With Any Gain There is Loss

• Red Sox Nation has lost a lot of its charm with this World Series win: all of those fans who rooted for the perpetual also-ran and the underdog are going to have to look elsewhere now. There is no more curse of the Bambino to lean on. And any mileage gained from Boston self-pity and cries of "Bucky-effin'-Dent" is now lost. You are one of the great teams in baseball now, Boston, and for that you're going to lose a lot of admiration. Better get tough, because you wished for something and you got it now, along with all of the karma that goes with it.


• Meanwhile, in the evil empire, Big Stein, Jr. is losing his superstar third baseman but keeping his hypocritical edge in his reaction:
  
  

  It's clear [Alex Rodriguez] didn't want to be a Yankee," Steinbrenner told the New York Daily News. "He doesn't understand the privilege of being a Yankee on a team where the owners are willing to pay $200 million to put a winning product on the field. "I don't want anybody on my team that doesn't want to be a Yankee."

  Got it? The Yanks expect brand loyalty even though they buy a player's fidelity to their organization. The Pride of the Yankees was mortgaged a long time ago. And this could be a scene from Jerry McGuire: you rarely have it both ways. Loyalty instills personal sacrifice; money merely bequeaths the drive for more money. I don't care for A-Rod, but in my book he is The Epitome of the Yankees for spurning New York to leverage for more money.


• And that means that my team, the Texas Rangers (owned by Tom Hicks, a Bush family confidant, Clear Channel muckety muck, and a man I find as morally repugnant as the Big Stein himself) are off of the hook on A-Rod. The Yanks did not merely take A-Rod's big contract off the Rangers' hands when they traded Alphonso Soriano for him a few years ago, they demanded that Hicks continue to pay part of the superstar's salary ($21.3 million) as long as he was in NY pin stripes. So, when the Rangers played the Yankees, the Rangers were helping pay for A-Rod to beat his former team. Hopefully, those days are over.


• To come back full circle to the Bosox: two years ago Texas lost out to Boston in the bid to trade (with the Florida Marlins) for the two most dominate players in these play-offs and in this World Series, Josh Beckett and Series MVP Mike Lowell . All that pity that Boston fans have been pulling their way for so long now needs to be channeled to the Rangers. And don't even get me started on their lack luster trade history, which has had its share of "Bucky-effin'-Dents."

UPDATE: Blogspotting is on the same page:

Hey Red Sox fans. Many of us used to love your team. And now that they're fabulous, they're a lot less fun. You may find that it's lonely at the top. I never thought I'd say this, but I may end up pulling next year for those underdog Yankees.

UPDATE: If I've understood the national stories on A-Rod correctly, Tennessean reporter Joe Biddle did not get it correctly on his blog yesterday. He wrote that Alex Rodriguez told the Yankees that he would be wearing a different uniform next year. Everything I've read says that he is open to returning to the Yankees under different contractual terms; the Yanks have said that they will have none of that.