No More Boston Bitching

By bidding $51.1 million merely to negotiate with Matsuzaka -- signing him to a contract might necessitate that much again -- the Sox also abandoned the moral high ground. That sort of "woe-is-us" defense tends to look a bit transparent when a team suddenly finds almost 6 billion yen stuffed under the mattress.

No more suggestions, please, that the Yankees are some financial superpower capable of trampling the rest of baseball with their reckless and boundless spending. No more talk about the Red Sox being the plucky underdogs that somehow must make do with less.

The Sox's insistence that the Yanks were economic bullies always seemed a bit hollow, anyway. Sure, the Yankees have baseball's deepest pockets, as might be expected in a sport in which local revenues are critical to a team's financial footing.

Here, though, is what the Red Sox never acknowledged: Although the Yankees could indeed outspend them, the Red Sox, in turn, could outspend the other 28 teams in baseball.

Do the Gettys complain about the Rockefellers?