Sam, I won't disagree with your post, but fiscal sanity for the Red Sox ensures that they don't go over the luxury tax or only have to pay like a million or 2 million. I believe that I read that Steinbrenner has to pay like 23 million in the luxury tax. In other words, as long as he is willing to do that, he really has no budget nor any fiscal sanity. The Red Sox could do the same, I suppose, but John Henry who made his fortune in investments strikes me as the type that would not do that as that would betray something fundamental to his personality and line of thinking. Look at other big market teams like the Mets, Cubs, White Sox, and Dodgers - those are teams that should have an advantage like Boston and the Yankees on other teams because of the potential of revenue stream. Yet, none of them have done much of anything. The reason is their front offices - they are just not run as well as Boston or the Yankees. But I do agree that baseball needs a salary cap, but who knows when we will ever see that happen.
Yes, the fact that the Cubs, White Sox, Dodgers, and Mets have been traditionally misrun is the saving grace of baseball. It's not just payroll, it's smart spending of the dollars. Boston got rid of Cashman and hired Epstein and the team progressed. It's alot easier to absorb bad decisions and a poor farm system when you've got cash, though. The luxury tax is a joke, btw. How does it help baseball's extreme economic disparity when only one team qualifies for it? Set it somewhere reasonable, like 80 million, and a 100% tax on salaries above that level, and it might make a difference. Ten teams would have qualified for the tax at that level this season (representing 7 of the 8 playoff teams).
sox deserve it. no more curse, no more 1918 chants at yankee stadium. they can hold their heads high.... did you know that in the last two baseball seasons, the yankees and the red sox played eachother 52 times? something had to give...
Looks like a jealous Yankee-loving psychiatrist is abusing his expertise! http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=757&e=6&u=/nm/20041029/od_nm/shrink_dc New York Shrink Rains on Red Sox Victory Parade 1 hour, 56 minutes ago Oddly Enough - Reuters By Larry Fine NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York psychiatrist cautioned Boston Red Sox fans that the team's first World Series (news - web sites) title in 86 years could have a deleterious effect on them. Charles Goodstein, professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine, said Sox fans had "wallowed in their misery" for generations and may find the euphoria of their four-game sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals a jolt to their identity. "If part of a long-time identity of being a Red Sox fan is a sense of suffering, a sense of not winning, a kind of camaraderie with other losers, you lost some of that," Goodstein said Thursday. "You have to face up to a different kind of identity, of being at least an ephemeral winner." Three million people may turn out in Boston on Saturday for the Red Sox's victory rally, and Goodstein, an admitted fan of Boston's arch-rival New York Yankees, jokingly warned hard-core Red Sox fans of possible long-term fallout. "Still so firmly anchored in this identity of loser, they may have to unconsciously subvert themselves in other aspects of life apart from their fandom," posited the professor, who is also president of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York. "Who knows?" he said. "They may screw up on the job, they may get into unbearable arguments with their wives and kids, they may have to suffer in some other fashion. "How difficult it is once you've lived the life of a masochist to suddenly find there is no one there to whip you any more." Goodstein laughed as he spun out the conjecture, and then swallowed some Yankee pride. "It's not been easy the last week or two," he said with grudging respect for Boston's historic playoffs victory over New York, becoming the first team ever to win four games in a row after dropping the first three in a baseball post-season series. Knocking off the Yankees gave the Red Sox the right to meet, and beat, the Cardinals in the Series.
