Posts Tagged ‘Sports’

Yankees fans, congratulations on your 27th world championship. I’m sure I’ll be hearing about it not only for the rest of the winter, but all through next year and until the next World Series is won, and if the Yankees don’t win that one, I’ll keep hearing about how they should have. Yadda yadda.

My issue is not that the Yankees won; it is how they won.  At the risk of taking this beyond sports, how the Yankees won and have won over the past two decades bridges to a great social divide about how success can be achieved in our society.

Obviously, if you have an unlimited source of funds, money can buy you anything. In a realm, such as sports, where a championship is the measure of success, having an unlimited source of money to achieve that success when the competition does not is inequitable at best.

If a professional league cannot provide an equal opportunity for achievement (aka salary caps), in my opinion, it should not be considered a professional league because a majority of the teams competing in that league fundamentally do not have the opportunity to achieve success.

I’m not saying it is only the Yankees creating this situation…it is other teams as well, but when comparing baseball to the other major professional sports, there is less parity in baseball than any other sport, and that is because of the lack of a salary cap.

I’m not saying this out of being a Yankee hater. I don’t like the Yankees, being that I grew up in Queens as a Mets fan and adopted the Marlins as my team when I moved to Florida, but my point is not to bash them because they are the Yankees…it is the greater social implication.

The point is, the way MLB as a league and baseball as a sport is run, it is a representation of the political views of some to win at all costs, even if winning means making the system unfair to those less fortunate. I don’t believe that is the right way in any situation…in sports, or in life in general.

Moi

I am 30 years old and I reside in Washington, DC, where I work as a legislative assistant for a Member of Congress.  I am also a graduate student, completing a Master of Arts in Political Analysis and Public Policy, and a weekly columnist for Youth Roll, an online source for all that inspires and consumes our world through the lens of a uniquely youth perspective.  Be sure to check out my column, View from the Hill, every Friday.  Knowing all of this, it should be obvious I don’t have much of a life, but somehow, I manage to squeeze in some semblance of one here and there.

My hobbies and interests generally revolve around a main course of sports and politics, with an appetizer of a fondness for travel and culture, a side dish of shooting pool and Texas hold’em, and finding ways to improve myself for dessert.

I am a proud alum of the University of Florida and am a die-hard Gator fan.  When I’m not cheering on the Gators, I’m competing in way too many fantasy football leagues and talking smack about the success (or sometimes failure) of my sports teams.  I played sports for many years and pride myself on my nearly unbeatable level of sports trivia knowledge.

I am also a political junkie and have a strong desire to impact policy and the progress of our nation and the world through my work on Capitol Hill.  Don’t let that fool you though…I’m not important, and am but a small cog in the engine.  With hard work and a little luck, that may change one day.

I’m a veteran of the blogging world who has decided to return from a lengthy hiatus.  I was a blogger when blogging was considered strange by most.  Starting in 1997 and ending in 2005, I wrote on three successful domains, all of which averaged a few thousand hits a day.  I’m not hoping for, expecting or working towards such attention through this blog.  This will merely serve as a sounding board for my opinion on various issues and discussion of certain aspects of my life, and a way for my many friends who live quite a distance from me to keep in tune with my life and my mindset.

If you’ve actually read this far, I’m impressed.  Thanks for your interest.