Yanks are the best team money can buy, but Cashman deserves praise

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The 2009 Yankees had an overall payroll of $206.8 million, nearly 50 percent higher than that of their closest competitor. Chris McGrath/Getty Images

NEW YORK -- The aroma that one perceived, as one walked off the field and inside toward the home clubhouse in the moments after the Yankees had won their 27th World Series on Wednesday night, was strong. It was one part expensive perfume, and one part expensive champagne, and it was unmistakable. It was Eau de WAG.

The area in between the Yankees' dugout and their clubhouse usually functions as an indoor batting cage, but on this night it served an arguably more important purpose. It was a holding pen for the players' wives and girlfriends -- their WAGs, in the current parlance. As their husbands and boyfriends conducted the first few minutes of their post-championship bacchanal, team security sensibly kept the WAGs out of the clubhouse -- "Someone could get hurt in there!" -- and they hugged each other and took pictures of each other and took sips from plastic cups, as they waited for things to calm down just a little. They included in their number Joanna Garcia, a guest star on Gossip Girl and the girlfriend of Nick Swisher, and Minka Kelly, a cheerleader on Friday Night Lights and the girlfriend of Derek Jeter. Kate Hudson, Alex Rodriguez's steady, was not subjected to the confines of the holding pen -- she starred in Bride Wars, after all -- but she was around.

Eventually, CC Sabathia came out looking for his wife, Amber, and his son, who goes by the nickname "Li'l C," and he escorted them in the direction of the clubhouse. Amber inquired of the rest of the women, "Are you guys going in to get wet?" and most of them soon followed, the security guards momentarily stupefied, perhaps, by all that champagne and all that perfume. On the way, Garcia noticed Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, whose blue dress shirt was already soaked through, and she stopped to speak with him for a moment. "Congrats, Brian!" the actress said.

"You too," Cashman said. "Uh, you too, Jo."

Spending a few minutes with the Yankees' WAGs -- who are stunning, almost all of them, and famous, several of them -- constitutes just one way by which you can tell that this team is different from all the rest. These are, by and large, not women who would conduct relationships with any old ballplayer, but with the most successful and well-compensated members of the profession -- nothing derogatory is implied by that -- and the Yankees have many of those. They have, in fact, three of this year's top four most richly paid players in the game, and six of the top 23 (in Rodriguez, Jeter, Mark Teixeira, A.J Burnett, Sabathia and Mariano Rivera). It is foolish to think that without them, and without an overall payroll of $206.8 million that is nearly 50 percent higher than that of their closest competitor, that the Yankees would on Wednesday night have been celebrating the franchise's 27th title. Their World Series rings were, in one way, bought and paid for by the contents of the Steinbrenner family vault. There's no way around it.

But the Yankees also had the game's highest payroll in 2002, and they did not win the World Series then. They had the game's highest payroll in 2003, and they did not win the World Series then. They had the game's highest payroll in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. They did not win the World Series in any of those years.

This season's iteration of the Yankees was different from all of those. Those clubs were burdened by the presence of vastly overpaid former free agents -- players like Kevin Brown, and Carl Pavano, and Jason Giambi -- who did not, by and large, live up to their considerable contracts. (It's worth noting that the club's payroll in both 2005 and 2008 exceeded this year's). It is difficult to argue that any single member of this season's club is overpaid, at least wildly overpaid. And a lot of the credit for that ought to go to Cashman, who finally figured out how to again turn the Steinbrenners' dough into a championship.

Part of the equation, Cashman recently admitted, was fortuitous timing. This past winter, the Yankees had several big contracts finally coming off their books, at the same time that a few uniquely talented players entered the free market -- Sabathia, Teixeira and Burnett, specifically -- and who were therefore available to the highest bidder, which is usually the Yankees, if they so choose. "We had areas of need," Cashman said. "We had to go in and attack that. But timing's everything. We had a lot of money coming off our roster and free agents that happened to be high-talent, high-character people. We were fortunate for that combination to be in place, and to be in position to actually score from it. We wanted to make sure that we found highly talented grinders."

Cashman knows of highly talented loafers. "In the past," he said, "we were in a situation where on that 25-man roster, people didn't necessarily enjoy each other. They enjoyed playing the game, they enjoyed playing in New York, but they didn't necessarily enjoy each other as teammates, I think. We didn't have as close a team. But this year it's all different."