Everything happens for a reason.
We're caught up. We'd started "Lost" in the spring, committed to watching every episode, from Season 1 through Season 4, before the 2009 season arrived. We finally got it done on Tuesday, the same day that Mark Teixeira signed with the New York Yankees. For us, like for Jack and Kate and rest of the O-Six, and for Teixeira, deliverance took awhile. But this isn't the end of the story. All it means is that we're ready for what's next. It all led to Tuesday, but we're just getting started. C'mon, man: The Island moved.
Who knows where this all goes from here? I think we all knew it would probably go this way, with Teixeira landing with the most storied franchise in American sports, the franchise of his boyhood idol Don Mattingly (too bad number 23 has been retired) and of his father's high school buddy Bucky Dent. Legacies are made in Yankee Stadium. Getting Boston and Washington and the Angels in the mix helped Teixeira get the number he got, but I'm not sure it was strictly about money. If the Nationals had offered $20 million more over the life of the contract (and Boss Jr. didn't match), would Teixeira have signed with Washington instead of New York? $40 million? I'm not so sure. Teixeira's career path is following Jason Giambi's in more ways than one. Besides replacing Giambi at first base and in the middle of the lineup, Teixeira – like Giambi – made his way to New York as soon as the Collective Bargaining Agreement permitted, set to spend the prime of his career in pinstripes. Giambi didn't win a World Series in his six-and-a-half years in Oakland or his seven in New York. Teixeira hasn't in his six years in Texas, Atlanta, and Anaheim. Will his eight years as a Yankee include a title? He and Alex Rodriguez are in the same boat now. My hatred for the Yankees is as strong as it's ever been. Short of Max suiting up for them one day, I'll never be able to pull for them. I'm still a Mark Teixeira fan, and the team he plays for doesn't change that. I have plenty of respect for Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, too. But I absolutely love seeing that team lose – and by "lose" I mean failing to win the World Series. With the way that team is allowed to operate, anything short of a championship amounts to catastrophic failure. I wrote this on May 8, 2007: Of course, I hate that my team seems to be behind the eight ball the minute the lineup cards are exchanged with that team. But that hatred is merely on the level of my distaste for peanut butter, jogging, reality TV, and the decision to let Steve Nash go. It's nowhere near the hatred I have for the Evil Empire (not the players, but the team), whose authorized tilt of the playing field makes it so easy to crave for them to fail miserably, by which I mean to fall short of reaching the World Series. Because it's plainly inexcusable for a roster like that not to be one of the last two standing, every single year. Second to the elation I'll feel when Texas next makes the playoffs will be the next time that New York doesn't. I'm happy for Teixeira because I think he's gotten himself (out of our division and) where he always wanted to be. But at the same time, I hunger for Yankee losses. Final offers, reportedly: Yankees: eight years, $180 million Red Sox: eight years, $168 million Nationals: eight years, $178-184 million (and an apparent willingness to go to nine or even 10 years) Angels: eight years, $160 million Orioles: seven years, $150 million And the Rangers: eight years, $140 million – and that was a year and a half ago. It was a solid offer to a player still a year short of free agency, and a smart decision by Teixeira to turn it down (without a counteroffer, incidentally). And of course, it was a good thing, in retrospect, for Texas that Teixeira declined it. Would you trade Neftali Feliz, Elvis Andrus, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Matt Harrison, and Beau Jones – right now – for eight seasons of Teixeira at $22.5 million per year? Of course not. As for all those columns talking about how disgusting New York's lineup is now, sure. But . . . Would you trade Saltalamacchia and Taylor Teagarden for Jorge Posada? Ian Kinsler for Robinson Cano? Josh Hamilton, Marlon Byrd, David Murphy, and Nelson Cruz for Melky Cabrera, Xavier Nady, Johnny Damon, and Nick Swisher? Hank Blalock and Max Ramirez (less than $7 million combined) for Hideki Matsui ($13 million)? Michael Young ($16 million) for Derek Jeter ($20 million)? And think about this one a minute before answering: Would you trade Chris Davis ($400,000) for Teixeira ($20 million)? Mark Teixeira will make 50 times more than Davis in 2009. Fifty times. And in 2010. And in 2011, unless by that time Texas locks Davis – who is represented by Scott Boras – up on a long-term deal that takes care of his arbitration years and maybe a year or two of free agency. (I won't start wishing yet for Davis to be a Ranger for life, though I'm hopeful that he's thinking along those lines.) Look at this line: 40 doubles, 36 home runs, 121 RBI, 331 total bases, .290/.378/.541 And this one: 47 doubles, 34 home runs, 111 RBI, 328 total bases, .285/.331/.549 The first is Teixeira's 162-game average for his career. The second is Davis's 162-game average, extrapolated from his half-season in Texas last year. I'm not suggesting we have the same player here that the Yankees just shelled out $180 million for (despite the minor league comparisons between the two that are all over the 2009 Bound Edition), but all things considered, do you want five years of control over a 22-year-old Davis, or the 28-year-old Teixeira at the contract he just signed? There are more than 25 teams out there that presumably would have matched the Yankees' $180 million offer if their answer to that question would have been Teixeira. Can you name one club that wouldn't take Davis right now, whether they could have Teixeira at his price or not? Don't get me wrong. Teixeira was one of my favorite players when he was a Ranger, and the day it struck me that he wasn't ever going to extend long-term here was a sad day. But while I'll concede the third base side-by-side, of course, looking at the rest of the starting nine I won't concede that New York's $126 million group is a better one than the Rangers' $30 million lineup. Yes, there's that pitching thing. We're working on that (the right way – by developing it). But the point of this is not that Texas should be considered right there with New York in terms of contention for a 2009 pennant. On paper we're not the Yankees – nobody is – but as has been the case the last eight seasons, those paper championships in New York haven't won them a thing. Peter Gammons points out that the Yankees now "have the highest-paid first baseman, the highest-paid third baseman, the highest-paid shortstop, the highest-paid catcher, the highest-paid starting pitcher and the highest-paid reliever in the history of the game." The praise they'll get for being World Series champions should pale in intensity to the embarrassment of being anything else. I wish the best for Teixeira, but he'll understand if all his old teammates and fans here in Texas look forward to every year in which he and his Who's Who teammates fail to raise the trophy that the Yankees are trying to buy.
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