I remember it like it was yesterday. Years ago, my father took
me to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. It was there that I walked
through Monument Park, a small plot of land beyond the outfield
cultivated with plaques paying tribute to the greatest of Yankee
greats. Babe Ruth. Lou Gehrig. Joe DiMaggio. Mickey Mantle. As I
paced from pillar to pillar, I could feel the ghostly presence of
Yankees past, and envisioned them playing on that hallowed ground
as if eternally in their prime–Field of Dreams style. I had never
seen anything so beautiful in my entire life.

I have been a New York Yankees fan since I was ten, long before
I knew what a payroll or a salary cap meant. The one thing that I
have become acutely aware of since becoming a Yankees aficionado,
however, is that most baseball fans love to hate the Yankees. The
most common cries of complaint are that the Yankees “always win,”
and must “buy players” in order to do so, two allegations that
could not be further from the truth.

The Yankees do not always win. Although they are the winners of
twenty-six world championships, a record for any professional
sports team, they have not won the World Series since the turn of
the century. In fact, the Yankees have appeared in the World Series
thirteen times in their storied history and have not won a title,
and did not even advance to the World Series sixty-one times. To
say that the Yankees always win would be erroneous considering that
they have not won nearly three-fourths of the time.

Just as the Yankees do not always win, they are also not guilty
of buying players. Although they boast the highest payroll in Major
League Baseball at one hundred eighty million dollars, the Yankees
were not always wealthy. In 1927, Babe Ruth was the best player in
baseball and made $70,000 on a team with a payroll of $250,000. By
today’s standards, Ruth would be earning only sixteen million
dollars for a team with a payroll no higher than forty-nine
million–clearly in the lower tier of payroll. In reality, the
Yankees have won twenty of their twenty-six world championships
prior to the free agency era. Therefore, the Yankees could not and
did not “buy players” to win championships. Even a large number of
current Yankees that contributed to their resurgent title runs of
the late 90’s–including Derek Jeter, Alfonso Soriano, Bernie
Williams, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera–are all home grown
players. The Yankees simply took what they had and used their
resources to get what they needed in order to field a winning team.
Why should the Yankees be detested for doing the exact same thing
that every other team in Major League Baseball tries to do?

Money alone does not necessarily equate to success, for the
three teams with the biggest payrolls other than the Yankees–the
New York Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers and Texas Rangers–all failed to
make the playoffs this season. A lucrative payroll, therefore, is
not a prerequisite for success in the Fall Classic, as the Florida
Marlins, Anaheim Angels and Arizona Diamondbacks, winners of the
last three championships, would certainly attest to. Forget the
Yankees’ over-hyped payroll, for this contempt is unmerited,
undeserved and unjustifiable.

In an era where athletes are becoming even more arrogant,
egotistical and concerned solely about individual accomplishments,
the Yankees are a splendid twist in a monotonous world of
competitors who have become increasingly distant and have destroyed
any kind of personal relationship with fans. Not only are the
Yankees good ballplayers, but also good men. There is a certain
aura and mystique about the Yankees, and their storied history and
tradition make it easy to understand why so many players to want to
play for them.

Baseball is America’s pastime, and the Yankees are America’s
team. The Yankee Clipper, Joe DiMaggio, once said, “I want to thank
the good Lord for making me a Yankee.” Love them or hate them, you
need to respect them.