Whither the Pinstripes?

The New York Yankees are gone until spring, and the sports world is the poorer for it.

No slight to the Detroit Tigers or their supporters, who now look forward to an American League Championship Series date with Texas after Thursday night's tense and well-deserved 3-2 victory at Yankee Stadium, but the fact is that whenever you remove baseball's greatest hero/villains from the mix, the post-season loses something.

It is a cherished myth -- but a myth nonetheless -- that what sports fans really want in their favourite games is parity among franchises.

You may prefer to think that a level playing field is paramount. You might believe, thanks to years of propaganda from commissioners and owners -- who always make the competitive balance argument during labour wars with players to justify what is in reality a straight cash grab -- that knowing that your beloveds have exactly the same shot at winning a championship every year as every other team is a big part of what keeps you believing.

But the evidence of sports history suggests otherwise. Dominant teams -- big, fat, rich, swaggering, arrogant teams with their own Monument Parks -- are in fact all but fundamental to the great fantasy, and when they are at their peak, the business of the game tends to thrive. If they didn't exist, a sports marketing guru would be moved to invent them.

Consider the current Canadian Football League season, in which the top six franchises are at this moment essentially the same mediocre-but-equal animal: can't exactly feel the excitement pulsing across this great land, can you? Consider the rotating cast of Stanley Cup champions, the absence of dynasties, and ask yourself if you wouldn't rather be cheering for or against the 1970s Habs or the ‘80s Oilers.

By contrast, consider an equation that hasn't changed a lick since your great grandparents were waiting to hear scores from faraway games by telegraph: the New York Yankees are still the New York Yankees. If you follow baseball and don't love them, you surely despise them, and in sport, rooting against someone is nearly as satisfying as root, root, rooting for the home team.

Here, the strongest negative emotions -- hate, resentment, envy -- are all good.

The Yanks have earned that historic enmity by forever, unapologetically attempting to buy their way to the World Series, whether the checkbook belonged to Jacob Ruppert or George Steinbrenner or Steinbrenner fils. When they succeed it is interpreted as a crime against fairplay by non-Yankee fans; when they fail it is seen as proof of a higher order, and in either event, it is the best kind of grist for the mill.

Those feelings have helped the Yankees become The Most Famous Team on Earth (just as they have helped the club that actually deserves that title now thanks to its global reach, Manchester United, who are soccer's Yankees -- or vice versa.)

Not that the Yankee-hater didn't admire the sublime talents of Joe DiMaggio, or the grace of the young Mickey Mantle. They could laugh along with Yogi Berra, get a kick out of Reggie Jackson's monster ego and monster talent, enjoy the various chapters of the Billy Martin-Steinbrenner bad romance from a safe distance, and marvel at how Joe Torre brought an air of class and calm to what had been a circus.

But just the fact that any baseball fan knows all of those names, all of that history, suggests how dominant a single team has been in the game's great narrative.

There were other compelling storylines entering the current baseball post-season -- including the September implosion of the Boston Red Sox, who have become almost Yankee-like since shaking their curse -- but the best was "Whither the Pinstripes?" as it nearly always is.

They cruised into the playoffs, seemed to dodge their Waterloo in Game 4 of the ALDS when A.J. Burnett somehow survived that crazy first inning, and then came home Thursday night with nearly everything pointing in their favour -- and lost.

When Jose Valverde mowed down the current incarnation of Murderer's Row in the bottom of the ninth, when Alex Rodriguez (perfect…) struck out to end the game, millions cheered around planet baseball.

And though this morning, that feeling of satisfaction has to be dulled a bit, knowing that the rest of October won't be quite as much fun, there was still that handy little fable to cling to, the valuable life lesson the Yankees and other Super Teams provide us in the years when they aren't being measured for championship rings.

They might have more money than anyone else. They might be able to pillage smaller franchises and loot them of their stars. They might have every advantage that the free market will allow.

But -- get ready for the message, kids -- they don't always win.