There is no sillier narrative in sports, certainly not around here, than this one: Yankee fans are spoiled and entitled ingrates who don’t appreciate the fact that their team never has a losing season.
Yeah … no.
Yankee fans aren’t spoiled. Or entitled. And have a right to think that a team that spends the way theirs does every year — does that in a sport without a salary cap — shouldn’t go 15 years without winning the World Series the way theirs has.
If the Yankees go three more years without winning it all, that will make 18 years since they won their 27th Series back in 2009. Since Babe Ruth came to New York and invented not just the home run but the Yankees, the only other time they went that long without winning the Series was between 1978 and 1996.
By the way? This isn’t just Hal Steinbrenner’s money we’re talking about here. With Yankee fans, the ones who fill Hal’s stadium and watch all those Yankee games on YES, it’s their money, too. They happen to have a right to at least expect a trip down to the Canyon of Heroes every decade or so. Yankee fans don’t think that’s asking a lot. Know why? Because it isn’t.
We now hear what we hear every year around this time: Look out, the Yankees aren’t just going to make one big move, they might make two or three. Got it. Please tell me the last time the Yankees — buying and not selling — did something that blew their fan base completely away at the trade deadline, and then helped put them over the top. The trade for David Justice, which did help put them over the top, was a quarter-of-a-century ago.
A year ago, with the field looking as wide open as it ever possibly could in the American League, here were the significant moves the Yankees made at the deadline:
Mark Leiter Jr.
If you think about it, that was probably fitting in a season when their league had turned into the Junior League. Of course, this was a season when the Yankees did finally make it back to the Series for the first time since ’09. Even with that, they were helped mightily by the fact only the Royals and Guardians were standing in their way.
It is always worth noting that over all the years since the Yankees did last win the Series, they have almost always been in the top five in payroll. The one year they weren’t in the top five was 2016. They were sixth that year.
They absolutely have had all those winning seasons in a row, an impressive run by any means or measure. But when did we start setting the bar there for a team that has won 41 pennants in its history and those 27 Series? Since the Yankees did win in ’09 — spending large the way they did on CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira — here is the list of teams that have won the World Series:
Giants, Cardinals, Giants, Red Sox, Giants, Royals, Cubs, Astros, Red Sox, Nationals, Dodgers, Braves, Astros, Rangers, Dodgers.
Again: We keep hearing from the Yankee media that the Yankees are going for it this time, they really mean it. But why didn’t they go for it a year ago when they still had Juan Soto hitting ahead of Aaron Judge and Gerrit Cole still getting the ball every five days? It must be Yankee fans acting spoiled and entitled all over again when they wonder how that World Series might have gone against the Dodgers — especially Game 1 of the Series, the Freddie Freeman game — if they had enough bullpen that a rag-armed Nestor Cortes didn’t get the ball from Aaron Boone in the bottom of the 10th.
Is Brian Cashman the only guy in town on the line with this trade deadline? He is not. There are also about two living tons of pressure on David Stearns to upgrade the Mets roster, simply because the Mets are as much of a now team as there is in baseball, and that includes the Dodgers. We all know Stearns is working off more of a payroll than Cashman is in 2025, even though he seems to have fewer holes to fill than Cashman does at the moment.
Have the Red Sox fallen back since their last World Series in 2018, and sometimes into last place? They have, even though they were just two wins away from the Series four years ago. But look at the relentlessness their owner, John Henry, has shown in what is still the Red Sox century in baseball until somebody wins five Series to their four. He parted ways with Terry Francona, the manager who broke the Curse of the Bambino and won him another World Series after that. He parted ways with John Farrell, who won him the ’13 Series, along with Ben Cherington, the GM for that team. Henry fired Dave Dombrowski, the architect of the ’18 Sox less than a year after the team won it all.
And not long ago, Henry authorized the trade of Rafael Devers, who had been his best hitter for years, after Devers refused to even consider playing first base. Now here the Red Sox come with a core of young players that looks as if it might rival the young core in Detroit before too long.
