A good year in sports: the Yankees lose :)

Every time the NY Yankees fail to win it all, I am all the more happier because it is yet another reminder that money can't buy one everything. 

And what a fitting end it was: A-Rod swinging his bat in the air for the final out.  A former Texas Ranger who left the team to follow a contract that was unheard of.  His gazillion dollar contract can't make his bat hit the ball, and the game and the series ends. 
What a Hollywood ending!!!

Rodriguez made the final out of the series, striking out against Neftali Feliz. The former Ranger marveled over the fact that he was the one to end the series, adding, "I'm sure it made it a little bit sweeter for them."

Made it absolutely sweet for me, yes :)

And thus the team with the highest payroll goes home. How sweet that the highest paid guy loses swinging his bat to the lowest (well, second lowest) paid player of the other team.  Makes up for a lot of crap this year!

Yankees will miss playoffs: it is a glorious 2008 :-)

I am absolutely delighted that the NY Yankees will miss the playoffs this season. ESPN projects that there is only a 0.2% probability that the Yankees will get beyond the regular season--they are 9.5 games behind for the wild card berth.

It is fantastic because yet again we prove that merely paying "market" prices for players considered to be some of the best does not make a successful team. If only we would understand this in society, and in our public policies. There is a growing ideological belief that the "market" knows best, and the Yankees are wonderful evidence that the market knows crap.

So, what money are we talking about?

• N.Y. Yankees $209,081,579, at an average of $6,744,567 per player. The highest in all of MLB
• The division leading Tampa? $43,820,598 for an average of $1,460,687 per player. Only the Marlins have a lower payroll.

BTW, here is a comparison: the annual operating budget of the university where I work: about $42 million. It is a crazy world that we live in where the "market" certainly prefers allocating resources to baseball and other forms of entertainment. Oh well.