being an astute business man! If the other owners poured their own cash into their own teams like Steinbrenner does, the silly payroll nonsense wouldn't be such a thorn in all the haters' sides. All the luxury tax and revenue sharing that the Yankees pay out which is pocketed by the other owners is beyond ridiculous so shut up already!

From 1976 through 2000- the last time the Yankees won a ring- TWELVE out of the TWENTY FOUR years they did NOT have the highest payroll. That's HALF the time. However they won SIX rings and TWO of those six years they won they did not have the highest- 1977 and yes the amazing 1998! But the only way Yankees can win is to buy every championship they are involved in!

Oh really?

If that's the case then let's look back over the past nine years when they did have the highest payroll. The proof is in the pudding. If a team's cash flow is the only way to win a world series then the Yankees must have really won in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008, yes? No? Maybe? Oh, wait! I see! It's obvious that the Yankees did not want to hurt anyone's feelings, they just let all those other teams say they won! That MUST be it! After all, money talks and if you have all the cash, there is no way in hell you can ever lose. OK. I understand!

For the first half of the 2009 season, the Yankees struggled quite badly. This includes the three big "buys" they got in the off season. They were horrible. All the anti-Yankee people chanted "SEE? YOU CAN'T BUY A CHAMPIONSHIP!" Then when they turned it around, the chant conveniently became "NO FAIR! YOU BUY YOUR CHAMPIONSHIPS"!

Well, silly anti-Yankee people, what's it going to be? You can't have it both ways. Do they buy their championships or don't they?

Find a new excuse, OK? You are STALE!

And by the way, the Yankees have the SECOND highest percentage of homegrown players in the sport with 56%. The Rockies have 64%. Just thought I'd add that for good measure.

It's been this way forever. The Yankees are damned if they do and damned if they don't. So keep whining people and keep clinging to the silly notion of the Yankees payroll. It's not going to change anything nor will it get you anywhere. Payrolls do NOT win championships and it's time to accept that as a proven fact. If you don't, you will continue to sound like one of those obsessive psychotics from Bean Town who can't get the Yankees out of their brains.

I thank you.

I want J. Damon to go somewhere he's allowed to grow that sweet beard!!!!!!!!!!

You can't have fairness when money is involved. MLB is a business first and a sport second and as long as no rules exist that limit the amount a team can spend on players there will be teams that will spend a lot and those that spend next to nothing. And for those that think a salary cap is the answer you are sorely mistaken. A salary cap would eventually lead to a reduction in the top salaries of the game or even force out players into early retirement. If the limit was set at $100M that would mean a 40 man roster would average $2.5M a year each. So when a lot of teams get close to the $100M mark and a player like Tex or Arod or Guerrero or Wright or Johan hits free agency then what? Are they going to take a pay cut because no team has the cap room to sign them? And above all else do you think the MLBPA would allow this to happen? A strike would have to occur first before a salary cap is ever put in place and I just don't see that happening.

Without the luxury tax the smaller market teams could not exist. The revenue sharing NY pays for being over the CAP allows these teams to be profitable or breakeven. If the Yankees were losing money I could see the complaining, but they can pay more than others, blame the players for being greedy, yeah right, would you take $20M from the yankees or $10M from your current team.
I am not saying the system is fair, but it is for profit after all.
The last 6 six years, we had the wrong mix of superstars, this year they got a nice compliment of role players and superstars.

I just love how Sox fans/ Yankee haters forget that it was the Sox who paid $52.1M just to talk to Dice K before they plunked down another $51M to sign him. This was also the team that had a bid out there for Teixeira for $172M. And what a coincidence that all these small market poor teams suddenly found $160M+ to try to sign Tex also last year (Orioles, Nationals) but once he went to NY that money all of a sudden vanished. The point is as much as Sox Nation likes to cry poverty and play the underdog they aren't so far off from the Yankees in terms of spending. Had they gotten Tex instead of us their payroll would be about $155M and Yanks would have been $178M. I just hope Yanks bid heavy on Bay and Holliday. Not to sign them but just to drive up the price the Sox end up paying on one of them.

Attn haters: stop pushing for a soviet league. Amazing coincidence how many of you root for teams with an awful lot of red in the uniform.'

Danielle quit your whining, "most affluent and richest egotistical ones rue the league and spoil it for any other team." Cry me a river, as if the Roid Sux at $122 million are a poor team. They just played poorly. For a small city (600,000) like Boston, that's a lot of cash for minimal results. If NYC were to spend the same per person, the yearly payroll would be well over a billion dollars.

As I told you, for all your toting of the crappy Wild card, how many wins did it get them in the postseason? And that was against a team with a smaller payroll.

George J. Mitchell should be indicted for protecting Red Sox players from his own steroid investigations. There's a warm spot in hell for grade A cheaters like him and Blowachek.

