The one time of the year the Pirates are in contention for the pennant.
Frank Deford, shows us why baseball is not like all the other sports though-in any given year, any team CANNOT win the pennant:
Yes, as sure as the flowers are a-bloomin’ again, every team has a chance. Whereas that is true in the NFL, the NBA and the NHL, baseball is more like American Idol or Dancing With The Stars — where it’s understood from the start that some competitors just don’t have a prayer. As sure as we kinda sorta suspected that Tom DeLay or Jerry Springer really didn’t have a legitimate chance to win the terpsichorean championship against beautiful, young and agile dancers, the reality in baseball — as long as there is no salary cap to equalize things as there is in our other popular team sports — the reality is that the Yankees and a few other rich teams are going to buy championships, while little old mid-major cities really can’t compete.
Come on, let’s admit it. Baseball is the national pastime only if hedge funds are the national livelihood. If this had to be illustrated any more starkly, a British survey just revealed that the Yankees pay their players, on average, more than any other team in the world.
More significant: No other plutocrat franchise in the top dozen is a baseball team. Baseball law really does allow the Yankees to be in a league of their own. There are 26 divisions in the four major team sports, and in 25 of them, the American dream lives. Then there is the American League East, where the Yankees reside — along with their moneybag runnerups, the Boston Red Sox.
You know what to do:
