The Red Sox trade for a pitcher from the National League West. The Yankees get one from the National League East.
Red Sox owner John Henry meets with Alex Rodriguez and his wife. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner meets with Gary Sheffield and his uncle.
The Red Sox open a new training academy in the Dominican Republic. The Yankees buy the Dominican Republic.
And so the winter has gone in baseball's most historic, and garish, rivalry. Steinbrenner spends money like a drunken sailor and the Red Sox spend like a drunken Steinbrenner.
It all makes for great theater.
Unless, of course, you're watching from the back row.
Which is where the Devil Rays habitually reside.
It makes you wonder whose karma we annoyed. Because, and here's the heartbreaker, the trend in baseball is toward economic reform.
Teams are avoiding arbitration. Big names are on the trading block. Free agents are finding a soft market. Even the Braves, for goodness' sake, are cutting payroll after a dozen division titles.
Yet the Rays are stuck in the American League East, where prices are high and parity isn't even a rumor.
Think about it. Pulses are racing around here because the Rays might be able to find a bat in the middle of the lineup for $4-million or so. The Yankees? They'll spend that on a backup infielder. The Rays wanted Tom Gordon to be their closer. The Yankees signed him for middle relief.
It's sad to consider when, in recent seasons, we have seen what can be accomplished with a team exactly like the sort the Rays are constructing.
The Twins have taken a lot of homegrown players to back-to-back division titles. The Marlins, with a staff of young pitchers and just enough hired help, won a World Series. The Angels, with a modest payroll, did the same.
The difference, of course, is those teams were not bludgeoned by the Yankees or Red Sox during the regular season. Yes, the Marlins beat New York in October, but that's not the same as going head to head for 162 games.
Or you can look at it this way:
The Yankees should have a payroll in the $200-million range. The Red Sox easily could hit $150-million. The Rays may not reach $30-million.
And these are teams Tampa Bay will play 38 times in 2004.
That's almost one-fourth of the Rays' games against teams that are in a higher tax bracket and should be in another league.
While baseball is pushing for competitive balance in every other division, you get the sense Bud Selig is happy to have the Red Sox and Yankees comparing billfolds. He may, in fact, be encouraging it.
The commissioner's office, after all, orchestrated the deal that put Henry in charge of the Red Sox. And now Selig is permitting Henry to meet with Rodriguez, even though the reigning MVP is the property of the Rangers.
The apparent motivation is to get the league's best hitter out of the Texas prairie and into the limelight of Boston. Think about the implications. A-Rod in Boston? Derek Jeter in New York? Hysteria in Connecticut? The Yankees-Red Sox rivalry already is as hot as it has been in 25 years, and now Steinbrenner is being challenged by the Red Sox in headlines everywhere.
It's an irresistible temptation for an owner who has been hell-bent on buying another World Series from the moment Luis Gonzalez's bloop single dropped in the Arizona night in Game 7 in 2001.
The Yankees since have sacrificed cash, prospects and draft choices to bring in Jason Giambi ($120-million), Jose Contreras ($32-million), Hideki Matsui ($21-million) and Aaron Boone ($5.75-million) to join Mike Mussina ($88.5-million), Jeter ($189-million), Bernie Williams ($87.5-million), Jorge Posada ($51-million) and Mariano Rivera ($39-million).
So it's hardly a stretch, when the Red Sox acquire Curt Schilling, for the Yankees to deal for Javier Vazquez. And if Boston is interested in A-Rod, then maybe Steinbrenner will get Sheffield or Vladimir Guerrero. And if Boston reels in closer Keith Foulke, Steinbrenner might just implode.
By now, you know it's useless to imagine the Rays in a spending spree of this type. The market is not large enough and the owner is not wealthy enough. Not to mention, the last time the Rays attempted something similar, the franchise nearly ended up for sale at a flea market.
So the best we can hope for is that Delmon Young and B.J. Upton are every bit the emerging stars Rocco Baldelli and Aubrey Huff are. That Dewon Brazelton has found his calling. That the next round of free agents works out better than the last. That luck, for a change, is on Tampa Bay's side.
That's all it will take.
Well, that and a couple of division rivals finally going bankrupt.
