Sunday, October 3, 2010

The Yankees spent $213 million, and all I got was this lousy AL Wild Card t-shirt

Shortly after the Yankees lost today, I got an email from Yankees.com with the subject line, "2010 AL Wild Card Winners. Get the gear," and pictures of the various merchandise for sale. A Wild Card t-shirt? You gotta be kidding me.As Chris Rock might say, "With a $213 million payroll, you're supposed to make the playoffs! What do you want, a cookie?"

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy the Yankees are playing meaningful games in October. But they should have won the division. And the fact that they didn't, and had to settle for the Wild Card, is disappointing. The Yankees spent $213+ million on payroll this year, and they didn't even win the AL East? In my writing for Heater Magazine, I did correctly pick that the Yankees would win 95 games. But I thought they would win a tight race for the AL East against the Red Sox. So much for that.

Then again, things could be worse than seeing the Red Sox win two out of three against the Yankees, and watching the Yanks miss getting the Wild Card at the hands of their rivals. I could have been a Mets fan, sitting through 14 innings at Citi Field for my team's finale, only to see the game -- and the season -- end this way (Report from CBSSports.com):
"Oliver Perez hit Adam Kennedy with a pitch before walking three batters in a row in the 14th inning, and the Washington Nationals beat the New York Mets 2-1 Sunday to avoid a three-game sweep."
Let's hope Brian Cashman isn't scouting Ollie as Javier Vazquez's replacement next year!

Anyhow, I had a busy weekend, with Yankees-Red Sox watching being just part of what was happening in my life. I went to see Malcolm Gladwell interview Bill Simmons as part of the New Yorker Festival (more on that in a future post.) I also walked my first-ever 5K race today. (I was very excited to walk 3.1 miles in under 44 minutes, until I saw that a runner on crutches did the same race in 28+ minutes!)

But as busy as I 've been, one thing I won't be doing is buying Wild Card gear. Sheesh.

What do you think? Tell us about it!

4 comments:

Alvaro Fernandez Ravelo said...

This excessive marketing by MLB really ticks me off! It's worth noting this cap is better looking than 2009 World Series Winner "Deliverance throwback" cap.

And they should now we Yankee fans are World Series winners or bust!

MONDOAS said...

I received the same email and I laughed. My first thought was Yankee fans will not accept any Wildcard gear! We are not stuck-up but we only want the best and Wildcard gear is not cutting it. My 2nd thought was about all the poor people in 3rd world countries who could use these nice items instead of what they have currently so..NOTE TO MLB..Yankee fans WILL NOT purchase Wildcard gear. It's going to be stuck on your shelves so I think you should donate it to Africa or some region where people can use it. Say it's from the Yankees and their fans!!

Uncle Mike said...

Just making the Playoffs is not enough. We are not the Atlanta Braves.

On the other hand, there are 21 other teams -- soon to be more? -- that would love to have problems no worse than ours. And one of those is in New York.

Uncle Mike said...
This comment has been removed by the author.

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