The best team money could buy

The following is a screed about the Yankees' payroll. If you are a Yankees fan uninterested in a screed about the payroll, don't read it. You won't enjoy it. Go out, buy a championship T-shirt, reminisce about this great team, enjoy the victory. I'm telling you: Don't read it.

As for the rest of you: The following is, I think, something that is always bubbling below the surface of baseball (when you are not a Yankees fan). I rarely write about it because ... it's like writing about the heat in Phoenix. We all know it's there, and we don't really want to talk about it anymore. But with the Yankees winning the World Series and then talking about how it showed the team's character, well, yeah, I thought maybe this once ...

Here's the thing about the New York Yankees' huge payroll: It has been talked about so much that, in reality, it is hardly talked about at all. I know this makes little sense, but what I mean is this:

A. Everyone knows the Yankees spend much more money than any other team to win games.

B. Because everyone knows it, people have been complaining about it for many years.

C. Because people have complained about it for many years, everybody is sick of hearing about it.

D. Because everyone is sick of hearing about it, nobody really listens.

E. Because nobody really listens, people don't talk about the Yankees spending much more money than any other team to win games.

Yes, this is a weird circle. But in this bizarre world of spin where Alex Rodriguez tries to project himself as an underdog* and Yankees types try to recast George Steinbrenner as sympathetic figure, I think this Yankees money fatigue is very real. As soon as you start talking about it, people turn off. What we're talking about this again? Or, as indignant Yankees fans, they get angry: "Oh man, you're not going to talk about the Yankees MONEY thing again, are you?"

*One good thing about this postseason is that it does seem to have killed the A-Rod as choker myth once and for all. Good man Alex Belth sends along these numbers: