1 Happy St

Some time earlier in the week while I was either finishing up my Christmas shopping or shoveling my driveway for the 80th time or watching a rerun episode of Roseanne or throwing rocks at passing cars from an overpass, the Yankees signed Mark Teixeira to play 1st base for the next 8 years. I know what you're thinking: Roseanne? Yeah, about a month ago, MeTV was showing an old Thanksgiving episode. It was one of them with Nanna Mary (or is it Nanna Marie?) and it's a classic and I always enjoyed it, so I set my DVR to tape it. Somehow though I ended up setting my DVR to tape every episode any time it airs on any station ever and I just haven't gotten around to fixing it yet. So any given day, I'll check my DVR for things that have taped and I'll have a backlog of 4 or 5 Roseanne episodes on there. Whatever. Don't judge me.

Anyway, so the Yankees signed Mark Teixeira for 8 years and eleven billionty dollars (or is it billiondy?). He's a good hitter and a good fielder and he makes the Yankees better and this is just another example of the rich getting richer and blah blah blah gayness. I was intrigued by the signing though because it meant that the Yankees had somehow managed to sign 3 of the top free agents so far this winter who are worth a shit when being graded for their overall baseball skilz. Yeah that's how I spell skilz. How do you spell it? With an S? Two L's? Ha! Child's play. So afterwards, I was so intrigued that I took an unscientific poll of non-Yankee fans to get their reactions to the amount of money that was spent. On average, my poll found two different responses.

1. This is insane. MLB needs a salary cap.
2. This is insane. Every member of the Yankees front-office should kill themselves.

Granted, my unscientific poll consisted of me and my brother-in-law. But the results I think would have been the same with a greater number of participants. I don't have a whole lot of knowledge when it comes to basic economic principles, so I can't really address whether or not MLB needs a salary cap. But I think I have enough knowledge when it comes to basic asshole principles to address whether or not the Yankees' entire front-office should kill themselves. If you're an asshole, the whole world would be better off if you killed yourself; that's a given. So the questions become 'what factors make someone an asshole and do these factors apply to the Yankees front-office''? I think being an asshole comes down to 5 things:

Do people hate you?
Do you not care that people hate you?
Do you do things specifically to make people hate you?
Do you live in New York?
Do people call you "asshole"?

If the answer is yes to at least 1 of those questions, then yes, you are an asshole. So how does the front-office of the New York Yankees stand up? They're a whopping 5 for 5.

Hank Steinbrenner, we'll start with you.