The Damn Yankees of Wall Street

The New York Yankees are the most dominant and valuable franchise in the history of American sport.  With billions of dollars in value, 27 world titles to their credit, the most expensive stadium in baseball, a cable network and the game's largest fan base, the Yanks are at the top of the heap.  They are king.  It is a great deal for you if you're a Yankee or a Yankee fan.

All of these assets and resources allow the Yankees to stockpile talent and spend gobs more money on free agent players than most other teams in the league.  This financial advantage allows the Yankees to continue to be a contender for a title year in and year out regardless of the success of their scouting efforts, minor league development or shrewd player trades.  In essence, the Yankees have more money so they can make a lot more mistakes than the vast majority of the other teams in the league.  Certainly the Red Sox and a few others have lots of money, but the Yanks could outspend every one of them if push came to shove.

The Pittsburgh Pirates or the Cleveland Indians are not quite so lucky.  These teams have no private cable network from which to draw funds.  They don't operate in America's biggest media market.  They don't sell out all of their games and they do not have assets in the billions to toss around on free agent deals when players they have groomed for success for years get hurt or never pan out.  Every decision that clubs like the Pirates and Indians make is intensified because if the wrong choice is made it can lead to years and years of futility in the standings.

This chasm in baseball accumen created by private revenue streams doesn't just make me wonder about the future of the game that I love, but reminds of a greater chasm with a much sharper meaning: class warfare.  The Yankees are the super-rich.  The Pirates and the Indians?  Well, they're the working class.  They'll have to work harder and smarter to get ahead and try to compete.  They might have one good year, or a competitive September, but eventually they'll fade away and wait for the Yankees to stroll to the playoffs again.

Much like the way baseball works today, the class system in this country is making it harder and harder for the average Indian or Pirate fan to put together a winning season.  But, it isn't just that the wealthiest one-percent have so much capital and resource that they can have access to things the rest of America could never and enough in reserves to make up for myriad mistakes, it's the rules themselves are actually stacked in their favor.

Imagine for a moment that the Pirates were to somehow make it to the World Series to play the Yankees.  This, in and of itself, would be a miracle but imagine it as reality.  Now, on that fateful fall afternoon that the World Series begins, you tune in to learn that in each inning the Yankees will be allowed five outs when they reach the plate, but the Pirates will be accorded only two.  It will require six strikes for a Yankee batter to be punched out and just two strikes (including foul balls) will send a Pirate packing.  There would be no way for the Pirates to compete and the series would be over before it began.

Every day in America this is the way the game is fixed for the super-rich and corporate conglomerates.  Recently, a list was announced on the Senate floor by Senator Bernie Sanders that comprised the ten largest corporations that avoided paying their fair share of federal taxes.  On average, these ten behemoth companies (e.g. Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil and Bank of America) paid a tick more than 1% in total federal taxes.  1%!  In 2010 GE paid no taxes at all.  This is like letting the Yankees play with 17 men defensively and every time their pitcher hits an opposing batter, the batter is out.

The ultimate kicker however, is that America's financial system, unlike the game of baseball is not designed in principe to have only one winner.  If the system works properly there should be a way for all involved parties to profit - and pay - for the success or failure of the market.  It is not a team versus team setup.  Yet, continued policy in the financial sector seek to encourage the average American to invest his money into the market only to exploit it.  Many Americans feel they pay too much in taxes and yet most of the very largest companies pay far too little, if anything at all.

No umpire seems willing to step in and call bullshit on this.  So, middle and lower class American Indians and Pirates are standing in the batter's box, staring into the sun looking down an 0-2 count knowing right now the strike zone runs from the tips of our toes to the tops of our hats and the next pitch will likely signal game over.