NEW YORK — Put the glass slippers back in the closet. The celebration of the underdog is over.
The World Series begins tonight in a $1.5 billion palace between purebreds, blue bloods. The Yankees vs. the Phillies.
Your poor, your tired, your huddled masses, cover your eyes. Parity is on hold. Baseball’s 2009 championship will be decided by teams that are deep and that have deeper pockets.
No one more than the Yankees, baseball’s proletariat.
“It is really not a surprise that we are here,” said tonight’s starter, CC Sabathia. “I hate to sound like that. But this is a really good team. Like I said, we get along, we have fun, we have great players, this is what you get.”
The Yankees are known for tradition, for winning. Losing, however, set these two teams on a collision course. The Yankees missed the postseason last fall for the first time since 1995. Any other market, any other team, it would be a hiccup. For the Bronx Bombers, it was nothing short of a cataclysmic failure.
They responded, as they have for the better part of three decades under the Steinbrenners, with money. Lots of it. The Yankees have spent $1.42 billion on player salaries since they won their last championship in 2000. Their outlay last winter on three players alone was $423.5 million.
The difference last winter is that they bought the right ones.
Their course back to their first World Series since 2003, and possibly their first title since 2000, was set on a sleepy Tuesday in Vallejo, Calif., on Dec. 9. That’s when Yankees general manager Brian Cashman negotiated with and landed Sabathia, the free-agent market’s Hope Diamond. The contract covers seven years and $161 million.
Sabathia helped land and recruit A.J. Burnett, an enigmatic pitcher who opted out of his Blue Jays contract to take the Yankees’ offer of a five-year, $82.5 million deal. First baseman Mark Teixeira followed. He spurned the Red Sox, leaving a trail of spewed chowder in his wake from Boston fans as he accepted an eight-year, $180 million contract.
While almost every other team in baseball was tightening its belt to Kate Moss’ waist size, the Yankees doled out the gross national product of Guam.
“We got the three best players on the market, so we should be playing in the World Series,” outfielder Johnny Damon said in a refreshing moment of candor. “We added an ace, another great pitcher and a great player.”
And it wasn’t like they were asked to inspire and improve the Pittsburgh Pirates. They joined a cast that already included baseball’s highest-paid player, Alex Rodriguez, future Hall of Famer Derek Jeter and arguably the game’s greatest closer ever, Mariano Rivera.
Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte, Jeter and Rivera were teammates during the Yankees’ last dynasty, when the franchise won four titles in five seasons beginning in 1996. This isn’t the first Yankees team to have the highest payroll, but it is one of the best.
“The difference is pitching,” said Posada, who has caught a staff that has a 1.90 playoff ERA. “We are pitching better. It’s as simple as that.”
In the Phillies, they face an opponent with many similarities. Like the Yankees, the Phillies led their league in home runs. And like the Yankees, when they needed to get a pitcher, they possessed enough cash and prospects to acquire Cliff Lee, tonight’s starter, from the money-hemorrhaging Indians. The Phillies’ payroll ranks seventh in baseball at $128 million as they have become a certified bully in the National League. To put that in perspective, the Rockies were at $77 million this season.
“We’re a good team. And we’ll keep the same approach that we got,” Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said. “We’re happy to be in the World Series again.”
For the Yankees, just making the Fall Classic doesn’t matter. They go by a Ricky Bobby philosophy: “If you ain’t first, you’re last.”
“Our goal is to win the championship. That will never change,” owner Hal Steinbrenner told reporters after his team clinched the American League pennant. “I expect us to give the Phillies hell.”
Troy E. Renck: 303-954-1301 or trenck@denverpost.com
Tonight’s starting pitchers
Phillies’ Cliff Lee
2009 postseason:
2-0, 0.74 ERA, 20 K’s
Yankees’ CC Sabathia
2009 postseason:
3-0, 1.19 ERA, 20 K’s
