By Rich Bauer
Congratulations to the late George Steinbrenner, the best owner of any team in the history of sports. His $10 million purchase of the New York Yankees is now worth $3.7 billion. That is almost a 6,500 percent return on investment. Not even Met favorite Bernie Madoff could beat that return!
On the field you have to like the way the Yanks have been coming from behind to win games this season. In two of their last three wins they have out slugged the Orioles and Rays after being down 3-0 and won each game by four runs.
Jacoby Ellsbury, back in the lead off spot, has been very effective getting on base and Starlin Castro has picked up where he left off last year with his timely hitting.
The one Baby Bomber who is coming through early is Aaron Judge. What I like is he is putting the bat on the ball, showing discipline at the plate, his strikeouts are down and he’s hitting with power ( 3 HRs & 7 RBIs).
How about Manager Joe Girardi asking Ellsbury and Brett Gardner to show some speed on the bases and challenging them to score over 100 runs each? Can you believe the Yanks have 5 stolen bases to go along with the pop in the bats?
As you know, I was rooting for Jordan Montgomery to get that fifth spot in the rotation and yesterday he showed why he deserves the chance to prove himself. He challenged hitters, coming up with 7 K’s in a little more than four innings, and only gave up 2 earned runs. I think he gets much better as the season progresses.
Think about this in mid-April: in the last ten years a team ranked in the top five in overall dollar value has won the World Series seven times.
Remember what the Beatles said, “ money can’t buy me love”, but I guess it is a safe bet that money will buy you championships in today’s world of baseball.
photo: si.com
