Alex Massie Alex Massie

The Fall of the Yankees

Ross Douthat has a fine post  – from a Red Sox perspective, no less – on the decline and fall of the New York Yankees. For the first time in what seems like a generation the Pinstripers won’t be playing in the post-season. Buster Olney explains why in terms of trades and drafts here. Messrs Douthat and Olney make some very pertinent points.

But, as I dare to suggest, in a piece I wrote for the New Republic last year, can it really be a coincidence that the age of Bush has coincided with eight years of Yankee failure (ie, no world Series triumphs)? I think not. The Bush administration’s bad karma has leaked into the Bronx and somehow turned the Bombers into a baseball version of Bush’s presidency…

The Clinton-era Yankee dynasty was remarkable for one thing above all: These were Yankees you could love. Or at least not hate. They had a mixture of suave youngsters and scrappy veterans that sportswriters love. Four titles were added between 1996 and 2000. These were happy, innocent years of fat–so much so in New York, in fact, that providence even permitted the Mets to participate in a Subway Series in 2000. The doyen of baseball writers, Roger Angell, was not alone in setting aside his “long-standing coolness toward the club”, concluding that “The Yankees–who’d have thought it–had become lovable”.

But that was before the excesses of the Bush years. In 1996, the Yankee payroll was $66 million; this year it was $195 million–a spending splurge even the federal government might admire.

The parallels continue. As the United States has squandered goodwill internationally, so have the Yankees domestically. And one can see why.

In fact if Americans could apply their understanding of baseball to the country’s relations with the rest of the world, then perhaps they would be better placed to understand how the United States came to have an image problem.


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