Tom Lehrer - Genius

As I sit here listening to some of Tom Lehrer's output, I am once again amazed at his genius. I was listening to "In Old Mexico," which contains the sentence, "For there is surely nothing more beautiful in this world than the sight of a lone man, facing single-handedly, a half a ton of angry pot roast."

And when I searched on Google, I didn't get any hits with Tom's name! If he is not the originator of calling a charging bull a half a ton of angry pot roast, then I guess I can understand it. If, however, he came up with this amazingly funny phrase, then it is simply unforgivable that the web doesn't give him the credit he deserves.

That time of year again

It's the baseball playoffs. And once again, the Red Sox find themselves fighting for their playoff lives. This caused me to reflect on the Yankees, since their defeats are even more sweet than Red Sox victories. And this past year sure was a strange one. But it illustrated once again that the God loves the Yankees: they are the luckiest sports franchise on the face of the planet. Let's examine their pitching this year.

By design, the Yankees rotation at the beginning of the year was as follows:

• Mike Mussina - $19 million
• Kevin Brown - $15.7 million
• Randy Johnson - $15.4 million
• Carl Pavano - $9 million
• Jaret Wright - $5.6 million

Of these guys (total cost $64.7 million), only Mussina and Johnson lasted the season. In total, the Yankees got 43 wins out of these guys -- or $1.5 million per win.

On the other hand, here are the guys they lucked into who found their way into the rotation:

• Shawn Chacon - $2.3 million (not sure if the Yankees picked up his whole tab from the Rockies)
• Aaron Small - $350 thousand (not sure of this figure, but he was a mid-season call up from the minors, so I'm sure his salary wasn't much more than this)
• Chien-Ming Wang - $300 thousand (I think he's making the major league minimum)

What have these replacement players done? They've won 25 games, at an approximate cost of $3 million -- or $120 thousand per win. Approximately 12 times as efficient -- on a cost per win basis -- as the planned Yankee starters.

Now you see why I consider the Yankees the luckiest bunch of bastards on planet Earth.