Why does not signing with the Yankees cause half the baseball media to hate you?

MITCH BLATT

So Cliff Lee just chose the Philadelphia Phillies over the New York Yankees, who were offering him more, and returned to his former team from 2009.

Naturally, a player not signing with the team with the largest payroll in baseball and the largest expectations in any given year, after playing for the Texas Rangers for half a year, is the same as LeBron, having played for Cleveland for his entire career, leaving Cleveland in a nationally televised “Decision” to play with two friends who decided to play together for an easy championship. The only comparison is that Lee changed teams in free agency. And that he used to play for Cleveland.

The ironic thing is that if he went to the “Evil Empire” Yankees with the highest payroll in baseball, Lee wouldn’t be being criticized by the baseball media. (I don’t imagine many fans are angry at him for not signing with the Yankees.)

A run down of some of the conspiracy nuts trying to link him with LeBron:

A Henry Abbot reader mail:

The longtime Clevelander became a very hot commodity, and had a lot of options this summer, and he chose the power team.

So … did we learn that there’s something wrong with Cliff Lee’s character? Is he not a true competitor? Is he some kind of fraud?

Um… The Indians traded Lee in 2009. They didn’t even try to sign him this offseason. Then he pitched in the championship in 2009 and played for two teams in 2010. Now he’s returning to his former team to win the championship he didn’t win in 2009, something LeBron didn’t do.

Also, it might help some of my Lee/Bron readers if I explain a few differences between baseball and basketball. Baseball has 9 players on the field at one time, basketball has 5. In baseball, a pitcher pitches in a rotation once every 4 or 5 games. In basketball, a player plays every game he’s healthy. In baseball, the offense goes in order, with each batter batting 3-5 times a game. In basketball, the offense is all on the court at the same time. A basketball player can take over a game and carry a team. LeBron James had a crappy Cavaliers team playing .500+ his whole time in Cleveland. The best a pitcher can do in Washington is win them 10-15 games if that teams offense can score 2 or 3 runs each game.

Oh, and did I mention again that Lee never played for the Rangers for his entire career, wasn’t as big of a star as LeBron, and didn’t make his decision on national TV? No one is criticizing LeBron for leaving Cleveland, but people are criticizing LeBron for leaving Cleveland while announcing his decision on national TV while joining a ready-made group of friends who are presumed to be champions.

And that’s something even Michael Jordan can attest to.

“I would never have called up Larry [Bird], called up Magic [Johnson] and said, ‘Hey, look, let’s get together and play on one team,’” “I was trying to beat them.”

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