How The Yankees could Ruin Baseball

This winter the New York Yankees have signed the top two pitchers, C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett, and the top position player, Mark Texiera. Their robust holiday shopping bill will cost them 423 million dollars over the course of the contracts. This spending by the Yankees has been rivaled by other clubs slashing payroll in an effort to stave off financial disaster.

This offseason's purchases by the Yankees worry me for two reasons, the non-competitve nature of teams in free agency in comparison to the Yankees and the pressure that it puts on teams to find ways to compete with them financially.

The first issue is simply that the despairity in financial resources makes it impossible for small-market teams to compete for championships for more than a one or two year window, with the home-grown talent that will soon leave to play for the Yankees. The Yankees infield will earn more than 21 entire teams this season, that is simply unfair, Major League Baseball needs to see what the NFL has done to take over as the most watched sport in America, parity and the ability of any team no matter the size of the market, i.e. Green Bay, to compete for a championship. (Note: The Detroit Lions do hinder this argument but they are awful because of poor management.)

The second reason that the Yankees offseason scares me is because it takes away from the way the game was meant to be, I know that players don't last entire careers with one tam anymore, but a few would be nice. My biggest worry is that Fenway Park is headed towards danger. It is clear that the Yankees have spent this year and will continue to be able to spend in this manner for years because of their new high revenue ballpark. The problem is their nearest competition in terms of finances is the Red Sox who play in the smallest park in baseball, simoultaneously the one of the most historic parks. My fear is that the Red Sox will find a need to expand Fenway to the point that it is no longer the Fenway that it has always been, a la the spaceship of a stadium that landed at Soldier Field, or that the Red Sox will build a new stadium to be able to have the same revenue. Thus taking away of the best parts of baseball for decades.

Either way the solution is simple, a salary cap.