The Astros haven’t been afraid to make major changes. The Dodgers, wheeling and dealing and spending all over the place, aren’t just the most aggressive team in the sport right now. They are the most ruthless.
The Dodgers throw money around the same way Uncle Steve Cohen does with the Mets. But it’s not just about money. It’s also about fearlessness when that’s called for, and doing whatever is necessary in the pursuit of a championship.
The Yankees don’t just sell history with both hands. They still sell winning. But they’ve won just the one World Series in the past 25 years. They lost a heartbreak Game 7 to the Diamondbacks in ’01; got upset by the Marlins in six games in ’03; watched the Red Sox change the course of history when they came from 0-3 behind the Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series. Over the past 15 years, they have won the AL East title exactly five times. The Dodgers? They have won the National League West title 11 out of the last 12 years.
Maybe this year will be different with the Yankees. Maybe there will be some real urgency at the deadline. Maybe Steinbrenner and Cashman will finally do enough to deliver another title. They pay a lot of lip service to doing that, every single year. Maybe this time it will be more than talk from them. And show that they’re really listening to fans who expect a lot better from both of them.
THE WRIGHT STUFF, AN ALL-STAR GAME TO REMEMBER & HARD TO BET AGAINST SCOTTIE …
Just know this about David Wright:
At his best, and he was at his best a lot, he was their Seaver.
Baseball’s All-Star Game was just terrific last Tuesday night, all the way to the swing-off at the end made so dramatic and so memorable by Kyle Schwarber.
It was a wonderful thing for Joe Torre, who broke in with the Milwaukee Braves, to be back in uniform as one of Aaron Boone’s coaches, and to hear the kind of cheer he did in a Braves place before the game.
The tribute to the late Henry Aaron was not just beautiful, it was perfect.
Do I wish Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani had been around to take some of those swings when it was 6-6?
Everybody wishes they had been around for that.
It doesn’t change the fact that the mini-Home Run Derby worked as well as it did.
And made everybody aware, if they weren’t already, that baseball’s All-Star Game is the last one left.
Let’s see just how much of a big-ticket item the WNBA is if Caitlin Clark keeps getting hurt this season.
It is the same right now with Scottie Scheffler as it was with Tiger Woods once, and Jack Nicklaus before him:
When he’s on top of his game, you bet him against the field all day long.
It doesn’t mean he’s going to win The Open Championship at Royal Portrush, which would make it two majors for the year and four for his career.
The weather over there changes about every fifteen minutes and you’re always one bad bounce away from your ball rolling so quickly towards trouble it reminds you of a marble rolling in a bathtub.
But even when he doesn’t win, he’s the one to watch, even more than Rory is.
Justin Fields has a chance to be a very big guy around here come September.
It really is quite remarkable how close Jannik Sinner is to having won a non-calendar Grand Slam in men’s tennis.
How close?
Three match points in the French Open final against Carlos Alcaraz is how close.
And if he’d won there, he’d also now be going for the calendar Grand Slam at the Open.
For all those acting as if the Knicks are odds-on to win the Eastern Conference next season, the Cleveland Cavaliers would like a word.
Looking back, I’m actually kind of surprised that Fox News didn’t blame that crazy shot Tyrese Haliburton made against the Knicks in Game 1 on Joe Biden.
When the Red Sox kid, Ceddanne Rafaela, is going from center field to second base and then back to being a streak of light in center, he sometimes looks like Mookie Betts on training wheels.
I sure do hope Pete Alonso stays around after this season, even though there’s no guarantee that he’s going to.
So the Mets traded Pete Crow-Armstong for Javier Baez and both of them end up playing in the All-Star Game for other teams?
Jazz Chisholm hit three more homers than I would have at the Derby.
The new thriller co-written by James Patterson and Mike Lupica, “The Hamptons Lawyer,” goes on-sale Monday.
