The 2006 New York Yankees, the best team $230 million can buy?

1994 Orioles flashback Scott Erickson pitched 2 innings for the Yankees yesterday, walked 4 batters, and gave up 3 runs. Erickson relieved Jaret Wright, 1997 phenom and $8 million man, he of the 4.94 ERA and 58-53 career W-L. The rest of the pitching staff includes such luminaries as:

• Octavio Dotel, who has 28 career blown saves in 99 chances, including 7 blown in 23 chances for Houston last year;
• Kyle Farnsworth, a $5.4 million pickup; despite his 100 mph heater, has a W-L record of 24-39 and a 4.43 career ERA; and
• Carl Pavano, perhaps the Yankees' worst signing decision of the Torre era, whose $8 million salary is sitting on the DL; he had a 4.77 ERA in 2005 in only 17 starts, and prior to 2003 had never stayed healthy enough to pitch more than 136 innings in a year.

With everyday starters Hideki Matsui ($13 million) and Gary Sheffield ($10.8 million) injured, Matsui perhaps out for the year, Torre is forced to play a motley outfield consisting of:

• Johnny Damon, our only healthy major-league quality outfielder;
• Melky Cabrera, a 22 year old Columbus call-up with no power and no defense—0 HR and 1 RBI in 41 career MLB at bats is unacceptable from a right fielder;
• Kevin Reese, another Columbus call-up (except he's 28) with 3 games of MLB experience;
• Bubba Crosby, who in 171 games and 201 career at bats has exactly 3 HR, 16 RBI, a .229 batting average, .269 OBP, and a .308 slugging average (!), for a .537 career OPS (!!); and
• Bernie Williams, who, as much as I love him, is so broken down after 18 years of great Yankee baseball that he has to be wheeled out the dugout in a HoverRound.

You can't blame the young guys much—they're in a no-win situation. Even so, the only homegrown recent call-up who has produced on a day-to-day basis has been Robinson Cano. And the infield shouldn't shoulder much fault either; even if playing below expectations, they aren't crippling the team.

We're starting to bear the costs of Steinbrenner's "win-now-at-all-costs" strategy. Clearly our farm system is bankrupt, given the poor quality of recent call-ups, and not one Yankee is among the Baseball America top 100 pitching prospects. We're saddled with massive contracts (Jeter, Mussina, Matsui, and A-Rod are fine—but the Johnson and Damon signings were questionable at best, and Pavano and Wright were downright foolish). There will be no option to rebuild as long as Steinbrenner is running the team. Just a couple examples of young prospects we traded to build our current AARP-ready lineup:

• Nick Johnson is having a breakout year for Washington. Batting .305 with 10 HR and 24 RBI in 41 games. .417 OBP and .986 OPS are among the NL league leaders. Age: 27. Salary: $1.45 million;
• Wily Mo Pena is starting in the red sox outfield. Batting .322 with a .375 OBP. 4 HR and 18 RBI are respectable power numbers for a leadoff guy. Age: 24. Salary: $1.25 million; and
• Brad Halsey: Oakland is turning him into a decent starter. 1-2 record but only a 3.21 ERA in 2006. Age: 25. Salary: $346K.

The team also prematurely gave up on Jose Contreras (who was 15-7, 3.61 for the 2005 champion White Sox and is off to a 5-0, 1.41 start in 2006, although he is 34 and makes $9.5 million) and let Andy Pettitte walk, mistakenly thinking he was washed up (17-9, 2.39 for NL champion Astros last year, despite an anemic Houston offense).

Despite all this, we're somehow still playing .590 ball and are only 1/2 game back of Boston. That's where the $230 million really comes into play—the injuries suffered this year and the bad contracts signed in the last 5 years would have crippled almost any other franchise for a decade. Thankfully, we haven't followed the same path to non-competitiveness as the mid-90's Orioles and early-2000's Dodgers, despite making many of the same mistakes.

So what's the point here, despite venting frustration over the incompetent management of my favorite team in my favorite sport? The real question is: are the Yankees still fun to watch? It depends on what kind of fan you are. If you're a Nassau-living, Gold's Gym-lifting, Camaro-driving, Chinese character-tattoo having, chinstrap-wearing, Hofstra-studying, certifiable meathead, and you say things like "only 26 to go" to Boston fans and "scoreboard" when the other team's fans get excited about a home run, then as long as the Yankees stay competitive, you probably don't mind the loss of team character, because being a Yankee fan for you is more about misplaced pride than an attachment to certain players.

But if you remember watching Donny Baseball in the late-80's and were pissed that he missed out on the 1996 series breakthrough, know the chants they sing in the bleachers, are just a little embarrassed that the team is horribly mismanaged by an egomaniacal, senile billionaire, and are sick of the endless turnover of faces in the lineup and unlikable players (Sheffield, Giambi, A-Rod), then you're probably getting pretty fed up with having the team being run like Citibank. Yes, pro sports is big business, and the Yankees are a billion dollar company, but unlike in corporate America, fans aren't fans because the Yankees offer lower prices or better service. No; in fact the Yankees offer higher prices and worse services, yet still pack 60,000 into Yankee Stadium for mid-June Sunday afternoon games against Minnesota. Why? In any other business, customers are only financially invested in the company itself, but fans are emotionally invested the Yankees. If I've always driven Dodge cars, and Dodge starts making lemons and charging double for them, I'll buy a Toyota. But if the Yankees have a few down years and Shea Stadium has cheaper seats, there's still no way I'm going to be a Mets fan.

I think that's the fundamental idea that Yankee management is missing. None of the players who've come up in the last few years are Yankees in the classic sense, and I don't think anyone feels the same way about Matsui (one of our more likable players, which is telling, considering he doesn't speak much English) as they did about O'Neill, Munson, Mantle, Rizzuto, Yogi, and Gehrig. The misguided thought that the team must win the World Series every year to keep fans happy (and to make money) is absurd. Yankee fans will still be fans when the team's not playing well, as long as we get some players we can recognize and connect with (see 1983-1996 for reference). But if the cost of winning is not knowing who's in the dugout anymore, paying $85 for a mezzanine level seat, players on the field treating a baseball game like a day in the office, trading any prospect under the age of 30—then having Kevin Brown and Randy Johnson self-destruct immediately after turning 40, YES producing Yankeeography episodes for everyone from Billy Martin to Kevin Maas, watching players celebrate an ALCS win not with champagne toasts but with a handshake and a nod, avoiding competition by buying the other team, and generally enduring the hatred of every other sports fan in America, then, as was written in 1950 in a Life magazine article entitled "I Hate the Yankees", "rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for US Steel".

Being a sports fan means being loyal, but it doesn't mean your passion meter can't drop a few notches. I don't think I'm the only Yankee fan who doesn't appreciate the direction in which the team is leading MLB. One of the best things about being a fan, especially in New York, is that you have the right to criticize your team in the vicious way only people who really love something can. So let's hope the Yankees' poor decisions and aging roster finally manage to bankrupt Steinbrenner, forcing him to sell the team. The new owners will have to endure a 70-92 record in 2008 after Johnson goes back to changing mufflers at the Birmingham Midas, Pavano's right arm falls off, Bernie retires to Boca Raton, Sheffield's head explodes after another huge swing and a miss, and Giambi gets hepatitis C from a dirty needle. Then we'll be left purged and clean, just like in 1993, ready to build from the ground up the next generation of Bronx Bombers.