Imitation

Murray Chass of the New York Times writes that the 2007 Red Sox

are doing a terrific imitation of the Yankees, the team they have long maligned for doing precisely what the Red Sox have done since the end of last season [signing free agents]. ...

By acquiring Eric Gagne last week, the Red Sox forfeited their right to criticize or whine about the Yankees, their longtime archenemy and nemesis, the team their chief executive once called the Evil Empire. This year, there's a new show in town, and the Red Sox have cast themselves as the Yankees. As such, they are giving an award-winning performance ...

Sadly, this tired meme -- that the Red Sox have become exactly like the Yankees -- gets as much play in Boston as it does anywhere else.

For some reason, these writers and announcers (and fans) think that the Red Sox spending a lot of money for players for a couple of years is the equivalent of the Yankees spending a lot of money for players for several decades.

Chass rattles off some of Boston's deals. One of his examples, the deadline trade of 2004 (which sent Nomar out of town) lowered the team's payroll and thus contradicts his premise. Murray bangs out more than 1,000 words on the subject before closing with this apparently unimportant tidbit:

"... the Red Sox current payroll is $148.6 million, the Yankees' $215.2 million."

So Chass's info has the Yankees' payroll $66.6 million more than the Red Sox's. (66.6 - Evil Empire, anyone?)

Meaning you could take the Red Sox's current payroll, add the salaries of

Ichiro Suzuki
Miguel Tejada
Kevin Millwood
Barry Zito
Albert Pujols
Dontrelle Willis

and still be about $1 million shy of the Yankees' current payroll.

I'm not saying the Red Sox don't enjoy a tremendous advantage over the majority of teams, because they obviously do. But to put the Yankees and Red Sox payrolls into the same bracket is ludicrous.