The looming contracts of Nick Swisher and Robinson Cano combined with the 40-game surge of low payroll teams? Time to sell the Yankees and get out of the baseball business.
The entity that has grown from $9 million to $3 billion in 40 years is not looking to Mike Lupica for business advice:
"I am sitting across from George Steinbrenner in his office at the old Yankee Stadium, and nobody was calling him the old man then because he wasn’t.
He is behind a desk that in memory is as big as one of the ships he used to own at American Shipbuilding, and I am interviewing him for a piece in the old Daily News Sunday Magazine, which is gone the way the old Stadium is gone and George Steinbrenner is gone."
We know you were not interviewing Steinbrenner for a piece in the old Daily News Sunday Magazine.
You were shining Steinbrenner's shoes.
"At some point in the conversation, I ask him if he might ever think about selling his baseball team.
Owning the Yankees is like owning the Mona Lisa, he said that day, and it was something he’d said before. But then he added this: 'And once you own it, you never sell it.' "
Lupica is trying to convince the audience of his Steinbrenner bona fides.
Lupica despised Steinbrenner and, if Lupica secretly admired Steinbrenner, then Lupica's column was fraudulent for decades.
"The Yankees got bigger than ever, which is where we are with them now, at least in terms of their value."
"In terms of their value."
Yes, they got bigger in terms of their value. What else matters? What are we talking about if it's not their value?
"We constantly hear about the value of the Yankees, how there isn’t a sports team anywhere, at least in this country, as valuable. Ultimately, though, bottom line on that, it only matters if you sell."
Truly one of the dumbest utterances in a Lupica Lifetime of Dumb Utterances.
I understand that this in an illiquid asset -- an idea, an approximation, a valuation. But Mike Lupica just said that a $3 billion asset only matters if you sell it.
That's like saying a nuclear arsenal only matters if you use it to destroy cities.
"Hal Steinbrenner is a very smart guy, which means smart enough to see and know that the landscape of baseball is changing, even in his time taking his father’s place and running the Yankees. What he has to see, as clearly as anybody, is that you can no longer buy your way to the World Series. If you could, the Yankees would have been to the World Series more than twice since 2001."
I'm sure Hal will take his chances with a $200 million payroll, but he probably isn't thinking too much about the playoffs right now.
He's too busy bathing himself in a bathtub full of $1,000 bills.
"In that same time, the Cardinals have won the Series twice. So have the Red Sox, who sure can spend, just not like the Yankees can spend, because nobody in American sports can. The Rangers have been to the last two World Series spending a whole lot less on baseball players than the Yankees do."
Talk about baseball or talk about finances. You're trying to link two things that don't necessarily link. Because now you're saying the Cardinals, Bosox, and Rangers are more successful than the Yankees. If so, are the Rangers worth $4 billion?
Lupica is disproving his own hypothesis.
If the Yankees need to win the World Series in order to increase the value of the franchise ... if October failures are forcing a malaise-ridden Hal Steinbrenner to shop the team ... then how can the Yankees be worth $3 billion?
Of course the Yankees want to win. It's fun to win, for one thing. It also keeps the revenues flowing and the brand value surging. A losing team year after year would eventually hurt the income and the asset value.
However, the value of a baseball player is not really his on-base% or ERA. It's his ability to draw eyes to the TV and draw bodies to the ballpark. The fans are not there to watch a ballgame, they're there to buy merch. If you wander inside the new Yankee Stadium, you will feel the pull of the vortex gift shop and the $11 beers.
You don't judge the finances based on the team's on-field performance. You judge the finances based on the finances.
How do I know the Yankees are doing fine in their finances? The team is worth $3 billion. That's how I know.
"And when the Yankees did win the one World Series they have won since 2001, they had to spend more than $400 million — on Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett — to get that done."
Hooray! The Yankees won the World Series in 2001! I knew it. I knew that Brosius completed the double play and Jeter was in position to catch Gonzalez's bloop.
The Yankees didn't spend $400 million in 2009 in order to win the World Series. That money is allocated over several years. So they spent a fraction of that to win the World Series in 2009.
Besides, if you're trying to prove that you can't win a World Series title by spending a lot of money, then ... well, never mind.
Bottom line: Don't ever let Mike Lupica be your accountant.
"Hal Steinbrenner has announced that he wants the Yankee payroll to come down, and maybe it can, and the Yankees can continue to make the playoffs every year. And yet: They are only halfway through Teixeira’s contract and halfway through Alex Rodriguez’s insane contract, and they just had to extend the $160 million contract that Sabathia originally signed."
Yeah, but they own a $3 billion asset.
"The total value of the contracts that A-Rod and Teixeira have signed, one for 10 years, the other for eight years, is nearly half-a-billion dollars. So they’ve got those going for them and they know Robinson Cano is going to want to get paid and Curtis Granderson is going to want to get paid.""Again: The Yankees may very well stay in the Steinbrenner family forever. But believe me, if the O’Malley family can sell the Dodgers, the Steinbrenner family can sell the Yankees. Or at least be allowed to have a conversation about that."
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