BELTRAN TO YANKEES IN 48 HOURS??!?!

[wrveres]

thats so funny, somebody said that George has been 'Building' his product. Well his Product sucked for a very long time and only when George finally got his hands taken off the 'product' did it begin to flourish.

.. Its all about Market size ...

and last time I checked, the Yankees were a much better 'product' long before Bud and George came along.

[JRM4833]

Maybe it's a rivalry from the Red Sox's point of view. I'm not a Yankees fan, but I can't imagine how they'd see it as a rivalry when they never lose.

Are you serious? So even though it is considered possibly the greatest rivalry in sports, we should just take a Californian's word for it that it's not really a rivalry. Here's a thought. Why dont you look up the definition of rivalry and then tell me your opinion? Rivalry: "The act of competing." Did you miss the fact that making it to game 7 of the ALCS is considered "competing" these days?

[Nomar4prez]

Well while I agree that it's hard for the #2 payroll to whine and cry about the #1 the fact remains that the Sox go after guys like Mueller, Ortiz, Bellhorn, Walker, Millar (recently), DLowe, Vtek (in the past) who are either young with potential or good value picks that do well once injected into the sox lineup. The Yanks go after guys like Giambi, Sheff, Vazquez, Brown, and any other stud player that a small market team cant resign. Obviously the Sox have to pay out the money at times (pedro, manny, schilling) but you cannot say they are on the level that the Yanks are just because they happen to be #2 on the payroll list.

I look at it like I look at someone with a cocaine problem. It's like someone who does 2 8-balls a day saying that a guy who does 3 a day has a problem. Both are bad. What both of them do is probably bad for baseball, as is all of the teams that spend nothing, but is well within the rules of baseball. What irks me is when Sox fans complain about the Yankees. It doesn't matter who spends more on FA's or who gets the higher priced guys. They both have teams comprised mostly of players that they didn't develop.

I still don't get why, since I'm a sox fan, I can't complain about the Yankees. They have $50 million more than us, and $100-120 million more than the majority of the teams. I don't whine and cry about the Yankees, but I do think something should be done. If that means that the Sox payroll goes down, then I'm alright with that as long as the playing field(in terms of money) gets more even. If the Red Sox and Yankees are bad for baseball, I guess that means that the Angels are too, b/c their payroll is very close to the Sox at $150 million.

[The Jury]

YET AGAIN, the infamous Peter Gammons report is inaccurate

[SinCity]

The funniest part is the fact that the Royals won't trade with the yankees.

[blindswipe]

A couple of points:

Way back on this thread, a Sox fan mentioned something about YES money. How is YES money any different from NESN money when the Sox have the same relationship to that network that the Yankees have to YES?

Rivalry:
That notion carries some degree of reciprocity. I, as a Yankee fan, can’t really HATE the Sox the way RSN hates us because the Sox have NEVER taken anything that mattered from the Yankees. And I do mean NEVER. I do have a general dislike of RSN for their chest pounding narcism but I don’t consider them rivals anymore than I consider the city of Boston a rival to NYC. (even though Bostonians like to think of their town as a mini-New York) It’s definitely more a rivalry for Boston than it is for New York, Steinbrenner being the exception. If you have doubts look at this thread and the people who are getting bent out of shape when the “rivalry” is downplayed.

Wrveres, you can knock Steinbrenner all you want but he alone has won more championships than the collective Padres have. And if it’s all about the market size, explain the failures of the Mets when, within that same market, they have a bigger fan base. - And don't even try to assert that there are more Yankee fans in NYC than Mets fans. Anyone that thinks so, didn't grow up in New York.

Either way, the point is moot. Baseball won’t change. It makes too much money from the Yankees. I heard a statistic the other night that not only do the Yanks lead the league in road attendance (AGAIN), but their road attendance surpasses all other teams’ home attendance. (this was as of 6/23) Between revenue sharing, luxury tax and box office, the Bombers pad the league's pockets to the point where some teams wouldn't be able to make payroll without Yankee money.