Yankees Sign Jesus to Minor League Contract

OK, in the interest of full disclosure, the Yankees didn't sign Jesus to a minor league contract, because everyone knows the son of god would be starting over Johnny Damon. However, they have now signed AJ Burnett, CC Sabathia and most recently, Mark Teixeira, easily giving them a lock on coolest named players in baseball. They were easily able to purchase the soul of Sabathia after outbidding themselves. When he stalled at their offer, which was FORTY MILLION more than any other team out there (because he wanted to stay with the Brewers and his shorter identical twin Prince Fielder and mash homeruns while eating bratwurst), the Yanks topped it by another 20 million.

Apart from the Yankees having a long history of luring players away from teams and making them completely unlikeable* (A-Rod, Damon, Giambi, Xavier Nady and now these 3), they've committed $420 million to these three, which is approximately 10 times the GDP of Ecuador if I did my research correctly. That's a lot of money. Sure, the good ol' Yanks have a long history of overspending on free agents, most of them crappy, which backfires to my delight. But now, with the new stadium being built (and behind schedule) they have one hand reaching into taxpayers pockets, while the other hand immediately throws that money to high priced players.

The Thug-brenners, long time owners of the Yankees, have for years threatened to move the team if they didn't get a new stadium, which, after 25 years of crying, led to the city forking over $941 million in tax-exempt bonds. The Yankees were allowed to raze public parkland without a real plan on replacing it (Bloomberg gets to call himself the environmental mayor and have a million trees initiative while his Parks Department doesn't even count, let alone inventory, the trees they started destroying before they were even allowed to) and when they do, most likely it will be on top of an underground parking garage with harmful rubber turfing.

The Yankees and their cronies were able to pressure land surveyors into coming up with a small appraisal for the land so not much would need to be replaced while telling the IRS it was worth 10 times the amount, at $200 million, so they could get P.I.L.O.T.s, or Payments In Lieu Of Taxes. However, the Yankees don't actually pay property taxes, so what these are in lieu of is really anyone's guess. Our mayor and city council are coddling rich assholes who want to save millions of dollars, so they can spend millions of dollars on things like larger scoreboards and nicer furnishings in luxury box offices while raising ticket prices to the very people whose money they are spending on these needless things. Now they're asking for 350 million more. The city doesn't make nearly as much back from public financing of new stadiums as they should, as much fewer new permanent jobs are created than advertised, the city gets stuck paying for a new Metro North station to accomodate overflow, and the Yankees** charge sales tax on tickets to pay back the tax-exempt bonds and not actually pay the taxes. Like so many before him to Wal-Mart and all those other big box retail bullies, New York's "illustrious" mayor has caved and screwed the people of this city.


*The Mets only lure players away and then they become awful. Yea, I'm looking at you Bonilla and Carlos Baerga.

**While this article is only about the Yankees because they're greedier and I'm a Mets fan, I don't believe CitiField, with 10,000 fewer seats and the power to displace many hard working people, needed to be built and definitely not with public money. Public money should be spent on things for the public, not private projects.