Buying an umbrella in New York (cont.)

CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett are two key cogs in the Yanks' $400M offseason overhaul. Nick Laham/Getty Images

Back to the umbrella purchase.

The beautiful thing about most Yankees fans I know is that they tend to be largely untroubled by their team's spending and the national anger that surrounds it and even the basic questions of fairness and unfairness. I am, of course, generalizing here: Not everyone is like that. I know of many Yankees fans who appreciate that their team has an unfair advantage -- they might even be a little bit sheepish about it -- but, in the end, hey, what can they do? Stop being a fan? No. They'll live with it. Plus, Teixeira looks good in the three-hole.

I also hear from some Yankees fans who deny that the Yankees really have an unfair advantage. They point out that, hey, it's not the Yankees fault that Steinbrenner(s) spends money. The Royals, Pirates or Reds could spend that money too if they weren't so cheap. These people usually fail to point out that the Yankees (because of the size of New York, the enormity of the YES Network, corporate dollars and a new publicly funded stadium) pull in many, many, many times what the Royals, Pirates or Reds make.

But back to most of the Yankees fans I know: They are just kind of oblivious to it all. They are not defensive or proud of the Yankees free-spending ways. They are also not unfeeling toward other less fortunate teams. Truth is, they don't even think about any of that. They accept the Yankees' advantages as their birthright, not unlike the way someone born into a rich family must think that everyone has a maid and an 8 a.m. tee time at the club.

I'll give you an example: There were numerous stories written after the latest signing that hit upon the theme that Teixeira is a great fit for the Yankees and he will do the team a lot of good. Well, as we used to say when I was a kid: No duh. He's 28 and bland (in a good baseball way) and he has a good glove, and he switch hits, and he punched up 150 and 151 OPS+ numbers the last two seasons. Good fit? Maybe that's why he cost 180 million smackeroos. Good fit? Really? What was your first clue, Professor Plum? Who the heck are these stories written for?

And then I heard from a friend of mine, a Yankees fan, and I realized EXACTLY who is the target audience for those stories. My friend wrote, "I was a bit skeptical of the Teixeira signing, but the more I read about him, the more I think he will be a perfect fit for the pinstripes." That was what he wrote. It was mind-boggling. It did not seem to occur to him that at least 28 other teams would have loved to sign Teixeira (not sure where he would play in St. Louis). It did not seem to occur to him that while Teixeira might be a good fit for the Yankees, he would have been a MUCH BETTER fit for Kansas City or Pittsburgh or Seattle or any number of teams that need a whole lot more help than the Bombers.

It did not seem to occur to him that spending $180 million more to buy one of the best hitters in baseball for one of the best teams in baseball is excessive, overkill, and in the classic words of Andre the Giant: "Not very sportsmanlike." It is (as I have written before) like playing a computer game on cheat mode. My friend would not argue with these points because he simply DOES NOT SEE these points; he never even considered looking at this the way a non-Yankees fan might. He only wondered if Teixeira was a good enough player for the Bronx.

And that (finally) takes me back to the souvenir shop where I bought my umbrella. There were three guys arguing -- I caught the argument in progress so I sort of had to catch up. Best I could tell, the most talkative guy (named Manny) was a huge Yankees fan. He was arguing that next year is already over, the Yankees have won, give them the trophy now. The second guy (call him Darryl. I don't know his name but he looked a little like Darryl from The Office) was clearly either A.) a Mets fan; B.) a Yankees hater or C.) a Yankees fan who liked to argue that the Yankees are doomed for his own reasons.

Then there was was a third guy, a quiet guy, who I suspected is a lot like the Yankees fans I know.

OK, so, Manny was saying, "You add Teixeira in there, man this thing is OVER. They don't even need to play next season." Darryl, in response, was saying that the Yankees will be under tremendous to win.

"That [bleep] don't matter," Manny was saying quite reasonably. "There's always pressure on the Yankees to win."

"And when was the last time the Yankees DID win?" Darryl asked, another reasonable point.

"Doesn't matter. Now the Yankees got CC and Burnett and all that pitching, and the lineup's gonna score a lot of runs ..."

"The Mets got Santana and they didn't win (bleep) ..."

"Yeah, well, the Mets don't have Mariano Rivera in the pen. If the Mets had Mariano, they would have won the last two World Series."

And so on. It was pretty entertaining stuff in a Mike and the Mad Dog sort of way. And then I heard one of my favorite Yankees lines, the line that I think in many ways sums all my feelings about the matter. At some point, the argument had become so heated that Manny pulled out one of the tabloids and was running down the possible lineups. He was reciting all the names: Johnny Damon, Derek Jeter, Nick Swisher, Teixeira, A-Rod, Hideki Matsui, Jorge Posada, Xavier Nady, Robinson Cano, and so on. And when you heard all the names together like that, it was ASTONISHING, all that opulence. all that money, all those stars, 32 All-Star appearances, home run titles, batting titles, Gold Gloves, everything else. There was a moment of reverent silence after Manny read all the names. And then the quiet Yankees fan behind the cash register, the one who hardly said anything at all, felt the need to speak up.

And here's what he said: "Wait a minute. Who the [bleep] is Xavier Nady?"