The Yankees are in one league and the Mets are in the other.

Three Lupica posts in one day!

I think Lupica is proactively making excuses for the Mets just in case the Yankees defeat the Mets in the World Series:

"The Yankees will enter the 2006 postseason with a payroll, according to the current numbers from Major League Baseball, of $213 million.

The combined payroll of the other three likely playoff teams - A's, Tigers, Twins - in the American League is $222 million.

If the Yankees play the Twins in the first round, the disparity in payroll will be approximately $150 million, which means the Yankees will have the greatest single economic advantage in the history of any postseason, in any sport.

This isn't about how the Yankees spend their money.

They spend it well.

They break no rules.

They pay a high price for success in revenue sharing, and luxury taxes, even if this new stadium of theirs will be a way around some of that.

It doesn't change the fact that only in baseball can one team outspend everybody like this.

While playing by the rules, they are also playing by a different set of rules.

You know what the difference is between their payroll and somebody like the Mets'?

An entire playoff team.

The difference between the Yankees and the Mets is the A's.

Or the Twins.

That's the bottom line here, on the amazing bottom line of the Yankees."

Meanwhile, Mike Lupica thinks Omar Minaya does no wrong and Oliver Perez is going to win 20 games.

Whatever, dude. It's pretty transparent that your perspective is skewed. The Mets are the underdogs and you're Polly Purebred.

But it's downright pathetic to claim the moral high ground, to feign outrage that the Yankees outspend everyone in the American League. A Mets supporter who complains about payroll is a hypocrite.


Last week, the Mets clinched the division while playing the Florida Marlins, and Lupica smiled.

The Mets celebrated so much that night, they went through twenty cases of champagne.

Beltran, Pedro, Delgaod all make about the same as the entire Marlins payroll.

Each case of champagne that the Mets poured over their free-agent mercenary heads cost more than the entire Marlins' bullpen.

Hypocrites like Mike Lupica did not see the irony. Hypocrites like Mike Lupica were not appalled. Hypocrites like Mike Lupica don't hate payroll inequities, they just hate the Yankees.