Envy Is An Ugly Thing

One last thing before I pass out this evening:

I think that all of these years of living in baseball's shadow in New York has given the Rangers baseball envy. The Blueshirts management have seen the Yankees grow from the disaster that was the Pinstripes in the '80s to the massive international brand that it has become and they want that. The Rangers want to find the worldwide domination that Steinbrenner and Sons has grasped. So what do they do? They copy them. It happened in the post-Cup '90s and it is happening again now. The Yankees went after talent based on star power and reputation, so the Rangers went after talent based on star power and reputation.

These teams aren't looking to build the best teams by addressing their needs, they are looking for corporate sponsorship dollars.

And those dollars come from suits who don't follow the games closely, they just remember the big names. So the big names are the ones that the teams have to get to keep the suits happy. Unfortunately in this day and age that is essentially true of most teams, in most sports but the few front offices that can balance the two are the ones that emerge victorious. The Yankees are having severe troubles doing it (pitching anyone?) and the Rangers staff appears headed down the same path. They don't seem to realize that they are playing on a see-saw and there is a sumo wrestler on one side and midget on the other and sooner or later, that little person is going to go flying off ...