Oh, please

If anybody needed any further explanation why most sports fans despise the New York Yankees (and their fans), all you have to do is click on this link. Yes, that's right, the Yankees "signed" Billy Crystal to a one-day contract and let him bat leadoff in their spring training game today against the Pirates in Tampa.

The true mark of organizational arrogance is when you're so full of yourselves that you think you're bigger than the game. And yeah, you could accuse me of being a baseball curmudgeon, and this was just a fun little publicity stunt, and it's only a spring training game, and it's only one at-bat, and it's a nice way to honor one of their longtime celebrity fans.

Whatever. This just smacks of the self-obsessed, obnoxious attitude that most of the country hates about New Yorkers. I watched some of the coverage, and the actual at-bat itself, on the YES Network this morning, and you'd think they were reporting on the appearance of Lou Gehrig's ghost or Roy Hobbs himself stepping into the batters box.

Of course, Crystal struck out and looked silly in doing so. He laid off a couple of borderline pitches, swung through a couple of meatball fastballs from soft-tossing lefty Paul Maholm, and the one time he did make contact, he was so far behind the lazy curveball that he slashed it foul down the first-base line.

Personally, I was hoping Maholm would stick the first pitch in his ribs and Crystal would pull a hamstring on his way to first base, but a strikeout is the next-best thing. Oh, and if the Yankees had any guts, they would have trotted out this circus yesterday when they played the Rays and maybe Crystal could have instigated a brawl.