Ted Williams choked in the postseason, and, while 2 years is not much of a drought, 2 championships in 90 years is nothing to crow about. That's not even statistically likely, as it's on the Corky Thacher side of the curve.

GO YANKS! WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS!!

#43 Gary - thank you for making the most sense out of anyone on this board.

Daniel - Blow it out your ass. If you cant afford it, stay home & watch on TV. Its simple.

There are ZERO affordable professional sports (of the big 4) these days, aside from the teams that suck (Pirates, Royals, etc).

Daniel- it doesn't cost that much to go to a Yankee game. Seats in the bleachers go for $14 and the grandstand is $29 if you take the initiative to buy your tickets when they go on sale via ticketmaster. If you sit and wait until the last minute to go to a game then yeah it will cost you an arm and a leg when you either have to buy the expensive seats that are left over or go to stub hub where there is a ridiculous mark up.
As for it being unfair I ask how is it unfair? Yankees had many empty seats in the early and mid 90's but when they won the WS in 1996 they got smart and started using profit to bring in FA's and sign their own players to extensions. It's not like they robbed anyone. They used their own money. 8 different teams have won the WS since 2000. So why were the Yanks and the Red Sox the only 2 to be smart enough to use that to their advantage, sell FA's on the fact that this was a place to come to to win a WS ring and pay what the market demanded to get these players? Meanwhile the Marlins won in 2003 and they proceeded to dismantle that team because the owner wanted to keep the profit for himself instead of paying to retain players and basically flipped the bird to the Marlins fans. Yeah I wonder why they don't pack the house at Marlins games these days.

Brizl- well spoken. MLB will not push for a salary cap because it will be met with the threat of a strike by the MLBPA and neither side wants to do that with baseball being at a near all time high in revenues. While everyone cries about the small market teams the fact is those fans don't turn out day in and day out to watch those teams play and also don't tune in to watch those teams if they make the playoffs. There is a reason the Yankees have so much money. Their fans show up to the stadium, buy merchandise and watch religiously on tv when the Yankees play. And it isn't just fans in NY. There are Yankee fans in every state. Same with Boston, LA and Chicago. As much as everyone loves the small market teams the fact is that it isn't smart to put a team in a market that either is too small to generate a profit or has fickle fans who won't show up.

Funny how there are always people screaming about salary caps whenever the Yankees are winning. Hey morons, do you really think that a cap is coming any time soon? Here's a clue: IT'S NOT - SO STOP WHINING!
Even if it did, the players association would only agree to it if 2 other things were part of of the deal -
1) that the cap was set so high that it would barely affect how things are currently done (increasing by a certain amount every year - and
2) that there was a salary floor or minimum that teams had to pay. This is the part where your hopes and dreams are shattered. Not only are the cheapest teams not able to spend the money that the Yankees, Mets and Red Sox spend - THEY DON'T WANT TO. Those owners would never go for it because it affects their bottom line which is all they care about. So the way it is right now is the way it's going to stay for the forseeable future, and guess what? Everyone in baseball wants it that way except for maybe 3 or 4 teams - none of which are in the top or bottom 20% in salary every year.

poster # 59 you sound like a sore loser RED "dirty" SOX fan, get over that @#$%, Yanks rule baseball thats the way it was, the way it is , and the way it will be, so please feel free to call my office for a Yankee fan application, we do not descriminate, 1-800-Go Yanks lmao

Why is it that Randy Levine thinks that all is right in the world? Because the Yankees won the World Series? What a pompous ass thinking that the Yankees deserve to win every year. Give me a freakin break. They should take his sorry ass out and shoot him.

When the average family has to obtain a second motgage in order to take in a game it's time for MLB to wake the f*ck up and make all teams have a ceiling in payroll and not let the most affluent and richest egotistical ones rue the league and spoil it for any other team.

Don't comeback with the bullsh*t that other teams can do the same. They have no where near the capital that theYankees and a few others have and therefore cannot compete with the F/A's who like anybody is of course going to go where the money is. It's only natural.

Damon, Holliday & Lackey to LaDodgers then we will be World Series Champions again

Hint: Every team buys their players. There's a minimum salary, which means that every player is paid, which means that every player's services are bought buy the team they play for.
Any team in the history of baseball that has won a World Series has bought it by signing the players that win it.

NEXT YEAR IT WILL BE THE SD PADRES AS A CONTENDER IN THE PLAYOFFS & world series look out here comes the team for the 2010 dynasty......

STILL HUNG OVER,not even thinking about NEXT season yet,all I know is that the YANKEES are CHAMPS and that Pro football,college football,and hoops make for a nice off season and like the players we get a few months off.JETER FOR MVP think it comes out around the 13th-15th of this month.
GGGGGGGGGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOOOO

YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAANNNNNKKKKKKKKKEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
I still cannot belive people are still bad mouthing OUR TEAM,you lost WE WON case closed