The Evil (Yankee) Empire strikes again

Last year at this time I was in Philadelphia celebrating a World Series Championship with 2 million of my closest friends.

I had high hopes (high, apple pie-in-the-sky hopes) of doing it again this year, but, unfortunately, the New York Yankees were working from a different script.

I’m not going to lie to you, it hurt watching the Bronx Bombers celebrate their 27th title, but no one can deny that the Phillies and their back-to-back NL Championships are a great team with a great manager and are well-positioned to make a run at a third consecutive World Series appearance next year.

Thank you, Phillies, for a great season of baseball.

As for the Yankees, what can you say? Once again, the greatest corporation in the history of American sports proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that with enough money you can buy a championship.

Or as a Yankee fan friend of mine put it in an e-mail “Money can’t buy love … but yes, it can buy a championship.”

Sure, the team had to go out there and win – and they did – but it certainly helps when you have unlimited resources and can throw $420 million at three players in the offseason and carry a payroll of $207 million, about $70 million more than the second-highest-paying team in the game (the NY Mets, who were just awful this year).

To put things into perspective, this year the Florida Marlins (who finished six games behind the Phillies in the NL East) fielded a payroll of $35 million. Yankee third basemen Alex Rodriguez alone made $33 million.

To be fair, the Phils come in fifth on the payroll ladder at a healthy $128 million, but these days it takes about $100 million to field a competitive team. (The Mariners have a payroll of $99 million, 10th overall.)

But $207 million is unheard of. It’s ludicrous and it buys you an all-star team.

On top of that, the Yankees this year opened their $1.5 billion-with-a-b stadium, of which the richest franchise in the history of sports forced New York taxpayers to foot half the bill with threats of moving to Jersey. In addition, the Yanks keep 96 percent of ticket revenues, 100 percent of all other revenues, do not pay property or sales tax on the stadium and get subsidized electricity from the state.

It’s a ridiculous deal for a team that was never in a million years going to be the Hoboken Yankees. Even Boeing didn’t get that good a deal from South Carolina.

Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for Microsoft or Wal-Mart and I don’t know how people do it. Yeah, they win, but I thank the Baseball Gods everyday that I was not born a Yankee fan.

It is a giant, heartless corporation that will continue to dominate the market because of its size and resources and its fans will continue to be arrogant braggarts because they can and because they have 27 championships, including five in the past 15 years.

Sure, Apple makes a better product, but it will never be able to compete with the Windows market share, which will continue to dominate because early success leads to a corporate branding and identification and virtually unlimited resources.

I mean, what does it say about a club that publicly and openly states that a season is waste and a failure if they don’t win the Series? That’s a lot of pressure and puts an emphasis on winning instead of playing good baseball. It’s a very Gordon Gekko mindset. Very New York City.

They are the Evil Empire. They are mercenaries. They are guns for higher to the highest bidder, all lumped under the same famous corporate logo and recruited by corporate head hunters.

With a few exceptions of course. Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera are both great, classy players who played great and classy ball this fall. I think Nick Swisher has more heart than the rest of the team put together and plays with a love of the game that is unlike anyone else in the Bronx.

And despite the fact that I am convinced that “Hideki Matsui” is a Japanese phrase meaning “Phillie Killer,” I can’t not like the guy. He is a quiet, classy player with a big bat and great attitude and I think he’d look great in a Mariners uniform next season.

But generally, the Yanks are the sports world’s version of a monopolistic, small-town destroying corporate chain designed to look like a baseball team. Their new stadium is the perfect metaphor – it’s a beautiful, overpriced palace designed to drum up memories of the past, with prices that make it almost impossible for the little guy to see an actual game.

Truth be told, they are the best team money can buy and I am actually kind of glad they are out there, looming over the baseball world like the Death Star, giving us all a collective villain and goal at the same time.

But I’d rather root for the Rebel Alliance any day. Go Phillies. We’ll get ‘em next year.

How long until pitchers and catchers report?

(New York-born-and-raised Editor’s note: Gawd, spoken like a true Phillies fan! Better luck next year — that’s if Phillies players haven’t jumped ship for New York.)